by Cege Smith
Ellie took a deep breath. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” she said.
Lucy came into the room and took Ellie’s hand. She turned it over so that Ellie’s hand was palm up. “We can’t exactly use the front door just in case the transports are on their way here and I’m not strong enough to take both of us the back way on my own. The waypoint in the basement is really only good for time travel, so I’m going to have to do this a bit differently. You know what I’m going to ask for, right?”
With dismay, Ellie realized what Lucy wanted. “Why is it always my blood that does the trick for your magic?” Ellie grumbled.
“Because you are special,” Lucy said with a wry smile. “Not all of us are so lucky.”
“If this is luck, I’d like to have a little less of it,” Ellie said, straightening her back. “Do what you need to do, witch.”
A small knife appeared in Lucy’s other hand. “I need to pull on your mojo, Ellie. Casting a spell to move two people from here to Purgatory without using the way line requires a lot more energy than I have. The easiest way to bypass that is to hijack the magic in your blood.”
Ellie said nothing. Ultimately, she would do whatever it took to see David again. So if Lucy required a transfusion of all of her blood, then Ellie would willingly give it to her.
Once she determined that Ellie wasn’t going to argue, Lucy sighed and then ran the sharp tip of the blade across Ellie’s palm. Ellie bit back a gasp of pain. Then Lucy’s eyes closed, and she started to chant. She waved the knife in a small circle around their heads and then she slashed down and sliced open her own palm. Ellie did cry out when Lucy’s cut hand grasped hers and it felt like a million tiny needles dug into her skin.
As light enveloped them, Lucy’s voice grew louder. The pain scorching through her limbs made it hard for Ellie to concentrate. She couldn’t see anything and her other arm came up to block out the brilliant blinding white light. The only way that she knew that Lucy was still there was the other woman’s death grip on her hand. Then a ball of white-hot light hit Ellie squarely in the chest.
Lucy’s hand shot out of hers and Ellie went flying backward. Her head smacked into a hard surface, and she saw stars. As the light finally dimmed and shapes came back into focus, Ellie found herself looking into two dark blue eyes she knew well.
“Ellie?” David’s voice was full of tight anticipation.
“That’s me,” she croaked. Ellie saw Lucy standing behind David shaking her head and raising a finger to her lips. Then she flipped up her hands and showed all ten fingers. Ten minutes, Lucy mouthed. Then Lucy flew straight at the door, and Ellie was amazed to watch her pass right through it.
Then David’s fingers were probing the back of her head and Ellie winced when they found the tender spot of her skull where it had connected with the wall. As Ellie’s eyes looked over David’s shoulder and wandered around the room, she saw that the room was small. There was a bed pushed against the far wall and a small writing desk next to the door that Lucy had just exited. She could see through the open door on the other side of the room that it led to a small bathroom. It seemed clean and comfortable, although stark. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting.
“Swell digs,” she said. “Sorry that you had to trade down on my account.”
“Ellie, it is you!” David pulled her into his arms and Ellie savored the warmth of his skin next to her nose as she buried her face into the crook of his neck.
“Who else would it be?” she said. She felt happy and safe for the first time in what seemed like forever.
David pulled away just enough so that he could look down at her. “What are you doing here, Ellie? It’s dangerous for you to be here.”
Ellie heard his words, but her eyes were drinking him in. His dark hair curled around his face, and one tendril dropped low on his forehead, just like she remembered. She reached up to push it off his face. Wrinkles lined the corners of his eyes. Those were new. David looked tired. She wanted to settle back into his arms, but Lucy’s time limit was ticking in her mind.
“We’re going to bust you out of here, David, as soon as we figure out how. Those details are a little fuzzy at the moment. But first we wanted to know if you had found anything else that may be useful.” Ellie felt as if she was drunk. She was certain it was the knock to the head that was clouding her thoughts, but the timing was incredibly inconvenient.
“Who is we?” David’s eyes narrowed.
