Messenger (Guardian Trilogy Prequel 1) (2 page)

BOOK: Messenger (Guardian Trilogy Prequel 1)
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Daniel chuckled at my understatement and watched his friend return to where we stood.

“Splendid day for a fight,” Jacob announced. “Splendid day!”

“Jacob thinks we should begin with a test of skills,” explained Daniel, although he sounded as unimpressed with the idea as I was.

The messengers, too, continued to stare at their new instructors, a blend of inhibition and annoyance in their expressions.

“Let’s see what you all have in you. One by one. Who’ll be first?” Jacob shouted, clapping his hands together with enthusiasm.

No one volunteered, staring uncertainly back at him.

I initially thought this was because they were daunted until I realized all eyes were finely attuned to someone else, someone approaching us from behind me, above the vine-wrapped trees.

Turning, I found him gliding in evenly, patiently, not as if he had all the time in the world but as if the world would wait for him. His massive appendages carried him steadily to the ground where he settled with precision on the uneven mud before they smoothly rolled back, sank away, and disappeared. As he walked the remaining steps to the five men and two women who had collected earlier, they didn’t address him but were observant of his moves in the way soldiers await commands from a head officer.

Just as I had, he had chosen a young adult’s body. He was tall but leaner than the others. This one’s muscles were lithe, allowing his movements to be nimble, precise, rather than clunky like the others. His dark brown, wavy hair was longer, too, swaying as he moved.

He stood out from the rest, by appearance and by the unreserved display of self-confidence. Unlike the others, he could successfully intimidate with ease. Even if I didn’t feel this way toward him, I saw it on the faces of those around me. In fact, I immediately got the impression that there wasn’t much this man couldn’t control.

When he came to a stop, he settled confidently back on the balls of his feet and folded his muscular arms across his chest before sweeping a firm gaze over the crowd.

This was when the messengers began to whisper to each other.

“Is that…”

“No, it can’t be.”

“But I think it is…”

“Eran?”


The
Eran?”

“Yes…
the
Eran,” confirmed Hermina, her eyes never straying from the man who had captured everyone’s attention.

When he scanned the group, he did so leisurely, assessing the messengers from afar, and it immediately struck me that he was here not as an observer but with a reason.

And then his eyes reached me and stopped.

When he did this, something exploded inside me. I drew in a quick breath and for the first time in my existence I actually tasted the air I inhaled. It was sweet, seemingly laced with sugar. I smelled the dampness of the jungle surrounding us and noticed the breeze slipping across my skin. And suddenly, I felt whole, as if I’d existed in a void until that moment, surviving but never actually living, seeing but never taking in the details.

His eyebrows pulled together as he stared across the clearing at me, in the way someone does when they believe they’ve recognized another. I wondered what he saw beyond my small, five-foot frame, round eyes, and long chocolate-colored hair. Whatever it was, it caused his eyes to become electrified the longer they stayed in place, heating until they burned with concentration and made me feel like he thought he was observing someone exceptionally peculiar or important. I was neither of those, so his interest was unexplainable to me.

As we watched each other, my muscles flexed, and I realized my body wanted to move closer to him, without reason, without a foreseeable purpose. I didn’t know this man, had never seen him, never spoken to him, and yet that didn’t stop or deter the urge to have him touch me.

Then he released the breath he’d been holding, and I knew he’d felt something too.

His muscles rippled through his thighs, but his position didn’t shift, and I thought he might be fighting the same urge I was to cross the clearing and close the distance between us.

Breaking my concentration, but only minimally, Jacob demanded again, this time more insistently, “Who will be first?”

He was losing his audience to the man now staring at me and was desperate to get it back. Jacob lived for attention.

No one stepped forward, not for a pummeling that Eran, the man whom everyone seemed to know, would watch from a few feet away.

I tried to unlock the hold this man had over me, to accept Jacob’s invitation since no one else would, but I couldn’t. As much as I struggled, I could not break free. I was mercilessly under this man’s arrest.

