Zero Rising: Soldier of Light Chronicles Book 3

by Ireland Gill

  “Don't get any ideas, Evika.” His voice shook me from my trance. “I'm still angry with you.” I looked up at him with a slight smirk, hoping to find the same expression on his face. To my relief, he looked down at me giving me a look of reassurance. It was all I needed for my contentment. The darkness within me had lifted completely and I felt somewhat myself again, but my head and body ached as if it had just gotten off of a bad ride. Especially my wrists. I wasn't about to ask for any favors from him, though.

  “Hayden, I'm so sorry,” I whispered to his arm. I felt his embrace grow slightly tighter to show that he heard me. We stared down the gravel road, watching the moonlit warehouse. Nothing but silence.

  “It's not entirely your fault, you know,” he said in a small voice as he laid his cheek against my hair. “Something in you was out of control, and I'm guessing a huge part of that was out of passion. I know that you loved her so much, your mother, but it's not up to you to decide the fate of others. You must remember this, Evika, or your fate will become unpleasant. This time, we were lucky.”

  I squeezed his arms tightly and winced as pain shot through my wrists. “I understand.”

  Hayden must have felt my grimace and scooted me away from his lap to kneel in front of me. He took my hands into his and examined the bruises he'd made and gasped as if someone had punched him in his gut. “Oh Evika, I'm so sorry!” He rubbed them lightly with his finger tips and hung his head low, shaking it from side to side. “How am I ever to be forgiven now that I've done this to you?”

  I pressed one hand against his cheek and lifted his chin with the other. “Completely forgivable, Angel-man. Who knows how far I would have run?” I let out a forced giggle. “You had to tackle me.”

  Hayden showed me a reluctant smile and took my hands. “You are so much bigger than life that I sometimes forget how delicate you really are.”

  “Bigger than life.” I snorted. “I don't even have a life. I'm just some girl who was thrown into this mess and somehow managed to have you in the process.” I thought about what I said and wanted to say something more. “You're the only reason I live at all anymore.”

  He sighed. “You've always had a problem relenting to my compliments about you, but there is one fact that you can never argue,” he said as he pulled the hair away from my eyes.

  I felt my playfulness coming back to me and threw my arms around his neck as I leaped back into his lap. “And what fact would this be?” I said as I dangled my neck back to look straight into his eyes.

  His expression was solemn, but his tone was joyful when he told me. “The meaning of your name, Evika. It means life.”

  I was being reminded again, the very thing my father told me in my dream. Life, I thought. There was a sick and twisted, yet beautiful irony to that. Nonetheless, I was alive, and thankful I’d been spared yet again during my weakest of moments.

  Chapter Sixteen If You Give a Dog a Cookie...

  We walked back down to the warehouse to check on Carter’s body and retrieve my stuff. We didn’t walk in a hurry. I actually wasn’t looking forward to seeing the mess I’d made, the mangled body, the anger with which I maimed that terrible man.

  “Do you think it’s still there?” I asked. “The body, I mean.”

  Hayden thought for a moment. “I actually don’t know. This has never happened before.”

  “You mean no Soldier of Light has ever gone ape-shit on a Seeker before? The history of this legend has been boring until I came around,” I joked.

  Hayden rolled his eyes at me lovingly. “Well, we know you couldn’t have made him any more dead than he already was.”

  I nodded.

  “The looming question is what will the Watcher do, or has already done.” Hayden sighed. “I’m pretty confident with my speculation, but we can only guess....because in theory, if the Seeker wasn’t meant to move on yet, that Watcher won’t be able to take the soul back for itself,” Hayden explained. “Thus, no Phantom.”

  “More like, no second Phantom. We still have the first one to deal with.” I exhaled nervously. “I hope your theory is correct.”

  We walked a little further, only a couple hundred yards away from the building. I must have appeared nervous, because Hayden put his arm up gently to mine and slowed our walking to a halt.

  “You don’t have to go inside,” Hayden said as we got closer to the makeshift entrance.

  I pulled at my jacket, overlapping the front a bit after feeling the slightest bit of a chill.

