“We just got back from Chicago,” Claud replied, leaning against the doorframe. “Mikel told me to come get you so we would only have this conversation once.”
“Is Seraphina awake?” Darian asked, rolling to one side and placing his bare feet on the floor.
“I’m guessing not,” Claud replied. “I haven’t seen her. I’ll tell Mikel you’re on your way.”
He left Darian sitting on the edge of bed, feeling like someone drained the life from him.
Technically, someone did, he thought, pushing himself to his feet and finding a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt. He wondered if he’d be able to replace the clothes he lost earlier, and the realization struck him. Probably not. They hadn’t been to any of the areas that mass-produced clothing, but if they suffered the losses of Europe, he’d have to be more cognizant of his actions.
He padded towards the room next to his with his boots in his hands. He turned the knob slowly, grateful it was silent. He cracked the door just enough to see her sleeping form curled beneath the light quilt. The wind ruffled her wild hair, but she didn’t move. He watched the rise and fall of the blanket for several moments before easing the door closed.
He remained where he was, contemplating if he should wake her. She needed to hear what was happening and be included in the planning. He decided she’d already been through enough in the last forty-eight hours. Darian joined the others in the tower’s meeting room a few minutes later. He didn’t feel like he had enough sleep, but he couldn’t miss any more meetings. His time with Seraphina had already drawn him away from too many.
“I assume Sara is still out?” Mikel asked.
“Yes. I thought she might not appreciate being disturbed by me,” Darian replied.
Mikel raised an eyebrow at him, but Darian didn’t feel like explaining. Mikel sighed and turned his attention to Claud.
“Tell us what you found, Claud,” the leader requested.
“We arrived at our old office building, which amazingly enough was still standing,” Claud began. “We emptied the weapons cache, and several of the men brought it back here. When they rejoined the group, we went looking for survivors.” He looked around the table, but his eyes settled on Mikel. “There were none. It looked like everyone died of the same disease we found in Rio. It was horribly gruesome. Eva said you found the same thing in Romania and France, which makes sense in hindsight. We headed north out of the city and ran into our first group of demons about a hundred miles away. Lucky for us, the local National Guard had managed to kill a few. We joined forces and took out the rest.”
“How many military men did they have?” Mikel asked, leaning forward.
“Not too many, maybe a hundred or so,” Claud replied. “But they did have several older vehicles and equipment with safeguards built in to protect from an EMP. They used them to pick up survivors and bring them back to the unit. That’s what took us so long getting back.”
“That’s the best news we’ve had all day!” Mikel exclaimed. “As soon as everyone is recovered, we’ll send another team to that location and reinforce their ranks.” Then, he turned to David, the warrior who led the team to DC. “Tell me your news is more like Claud’s and less like mine, David.”
The warrior shook his head. “Unfortunately, DC is gone along with all the outlying areas: Baltimore, Annapolis, all the military posts, everything. We moved south down the coast and found the same carnage. It was like they lined the coast with whatever bombs they used from Ocean City, Maryland to Virginia Beach.” He looked over at Claud then back to Mikel. “We found a few survivors in the mountains of West Virginia and western Pennsylvania. They were heavily armed and had already killed a small group of demons ranging through the mountains.” David chuckled, but his smile was filled with grief. “We stayed overnight in a small town in southern West Virginia. They welcomed us and fed us like we were one of their own. Then, they told us how many were lost before they killed the last demon. If a larger force shows up, those people won’t win the fight. They stand a better chance than most, but even with all their weapons, the demons nearly wiped them out.”
Silence settled over the table. The Csökkent had been thorough with their placement of the bombs. Darian hated that he never knew. He had several contacts on the US’s eastern seaboard. Had they really not heard a thing? Or were there so many threats that everything got lost in the noise? He suspected the latter.
“We’ve still not seen Orin or Victoria,” Mikel said, interrupting Darian’s thoughts. “We have to assume they have some role in whatever else is coming. I’m also assuming they are still in Europe.”
“What role could they possibly have?” Stephen asked. “If our initial reports are any indication, the human population has been decimated. We’re all that’s left to fight against the Overlords.”
“It certainly looks that way,” Mikel replied. “Darian, I’d like to send your scouts to any military base that’s isolated from a large city. I want to find out how much of the world’s armies are left and do it as quickly as possible. Their job is purely recon, information only. They can come back for support if needed.”
“If I send out two scouts per team, that will be seven areas they can search,” Darian said. “Do you know where these bases might be?”
“Some of them,” Mikel replied. “I was hoping you would have that knowledge from your security company.”
“Most of the military groups we worked with were part of the nation’s government, which of course is not hidden in a small town,” Darian responded. They were privy to a few locations, but not all. It would be a start.
“Then, we’ll start with what we know.” Mikel stood and placed his hands on the edge of the table. “While Darian’s scouts are doing that, I want to take at least half of our warriors to England. There’s a reason there were no bodies in Dover. We need to find out why. The rest of the warriors will be on standby. This fight is going to get ugly, and I don’t want everyone exhausted or wounded at the same time. Any questions?”
“Any plans for me and Seraphina?” Darian asked.
