by Ivy Sinclair
Protect Her: Part Ten
By Ivy Sinclair
Copyright 2015 Smith Sinclair Books
ebook Edition
Cover Design by Mihaela Voicu
ebook Edition, License Notes
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CHAPTER ONE – RILEY
“Put her there.” Adam pointed at the bar. We both moved across the room, and he swept the glassware and bottles off the bar top and onto the floor where they landed with a crash. I couldn’t have cared less about any of that, but I did notice that the relic was among the items that landed on the floor.
“That cannot help you,” Adam said. It was annoying how observant he appeared to be. “Power without guidance is useless.”
There was a part of me that would have been willing to try despite his warning, but I could feel Paige slipping further away from me with every heartbeat.
Adam’s focus was on Paige as I swept her up and settled her body on the bar. She was as light as a feather, so the movement jostled her more than I would have liked, but I would gladly take the blame for a bruise or two over losing her forever. I hoped he hadn’t noticed the other small movement behind him. It appeared that Viho wasn’t unconscious any longer. When the relic skittered across the floor, it had settled no more than a foot away from where Adam had dumped him on the floor.
One thing at a time though. I needed to get Paige back here and present with me. “What now?” I asked harshly.
Adam moved the bar stools on his side out of the way. He and I stood facing each other across the bar with Paige between us. He leaned forward and put his ear down just above her mouth. I wanted to punch the guy for getting so close to her, especially when I had once had a front row seat to observe the danger he represented. He’d killed Eva’s Protector without breaking a sweat. I had to be careful.
I felt my hands tighten into fists. I had to keep my cool. Adam had offered me a plan to getting her back. I had to be patient, but that ability was far from being one of my strong suits on the best of days.
Adam pulled back up to his full height. “You don’t have much time now.” His face was calm, but the words made it sound as if he was almost bored with the situation.
“Tell me something I don’t already know!” It wasn’t my intention to start a pissing match with this paranormal badass, but my agitation was reaching an all-time high. “Tell me what to do. Guide me, teach me, whatever it is that I’m supposed to do. I’m listening.”
“You have to enter her mind and find her essence. She will be buried somewhere inside her thoughts and memories. She is trapped, although she doesn’t realize it. Eva will be close by. She will try to manipulate Paige to discredit anything you say that contradicts her end goal. But you must find Paige and steel her resolve against the possession. To save her, you must bring her back to the level of consciousness where she can wake up on her own.”
“There’s no way Paige would agree to be possessed,” I said. “The permission can’t be coerced either. That’s part of the rules. She and I have talked about it many times. She’ll try to make a stand against Eva.”
“I told you. Eva is a master manipulator. She has had a thousand years to plan this moment. Do you think she has any intention of failing? She will spin the tale however she needs to so that Paige doesn’t feel there is even a choice anymore. It isn’t coerced when it feels as if it was nothing more than the fulfillment of fate and destiny. Those are powerful forces of influence and can be deceiving to a susceptible mind.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Paige has a future with me, and she knows it. That isn’t something she would give up. There’s nothing Eva could say or do that would make her want to change that.” I stubbornly refused to believe that Paige would agree to anything that would separate us so permanently.
“It doesn’t matter what you think you know about what Paige would or wouldn’t do. It’s almost done,” Adam said.
I didn’t have time to argue with him. “Okay. I need to get inside her head. How do I do that?” I put my fingertips on her temples.
“It’s not simply connecting with her mind. You need to enter it physically,” Adam said. “You need to be fully present if you expect to be able to be strong enough to diffuse Eva’s influence. If you were still human, I wouldn’t even suggest it. As an angel, you stand a chance.” Apparently the news of my recent transition was making the rounds. “You must also be careful of how you engage with Paige. Her consciousness has the power to expel you if you upset her. You can’t let that happen until you are sure that her mind is once again fortified against Eva.”
“I got it,” I said. I stroked her cheek and then leaned down to kiss the top of her forehead. “I’m coming for you, babe. Just hang on.” As I pressed my forehead against hers, I felt Adam touch my arm.
“I will give you the necessary boost. Focus on your mission. You won’t get another chance.”
With those words of pseudo-encouragement, a blinding light surrounded me. I closed my eyes and thought about Paige. I let all the tension drain from my body to the point where I felt weightless. I trusted that the bond between us would take me to her. After a brief period of time, I felt a sinking sensation and then felt the hard ground beneath my feet. The elements attacked me then. Rain and wind pummeled against my body. My eyes opened and focused, and I discovered that I stood in a field of tall grass in the middle of a storm.
Now the reason for Paige’s clothes being wet made perfect sense, although how what was happening in her head and its ability to translate to the physical world caused my head to spin. That was something I’d have to ask Klein about; he was the real brains behind my operations.
The rain came down so heavily that it was hard for me to see anything in front of me, but I knew Paige had to be close by. I brushed the rain away from my eyes as I spun around trying to look in every direction at once. I thought I saw a flicker of white to my left, and I took off in that direction.
