The Protect Her Box Set: Parts 7-9 (26 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN –
PAIGE

My dream started out happy, and I loved that. I was ten years old again running in an open field of sunflowers under the warm afternoon sun. I twirled and twirled delighting in the way that my sundress’s hem lifted off the ground to spin around my legs. My laughter filled the air. I ran and twirled for what seemed like hours. There was nothing to worry about here. Here, I was safe.

As my legs finally started to grow tired, I felt the sensation that someone was watching me. I wasn’t entirely concerned. I knew my parents were never far away. Living in the commune meant close quarters, but they allowed me some freedom on spring afternoons once the long winters wore off. My mother always said that I had too much energy and curiosity for my own good. I never understood why that was a bad thing.

So I expected to see my mother there when I whipped around in a tight twirl. Instead, I saw a woman standing there who looked vaguely familiar although I couldn’t immediately place her. I paused in my twirl and felt the lightheadedness that always accompanied a particularly intense round of twirling. The woman raised her hand to wave at me and smiled. Her long black hair was pretty. I wished that my hair looked like that.

I hesitantly raised my hand to wave in return. My parents taught me that it was impolite to be rude when adults addressed me. Although all the adults in the commune were friendly, there were several that I actively avoided because I didn’t like the way that they looked at me. It was as if they were expecting me to do something, but I wasn’t sure what that was. My mother admonished me when I told her about it, but I still saw her worried glances in my father’s direction when she thought I wasn’t looking. There was something going on around the commune, and it had something to do with me. I just didn’t know what it was yet.

The woman waved her hand to beckon me closer. I scrunched up my nose as I tried to think about where I knew her face. She didn’t live in the commune. I was sure of that. But this was the third commune we had lived in since I was born, and I wondered if perhaps I had known her from one of the earlier ones. That seemed to make the most sense.

“Paige! Come closer. I can barely see you all the way out there.” The woman’s voice carried on the breeze to me. It had a slightly unusual accent to it. She wasn’t from these parts as my father would say. Still, there wasn’t anything menacing in it, and she knew my name. Surely, if she knew my name, then it was okay to approach her.

My feet seemed locked in place though, and I didn’t understand why.

“What’s your name?” I called out to her. I desperately wanted to remember where I knew her from. It seemed that her name was important.

She laughed, and then I saw her starting to move toward me through the field. “You’re being silly, Paige. Come closer. I just want to talk to you.”

“Why?” I asked. My voice was so childlike and innocent. I didn’t fully appreciate that then, but as my adult consciousness began to awaken inside my mind, I understood that this was a dream.

As that realization came over me, the sky darkened as the sun was covered by a cloud. I looked upward at the sky. The clouds seemed to be shifting faster and faster covering up all the sun’s rays. It was as if the sun was about to be suffocated. I felt the first tendril of fear gather in my chest.

That was when I looked back toward the women. My heart stopped for a moment. She was gone.

“It’s not safe for you to be so far out here alone. There are dangerous people in the world.” I whirled around. The woman was behind me. Up close, she didn’t look as friendly as she had from across the field. I knew that I knew her. I just needed to find her name. It eluded me though as if my child consciousness didn’t want to know. It forced my adult consciousness back.

“My mother said I could play out here,” I said defiantly. I wasn’t sure why, but there was something about this woman’s tone that told me not to defer to her, even if it got me in trouble with my parents. “She said as long as I was home by dinner time, I could go as far as the white fence.” I pointed far across the field at the white fence that marked the end of the commune’s property line. Beyond it there was nothing but trees and wilderness. It wasn’t a place that I would want to go anyway. I preferred the sun.

“Well, your mother hasn’t been here long. She doesn’t understand the way that things work, and neither do you, I’m afraid.” She leaned over so that her face was only inches away from mine. “Why don’t we take a little walk? I’d like to talk to you some more.”

“I shouldn’t,” I said. I took a step backward. The sky continued to darken above our heads, and now there was a chill in the breeze as it swept up the hem of my dress. “I think that I should go home now.”

“Walk with me,” she said. Her tone hardened, and suddenly I knew that I was in trouble. With a capital “T” as my dad would say. I glanced furtively over my shoulder. In the far distance across the fields, I could see the rooftops of the commune proper. They might have been thousands of miles away.

“I…want to go home now. Please,” I said using my best manners. “My mother will be worried about me if it starts to storm.”

“Of course, your mother is going to worry about you, Paige. We are all so terribly worried about you,” the woman said. She shook her head. “You have been a great burden on the communes and your parents. Do you have any idea of that? That’s because everyone is trying to keep the truth from you because they are scared, but they shouldn’t be. I want you to be able to tell them that for me. Do you think you can do that?”

