by Glover, Nhys
Now she realised their mistake. Marnie’s face was a picture of horrified distress, and before she could react, Hawk was reaching for the old lady to keep her on her feet.
‘It’s okay, Marnie, everyone can see Hawk now. Can you feel how solid he is? We don’t know how it happened, but by the time we got to London he was corporeal.’
Marnie looked up into Hawk’s face with wonder as the fear started to dissipate. ‘I’m not dying?’
Hawk smiled. ‘No, you are not dying. Unless everyone in London is also dying. I am in physical form now. I even have an identity, courtesy of one of our assassins. I am Hans Fredricksen, although you can still call me Hawk.’
Marnie’s eyelids fluttered as she took in his words. ‘Oh my stars! This is amazing. It seems impossible. But… but you feel real enough.’
‘I am, and with any luck I will stay that way. Shall we get Cassie home? Drive very slowly and carefully, we are still not sure whether her danger period is passed yet.’
Marnie nodded and drew away from Hawk shakily. ‘Oh my stars! This is simply amazing. More amazing! I haven’t seen your face since I was eight years old. You haven’t changed at all. Oh my!’
When they were all in the car and heading the two miles home, Marnie kept looking in the rear view mirror to check on Hawk’s presence there.
‘Marnie, eyes on the road. We want to get home in one piece. You can ogle him all you like when we get there.’ Cassie gave a little laugh, feeling light for the first time in days. Finally, she was home where she belonged with the two people who meant the most to her in the world at her side.
‘I’ll get the tea on,’ Marnie said, once they’d put the car away and headed for the front door.
‘I’ll change into some fresh clothes. I’m sick of the sight of these ones.’ Cassie looked at Hawk and silently nodded in Marnie’s direction.
He took the hint. ‘I will come with you and help with the tea. Do you know how to make those scones your grandmother used to bake? I can still remember how they melted in my mouth that first day I visited this farm. Do you know, I felt as if this house welcomed me in that day, and it has been the same ever since.’
Cassie listened to them chatter on like long lost friends as they made their way down the hall to the kitchen. Then she carried her few plastic bags up the stairs to her room.
It felt like months since she’d been here and yet nothing had changed. Had she stood at that window just a week ago, forlornly looking down at the ghost of a fighter pilot in the garden? It didn’t feel quite real.
Now that fighter pilot was downstairs dressed as a twenty-first century man with a new identity and a new life. With her.
Life had never been better!
As the kettle boiled, Hawk listened to Marnie’s animated chatter. She sounded so much like the child he remembered that it was hard to see her as an old lady at all, for all the thinning grey hair and the wrinkled skin.
Then, as a tea cup was placed in front of him a wave of anxiety washed over him.
Instantly, he was on his feet, adrenalin spiking. His chair crashed to the floor behind him as he sped from the room and down the hall. He reached the bottom of the stairs in time to see Cassie take the first step.
‘Cass…’ he cried, flying up the stairs toward her just as she lost her footing.
It all happened in slow motion. He saw her mouth form an ‘oh’ of surprise. Her arms flew up and her back arched as she tried to compensate for her sudden downward momentum, but she couldn’t counteract her loss of balance. She began toppling forward, almost like a diver from a diving board.
And he dove for her, lunging up the stairs, uncaring if he came crashing painfully to earth afterward, as long as he reached his Cassie in time. As long as he caught her before she completed the fall that he knew, on some preternatural level, would be a fatal one.
For what felt like an eternity his hand reached for her, seemingly getting no closer. Then finally, his fingers managed to cross the monumental gulf between them and found purchase on her thin arm. He twisted his body like a cat, rolling over and pulling her down on top of him as he started his own descent. Falling hard, cushioning her fragile form with his own, he barely felt the impact. The blinding pain in his head as it glanced off the wall hardly registered at all.
Cassie felt warm and solid in his arms, as the aftershock of the impact jarred him so badly he bit his tongue. Her breathing was wonderful, harsh and gasping as it was against his ear, because it was still breathing. She was still breathing!
And then time started up at normal speed again and he saw that they lay sprawled at an awkward angle down the narrow staircase wrapped in each other’s arms. His back was pressed against the edges of several carpeted stairs. Her chin was propped against the top of his head, her throat align with his eyes. It was hard to tell which body parts were hers and which were his.
But then his attention was fully on Cassie.
‘Are you all right?’ he demanded on a gasp, trying to right them from their ungainly position. How had he made it up twelve stairs so fast to catch her five steps from the top?
‘Ye… esss… Oh my god, Hawk. That was it? After everything we’ve been through, that was how I was going to die? This is incredible.’ Her voice was high with excitement and amazement.
‘I… I think so. I felt it from the kitchen. The need to be with you. That you were in danger.’
Marnie was at the bottom of the stairs then, demanding to know what was going on.
‘I just saved Cassie’s life,’ Hawk said with a grin. He untangled their limbs and edged into a seated position. Not sure if he had the strength yet to get up, he stayed where he was with Cassie in his arms.
She felt so incredibly alive against him. Tears pricked at his eyes and chocked his throat. So close… so very close. He’d come so close to losing her.
