“The others have been unearthed. The division has already begun.”
Aries watched Kes carefully. Sharply. “What will you ask of me?”
“I want you to pledge yourself to Larken, vowing to protect her above all others.”
Aries’s pink eyes flared, and his upper lip curled as he roared in Kes’s face. “You cannot ask this of me!”
Kes didn’t back down but met him toe to toe, pushing back when Aries postured. “She is my family. You know what Taurus will do to her.”
The two stared each other down for a long moment, silent conversation passing between them.
“What would he do?” I asked, keeping my voice as tempered as possible.
Kes and Aries ignored me.
“I won’t see it happen. I am granted a right, and I demand you honor it,” Kes hotly demanded, pointing at me. “You gave me your word,” he panted.
I stepped toward them, extending a hand. “Wait. What does this whole pledge-thing mean?”
Without answering, Aries cut the palm of one hand with a claw on the other and slashed the nail through the pooling blood, approaching me with it. I backed away. “What? No.”
Kes stopped me. “You must allow him to make this promise to you. This is the only thing I can do to help you now. He’s coming.”
“Who?” I asked, half in exasperation, half in fear.
“Taurus.”
“Taurus?” I parroted, trying to understand exactly what he was saying. “Are you trying to tell me the zodiac signs are real?”
“The Zodia are real,” Kes corrected, “and they are collecting those who are rightfully theirs. You belong to Taurus.”
“I don’t belong to anyone,” I argued. I wasn’t a thing, a possession.
“This isn’t the same world you woke up in, Larken, and it will never be again. Aries is making an offer you should not refuse.”
Aries wasn’t offering anything. He didn’t want to pledge to me. He didn’t want to protect me from Taurus or anything else. He couldn’t care less if I lived or died, but he owed my brother some sort of favor and was willing to honor it. I looked at the pool of his crimson blood, then I turned my attention back to Kes. I wrung my hands and shook them out like they were covered in water. I didn’t know what to do.
“I’m scared,” I whispered, another tear leaking from my eye.
“So am I, but you have to hurry. He’s close.” Kes’s eyes flicked to the staircase.
“Fine,” I said, watching warily as Aries approached. I told myself that if Taurus was as awful as Kes said, maybe this was a good, temporary arrangement. With that thought, I tried to quiet my racing heart.
Kes would never hurt me, I reminded myself. He promised to keep me and Mom and Dad safe.
“Kes, have Mom and Dad been… collected?” This was bad. Dad was a Taurus, too. Mom was a Libra.
Kes’s lips thinned. The muscle in his jaw ticked. “Yes.”
“What will happen to them?”
He shook his head. “They’ll be fine,” he said noncommittally.
“Dad’s a Taurus, too,” I reminded him. “And you just said you didn’t want me to go with him.”
Aries lifted his sharp fingernail. “Close your eyes.” The deep rumble of his voice slid over me, pebbling my skin.
A million questions flooded my mind but disappeared the moment his cool, wet blood was applied in a thin line that started above my right brow, bisected it, and slid over my lid and down onto the apple of my cheek. Aries drew a matching line over my left eye and stepped away.
The bad feeling I had earlier today returned with a vengeance. The hair on my arms rose.
Kes looked to the ceiling.
“He is here,” Aries said ominously, wiping his blood along his loincloth and striding across the room and up the steps. The ground shook above us like two giants were battling outside.
“I have so many questions,” I hissed to Kes, who stared up at the ceiling overhead that cracked with each massive blow from above. Two fissures spread across the painted heavens, mimicking the lines Aries had drawn on my face. I gathered the sleeve of my sweatshirt and went to wipe off Aries’ freaky blood smears.
Kes batted my hands away before I could swipe anything. “No! You can’t remove his mark.”
“For how long?”
“Oh, I don’t know, forever,” he snapped.
“Never?”
“Not unless you take a permanent mark.”
My mouth gaped.
