Gone: A Shadow Slayers Story (Shadow Slayers Stories Book 3)

by Nellie H. Steele

  “Perhaps she’s still deciding. Perhaps she’s as unsure as we are.”

  “Celine? Unsure?” Michael questioned.

  “Well, turn it around and view it from her perspective. And remember, this isn’t ‘our’ Celine,” Damien replied. “At sixteen, her sister introduces her to this man. He has her father murdered, shoves his dead body in her face and tells her it’ll all be okay if she sticks with him. No one is there to help her. What choice did she have?”

  “But she was so spirited when we met her, why did she give in?”

  “Yeah, she was,” Damien agreed. “But she also had help… from us. Spunk only gets you so far. She may have resisted. With no one there to help her, he may have harassed her for hours or days until she finally gave in. The only reason he didn’t have that opportunity the last time was because we were there to help her.”

  “Okay, good point.”

  “Okay, continuing, no one helps her, she gets stuck married to this guy. And by the appearance of it, it’s a decent marriage in terms of her position. She wants for nothing, she’s sought after in society, it is a good match for her. After twenty-some odd years, someone shows up and blows up her world. Tells her the man she’s married to is responsible for her father’s death. Even if she is questioning everything, she’s got to be unsure, perhaps even scared. What will become of her? What if we’re lying?”

  “Okay, that seems reasonable enough. It’s just weird imagining Celine scared and clinging to… that bastard.”

  “I agree, but we need to be sensitive to her uncertainty. We don’t realize what she’s been through in this version of events.”

  Michael nodded in agreement. “So, what do we do?”

  “We tell her the truth. All of it. But we highlight the good parts like how strong she is and how much good she’s done as the Celine we know.”

  Michael nodded again. “Right, okay. So, leave out the part about how the Duke made her life miserable for centuries.”

  “Perhaps not leave it out, but I wouldn’t dwell on it. She needs to realize what she’s in for, but let’s not make it sound so horrible.”

  “Agreed. Okay, we have our plan. We tell her the truth, sort of,” Michael responded.

  “And hope it corrects everything and we can go back home to normal Celine.”

  “Yeah, fingers crossed. This version of Celine is kind of… terrifying.”

  “Tell me about it. All I could think about when she was doing her thing with that criminal was what she might do to us if it didn’t work out the way we thought.”

  “Yep,” Michael agreed. “I do not have any desire to get on this Celine’s bad side.”

  “Me either. So, we tell her the truth… sort of.” Damien grinned.

  Celine’s carriage pulled up the drive to the Buckley country estate late in the afternoon. She glanced out the window at the modest estate. Marcus would follow her here tomorrow. She hoped to have learned everything she needed to by then. What she learned while here would dictate her next move. In addition, she hoped to learn more about the Carlyles. Who were these strange men and where had they come from? How were they aware of so much about her life? She hoped to have all these questions answered this evening.

  The carriage wound to a halt outside the front door. Four men waited to greet her. She waited inside the carriage until the coachmen opened her door, extending his hand to assist her as she exited. She stepped from the carriage, adjusting her dress before greeting her hosts.

  “Celine,” Alexander greeted her, stepping forward. “Welcome.”

  “You are alone,” Gray noted. “I was under the impression Duke Northcott would travel with you.”

  “Duke Northcott extends his apologies. He will arrive tomorrow in time for dinner. He had pressing business that did not allow him to leave London just yet,” Celine explained.

  Damien could have leapt for joy. It was only one night, but still, it was twenty-hour hours that they had alone with Celine to convince her of the mistake she made on her sixteenth birthday.

  “Either way, we are pleased to welcome you, Celine,” Alexander reiterated.

  “I am pleased to be here, Alexander,” she answered.

  Gray offered her his arm to escort her inside. She accepted, smiling at him. The group made their way inside the house and Alexander led the way to her bedroom. “I hope you will find it suitable,” he commented as she entered.

  “Most suitable, thank you. If you do not mind, I should like to rest before dinner.”

  “Of course,” Alexander answered.

  “I look forward to seeing you at dinner, Celine,” Gray told her, closing the door behind him as he and Alexander exited.

  They met Michael and Damien in the foyer. “It appears we are in luck. Celine traveled alone, so we have free access for the time being to discuss her husband with her,” Alexander stated.

  “Yes, one day is better than none, I guess,” Michael agreed.

  “I’m still uncomfortable with the idea of that man being in this house,” Gray said, crossing his arms.

  “With any luck, he won’t be here that long,” Damien answered.

  “You really imagine she will leave him?” Gray questioned.

  “I’m not sure, but if she wasn’t considering it, why would she have come here?”

  No one answered for a moment. “Perhaps,” Gray said, “she merely wants to learn what kind of man she is married to and has no intention of acting on the information.”

  “To what end?” Damien inquired. “Who would want to know their husband is a complete bastard so they could keep on living with them like nothing happened?”

  “Perhaps she’ll confront him about it, and they’ll have a row and put it behind them,” Gray suggested.

  “Your husband ordering the death of your father isn’t something you have an argument about and then leave behind,” Damien argued.