“Paige!” I called out. “Paige, can you hear me?”
I didn’t think it was possible, but the rain seemed to fall harder at my words, and the raindrops hurt as they pelted off my skin. I didn’t stop calling her name at the top of my lungs though. A flash of lightning directly above my head illuminated the entire field. That was when I saw her standing about fifty yards ahead of me in what appeared to be a clearing in the center of the field. She wasn’t alone.
I had seen Eva’s ghostly image before, so I knew it was the goddess that stood there with Paige. Eva had her arms outstretched as if she intended to take Paige into a kind of mother’s comforting embrace.
“Paige! I’m here! Don’t do it, Paige!” I waved my arms in the air as I tried to project my voice over the sound of the storm. When the lightning flashed again, I saw Eva’s face turned toward me. The expression of pure hatred and madness almost stopped me short in my tracks. When the lightning flickered once more, the goddess was gone from the clearing.
I reached Paige a moment later. I grabbed her shoulders and whirled her around so that she faced me. Her face was pale, and her blue eyes were blank.
“Paige. Can you hear me?” My heart beat so hard inside my chest that I thought there was a chance I might pass out. “Babe, c’mon. Talk to me.”
She blinked, and the rain stopped so suddenly it was as if it had never been raining at
all. I realized then with a cold shiver that Paige had been controlling the storm. It made perfect sense when I thought about it. We were in her head, after all. Since I was physically there in her mind, I had no idea what would happen to me if I were harmed inside of Paige’s mind. I had to proceed with caution.
“Riley?” When she said my name, a huge bubble of relief seemed to burst inside my chest.
“Yeah, babe. It’s me.” I pulled her into my arms and crushed her against my chest. “I’m here now. It’s okay.”
She didn’t move. I stroked her wet hair and murmured words of nothingness trying to reassure her that I wasn’t going to leave her side. I kept my eyes peeled taking in everything around us though. Eva might have disappeared, but I didn’t think for one second she was gone. My appearance had taken her by surprise. She was regrouping, and we had to be ready for whatever she tried to throw at us.
I held her for several more moments, but then the awkwardness began to settle in as she still hadn’t moved. Her arms hung limply at her sides. I disentangled my arms from her body and took a small step back so that I could study her face.
I cupped my hand under her chin and drew her eyes up to mine. “Are you with me?”
I saw a flicker of confusion cross her face. “As opposed to what?” Her tone was neutral. There was no warmth or energy in it.
“Do you remember what just happened?” I decided that the best course of action was to take it slow. I didn’t want to scare her. There was a good chance that she had retreated somewhere else in her mind. The trance-like state could be serving as a protective bubble around her essence. “Do you know where you are?”
“I’m dreaming,” she said softly. Her nose wrinkled. “At least, I thought I was dreaming. Then she told me that I wasn’t. She said it was a memory.”
I asked questions for a living. It was always important though to spend your time asking the right ones. I needed to re-establish our connection and make sure she still trusted me. “Let’s start at the beginning, okay? Do you remember us making love?”
A small smile flitted across her lips. It was the first real emotion that I had seen in her expressions since I arrived. That was a positive sign. “In the bathroom of Slinky Pete’s. But it wasn’t a bathroom anymore. You made it something else.”
“That’s right,” I smiled softly at her. “Then you were so tired that you fell asleep in my arms. You were having happy dreams when I left you. I know because you were smiling even in your sleep.”
She looked up at me. Her eyes finally focused on my face. “Why did you leave me?”
That was an excellent question. I had to be careful how much I told her. Eva could be anywhere listening to our exchange. I had angel chops to fight with now, but she had a thousand plus years on me. Cautious and careful was the name of this game.
“I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to talk to Samuel because I had some questions for him. Questions that couldn’t wait.”
“Oh.” Her forehead wrinkled as she frowned again. “I don’t like Samuel.”
That made me chuckle. “I don’t like him either. That’s why I sent him away for a while. So if having him and those other archangels around bothered you, you can come back now and not have anything to worry about. Me, you, Klein, and Viho will figure out what our next play is, and we’ll do it together. I need you to come back and help. You’re important to all of us.” If I needed to pull her to consciousness, I wanted her to remember she had a place in the outside world. She wasn’t alone anymore.
She shook her head. “I can’t go back there. Ever.”
Those few words were spoken with such brutal finality that I wondered if I was already too late. How everything had derailed in such a short amount of time was beyond me. An hour ago, she glowed with happiness. The future might have been uncertain, but I thought that she believed, like I did, that as long as we were together we could face anything. Now, she seemed to be a dull shell of the woman I loved. The abrupt transformation was alarming. Adam was right. Eva was one hell of a manipulator if she could achieve this in such a short amount of time.
