Covenant (22 page)

One moment we are in the
water, and the next we are flying. I carry her limp body to land
and kneel over her. In that moment, I feel the sojourn call coming
from her body, and a coldness runs through me. It won’t end like
this. I won’t let it.

Shaking, I bend over and
perform CPR. It’s something I’ve seen so many mortals do just
before the human dies, and I have the motions memorized. I just
never quite expected to be using them to save the girl I loved. The
world is surreal, and I want this day to be over. Actually, I want
it never to have occurred.

“
Come on, Elizabeth!
Breathe.” I seem to be breathing for her forever, breathing and
waiting. Stillness. I don’t know how long I’m there before she
finally coughs up water and I roll her on her side.

She’s disoriented, and right
away she tries to get up, but I won’t let her. I set my palm on her
chest right under her throat and keep her down. “You hit your head
pretty hard. You should probably stay put.”

As soon as I know she’s not
going to fight me, I touch the back of her head, and sure enough I
feel the rise where her skull slammed into the rock. Although her
hair wets my fingers, there is no blood, which is a good
thing.

A second later, I look into
her dark eyes, and the world seems to stop as we recognize each
other. I can’t look away. I can’t hide myself. All I can do is
stare.

“
Lev?” Her voice is weak
and broken, and while I’d like to say it’s from striking her head,
I know it’s because she sees my face and recognizes who I am. In
that instant, I curse myself for not changing my
appearance.

It’s all I can do not to
embrace her. I’ve missed her so much, and her finally seeing me
makes it all so much calmer. But I can let her go on thinking I’m
still here. I shut my eyes and blur my features back into the new
me, the one she won’t recognize.

“
I’m sorry?” I pretend like
I don’t understand her.

She blinks disorientedly,
and scrutinizes me. “I..thought you were someone else.” Then she
quickly sits up.

“
You might want to take it
easy. You really hit your head hard.”

She doesn’t look at me.
Instead, she searches for the me who makes sense to her, the one
who has always been close to save her. What I wouldn’t give for her
to know I’m still here. But to what end? What could it accomplish?
I’m not her guardian. I’m her sojourner, which means until she is
dying, there isn’t anything to connect us anymore.

She stands rather quickly,
and I’m afraid she’s going to fall. “Perhaps you should sit
down.”

“
Lev?” she calls,
searching.

“
Who are you looking for?”
I ask, trying to keep my tone even despite the chaos building
inside of me.

Elizabeth looks at the path
and runs up it, heading back toward the falls, a place I really
don’t think she needs to go, all things considered, so I quickly
catch up to her and grab her arm.

“
Are you all right?” I ask,
trying to break her stride.

“
Leave me alone!” Tears
glitter in her eyes, threatening to run down her face. She jerks
free and starts running again. I follow because I don’t know what
else to do. I’m still worried about that bump on her head. More
than once she runs into a tree branch, and it appears her gait is
uneven.

“
Hey, wait,” I yell,
wishing I could get her to stop. I don’t think anything is going to
stop her, and I wonder what is going to happen when she gets to the
falls and realizes I’m not there. What will she make of all
this?

She keeps running. Once she
starts to stumble but rights herself at the last moment. She
doesn’t stop until she rounds the bend of the falls and reaches the
railing. She breathes so hard it doubles her over, and she has to
catch her breath before shouting my name again. Worried Kane might
still be lurking nearby, I scan the area, but he is nowhere to be
found. Again, she calls for me.

Her tone is desperate, and I
know she’s reaching a breaking point. All I can do is watch as the
misery consumes her. She grips the rail with both hands so tightly
her knuckles turn white. Thinking she might actually climb the rail
again, I rush toward her, knowing her balance is likely
shot.

“
Perhaps you should step
away from there.” I ease behind her, near enough so that I could
grab her if necessary but not so close that she feels
pressure.

“
Leave me alone!” She
doesn’t even bother to look at me, and now the tears are falling.
“Lev! I know you’re here.” She starts climbing the
railing.

To anyone else, it would
appear she was crazy, yet I know she is just looking for me. She
knows I’ve always been there to protect her. She’s probably
guessing that if she does this, throws her body into the water
again, it will force me to appear. That’s what she wants more than
anything, and that’s the one thing I can’t give her.

“
Please come down from
there.”

Instead of yelling or even
speaking, she keeps climbing. She’s already on the third step, and
now I know I don’t have a choice. I swiftly reach forward and raise
myself into the air so I can wrap both arms around her and pull her
down.

“
Get away from me!” She
starts screaming and fighting, trying everything she can to break
loose, but I won’t let go. Sobs hiccup through her. She starts
screaming my name over and over. The sound tears at me like
sharpened claws, and it’s all I can do to keep holding her against
her will and breaking her heart all over again.

How could I have been so
stupid?

I lean toward her and
whisper, “Sleep, Elizabeth. Sleep and forget.” Her body stills, and
she falls against me. If only there were some way I could block
other memories, but my power only works on those which have just
happened. The rest are beyond me.

I shift her weight so I can
carry her in my arms, focus the heat from within me on her so as to
dry her clothing and warm her body, and then lift into the sky to
fly her back to her house. I cloak both of us from sight so no one
questions me, and Jimmie has probably gone to work, so getting
through the house unseen is easy.

It takes everything I have
not to keep looking down at her sleeping face, so momentarily
peaceful in slumber. Her breath eases in and out calmly, and I wish
this could go on forever for her—that pain would never touch her
again. But I know when she wakes, if she does remember any of this,
it will be like a dream, hazy and out-of-focus—something not quite
real. How I wish that if I could not remove my memory from her
altogether that she would look upon me as just a dream so that she
might find the peace she so desperately needs.

