Messenger (Guardian Trilogy Prequel 1) (16 page)

Then Kaila screamed a single word in defense. “Liar!”

“You’re trying to pin it on us?” Cedric scoffed. “We’re loyal to you.”

It was interesting that he was declaring his allegiance directly to Oleg’s brother, who was now on his feet. I was actually thankful for it. It deflected the intensity of their rage away from me.

Oleg’s secret was apparently solid enough that his brother had no doubt about the integrity of my accusation. His hand tightened around the handle of his rapier as he scowled from one Kohler to the next, seething as he took in the sight of them. These were the kids who he had defended just the night earlier, the ones who he had credited for giving him and his friends someone to blame for these deaths, his brother’s included. I could see these ideas swimming in his mind as his eyes grew steely and the muscles in his forearms began to flex.

The Kohlers, however, didn’t wait for the attack.

Simultaneously, the three of them sprang into the air, their weapons drawn.

The clash that followed was swift, a blinding movement of arms and weapons and angling bodies. As Cedric flung oil at the crowd and Kaila’s battle axe swung in a halo overhead, Eran gently thrust me to the side. Two men fell immediately and when they did I recognized the Kohlers’ intentions. They meant to carve a path to the door.

And my heart skipped a beat…because that was where Eran was standing.

When Deschan’s wooden hammer came down on another man, Eran became the last barrier. But they didn’t go after him. They turned their weapons on me.

I already had my sword out and ready, but it was no match for an axe, hammer, or slick black oil. Eran knew it and lunged to take the brunt of all that would be coming down on me. As he did, the doorway opened and the Kohlers fled.

“Are you all right?” Eran asked, his voice rushed from emotions.

I nodded. “Are you?”

“Fine.”

Moans were now filling the small room as we turned to face it.

Blood was on everything in sight. The walls, the bed, across the dirty floor, smeared across Oleg’s brother.

“No,” I exhaled and ran for him.

He was slumped against the wall, so saturated with blood I couldn’t identify which wounds were fatal.

“No,” I whispered, and he opened his eyes.

His bloodied hands seized my wrists and drew me forward. The smell of blood permeated the air around him as he held me close to him, where I could distinguish the message he intended for me to hear.

“I’m going to see Oleg now.”

Tears began to form in my eyes, which I violently wiped away.

“Before I do…,” he mumbled, pulling the rapier he held across his body toward me. “Richolf gave his life to protect us with this blade. I now give it to you…I leave it in your ha-hands.” He shoved the handle onto my palms. “Finish the job, Messenger, finish the job.”

And this was when I understood this rough and unforgiving man, who had somehow turned those traits into strengths, employing them to do what was right. Now he was using his last breath to leave us with his dying wish: to take down the immoral and defend the weak.

I placed my hand on his furry cheek and opened my mouth to speak.

“He’s gone, Magdalene.”

I lifted his cheeks to me. Looking into the brown spheres that had been so formidable, so full of life moments earlier, I knew Eran was correct. The man was gone, the life having drained completely from his eyes.

I sat quietly in front of him, unwilling to move. Even when Eran’s hands slipped beneath my arms, it was his strength pulling me to my feet, not mine.

Voices behind me confirmed that others were learning about the attack and had come to see the results. They weren’t good. They weren’t good…

“Can you stand?” Eran asked. “If not, I can carry you, but it is best if we don’t draw attention to ourselves.”

I nodded although I wasn’t entirely certain. It took a few tries to balance my ankles over my feet and it required the wall for steadiness, but I did it.

“We need to leave,” Eran said quietly into my ear.

Again, I tipped my head in acknowledgement and we moved through the crowd, into the streets and out of the city’s walls. After returning to the Volkmars, we awaited retaliation, waited to protect the Volkmars as I had been unable to do with my own family. But the Kohlers never came.

Weeks passed without sight of them. A manhunt larger than any ever assembled was inspired by what happened. They scoured the hills and cities and passed on the news to outlaying territories, but it was to no avail. When resources grew slim and the enraged heat over what the Kohlers had done extinguished, time and effort were realigned with the other war…against the nobles.

As time passed, a small camp of makeshift tents sprang up around us, forming the center of command of the peasant’s war. Eran and I gravitated to them, where my services were needed most, again trading food and shelter for message delivery to the other side.

And as Eran and I waited, counting on the Kohlers resurfacing to take their revenge, we maintained our verbal contract to work together. The establishment of our roles made the tension between us ebb and, in spite of his arrogance, before I knew what had happened I started to see Eran as a friend.

So when the Kohlers did return it wasn’t their actions that shook me. It was Eran’s.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: DISGUISE

O
N THE MORNING THE
K
OHLERS REAPPEARED,
the sun rose to reveal a mist clinging to the camp and shrouding it in grey.

“Friedricha,” Eran’s voice came to me as a distant whisper.

“Yes?” I said, opening my eyes.

“The sun is rising. Not many are awake. Will you come with me?”

I frowned, which he responded to with one of his own.

Only when it didn’t appear that he would be leaving me alone any time soon, I sat up and took the rapier Oleg’s brother had given me. Sliding it into the sheath attached to my black tunic, I asked, “Where are we going?”

He didn’t respond until we were at the tent’s entrance. With twenty sleeping men behind us, their snores created a jarring cacophony and I wondered how anyone could sleep at all. And for the first time in quite a while I appreciated that when I left my body at night I remained away until morning.

Eran rotated his head back to me, pressed a finger against his lips, and said, “Shhhh.” From behind it, a mischievous smile rose which almost made me giggle.

