Unknown Protector

by Maggie Mundy

  “This is unbelievable.” Nicole peered over his wing.

  Her cheek almost touched his as she turned back and smiled. He should be thinking of Pergor, but all he could think about was how those lips would feel pressed against his. She wasn’t moving away either when he glanced from her eyes to her lips. Lips opening with an invitation he wouldn’t refuse. Everything ceased and the tunnel of light was replaced by a gust of wind so powerful he closed his eyes for a second. When he reopened them they were on a raised circular platform in a small room with a domed ceiling. The windows showed a night sky far from Earth and the surface of the planet, which resembled a moonscape.

  No one greeted them. For a race that liked to use humans to elevate their inner core to a higher level of consciousness, they seemed to have a distinct revulsion to connecting with the real thing. He took a deep breath and absorbed his wings back into his body.

  Nicole still encircled his body with her legs around his waist, and her arms snug around his neck. It was a good thing no one could read his mind at the moment, because it was full of wanton thoughts.

  “You can stop squeezing me, honey. We’re here.” He didn’t want her to but he needed to get on with the job in hand, which was to get her a new guardian and finish his duty.

  “I’d love to, but you appear to be holding my ass.” She smirked and raised an eyebrow.

  “You’re afraid of heights and I didn’t wanna drop you. I mean after all that effort I put in keeping you alive.” He smiled at her with a smile that usually worked on ladies, but Nicole wasn’t paying attention anymore. When he let go of her she turned and gazed across at the window and gasped. She slunk to the floor at his feet with her head in her hands, shoulders heaving as she sobbed.

  He sat down next to her and placed his arm on her shoulder. She peered at him with tears wetting her face and sniffed.

  “This is too much. I want my life back, my world back. You can’t do this to me. You people just can’t take my reality away and replace it with this.” The desperation in her voice was matched by the sadness in her eyes.

  “I’ll get you back. I promise.”

  A voice echoed in the room. “You may leave the human in a side chamber while you collect a new guardian for her.”

  He helped her up and guided her from the room with his arm around her shoulder, while she leant on him. Underneath was the strongest urge to get back on the platform and take her back to Earth, and away from everything. He never would. Damn it, he always obeyed the rules.

  Chapter 4

  A Place Called Pergor

  Nicole tried to get her mind around what she’d seen. She accepted Mira’s existence. She even accepted Ridge and Sayell, whatever they were. Seeing outer space fly by and the surface of another planet in front of her was a step too far though. She was glad of Ridge’s support. His thoughts might be murky but he was the only face she knew.

  They entered a long tunnel in which the walls appeared to be made of ice but the air wasn’t cold. She reached out to touch the rough surface, which scratched her fingers. It pulsated with energy and where her hand touched the wall glowed red, but it wasn’t hot. There was also an aroma in the air reminding her of honey and her stomach grumbled. Ridge let go of her and strode on ahead. She needed this to stop. Or more so, she needed him to stop so she could get some idea of what was going on.

  “Wait a minute, Ridge. What’s going on? Is this the tunnel with the light at the end of it and I’m dead, or am I really the alien on another planet.”

  Ridge stopped walking, turned, and stared at the floor as though contemplating what to say. Then glanced up and took a deep breath.

  “It’s the communication post between our world and yours. It’s called Pergor. I needed to bring you through the transference compartment back there; otherwise I could’ve gone straight to the crystal chamber and sorted this out.”

  Her tears were gone and she nearly laughed out loud, but thought better of it. “You mean like Purgatory. No, don’t tell me, another myth.” She wanted to know more but he just shrugged. “So it’s an alien purgatory?” she asked.

  “You weren’t meant to see this, you were meant to be in stasis up here. I kinda guessed it hadn’t worked when you kept saying, ‘I don’t wanna die’, over and over. You’re a lovely lady, Nicole, and I know this is all crazy to you. Something’s wrong here, and nothin’s normal like it should be, especially not you.” He raised one eyebrow and turned away again.

  Hang on. She hadn’t asked for this. “I’m normal. You’re the one who took me away from my world to this place. I accept I could see Mira, which was a bit strange, but the rest of this isn’t my doing.” Nicole marched fast to keep up with Ridge’s long strides. She considered he was a good six-foot to her meager five-foot-four. “Anyway, this ‘what’s normal’ attitude is a bit rich coming from a man with wings who brought me heaven knows where. That’s if heaven exists. Don’t answer that.” Nicole followed him until they stopped outside of a door, or she assumed it was a door.

  Ridge turned back and stood with arms folded. “I’ll explain. The voice back there was a Processor, or what you’d call an alien from my Homeworld. He ain’t meant to associate with humans, especially one who sees her guardian and blows stuff up. Sayell and I are Midworlders, or you’d say half-breed aliens. We get replacement guardians for humans when needed. My lot provides Angelics, his Demonics. You’ve already picked up I ain’t no angel, so let’s get you a new one and we’ll go home and forget all this.”

