by Vicki Keire
“What did they do to you?” I whispered to no one in particular. My hands ached to reach out to him, but something told me that would be a bad idea. Who knew what kinds of alarms I might set off?
“Maybe he can tell you himself.”
My head snapped up. He’d caught my interest. “How so?” I asked.
“Like this,” Jack said, reaching out a hand to the motionless figure.
I watched, as fascinated as I was horrified. I thought again of alarms and fighting. But before I had time to stop him, Jack’s hand hovered over the body for just a second. Then he thrust it against Asheroth’s immobile side, sending waves of blue fire across his body. I had to choke down a scream.
“What are you doing?” I demanded. “Can I help?”
Jack looked as if he was going to dismiss the idea, but then he turned to me with an excited look, grappling for my hand. “Maybe you can. You do boost my power. Maybe together it will be enough.”
“So, what do I do?”
“Just hold on. Don’t let go, no matter what.”
I can do that, I thought, weaving my fingers through his. As Jack reached for Asheroth again, I concentrated on holding his hand as tightly as I could.
“Now,” Jack said, his eyes glazed with effort. “Channel the Shadows.”
forced down my nervousness and reached for that deep part of myself, for the darkness inside me I hadn’t ever been able to understand. That place was where my Gifts lived, dimly understood, but powerful nonetheless. Perhaps it was being so close to the energies of the Dark Realms, but I felt an immediate response to my summons. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as cold fire caressed my palms. The tingling grew more powerful until the numbing, throbbing sensation spilled out from my palms to travel up the hand I held. Jack’s eyes widened slightly, letting me know he felt it, too.
Then he moved his fist to rest over Asheroth’s heart.
The effect was immediate and electric. Limbs flailed as my guardian jerked bolt upright. His skin was bathed in a familiar faint blue glow that ebbed as Jack withdrew his hand. He looked even paler than normal. More corpse-like. His eyes, which had been dead before, snapped with brilliant light. Although an expression of pain remained, wariness coupled with a dawning awareness of the situation appeared across Asheroth’s face. I wanted badly to go to him, to demand to know what had been done to him, and to tell him things would be okay. But I knew that was a lie. Things were far from okay, and they were getting worse by the day.
Jack held me back from Asheroth with firm hands on my shoulder. “Just give him a minute,” he cautioned. “We don’t know what he’s been through.”
I nodded. It was a painful process to watch. He moved as if injured. It took everything I had not to rush to him.
“What,” Asheroth rasped in a voice that sounded like raw charcoal, “have the two of you done?” His eyes began to shine their brilliant, Christmas-light white. “What are you doing here among the forces of the Dark Realms?” He jumped down from the stone platform and paced toward us. Slowly like a big cat, he prowled closer and closer. “I thought I made it plain you were not to come here again.” Even his voice had a growl buried in it. “I made your escape possible at great personal cost.”
“Umm,” I said, none too brightly. I went from straining to get to him, to pushing back against Jack in an attempt to get away. It seemed as if unpredictable, angry Asheroth had weathered whatever had been done to him. I tried to tell myself this was good news as words began to pour out of me in a torrent. “We didn’t know you were here. We were just looking. Preparing. We’re just here to… check things out. Like the Hunters, and Belial, and…” Oh, hell.
Asheroth’s eyes narrowed. He was almost within reaching distance. “Hunters?” he asked, drawing out the “s” so he sounded like an angry snake. “You’ve been ‘checking out’ Hunters?”
Jack stepped between us. “None of that is as important as the fact that we found you.” Jack crossed his arms. “At great personal cost to us, I might add. And now nothing is as important as finding a way to get you out of here.”
Instead of agreeing immediately as I had expected him to, my Fallen angel’s eyes snapped diamond fire. “I found her, you know,” he said softly, almost forlornly. “Or rather, she found me.”
“Who found you?” I asked, a tight feeling rocking my insides. Surely he couldn’t mean…
“Katerina,” he said, almost reverently. “I found her in the Dark Realms.” He dropped his head so that his black hair obscured half his face. “We found each other.”
