Forsaken

by Jacquelyn Frank

“Yes,” she laughed. “Gargoyles need help, too. I think he’s looking for opinions on his new garden. Anyway, I better go, I’m already late.”

  She had smoothed her dress down and stepped out of his reach before he could react. She went to the door, grasping the knob, forcing him to hastily worry about his state of undress as her exit threatened to expose him to the outside world. Not that he was shy, but he was courteous of Jackson and Marissa’s home, and it was bad enough he had played the part of the naughty guest as it was.

  “Faith!”

  Faith heard him call her at the last minute, but she hurried through and shut the door regardless. After all, what could he possibly have to say. “Don’t get any ideas.” “This was a mistake.” “Nothing has changed.”

  She didn’t want to hear him speak the words aloud, even though all of them were true. It was enough that she was forced to come to that conclusion; she didn’t have to feel the wounds of his words as well.

  And now she would go. She would huddle over her new memories like a miser huddles over his gold. They were far from being as tender as their previous assignations had been, but they were hers, and no one could take them away from her. She could remember the heat and fire of it all in the future…a future she knew was about to get very lonely.

  She walked out the front door minutes later, peeled off her borrowed dress, and let it fall to the porch floor. With a deep breath she extended her wings, wriggling them into full extension, sighing with a combination of relief…and regret. But she shoved away from the regret as she shoved away from the porch, her body launching into the air.

  She ought to have taken her leave of Jackson and his household politely, but perhaps they would understand.

  She was leaving the way she had come. Unexpectedly. And she was leaving with what she had arrived with.

  Nothing.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Faith had been home only for an hour before her mother had descended on her, demanding a recounting of all that had happened. Faith hadn’t even thought that her father had told her about her mission. She hadn’t gone to her father’s house specifically so she could avoid too much attention and too many questions. She needed a minute. She needed a minute to mourn what she had lost.

  She had been as detailed as was necessary with her mother…leaving out the intimacies she had shared with a mortal man. Her mother, in a word, was a snob. Oh, she was a decent person overall, but she was definitely a snob. She had plans for her children, and Faith was very certain they didn’t include one of them running off to be lover to a human man.

  Fortunate then, that that human man did not want a lover.

  “You look simply awful, darling,” her mother had cooed, genuine concern in her eyes as she’d examined Faith for the damage she had suffered. “I take it you need to rest before resuming your duties? Is that why you’ve come here? I know you find it much less taxing here.”

  “Mother, don’t start.” Her mother was constantly in a silent competition with her father to be better than he was for her. To offer more, to be more enticing, to possibly deserve more loyalty. Her mother was not petty, merely competitive, and the father of her eldest child was her favorite contestant.

  “I’m fine, Mother. I just need a day or two to decompress, then I’ll return to Father.”

  “Yes, of course,” her mother agreed gently. “Well, it’s entirely up to you, dear. Are you sure you’re all right? You seem a little…off.”

  “I’m fine,” Faith said. “I’ll see you in the evening.”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” her mother said. “Your brother was in some trouble, too.” At this her entire visage fell and she began to wring her hands in a rare show of stress. Her mother kept her cool quite well in even the worst of circumstances, which was an excellent quality in the leader of the Australian Night Angels. But when it came to the well-being of her children, most specifically her beloved son who lived with her—as opposed to Faith, who had chosen to live with her father—she worried for him ferociously and tried to protect him at every turn, even though Faith’s brother was far and above capable of taking care of himself. “We found him nearly beaten to death in his home.”

  “Oh no! Is Dax all right?”

  “Well, I suppose he is now. Physically, in most respects. But I am not so certain about mentally,” her mother said, trailing off at the end and looking very concerned indeed.

  “I’ll have to go and check up on him.”

  “But you just got back from the States,” her mother said worriedly. But despite her protests, Faith could tell her mother wanted her to do exactly that, and as soon as possible.

  “It’s no trouble.” She would rather stay there and keep busy than set foot in her father’s house, back in his domain and on the same continent as…

  No…no, Faith, don’t do this to yourself. Otherwise, every time you step into North America you’ll want to search for a man who doesn’t want anything more to do with you.

  There was no explaining just how badly that knowledge hurt. And besides, it wasn’t as though she should be shocked. She had known all along that he wouldn’t be capable of…

  That wasn’t true. All along she had known he was capable. Thanks to Grey she had known almost from the start that he was very much capable of loving her. What hurt was that he didn’t seem to want it in spite of what he had seen. In spite of what they had shared. Grey had showed him how deeply they could come to care for each other and still he rejected it. Grey had shown them how amazing life together would be…

  The future had changed, yes, but did it have to be the entire future? Why couldn’t it just be the part where Marissa is driven mad with grief that changes? Why couldn’t the rest stay the same? Couldn’t he see it could stay the same?

  Dax stood staring into the fireplace of his father’s home. He had been living with his father ever since…

  He closed his eyes and sighed. At least he could close his eyes, he thought with gratitude. It had been a week before he had been able to do so without the horror of that night replaying in constant detail. Details he would not share with anyone. Anyone except his closest friend…his father.

