FORBIDDEN (3 page)

“E, you know Guardians want nothing to do with us Guards, right? They’re trouble anyway. How many times do they have to strip your status for you to remember it?”

He grinned, instead of listening to a word I said. His eyes told me the decision was already made, and I was stuck with double duty either way. The Guardians were his weakness. “Angels make you loopy, man.”

“I can’t help it. The Almighty did his best work on those ladies.”

“They’re in heaven. We’re in hell. Do you not see a problem with that?”

“You may be in hell, but I’m gonna do my job and get Guardian status. Might as well schmooze the ladies and have a leg up.”

I rolled my eyes. Ethan was as close to a friend as I had. Shoving him out from behind the pillar we’d chosen to hide behind, he fell into a human. Apologizing profusely in ancient Greek, the woman just stared at what was probably the best looking guy she’d ever seen. The muscles he was so proud of contracted and strained his already too tight shirt as he ran a hand over his short black hair. He made sure his brown eyes looked apologetic, and plastered on the same puppy dog smile he’d given me a moment ago. That was another nice thing about our plight. We looked like angels of light, although we hadn’t received the status. It helped with the humans trusting us if we needed to interact.

Sometimes it got one of us in trouble. It always seemed that after fraternizing with humans too long, someone would end up getting attached to a Call. It always ended in the stripping of our wings, and the death of the Call. Our wings were stripped for breaking the rules, and the Call was killed for knowing too much. No other options, no wiggle room in the law. Staying detached was the only way to be an effective Guard.

A sudden burst of wind hit me from behind, and a strip of Ethan’s shirt landed nearby. He preferred to fly. He also ran around half-naked most of the time. According to him, the ladies loved that.

I took my jacket off while slinking into the shadows. Shoulders tightened and legs crouched, I burst into the air with all my might. Wings exploding out, I flew to perch close to the girls. Having two of them to watch made me paranoid.

“Ang, I’m telling you. The guy was real.”

“Hannah, I’m telling you. I don’t believe you.”

Hannah huffed and continued to walk past the pillar where I was sitting. My legs dangled down, heels kicking the ancient grey stone. A chip broke off, tumbling down and hitting Hannah on the head. As she looked up, I found myself gazing into her grey eyes. They were wide as half-dollars.

I couldn’t move.  Maybe if I didn’t move, she wouldn’t see me.  Yeah, right.  Once the Call knew your name, they could see you while others couldn’t. Giving your name forged a bond between the Guard and Call, which was reason number one to never get close to a human. If they knew your name, it was only the beginning of a relationship that shouldn’t exist anyway.

I knew it was stupid to give her my name, but did it anyway. What had I been thinking?

My wings were spread wide, not expecting to have to deal with Hannah seeing me.

Hannah grabbed Angie’s wrist. Yanking on it, she remained amazingly calm. “Angie, that ninja guy I told you about?”

Angie was bored. “You mean the imaginary friend you’ve made up?”

“Yeah, that one. He’s sitting on the pillar right there.”

I launched myself off the pillar, causing a portion to fall off at the feet of the girls.  Angie screamed, but Hannah waited for the single black feather I lost to float to the earth.  I hovered, knowing my cover was blown anyway.  Picking the feather up, she looked at me once more and stuck the feather in her pocket.

Screwed was the understatement of the week right now.

FOUR

“Dude, you let her know your name? And you call
me
the idiot?”

Ethan wasn’t helping the situation. I paced back and forth under the Roma pine tree that Ethan was sitting in and waved my hand up in his direction. “Shut up. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“You’re gonna have to guard from a distance. A long distance. If she sees too much of you…”

“I know.”

Humans got attached. That couldn’t happen. I wouldn’t let it. I’d had enough torture to last me ten lifetimes. It was time for an upgrade. Purgatory was an upgrade. Getting even higher would be nice. Having my Call ruin that would land me back at square one. Hell.

I sat down on the well-manicured lawn and picked crap off the bottom of my shoes. Angie was yelling at Hannah at the moment, telling her she was delusional. Ethan and I were both getting a kick out of it, since we knew Hannah was the one that had it right. It was hard to tell what kind of theory Angie could come up with for everything Hannah told her.

“You ready to head back tonight? It’s gonna be a long flight.”

I groaned. Flying over the Atlantic was a pain. With no way to wear a shirt, it was always cold. Sure, Ethan and I could make it back in a flash, but the duty was to watch the Calls. We flew the same speed as the plane, which meant it felt like we weren’t moving at all. Technically we could leave them for short periods of time if need be, but no Guard wanted to get caught not watching their Call. “Man, don’t remind me.”

It was a long eight hours to the JFK airport in New York. The girls had a layover there, then it was back to Podunk Town, USA. Okay, it wasn’t Podunk Town, but it was close. It was the little town of Londonderry, Ohio, which was home to not much more than cows and cornfields. Of all the humans on earth, I was given the one who lived in a town that had two stoplights, the second one being put up as we spoke. Yeah, there was a ton to keep me busy.