  “I’m ok. It’s my own mess.”

  He shook his head. “True. It is your mess.” He nudged me in the shoulder. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to make you go clean it up. It’s not like it’s a pile of dirty dishes.”

  I looked at him quizzically. “That’s exactly what you should do, Hayden. My mess. My problem.”

  He smiled solemnly, and raised his hand to put a stray hair behind my ear. But when he looked past me toward the building, his smile faded. “No,” he shook his head. “It’s Jericho’s problem. And it won’t go unpunished. The Council will see to that. I will see to that.” He spoke with such conviction, I had no choice but to believe him.

  “What will they do to him?”

  “My guess?” He thought for moment. “Because they always have to be fair, there will be a trial.”

  “A trial?” I wrinkled my nose at the idea. “Why would they give Jericho a vacation to hang with humans?”

  Hayden’s head shook as he kept his eyes on the building. “Not that kind of trial. A real one.”

  “Oh,” I said softly. “Well, I hope the punishment is forcing exile on him.”

  Hayden gave me a quick glance. “That may only be part of it. The charge will most likely be great enough that they’ll also break him.”

  I stopped short for just a second as we walked, almost tripping. “You mean, break his wings?”

  “Of course.” Hayden shrugged. “He’s a traitor.”

  I should have known it was that simple: Defy the Council, get punished. I relished at the thought of Jericho getting what was coming to him, but was almost afraid my face would show how much I’d been happy with the idea that the giant angel on the Guardian Council who made it no secret he’d never become human by choice, could possibly have those dark wings ripped clean from his back. It satisfied me to know that, even though I’d wandered off causing such chaos for my Guardians, I’d set free a secret that asshole thought he got away with. Justice would be served.

  Hayden and I made it to the beat up door, the one the Watcher had been banging on to get to the Seeker. My stomach immediately dropped. We saw the dangling metal of where the hinges once were, the door laying against the frame haphazardly. The Watcher had finally broken through to get inside.

  “Shit,” Hayden muttered. Then he stepped over the lowest part of the broken door to walk inside. “Come on,” he said to me quietly.

  Before I followed, I closed my eyes and took a long, deep breath. I hoped his theory about the Watcher was correct. I hoped so hard, even though the loud pounding in my ears, the sound of my racing heartbeat. It became even louder as we entered. But it was the only sound I heard, because it was dead silent in that building.

  We went directly to the area of the horror scene, careful that our footsteps weren’t too loud as we entered. I was expecting to see a slumped over, lifeless Anton still dripping of blood onto the cold, gray, concrete floor. But he was gone. There was no Anton. There was no Watcher. There was no evidence of there ever being a scene with the empty chair that sat there. The blood had disappeared.

  “How can this be?” I stepped over to the chair, moving it around, craning my neck to look under the seat I knew for sure in which Anton had been sitting. The tangled rope fell to the floor, slipping from the chair. It was as if he’d never been there. As if I’d never been there. Except, of course, one thing that gave it away – my knives; they were lied out on the cold floor like forgotten items someone had hastily left behind in a hurry. As
ide from the items I’d brought with me to my horror show being left around haphazardly, the place was clean of any crime scene. If you’d even want to call it that.

  I looked over at Hayden. He ran his hands through his hair. “Well...this is new.” He looked around to observe the rest of the area. It surprised me that he wasn’t showing more concern for the matter. His head jerked. “Hey. Look.” He pointed to the corner of the room and went to grab whatever it was he saw.

  My eyes followed to the object he’d scene. It was none other than the beaten up, red castor, tucked away in the corner of the room as if it were afraid to be found, but still made sure it was. Hayden picked it up and examined it. His lips pursed as he looked at the one thing that would give away the answer as to what we’d wondered. Then he turned the castor to show me the part with the sensor.

  I narrowed my eyes. The castor’s sensor was lit up, meaning that something was trapped inside again. All. Over. Again.

  I shook my head, the pit of my stomach churning with all sorts of emotions that made me nothing but sick. “I can’t.” My head shook more violently as I backed away from him and the object.

