FORBIDDEN (18 page)

He had a point, but I didn’t let him know it. “You just told me not twenty minutes ago that you were turning over a new leaf.”

“I didn’t know it would have to be implemented so fast. I need slow and steady, not trial by fire. No pun intended, of course.”

I rolled my eyes. He was so dramatic. I put my hand on his shoulder and nodded my head. “You’re a big boy. You can do it. Promise me you won’t let anything happen to them.”

He nodded. “You owe me.”

“I owe you.”

Ethan continued his rant as I turned and ran out of the parking lot. I didn’t bother to respond. “You owe me big time, not just little time. This is going on your permanent record, Sir!”

EIGHTEEN

Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard to find my way back to Reina’s. Her scent was much stronger than Hannah’s, which was saying something. It wasn’t evil like a Fallen’s, though. It reminded me of something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Happiness, I guess, although happiness wasn’t really a scent that I knew of.

Reina answered the door before I could even knock. She smiled brightly, but I noticed it didn’t hurt as bad to look at her as it had the first time. “Hello, Levi. Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“I need to talk to you.”

She took in my appearance, which was probably muddy and gross. I’d taken no care to avoid puddles and muck on the way over. “You ran all the way here?”

“It only took me an hour. Didn’t want to ruin the shirt I just got.”

She smiled and nodded. “Makes sense. Come in.”

Then it hit me. “Wait, how do you wear clothes and use your wings? I mean, you don’t fly around naked, do you?”

“No, Levi, I don’t. I simply alter the clothes to fit around my wings. It’s not that hard, you know.”

Well, that was a relief. I don’t know what I’d have done if we needed to fly somewhere and she was, well, not completely covered. That would be a little awkward. “Ah, yeah, that makes sense. I’ll look into it. Ethan and I run through a lot of shirts and stuff due to the wing issue.”

Reina wasn’t deterred by my random thoughts. “You said you came to talk? I’m assuming it wasn’t about whether or not I fly fully clothed.”

I blushed. It was totally out of line to ask her that kind of question. It was proof I’d been spending too much time with Ethan. His inability to shut his mouth when needed was rubbing off. “Oh, yeah, about that. Here’s the thing. When the Fallen came for Hannah the last time, he said she upset the balance and she had to go. I would have understood that, except the Fallen have been hunting her since she was in Rome. Her time hadn’t come yet. Why are they so intent on her? Every Fallen I’ve known just goes for the balance, not the person. What’s different about Hannah?”

“Did you put this all together yourself, or was Ethan along for the ride?”

“It was mainly me, but Ethan said he’d look into things on his end. He’s watching the girls so I could come talk to you.”

Reina blanched. “Don’t let him do that.”

“Why not?”

She looked like she was freaking out – as much as a really calm person could look freaked. It was weird. She was a calm as possible on the outside, but I could see the inner turmoil. Her eyes told a different story than her body language.

Wait, why was I looking that deep? She became a blur as she moved up the stairs. I followed behind. “Where are you going? Are you going to answer my questions?” I shouted.

She was in the room next to where Hannah had stayed. I could still smell Hannah’s tainted blood in the air. Reina was stuffing clothes and belongings – a computer, cell phone, and some electrical thing I hadn’t seen before – into a duffel bag at warp speed. I stepped in front of her in one of her laps around the room. “What aren’t you telling me, Reina?”

“Ethan isn’t one of us, Levi. He can’t be trusted!”

“I’m not one of you! I’m some half-breed, middle ground right now. Ethan barely trusts me anymore. If he’s willing to do something, let him. He’s actually trying to be a decent Guard now.”

Reina looked at me sternly. “Why are you trusting him with the human? I thought you cared about her.”

“I do.”

“Then why would you leave her in the hands of a dark one?”

“He’s not dark.”

“His wings say otherwise.”

Both of us had unfurled our wings during the conversation when it became heated. I didn’t even remember doing it. So much for keeping the shirt I’d just bought intact. Her eyes narrowed. “You genuinely trust Ethan.”

“I do.”

She walked around me and put the last of her clothes in the duffle bag. “Then I hope your trust isn’t misplaced.”

It wasn’t worth arguing about. What was done was done. I walked to the doorway and leaned against the frame as I watched her flit around the room. She turned down the bed and started to make things messy. For what reason was anyone’s guess. “What are you doing?”

“Making it look like I’m still here.”

“Are you planning on not being here?”

She looked at me and smiled. “Well, no. For one, you’re a nomad. You stink. You’re supposed to be a Guardian. Two, I’m officially your elder. I’ll be overseeing you while you transition, I told you this. Secondly, real estate is a good thing. To watch over you, I’ll need to be closer than an hour away. I’ll buy a house. You can live with me, if you’d like.”

“You have that kind of money?”

