Messenger (Guardian Trilogy Prequel 1) (25 page)

This time when I didn’t respond, it seemed I was conceding, and he seemed taken aback by it. It was understandable. I very rarely did.

The truth was I couldn’t formulate a response. I was too focused on breathing, and on controlling my hand on its way to the rapier at my waist.

“What I don’t think you’ve grasped yet, Magdalene, is that you’ve changed the entire cycle. Until you, we would kill them and they would return. Until you, they were safe. You, Magdalene, are their weakness. So what I need is for you to listen to me, to trust my judgment so that when I say you are in danger you believe that you are, in fact-”

“In danger.”

The voice came out of the dark as a guttural whisper, covering Eran’s words like a sinister blanket.

But Eran didn’t hesitate. He didn’t step back in shock. He didn’t scramble for his weapon. It was already in his hand.

The length of Eran’s sword flew by my left hip suddenly, stabbing into the darkness that ran the entire distance of the tent.

A grunt followed it.

“Thank you,” Eran exhaled, his arm remaining poised outward, refusing to withdraw. “I was waiting for you to speak so I could get an angle on you.”

If I could have caught my breath, I would have laughed.

Eran
had
known we weren’t alone.

“Are you planning on making a solid-sized cavity in me now?” the voice asked, mockingly.

It didn’t sound like its owner was in pain. This alarmed me, and I went back to calming myself through slow intakes of air. I had a momentary lapse when I saw Eran’s sword rise and I knew the Fallen One wasn’t dying. It was hovering.

“Your control over metal is useless,” the voice hissed. “You’ll have to
work
at finding my weakness…”

While I was jostled by the fact the Fallen One had been lurking in the tent long enough to have listened to our conversation outside, Eran seemed undisturbed.

“Show yourself,” he commanded, waiting to sheath his sword before it did.

The Fallen One came forward, emerging from the shadows leisurely. He was squat with a beard trimmed to the contours of his round face. Long, lean grey appendages effortlessly kept him aloft as darkly tanned, meaty limbs dangled from his body. His grin was mocking, challenging, because the cut where Eran’s sword had made contact was already healing.

“Seti,” Eran said, his tone thick with sarcasm.

“Eran.”

“Still dealing human skulls on the black market?” Eran asked.

“I’ve moved on. A few of your men made it…impossible…to continue.”

“Which explains why your trail went cold in Venice. And what do you deal in now?”

“The full human head,” he replied flatly. “The heads of Messengers are becoming highly valued these days, in fact.”

Eran’s hands tightened into fists. However, Seti’s threat didn’t affect me. I was concentrating on what he had just admitted to.

It’s not over
? I questioned.
Eran was correct? Horace wasn’t the only one taking the lives of Messengers?

Dazed and considering whether I’d misheard Seti, I asked, “You’ve taken another messenger’s life?”

“I did,” he confirmed, free of remorse. “Made a decent sized coin off of it. Would have had the one Horace took too, but he beat me to it. Not to worry…I’ve found another…”

A wicked grin spread across his face. When he turned that grin on me, the prize he sought, Eran didn’t wait to react. One second he was beside me, the next he was in the air, becoming a blurred shadow as he went after Seti.

The two of them collided, hurdling Seti backwards, through the tent wall. A tearing sound and the emergence of light from the outside told me that they were no longer inside with me.

I jerked my shoulders forward, expanding my back, and activating my appendages for release. They sprang outward just as I took my first lunging step toward the hole. Luckily the rip was wide enough to permit the length of my wings because they were fully extended as I flew through it and into the night.

Already they were hundreds of yards away, dancing a sick game of dodging fists, twisting and writhing for the upper hand in the glare of the full moon.

I pumped my appendages harder and cleared the tent roof just as the whoosh of wind against others’ appendages met my ears. Peering over my shoulder, I found Heath, Alban, Claudius, and Caius directly behind me.

We aren’t alone so this should be easy, I thought.

But as Eran took hold of Seti and dove toward the earth, we lost them in the trees. My heart lurched into my throat at the sight of it.

We plummeted in the direction they had gone, flying so hard through the limbs that I felt the tug and scrape of branches down my face and arms.

But when my feet hit the compacted dirt, there was no struggle within our surrounding area.

All of us glanced around, searching for any sign of Eran or Seti, but there was nothing. They were moving too fast for us.

Without a word, we came to a consensus and launched ourselves into the air. Racing into the sky, we sought height this time, almost reaching the clouds in an attempt to broaden our search area.

“Go back, Magdalene,” Claudius instructed.

“No.”

“We have this under control.”

“No, you don’t.”

“He’ll be all right,” Heath assured, and I was briefly jarred. They knew how I felt about him? For a fleeting second, I felt transparent.

“He better be,” I muttered and dropped toward the earth.

When I tipped my head up, they were moving east, assuming I was following their orders to return to safety. I could see the fires of our camp. It would take less than ten seconds if I were fast about it. But I wasn’t going in that direction.

Feeling like we would have seen them if Eran or Seti had left the area, I circled back to the wooded hillside where they had disappeared. Stopping there, I hovered just over the treetops, listening, waiting.

Below me was the river where Eran and I bathed, sparkling in the moonlight like a strand of diamonds. And then the strand was broken, a strip of black formed where there shouldn’t have been one.

I tucked my appendages back and plunged toward that break. The wind whistled in my ears and snapped my clothes back to the point of nearly tearing. Neither mattered to me after I saw two bodies in the midst of a fight.

I landed with a splash directly beside them, my rapier in hand, poised to thrust. But it was Eran on top, holding Seti beneath the water.