We watched as more bits of stone and dust fell from the ceiling. A particularly hard impact shook the walls I was bracing against and I let out a cry.
Kes paced, inching closer to the door. “I am his Guardian.”
“Well, go…” I shooed him. “Guard him or whatever.”
“He gave an order to stay here.”
Why did guys have to be so weird? “You never listen to anything anyone says, so why start now?”
Another huge jolt came from above. The two were tearing the earth and graveyard apart, I just knew it. All those headstones. They were probably throwing them at one another like snowballs.
“Why is Taurus worried about one girl?”
A storm roiled through Kes’s blue eyes. “Because you could make all the difference.”
The ceiling groaned overhead. The once perfectly smooth ceiling bowed toward us.
“It’s not safe down here. I won’t make a difference if we’re buried alive!”
He gritted his teeth, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “Come on. But stay at the bottom of the steps. Stay close to me.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I mean it, Larken,” Kes warned before leading me up the staircase and helping me out of the vault, even though I wasn’t short like he claimed. As he led me outside, I wished he had told me what to expect, because I did not expect him.
Taurus looked young like Aries, very much like a guy my age, with the exception of the bullish, bone-colored, sharp-tipped horns curling from either side of his forehead and pointing straight at me. As if he was aware of me, his eyes snapped to mine. They glowed an angry orange, like churning lava, and I retreated a step. “She’s mine,” he growled. “You cannot harbor her.”
He had thick hooves where feet should be, and I half expected him to scuff the ground with a cloven-tipped foot, kicking up clouds of dust behind him.
Aries was visibly pissed. He glowered at me and Kes. “How am I to protect her, Guardian, if you put her in harm’s way?”
I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. Sorry, Kes. “With all due respect, Aries, the fight compromised our safety.” His dark brows furrowed, so I explained, “The ceiling split and was about to collapse.”
Taurus let out a guttural roar that vibrated through my skin and charged at Aries, almost catching him off guard, but at the last second, Aries lowered his head and steeled his muscles. Their impact knocked me off balance for a second. Kes steadied me as the two beasts circled one another.
Taurus tried to impale Aries, but Aries grabbed his horns and thrust him away as though he weighed nothing. Aries was clearly stronger, but Taurus scared me. He was merciless and stubborn and would not relent. He kept attacking Aries, trying to gore him from one side, then the next, then charging straight-on. He tried to chase him, but Aries wouldn’t play Taurus’s game.
Taurus couldn’t focus. He kept glancing back to the bloody slashes on my face.
“I have pledged myself to her, as evidenced by the marks. You can scent my blood on her skin. Why do you continue to fight when I’ve clearly won the battle?” Aries half-taunted.
I mean, it wasn’t an unreasonable question. Maybe it would’ve been smarter not to be such a wise-ass when he asked it, and maybe he should’ve wiped the cocky smirk off his face, but who was I to judge?
“Aren’t you going to jump
in or something?” I whispered to Kes as they smashed heads again and again.
“He doesn’t need my help,” he said, slouching against a tall obelisk-shaped headstone, arms crossed over his chest, eyes fastened on his Zodia.
“But down there, you said you were worried. You said you were his Guardian.”
Kes shrugged. “I shouldn’t have worried. He recovered quickly. He’s good now. Just watch.”
Kes loved MMA fighting, and this battle was like that to the hundredth power. The two brawling beasts parted, Taurus finally showing signs of exertion while Aries showed none at all.
The bull-headed jerk pointed his finger at me. “If the pledge leaves your skin, I will return for you.”
“What does he mean if it leaves my skin?” I whispered to Kes.
Kes whispered in an irritated tone, “If you remove it. For instance, if you do something stupid like wipe it off with your sweatshirt sleeve, or wash it off while showering – if anything removes it. He’ll know. We won’t be able to stop him from taking you away.”