Then Eran swallowed, opened his mouth, and spoke. “I will.”

A vibration went through me at the sound of his voice, stifling my breath and erasing the memory of what it felt like to inhale.

He spoke with an English accent and a rugged inflection, which seemed so opposing to me. And as we continued to try to figure each other out from afar, my first notion of him was that he was a contrast in personalities; someone refined and contemplative, but who insisted on portraying himself as a rugged brute.

I was so preoccupied with him, with understanding him, that I didn’t notice Jacob’s reaction. It was hesitant.

Eran did, however, and added, “If you’ll allow me, Jacob.”

Jacob chuckled, although there was more than fabricated enthusiasm in it. There was fear, even if his words denied it. “Always wanted to take on the legendary Eran.”

Eran didn’t rebuke that reputation, or endorse it. He simply unfolded his arms and strode toward us.

As he did, his stare remained steadfast.

“Gravity is different here,” he remarked to himself, and I took this as his personal reminder for when the scrimmage began. “Stronger, somehow…”

“That would be Magdalene’s doing,” Daniel remarked. “To make it more closely resemble the setting where the messengers will fight.”

Only then did Eran break his gaze, and I instantly wanted it back.

His reserved manner didn’t change, but added a hint of curiosity as he repeated my name to Daniel. “Magdalene?”

Daniel motioned in my direction and Eran followed his hand back to me.

Again our eyes met, this time sending a prickle across my skin.

He was still focused on me when Jacob sent a fist into the side of his mouth.

Gasps rose around us, out of surprise at having seen such a motion in this place for the very first time but also over the sheer insult of it. There had been no mutually agreed on starting point and Jacob hadn’t waited for one to be decided on.

My first instinct was to step forward and offer assistance to Eran, but Daniel noticed me flinch and held me back.

Eran’s head snapped violently to the side when Jacob’s fist landed on his cheek, but it returned to a forward-position. From there, the glint in Eran’s eyes was clearly visible to me. It hadn’t faded, and instead had taken on a hardened, menacing edge.

From my peripheral vision, I saw Jacob dancing on the tips of his toes, springing out of excitement for his well-placed shot and in an effort to keep himself out of his opponent’s reach.

But his bouncing did little to deflect the onslaught that followed.

Daniel saw it coming and muttered anxiously under his breath, “Jacob, it would be best if you fled now.”

But Jacob didn’t have time to react.

Eran’s body spun around, his appendages exploding from his back and swooping up and over his head to angle himself above Jacob. From there, he had a height advantage and he used it, and the gravity he’d mentioned earlier, to drive Jacob to the ground.

Jacob’s body slammed into the soft mud, indenting over an inch deep in a filmy brown pool, his appendages disjointed and askew beneath him.

Eran’s hand remained clamped around Jacob’s throat a few seconds, long enough to prove who was superior, as Jacob struggled beneath it. From Eran’s profile, I saw solid grit in his features with his jaw flexed and lips pinched in disapproval at Jacob. Then he sprang to his feet and extended a hand to help Jacob up.

Jacob glared at it and slapped it aside, choosing to stand on his own. As he did, Eran addressed the group.

“Surprise is the best tactic against your oppon-”

Jacob sent another fist into Eran’s jaw.

This time, Eran didn’t hesitate.

In a shocking display of power, Eran seized Jacob’s shoulders, swung him up, and released him across the clearing. Jacob’s body soared through the trees slamming into the first one tall enough to stop his momentum. The sounds of cracking wood and groaning immediately followed.

Jacob’s expression was justifiably confused as he blinked rapidly to gain an understanding of his new position and where his opponent might be. He did this while struggling to salvage his footing, and composure.

But Eran was quicker.

He flew faster than anyone I’d ever seen, his body and appendages a blur as he traversed the small training area and advanced into the jungle. When he landed on Jacob, his body didn’t jostle or flinch. He was ready for the blow. Jacob was not. Jacob’s head jerked backward, stopped only by the trunk of the tree.