Reina laughed. “Levi, I’m over six hundred years old. Money is just something that adds up over centuries. I’m sure the renovations will cost more than the house.”

If the house was going to end up being anything like this place, I had to agree with her. However, that still didn’t explain what she was doing. “So why are you messing everything up again?”

“So that if the Fallen somehow get in, they’ll assume I’m not far away.”

I shuddered. “Are they not supposed to be able to get in?”

“No, they shouldn’t. The goodness here overpowers them. Kind of like how you and Ethan were unable to even look at me,” she smiled brightly, then continued. “See? You can look at me without pain now that you’re transitioning. The goodness doesn’t affect you like it once did.”

“Why is that?”

“Good and evil cannot reside together. Not for long, anyway,” she amended. “Things end badly when it tries to coexist. The Fallen know this. They don’t tempt the danger.”

I nodded. “So, about my question. Why are they hunting Hannah and Angie?”

Reina sighed. “You’re persistent.”

“I try.”

“That wasn’t a compliment,” Reina said as she pushed past me in the doorway. “There’s a reason you weren’t privy to that information. I’ll get in trouble if they ever find out I told you, so you didn’t hear this from me, okay?”

“Hear what?”

“What I’m about to tell you.”

I rolled my eyes. The joke went over her head. “I meant that as a joke. You know, hear what? Like I never heard anything. Get it?”

She groaned. “I can’t believe I’m telling a sixteen year old this.”

“Not sixteen.”

“Whatever. Listen, Hannah is a rarity. She’s what we classify as a pure soul.”

“A pure soul? I didn’t think those were even real. We were told they were a myth.”

“There’s a reason for that. We don’t want the Fallen knowing that the balance is always on our side if a pure soul exists.”

My mind was reeling. Hannah was a pure soul? How could that be? I’d never met a pure soul. According to what we learned when we became Guards, they possessed strength that no other human could. They were dangerous. Hannah wasn’t dangerous, that was impossible. I voiced my thoughts without even thinking it through. “Hannah wouldn’t hurt anyone. The Fallen tell us they’re dangerous.”

Reina nodded. “They can be. They’re emotional creatures by nature. They want to help however possible, but sometimes their help is worse than if they had left things alone. Also, if things don’t work out for them, they get frustrated. They can turn the tides of a war, they can heal people through intervention, and they are just generally all things pure. They’re as close to a Guardian a human can be, if that makes sense. This is all in a Guardian’s favor usually, but for the Fallen, I can see why they would be better off left as myth.”

“So what does this mean for Hannah?”

“It makes sense the Fallen want her dead as soon as possible. They know what she is and what she means to us as Guardians.”

I sucked in a breath. “What does she mean to Guardians?”

“That we could take on the Fallen and win as long as she survives. She gives us the added strength we need. We protect pure souls with a vengeance. They change the odds completely.”

“Is that something we want to do?”

Reina smiled. “Every couple hundred years, the Fallen get restless. It’s always easier to defeat them if a pure soul exists. We never lose, but it’s never pretty when a pure soul isn’t present.”

“What kinds of things are you talking about?”

“Remember the Holocaust? How about Iwo Jima? Hiroshima? Vietnam?”

“Yeah, I was around for those. What about them?”

“Those were times that the Fallen got out of hand. We battled back, but without pure souls, things got ugly. Mankind listens to the darker whisperings of their hearts more often than not. Fallen know this.”

I nodded. “So why didn’t anyone want me to know this?”

Reina shrugged. “You were a Guard. You could have betrayed the confidence and told the Fallen if you knew. That wouldn’t serve us well, now would it? Owen – that great oaf who runs the show down there – he didn’t even know. We play our cards close to the chest.”

“And how about now? What do I do with this?”

“You guard Hannah with your life, just like you were before. She’s an asset we can’t afford to lose,” Reina said firmly, her eyes burning with a ferocity I hadn’t seen before. “Levi, I know you have an unnatural obsession for being honest with Hannah. You need to understand this is something she can’t know. She will struggle with this as it is. If she knew, it would just be more to torture her. It’s hard for her to tolerate evil. It’s amazing you were even assigned to her. I don’t know why they didn’t give her a Guardian. That’s what makes me think you were destined to meet her.”

I hung my head. “She doesn’t want much to do with me right now.”

Reina smiled sadly. “You tried to tell her about your past, didn’t you?”

“It didn’t get very far.”

Reina put her hand on my shoulder. “Ah, I see. You know, she’s only human. You deserve to be able to explain.”

I nodded, kind of numb to the conversation at that point. Hannah was a pure soul. It was in her nature to despise evil things. No matter who I was now, I was evil before. Would she ever forgive that? What would she do when she knew the whole story?

Reina’s hand ran across my cheek and slid into my hair. She turned my head to hers. “You know, Levi, you wouldn’t have to explain anything to me. I already know everything.”