“Why? Is it because you don’t feel safe?” I asked. “I promised to protect you. We can’t avoid everything, but I promise that I will always come for you. No matter what.”
“Riley, I just…can’t.” Her expression was so disheartening. It was as if the life had been beaten out of her. This wasn’t my Paige. My Paige would fight until the end. Eva had sucked all the fight right out of her. I wanted to find the goddess and strangle her with my bare hands.
“Babe, you can do whatever you want to do. You still have free will, and you can fight. You shouldn’t stay here anymore. Come back with me. It isn’t good for you here.” Add in the goddess who stalked her who could appear at any moment, and that sentiment was truer than ever.
“This used to be my favorite place to be,” she said. She looked wistfully around us at the field.
Her reluctance to make any attempt to come back scared the shit out of me. I felt a sense of urgency, but I couldn’t press her. I remembered Adam’s warning about upsetting her. I couldn’t let her inadvertently drive me away.
“Tell me more about this place then,” I said. I took her hand in mine and kneaded her palm. “I’m listening.”
“This was the second to the last commune that we lived in before my parents moved us to an actual town. But this one was my favorite. There were lots more kids my age, and maybe because I was a little bit older, my mom let me play out here in the fields pretty much whenever I wanted. I felt free in a way that I couldn’t recall ever feeling before. It was almost magical sometimes. I loved my house. I loved my room. I loved the community.”
We were inside Paige’s head and deep in her memories. I was an angel, and we could do whatever we wanted. I saw a unique opportunity had presented itself. I cupped her chin and drew her eyes back to mine. “Show me.”
CHAPTER TWO – PAIGE
It was a surprising request. Ever since Riley appeared, I had been trying my best not to let him in. I walled off all of those emotions. If I let him in, I would have to tell him what I had done. I had already given myself over to Eva and negotiated a deal that gave me three more years on the mortal plane. Now that those three years had passed, she was ready to claim her end of the bargain.
I wasn’t all that surprised that I would have done something like that. The Paige of old wasn’t the kind of person that I was proud to remember. She was manipulative, dark and broken. But she had been a survivor. She would claw her way out of any situation and twist it to her advantage to give her a way to escape. I was nothing like her anymore, but her choices seemed to come back to haunt me no matter what I did.
There was a part of me that was ready to tell Riley to go away. I couldn’t handle looking into those beautiful green eyes knowing that everything I thought we had ahead of us was gone. Just like that, my future ceased to exist. But I knew I needed to find a way to tell him goodbye.
The worst part was I had a feeling once he found out, my dark angel would end up in a black place of his own. I acted like an anchor for him just as he did for me. But this ship had set sail. I couldn’t believe my dumb luck. I found the man of my dreams and barely had any time with him before I would cease to exist. I guess I should be grateful to have had him at all, but that was where the old Paige reared her ugly head.
I should be willing to fight for him, right? I should kick up my heels and do everything I could to try to stop the inevitable, but I worried what Eva would do to him. Riley was an angel now, but he was a newborn in their terms. He still had no idea of the extent of his abilities. Eva had been around for lifetimes before her banishment and had a thousand years to stew on what to do next. All of that centered on me. Riley would be nothing but collateral damage in her game. I couldn’t let that happen if I could help it.
I wasn’t sure how much time I had, but I found that I wanted to share this part of myself with Riley. It would be a strange way to say goodbye, but I could o
ffer him some insight into who I had been before the darkness found its way into my life. It had always hovered there out of sight, but this time in my life had been innocent and pure. I wanted him to see that. I had been good once.
“Okay,” I said with a small nod. I had to fortify the walls around my emotions. I so badly wanted to throw myself into his arms and ask him to protect me from Eva, but that would be selfish and wrong. I had gotten myself into this predicament, and these were my lumps to pay, not his. Riley had sacrificed enough for me. How much more could I possibly ask of him?
“Lead the way,” he said, sweeping his arm out toward the field.
His hand still weighed in mine, and I began to draw him through the grass toward the commune. I didn’t want to spend this time talking about Eva. So I decided to talk about something else, something benign. “Did I tell you that I skipped two grades in school?”
“I didn’t know that,” he said. He stuck his other hand into his pocket as we walked. Although he was trying to appear casual, I knew he was wound up tight. He looked around the field. “Is this somewhere in Iowa?”
“Kansas,” I replied. I took a deep breath and let the smell of the air fill my nostrils. I always loved the way it smelled after a hard summer storm. “My parents moved around to five different communes from the time I was born until I was twelve. We never stayed in any one place for too long.”
“That must have been difficult,” Riley said. “I lived in the same house for my entire life until my mom sent me to live with Alice.”
“I guess I got used to it,” I said. “My mom was a schoolteacher before she met my dad, so she homeschooled me through second grade. Then when I finally was sent to public school, I was so far advanced that I got moved up. I think that was probably good for me later on, but it wasn’t the easiest thing constantly being the new girl and then being two years younger than everyone else in class.”