  “I agree. Plus, the way she looks at you,” Michael said to Gray, “I think we stand a good chance.”

  “At me? You must be joking,” Gray answered.

  “Yes, at you,” Michael responded. “It’s the same look she gives you where we’re from.”

  “And in our reality, she’s been married to you for over two centuries,” Damien said with a coy expression.

  “It’s true. The only genuine expression I’ve witnessed on her face has been when she’s near you,” Michael added.

  Gray considered the information. “It may mean nothing. Perhaps you’re reading her wrong.”

  “I’m not,” Michael responded.

  Gray opened his mouth to respond, but Damien cut him off. “He’s not. He’d know best. Michael and Celine were sort of a couple for a bit.”

  “I thought you said Celine was married to Gray for over two centuries?” Alexander queried.

  “She was, she is,” Damien began. “It’s complicated. She was Celine and then she wasn’t and then she was again. When she wasn’t Celine, she and Michael were together, but then when she was Celine again there was no question who she was in love with.” Damien glanced to Michael. “Sorry, buddy.” Michael waved his hand at him to dismiss it.

  “You’re making no sense,” Gray responded.

  “I told you, it’s complicated. Never mind, it’s not important. The important part is she is in love with you and has been for centuries. We’re sure this Celine is, too. Michael is correct. The most genuine expression I’ve seen on her face since we’ve met this Celine is when she looks at you.”

  “Are you telling me you don’t have any feelings toward her at all?” Michael asked Gray.

  Gray didn’t respond for a moment. “She’s a married woman, I hadn’t considered it.”

  “I don’t buy that story for a second,” Michael answered.

  “Yeah, mister ‘I’ll walk you home for companionship,’” Damien chimed in. “You want us to believe you have no interest in her?”

  “She’s beautiful, I’ll admit it. But she’s married.”

  “A
nd if she weren’t?” Alexander inquired.

  Gray took a moment before he answered. “She is.”

  “But if she weren’t?”

  “If she weren’t, I’d have married her in a heartbeat. Is that what you want to hear?”

  Michael and Damien glanced to each other, grinning. “Yep, that’s what we wanted to hear,” Damien responded.

  As dinner approached, Celine appeared downstairs, dressed in a different gown for the event. They made light conversation over cocktails before entering the dining room. Once they were seated for dinner, Alexander continued his discussion about the estate.

  After a brief pause in the conversation, Celine said, “Gentlemen, do you plan to continue discussing trivial pleasantries all evening? My husband will arrive in less than twenty-four hours. I hoped to learn by then what you know and how you came to this knowledge.”

  The men glanced to one another before Alexander spoke. “My apologies, Celine. I did not care to ruin your meal with such discussions. They must be painful for you to endure.”

  “Duke Northcott is the source of the pain, not you. Thereby you cannot ruin my meal by speaking the truth.”

  They were silent another moment until Damien spoke up. “Well, I guess it’s our turn then,” he said, clearing his throat. Celine rested her crystal blue eyes on him. “Like I said before, we knew about your father because we were with you that night.”

  “That I cannot understand. No one accompanied me that fateful night.”

  “It’s a long story,” Damien responded.

  “I have twenty-four hours. Unless the story is longer than that, please explain.”

  “Well,” Damien began, glancing to Michael. Michael nodded to him. “We aren’t from this time. We’re from the future.”

  “How did you come to be in this time?” Celine inquired.

  “We’re not sure,” Michael answered. “We’ve traveled through time before. In the other two instances when we time traveled, you sent us back. The first time to help you on your sixteenth birthday and retrieve The Book of the Dead and the second time to stop the Duke from stealing a painting that contained a shard of your soul.”

  Damien picked up where he left off. “This time we have no memory of you sending us back. We think some electrical pulse hit us and sent us back here. But everything here is completely different than it was where we came from. In the future we came from, we’re good friends. And you never married the Duke.”

  “That’s right,” Michael continued. “On your sixteenth birthday, we were there. We helped you escape from him and took his book to our time where you used it to send him back to Hell.”

  “But when that shock wave hit us and we woke up here, we found Alexander and he said you were married to the Duke!”

  “How did you know to seek out Alexander? How is he connected to this?” she glanced to Alexander. “Are you, too, from the future?”

  He shook his head. “No, I am not.”

  “We’re ALL really good friends in the future,” Damien said, motioning to encompass all of them. “We knew Alexander from our time.”

  “How have I survived until your time if I did not surrender to Marcus’ demands that night?” Celine asked.

  “When you took the book and ran, the man who killed your father chased you. He stabbed you and you almost died. The Duke happened upon you and revived you. You then stabbed him, hence drawing blood during the ceremony, and that turned you into what you are,” Damien explained.

  “And then?” Celine inquired, her face a mask of confusion.

  “We’re not one hundred percent sure of what happened after. You sent us back to our time right after that. We left you on the beach in Martinique,” Michael described.

  “Reluctantly,” Damien pointed out.

  “Yes, we didn’t want to leave you, but you said you couldn’t leave, and you’d be okay.”

  “Anyway, in the years that followed, you were meant to meet and marry… someone else. You’ll spend centuries with that person. That’s beside the point. The point is, Celine, you were never supposed to marry the Duke. You were never supposed to be on his side. Something is wrong here. And we assume we were sent to this time to fix it.”