“Find out what triggered her ability, and see what Raphael can do to help her control it,” Mikel replied. “I’ll let you know if we need you.”
The group started filtering out, but Mikel called Darian back.
“I suggest you start calling her Sara,” Mikel said. “It’s the little things that matter.” He left Darian standing alone in the meeting room.
He knew they were all trying to bring his Sentinel closer to him, but the last thing he wanted was to make her feel like he was being forced upon her. They’d already done that with the bonding ceremony. He was surprised she agreed to it so readily but suspected it was only because she hoped to save her husband. She might be a little naïve, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew she didn’t have the strength to fight against the demons, but she also knew that he did. Until now.
Chapter 31
Seraphina
Sunlight filtered through Sara’s closed eyelids, a cool breeze drifting across her face. She wondered how the weather could be so pleasant all the time. Shouldn’t it be blistering hot since they were in South America?
She turned her head to the side and immediately regretted it. A cry escaped her lips as a dull throb echoed through her skull. She pulled her hands from beneath the sheets and rested them against her forehead. Everything hurt, not just her head, but her arms, chest, torso.
“What the hell?” she whispered.
The sound of the door opening forced her to open her eyes, revealing Magdelin’s kind face.
“Let me help you,” the healer said as she approached the bed and laid her hands on the sides of Sara’s face. Her cool, healing touch brought instant relief.
“Thank you,” Sara said in a soft voice.
“That’s why I’m here.”
“How long have I been sleeping?” Sara asked, the sudden urge to pee compelling her need to get out of bed.
“About ten hours,” Magdelin replied. “Take my ar
m.”
The healer helped her out of bed, and Sara looked down at her attire. A deep gray, silk shirt reached mid-thigh, and someone had rolled the long sleeves halfway up her forearm.
“I do have my own clothes, you know,” she murmured. Still, the silk felt wonderful against her skin.
“Adalina was too impatient to find them,” Magdelin replied, avoiding her gaze. Was that a lie? “And the clothes you showed up in looked like they suffered through one of Darian’s fire incidents.”
“Do I even want to know?” Sara asked as the two women tottered towards the bathroom.
Magdelin shook her head and turned to leave. “Probably not.”
Sara pushed the bathroom door open, and she suddenly remembered what she’d been wearing. “But that was my favorite t-shirt!”
“Not anymore,” Magdelin’s muffled voice replied through the door.
After Sara took care of her immediate needs, she leaned over the bathroom sink and looked in the mirror. Her dark brown eyes stared back at her, and her lips formed a smile, laughing at the tangled mess of curls on her head. She never considered herself an attractive woman, always thinking her narrow nose was too pointed, her lips too thin, and her cheekbones too high.
“You look like shit, girl,” Sara said to the woman in the mirror.
“No thanks to you,” she replied.
“You shouldn’t talk to yourself,” Darian’s voice called from the other side of the bathroom door.
Sara rolled her eyes. Of course, he was there now. “And you shouldn’t eavesdrop on a girl’s conversation, Darian.”
He was silent after that, but Sara was certain he didn’t go far. She reached into the shower and turned on the water, intent on making herself somewhat presentable.
Would a shower wash away the anger and hatred leftover from those demons? She doubted it. She still didn’t understand what happened. It was almost like she was in their minds and could feel their need for death. A shiver ran through her before she tossed Darian’s shirt on the floor. She hesitated, looking at the rumpled silk, and snatched it up, hanging it on it the peg on the back of the door.
Thirty minutes later, she poked her head out of the bathroom. Darian sat in the living room, pretending to look at a magazine, but she saw him watching her with an unreadable expression.
“Is Magdelin still here?” Sara asked.
“Nope, just you and I.”
She needed to get to her room with some semblance of dignity, and the towel wrapped around her didn’t really fill that role.
“I believe we’ve already crossed this threshold, Seraphina,” Darian said, interrupting her thoughts. “If it helps your modesty, I promise to ignore you as you run to your room.”
“Will you ever call me Sara?” she asked, adjusting her towel and making a beeline for the bedroom.
“Maybe.”
She didn’t look at him, but she could hear the humor in his voice. She slammed her door and leaned back against it. Why did he have to be so irritating? The same question could be applied to her. She poked that bear several times already and enjoyed it, and she wasn’t sure she could hold it against Darian for doing the same to her.
She found a clean set of clothes and braided her wet hair. Again, the woman in the mirror looked at her with a critical eye.
“You know, he’s probably the only one with answers.”
“I know.”
But she didn’t like the feeling that continued to grow between her and Darian. It had only been a couple of days since her life was torn apart. She wasn’t given time to adjust to any of this. Did the bonding make her feel so close to him, or was it something else? Could she accept the fact that she was destined to be by his side from the beginning? She refused to believe it was true. She never would’ve had the family she loved so much. That damn lump in her throat swelled again, and she choked it back. She lost the family she loved. Was it her fault? Or was it Darian’s fault for not approaching her before she fell in love with her husband? If he had, she wouldn’t have this grief. But she also wouldn’t have had the love of a child, her little girl. She would never want to change that, even with her immeasurable pain now.