“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.” I kept reaching for an excuse that would ensure that she would set me free. This one seemed the most plausible, and should indicate to her that she had overstepped a boundary.

“I’m far from a stranger.” She smiled at me, but it held no warmth. She touched the top of my head. “I know far more about what’s going on inside that pretty head of yours than you realize.”

My adult consciousness came screaming back then, and in that instant I knew who the woman was.

Eva.

I stood before her in the field, but now I was an adult. I still wore the white sundress though. We stared at each other for a long time.

“I’m dreaming,” I said. I would have closed my eyes, but I was afraid that if I did she would overwhelm me. “This is nothing but a dream.”

“Actually, it’s a memory,” Eva said. “We’ve spoken before, Paige. Several times, although I understand if you don’t remember them. Each time I told you that there was nothing to be afraid of. That this was what was supposed to happen. You should feel so honored to have been chosen. And through you, I will make my triumphant return to the earthly realm and have my revenge on those who wronged me.”

“A memory?” My mind stuttered on those words.

“Your poor parents kept thinking that if they moved you, I wouldn’t find you. But I will always find you. You are marked as mine, and I always take what is mine.”

I needed to get out of this dream state. I knew that my body was back in the bed with Riley. The relic was in my pocket lying on the floor. I needed to find a way to warn him and to get to it.

“We’re going to stay here,” Eva said. She turned her face up, and I saw the sun shine through the clouds onto her face. It was as if she had willed it to do so. It lit up her form, and for a moment I saw the beauty of the goddess that she was. It brought tears to my eyes. “You have eluded me for far too long. I am weary of my prison. My time has come.”

“You can’t take my body without my permission,” I said. I knew that the excuse sounded weak even to my ears, but it was the only thing I had going for me. “And it can’t be coerced, remember?”

“I wouldn’t hurt you. I’ve been watching over you all this time,” Eva said. She sighed. “Do you think it was a happy coincidence that you were able to survive all that time after your parents’ death? No, it was because you called on me, and I came to your aid.”

“I have never asked for your help,” I said, shaking my head vehemently.

“No? All of those nights that you cried yourself to sleep asking why this was happening to you? Begging God to take pity on you and make your life better? It wasn’t God who answered those calls, Paige. It was me. I gave you cunning and knowledge that allowed you to outsmart and outmaneuver those that would have harmed you. I’ve been doing that since the day you were born, so the bridge was already open. You walked across it willingly many times, even if you didn’t know it.”

“I will never accept you. Especially not now,” I said. I wasn’t about to let her know how she intimidated me with her confidence and poise. There was nothing in her stance that said that she thought she would lose, and that rankled a place deep inside of me.

“Because of the man,” she said. She smiled again. “Riley.”

How much did Eva know about me?

“I know everything,” she said with another indulgent smile. “All of this time you’ve been worried about me possessing you. You’ve been so guarded against letting me in. Paige, my darling, I want to let you in on a little secret.”

I felt a knot of terror start to unwind in my stomach as the sky suddenly lit up, and rain began to pour down on us. I was immediately soaked to the skin. I realized that the weather was a perfect reflection of my emotions. I was doing it. I was controlling it, but I sensed that it was nothing more than some kind of elaborate illusion. I didn’t want to hear her next words. I needed to block them out. I didn’t want to know the truth.

Eva turned toward me, and the lightning lit up her face. At that moment, she wasn’t a beautiful goddess at all, but an ugly skeletal ghoul.

“Three years ago, you were hit over the head and dumped into the Calamata Island Bay. It wasn’t part of Bruno’s plan to have you injured so badly, and you would have died. But you called out for help, and I answered. It wasn’t coercion. It was survival.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

“There is no God here for you, my love. Only Eva. Who you accepted as the possessor of your body in exchange for your life plus three years. You drove a hard bargain. I admire that. But your time is up, dear little Paige. I’ve come to collect on your debt.”

CHAPTER TWELVE –
RILEY

I didn’t want to wake Paige up, but things were starting to happen now. We could rest again when we knew what to do. I directed Viho back to the meeting table. “Let me get Paige. She might have some ideas too.”

“And she can take that unholy thing back into her possession,” Viho said, glancing at the relic. “I’ll be very glad when that is off our plate. We have enough to worry about.”

“You don’t have to keep reminding me of that,” I said. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Viho at the moment. I decided I couldn’t reconcile the fact that he was my father yet. So I decided to treat him just like I’d treat any other colleague on a job. If I kept it clean and matter of fact, then I didn’t have to deal with any of the other emotional bullshit that came with it. At least, not yet.