  Hayden dropped the castor lower and to his side. “And you won’t, Evika. You don’t have to.”

  “Yeah, but how do we fix this? That asshole is back in that damn thing now.” I had a sudden compulsion to flee, disgusted with idea. “I mean, what the hell? He still wants saved?”

  Hayden looked down at the castor again, narrowing his eyes. “He wants to stay hidden.”

  I let out a nervous sigh. “How do you figure?” I wiped away a stray tear I hadn’t realized trickled down my cheek, then bent down to grab all of my knives from the ground.

  “It was probably the only place left to hide before that Watcher got through that door.” He gestured to the broken metal sitting in the door frame behind me. Then he looked down at the metal orb again, tossing it up in the air and catching it, as if it were not anything but a play thing now. “We’ll throw it back.”

  I was in the middle of stuffing everything back in the duffel bag – the clean rope and the clean knives - while I crouched on the bloodless cement floor, showing no evidence that I’d just killed (or rekilled) a murderer.

  “If we throw it back, what happens to him?”

  “Not sure.”

  “You’re not sure of much of any of this, are you?”

  His brow raised. “This has never happened before, remember?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just nervous about all of this. I feel terrible about, well, this whole night.”

  Hayden nodded solemnly. “Yeah, I know you do.” He let out a long breath while he studied me for a minute. “But you’d do it all over again anyway, wouldn’t you?”

  I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to answer that question or not. In all honesty, we both knew the answer. I didn’t have to say it aloud. Thankfully, it wasn’t silent much longer for me to wonder any further.

  “Come on.” Hayden tossed the mangled castor into the duffel bag and zipped it up, slinging it over his shoulder. “We’ll figure it out. I promise. For now, let’s just go home.”

  * * * * *

  We headed back home, Hayden on his Harley, and me in Aurora. The drive back felt unsettling, and I couldn’t really put my finger on the reason for it. It very well could have been the nausea haunting me again. Once I’d pictured the images in my mind of the damage I’d done to Anton with my knives, I cringed. My strength exceeded beyond whatever I thought I had in me, handling this man and maiming him to avenge my mother. There’d been so much darkness in me. So much hate and disgust.

  I shook my head to rid of the images in my mind as a set of bright headlights on the highway passing in the opposite direction brought me back to the present. I looked straight ahead to focus on Hayden riding in front of me. I thought about all of the things that I’d done, all of the rules I’d already broken. I thought about my temper, and my strong will that sometimes overshadowed my good decisions. Well, let’s be honest, my anger and my headstrong self always seemed to take over.

  But there we were, driving back home, moving on to the next steps to clearing up whatever mess I’d made that night. And there I was...forgiven all over again by Hayden. Countless times since we’d met, I’d challenged rules, bent them, broken them...ignored them. But this angel-gone-human would forgive me every time. As always, I questioned as to whether or not I even deserved his forgiveness...or deserved him in my life at all.

  We pulled onto our street, and flashing red lights immediately drew my attention. I was struck with panic when I saw these lights were from an ambulance parked in my driveway. I hastily pulled next to the curb in front of the house behind Hayden, and rushed out of the car. My mind raced with scenarios of who might be in danger. I couldn’t move fast enough, whipping past Hayden to get around the emergency vehicle.

  “What’s going on?!” I yelled as I ran, then was given a brief moment of relief when I saw Jaxon standing on the porch. He was holding two cell phones. One of the screens was so bright, it lit up his entire face. His eyes had a distant and empty stare as he looked up, finally noticing me.

  “Jaxon.” I went to him, getting a closer look at him. He had a slack expression as he slowly bent down to sit on the porch step.

  “She’s –” His chin was trembling. “She’s gone.” I could hardly hear him.

  “Who’s gone, Jax?” Hayden was at my side then.

  My brother clutched the phone with a flowered case and the brightest screen, looking down, squeezing his eyes shut. “Rose,” he muttered through a strained voice.

  “Omigod, what?” was all that came from my lips. “What do you mean Rose is gone?”

