Messenger (Guardian Trilogy Prequel 1) (38 page)

“Ahh,” Dmitrei exhaled slowly. “If anything, you guardians
are
altruistic.”

“I’ll agree with that assessment.”

“A trait I disdain,” Dmitrei added.

“Now is your time to vent your anger over it.”

“Yes, it is.”

Again, Eran’s palms rose up, once more prompting Dmitrei.

“There is one problem,” Dmitrei said.

“What is that?”

Suddenly, Dmitrei took hold of one of Eran’s forearms and flung him across the room. For someone small, he knew how to use his weight and Eran slammed into the ladder before plummeting to the floor. I cringed, wanting with equal desperation to go to Eran and to attack Dmitrei for what he had done.

Yet as Eran pulled himself to a standing position, Dmitrei declared, “I have no interest in killing you, Eran. Leave.”

With a flick of his wrist, Dmitrei bent to pick up his chair. To him, the fight was evidently over.

For Eran, it was not.

He didn’t hesitate, lunging into a sprint and leaping at Dmitrei. Their contact slammed Dmitrei into the wall, where his eyes widened in exasperation.

Undeterred, Eran argued, “Think of the money you can make with a guardian’s skull.”

Dmitrei shook his head, his expression mocking sadness for Eran. It lasted only a second before a snarl emerged across Dmitrei’s face. The next movement he made was abrupt. Without warning, Eran was thrust backward with enough force to send him entirely across the room. For the second time, he landed against the ladder.

“Think,” Eran panted, “of the money you can make…with the skull of a guardian who leads an entire legion.”

Dmitrei chuckled sarcastically. “Not enticing enough, Eran.”

“Enough in comparison to what? What do you want?”

“For you to live,” Dmitrei hissed, his demeanor rapidly turning malicious.

Then, with all the emotions that filled Eran, he raged, “WHYYYYYY?”

It stunned Dmitrei and me equally.

The true Eran was completely exposed now. Gone were the centuries of trained detachment. He was no longer the impassive colonel. He was a man full of life, driven by needs, trying to reunite with the woman he wanted.

And in purgatory, I wept for him.

Eran’s angst showed openly on his enraged face as he awaited an answer.

“Because at the moment,” Dmitrei said shrugging heedlessly, “it’s your single greatest desire.”

As my comprehension of Dmitrei’s reasoning came over me, I closed my eyes against it. He would not concede. He was a Fallen One, expelled here for committing crimes against humanity. He wasn’t going to do someone the honor of giving them what they want most in the world, least of all a guardian, least of all a colonel. Everything Eran was now worked against him.

“Then you leave me only one option,” Eran said. “To force you.”

Dmitrei was in the middle of a smile when Eran came at him again. This time, however, Eran didn’t stop. He collided with Dmitrei, shoving him off his feet. The two of them landed with a thud on the floor with Eran on top. Then Eran’s arms pummeled Dmitrei, moving at such a blinding pace they became a smear of moving color and didn’t seem to be real. Dmitrei’s head swung from one side to the other until Eran stopped.

“You can make this stop, Dmitrei.”

Eran drew back his fist and waited.

“No,” Dmitrei hissed.

Eran’s fists came down again over and over, stopping when cuts began to form on his face.

“End this,” Eran demanded. “Do it now.”

“No.”

And Eran let his fists fly again. When blood began running from Dmitrei’s nose and down the side of his cheeks, Eran paused once more with his fist in preparation for another assault overhead.

“I won’t leave, Dmitrei,” Eran warned, “not until it is done.”

Through gurgling blood, Dmitrei retorted with his own threat. “Kill me, I will return, and you will still be here without her.”

“Did no one ever tell you, Dmitrei? I have the ability to see injuries that others have sustained internally.” Eran leaned forward, over Dmitrei, making his next statement as plain as possible. “I won’t
let
you die.”

That was the impetus that Dmitrei needed. He hurled Eran over his head and into the wall. If it had been a wall made of wood or mud and straw, it might not have done much harm. But this was a wall from a room carved out below a house and it was made of bedrock.

A sickening crack resounded through the room as he hit and in that instant I felt sick and filled with rage.

Eran rolled to his side, managing to come to a halt facing the room. His eyes didn’t seem to work, lethargically drifting around in their cavities, and a gash across the top of his head began to leak blood, turning his brown curls into flattened, blackened ones.

Anger like I’d never felt before swallowed me whole as I went for Dmitrei. I fought the restraints of my translucent presence, using the energy exploding from me to send my fist into his face.

Dmitrei stood over Eran’s body, victorious, and wiped the blood from his cheeks. When my hit came, it made him pause before resuming his efforts. I kept pummeling him though, even after he gave no further reaction. Eventually, his face was clean and I came to my senses, standing back to assess what more I could do.

“Regrettably,” Dmitrei said staring down at Eran, “it seems that we have both won this fight.”

Then, he stepped away and climbed the ladder, leaving Eran to breathe his last breath alone.

The heartbreak I felt in watching the blood pour from Eran’s head held more pain than in all the times I’d ever felt sorrow combined. Of all that I had witnessed, nothing was more terrifying, more despairing than to watch Eran die.

Breaking down, unable to bear the pain of it, I sobbed, “I’m here for you. I’m here for you. You are not alone.”

I dropped my head into my hands, weeping like I had never done before.

“Magdalene…”

There were three things that stunned me next. First, I realized that his voice was free of pain. Second, it was much closer than it had been seconds earlier. Third, when I opened my eyes, Eran was standing before me.