Ellie was thrown off by his question because David didn’t look happy to see her at all. The reunion scene she had in her mind wasn’t going according to plan at all. “We…as in me, Lucy, and Jeffrey. Did you know that for anything to get done around here you basically need three people? That’s another thing they don’t put in the Afterlife brochures.”
David slowly helped Ellie to her feet. His silence was deafening. Ellie swayed as she tried to take a step, and David put his arm around her and led her to the side of the bed. He pushed her down onto the thin mattress and then sat down next to her. His jaw was twitching, and Ellie fought to keep her hands in her lap because she just wanted to hug him. David didn’t look happy to see her at all.
He sighed and ran a hand through his brown curls. “I don’t need you to bust me out of here, Ellie. I’m here because I chose to be here. You know that.”
“I’m not going to leave you here, David. It’s my fault you are in the Afterlife to begin with. Look, I understand that there’s a lot of stuff that we need to figure out, but we can do that together at the waypoint. I have a plan, or least, the beginning of a plan. Like I said, we’re still working out the details.”
David took Ellie’s hands in his and then his eyes lifted to hers. “Ellie, you aren’t understanding what I’m telling you. I don’t want you to try to save me.”
Ellie thought for a moment that the blow to her head was affecting her hearing. “What do you mean, David? Why would you want to stay here?”
David looked over her shoulder and Ellie had that scary sense of déjà vu again. It made her want to turn her head and see what he was looking at. “You made your deal with Mikel. I made my deal with Lillian, and I’m fine with it. It’s for the best.”
He started to pull his hands away, but Ellie grabbed them. “What are you talking about? What deal with Lillian? Lillian’s dead. Mikel killed her when he brought us into the way point, remember?”
Ellie felt her throat clench. If Lillian Bradford was alive, that was not a good thing for Ellie. Not a good thing at all. Lillian was the type of woman to hold a grudge, and Ellie was certain that with the part that she played in Lillian’s unseating as the Guardian of the Bradford waypoint, she would be out for blood. Ellie’s blood.
David’s hands slid from hers and Ellie immediately felt hollow inside. His touch kept her grounded. He stood and took a few steps, putting space between them, before turning to face her. “Lillian is not dead. She’s very much alive. She helped me see that this is where I belong.”
“You belong with me, and we belong on the Other Side,” Ellie said firmly. “You don’t belong here.”
“No,” David shook his head. “I’m sorry for whatever I led you to believe was going on between us, Ellie, but you have to know by now that what we had wasn’t real.”
Ellie stared at him in shock. “Wasn’t real? Are you saying that you don’t love me? You couldn’t have been faking that. The way we felt about each other gave the waypoint the energy it needed. Your aunt may have set things in motion, but I fell for you nonetheless. There’s nothing false about how I feel about you.”
David averted his eyes from her face. Ellie stood and was shocked to watch David take a few more steps back from her. “It wasn’t any different than Joseph and Lillian. They cared about each other in their own twisted way, and that was enough for the waypoint for awhile. Why do you think Mikel forced you to reap psychic gifts after you arrived? He knew that what we had was like a dying battery. He needed you to be strong with the collected psychic abilitie
s to do what you and I couldn’t do because what we had wasn’t built on anything real. It wasn’t sustainable.”
“Why are you saying this?” Ellie’s voice was a whisper. She had gone numb. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that David would brush her aside.
“I’m saying this for your own good, Ellie,” David said. His voice held no emotion. “If you had just stayed away, like you were supposed to, you would have been able to keep your romantic dream of what you and I supposedly had together. It’s your own fault that you tried to do something so stupid as to come here to save me. That’s pretty arrogant, Ellie. Mikel really blew your head up about how special you were, didn’t he?”
David’s words cut Ellie to the bone and her anger flared, but she kept it in check. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do mean that. You are running around and putting your nose where it doesn’t belong. I mean really, you’d think you’d learn. That’s what got you into this mess in the first place. You were an easy target. You almost made it too easy. Lillian was right about you. You are weak.”
