Borrowed Heart

by Linda Lamberson

  The seventh woman had an exotic look about her, much like Madame Sasha did. She, too, had dark, olive skin and dark brown eyes that were framed by long, black eyelashes. But unlike the psychic gypsy, the Tribunal member was wearing no makeup, and she had thick, white, flowing hair that fell down to the small of her back.

  “Council Member Tara,” Peter said. I jumped a little at the sound of Peter’s voice; I hadn’t realized he had still been standing next to me.

  “Peter,” the woman with the white, flowing hair responded cordially; her voice was incredibly soothing. “It’s good to see you again. I hope all is well with you.”

  “Yes, thank you. I extend the same warm greetings and wishes to you and the rest of the Tribunal members.”

  “Thank you, Peter,” Tara said, speaking on behalf of the panel. She then turned her attention to me and sighed. “Eve, my dear, I had hoped we could have met under different circumstances. Please approach the podium.”

  Peter took me by the arm and escorted me to the podium.

  “Thank you, Peter. That will be all.”

  “If I may, Council Member Tara, new facts have just been brought to my attention, and I believe they are pertinent to this Inquiry.”

  “Very well,” Tara said with a hint of curiosity. “You may stay—for now. Have a seat please.” Peter did as Tara requested and sat down in the first pew directly behind me.

  “Typically,” Tara continued as she turned her attention back towards me, “our Inquiries are conducted in an open forum for all Shepherds to witness if they so choose. However, because of the … unusual circumstances that surround your case, Eve, the Council has decided it would be best to handle this matter behind closed doors.” Tara cleared her throat before continuing.

  “Tribunal members, are we ready to begin the proceedings?” Tara asked the other members without so much as glancing to her left or her right.

  “We are,” the other six said in perfect unison.

  “Good, then begin we shall,” Tara announced. “Eve, certain of your activities have been called to our attention. In fact, you stand before us now, accused of violating three of our Rules.”

  Anxiety and fear spread through me. I locked my knees so they wouldn’t buckle right out from under me.

  “We will now examine each alleged violation. You will be given an opportunity to explain and defend your actions should you feel the need,” Tara explained. She paused, waiting for me to acknowledge that I understood her instructions, and I did so with a brief nod of my head.

  “With respect to Rule One,” Tara began the interrogation, “did you indeed knowingly seek out information about your past?”

  “If I may, Tribunal members,” Peter interjected before I could answer Tara’s question. I turned around to see Peter standing up, waiting for permission to speak further.

  “You may,” Tara answered, speaking on behalf of the rest of the panel.

  “The situation between Eve and her charge is complicated … Mr. Harrison knew Eve prior to her death.”

  “We already were aware of this information, Peter,” Tara remarked calmly.

  “Yes, well,” Peter continued, “Mr. Harrison volunteered certain information about Eve’s past despite her request that he not do so.”

  Tara paused for a moment and looked at me.

  “Is this true?” she asked me.

  “Yes,” I managed to say, despite my parched mouth. “But I should mention that I once asked Qui—uh, Mr. Harrison, if he knew where I was from, but he said he didn’t.”

  “I see. Well, we will take Mr. Harrison’s role with respect to your violation of this Rule into consideration,” Tara said as she made a note in what I assumed was my file.

  “With Respect to Rule Three, did you indeed reveal yourself to your charge in a context that did not involve his safety?” Tara questioned.

  “Yes,” I responded. My head started to spin. This was it. I could see the writing on the wall. I would never see Quinn again. I felt like all of the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.

  “And, finally, with respect to Rule Five, did you indeed get personally and emotionally involved with your charge?”

  “Again, if I may,” Peter offered, this time walking up to the podium next to me.

  “Yes, Peter,” Tara said calmly, her face expressionless.

  “It would also seem that Mr. Harrison and Eve had a relationship of a romantic nature at some point while Eve was alive,” he stated.

  “Peter, we also were aware of this information prior to Eve being assigned to his case,” Tara offered.