My throat tightened. “That’s… wonderful,” I forced myself to say. I was surprised at my response. Maybe it was the fact that he had met my dead great-grandmother’s ghost that freaked me out so much. Maybe he was delusional. I wasn’t sure which scenario I preferred.
“He changed her,” Asheroth went on. Something dark and cold had crept into his voice. “He changed her form, but I knew her anyway.” When he lifted his head, his face was almost a mirror of the one his frozen form had worn―agony ravaged his features. “He made her into a Grey Lady,” he wailed. Then his voice rose to a powerful shout. “And I will kill him for it!”
“Oh my god,” I whispered, and this time, when I hung on to Jack, it was for help standing. My great-grandmother, the first Caspia, stuck in the Dark Realms as one of Belial’s personal servants? I remembered the Grey Lady who had seemed so helpful, the one who had hidden my daggers and jacket. The one who felt like spring rain, and sent me memories of a blonde child playing in the fields. “That was her.” I clung to Jack. “He has her trapped.”
“I will kill him,” Asheroth repeated, conversationally now. “And then I will take over his kingdom. I will reign over the Dark Realms until I have found a way to make her whole again!”
Nothing he said seemed rational. I couldn’t take in his words, couldn’t make them sensible. I noticed how battered his body was. Had they tortured him out of what little sanity he had left?
“Just come back with us,” I pleaded. “We’re being attacked on both sides, and we need your help. Once Belial has been defeated,” I swallowed hard. I couldn’t believe I was playing along with his insane ravings. “Then you can come back. If that’s what you want.”
He said nothing as black abysses unfurled on his back. His eyes were stark white like bolts of pure electricity, or lightning before it hit the ground. A dark portal shimmered behind him. All he would have to do was step through, and be lost to us.
I held out my hand to him, an echo of the gesture he’d made to me over Katerina’s grave. A gesture I’d rejected. “Please,” I whispered. “We need you.”
“She needs me more,” he said, and stepped backward into the opening. “I will come to you,” he promised, the portal closing around him. “But I have other matters to attend to first.”
I almost choked on my disappointment. Having Asheroth back would have been a major coup. And a part of me missed him, missed him terribly. I hadn’t realized how much I had come to depend on him―for protection, for power, for all kinds of things. And now he was gone.
But he had found a new reason to live, I reminded myself. My great-great grandmother. Katerina. The first Caspia. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Jack sketched another shimmering arch in the air, and I took a deep breath before stepping through.
awoke to Ethan sitting cross-legged on the bottom of the bed, staring at me as if he was attending my wake.
Jack was nowhere to be found. I assumed he had returned to wherever his sleeping body was located. I yawned and flexed muscles that had been motionless for most of the night. Tension and soreness traveled up and down me in waves, and I wondered if even my unconscious body had been so stressed out it was unable to relax. Stretching felt wonderful.
I smiled up at Ethan. “Good morning,” I said.
His response was terse. “I hate it when you do that to me. Just… slip out of your body like that. It’s impossible to wake you. It�
�s like looking at your still-breathing corpse.”
I felt terrible about not having brought him along. I just hadn’t wanted to disturb him, and I figured the fewer people sneaking around, the better. I sat up, the thick white satin bedspread falling to my waist. “But we found Asheroth,” I offered in a small, apologetic voice. “He’d been tortured, and frozen, like some kind of statue.”
Ethan’s brows pulled together in confusion before slamming down as his anger built. “Asheroth?” he asked. “Don’t tell me you risked another trip to the Dark Realms…”
“No!” I almost tripped over my words, trying to reassure him. “We found him in Belial’s encampment. So we had to try to get him out.” I left out the part about my ancestress and swung my legs over the side of the bed, hopeful Asheroth had changed his mind. “Is he here? Did he make it back?”
“Wait, what? Asheroth, here?” He shook his head as if hesitant to tell me. “He hasn’t shown up here, Caspia. Not yet, anyway.”
My heart felt like it had been crushed. My guardian wouldn’t abandon us, not in our hour of need.