  Nicole twiddled her index finger around beside her head. “Going home suits me fine, but aren’t you forgetting one important detail? My apartment’s been blown up. I’ve no old life to go back to.” Saying the actual words made it more real and she heard the crack in her own voice. Ridge put up a hand and touched her cheek and she found herself leaning against it for comfort.

  “It’ll be sorted. You’ll believe you were lucky to be out when the gas explosion happened, and your new place will be everything you could want. When your new guardians attached the memory of tonight’s fiasco will disappear. It’s for the best.” Ridge placed his palm on the door in front of them.

  The opaque door became clear and opened, letting hot air into the corridor. They stepped through and the door snapped shut behind them. The small room’s walls were identical to the tunnel.

  Ridge stopped and turned. “Stay here, while I go and sort this mess out.”

  Before she could say anything he went out a door opposite. Nicole pressed her face up against the door, but it clouded over and became opaque before she could even get a peek. She turned around to view where she was. A small room about twelve feet by twelve. It didn’t even have a chair so she plunked herself on the floor and sat with her back against the wall. Taking a deep breath she tried to draw on her police and detective abilities to sort things out and prepare for what might happen next.

  Her lungs still protested, but she managed to get a breath in while her back and abdomen ached from Sayell’s beating. Pulling up her sleeves she gingerly touched the bruises starting to develop on her arms. Maybe Ridge could make them disappear like he planned with her memory; otherwise wouldn’t she wonder where they came from when she sat in her new apartment? Damn, she didn’t like this.

  Her mind whirled at all the information she tried to process. For some reason Sayell killed Mira. His boss, Liliath, wanted her pregnant, and Ridge said they were both Midworlders. Mira was a guardian angel and these two guys had wings, even if their halos seemed to have slipped a bit. Ridge brought her off in space somewhere, which didn’t fit at all with her ideas of angels and demons.

  Why did this Liliath want to have a go at her as well? Did she get kicks out of getting her men to go around raping people? More information would be great and she wasn’t going to get it sitting here with her mind whirring out of control. Her stomach churned
in dread at the magnitude of it all. She wouldn’t cry. What she needed was a practical job to do.

  She blew up magical snakes, so surely she could open a door. A normal lock would have made it easier, though her tools would be somewhere amongst the rubble of her apartment. She ran her fingers around the edges of the door but found nothing, no seam or hinge of any kind.

  “Abracadabra,” she said, melodramatically placing her palm on the door. There was a tiny click and the doors sprang apart. “Well, what do you know? I should have been a magician, not a cop. It only took travelling to another world to realize it.” The door opened onto a corridor with more tunnels. It slammed shut behind her with an ominous clunk loud enough to announce her presence if anyone was listening. She stood in the corridor glancing both ways. No one came.

  “Hello?” No answer. Wiping her palms on her jeans she started walking. She chose a tunnel on the right, as there appeared to be nothing to distinguish it from the others. The owners of this place should have a map with one of those ‘You are here’ arrows for lost human visitors. A ‘Ridge is here’ arrow would be good too.

  She shivered at the eerie silence of the place. Maybe ghosts would start to appear. Did ghosts exist? Nothing else was what it was supposed to be. She wasn’t sure what sounds you were meant to hear on a space station, but the utter silence didn’t seem right. At any moment she expected someone to appear around each corner and give her a heart attack. She kept moving, which seemed partially better than sitting still and thinking too much. The corridor ended and the next one had doors off to either side. She tried the palm trick on all of them. Nothing happened, not even when she spouted magic words.

  Where were all the people, or aliens, or angels? Ridge should have left a trail of feathers behind him, but he might not be the only one with wings around here. The corridor came to a dead end and she placed her hand on the wall in front of her. It opened to reveal an elevator-type interior. She entered and the doors closed behind her with a hiss. Her mouth went dry and hands shook as she tried to calm herself. If the elevator was moving she couldn’t tell.

  “Too late to consider if this is a bad idea. Keep calm. Great, now I’m talking to myself.”

  The door opened.

  “Shit.” Jumping back she grabbed her chest. Her heart thumped beneath her hands as she expected someone to jump out and shout ‘Gotcha’.

  She peeped out of the elevator at another small room with a blue crystal curtain on the far side. It was her first sign of anything decorative. Edging her way across the room she reached out a trembling hand to pull back the curtain. The light from the area beyond dazzled her and made her squint. She peered around what looked like a large underground cavern with raised platforms on either side. There were large crystal pillars in half-circles between the platforms. The whole thing reminded her of Stonehenge.

  A door hissed open to the right. She heard Ridge’s voice, and he didn’t sound too happy. She ran behind one of the pillars hoping he hadn’t seen her.

  “Don’t give me that,” Ridge said. “I did my job. It’s simple. You’ve done it every other time. Just give her an Angelic. We’ll all be happy and I can go back to my poker game.”