The sound of the slap rang out and bounced against the walls of the small room. Ellie saw her handprint outlined on David’s cheek. “Now that your memory has returned, I see that you are more like Lillian than I ever imagined, cruel and malicious. I am not weak. If anything, the little games you played at my expense have proved that to me because I am still here and not some crumbling mess in the corner. I don’t need you. If this is where you want to be, then may you rot here or in Hell with your psycho aunt. I don’t care.”
“Everything okay in here?” Lucy’s eyes appeared on the other side of the small slit in the door.
“I’m ready to go, Lucy,” Ellie said. “Now!” She refused to cry in front of David and let him see how deep his words cut her, plus it was a sign of the very weakness that she said she no longer suffered from. Lucy was through the door and next to her before she could blink.
Ellie held up her hand. “Quick. I’m ready to go home.”
Lucy shook her head. “I can still feel your blood mingled with mine. You need a minute to say goodbye?”
“I do not,” Ellie snapped. She grabbed Lucy’s hand. “Chant. Now.”
Ellie closed her eyes and pretended that she couldn’t still sense David’s presence right next to her. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of looking at him. She would forget that he ever existed. The warmth enveloped her again, but this time Ellie was ready for the tiny pinpricks of pain that accompanied the teleportation and she welcomed its distraction.
When she opened her eyes again, she found herself staring into Lucy’s wide, confused eyes. She collapsed to the floor with tears streaming down her cheeks. Ellie was lost.
CHAPTER FIVE
David lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling. He felt as if his heart was being ripped out of his chest every time he recalled the horrified expression on Ellie’s face just before she slapped him. His cheek still tingled, and he wondered if he’d have a bruise. Ellie packed a hell of a wallop with the supernatural strength that came as part of being a Guardian. He deserved it. What he didn’t deserve was her.
Ellie was good and sweet and kind, regardless of what Mikel had done to change that when he sucked her into the dark place that was the Bradford mansion waypoint. David grew up in the waypoint, and only recently had those memories restored after his return from the Other Side. The people he knew as his parents, Joseph and Lillian Bradford, were evil people who stole him from his real parents right after his birth. The dark ritual that bound them all to the waypoint also threw David’s soul into some kind of spiritual limbo. Now he was told that he wasn’t even supposed to exist. He wondered how anyone was supposed to deal with that kind of mindbender and not go a little crazy.
It was David’s fault that Mikel trapped Ellie. David had been the lure, which Ellie fell for hook, line, and sinker in her vulnerable state after her divorce. It made David sick. His wish when Braz brought him to Purgatory was that Ellie would forget him. Her sudden appearance in his cell told him that she had not, and that was dangerous for both of them. Their love made them targets, so the sooner that bond was broken, the safer they would both be, but it hadn’t made it any easier for him.
Ellie left him no choice but to lash out at her. She had to let him go and move on. Keeping any ties to him could destroy her, and David would not let that happen. Now that he knew the danger he was to her, he would do whatever it took to keep her safe, even if it meant breaking her heart.
He was a bastard. The whole situation made him feel like he was swallowing a gallon of liquid bleach. It burned, and it wasn’t the only thing. Anger swelled inside of his chest. It was unfair. He hadn’t asked for the life that was thrust upon him. Everyone that loved him had been taken away. He was left with darkness, and in that darkness, there was Lillian.
As if her name crawling across his mind summoned her, the woman was standing at the foot of his bed looking down at him. David shot to his feet. “I wish you’d stop doing that,” he snapped.
Lillian looked perfect as she always did. Her naturally blond hair now moved toward silver, but it was pulled up in a smooth bun at the base of her neck. Even in her sweeping black blouse and slacks, she looked as ready to attend a luncheon as a trial in Hell. The skin of her face was unlined, even though she was over a hundred years old. Lillian’s life goal had been to escape death and stay young forever. So far as David could tell, she was doing a bang-up job succeeding in that, regardless of what that meant she had to do to achieve it.
