Messenger (Guardian Trilogy Prequel 1) (21 page)

“But I understand you don’t want to admit it. You want to deny it. You want to fight it. You want to be on equal ground with me. You want to prove your worth. But the fact remains we are not equal. We each have our strengths. And we each have weaknesses. Yours is most definitely pride and while it is an incredibly appealing trait it also makes you vulnerable without me, especially if the fight that’s coming does in fact arrive.”

When he was finished, I gave myself time to process all he’d said. But above everything that stood out to me was his overwhelming need to protect me.

“Thank you for your concern.”

“I’m serious, Magdalene.”

“I know you are.” There must have been something in my voice that convinced him because his shoulders dropped several inches and he exhaled.

I attempted several times to voice the question on my mind, not being sure how he would take it, but finally I asked, “Is that the lecture you gave Bailey?”

“No,
she
would listen to me,” he said.

For some reason, that struck me as funny and even though I was crushed inside, I smiled. “Do you honestly think the Kohlers will come back?”

At that point “If Horace doesn’t return, they will be back and this time they won’t bring just one more. They’ll bring everyone they can gather and…” He heaved a sigh.

“And what?”

“And they’ll all be coming for you.”

I sat there, allowing that realization to sink in. My mind didn’t seem to want to accept it. The prospect was just too daunting. Yet deep down I knew Eran was right.

“We need to get you back to camp,” he said, noting that the sun was beginning its descent. “You’ll have messages to take.”

When we arrived at the camp, a stream of people had collected from the head of a tent and ran down the length of another. Several groups from our camp had gone on raids two nights ago and I knew by the sheer number of those waiting that it hadn’t been a successful one.

Eran had done his best to convince those in command – of which there were many in a very loose structure – that the Kohlers had ignited this war, but years of abuse by the nobles had taken its toll. The people were bent on blood. More arrived every day looking for it. Unfortunately, they seemed to be losing more of it than the nobles. To quell the amount of it being spilled, Eran met with those who called themselves the leaders to offer suggested military tactics. But because of his youthful appearance and the fact that they were unfamiliar with him, they politely sent him on his way. Therefore, he did his best to help where he could, which was to oversee my protection as I delivered messages to the dead.

The last hours of the night were spent taking notes from friends and family of the newly departed and it was well into the evening when the last guest stood from the single chair placed before mine and exited the tent.

As she left, I slumped against the back of my chair, exhausted and ready to give this body a rest. Absentmindedly, I lifted my fingers to my shoulders and began to rub away the stiffness.

Another pair of hands came over my shoulders and my mind quickly presumed them to be Eran’s. He had been the only one behind me and was now the only one in the tent which usually housed official meetings on the rebels’ strategies but was otherwise unoccupied at night.

Without thinking about it, I rolled my shoulders backwards into his palms. The heat from him was soaking into my tight muscles and it was an unavoidable relief.

“Was that a moan?” he asked.

“Did I make a sound?”

“I think you did.”

I released a half-laugh, too tired to offer anything more.

“It was a good sound,” Eran whispered and I felt his fingers stiffen at his candid acknowledgement. It was the first time he moved them since he laid them on me, but I got the distinct feeling he didn’t want to stop there and yearned to curl his fingers around my shoulders and feel me more fully.

A constrained sigh escaped him, followed by a deep, forced inhale.

His thumbs moved, sliding down the dip between my shoulder and neck. They were tender, barely a whisper against my skin. And I knew he was exploring me, just that small and subtle part but taking his time not to miss an inch. When his hands reached the base of my neck, they paused and I thought he was done, would now pull back and step away. But his thumbs moved up over the top of my palms, embracing my hands.

I was acutely aware of his scent, the quickened pulse in his thumbs, his restrained breathing.

I wanted to ask him what happened to the girl he’d fallen for, where she was now, why he was touching me so tenderly when he still had feelings for her. Or was I wrong? Had he not been drawn to my lips at the river? Was he simply trying to relieve me of sore muscles now?

No, I heard his excitement and I felt the softness of his strokes.

He opened his mouth to speak but the tent flap opened, bringing him to a sudden halt.

From the light of the lantern set beside the door, I recognized one of the two faces instantly. So did Eran, which was why his hands jerked away from my shoulders.

Our guests had seen the contact between Eran and me. They knew it was inappropriate and it left them in awkward silence. They blinked from him to me and back to him.

“Colonel,” said the large, swarthy skinned man with a rumbling voice, and tipped his head at Eran in respect.

“Claudius,” Eran replied stiffly.

The girl beside Claudius, who I knew to be Eran’s previous ward, tipped her head also, unsure of what else she should do. Her voice was sweet, coy, and melodic. “Eran,” she said, to which he didn’t hesitate to respond.

“Bailey, come in.”

She stepped forward where her delicate frame seemed to be swallowed by the tent and stood uncomfortably to the side. Her chiseled nose and slender, fragile fingers seemed even smaller than I remembered. This was likely because she was dwarfed by Claudius.

In the light, he was even more massive, bigger than any other guardian I’d seen. His neck was twice the size of an ordinary man’s, his hands large enough to squash a grapefruit in each palm. Eran couldn’t have found a more robust, able man to take care of his original ward.

Claudius walked in hunched, or his head would hit the tent’s ceiling, and met Eran midway. There was tension in the room now.

“I come with news,” Claudius announced.

“News from where you are stationed in France?” Eran asked, speculating.

“Yes, Sir. It involves your ward.” Claudius’ eyes flickered to me and back to Eran.

“I don’t have a ward,” Eran replied flatly, to which I smiled.

