Messenger (Guardian Trilogy Prequel 1) (31 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: SHIELD

S
CREAMING GREETED ME BEFORE
I
OPENED
my eyes. Smoke was in the night air, singeing my throat. Chaos, the kind heard during panic, was just beyond the tent walls.

I knew my head was against the bed, but it felt as if someone had stabbed a knife into the back of my neck.

Instantly, I sat up and slapped a hand over the pain.

There was nothing there but my hair, which was pulled straight out in alarm.

The flap was closed but multiple fires raged outside, casting distorted silhouettes of people fighting across all four angles of the tent.

Eran
, I thought, and leapt to my feet, sweeping my hand along the ground for my sword.

A startled gasp came from behind me and I swung around to find a man huddled in the corner.

Leaning forward, I muttered, “Enderl?”

He closed his eyes, assumedly to steady his heart, and opened them again.

“They…They came just before dawn…,” he said and swallowed.

“Do you know where Eran is?”

He shook his head, although his focus was on the tent flap behind me. “I fled here, thinking he could help me. I saw your guardians surrounding the camp and I wondered what they were doing f-facing out.” Enderl heaved several deep breaths. “I thought…I thought they were guarding something, but they…they were waiting for the others to come.”

“The others?” I said to myself. My heart paused and I had to draw in a breath to restart it. “Where’s Eran? Do you know where Eran is?” I said in a rush of words.

“I didn’t see him,” he said, his face contorting in fear.

For a fleeting moment I realized that he too, this reborn, knew how I felt about Eran…

Standing, I took a step toward the tent exit.

“They have a new k-kind of weapon. They’ve attached wings to their backs,” he said, his eyes growing wide as his hands spread out in demonstration. “Or they…they…they have some sort of new flying contraption…or they trained giant birds…S-something…Something…”

“Who?” I asked, confused.

“Whoever came for all of you.”

Yet I knew our attackers hadn’t attached wings to themselves, they hadn’t contrived a new offensive measure, and they hadn’t trained birds.

I pulled the cover off my bed and handed it to Enderl.

“Hide,” I commanded, refraining from telling him that it was his best chance for survival.

As I moved down the tent, past the flickering lights and shadows across the walls, I suddenly comprehended what Eran had known all along.

They’ll do it when our defenses are down
was what he had warned. And they had. They came when they could be assured that half of our force was asleep, defeated by exhaustion in our wait for their arrival. They came when the messengers would not only be unable to fight but would be a burden to the guardians in their efforts to protect them. Knowing this, Eran had assembled his guardians along the outskirts and formed the best stronghold he could.

That’s why he stationed me out front
, I thought as I reached the tent flap.
He allowed me on the hill when he knew there was little risk of me being there when they came.

Torn between gratitude and fury for once again making a decision on my behalf, I stepped outside to search for him…and came to an immediate halt.

Every tent in the other camp was on fire, clouding the air with smoke and ash. Our supplies were strewn across the camp, either in pieces or in flames. The ground was streaming with blood.

As if a dome of humans had fallen on us, our camp was completely surrounded, on land and in the air. The circle the man had been talking about was still in formation with every Fallen One paired against a guardian.

I had never seen this type of resistance or been trained in this way, but I understood its strength. By fighting shoulder to shoulder, without more than a foot of space from one to the next, the guardians had created a nearly unbreakable human shield over us. Looking beyond it, I suddenly grasped why Eran had determined the messengers were incapable of their own defense. Our greatest enemies moved faster, more accurately, and in greater numbers. Only centuries of practice and the honing of skilled warfare gave the guardians an edge.

Their only challenge was that the Fallen Ones hovered several layers deep, clawing to get past others for a chance to break through the shield. With their eyes enraged, teeth bared, and drooling between hisses and screams, I saw in them a level of frenzy that stunned me.

Eran
…

His name came back into my mind.

Where
is he?

My eyes darted from one guardian to the next until I found him, that trimmed muscular body moving swiftly to deflect the Fallen One attacking him.

With my sword in my hand, I sprouted my wings and bent my knees in preparation to spring up toward him. As I did, a pair of hands took hold of my arms and pulled me back down.

I twisted them free when Jerod’s voice yelled into my ear. “You’ll distract him!”

No, he needs help! They need help!

I prepared to leap again when another pair of hands came around me.

Glaring, I looked over my shoulder to find Dante with a determined scowl.

“Let him work, Magdalene.”

They were talking about Eran, and they were correct. If Eran saw me, he would split his attention between me and the Fallen Ones, weakening his focus on his opponents. But I couldn’t stand by and…

I launched myself again into the air, but my feet left the ground only a fraction of a second. Arms looped around me, crushing my appendages.

“Let me go!” I seethed. “Let me go!”

Jerod’s shouting filled my ears as I struggled. “They don’t need us! They don’t need us! Don’t you understand that?”

“Get off me!” I screamed “Get off me!”

“No!”

And they wouldn’t. I had to wrench myself free, where I stumbled back, away from them. Fuming, I glared at them, my lips curled back and my nostrils flared.

I looked up in time to see the arm of one of the guardians to Eran’s left bow backwards. When it stopped, it hung in an unnatural state as the Fallen One edged closer to penetrating the shield.

“Don’t you see?” I raged. “They
will
need us…What will you do then? WHAT WILL YOU DO?”

