Immortally Embraced

by fox, angie

  “The peacekeeper will find love,” Marius began.

  I blinked twice. Okay, that was good. My heart surged. Maybe Galen would come back.

  “As,” he continued, “a hideous new weapon is born.”

  Aw hell. “We don’t need any more weapons.” The old-fashioned swords and cannon fire were destructive enough.

  “You can’t beat love,” Marius said simply.

  Did he suspect?

  I’d deny it like my life depended on it—which it did.

  Still, I could understand his interest. The prophecies predicted an eventual end to the war—if they all came true. Marius had a bigger stake in that than anyone.

  Every last one of us was enlisted in the army until the end of the conflict. Since I was a half fairy, I’d be here for about 150 years. Shirley was a valkyrie. She’d beat me by another 150. But Marius was immortal. He was here for eternity.

  * * *

  Long after lights-out that night, I lay awake and thought about it.

  The peacekeeper will find love.

  I’d found it already. Twice. And they’d both left me. Marc I couldn’t fault. Galen was another story.

  Still, I couldn’t help but wonder. Maybe this meant he’d misinterpreted his orders, or that he’d have a short mission. Maybe he’d be back. He could be sorry for how he’d ended things.

  He should be.

  I woke the next morning still thinking about it.

  What would I do if he did come back?

  Marius had gone into his death sleep, either in his footlocker or—more likely—in the makeshift lair we’d cobbled together out by the tar swamps. I glanced that way, watching firebirds as they soared and dove for bog beetles. I sat up and saw a note fluttering on the outside of our door.

  If it was another sympathy note, I was going to scream.

  I took it off the door on the way to the showers.

  Meet me by the burned out officers’ showers.

  My heart squeezed. “No way.” I had to read it twice.

  Galen had always found it amusing the way we tended to go through officers’ showers. It wasn’t my fault, though. They seemed to get caught up in a lot of practical jokes.

  Hell’s bells. I read the note again, and then shoved it into the pocket of my robe. You’d think he’d come into camp if he could. He was sure popular around here. Unless he couldn’t show himself. Had Galen left his unit? I hated to think of him going against orders again, especially when the consequences had been so severe the last time.

  Okay. I took the fastest shower in history and changed into a fresh set of scrubs. I could roll with this. I combed my fingers through my wet hair. If he’d come back, we could at least talk. We could set things right before he headed off to war again.

  I barged out the showers and ran straight into Holly.

  “You’re not on shift today, are you?” she asked, righting herself.

  “No,” I said, already halfway past her. “Sorry. I’m meeting a friend in the minefield.”

  “Way to rebound.” She gave me a mock salute.

  “It’s not like that,” I said, walking backward, eager to be on my way.

  We called the unit junk depot “the minefield,” only because the field beyond the cemetery was so full of broken-down vehicles, half-wrecked buildings, and machinery parts that the bored among us had seen fit to rig it with practical jokes. It was pointless and immature, but that’s why we liked it.

  You’d think that people would avoid the place, but you had to go through the minefield in order to make it to the prime make-out spot—the only place you could really count on being alone—the rocks.

  I’d never been to the rocks. Scratch that. I’d been there once. And it had been amazing. But most of the time, I went into the minefield to see Father McArio or to work in the makeshift lab I’d set up out there.

  But it never failed. If you braved the minefield, people always assumed you had a date on the other side.

  If I remembered correctly, the burned-out officers’ showers should be about halfway through the maze of junk, right after the mangled helicopter.

  I rushed through the city of scraps faster than I should have. Hulking skeletons of half-rotted bed frames and jeeps lay rusting on either side of the rock-strewn path. I ducked past leaning heaps of particleboard and a mashed-up refrigeration unit, breathing in the tinge of rust and dirt. A slight left after the gutted ambulance took me past my workshop and almost to the officers’ showers.

  The limbo suns beat down. I stripped off my scrub shirt, glad to have a tank top underneath. Of course I’d forgotten to wear a bra. Again. But it’s not like Galen would mind.