Claudius seemed confused. “But she’s a messenger,” he said, tipping his head at me.

“Magdalene is a messenger. I have not been assigned to her.”

Bailey’s forehead creased in puzzlement.

Claudius’ eyes lifted to Eran and the brows above them furrowed. “Do you know where I can locate her guardian, Sir?”

“She does not have one.”

If finding Eran and I in an intimate pose and if learning that Eran, a guardian, was not overseeing me, a ward, wasn’t enough to shock Claudius, this latest revelation was. Their mouths fell open. They forgot to breath. They seemed frozen in place.

To be fair, I didn’t blame them. It was unheard of for a messenger to exist on earth without a guardian. Not only did it oppose the judgment in which every messenger must have a guardian, it also subjected me to a far greater probability of risking eternal death. In short, I was breaking just about every decree that had been established between guardians and messengers.

“Yes, Sir.” Claudius didn’t seem to know where to go from that utterance.

Unencumbered by these disclosures, Eran redirected the conversation back to the more important part. “What news do you have regarding Magdalene?”

“I had intended to tell her guardian and give him or her the opportunity to decide whether to divulge it to her.”

In an understated way, Eran asserted, “You don’t have that option.”

“Yes, Sir.” Claudius looked at me again.

“Claudius,” Eran said to regain his attention. “You’ve traveled from France. You’ve brought your ward with you. Certainly whatever knowledge you have must be worthy of those efforts. So I implore you to overcome your indecisiveness and reveal it…Because quite honestly my irritation is growing.”

“Yes, Sir.” Claudius, who remained ducked, finally addressed me. “You have a bounty on your head.”

Claudius and Bailey, who hadn’t moved from where she stood just inside the entrance, noticeably shifted with unease as they awaited my reaction.

“What’s a bounty?”

Claudius glanced at Eran, who conceded stiffly, “Go ahead.”

Claudius, who exhaled through his nose, didn’t seem to enjoy being the one to deliver disconcerting news. I wondered how he would fare in delivering some of the messages I had over the years.

“A bounty is a campaign against someone. The first person to claim the head on which the bounty is laid is rewarded with esteem for having succeeded. The campaign is rare and almost always used in retaliation, and at times for entertainment but…”

“This is not one of those times,” I concluded.

“No, it is not.”

“And why would they place a bounty on me?”

“It is being said that you stabbed a stake through Horace’s neck.”

“I did.”

He paused, taken aback by the brazenness of my confirmation as much as by the unquestionable veracity of it. Horace was one of the most treacherous Fallen Ones. For a small, big eyed girl to inflict such harm on him was remarkable.

“Eran helped,” I said.

Needing neither compliments nor inclusion, Eran forced back a grin.

Again, Claudius glanced between Eran and me in evaluation, and I could see that he thought there was something between us.

“When you did,” Claudius continued, “They were waiting at his point of return.”

“Who is ‘they’?” Eran asked, tensely.

“Everyone.”

“Two people by the name of Kohler, a boy and a girl, collected others to await Horace’s return. It was a test to prove their theory. They said you had an ability to permanently end the life of their kind.” He paused to await a reaction to disprove it, but Eran and I showed no sign of dispute. “Horace didn’t believe them and volunteered. He was confident he would return so when he didn’t, they recognized you as a threat.”

No one spoke for a few tense seconds as we digested that information.

“And how do you know this?” Eran asked, taking command.

“I overheard it.”

“From?” I pressed.

Eran turned to me. “Claudius is an intermediary between me and my informants.”

«Your…informants?»

“I keep guards at specific points to keep me educated on the workings of our enemies. This level of information would certainly have reached them. You can trust Claudius’ account.”

“So it is true?” Claudius asked unexpectedly. “You have the ability to destroy Fallen Ones?”

I had done it twice now, with Cedric and now Horace. It was feasible to assume I could do the same with the rest, but the theory was unproven. What if Cedric and Horace were anomalies, unexplainable deviations?

Despite my self-doubt, Eran had confidence in my ability.

“Yes,” he declared, “she can.”

The way Claudius and Bailey stared at me then was very different from Eran. They were unnerved, not understanding or knowing the limits of that power made me peculiar to them. Eran, however, held unwavering admiration for me.

“When can we expect the first wave?” he asked Claudius.

But I was the one who stepped forward.

“They’re not coming together?” I asked.

Claudius turned his large head my way and in the darkness of his skin I saw a rigid expression. “They don’t need to.”

“Fallen Ones work better in smaller groups,” Eran explained. “They’re less detectable and therefore more lethal.”

“How many can we expect?” I asked.

“The word is still spreading, but there are those who are moving.”

“How many?” Eran pressed.

Claudius’ response was grim. “I’m sorry, Sir. There were too many to count.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: FAMILY

T
HE VERY NEXT DAY
I
LEARNED
just how small our “world” was on earth. It seemed that despite our significant differences, guardians, messengers, and Fallen Ones alike tried their best to keep tabs on one another, and when I awoke I discovered the Fallen Ones weren’t alone in hearing about my bounty. Plenty of messengers had themselves fallen to earth and they, along with their guardian, were just now beginning to hear of my infamy.

“So, where is the little felon?” a deep male voice bellowed just outside the tent. It was a voice I recognized, except that now it was speaking in old Germanic language. “I’ll bet she’s in here!”

I groaned and sat up, waiting for Alban to enter. He did just as I lifted my head toward the tent’s opening to catch the flap flying inward and up. A large head covered primarily with black bushy facial hair peered in. The man beneath the hair beamed, narrowing his eyes to near slits and producing a hole of teeth in the middle of his face.