He wouldn’t abandon me.
Ethan had no trouble interpreting my expression of dampened hope. “Well, he isn’t here. Yet.” He looked uneasy. “Unless he gets here soon, and I mean really soon, like after breakfast, then you’re still going to have to undergo the binding ceremony. We can’t afford to wait on Asheroth to raise the barriers between us and the rest of the town. We need that done as soon as possible.”
“It’s just as well.” I padded over to the dresser where the clothes I’d arrived in were stacked in a neat pile on the top. I did not want to undergo the binding that would make me the new Guardian of the South, but we also couldn’t afford to wait. I thought of how unbalanced he’d seemed, and remembered the crazy things he’d said. The first Caspia, trapped in the Dark Realms as a Grey Lady. His vow to rule over the Twilight Kingdom, just as Belial now did. I suppressed a shudder. I could only hope he hadn’t been robbed of the last shreds of his sanity. “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to do this. But there doesn’t seem to be anyone else, and who knows what Asheroth will decide to do.” I didn’t want to say the words aloud; I’d rather keep them inside. “We have to move forward, no matter what.”
Ethan nodded. He finally seemed a little more relaxed, at least enough to give me a hesitant smile. He slid off the bed and came up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist. “I like you in white,” he said, tugging on my nightgown. Hesitant fingers stroked the tangles from my hair. “But mostly, I’m just glad to have a moment alone with you. Before all the craziness starts.”
“Craziness?” I spun around so that I stood just inches from him. “I thought we were saving the town.”
He had me pinned between him and the dresser. His arms came up around me, trapping me as they made a half-circle around my body. “I have a feeling,” he said, inching in closer, “that things are going to get a little crazy before the day is through.” His light blue-green eyes regarded me keenly. “You do understand what happens this morning?”
“You mean the ritual.” I let my fingers trace the muscles of his arms.
I could never get enough of his human body with the way it was so strong, but warm and welcoming, too. Did I miss his angelic form with its incredible strength and lightning fast reflexes? I’d had a lot of time to think about it. Although it was true that I did miss some of the things he used to be able to do like destroy our enemies with his bare hands, I still much preferred warm human Ethan. His arms came up tighter and tighter around me until I stood directly against his chest. I rested my head against him and thought of the thing I loved most about his being human: his heartbeat. I let my palm come up to rest right over its rhythmic thumping.
My Ethan. The only Fallen angel I knew that wasn’t doomed for loving a human. Whether it was a blessing or a curse, or a mixture of both, we at least had a shot at spending the rest of our human lives together. But it came at the price of his immortality, and I had never stopped feeling guilty about that.
“Do you ever miss it?” I asked as he continued to finger comb my hair. I sighed gratefully. It felt wonderful.
“Hmm?”
“Immortality,” I whispered. There was a lump in the back of my throat. “Do you ever regret it, giving it up?”
He answered me with a soft chuckle and an even tighter embrace. “I want to grow old with you. I don’t want to linger on after you, slowly going insane because I’ve been left alone. I’ve seen it happen to too many of my kind. Asheroth. Belial.” He shook his head. “No, love. I don’t regret it. Not for a minute.”
His kisses, when they came, made me forget all about wars and bindings and enemies.
The morning of the ritual was clear and just a little bit chilly. Of course, it always seemed chilly at Bain’s property. I wished for a sweater as I stepped outside onto the porch.
“You haven’t eaten,” Mrs. Alice chided as she stepped, seemingly out of nowhere, to my side. She held a steaming porcelain cup of something out to me.
“I can’t,” I told her. “I’m too keyed up.”
“That’s when it’s most important to maintain your routine. We can’t let the bastards take everything away from us.” She smiled at me, and I realized, not for the first time, just how pretty she was, and how kind the years had been. I hoped I looked half as good, should I be lucky enough to live to even close to her age.
“I know it’s not one of those candy coffees you prefer, but it should do the trick,” a gruff smoker’s growl teased from behind me. I whirled, disbelief warring with hope in my heart.