  “We are still awaiting a replacement for Nicole’s previous guardian,” the other person snapped.

  They sounded male and the room rumbled when they spoke.

  “You’ve always got Angelics waiting. I know none of my kind will ever reach being Elevated, so our minds can travel the universe, but I expect to be able to do my job. So if you can’t give her what she needs, you need to tell me what’s going on?”

  Nicole peeped out from behind her pillar to see Ridge standing with his hands on his hips and a face like thunder. She edged out further as she wanted to get a peek at the other guy.

  “It’s to do with the stunt she pulled, isn’t it? She killed my scripsits, exploding like firecrackers they were. I reckon she’d been seeing her guardian a while too. Pretty rare except amongst the lunatic fringe. She don’t come over nuts to me.”

  Wow, he gave her a compliment, or she thought it was one.

  “This human may be showing unusual talents. It’s important we allocate someone equivalent to her previous guardian to blend with her. Mira, it appears is having difficulty in giving us access to the information both she and her Sym collected while connected to this woman. As a Midworlder, you are supposed to look after the Guardians attached to humans. Things could have turned out better if not for your late arrival. Mira’s passing back was not altogether orthodox.”

  Mira was alive. How could it be possible? Nicole didn’t know whether to scream, cry, or laugh.

  “It ain’t my fault her Angelic got vaporized. I got there soon as she called. Anyhow you always seem to know when the Demonics are planning an attack. What happened this time?”

  “Don’t dare to question me, Midworlder. Your job is to do what you are told.” All the crystals in the room vibrated.

  “I always obey the rules. I know we’re only mixed breed fodder for you all on Homeworld, as either side tries to be top dog. Can you at least let us get on with the work?” Ridge asked.

  “The issues on Homeworld are not of your concern. You’re informed of what you need to know and nothing more.”

  Nicole wished she could see Ridge’s face because she figured he would be red with anger.

  “I know when I’m gettin' the run around. So why don’t you trot out an eager angel. If no one wants her it’s your problem. Humans are nothin’ but vessels to you, and nothin’ but work for me.”

  Nicole couldn’t stand quietly hidden behind the pillar anymore. Her body trembled from head to toe, she was scared and bloody angry, but Mira was alive and she needed to know more.

  “What does he mean? Mira’s alive?” Nicole asked, striding out and trying to act defiant. She got a good look at the person Ridge was speaking to and gasped. “You’re an angel.” All fear and anger disappeared to be replaced by wonder. She gawked open mouthed at the shining male, human-sized version of Mira. He was dressed in a white robe and his wings were unfurled. They fluttered which caused a rumble to resonate around the room. Nicole grabbed Ridge’s arm to steady herself as the angel emitted a screech. It probably wasn’t saying “Hi.” She held her head up and swallowed as her stomach clenched. Going back behind the pillar probably wasn’t an option anymore.

  “I told you to stay outside,” Ridge said from between gritted teeth as he glared at her.

  Nicole raised an eyebrow up at him and faced the angel. She might as well continue doing impetuous things after the way the rest of the night was going. Ignoring her unease she put on her police stance of wide set feet and hands on hips. “Where’s Mira? I want to see her,” Nicole spoke calmly and took a step towards the angel.

  The angel closed his eyes and raised a hand in front of her. Nicole tried to speak, but no sound came out. Not this again. The angel grinned and lifted her until she floated ten feet off the ground. She didn’t get a minute to gather her thoughts as he flung her across the room. She landed against a crystal curtain at the back of the platform. She could move her head but the rest of her body appeared stuck like glue in the crystal strands. Peering down at her feet she could see the sparkling cords encircling them. The angel stood at least twelve feet away with eyes wide and a scowl on his face. He lowered his hand but she still couldn’t move. Ridge moved so fast he stood before her in a second.

  “You should’ve listened to me, honey. Angels are not the friendliest critters around. I’ll try an’ sort this out.” Ridge’s voice no longer sounded angry, but full of the concern his eyes portrayed. He turned and zoomed back to the angel but she couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  She still couldn’t move and the vague sense of pins and needles in her toes increased until the intensity became excruciating. The pinpricks changed and became sharp and
stabbing. She was going to pass out. The sensation continued to creep up her legs, as if she were being lowered into a vat of ice with shards scraping her skin. The cold hit her pelvis and her breath caught. At least her lungs still functioned. An invisible force squashed her chest, freezing it to match the rest of her body. She opened her mouth but no air passed in either direction. Once again she found herself staring at her own death. The chill rose over her chest. Her body acted like blotting paper soaking up the cold and the distress.

  Ridge stood in front of her. The last thing she’d see, a longhaired guy who peered at her with worry in his eyes. All of a sudden Ben’s face floated in her mind. Ben always cared what happened to her, but he was gone. She didn’t understand why Ridge would care. She was just another job. A job not going too well.