Messenger (Guardian Trilogy Prequel 1) (30 page)

Eran didn’t parse words when he made his announcement, evidently seeing no reason to delay the inevitable. As he spoke, I realized he would have been an effective messenger. Sympathetic, but detached.

“Bailey is gone. We discovered her body next to a stream only a few hours ago.”

Gasps and moans drifted through the crowd. Some dropped their head into their hands, and I could understand the feeling of wanting to hide from that fact.

“She was lying beside a Fallen One, whose life she had ended.”

That news seemed to lift a few from their sorrow.

“That’s not all,” Eran announced solemnly. “Magdalene is not alone in her ability to permanently eradicate Fallen Ones. The ability applies to all messengers.”

He allowed them to process what he had said. When it did, the guardians turned with shock toward the messengers they protected as their ward’s faces drifted into a variety of disbelief, confusion, apprehension, and amusement.

“Are you saying…,” Alban asked, taking another step forward.

“Yes,” he said, not waiting for Alban to finish. “Fallen Ones die an eternal death at your own hands as well.”

Alban’s palms rose and his head fell, intent on evaluating the parts of his body he’d apparently given little consideration.

For clarity, I added, “It doesn’t seem to matter how it is done, so long as the death is executed by a messenger.”

I wondered if that was a poor choice of words until I remembered the type of entities we were discussing.

No, “execution” is appropriate,
I concluded.

So both sides share the same dilemma,” Ariela called out.

“Yes, they take our lives permanently and we take theirs.”

Dante stepped out from behind a rather large guardian to challenge snidely, “And you’ve confirmed this how?”

I was momentarily taken aback by his emergence. Known equally as well as Jerod for an abundance of cynicism, I hadn’t considered that he would come to my aide, despite the messengers’ bond. Of course, now that he was here, he had the interest in challenging it.

My explanation, however, ended any further skepticism.

“When Bailey took the life of the Fallen One, he didn’t return. That is how they learned the ability isn’t exclusive to me.”

Hermina stepped forward, her motions urgent. “The Fallen Ones know that we have this ability?”

She saw the danger in this fact well before anyone else.

“They do,” Eran said, leaving no room for doubt.

She blinked several times while adjusting to this news. Once she did, she said, almost inaudibly, “Then they won’t be coming for only Magdalene. They’ll be coming for all of us.”

A tension filled the air, stifling them, pressing down their shoulders, and drawing in their expressions. They stood this way long enough for the sounds of the other camp to drift into ours.

It was Hermina’s guardian who managed to speak first.

“It’s almost dusk,” Jeremiah noted.

Eran nodded. “We need to prepare.”

He was already evaluating the group before him.

“Sir?” Heath said. “For what exactly?”

Eran stared pointedly at him, again delivering the blunt reality of our situation. “For war.”

Eran was set in motion then, and his commands were nothing like they had been this morning. No longer was there a probable sense of a looming battle. That deadline had just been pushed up. It was coming right now, right for us. He bellowed out posts one by one with the conduct of a man who was familiar in doing so.

When the guardians and messengers left to take their positions, they didn’t leave in the relaxed manner they had hours earlier. This time they ran. Within minutes, we had weapons aligned at various outposts, sentries studying the horizon, and runners to check the status of these defenses and replace them when they were depleted.

Eran and I took our post to the west, climbing the hill to stand below the dead trees overlooking our camp. As he settled against the blackened trunk of one and crossed his arms across his broad chest, I felt his eyes on me.

“You should sleep, Magdalene.”

“I’m not tired.” In fact, my body was over-stimulated.

“You’ll be more prepared to handle them when they come,” he suggested.

“I couldn’t do it if I tried, Eran.”

An owl sprang from a nearby tree, jerking me into a defensive position. Eran, however, didn’t seem to flex a muscle.

“It was a bird,” he muttered.

“I know.”

“You should sleep.”

I sighed.

“They aren’t likely to attack tonight anyways. They’ll do it when our defenses are down.”

I swiveled around. “Then why did you have everyone rush for their posts?”

He shrugged complacently. “Practice.”

His audacity was stunning.

To prevent my anger from igniting over it, I looked out over the featureless land being engulfed by the night, searching for movement. There was none.

Untroubled, Eran kept his eyes on me. “She was wrong.”

“Who?”

“Kaila was wrong about you. You
are
different from the rest.”

“How so?” I asked, keeping my attention on our surroundings.

Tilting his head toward me with a perplexed expression, he mumbled, “I haven’t quite figured that out.”

He was quickly losing my faith in his argument.

“Then how do you know?”

“I sense it. There’s more to you than your ability to send lives away forever. That’s too gloomy, too dismal for someone with as much life as you have. It’s contradictory to your essence. You have more to offer.”

“I think you see me for something more than I am.”

“Possibly,” he said, “but it’s not often I’m wrong.”

Again, his arrogance reared its head, although this time it was in my favor, which left me torn between accepting his opinion or ignoring it based on his defense. While I didn’t innately agree with him, the tormenting fact was he hadn’t been wrong…not once in my presence. I was surprised when he countered that conclusion.

“Of that I am certain, but I
have
been wrong about you in the past…very wrong.”

Piquing my interest, I turned to face him. He was still lounging against the tree, appearing more at ease than someone who had just finished work for the day, and certainly not one concerned about a flock of Fallen Ones who could materialize at any time. His muscles were loose, pushed into imposing bulges where his arms crossed and his head was tipped back against the tree.