  His bottom lip quivered. “Gone,” he said distantly. “They are taking her to the hospital. Nothing is confirmed, but I know what I saw.” He squeezed his eyes shut tightly for a moment, then opened them to look at us directly. “I know what I saw.” Conviction in his voice.

  Hayden crouched lower to level his eyes with Jaxon’s. “What did you see, Jaxon?”

  Jaxon narrowed his eyes and zeroed in on Hayden’s. “Darkness.”

  A feeling of dread immediately washed over me as soon as I heard the word from my brother’s mouth. I met Hayden’s glance once I realized he’d shifted his eyes to look at me.

  “Did she say anything to you before this happened?” Hayden asked, but we all whipped our heads around to the front door as the gurney was being wheeled out with Rose’s body laying upon it. The metal wheels clanked against the threshold, and the rhythm of their uneven rolling on the wooden deck slabs echoed underneath the porch roof.

  Jaxon quickly stood, sliding each of the cell phones in different back pockets. “I have to follow them to the hospital. I need to get a hold of her parents.”

  Indigo was the last to follow the paramedics out of the front door. Hayden immediately stood to go and speak with him, so I walked up to Jaxon and embraced him, not knowing what else to do. He welcomed my gesture, and returned it with the same force. He held so tight, as if afraid of slipping away.

  “Jaxon, I’m so sorry. I don’t understand why this would happen.” And I didn’t. I was afraid to ask him what he meant by “darkness,” but I knew it was important. No healthy, bubbly, twenty-year-old girl just drops dead for no good reason.

  “I gotta go,” Jaxon said as he wriggled from my arms that held him around his back.

  I looked up at Hayden who gave me a look of concern as he walked away from Indigo. My hand reached up to my brother’s arm. “Wait, Jax.” I had to know. We couldn’t wait until he was back from the hospital to know what he’d seen. “What do you mean by ‘darkness?’”

  My brother turned to me. The moonlight shone on a tiny tear trickling down his cheek. He sighed. “She was fine. We’d just gotten back from the movie and she was going to spend the night. We were in my room, hanging out on the bed and talking. She said she was really thirsty, so I grabbed her a bottled water from the fridge downst
airs. She guzzled half of it down and seemed fine. Then we—-” he paused for a few seconds, pursing his lips before continuing, “—-we started kissing and she just collapsed on the bed.” His eyes narrowed. “It was like all the life had been sucked out of her in that one second – in that last kiss I had with her.”

  I waited patiently for him to finish a quiet moment again before he could continue. I braced myself for the rest of his story.

  “Her eyes went black...for just a split second. I saw it, right before they closed. And then...” he paused for a moment, seeming to have trouble recalling the next set of words. “And then I felt it.”

  “Felt what?” The words slipped from my tongue before I could even think.

  “The darkness.” He looked me square in the eyes, expectantly, as if I were supposed to be familiar with the experience. “It consumed me.” He brought his hands to his face to wipe the stray tears, and I could see his hands slightly trembling. “It was like I could see the life just leave her body, whatever took her from me, and then it poured into me like it was some sort of emotional weight. This dark, dark weight.” He looked up at me, desperation in his eyes. “I’m crazy, aren’t I? I mean, the paramedics are saying it could be something like a heart attack, but how does that even happen?”

  I grabbed my brother’s hands, feeling them tremble even more as I held them. “Jax, you’re not crazy. I promise.”

  He took in a deep breath and blew air out very steadily, as if trying to calm himself down from breaking into a meltdown.

  “Trust me. I’ve seen, heard, and experienced things that made me think I was crazy, too. But I know I’m not. Reality is truly scary and plain fucked up.” I looked down at our hands and felt his shaking finally calm down a little. Then I looked up into his sad eyes. “Maybe you’re an empath. Or maybe you have some sort of gift, too.” I truly believed that my brother could have possessed a gift, something just as my father and I did.

  Jaxon shook his head and slid his hands from mine. “I don’t want it.” He pulled away. “I just want Rose back. I gotta go.” Then he walked away.