In the distance, Eran’s voice was muffled but clear enough to be understood.

“Have you had enough?” he demanded.

Jacob’s answer was to drive a knee into Eran’s gut.

Although Eran’s body jerked, he didn’t release a grunt or a moan. He was too busy taking hold of Jacob’s shoulders again.

Eran’s arms rotated to the side, sending Jacob’s flailing body into a tree. This one was within arm’s reach, as were the rest now that they were in the thickly wooded and shadowy part of the jungle, but the force was enough to pitch Jacob’s limbs awkwardly back behind him.

“Now,” Eran seethed, “have you had enough?”

Jacob roared and maneuvered himself out of Eran’s grasp. A second later, he sent an elbow across Eran’s face. Again, Eran’s head flew to the side, and he retaliated.

Eran swung Jacob into another tree with enough power to send dead leaves down around them. But this time he didn’t stop. Eran swung him back in the other direction, into another tree. And again, Eran pivoted him into yet another tree.

As we watched Eran slam Jacob into tree after tree, rotating him from left to right and back again. Jacob fought back as best he could, attempting to grab hold of Eran, to surpass his swift reflexes, but he couldn’t meet his fighting caliber and in the end Eran took pity on him.

Both panting, and with Jacob’s head wobbling like a top on his neck, Eran held him against the last tree trunk.

“Now?” Eran asked through gasps, though his were not nearly as heavy as Jacob’s.

Unable to catch his breath, Jacob only nodded.

From our side of the clearing a deep, rumbling chuckle began. I glanced back to find a massive man from Eran’s group of observers enjoying the display.

“And that, me lads,” he said, “is how a legend does it…”

When I returned my focus to Eran it was just in time to witness the muscles quiver down both sides of his back as he released Jacob. They were not bulging or overworked but defined and able. My eyes continued down the length of his back side, seeking out shadows carved by the strength of him beneath his clothes. And again I had to remind myself to breath.

A flutter from behind told me that someone was moving up to my left side. However, I didn’t find myself capable of drawing my eyes away from Eran to see who it was. Only when she spoke did I know who had come forward.

“What did you do to this place?” Hermina asked in a tense whisper. “Jacob shouldn’t be…shouldn’t be…” She lifted a hand in his direction. “Stunned to powerlessness.”

“It’s not the place,” Daniel clarified. I couldn’t help but notice the admiration in his tone and it made me proud. “Magdalene did make the training grounds as close as possible to an environment in which the messengers will ultimately fight for their lives, but it’s not the place that did that to Jacob.”

“Then what was it?” Hermina demanded.

Daniel replied plainly, in the manner of a seasoned fighter. “It was Eran.”

They strode back to us in the clearing then, Eran’s head high, Jacob’s head low and tucked between hunched shoulders.

When Eran spoke it was to all of us.

“Fight only when it is the best and only option. If a fight is unavoidable, learn your stance, deliver your hits accurately and fast, aim for weak spots, keep moving, don’t be afraid to use your surroundings, take in your surroundings, become aware of it and learn to take a hit,” he said. “As Jacob’s done.”

He gave a final look at his sparring partner, who barely met his eyes. They nodded to each other, and I knew what was being exchanged…respectful appreciation between the battle-scarred. Eran continued across the clearing to join his colleagues, who hadn’t moved from their spots on the outskirts since arriving. Without a word to each other or the rest of us, they extended their appendages and took flight.

As Eran’s feet left the ground, he found me in the crowd and gave me one final burning look. There was something in his eyes now, not pride at having subdued Jacob or to impress upon me the importance of the lesson he’d just demonstrated. All that seemed to have been forgotten. No, what I saw was intense curiosity. And just before he broke our gaze to adjust his sight on the route they were taking, I was certain that he felt the same way I did…that he wished he understood what had just happened between us.

BOOK: Messenger (Guardian Trilogy Prequel 1)
3.24Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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