  A low peeping made me stop. Dukkies. They were tiny, red birds with black horns and sharp little beaks.

  In the egg stage, you could eat them. In the adult stage, they might try to nest in your shoes. But in the just-hatched, baby stage, they’d bond with you like you were a mother duck.

  I lifted my foot and searched for trip wires. Two steps ahead, I spotted them, half buried in the dirt. They led to an innocent-looking box.

  Ouch. I’d be sure to tell Father McArio. He worked with a group of nuns who did creature rescue. In the meantime, I stepped over the wires and continued on my way.

  Just past it, I spotted the burned-out showers. The door was ajar.

  “Galen?” I called, walking carefully, keeping an eye out for any more dukkie-style traps.

  I could see a shadow moving inside. The two front stalls had been ripped out, leaving one main tent support.

  Maybe Galen was trying to be subtle. Yeah, well, subtle didn’t work on me.

  “Did you finally realize you’re being an ass?” I barged in the door and nearly fell over.

  The shower-turned-shack was small and dim, smelling of charred wood and rotting canvas. Light filtered from loose boards in the ceiling.

  And there, standing right in front of me, was Marc.

  My pulse pounded and my head swam. I hadn’t seen him since New Orleans.

  He was larger than I remembered, harder, with slashing green eyes that made him look like he wanted to eat me alive. I could feel the heat of them through my thin tank top.

  His blond hair had been shorn hard, so that it spiked at odd angles as it grew out. He needed a cut, but I doubted he cared. Marc was never one for rules that didn’t suit him.

  He’d been drafted ten years ago into the old army. He’d been killed ten years ago. And while I had a special talent for seeing the dead, I could tell right away that Marc was very much alive.

  Holy hell. I’d sat in his mother’s living room and grieved with her. I’d helped bury an empty casket.

  “Marc?” I choked.

  His face was unreadable; at least I had no reference for it. Not anymore. He wore the tan fatigues of the enemy, with a green Ankh emblazoned on the sleeve. I shook my head. Of course. He was with the medical corps. They’d taken him from Tulane Hospital on a cold day in February. I’d run my fingers over his sharp, angled cheeks, kissed him through my tears. That was the last time I’d seen him.

  Until now.

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. What do you say to a dead man?

  He took a measured step closer. “It’s been a long time, Petra.” The light fell on him, and I saw a jagged scar along his neck.

  He’d suffered.

  Hadn’t we all?

  A chill skittered up my spine, threaded into my breasts until my nipples stood in hard points. My heart hammered in my chest. “You’re alive.” All those years, I thought he was gone. I mourned him. I missed him. “What the hell?”

  He took another step closer, and I caught my breath. If I could have ever imagined having this kind of second chance, I would have thought I’d rush into his arms, or wax poetic. Or at least touch him. But I couldn’t even bring myself to move.

  He looked older. Leaner. There was an unfamiliar hardness about him.

  He shook his head ruefully, the same way I’d seen him do
it a hundred times. Only he looked different doing it now. He’d changed.

  So had I.

  He began to reach out to me, then stopped, swearing under his breath. “It’s good to see you.”

  It was all so surreal. “What happened to you?”

  He glanced toward the door. “I don’t even know how—” he said, his words heavy with regret. “First, I need to ask you something. I don’t have much time.”

  “No kidding.” He was in an enemy camp.

  He blew out a breath, as if he’d read my mind. “I can’t believe you’re here.” A trace of light skittered across his features.

  “Why are you?” I asked, standing opposite him, as if we were separated by a great divide instead of two feet of dirt.

  It pissed me off. He was no better than Galen. Scratch that. Marc was worse. He hadn’t even had the decency to tell me he was alive.

  He clenched his jaw, determined. “I need someone I can trust.”

  chapter three

  “Trust?” The man wanted to talk trust? For as much as I wanted to feel relief and joy, all I could comprehend was stark white shock.