He stood uninjured, his hair clean, his eyes alert.

“I’ve passed,” he said, amused by the notion.

He exhaled and took me into his arms, where I clung to him. Where we touched a vibration began there.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I mumbled into his shoulder. “You shouldn’t have hurt yourself.”

“I didn’t. Dmitrei did.” He sounded almost entertained by the fact his deception had worked.

“You know what I mean.”

“Magdalene, with you waiting for me on the other side, how can you quarrel with me on that?” He paused and something occurred to him. “Why are you here?” Eran was back to his firm, controlled manner.

I lifted my head.

“You should be in the afterlife.”

“No, I-I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t what?”

I stared up into his blue-green eyes, wondering how it could be so difficult to take a breath without a body.

“Couldn’t what, Magdalene?”

My voice was small as I said the words. “I couldn’t exist without you.” Clearing my throat, I repeated it. “I will
not
exist without you.”

His lips stretched into that arrogant smirk, and this time I didn’t mind it.

A few seconds passed and I began to feel awkward under Eran’s scrutiny. “If you expect me to delve into that-”

“Oh no,” he reassured, “I wouldn’t ask it of you. I know that was hard enough for a recluse.”

“Good,” I replied, owning that label. “I’ve already said more than I wanted.”

“The fact is, I know how you feel about me. You can avoid meeting my eyes, Magdalene. You can hold back your urge to touch me. But you couldn’t hide it in your kiss.”

I had never felt humility before like I did in that moment.

Having never been one to cower from the truth, I realized then, the only person I had hidden myself from was Eran, and he was the one who most deserved my honesty.

“I care for you,” I confessed. “More than I should.”

Why did that feel so liberating?
I wondered.

“Then we have the same problem,” he said earnestly.

I tried to hold back a smile and couldn’t.

“That too must have been a challenge to admit,” he said, meeting my grin.

“It was.”

His shoulders rolled up as laughter overtook him. “Being away from you for the last hours was like spending a lifetime apart…far too long and intensely excruciating.” His hand rose to cup my cheek and again I felt a vibrating sensation where he touched. I leaned into it. “I can’t believe you returned for me.”

“I couldn’t leave you,” I said pleading. “I couldn’t…”

His face contorted in distress, looking like he wanted to take away my ache. With his hand still on my face, he leaned in and placed his lips on mine. Every place he made contact left that irrational, exquisite sensation. He had meant for it to be a temporary distraction, but it became more. Quickly, his free hand rose to my opposite cheek and he stepped forward. At the same time, I slipped my arms around his shoulders and pulled him to me.

He moaned.

Our lips crushed together, setting free the need to express what had been constrained for so long.

My arms slipped from his shoulders to curl around his neck and I pressed my chest up to him. He responded by pulling my hips into his body and arching my back until I was fully pressed against him. My entire being hummed now.

I could feel the muscles in his chest, the firmness of his abdomen, the solidity of his hips, and the pressure of his thighs. We had melded and become one, and yet I still couldn’t feel enough of him. Even when we parted, and our foreheads remained together, I wanted him closer. Then a realization came to me.

“Eran?”

“Hmm?”

“Why don’t we see the tunnel of light?”

Slowly, he lifted his head.

“Shouldn’t we see it by now?”

“It’ll come eventually.”

I trusted him and yet my uneasiness didn’t dissolve.

As we waited, we spent the time the best way we knew how…gazing at each other. I took in every definition of his face, every curve, every dip, every slope. And he did the same with me.

We were entirely alone, engulfed in silence, without any possibility of an interruption and yet when he spoke, it was in a whisper. “I heard you when you screamed at me to stop upstairs.”

I nodded.

“And again when I told Dmitrei he’d find no contest from me.”

I winced at the memory of it.

He seemed perplexed. “Our bond is stronger than we know, Magdalene.”

«Our bond?»

“Don’t you feel it? It’s what tells me when you need protection, what helps me to hear you when you are in a place that doesn’t exist.”

I placed my hand against his face. In turn, he tenderly kissed my palm. When his gaze returned to me, however, he seemed baffled.

“What?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Something…”

His eyes shifted around the room as if he were searching for an answer.

“That bond, that feeling is…it’s ebbing.”

“Ebbing?” I demanded, alarmed.

It wasn’t so much his choice of words but his face. He was still trying to understand what was happening to him.

“Eran?”

“I think I’m…I’m being pulled.”

“Toward a light?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I see no light.”

“Where then? Where are you being pulled?”

Evaluating it, he muttered, “From behind.”

I peered around him and what I saw made me stiffen.

His body, the lifeless body lying against the wall, was behind him.

“No,” I whimpered. “No…”

Eran was staring over my head, but he focused on nothing in his path. He was using all his senses to determine what was happening. “It’s getting stronger,” he warned.

“No,” I said one final time before realizing that pleading, regardless of the amount of desperation that accompanied it, would not stop Eran’s departure.

I seized his shoulders. “Listen to me. You will not be alone. I am here. Do you understand? I will be here.”

“No, you won’t,” he demanded. “You will leave this place and return to the afterlife.”

I shook my head.

“Don’t defy me on this, Magdalene.”

“You like my defiance, Eran,” I countered.

He seemed stunned. “You heard that?”

I nodded, unashamed.

He rolled his eyes to the side. “You’re going to use that to suit your purposes for the rest of eternity, aren’t you?”

I nodded.

He smiled warmly, content in the moment. “I would expect nothing less from you, my lo-”