  Peter looked confused and flabbergasted. I, too, was floored. They knew about Quinn and me, and they assigned me to him anyway? Why would they do that?

  “Is that all of the new information you have to offer, Peter?” Tara asked.

  “No. No, it’s not,” Peter said somewhat arrogantly. He looked at me and then back at Tara. “It would seem the situation between Mr. Harrison and Eve has been complicated further. Just moments ago, Eve told me she remembers her past … she knows who she was before she became a Shepherd.”

  With the exception of Tara, all the other Tribunal members gasped and mumbled amongst themselves. Tara, however, kept her eyes on me like I was her target. She didn’t even blink an eye.

  “Is this true, Eve?” she asked with a strange curiosity.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “And just how much do you remember?” she followed up.

  “All of it,” I said bluntly. “Every memory I have as a child, growing up in Michigan, going to IU—everything.”

  The panel mumbled again—all but Tara, who now cocked her head slightly to one side while she continued to stare at me.

  “My, this does complicate things further, doesn’t it?” Tara asked rhetorically.

  “It does,” Peter offered, unsolicited, “particularly in light of the other information I already provided you … and the Servants’ attack on Eve,” he said with more confidence.

  The other information Peter already provided to them? I repeated to myself. I felt like I had been sucker-punched. Peter had been feeding the Council information about me. He had been spying on me. How could he have done that to me? I was overwhelmed with anger, and it took all my strength not to lash out at him right then and there. I shot Peter a look out of the corner of my eye that screamed “traitor.” If he saw my expression, he ignored it and continued making his point.

  “Tribunal members, I have done some research, and I believe Mr. Harrison and Eve’s destinies were entangled for quite some time,” Peter remarked.

  “We agree with your assessment,” Tara conceded. “This is a most extraordinary case. It is unheard of for a Shepherd to be assigned to protect a human who knew the Shepherd while alive—much less to a human with whom the Shepherd had been involved.”

  “Then how did it happen?” I blurted out. “Why was I assigned to his case?”

  “We had our reasons, my dear,” Tara said calmly.

  “Well, what were they?” I demanded. “What possibly could have led you to believe this was a good idea?”

  Peter immediately grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard. “Eve, the Council does not have to explain the bases of its decisions to you,” he stated in an admonishing tone.

  “No, of course it doesn’t,” I said bitterly. I didn’t care how I was supposed to act before the Council Tribunal members. I was furious. “The Council doesn’t have to answer to me, to you—to any of us. But they can go ahead and twist the threads of fate just enough to destroy a young man’s life under the perverted guise of saving him. The Council can go ahead and assign him a Shepherd with whom he had already fallen in love and then sit back and laugh, knowing that despite the inevitable, the Rules would prohibit any sort of reunion between the two.”

  “Eve!” Peter reprimanded.

  “Are you quite finished?” Tara inquired curtly. Anger flashed in her eyes and the golden aura around her flickered red.

  “Ye
s,” I muttered. I knew I had to back off.

  “Eve, we need neither explain our actions to you nor provide you with the underlying reasons for our decisions … even as they relate to you,” Tara said sharply.

  “However,” she went on, regaining her composure, “given the unusual nature of your assignment, I do believe it would be prudent for me to share certain information with you. Eve, we did not play a significant role in assigning you to Mr. Harrison’s case. To the contrary, your assignment came directly from the Order of the Realms. Needless to say, we were aware of your prior involvement with Mr. Harrison, as well as the potential for a reunion between you two, but we had no authority to circumvent your assignment.”

  “I … I don’t understand,” Peter mumbled. “That goes against everything we do … everything we stand for. Why would the Order set Eve up to break the Rules? Why set her up to fail?”

  “I can assure you that failure was not the intent in this matter. The complications you raised, Peter, are of much greater significance than you could have surmised. In life, Eve was no ordinary threat to the Servants.”