‘Again. Saved my life again,’ Cassie said with a groan, burying her head into his shoulder.
‘What happened? Honestly, I never get to witness any of the good stuff,’ Marnie said with a grumble.
‘Good stuff? I hardly think almost falling down a flight of stairs is good stuff,’ Hawk grumbled back, suddenly starting to feel the pain from his fall in every part of his new body. There was a lot to be said for being an apparition. Feeling the aches and pains of everyday life was already wearing thin.
‘Or climbing out onto that tree. Or… or hiding out from the bad guys…’ Cassie added, beginning to laugh.
Then her face grew still and the laughter died out in her eyes. She turned to him, the question written there for him to read so plainly.
If that was what he’d come to save her from, did that mean he was about to go now? It was clear that he couldn’t have saved her life if he hadn’t been in physical form. Maybe becoming corporeal had always been part of the plan.
And now she was saved…
He looked down at his body. It didn’t look any different to him. He was still here. He focused on feeling Cassie. Yes, she still felt solid, still felt real to him. Did he feel the same to her? Could Marnie still see him?
Panicking, he looked down at Marnie. But her eyes were still on him, and there was only dawning concern on her face. It was not the expression of someone who saw a solid person disappearing.
‘Can you still feel me?’ he asked Cassie, touching her pale cheek.
She nodded, unable to speak because of her terror. Slowly, he drew her to her feet and helped her down the steep flight of stairs.
At the bottom, Marnie put her arm around his girl and began leading her into the sitting room. When she had Cassie on the two-seater settee, Hawk sat down next to her, not wanting to break physical contact for any length of time, afraid that if he did he’d lose his tether to this plane for good.
‘I… I’ll get the tea,’ Marnie said uncertainly. She was obviously afraid to leave the room in case he disappeared while she was gone.
This was madness. Waiting was driving them all insane.
&n
bsp; Furiously, he looked to the heavens. ‘For the love of God, let this be over. We cannot take much more!’
‘Don’t,’ Cassie cried, clinging to him. ‘Don’t make it happen!’
‘If it is going to happen, let it be now. I cannot go on like this, afraid every minute will be my last with you. This is no way to live!’
In the next moment, he began to feel something… an odd buzzing sensation throughout his body. Panic replaced his fury instantly as he looked down at his torso. Was he fading? Did he seem to be less solid than he had been only a few moments ago?
‘Hawk! Oh god, Hawk! I… I can’t feel you… Please… don’t let them take you. Please. Stay with me. You can stay with me if you just want it enough. Want to live, Hawk! Want to be here with me with ever fibre in your being. Please!’
Was it as simple as wanting it? If that were so, he wouldn’t be fading now. He’d have been solid from almost the first moment he saw her. She made him want to be alive again; to truly feel… not the numbed survival that had been his lot for the last few years of the war, but truly feel!
Then he realised the truth. It wasn’t enough to want to live. He had to believe he could. He had to believe he deserved to be here, alive and happy with this woman he loved more than life. He had to know that this was his destiny. Not saving her life… that wasn’t his destiny. Being with her, day in and day out, for as long as they had breath in their lungs – that was his destiny. If he believed it!
He looked at her terrified face, so pale and vulnerable without the cover of hair. Her big blue eyes were haunted, much as they had been when he’d first seen her at the window so long ago. But they were haunted for another reason now. Because she didn’t believe he wanted to stay with her enough. So many people had left her; she thought he was just the last in a very long line to do so.
Didn’t she know he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life? Didn’t she know how special and beautiful she was to him? How his life had truly begun the moment she’d come into it?
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to stay with her…
As he felt himself fading further, he focused on what he knew to be the truth. He could stay here. He had an identity, a place, people… everything he needed to be human again. He could do this! His men hadn’t died that day over France. They’d all got home safely. Their deaths hadn’t been on him that day and he deserved a life. His last had been used up on a war that was none of his making. He deserved another chance at happiness, unfettered by guilt or duty.
He deserved a life with this beautiful woman he loved with all his heart.
Hawk saw the look in Cassie’s eyes change from terror to hope. The sensation of her skin against his became more defined… more real. Looking down at his body, he saw that he was becoming solid again, bit by bit.
I do deserve to live! I do deserve to be happy! The tingling was gone now. And he saw the last of the terror leaving Cassie’s eyes, replaced by cautious relief. She swallowed convulsively and then smiled, still unsure whether the worst was over.
But he knew. Deep inside him, he knew that the war he’d waged was over. He’d won! This was his life and he deserved to live it. No longer just surviving, no longer expecting only half a life. For him, from this point on, it was a whole, fulfilling life with this woman he’d waited nearly seventy years to find.
‘I am not going anywhere, Cassie. You are stuck with me from here on out.’ He grinned at her confidently, trying to convey the depth of his certainty.
Her gaze flicked from one of his eyes to the other, trying to read the truth there.
When she found it, she grinned at him. ‘Oh my love, thank you! Thank you for choosing to stay with me. I need you so much…’
Then he was kissing her face, little desperate kisses that affirmed she was real, that affirmed he was real, that told her that everything was going to be all right. Then he settled on her mouth, a deep tender kiss that rocked him to his very soul.