  “We obviously need your help to return to our time, so at the very least, we needed to meet you and get you to agree to help us return to the future,” Michael said. “But Damien is correct, this isn’t the way things were supposed to happen.”

  Celine paused for a moment before responding. “Well, I must admit, gentlemen, this is quite incredible. Your claims are almost too fantastic to believe, yet they are grounded in some truth. And I must admit to sensing a strange draw to you.”

  “When we first arrived here,” Damien responded, “we had no idea how or why we were here. We sought out Alexander because we assumed he could put us in contact with you to go home but… he didn’t know us or you.”

  “And if you send us home now,” Michael added, “we’ll return to a world unrecognizable to us.”

  “Right,” Damien agreed. “So, we must fix things.”

  “In other words, you must fix things, as you put it, so you are more comfortable in your world?”

  “No!” Damien argued. “We must fix things because this is wrong! What’s happening is wrong! You weren’t meant to be on the bad side, Celine!”

  Celine considered their comments for a moment. “You’ve given me much to consider,” she said at length. She stood from the table.

  “Oh, come on, Celine!” Damien exclaimed, also standing. “You can’t say that and leave!”

  Celine’s eyes grew wide. “What would you have me do? What is it you expect of me?”

  “I expect you to be the Celine we know,” Damien said, approaching her. “I know you’re in there. The good Celine, the honest Celine, the Celine who would fight for her friends and her family. I expect you to help us correct what’s gone wrong with history, so when we go home, the world is normal again.”

  “Yet you only share part of your information,” Celine responded.

  “That’s not true!” Michael shouted, leaping from his chair.

  “Isn’t it? We’re all good friends in your time. You leave out details. How did we meet? To whom am I married? These events may not be possible to correct! My life has already hurled me toward the precipice. Decisions aren’t easily reversed. Choices may not be able to be undone! Options may not exist to correct the wrongs as you see them. I fail to understand what you propose I do. You have given me no direction toward which you seek me to go. Therefore, I must consider what you’ve said and guide my own path.”

  “No, Celine,” Damien responded, his voice gentle, taking her hands in his. “Not alone. Together. We’re your friends. We care about you, we love you. We want to help.”

  Michael joined them around the table. “Yes,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “We aren’t keeping things from you, but we don’t know how much to say. We don’t know how much we can tell you without impacting the future in some irreparable way. And we don’t know your sentiments on the situation. Tell us what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling. Help us help you.”

  Celine glanced between the two of them. Damien recognized a glimmer of the Celine he knew in her eyes as she searched their faces. He felt her hands tremble, saw the tears welling in her eyes. She collapsed into the chair. “I have never felt so alone,” Celine choked out, a tear streaming down her cheek. Gray rushed to offer her a handkerchief. She accepted it, apologizing. “Forgive me for my outburst.”

  “There is no apology needed, Celine,” Gray assured her.

  Damien pulled a chair next to her, sitting down and putting his arm around her. “You’re not alone, Celine. We’re all here to help you. We don’t want you to live this life. We want you to be happy. I want to see you smile again!”

  “Am I happy in your world?” she asked, sniffling.

  “Very,” Damien answered.

  Celine pondered a moment. “What must I d
o?” she inquired.

  Damien took her hands in his. “I think you realize what you must do, Celine.”

  Chapter 22

  Present day, Bucksville

  Celine readied herself for her trip, pulling on a heavy cardigan. She planned to check on Damien and Michael before she departed. Gray knocked at the door, entering. She smiled at him, not speaking.

  Gray leaned his side against the far wall, his arms crossed. “I hate this, you know,” he stated.

  She glanced at him again, pulling her hair into a ponytail. “I know and I’m sorry,” Celine answered. “It’s not my idea of a good plan either, but it’s all we have.”

  “It’s not your fault. As usual, it’s his. At least this time he’ll have to clean up his mess.”

  “It’s both of ours, Gray. And neither. Neither of us realized this would happen. Neither of us set out to harm Michael or Damien in this way.”

  “Ha!” Gray guffawed. “That man sets out to harm anything he comes into contact with. He destroys anything in his general vicinity.” Celine didn’t respond, instead, digging through her jewelry box. “I’m sorry, Celine. I realize you have enough strain on you. I don’t mean to make things worse.”

  “You aren’t making anything worse, Gray. But there is nothing to say. I don’t disagree with you, but I will not let Damien die. Not if there’s a chance I can save him.”

  “Do you really think you can trust him?”

  “No, I don’t trust him, but I do trust that he has the knowledge to help us.”

  “What assurance do you have that he’ll help?”

  “None, but I convinced him to help Celeste.”

  “He assumed you would marry him then.”

  Celine’s shoulders sagged. “I must try, Gray. Damien is dying! I cannot live with myself if I let him die without trying everything to help.”

  “Yes, I understand. I hate it, but I understand. You’ve always been the braver one of us. For God’s sake, though, Celine, be careful.”

  “I will,” Celine agreed. She pulled an item from her jewelry box, wrapped in a velvet bag.