  “I was an eighteen-year-old college student from a small town in Michigan,” I interjected. “I wasn’t a threat to anyone.”

  “Not yet,” Tara clarified. “And it wasn’t you alone that posed the threat.”

  “I don’t follow,” I said, confused.

  “Eve,” Tara sighed, “your fate had been inexplicably tied to Mr. Harrison’s well before you two ever met. You see, you alone did not make the Servants nervous. You needed a partner to set the wheels in motion and accomplish whatever it was that would have threatened the Servants. Mr. Harrison was that partner.”

  “But there is nothing extraordinary about that,” Peter jumped in to say. “We’ve seen this type of scenario before … where a perceived threat is the result of a combined effort based on human strength, will, and intellect. And just as the Servants have done in the past, they easily could’ve quashed any such alleged threat posed by Mr. Harrison and Eve simply by manipulating their destinies, thereby preventing them from ever meeting and forming an alliance. The Three Sisters do the same thing when they need to prevent certain disasters.”

  “Unfortunately, Peter,” Tara responded. “This situation is different than the others we have dealt with or seen in the past. The circumstances here are extraordinary because Mr. Harrison and Eve are true soul mates.”

  “True soul mates,” a voice in my head repeated. Suddenly, a searing pain ripped through my chest, much like the one I had experienced weeks ago in Quinn’s apartment. I couldn’t help but grab my chest. I looked at Peter for an answer, but his eyes were clearly full of pain. Could it be that he felt my pain too? Was the connection between mentor and mentee that strong?

  “Peter,” Tara continued, completely disregarding what she had no doubt witnessed right before her eyes, “you know as well as I that in the case of true soul mates, it would have been nearly impossible to stop, or even slow down, the forces destined to bring Mr. Harrison and Eve together. Thus, the Servants devised an alternative strategy … they sought to eliminate one of the soul mates.”

  “Me,” I said numbly.

  “You,” Tara confirmed.

  “Wait a minute!” I exclaimed. “Are you saying that I died so Quinn could live?” Tara didn’t have to answer—I knew it was true from the look on her face.

  “But,” Tara continued, “it is also said that the connection between true soul mates is often so powerful that it can transcend even death. The odds of this transcendence occurring increase exponentially when the soul mate who died becomes an immortal with a living soul. We believe the Servants knew of your connection with Mr. Harrison before you died and somehow discovered you had become a Shepherd upon your death. Realizing that ending your mortal life was insufficient to eradicate the threat posed against them by Mr. Harrison and you, they then targeted Mr. Harrison, manipulating his fate and making him their newest target.

  “The Order of the Realms believed that if you were assigned to Mr. Harrison,” Tara went on to say, “the ongoing connection between you two would provide the stimulus to revitalize the threat the Servants so hoped to foil. And judging from their recent attack on you, I believe the Order was correct in its hypothesis.”

  “You used us … as bait!” I exclaimed. “So in this supposed ‘master plan’ to foil the Servants, was I always supposed to die? Did you let me die?”

  “No, my dear. It would seem your death was unavoidable. Your Shepherd used all of his strength to save you in the initial car accident. But the Servants changed their tactics and immediately executed a back-up plan, one which we did not foresee.”

  “The pickup truck,” I whispered out loud.

  “The pickup truck,” Tara confirmed again. “After your Shepherd used his strength to shield you from the injuries you would have sustained in the car accident, he was too weak to prevent you from being hit by the oncoming vehicle only moments later. Your body died instantly.”

  “It was mere chance that you were targeted by the Servants first; it could have just as easily been Mr. Harrison. Nevertheless, you were always destined to become a Shepherd, Eve. In that respect, it is unfortunate that your fate triggered Mr. Harrison’s own fate and made him a subsequent target.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I chuckled cynically. “I died for nothing?”

  “Eve, I wouldn’t interpret what happened to you that way at all. You died so you could save Mr. Harrison’s life,” Tara clarified. “And, so far, you have done just that.”