  He’d abandoned me. He’d lied. For ten straight years. “We thought you were dead,” I said, body shaking. “We buried you.” I’d sat with his mother on the floral couch in her living room and cried until we were sick with it.

  My head felt like it was going to float away. I stood stock-still, trying to get a grip. “Now you’re back. Not because you’re sorry or because you miss me, but because you trust me.” It hurt more than I would ever admit. And at that moment, a secret awful part of me wished he’d stayed dead.

  His voice grew husky. “The army made a mistake.” He stared at me hard, as if he could make me understand by force of will alone.

  My stomach hollowed. “You did, too.” He’d had ten years to correct the error and he didn’t.

  He reached for me. “Listen, I know—”

  I held out a hand to block him. “Why’d you do it? What happened?” How had this gotten so fucked up? “No more bullshit,” or wishing things were different. He’d had his chance and he blew it.

  He scraped a hand through his hair, making it spike up even worse. He was shaking. “Our unit was too close to the front,” he said. “We had to retreat. But I’d just done an arterial reconstruction. There was no way we could move that patient for at least twenty-four hours.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “So you stayed.” I’d heard this part before.

  “Yes.” He was tense, his muscles drawn painfully tight. “It was the only thing to do.”

  I knew that. “I never blamed you.” His father hadn’t understood. His mother had been so angry. But I knew he didn’t have a choice. I would have done the same thing.

  A muscle twitched over his cheekbone. “The camp was overrun and the new army was ordered to take no prisoners.”

  My stomach dropped. It was as good as an order of execution. “My side did that?” The shock of it loosened me. I stepped backward, hand on my hip, trying to make sense of it. We didn’t order killings. We were the enlightened ones.

  Marc’s voice tightened. “My patient was given to the Shrouds.”

  “No,” I said, the word tumbling out of me.

  The enemy—their side—they were the ones who used the cursed creatures who fed on life like parasites. Shrouds moved like silvery shadows, sucking the life and souls from humans and endlessly torturing immortals to the brink of death.

  Marc had confessed it without malice. He hadn’t asked for pity. He was telling me the plain truth. He’d accepted it. I couldn’t even fathom it.

  His eyes held mine. “One of their special ops officers was supposed to take me out back and slit my throat. Only he pulled his punch. Left it to the fates. Said if I was supposed to live, I would.” The pain of it crossed his face. “I lived. I made it back to our lines.” He cast me a guilty look. “By then I’d been reported dead for a month. They’d shipped my personal effects back home. You’d buried an empty casket.”

  I couldn’t imagine going through something so horrific, so wrong. Still, “You didn’t feel the need to tell us you were alive?”

  Part of me died when I lost him. He’d been my entire world. I didn’t have anything else besides Marc and my studies at Tulane. He’d stayed and done his fellowship there so that we could be together. He was the one person who was never going to leave me.

  I didn’t know what was worse: That he’d let me grieve. That he’d torn a hole in his own family when they lost him. Or that he couldn’t seem to comprehend just how much he’d meant to us.

  He swallowed hard. “I knew I was never coming home. Sure, I could give you false hope. I could write you letters. But it was killing Mom.” He cast me a miserable look, as if daring me to deny it. “She wasn’t sleeping. She wasn’t eating. She was afraid to live, because what if she so much as cracked a smile while I was dying somewhere? You know it’s true,” he said, noting my surprise. “She told me.”

  My throat tightened. Of course it was true. “She loved you.” How could he expect his own mother to let go? How could any of us ask that?

  As far as I was concerned, the family Marc had left behind was a gift. They truly loved one another. And me. Yes, we’d suffered together because of it, but I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

  He grimaced. “You weren’t moving on,” he said, as if it cost him to utter each word.

  I shrugged, helpless. “I couldn’t.”

  The air around us thickened. “I know,” he said simply. “I never planned to let any of you go.” He cleared his throat.