“You’re no help,” she said to her reflection.
Darian hadn’t moved from his place on the sofa when she finally emerged from her room.
“I thought Eva and Claud lived here as well,” she said as she dropped into the chair across the room from him.
“Claud was here a little while ago but got tired of waiting for you to get out of the shower,” Darian replied. His lips twitched, the telltale sign of his effort not to grin. “He went to the barracks instead.”
The thought suddenly occurred to her that some of the warriors might not have survived the battle. She’d seen several with severe injuries, but she hadn’t seen Eva again after they split from Mikel’s group. “And Eva?”
“Eva is fine,” Darian replied, tossing the magazine on the table next to him. He seemed to read her thoughts when he answered. “But a couple of our warriors are in critical condition. Magdelin isn’t sure if they’ll survive.”
She covered her mouth, visions of the battle assaulting her. She squeezed back her tears, refusing to cry again.
Darian leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Do you remember what you did before you passed out?”
“I’m not sure,” she replied. “I remember seeing Adalina hurt and the man next to her falling beneath the demons that assaulted him.” She bit her lip. “Then, I got really pissed.”
“You threw daggers of light into the demons’ skulls,” Darian said. “Do you recall that part?”
“Did I really?” She reluctantly replayed the scene in her head, trying to focus on her actions rather than the anger she’d felt. “Yes, I did. It was disgusting, but I didn’t want to see anyone die, and I knew they would.” She cradled her head in her hands, not wanting to revisit the demons’ thoughts, but the feelings still lingered at the edges of her memory.
“The demons are dead, Sara,” Darian said. “Every one of them collapsed, their black blood pouring from their red eyes. You were in a coma-like state for ten hours afterwards.”
His calloused recounting of the event made her shudder, and she would’ve preferred his compassionate side right now. She refused to look at him but heard the sofa creak as he rose. His soft steps approached her, his black boots appearing in front of her chair. She didn’t want to look up and see the rest of him.
“I can’t talk about it, Darian,” she whispered.
He knelt in front of her, gently pulling her hands from her face. She refused to let the tears fall down her cheeks, just as she refused to look at him. He would make her say it out loud.
“I could feel your emotions during the entire thing,” he said softly. “I need to know whose anger and hatred you were feeling.”
She snatched her hands from his and pushed him away. Maybe she didn’t want his compassion after all.
“I don’t know whose they were!” she yelled, jumping from her seat. “I don’t want to believe they were mine, but how could they be anyone else’s?” She grasped the sides of her head. “When the first one was silenced, all I wanted was to rid myself of the rest of them.”
He pushed himself off the floor, understanding glittering in his eyes. “I’ve been possessed by a demon,” he said. “I know what it feels like to have one inside your head.”
“You were?” she asked, fear rising into her throat. “Was I possessed?”
“No, Aneera thinks you somehow connected to them, but they did not possess you.”
“I killed them. The light from my hand grabbed their minds and silenced them. I felt their lives end in my grasp.” She looked at him, expecting to see revulsion but still finding understanding. “I don’t ever want to experience that again. The depth of their hatred is more than one person can bear.”
“What about the knife throwing thing? Could you do that again? It was pretty damn effective.”
&nbs
p; He grinned, and she recognized his effort to lighten her mood. Okay, maybe the compassionate side of him was better.
“It was, wasn’t it.” She smiled a little. “I need to figure out how I did it.”
She noticed him inching his way towards her, and she bit her lip. She needed to convince him she was okay before his overprotective personality went into the overdrive.
“Which reminds me,” she said, moving towards the kitchen, “I felt your fire burning through my veins before… well, before all that demon-mind-thing. What happened there?” She put the kitchen counter between them and started making another peanut butter sandwich.
“Probably because I gave you part of my strength,” he replied, leaning on the opposite side of the counter. “I felt you call for it, and it seemed like the only way we would survive. The ferry wasn’t far enough away from the dock. The demons would have gotten to it easily and slaughtered the people on board.”
She paused with her spoon in the peanut butter she really didn’t want and looked up at him. He felt her call for his strength... What did that mean?
“You not only saved our warriors and scouts but all the people on that boat,” he continued.
“But now these Overlords will know what we can do.” Her spoon hovered over her bread. “Weren’t we supposed to keep that secret?”
“We didn’t leave any of the demons alive,” he replied, his eyes drifting from her face to her sandwich. Was he hungry?
“Surely the people on that ship saw what happened.” Sara swallowed hard, spreading a glop of peanut butter onto a piece of bread and forcing herself to think of the fact that she’d saved innocent people. That’s what this was about, wasn’t it? “What if one of those cultist guys was in the group?”
“I suppose that’s a possibility.”
He rubbed his jaw, and she noticed several faint scars crossed the back of his hand. She hadn’t seen them before but assumed they came from fighting with those long daggers. How did he live a life of violence for two hundred years? She barely made it one day without falling apart.
“Did you intend to eat that?” he asked, his mouth twitching.
Sentinel's Rise: Book 1 - The Watcher and the Sentinel Series Page 19