“Mr. Markov!” I shouted, and ran to wrap him in a fierce hug.
“Careful!” he cautioned, warning me away with one wave of his hand. It was then that I noticed he leaned on his cane more than ever. One arm was encased in bandages from wrist to elbow. He had scrapes and bruises up the side of his face, and wore a brace on the knee not supported by his cane. But his expression was as fierce as ever, eyebrows drawn together over hawkish eyes, his jaw set in determination. He had never looked so defiant, and so fragile, all at once. My heart swelled at the sight of him.
“Oh, Mr. Markov,” I said, holding myself back lest I hurt him. “I was so worried about you.” Tears sprang to my eyes. Here was the last remnant of my coffee shop family, tottering before me right before a dangerous battle. “I hope you don’t plan on fighting, because… because after losing Nicolas and Amelie, I don’t think I could take losing you, too.”
His fierce expression softened just a little. “The twins are fine,” he reassured me, reaching out his bandaged arm to grasp my hand. “They have their hands full, but it’s nothing they can’t handle. They wish they could be here, but they expressed their confidence that we will rise to the occasion.”
Secretly, I wished I had their faith in me. And part of me was glad they were away from all of this.
Mrs. Alice scowled at the old wizard. “Don’t worry, Caspia. I’ll keep him by my side during the fighting. I won’t let him operate under the dangerous delusion that he has the same powers as a younger man.” Markov shook his head as if exasperated, but he looked on the older woman with fondness before releasing my hand.
Mrs. Alice held the mug out to me and I took it reluctantly. It was like nothing I’d ever tasted before―thick and sweet with the bitter under bite of herbs I didn’t recognize. I sipped it gratefully and basked in the warmth it sent coursing through my body.
“What’s in this?” I asked.
“Just something to help you relax through the ceremony,” she said.
The ceremony. Right. I should have figured there was a dual purpose to Mrs. Alice’s actions this morning. “Shouldn’t we wait to see if Asheroth makes it back?” I asked, sipping my drink. I was going to need all the help I could get. “I mean, if he’s here, there’s no need for a new Guardian of the South, is there?”
Mrs. Alice shook her head sadly. “But he isn’t here, Caspia. And he left you his
heir for a reason. Have you considered the fact that he wants you to take his place?” She looked behind her as if afraid of being overheard, and lowered her voice a notch. “And the rest of us agree that a new, and sane, Guardian is better than an erratic one.”
“There really is no other way?” I asked in a small voice. I so did not want to do this. I still hadn’t processed the many ways it would change my life, and frankly, I wasn’t sure if I would ever be ready.
“Not if you want to protect the town,” Mrs. Alice answered sadly.
I nodded and drained the last of the drink. The herbs had all settled to the bottom, and their sharp bite, which had been masked by the sweetness of the drink, almost made me gag.
“We should do it then. Before I lose my nerve.”
Mrs. Alice gave me a look I can only describe as bittersweet, and led me inside by placing her hand on the small of my back.
I insisted Ethan come with me. Some of the other Guardians had brought people with them, so why not me? He stood slightly behind me on my left side, eyes darting everywhere around the room as if expecting danger from all quarters. Still, his presence was calming.
A round table stood in the middle of the room. Bookshelves rose all the way up to the second floor with old fashioned ladders scattered about. A fireplace roared against the far wall. I wished, for a brief moment, that I could just curl up with a book and forget everything else. It truly was one of the most amazing libraries I had ever seen. My estimation of Bain rose a few notches.
We were arranged around the table according to the directions we represented. That meant that Bain, as Guardian of the North, stood directly across from me. He gave me a knowing smile, flashing teeth that were far too sharp. He alone had no one else with him. Cassandra stood behind Mrs. Alice to my right, and Jacob Eden accompanied Cynthia, the pretty, dark-haired young Guardian of the West. Cassandra had whispered her name to me when we took our positions around the table. I wondered what relationship the two had to each other before snapping my attention back to the ritual at hand. I needed to pay attention. What was about to happen would change my life.