‘I love you so much…’ Cassie said against his mouth.
‘Good! That’s good…’
And it was better than good, it was what he deserved.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book took nearly seven long years to complete because having my heroine as a cancer survivor was just a little close to home for me to go to at times. But now that it’s finished I feel a real sense of completion around not only the book but my personal experience with cancer.
I am always keen to find out what my readers think of my stories, and never was that more true than with this one. So please leave feedback at Amazon or at my website www.nhysglover.com/
I would love to hear from you.
If you haven’t already read my other paranormal novel ‘Guardian of Werewolf Keep’, here is an extract so you can see if you might like it.
CHAPTER ONE
Philomena Davenport stared up at the pile of weathered stones and fallen turrets outlined on the twilit skyline of the desolate Yorkshire moor. This was Breckenhill Keep? How could it be? Her father’s will stipulated that she must live here for three months before inheriting his immense wealth, but no one but goats could live in this fallen down ruin!
It was a ghastly trick. Yet another perpetrated on her by her cruel, absent parent. What other explanation but cruelty could there be for leaving his wife and daughter to live in genteel poverty, believing him dead all these years, while he’d actually lived on with what could only be considered spectacular wealth? What kind of a man would do such a thing?
The carriage trundled on toward its destination as the shadows gathered. The closer they came to the ancient castle, the more daunted she became. In places, it was several stories high, towering over them like a malignant giant. In others, it had toppled to the height of a fence.
The central part of the Keep seemed solid enough. It appeared to be a stronghold of sorts, with long, thin windows harking back to a time when bowmen hid at such openings to fire down upon their medieval enemy. The castellated battlements at the very top were rounded with age, but they still reminded her of the castles on a chessboard.
The horses pulled up on the rutted driveway in front of a huge, oak door. This, at least, seemed to be in a good state of repair.
Her new footman jumped down from his seat next to the driver and came to the window. He peered in at her anxiously. Phil lifted her chin and tried to look imperious.
‘Please open the door, Phelps, and help me down. Then go up to the door and knock. It is obvious that the staff is unaware, as yet, of our arrival.’
Phil tried to sound older and worldlier than her twenty-two years. She knew that servants would easily lose respect for a mistress who showed uncertainty of any kind. Her new staff didn’t need to know that before last week, she had been little more than a servant herself.
The footman opened the door with marked reluctance and helped her down from the coach. Young Prudence, her maid, scrambled down after her. They both stood patiently waiting while the footman climbed the rough-cut stone stairs to the large door.
Phelps used the huge brass doorknocker, which was shaped like a yawning beast, to draw attention to them. The sound of the loud rap echoed hollowly in the gloom.
They waited; then waited a little longer. As the minutes passed, Phil realised she had stopped breathing. Deliberately, she drew a deep, calming breath into her lungs and called up to her man.
‘Knock again. There has to be someone here.’
Phelps did as he was told, this time with more enthusiasm.
Night was upon them now and the full moon provided their only light. In the eerie silence, she heard the horses shift restlessly in their traces. It felt like they were the only people alive on this desolate moor.
When the second knock still brought no response, Phelps raised the knocker again. As he did so, the door flew out from beneath his hand and he almost fell across the threshold.
‘Who are you and what do you want at this time of night?’
Phil
saw the door fly open and heard the commanding male voice, but she could not see its owner. Her footman obviously could, because he was backing up fast, almost falling down the stone stairs in his haste to get away from whoever had addressed him.
As it was clear that the footman was not going to make the announcement of her arrival, Phil stepped forward with her head held high.
‘It is the new mistress of this house, Philomena Davenport. We were delayed. Please be so kind as to have your people see to my needs. I am tired. It has been a long trip from London.’
From the cavernous doorway stepped a tall figure. The moonlight provided only a silhouette of his shape, but it was enough to portray size, strength and vitality. This was a young man in his prime and he was angry.
‘Go back to the village and find shelter there for the night. We are not prepared for your arrival. Come again tomorrow at a civilized hour.’ The man’s voice was deep and gravelled, as if he suffered a sore throat, but the volume made it apparent that there was nothing wrong with his windpipes. His voice was loud enough to echo off the stones around them and out onto the lonely moor.
‘How dare you speak to your new mistress in such a way! I am sorry that we must put you and the rest of the staff to inconvenience, but I am arrived and I will be staying.’ She wondered how she managed to put such steel into her tone when she felt like folding up like a stringless puppet and falling to the ground. However, the idea of getting back into the carriage and making her way back down the steep goat track – which passed as a road – to the nearest village some miles away was more than she was prepared to consider.
‘This is no place for you this night, madam,’ the tall silhouette ground out with bare civility. ‘I have no time to see to your needs. Go away!’ He stepped back into the Keep and made to close the great door.
Without fully thinking it through, Phil bounded up the stairs ignoring her heavy skirts and managed to put her foot in the doorway before the door fully closed. She yelped in pain as the heavy door hit her booted foot but she didn’t remove it.