Lillian Bradford was cold, ruthless, and evil. David couldn’t take his eyes off her for a second for fear he’d find a knife in his back. Whereas Lillian’s existence seemed immortal, he was fairly certain even though his was intertwined with hers in some dark way that his was not. Until he knew what the Afterlife meant to do with him, he needed to be vigilant.
Lillian’s mouth opened and then her eyes narrowed as she sniffed the air. “Have we had a visitor, David?”
“Unfortunately, only you,” David lied. He knew how Lillian felt about Ellie, and he didn’t dare mention her appearance. Ellie was supposed to be safely ensconced in the waypoint.
Lillian’s head swung around the room and settled on the spot where Ellie’s body hit the floor when she arrived. “I am almost certain that I smell a familiar perfume.”
David shrugged. “Probably yours. What do you want, Lillian?” He had to distract her from Ellie. He feverishly hoped that Ellie had gone back to the waypoint and not somewhere else. At least within the waypoint, David was confident that the rules of the Afterlife ensured that Lillian couldn’t touch her.
“Is that any way to greet your mother?” Lillian asked, holding her arms open.
David took a step backwards. The thought of her touching him made his skin crawl. “You’re not my mother.”
Lillian’s arms fell to her sides, and a sour look crossed her face. “I raised you. I gave you a perfect childhood. You have a chance at immortality. I’d say I provided for you better than your real mother ever could have.”
“Well, I’ll never know, will I? You made sure of that.” David’s birth mother had been Lillian’s sister, Emma. The fact that he shared any blood relation with Lillian twisted at his insides. “And that perfect childhood included being possessed by a minion of Hell on a regular basis. Thanks for being so wholly unaware of that fact, by the way.”
It was Lillian’s turn to shrug. “So Mikel was keeping an eye on me. I should have guessed. So what? You obviously suffered no ill effects from it.”
“It was an invasion of my body!” David yelled. “You used me in your little ploy to live forever. My blood. My soul. My life. You belong in Hell!”
“On that, at least, we agree,” Lillian said with a slow smile. She moved around the bed and sat down, lounging on it as if she didn’t have a care in the world. “They are close to deciding on Mikel’s successor, as soon as his trial is over it will be done. That one got a bit big for
his britches. He has some serious explaining to do. I, of course, will be doing my duty in reporting his atrocities towards my family and me. Should be an easy decision.”
“You seemed to be willingly doing his bidding for the last hundred years. Or do you plan to try to sweep that under the rug?”
“I was biding my time, dear. You don’t get anywhere by acting like a bull in a china shop. I waited, watched, and learned. Unlike my dearly departed husband, I have patience. When I take over Mikel’s position, I will be a powerful ally for you. It would do you well not to forget that.” Lillian picked at a piece of imaginary lint on her pants.
David didn’t believe her coy act for a second. Lillian wanted David’s allegiance so that when the time came, and she made a far larger move, she would have him at her side. He didn’t understand why yet, but he knew he was an important cog in a much larger wheel.
“You are going to be asked to testify in Mikel’s trial,” Lillian said casually.
David could tell that she was watching his reaction carefully. “I will not.” David crossed his arms. “I want no part of anything that has to do with that thing.”
“I’ve heard rumblings that they are going to require Ellie’s attendance as well. The allegations against Mikel are serious, and they’ll need further corroboration of what I’ve told them.”
David turned, not wanting Lillian to see the expression of hatred that crossed his face. His hands balled into fists. Images flashed through his mind of Mikel, while he was in possession of David’s body, touching Ellie and caressing her skin. Mikel manipulated Ellie into caring about him. When Lucy cast the spell that freed David from Mikel’s influence, David watched Ellie kiss Mikel to distract him from David’s sudden impenetrability. But David saw affection for Mikel in her eyes that she tried later to deny.
Then David was staring down at his bloody fist. He had driven it into the wall in his anger. “She shouldn’t be exposed to him any more than necessary. He’s done enough damage,” he said through clenched teeth.