Plus, there was a voice in the back of my head that I recognized as Paige’s that said I needed to give him a chance. My family had grown exponentially in the last week. I had gone from practically no one to have a mate, two mothers, a sister, and a father. It was kind of amazing really. But I had been alone for so long that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with all of these new people in my life yet either.

For now, I was focused on one. Paige. Keeping her safe was my top priority. I made my way back to the bathroom and opened the door as quietly as I could. I stepped inside and saw Paige’s form on the bed. I closed the door, and that’s when I felt a rush of frantic anxiety that I knew emanated from her. I strode over to the bed.

Paige laid on top of the covers staring blankly at the ceiling. She was dressed in a simple white sundress that reminded me of a little girl’s outfit. Her hair was tied up in two ponytails.

I touched her face. “Paige? Can you hear me?” There was no response. I shook her shoulders. “Paige? Paige?”

Her expression didn’t change. She didn’t even blink as I shook her again, slightly harder this time. I felt my heart start to race. I could feel her emotions even though it didn’t appear that she was presently conscious. She was scared out of her mind, and I felt certain wherever she was she was crying out for me to help her. But I didn’t know how.

I saw the sweat bead on her forehead, and then I realized it wasn’t sweat at all. I watched in horror as Paige’s clothes went from dry to wet in a matter of seconds. “What the hell?” I whispered to myself.

I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew it was bad. I had left her alone thinking that she was safe, but she wasn’t. This was my fault. I had to find a way to reach her. I leaned down close to her ear. “Just hang on, babe. I’ll find you. Hold on.”

Picking her limp body up off the bed, I made my way back into the bathroom. The door in front of me exploded as I moved quickly through it into the bar. I stopped short in my tracks.

A man stood there. In his hands, he held the backs of Viho and Klein’s shirts. Both men hung in the air with several inches of air below their feet. They appeared to be unconscious.

The man himself was huge. I was tall, but he was taller than me by several inches. He wore a black cloak with a hood covering his head that gave no indication of who he was, but I knew. I had seen him before in a thousand-year-old memory. This was the man who had killed Eva’s Protector. He cursed Eva’s life force that he stole from the Protector, and it became the relic of destruction. The was an entity with an ax to grind.

“Riley Stone. At long last, we meet.” The voice was the sound of evil itself.

“I am afraid I’m at a loss,” I said. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Does it matter?”

My mind raced. I tried to look at the bar to see if the relic still sat there. If I could get to it, maybe I’d stand a chance taking on whoever this guy was. “If we’re going to be friends, then it would be good to at least know who I’m talking to.”

“We aren’t going to be friends,” the man said. His voice held a note of a snarl. He opened his hands, and Viho and Klein’s bodies slid to the floor. He gestured at the bar. “If you think that you can get to it before I do, feel free.”

I decided that I needed to try a different tack. “What do you want?”

“I’m here to help you,” he said simply.

I snorted. “Amazing how many folks want to help me these days. So if I told you to go fuck yourself, what would you say to that?”

“I’d say that’s the wrong answer considering your mate is about to give herself up to Eva,” the man said. “You need my help, Mr. Stone. I hate formality. May I call you Riley?”

“You can call me whatever you want. I don’t give a shit. What do you mean, she’s about to give herself up to Eva?”

“Eva is a very manipulative goddess, Riley. For now, that’s all I’m willing to say. But I’m here, and I’m willing to help you save her. Perhaps you can even save yourself in the process. The world is a magical place when you have a positive attitude.”

The man was mocking me now. Then I heard a short gasp, and I looked down. Paige blinked, but then her face went slack again.

“I wouldn’t dally in your decision. Your mate has five minutes, maybe less, and then she’s going to be gone forever. What are you going to do?”

I didn’t want to accept his help, but Paige’s emotions had reached crisis height. Something was about to happen, and a mental confrontation with Eva was the only thing that made sense. I had to do something. I couldn’t wait.

“Tell me your name,” I said. “Before I agree to anything, I need to know two things. Your name and your price. I know that everything like this carries a price.”

The man reached up and threw back his hood. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but underneath was nothing but an ordinary man’s face. The only thing of note was that his skin was so pale that I thought he might be an albino.

“My price is any favor I wish granted the moment I call for it. And since you are so insistent, Riley, I will give you my name. I admire tenacity in those that I do business with.”

“Get on with it already,” I said.

“Fine,” the man said. “My name is Adam.”

Of course, it was. Guess I should have paid closer attention during Alice’s catechism lectures after all.

To be continued…

Join Ivy in the
Ivy’s Front Porch
group on Facebook to find out exclusive news and notes just for
Protect Her
fans.

Sign up for
Ivy’s newsletter
and never miss a release.