“You’re too close, Magdalene,” he shouted, water streaming down his face and spraying beads from his lips.

He was correct. Seti took a swipe at me but the water slowed him down. As his hand passed by, I stabbed my rapier through it, pinning it to the river’s bottom.

Seti stopped his thrashing then. The water settled and the faint moonlight shone on the man’s face, revealing a wretched smile.

“It’s not suffocation,” Eran muttered to himself, as if he were checking off a list, and hauled Seti out of the water.

I pulled my sword free and followed Eran, who dragged Seti into the air toward camp.

This seemed like an odd choice at first. There would be people, reborns, nearby. But I realized as I followed that Eran was strategic. Everything he did had a reason. And what he was doing now was searching for Seti’s weakness.

When we reached the outskirts, Seti began his fight again, and it grew more impassioned as the distance between him and camp contracted.

Why?
I wondered, searching for whatever it was that sent Seti into fury.
Why?

There was nothing but canvas tents, a dirt ground, a few bushes and a fire.

I gasped when I saw it.

The fire…I realized. Seti’s weakness was fire.

As Eran fought to hold onto Seti’s writhing body, I flew ahead, skirting the ground to avoid being seen by those in the larger camp. I elevated myself just once, inclining my appendages as I soared over the flames and scooped up a flaming branch. Turning back, I found Eran had just dragged Seti into the camp. They were grunting and writhing with such ferocity they didn’t see me.

It didn’t matter that Seti still glistened from the water or that his clothes were wet enough to drip a trail across the ground. As the flaming branch touched his skin, landing directly on his writhing arm, he was instantly consumed by the flames. Eran released him and Seti fell to his knees where he opened his mouth to scream.

But he was too late.

The fire took him, roaring into a blazing mound.

He had just fallen forward when Hoffstedler appeared with the rest of the messengers behind him.

“Are you hurt?” Bailey asked, rushing to Eran’s side.

Eran and I were bent at the waist, bracing ourselves against our knees, catching our breath. Both of us shook our heads but I had a feeling she was singling out one of us, and it wasn’t me. One look at her told me that she was loyal to Eran and cared more than she should for her original guardian.

“They’re safe,” Hoffstedler announced to those at his back. “She’s safe.”

I evaluated Eran nonetheless, just as he did with me.

“You’re bleeding,” he said, leaving Bailey to urgently cross the few paces between us and lift my face delicately to the firelight.

“You’re not. How is that possible?”

Bailey watched with intensity as he touched me, yet again, in her presence.

He was still cupping my jaw, tilting it from side to side, when he answered. “Guardians heal rapidly. It’s one of the criteria for acceptance. We need to get these cleaned up.”

“Not yet,” I said.

Something needed to be said to the messengers and guardians who were beginning to gather around Seti’s singed body, something that would change the way they thought about Fallen Ones forever.

CHAPTER TWENTY: REVELATIONS

I
REALIZED AS OUR CAMP GATHERED
that there were more of us now. The familiar faces of messengers and the unknown faces of their guardians drifted in from the darkness. Having just arrived, they seemed inquisitive about what had happened only moments earlier. When I turned to face the growing group, I could hear their murmurs and caught sight of their gestures toward Eran and me.

We had just ended the life of a Fallen One and that was most certainly cause for chatter. It was common enough for a guardian to send a Fallen One back to the point of renewal, but never before had a messenger assisted and never before had she sent that Fallen One to a place where he would not return.

Their questioning gazes trailed from me to Eran and back to him as we strode toward them.

“You two did this?” Stoyan asked, pointing to the smoldering lump that had been Seti’s body. He wore the same befuddled expression he’d had in the afterlife when I successfully completed Daniel and Jacob’s treacherous course through the jungle.

“Yes,” Eran said.

“Unaided by other guardians?” he pressed.

“Yes.”

Stoyan’s eyes shifted to me where they lingered with perplexity.

“Without the help of any other guardians?” Darya asked, just as baffled.

Before Eran could interject and defend his men and women, I answered. “Seti attacked quietly, standing in wait until we were alone. The guardians didn’t know we were in trouble until it was too late. They tried to catch up to Eran, but he had a good head start and became lost in the night.”

Jerod’s forehead puckered as he asked, “Then how did
you
find him?”

My answer was simple and completely honest. “Luck.”

Eran’s head was turned my way and I could almost feel the gratitude coming from him.

“And is it true,” Darya asked stepping forward, “that he won’t be coming back?”

A tense silence followed as they waited for firm confirmation on what they had been hearing, on what had made them leave their homes and track us down in the midst of battle, on what they had come to defend.

“Yes,” Eran said. “It is true.”

The messengers stepped forward as the guardians stepped back, and their reactions were logical. It was clear to see that the guardians considered it to be a peculiar anomaly, while Messengers wanted to praise it. But neither side had given it due analysis.

“Is this why you are protecting her?” asked Bailey, almost hopeful that it was Eran’s sole motive.

“Among other reasons,” he replied, instantly making me question what those could be.

“So you make them die eternally,” she muttered, coveting it.

“I don’t see it as a gift,” I said. “It has put my life at risk. It is drawing every Fallen One who hears of the bounty to hunt me down. But that’s not what is important. What is, involves the rest of you.”

“Us?” Bailey demanded.

As I said this, Heath, Alban, Claudius, and Caius soared into the far reaching shadows of the camp, tucked their appendages in, and came forward to meet the rest of us at the fire. They stopped short of Seti’s smoking remains where Heath moped.