  “Have you been sleeping?” Balthazar asked his son as he entered the room and found him standing pensively before the fireplace.

  “No,” he answered truthfully. “I have to do something about this, Father. I can’t just let it be.”

  “I know you feel that way, Dax, but you also know there is nothing that can be done right now.”

  “I can’t just do nothing!” Dax shouted out suddenly, his fist smashing into the mantelpiece and making the objects on it jump in place. “She has stolen from me! I cannot let it go!”

  “I think I have some information about this,” Balthazar said carefully, watching his son closely. “It involves your sister.”

  “Faith?”

  “Yes,” he said. He could hardly begin to understand the pain Dax was in. He could barely empathize. He couldn’t cope with the idea of what he had been through, nor did he know how he would have acted had it been himself. Which, from what he was learning, could very easily have been the case. But this deviant who had done this had not risked targeting one of the rulers of the Night Angel world…instead he had gone after an heir. Good stock, but not yet enough experience to be able to take on something of that power and magnitude.

  Balthazar had only recently learned about what Faith had been through. Slowly he explained to his son how a Bodywalker was not a Bodywalker…but a demon god in the guise of a Bodywalker. Every word was like a nail in Dax’s hide, a physical pain that was unendurable.

  “Faith is coming to check on you. She is concerned for you.”

  “You didn’t tell her—?” Dax turned hard about to look at his father.

  “Know me better than that, Dax.”

  Dax deflated. “Yes. Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I know you wouldn’t betray my confidence. But what you are telling me makes this even worse than before. This god is
using a part of me to bring terror to this earth. He must be destroyed.”

  “Before or after the birth of your child, Dax?”

  Dax flinched as his father knew he would. But he had to remind his son that there was an innocent life standing between Dax and any vengeance he sought to deliver.

  “And there will be a child. As a god he can manipulate the workings of his mortal body on all levels. There is no way to doubt that.”

  “An innocent child,” Dax said quietly. “But imbued with the power of an imp god? How innocent will it be for how long a time?”

  “That is hard to tell. The future will play its hand as it will. We will keep the heirophants close and await the opportunity we seek. Time for vengeance will come, but it will have to be well thought out.”

  “Can Faith’s sister, Dahlia, come to stay, do you think?” he asked. “She is the most powerful heirophant of all. If anyone will find the right future, it will be her.”

  “I will ask Faith to make the request once she gets here.” Balthazar rested a supportive hand on his son’s shoulder. “The right time will come. Believe me when I say that.”

  “Oh, it will come,” Dax assured in return. “It will come.”

  Faith left Dax within an hour of arriving. Dax had told his father only about the true nature of the attack against him, but he had realized while Faith was there that if he were going to get any kind of solution to the dire challenge in front of him, he would very likely need the help of his mother and, perhaps, his sister’s father, Desmond. Or even more than that, he had realized when his sister had explained to him exactly what he was dealing with. Not that he had needed any further explanations. He had known in the moment, as he’d been crushed down into the floor, that he was being molested by a power of sickening proportions.

  He had asked Faith to return to her father and to ask Desmond, as a favor to him, for his help and to do so discreetly.

  Faith had been unable to deny her brother, not after hearing his no-doubt softened version of what had happened. Dax, though he was younger than she, had always looked on her as though he needed to protect her. Her ability was significant and as a result she needed very little protecting, but his was even more powerful and she supposed that between that and love for her, he had come to feel like he needed to be her protector.

  But Dax had just learned that power was subjective. Her defensive power had been able to defeat what his defensive/offensive power had not been able to do. It had no doubt made his bitter pill even more difficult to swallow. So when he asked her to return to her father right away, she couldn’t deny him. Whatever her personal feelings, she had to put them aside and go to her father’s house. Get to his continent. And even though they resided in Washington state, a good distance from New Mexico, it still felt too close for comfort.

  “Oh Faith! I was just coming to look for you! I have a message for you!”

  When her sister, the oracle, said message, she knew she didn’t just mean the average message.

  “Yes? Is there someone who needs ferrying?”

  “You need to return to where you came from. You’ve left something unfinished.”

  Faith gasped. “Oh my goodness! I did! I forgot about the woman in the road! Oh, how could I be so thoughtless!”

  Chatha’s attack and Leo’s rejection had completely erased the needy spirit from her mind. The poor creature, she had waited so long already!

  “Yes, go to her. And check on the others you left behind as well. You are needed there too.”

  “Thank you, Dahlia.” She put her arms around her sister and hugged her tightly.

  “Of course,” Dahlia said softly into her ear. “And don’t worry about Dax. He’s going to be just fine.”

  “Oh…well, I know that,” Faith said softly. “He’s Dax.” She hesitated. “Are you sure…that I should go back to the others?”

  Odds were that now that it was an entire week past the time that Leo had been required to stay, he had long since left. He had been chafing at the bit a month ago, so by the time he’d been free to leave he must have been halfway out the door already. If she went back she had to prepare herself for the fact that he might not be there…and for the fact that he might.