Jerod and Dante stared back blankly. They did this because they understood our roles better than me. Guardians were doing what they were designated to do…committing themselves, their own wellbeing to the protection of their wards through whatever offensive measures were necessary. Messengers, on the other hand, were trained in defense, capable only of defending themselves, not guardians.

I, however, didn’t accept my role. I never had. I wasn’t a ward, and I never would be.

I shoved past them. They let me go this time because I wasn’t moving in the direction of the fighting. They had fulfilled their allegiance to the bond between the messengers. They had kept me from killing myself. That was all Jerod or Dante deemed as their responsibility, and it had been met.

But they were wrong. Soon the Fallen Ones would find an opening and the guardian’s shield would yield, and then they would need to stand up and fight.

I glanced overhead at the multitude of Fallen Ones hovering above the single layer of guardians. The only way we would win this battle would be by the numbers.

I marched into the nearest tent where a multitude of messengers remained asleep, incapacitated in their state. I had been one of the first pulled back to earth, and if I didn’t wake the others we would all perish before they ever woke again.

How many were left?
I asked myself.

Recalling the clearing before I’d been brought back was unsettling.

Nearly all
, I thought.
Nearly all…

The first messenger I came to was Alban. Stopping at the side of his bed, I pulled back my hand and sent it tearing across his face.

The slap jerked his head across the bed but his eyelids remained closed.

It’s the beard
, I thought.
It has too much cushion. Try someone else.

I stepped to the next one.

It was Hermina, and I cringed.

Raising my hand overhead, I reminded myself it was for her own good and released my palm across her face.

Her head too rolled to the side and she did not wake.

Beginning to breathe heavily, I went to another messenger and did the same, only to receive an identical result.

No
… The word whimpered through my mind.
They can’t all stay asleep. There has to be something I can do to bring them back…

I went down the row, slapping, pulling, tugging, and when I got to the end I heaved for the air which panic and exertion had sapped from me.

Bracing myself, I turned around to face the rows of beds.

All bodies lay motionless.

And I screamed.

It tore up through my throat burning its way out until tears sprang from my eyes. And yet even that did no good.

Dante and Jerod appeared at the entrance a second later, fearful and inquisitive looks on their faces. When I saw them, something erupted in me.

Defiance.

Denial.

Resolve.

My appendages burst through my skin to swell behind me as I leaned forward. A single pump by them sent me over the first few beds, my feathers just missing the heads of those sleeping below me. Another thrust and I soared through the tent, over Dante and Jerod’s ducked bodies, and out the entrance.

There were more tents, more Messengers to try and wake, but something told me that it would be futile. Instead, I went up.

My sword was already free and pointed at a Fallen One. When my tip met his neck and he slumped forward, I knew that metal or deep punctures had been his weakness. I pulled it out and sent it into another.

Then I felt the cold slice of metal against my own skin. My head fell just in time to see the first drops of blood begin to tint the tunic’s cloth at my waist.

The pain at the back of my neck spiked.

“Magdalene!” Eran shouted, partly angry and partly horrified at seeing me injured. “Get back!”

There was no time to address him. The Fallen Ones were becoming more riled every passing second.

I shoved my sword through the guardian shield and it plunged into a stomach. I shifted to my right and sent it into an eye. I moved again and sent it into an open mouth in the midst of a scream.

By then, my wound was hot and stinging. I placed a hand on it, where it slipped from the loss of my blood.

“Get back, Magdalene!”

Once again, it was Eran’s voice over the commotion, and again I ignored it.

I wouldn’t do as he commanded. They needed every bit of help they could get. Mindful of his constant glances, I stabbed more Fallen Ones as I made my way around the circle, overhead and down again toward the ground. Some of our enemies fell, others reacted with annoyance.

Then the first Fallen One broke through.

He wrenched passed Lorencio, who had been preventing it from happening despite a broken arm and a broken appendage, and into the circle.

Catching the movement from the corner of my eye, I spun around.

What I saw next took seconds before it was over and left me speechless.

Below the Fallen One who breached the shield was a massive gathering of messengers. Having revived, they were looking up at the Fallen One hovering overhead with bewildered expressions.

Lorencio attempted to go after the one who invaded our area but was forced to hold back the others attempting to break the shield. Seeing this, we inside knew one fact with absolute clarity.

It would be up to us to stop this one.

Jerod and Dante, the two who had refused to assist earlier, grasped that concept first. Finally casting their fears aside, they hollered and pumped their fists into the air. From behind them, their appendages snapped to their fullest extension and they charged the Fallen One in defense of the rest. Every messenger responded to this sight, snapping their wings outward and leaping into the air, all aiming for the same Fallen One. We met him in a cohesive group, where he was devoured by a twisting ball of limbs and wings.

I was in the midst of the struggle when Eran’s voice bellowed, “”Messengers!”

At first, I thought he was warning us away, trying to convince us that his guardians would handle the Fallen One. It wasn’t until the shield overhead and around us suddenly collapsed inward that I comprehended that it had been a command.

The guardians swept down toward us, directly into the melee. As if they’d never lost sight of their wards, they caught their messenger’s hand and drew them to the ground. As I watched this take place, Eran appeared through the throng, his wings bending and coiling until he had woven through the Messengers to meet me.