Ethan and I sat in the corner of the boarding area directly across from where the girls sat with their backs to us. I had picked up a black, zip-up hoodie in a snowboarding shop before we left Italy. It was nice because there was a pocket for my iPhone, complete with a little cut in the body to slip my headphone wire through. It even came with a blow up neck rest that fit into the hood of the jacket. It was strange, but I had to give it to humans, they came up with some pretty sweet stuff.

Ethan punched me. His lips were moving, but my music was up so loud I couldn’t hear him. I pointed to my headphones and pulled that neck rest hood deal into place. Man, this hoodie was awesome.

Unfortunately, Ethan was a pain in the ass when he wanted something. He pulled my hood off my head, and took out one of my ear buds. “Dude, our calls are moving.”

Hannah and Angie were heading toward the main terminal where the shops were located. I sighed and grabbed Ethan by his popped collar. “Let’s go, Preppy Delight.”

Ethan knocked my hand away and began to fix his clothes while he grinned mischievously at me. “Don’t be jealous that I’m better looking than you. Someone had to offset your ugly factor.”

It was nice to be able to control when we were visible. We followed them all around the overpriced stores while Angie picked out the dumbest things and cooed over them. They went to town in the “As Seen on TV” store. At one point she had a self-cleaning cat box and was cooing over how maybe someone could invent a self-cleaner for her dirty dishes.

“Uh, Ang, they’ve already invented that. It’s called a dishwasher,” Hannah pointed out.

“Well yeah, but that’s a pain. What if you had a box you could just have in your room? That’d be so awesome.”

Ethan blushed scarlet as I doubled over in laughter at Angie’s comments. “Dude, she’s a blond. It’s like genetically hereditary or something.”

I sucked in enough air between laughs to respond to Ethan. “Nothing is
that
hereditary. That’s just a shallow gene pool. Congrats, buddy.”

Just then I felt a change in the wind. Ethan punched me in the side and cocked his head toward the main walkway through the terminal. “Dude, you feel that?”

“Yeah. They’re here somewhere. But why?”

Ethan shrugged. “Maybe it’s someone’s time to go?”

My eyes scanned the crowd quickly, trying to spot another Guard. I turned to Ethan, worry starting to ebb into the pit of my stomach. “Have you seen another Guard anywhere?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but then his eyes became as big as saucers. He pointed a finger out where I had just been looking. “Uh, there’s more than one.”

I turned to look out of the store once more. Three Fallen, complete with bloody wings, were stalking toward us.

Ethan muttered the warrior’s prayer behind me. “
High and Mighty, I call to you right now in my time of need. Provide the speed, wisdom, and courage necessary to protect my Call and uphold your perfect will,
” he nudged me to join him. I sighed and finished the prayer along with him, knowing I’d get into trouble if I stood silent. “
I will be the warrior you have called me to be in times of peace and war. I will uphold the charge of looking after my Call until you call her home. My will is to follow yours, even if it means eternal death.
”

We kissed our fingers, touched our hearts, pointed to the heavens, then stood still. Ethan nudged me. “What’s the plan, chief?”

“There’s no way we can fight them in here. It’ll cause a scene, even if they stay invisible. We’ve gotta get them out of here.”

“We need a diversion.”

I hissed over my shoulder. “Yeah, well, why don’t you come up with it, Sherlock?”

He sighed. “I wish you hadn’t said that.”

“Why?”

“Because the only thing I had in mind just disappeared.”

Hannah and Angie had gotten lost in the crowd with our attention diverted elsewhere. Crap, man. This trip had seriously sucked. The Fallen sniffed the air, obviously searching for their intended target.

Before I could say anything, Ethan pulled the self-cleaning cat box off its display and chucked it at the leader of the demons. Kitty litter flew everywhere, which to any of the humans probably looked pretty freaky. To top things off, the Fallen was pissed. When I say that, I mean super pissed. It roared in anger and clawed its eyes in pain.

Ethan fist pumped. “Heck yeah! Ten points for hitting a bulls’ eye!”

That’s when he realized the things were on a beeline to us. He groaned. “Ah, hell.”

I sighed. “Yeah, that’s where we’re headed if we don’t get this taken care of.”

FIVE

I grabbed another cat box since they seemed to be somewhat effective and sprinted toward the bloody demons. I gave up on being inconspicuous, since obviously our cover was blown with the exploding kitty litter and invisible roaring monsters.

All hell broke loose after the Fallen decided they’d become visible to everyone. Their burned and rotten flesh made them look like crispy zombies from a C-rated movie. Muscles showed through where their flesh had rotted off. Their wings bled and beat furiously, stirring up gusts of wind that knocked people over. They weren’t a pretty sight. It didn’t matter what they looked like when they got close to someone. They were vicious, and definitely not something anyone – living, Guard, or Guardian – wanted to deal with. The only thing worse were Hunters, but thankfully we never had to deal with those.