  “No,” she said to Dahlia with a firm shake of her head. “I’ll go back for the soul, but don’t ask me to—”

  “Faith,” she said softly, her warm sunshine-colored eyes were gentle and admonishing at the same time. “I would not ask you to do something without cause.”

  “But why…?”

  “Just go. The rest will work itself out. But you must finish what you’ve begun.”

  “I know. I’ll go find her. I promise. I’ll go right now and I’ll be right back.”

  Faith left her sister hurriedly.

  “No,” Dahlia said softly to her absent sister, “you won’t be back for quite some time.”

  Faith landed lightly on the balls of her feet, her wings fluttering with the chill in the air. There was a dark figure sitting on the porch as she approached and it rose to greet her. Expecting Jackson or one of the Gargoyles, she offered up a smile.

  The smile faltered when she saw who it was.

  Leo.

  She hesitated in her progress, even took an involuntary step backward. He came down the steps quickly and stood in front of her. Faced with him so unexpectedly she was flustered and upset, panic gripping her chest. She had been almost positive he would be gone by then! If she had thought he would be there she would never have come…or at the very least she would have prepared herself, would have steeled herself for the meeting.

  Truth now, Faith. You were hoping he would be here.

  Hoping and dreading. But why didn’t he leave?

  “Faith.”

  “Leo,” she greeted him awkwardly. She felt raw and exposed. Her confidence had been in tatters since she had left. So had her peace of mind.

  “I came to tell everyone that Andy is in a good home for Down syndrome adults now. He’s a real good kid. Funny as hell. He’s got a thing for knock-knock jokes. You’d never know…”

  You’d never know he’d harbored a psychopath.

  “I came to finish…the lost spirit in the desert…” She gestured vaguely behind herself. “I was stopping in. I didn’t know you’d be here.”

  She said the statement hard, so that he would know she hadn’t wanted to find him there. She wasn’t going to flaunt her feelings, but neither could she hide them in their entirety.

  “Faith, come inside. I…I have something for you. I didn’t know if you’d ever come back here, but I hoped you would…so I…I brought you something.”

  “I really don’t need anything,” she said, feeling awkward again as he reached out to take her hand and pull her toward the house. He led her upstairs, back into the suite he had used when they’d last been there. She stayed in the living area. She didn’t think she could bear looking at the bed where they had made love so thoroughly. Where for a vignette of time, they had meant something intimate to each other.

  He went into the room briefly and came back to her.

  “I went back and packed up all my things…brought them back here. I figured that I need to stay around here. Since I can go out into daylight I can be of real use around here. And I’ll be certain to get my adrenaline fixes around here, that’s for sure. So anyway, I-I found something…something that Docia once gave me when she was a little girl and I guess I could never throw it away.”

  He handed her a red heart-shaped box with a ribbon around it. She could tell by the heft of it that it was empty, void of all the chocolates that might have been inside of it at one point for some distant Valentine’s Day. The box was worn and beaten in along its cardboard rims, the foil embossing flaking and faded.

  Utterly puzzled, she pulled the ribbon and opened the box, knowing already there wasn’t anything inside. She held the two pieces of the box, one in each hand, and looked up at him in confusion.

  “It’s my heart,” he said qu
ietly. “Old, battered, empty.” He reached to run a gentle thumb along the line of her jaw. Everything about him changed in that instant as he drew her closer to himself. “I’m giving it to you so you can fill it up. I know it’s going to be hard to do, since I don’t make things easy, but I was hoping you’d take on the job. Rescue me, the way you rescued Jackson. All in.” He cleared his throat. “I know it’s selfish of me, and I know I have no right to ask. I’m pretty used up and worthless in the emotions department right now, but…” He trailed off, but she waited patiently as he searched for his next words, for his cautious feelings.

  “I can’t promise you anything but this minute, this moment right now,” he said softly, pulling her in tight and close. “None of us have anything for certain besides this minute. None of us should promise what we might never be able to give because the next minute after the promise we could be gone, leaving it empty and unfulfilled. And I couldn’t do that to you,” he said as he pulled her cheek to the fervent, breathy press of his lips. “When you walked out…when I realized you’d left me entirely, at first I thought, for just one second I thought, thank God. That will make things easier. And the very next instant I knew I was wrong. I knew…I knew I’d been wrong all along. Wrong not to share myself with you, wrong to sell you short, wrong to push you away. I realized the last thing I wanted to do was go on without you. I know you left because I drove you to it, but please, please let me make it up to you. One day at a time. Don’t ask me to let you go again because my heart couldn’t possibly take it. I love you and I will never betray your trust like that again. Now, my heart is in your hands, Faith,” he said, holding her hands where they were holding the silly cardboard box. “Do with it what you will.”

  Faith felt heated tears burning into her eyes as the intent behind the gesture was suddenly made so clear to her. It was stark in the words he had used, and brilliantly seared across his scroll. That single, glorious word. Love. Then came devotion. Then more and more words, all the same, all running over with his emotions and his feelings toward her. She had never seen anything so bright and beautiful in all of her life. She laughed shakily, a blink of her lashes sending tears haphazardly over her lashes, gluing his gently pressing lips to her cheek. He kissed the salty fluid away.