“I used to wonder whether you had been brought into my existence to challenge me, to test my restraint, to teach me better control over my emotions.”

“That’s flattering…”

He laughed. “Now, though, I enjoy your company.”

I was about to politely thank him for the compliment when he added something under his breath, in an almost inaudible way. “More than I should…,” he said.

I froze as his words went through my mind again.

More than I should
…

He hadn’t expected me to hear that part, but I had, and we both knew it. Standing motionless, several feet from each other, neither of us spoke. He looked at me the way I did at him when his back was turned…full of yearning. His stare left me breathless, wanting to cross the few steps to him and lean into him. I wanted him to hold me, to put his lips on me, to take my face in his hands as he had done at the river when he bathed.

Then he shifted his feet, stirring the dirt beneath them, and broke our gaze.

Leveraging his head against the trunk of the tree he pushed himself to a standing position. Groaning, he rotated to the side and surveyed the area. While remaining in that position, he repeated, “You really should go to sleep, Magdalene.”

With his back almost completely to me, I felt the cold sting of rejection. He didn’t want me here.

He wants to be with the girl
, I thought, the one who he adores.
And could I blame him? I understood those feelings, because I had the same for him.

Quietly, I unfurled my appendages and swept them downward. By the time he was seeking the source of that sound, I was already in the air. One more thrust and I was far enough into the sky that I couldn’t distinguish his face. Twisting, I dove toward camp, skirting the ground until I nearly slammed into the first tent I came to. From there, I steadied myself and allowed my appendages to sink back to their place inside me before facing the hill again.

From above, I saw Eran at the edge, looking down, searching for me in the night. His silhouette told me nothing other than that he was ensuring the sound he’d heard came from me and not a Fallen One. Given that I was now gone, he’d make the correct assumption soon enough.

I waited there all night, standing at the foot of our camp, too restless to sleep and having no other place to go. Periodically, I searched the sky for our enemies, but they didn’t appear. The rest of the time I spent trying not to notice Eran’s outline against the starry sky and noting the movement of our people around camp as they remained ready for the coming attack.

I did my best to ignore the weight in my chest, which settled there after I landed and took my first glance at Eran above, but it got the best of me several times and I felt my chest tighten in disappointment more than once.

When dawn came, I went about my routine. Eran caught up to me just as I sat down to accept messages from those in the other camp, standing quietly aside, even as the tension between us was evident.

The strain of the unknown remained high as the rest of our group did what duties they could throughout the day without straying too far from the rest of us. None of us knew what to expect when the Fallen Ones came for us. We didn’t know the size of the attack, how they planned to attack, or when. If we’d at least known this last component, we might have been able to prevent what ended up happening.

Unfortunately, the messengers seemed to walk through the day in a daze, lifeless and weary from lack of sleep. The guardians on the other hand, seemed to have taken on their counterpart’s energy. More than once I heard Heath’s bold voice yelling over the tents and I saw Cilla practicing with her daggers. As I did, the more it became clear to me that sleep had been trained right out of them.

When night came again and there was no sign of Fallen Ones, several messengers succumbed to exhaustion, some missing dinner entirely. As I sat at the fire, I felt my head tip forward twice and I lost my bearings to lightheadedness both times. Eran saw this but wisely refrained from commenting about my condition.

Finally, exhaustion took hold and my eyelids fell. I rolled forward, expecting the ground to catch me. What I landed in was much more welcoming. Someone caught me, picked me up, and carried me away. His voice was warbled as he told someone to give him another serving of soup. He’d be back for it. The voice sounded like Eran’s.

When I opened my eyes, I was in the Hall of Records.

Instantly, I felt refreshed. Gone were the weight of my limbs and the pressure of fatigue in my head. I laid motionless for several long breaths, soaking in the beautiful feeling of rejuvenation. When I did sit up, I found I was virtually alone. Nearly everyone else had surrendered to sleep earlier and the benches were mostly empty. It was eerily quiet in the hall, as I passed over Bailey’s bench and then Benedictus’ and then Anna’s. The image of the empty stone seats drove me faster toward my heaven, bypassing the pockets of scrolls around me and discarding my duty for the night.

When I reached the clearing, the messengers were again lined up, leading into the jungle, attempting to conquer once more the course Jacob and Daniel designed to prepare us for the fight of our existence. Darya entered as I landed beside our instructors.

They had been told of what was coming. I knew by the pierced expressions they maintained as Darya vanished into the shadows. There was no scream this time, no trembling of the trees. Minutes later, she emerged, unscathed, from the opposite side.

Loud and rambunctious cheering followed.

Alban, the next in line, yanked his pants up his waist and leaned in, stomping forward until he disappeared. Yet he too appeared at the end of the course, one fist raised in the air in defiance.

Our cheers led him back.

Stoyan wiped the back of his hand across his face, curled his upper lip, and moved in, flying back to us amidst our applause moments later.

One by one they entered and one by one they emerged uninjured and victorious. The reason why was easy to establish.

The threat was no longer a faceless entity. It had multiple faces and they were at our doorstep. This was the messengers’ moment to prove to themselves that they could, in fact, survive.

Daniel and Jacob stood proudly by as their pupils succeeded, and as we were yanked back to our bodies on earth, they cast us off with faith in our abilities.

What we didn’t count on when we arrived was landing right in the middle of the battle we had been preparing for.