We slipped into the dense morning air and he led me to the edge of camp, up a hill to a grouping of twisted dead trees. Stopping there, he turned to face the sun as I came up beside him, intoxicated by the beauty of the moment.

The chaos and volume normally coming from the camp below was hushed now. The mist drifting between the tents gave it an ethereal, ghostly presence. Then the sun’s beams of light broke through and everything in sight sparkled.

Eran had turned and was ignoring the sunrise. “Why are you smiling?”

“I didn’t know I was…” But he was correct. I sensed my cheeks were pulled up and giggled quietly.

“You enjoy my company, don’t you?” he asked in his typical smug manner.

I laughed through my nose, contemptuously. “That…is arrogant of you.”

“Maybe, but it is true,” he insisted. “Isn’t it?”

I turned away, trying to give the impression I was disinterested but when I looked back he gazed at me with a mixture of passion and warmth.

“I enjoy your company,” he admitted unashamed, unconcerned about what I might think or do.

In reaction, a now familiar heat rose in my stomach.

Unexpectedly, he grew serious again, the tenderness in him quickly being replaced by the sobriety of whatever was on his mind. “But there is something I must tell you. It may scare you a bit. But…it’s important that you know…”

Before I could stop myself, I confessed, “I have something to tell you too…”

Realizing what I’d done, how close I was to admitting the truth about being an Alterum, I tensed.
What was I thinking?
It was my greatest secret, the only one I’d kept from him since our talk in the barn, and here I was about to divulge what I had so carefully restrained. There was significant danger in exposing my true identity, for him and for me.
What was I doing?

His head jerked at my surprise admission. “All right, you go first.”

I inhaled, preparing the words that would either be the devastating ruin of his learning here on earth or the cataclysm that would strengthen the delicate new bond we had with each other.

And then my throat constricted. My face contorted against the sudden pain on the back of my neck. At the same time, my body began to shake.

“Friedricha?” he demanded, instantly alarmed.

My chest seemed unable to expand, to take in a breath, to respond as the panic rose in me.

Close your eyes
, I told myself,
ward off the feelings, ignore the pain.

It helped, until I reopened them…because standing before us were the Kohlers.

“Friedricha,” Deschan greeted me, his voice filled with contempt.

Breathe
, I told myself. Draw in a breath before Eran has to handle them on his own.

He needs me,
I rationalized.
Turn this energy to something good. Focus on what will help, not hinder. As Eran had said in training, don’t be afraid to use your surroundings. Notice what you smell, what you hear, what you see…

And gradually my body settled.

I heard their heartbeats. I smelled their unwashed skin. I saw Kaila’s battle axe, Deschan’s hammer, and Cedric’s bulge of chemicals beneath his clothes.

With absolute calm overtaking my body, I gave into it, and my muscles loosened. My pulse slowed and the shaking subsided.

They were scowling at me again. I didn’t like it.

With a brief shrug of my shoulders, I allowed my cloak to fall to the ground, exposing my rapier to them and my back to the brisk air.

Then, without warning or intent, my shoulders rolled forward, arching my back out of habit, expanding to loosen and lengthen the skin between my shoulder blades. And from between them, my appendages sprang outward, tearing the back of my tunic down the sides.

I caught Eran staring at me, and it wasn’t the expression I had expected to see.

He was smiling, proudly.

I was encouraged by it and the secret I had failed to reveal earlier stretched wide. I flapped my appendages, enjoying the freedom I had been denied for so long. I caught sight of them in my peripheral vision just before they folded into place along the length of my back.

“This…,” I muttered to Eran, “is what I was going to tell you.”

“Funny,” he said almost cavalierly. “I was going to tell you the same thing…”

Suddenly, his cloak slid off and his tunic tore loudly as stark white wings emerged from his back.

I watched this in utter shock with my jaw hanging open, unable to pull my eyes away.

Almost inaudibly, I confessed, “I never knew…”

And one side of his lips, those seductive lips, lifted into a knowing smirk.

And again, I found my breath caught in my lungs but for a different reason.

“Kohlers,” Eran said, refocusing his attention on them. “It’s a bold move for you to return here. Your names and faces are on everyone’s mind. They’re intent on justice.”

“And as you can see,” I pointed out with a motion that covered the tents below, “there are hundreds of them.”

“They are peasants…,” Deschan said, his thin, unappealing lip curled in disdain. “They won’t be able to touch us…and they surely won’t be able to help you.”

Eran’s shoulders shook with laughter. “We won’t need their help.”

We had come to a head, once more flinging insult and threats from both sides. This time there was vehemence in the air palpable enough that I was convinced the Kohlers wouldn’t back down without a casualty. Eran felt it too and stepped to the side, covering me from their first strike. As he did, something began to grow from behind the Kohlers.

They slipped into view and then were gone only to expand out from behind their shoulders.

Grey wings, the length of their bodies, fluttered once, settling the feathers in place. They thrust downward in a unified show of force and lifted the Kohlers into the air where they hovered just off the ground.

It was surreal, unexpected. It couldn’t be happening.

The Kohlers had fallen?

Eran sprang into the air, and I followed. Our ascent was so fast we broke tree branches on the way up, but once the Kohlers began making excited animalistic grunts all that was forgotten.

Eran angled himself to take on the boys and I met the girl.

She threw a punch, which I deflected without effort.

With my wings keeping me aloft, I had full leverage over my limbs and I used that advantage easily. I bent my arm and rotated my elbow into Kaila’s cheek, swiping it across her face so powerfully it propelled her head to the side. She groaned but recovered quickly.