Once in her bedroom, I
slowly make my way to her bed and ease her into it. She is
completely dry and will never know what has truly happened, which
is so much better for her. There is no way to make this better for
me. I lay on the bed beside her for just a few moments and unfurl
my wing around her, shielding us both from the outside world. While
I can’t make things stop around us, I can for the moment block it
out so maybe we can both find enough calm to continue against the
chaos assailing us.

Reaching out, I stroke her
face, savoring the softness of her skin. Her lips part slightly
like she’s trying to speak to me, but she doesn’t even know I am
here, lying beside her. In this moment when I am looking at her
face, I feel tears pooling in my own eyes, and everything hurts.
She is the only absolution I want, and I miss her.

Chapter Sixteen

After I am sure Elizabeth is
wrapped deeply in sleep, and that when she wakes, she will believe
that she’s only had a dream, I fly back to the falls so I can
search for Celia. It has never occurred to me that a battle might
ensue between two angels. In all the years of my existence I’ve
never seen anything like that so why would I believe it would
happen? I thought that only happened between humans.

What do I know?

At first glance at the
falls, I see nothing amiss. Then again, I do not see Celia, either,
and that alone is troubling. Another pass reveals nothing and that
is when I have to rely on searching for her by sense, the same way
she often finds me. Taking a deep breath, I shut my eyes and let my
instincts guide me.

In that instant, all the
pain and chaos swirling through Celia quickly jars me, making me
feel light-headed. My wings falter, and I start to plummet.
I have to detach and focus.
Steeling myself, I try to concentrate even harder on Celia,
flying lower.

What happened between Celia
and Kane?

As I focus on her, I find
myself lowering quickly, and a moment later, I land upon a spot
that isn’t far from the falls. She’s lying sprawled on her back,
one arm close to her head and a leg bent unnaturally. She’s so
still I don’t know what to make of it. It’s not like angels need to
breathe, so that’s not going to help me figure out what is going
on.

“
Celia?” My tone is breathy
and panicked as I realize that her eyes are open and staring at the
blueness above. They don’t blink. The only thing which even
suggests she is still trapped inside that body is that I feel the
chaos inside of her, the sheer panic that is so violently swirling
around her she can’t fight it.

Frightened of what my
choices have led to, I touch her face, trying desperately to stir
her from unconsciousness. “Celia, can you hear me?”

No response.
What did he do to her?
I
shake her harder, calling her name repeatedly. Nothing within her
stirs. She doesn’t move. I keep trying for a couple of minutes
before I realize she’s not going to wake up, and while I sense
Celia is still inside this body, she’s not about to respond. She
can’t.

“
Cee, I’m sorry. I’m so, so
sorry,” I say, slipping one arm beneath the bend of her knees and
one below her back so that I can scoop her into my arms. Then I
fling us both into the sky and desperately launch myself toward the
Upper Realm. I have to find Evan. He’ll know how to fix this. But
then I’ll be having to answer a million questions I’m not sure I
can answer because the shame is too great.

But it’s my fault—all of it.
Celia deserves only good things because in all of this, all she has
tried to do is help me. No matter how twisted things got, she never
stopped trying to do what was right, and I owe her for
that.

Back in the Upper Realm, I
take her to the place before the mountain, wondering how to reach
Evan I’ll have to go to his restorative place. I glance down at
Celia and find her eyes are still open and unseeing—the human
equivalent of dead.

“
Hang on, Cee. I’m going to
Evan. He’s going to help.” Part of me wonders if he can, wonders
what was done to her to leave her in this damaged state so far
beyond me she doesn’t even blink.

I fly across the ocean
towards a small cave. Although my memory is still a bit scrambled,
I do know this is Evan’s place, and by the time I touch down, the
chaos is about to overwhelm me, and it’s all I can do to keep
myself together enough to lie her on the blanket spread across the
cave floor and try to calm the madness inside so I can think. As I
lie her down, her body just rolls out of my arm, her head turning
the opposite direction like a doll’s.

I sit beside her, feeling
more useless than I’ve ever felt, and I don’t know what to do. I
hang my head and try to keep myself from falling over the edge.
Then again, it’s so much easier to do that when you know exactly
where the edge is so you can avoid it. I’m flying blind here. I’ve
been flying blind since Evan took my memory away, thinking that
would be all for the best.

It’s not hard to see how
well that worked out.

“
Lev?” I look up to find
Evan standing there, his gaze first on my face, then on Celia.
“What’s going on?”

“
I need your help. Celia is
hurt. She needs you to heal her.”

“
Lev, where is the dagger?
I must have the dagger that you took from the pulpit.”

My shoulders slump, and I
wish I never had to speak again because I don’t know how I’m going
to tell him I betrayed every trust he’d ever placed in me in a
foolish gamble I knew better than to take.

“
I don’t know,” I finally
say in a calm voice.

He stiffens, and suddenly I
feel the chaos starting to swirl around me crazily—his chaos, which
is really not good. Evan is never worried, never unnerved. Except
for right about now. He hasn’t even looked at Celia, which tells me
a lot, that the dagger is so much more dangerous and powerful than
I ever knew.

“
Then tell me what you do
know.” He eyes Celia.

“
Kane has it.”

His head jerks up so he can
glare at me, and right about now I’m pretty sure that is the worst
thing I could have said, considering how he’s staring at me. “How
could you be so foolish and gamble with something you had no right
to touch? You have no clue what you’ve done, how much damage that
one action has caused, and I don’t think I can begin to convey it
to you. Ever.”