  “So … does that mean I’m still Quinn’s Shepherd?” I asked timidly.

  “You two may be true soul mates, but be that as it may, you still broke the Rules and there are consequences for doing so,” Tara replied. The monster lurking in the pit of my stomach growled as I began to drown in my own anxiety.

  “Yet,” Tara continued, “the Tribunal believes there are mitigating circumstances that must be taken into consideration when determining the consequences in this matter. I feel it is necessary that we take a recess from our examination at this time so we can best decide what is most appropriate in light of all of the facts before us.

  “Eve, before we end the Inquiry, is there anything you would like to share with us?” Tara’s eyes narrowed, like she was looking for something, like she was trying to get inside my head. “Is there anything else we should know about your actions under investigation?”

  I tried to wipe my mind clean. I didn’t want to the Tribunal members to know about the extent of my relationship with, and my feelings for, Quinn, but it was useless. It was like telling someone not to smile. The more I tried to purge these thoughts from of my head, the more they fought to stay close to the forefront of my mind. Images of Quinn and me together were racing through my head. I was certain the panel was reading every private thought and seeing every intimate image I tried to conceal.

  When I scanned the Tribunal members’ faces, however, I saw nothing indicating that my secrets had been divulged. How could that be? If they had glimpsed one iota of how much I wanted Quinn, if they had seen any one of the images of Quinn and I together popping into my head, then surely they would’ve asked me about them. Surely they at least would have raised an eyebrow. But they didn’t. I looked at their faces again, and it suddenly dawned on me that maybe they hadn’t read my thoughts. I didn’t understand. Peter told me it would take time for me to develop the skills to shield my thoughts. In fact, Peter hadn’t even taught me how to keep my private thoughts private and that’s why he …

  Peter. I gasped. I cleared my throat softly and looked at Peter out of the corner of my eye. When he refused to acknowledge me, I knew I was right. He was still shielding my thoughts for me. He was risking being subject to his own Inquiry to help me.

  “Fine,” Tara announced, “then without further ado, we’ll leave you now to confer in our chambers. We will reconvene once we have made our final decision.”

  “Wait!” I cr
ied out, my mind having snapped back to the heart of what was happening.

  “Yes?” Tara said serenely, seemingly unaffected by yet another one of my outbursts.

  “You said I could say something … in my defense.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Well, I would like to … say something, that is.”

  “Go on,” Tara said, intrigued.

  “First, I want to apologize for breaking the Rules. But the truth is, if I had to do it all over again, if I went back in time knowing my future actions would lead me here, standing before you now, I wouldn’t have changed anything. I wouldn’t trade a single minute of my time with my charge, even if it means having to face dire consequences for my actions.

  “I will resign from being Mr. Harrison’s Shepherd without hesitation,” I continued. “I’ll voluntarily sacrifice my existence as a Shepherd, if it means that Mr. Harrison will be safe … if my doing so ensures that he will survive and that he will be free to live a complete and full life.”

  “Are you so deeply in love with this mortal that you would so selflessly sacrifice yourself—your soul—for him?” asked another female Tribunal member.

  “Yes,” I said unequivocally. “But the thing is,” I continued, “I think it would be a huge mistake to remove me from my assignment. No other Shepherd will be as invested in Mr. Harrison’s safety as I am. No other Shepherd will be able to protect him as well as I can. I know him. I know how he thinks, how he acts, and how he reacts to things. And he knows me. He trusts me. He will listen to me if I tell him he’s in danger.

  “Besides,” I added, “the Order of the Realms must have been aware of the risks that came along with assigning me to Mr. Harrison’s case, but they still assigned me to watch over him anyway. You said it yourself,” I said, looking directly at Tara, “they wanted Mr. Harrison and me to be together so we could stop the Servants. So I’m asking that you please let us do what we were originally destined to do.”

  “We will discuss your case and make a decision,” Tara said calmly. “In the meantime, Sergei will escort you to a more comfortable space.