  He reached out for me, and then changed his mind. I felt it like a slap. “It was better to let you have closure,” he said.

  Of all the … “Do you honestly believe that?” I demanded. Did he have any clue how much it hurt to know that the man I loved was dead?

  I closed the distance between us, wanting to touch him, hating myself that I refused to do it. I wanted to punch Marc and Galen and every man in the history of time who’d tried to be noble. “It doesn’t work that way. You can’t manipulate people like that. You have to live your life as it comes.” No apologies. No sugarcoating it.

  We stood inches apart, unmoving. He didn’t back down. Neither did I.

  He was so mad, spots of color streaked his cheeks and forehead. “I didn’t want you living your life for a day that would never come,” he ground out. “I didn’t want to hold you back. I was never going to make it home. You still had a life. I wanted you to move on, get married, have babies.”

  “I thought you loved me.”

  “I do love you!” he snapped.

  I stepped back. “Well, then you’ve got a shitty way of showing it.”

  He shook his head slowly. “Maybe I do.” He dropped his chin for a moment. When he faced me again, the pain in his eyes was staggering. “I’d have done anything—even let someone else have you—if it meant you’d be happy again.”

  What? Did I have MOVE ON WHILE I GO DIE NOBLY printed on my forehead?

  I twisted my lips into a mock smile. “That was your mistake.” I’d never wanted anyone else. Not until Galen.

  And look how that had turned out.

  “Petra.” His take-charge bravado slipped and I saw the Marc I remembered, the man who felt too much. The pain in his eyes seared me to the core. “I didn’t want you to suffer.”

  Too late.

  I let out a breath. This was so fucked up. I leaned my back against the rough wood tent pole. “It would have been nice to know you were down here when I got conscripted.” I could have used the support.

  He dug a hand through his hair. “We’re on opposite sides.”

  “Right.” He was the enemy.

  A loud crash sounded outside. Quickly Marc and I ducked back into the dusty shadows behind the last wooden shower stall. He drew me close, and for a moment I held my breath for an entirely different reason. I remembered the warm steady feel of him, the way his fin
gers gripped when he held me.

  The heat of him seeped through the thin material at my back. His body pressed against me. We used to wake up that way, him molding me from behind, his lips brushing along my shoulder blade.

  I closed my eyes as his breath warmed my ear. His chest rose and fell against me. I felt myself soften at the very core. It was my body’s natural response to being held, nothing else. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to remember. I tried to draw away, but he held me close. He even smelled the same. Under the sweat and dirt, I detected the warm, spicy scent of him that used to make me feel safe and loved.

  Two men outside cursed loudly. Dukkies quacked up a storm.

  Fear pricked along my spine. Our patrols didn’t usually monitor the minefield, unless they suspected a threat had made it past our defenses.

  Their voices calmed and once again, we heard them speaking low to each other as they approached. My heart sped up. The air inside the showers was heavy and hot. A drop of perspiration slid down my chest. I couldn’t make out the words the guards spoke, but I knew these two weren’t out to party in the minefield—or at the rocks.

  Seven hells. I was hiding out with the enemy.

  I wondered what they’d do to him if they caught him here. I pressed closer to Marc without even thinking about it. His arm tightened around me. The last time, our side had tried to execute him.

  “Hey now,” I heard a familiar voice say. It was Father McArio. He was usually in camp during the day.

  “Have you seen any suspicious activity?” one of the men grunted.

  “Yes,” Father said with conviction and my heart sank. “Out by my hutch. I was just coming to find you.”

  Thank God. I about collapsed against Marc as Father led the men away.

  I turned around, hands braced on his chest. His field jacket was rough, and dusty from the desert. He’d always been lean, but now he was coarser, harder.

  His gaze raked over me; his fingers traced me like he was trying to memorize every breath, every touch, every nuance of my expression as I watched him. I should have stepped back, but I didn’t.

  “I can’t believe you just waltzed into my camp,” I whispered.