What right did these things have to claim anyone? We had rights, too! Humans spent centuries establishing our own kingdoms in the forms of the lives we were carving out, and then these Zodia woke up and stomped in here and erased everything that mattered in a matter of hours. To them, our belongings, our homes, our families, our very breaths meant nothing. They were in for a rude awakening when they realized how hard we would fight to get our lives back.
“Fair enough,” Aries replied casually, examining his loin cloth in the light. The slight curl of his upper lip said he found it lacking. I mean, he looked amazing in it, but it was skimpy.
Aries’s eyes snapped to mine.
Um… if this is going to be an Edward Cullen situation where he can read my thoughts and I don’t have the shield thing Bella had going on, this will be awkward.
He didn’t say anything, just watched me.
Taurus said something to Aries, who immediately stiffened. Then the bull glanced at me and ticked his head in my direction, continuing whatever he was saying. Aries let out a threatening string of words before Taurus barked an ominous laugh that promised he wasn’t giving up so easily, then disappeared.
I let out a pent-up breath and tore my eyes from Aries to survey the area around me. The graveyard was surprisingly intact. A few headstones were overturned, but Kes quickly righted them. All the thundering must have just been them… against the ground.
They were like Titans, but real, awake, and angry.
“Mom and Dad are okay, though, right?” I asked Kes, finally regathering my thoughts now that Taurus was gone, letting the worries seep back in.
He swallowed thickly, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. “They should be.”
Mom was born September twenty-eighth. “Mom’s a Libra.”
Kes nodded.
Libra was the woman with the scales. That meant she was reasonable, right? She seemed like a gal who appreciated justice and balance. “Can you bring her here? What about Dad? Does Taurus have him? Can you protect him, too?”
He closed his eyes. “Aries owed me a single favor, a right. I’ve claimed it for you, and now have nothing with which to bargain. But I can check on them.”
I glanced at Aries, alarmed that he was still staring at me. While it was unnerving, part of me wondered what he saw. What he thought of me. What he thought of his blood on my skin.
The two exchanged words in the lyrical language I wished I knew. Kes’s tone was grave and it set my teeth on edge. I was about to ask what they were talking about, whether he would go find Mom or Dad first.
Kes gave me a quick side hug and nodded to Aries. “Take care of him?”
My brows shot up. “Me take care of him? How?”
“He doesn’t know this world.”
Well, news flash. Neither do I anymore.
He blew out a long breath. “You could take him to our house and let him borrow some of my clothes, for starters.”
First of all, no. Aries was way more muscular than Kes. No offense. And secondly, “You said home wasn’t safe.”
“If Aries is with you, everywhere is safe. Do not remove his mark and do not leave his side.”
I narrowed my eyes at Kes, but he disappeared before I could argue.
Aries studied me from a few feet away. I wondered if I could trust him, and waited to see if he’d attack me now that Kes was gone. With those muscles, he could snap me like a twig. I knew that much. He’d barely ‘batted’ me in the mausoleum and managed to send me flying.
Maybe he’d just erase his marks and let Taurus come and claim me after all.
“I won’t harm you,” he finally said. “But, now that I’ve pledged myself to you, you’ll have to come with me.”
“Go with you where?” I asked.
“To where I will resurrect my kingdom,” he gritted in irritation.
“You’re cranky? Well, so am I. Your kind just woke up and imploded my world, so first, I have questions. I don’t understand any of this.”
His brows pinched. “How many questions do you have?”
“Approximately thousands.”
He slowly approached me and gently laid his hand on my shoulder. I stood my ground and didn’t back away, even though he was close enough I could see the striations in his matte black horns. I should have run, because by the time I realized what was happening, it was too late. Aries gave me the same look Kes did before bringing me to the cemetery.
This was going to hurt. I braced for it, squinting as I winced, and prepared for the pain. But it never came.
Instead, for a split second, I felt comfortable warmth. Somewhere in the brilliant darkness, Aries held me tight. I could feel the tips of his claws, but they didn’t bite into my skin. I was all too aware of his chest pressed against mine. In a blink, his comfortable warmth disappeared as the world around me came rushing into view. Then I felt nothing but a cold so frigid, it took my breath away.
We stood in front of a mountain range, the tops of which were encrusted with snow and glaciers, glittering like jewels in the afternoon sun. “Where are we?” I asked through chattering teeth.
“Home,” he said wistfully, staring at the mountaintops like he remembered them and had missed them terribly. “The Zodia have divided the earth equally, each of us taking a portion. This is mine.”
Aries closed his eyes. He swept his hands, palms up, into the air before him, and the ground began to rumble underfoot. Not enough to knock me off balance, but enough to make me hold my arms out to steady myself. From beneath the ground, as if it had been sunken in water and was being raised from the depths, Aries unearthed his kingdom.
Sleek, dark columns erupted from the arid soil to form a forest of stone, each one so tall, I had to squint against the sky to see the stone-capped tops. Beyond the dizzying rows of columns rose an even taller castle, complete with balconies and sharply tipped turrets.
I stood beside him, stunned, my mouth agape as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing. He glanced at me in his periphery.
“I must gather mine among the divided,” he finally spoke, “and call forth the other eleven Guardians so that they may assist them and keep the peace.”
I closed my eyes, picturing the terror that those born under the Aries sign were about to experience and wishing there was some way to help them.
Aries said my name and waited until I looked him in the eye. For a long moment, he watched me as if I were a puzzle, something to figure out. “I have to claim them and bring them here where they can be safe. They’ve watched all the others disappear. My people are the only ones still scattered. They’re frightened.”
“Have you ever done this before? Collected your people?”
He shook his head. “Before… it wasn’t necessary. The separation occurred at birth and was the way of life.”
Behind him, his home stood proudly. His castle’s shadow yawned over the land as the sun slowly slipped toward the west. Aries turned in a circle, stretching his hands out and speaking in that secret language I didn’t recognize. In a blink, thousands – no, hundreds of thousands – of people appeared, stretching as far as I could see in every direction but the mountain behind us. Men, women, and children. Wealthy, impoverished, and everything in between. Every race. Every religion. Every age and walk of life was represented. Everything that used to separate us from one another didn’t matter now that the Zodia were here.
Visibly frightened, his people huddled together against the cold, howling wind. Infants screamed. They’d been torn from their mothers and fathers, from those who loved them, and now rested in the arms of complete strangers. Did Aries consider how he might feed them? What about those who were ill? I caught sight of a man wearing a thin hospital gown, shivering in the biting air. Some wore pajamas. Some bikinis and board shorts. Some donned business suits, some jeans and tees, while others wore parkas.
There were jewel-toned saris, muted plaid kilts. Some wore shoes. Some were barefoot. There were men wearing keffiyehs, and one who wore a blood red bandana atop his head, sporting a leather jacket with moto patches. One girl about my age wore a gown, complete with a sash and glittering crown. She stood next to a guy with saggy pants who wore a beanie clamped down over thick dreads.
Moments later a new, smaller group appeared between us and Aries’ people. Although they looked human enough, they weren’t.
I counted each one to be sure. There were eleven.
The Guardians ranged in age from young adult to elderly, male and female. They looked like they could seamlessly fit in amongst the throng of people, but their ultimate duty was to Aries alone.
Aries quickly introduced himself to the assembled multitude, his voice booming over the land like peals of thunder. Loud and terrible, but clear. He explained that they were residents of his kingdom now, and then, as easily as he’d constructed his temple and the castle within it, he built humble homes for them all, simply by whispering for them to raise up. Wide-eyed people moved out of the way of the rising stones and watched the walls rise and roofs thatch themselves. Aries’s castle postured over it all, nestled into the mountain’s side like a kitten curled up to its owner.
Things That Should Stay Buried Page 5