Affinity (The Guardians Book 1)

by K Fisher

  Nico still remembered her short blonde bob of hair, the warm amethyst eyes nestled within rosy and full cheeks. She had appeared so small and so alone when Nico ran into her, despite the fact that she had her close friends. It was hard to forget what she had been before Danira took full control and instructed Nico bury her body. The woman had been quite a fighter until the end, with the born ability to play music that would leave you in a trance. It was a unique ability, and one that Danira used as often as she could.

  She was nothing but a sponge for the powers she drained, a collector of souls.

  Instead of answering Faye or continuing the conversation, he placed her back on the ground, reaching for the gag nearest her. His large hand grasped onto it, the other on her arm as he brought it towards her face to tie, but her body began wiggling and struggling away from him, her voice growing louder and louder.

  “You don’t want to do this, you don’t want to do this!” Her hands were glowing brightly, desperate to get on him as she tried to get the upper hand.

  “ENOUGH, FAYE!”

  He didn’t, he truly did not want to do these things to her, and there was nothing her power could do to force the thought in his mind anymore than it already was. He already had a hard enough time convincing himself he hadn’t joined up with a side that was too dark to bear. A side that had promised him protection, a place to live and food to eat, a way to get away from the police and what she had claimed would lead him to prison for the rest of his life, away from the pull of the spirit realm. A pull he had been certain would be the end of his life, that had possessed his brother to kill his parents when he was a child.

  At the time, pledging himself to Danira had seemed like the only option. Now, as his body and soul remained her slave to use as she wished, the things he had done for her weighed heavily on his mind. Especially when faced with them so intensely.

  The yells from Faye’s lips were desperate as she tried to get away from him. One strong hand tangled in her long black hair, not hurting her but holding firm as he kept her in place. The other was on Faye’s hip bone, pressing her back against the concrete floor. He kept her there for a moment, his face a mere few inches away from hers as he struggled with what he wanted to say next. Neither of them spoke and Faye stopped moving, trying to catch her breath against the ground.

  Nico’s hand softened against her hip, reluctantly letting go of her body as his hand released the thick, gorgeous locks of her dark hair. The strands fell over her shoulder and into her face, the need to brush the strands away or hold them in his hand once more almost too much for Nico. The way she affected him was like a disease, a torment that only reminded him more of what side he was on, and how a woman like Faye would never accept him.

  Like that was even an option.

  There was a pain in his shoulder and arm, the darkness Aiden had sent him home with was a slowly creeping infection down his body, the dark spiderwebs taking over his skin inch by inch. The fight he had endured earlier was not one to normally exhaust him, but still he remained there with her, body wanting nothing more than to fall to the cold ground and try to get some sleep. His soul was exhausted, far more tired than he had felt in a long time, a battle of temperature as he danced between hot and cold.

  Faye shifted, Nico preparing to stop her from whatever she sought to do next, but instead he caught her gaze fall to his exposed shoulder.

  “That looks like it hurts,” she said, the words softer than Nico had anticipated.

  “It does.”

  There were footsteps behind them, an echo of flat shoes making their way across the floor until they stopped at the open door to the cell. Nico’s body tensed but he never once looked away from Faye’s eyes, the two of them captured in the moment as they challenged each other to make a move to run or punish.

  “Faye Schree, it’s a pleasure to meet you so formally. Unfortunately, it has only been in passing before,” Danira’s thick accent rang out through the room, her tall frame filling the doorway to the cell as she observed her pet and her prisoner on the ground. “Looks like you two are already getting better acquainted.”

  With her words, Nico slowly rose from the ground, taking a deep and pained breath before his dark brown eyes turned to look at Danira. The dark mist of his power had already started to billow out from his feet, consuming his legs and rising upward.

  “Lock the cell behind you, Nico. I’ve got it from here. I’ll see to the unique wound my brother left you later tonight once I am done dealing with Faye.”

  Nico’s body disappeared from view, dark mist all that remained as it trailed through the air, slamming the cell door shut with the force of its exit, the key dropped in Danira’s outstretched hand before she was left alone with her prisoner. Danira’s hand closed around the key and lowered it to her pocket, movements slow and deliberate as she made her way away from the door and towards the front of the cell where Faye sat.

  “Don’t even try to influence me with your voice, my little fairy, I have more Affinities within me than you could even dream about and if I have to kill you, I will. Besides, I’ve always wanted to bend others to my will with only my voice. Collecting each of your abilities is absolutely necessary, you know. Keeping powers like this in the hands of reckless children will only plunge the world into pain and suffering.”

  “We’ve done a pretty good job to taking care of things so far,” Faye grumbled back, adjusting herself so she was seated upright once again.

  “No, no. You have it wrong. You simply think you are helping those with no connection to the spirit realm. You believe you are keeping the realms separate and that is right for those on this earth, you’re wrong. Affinities are powerful, beautiful things that we have been blessed with from birth. We should never be kept away in a realm, forced to live in our memories while the rest of the humans are allowed to go where their spirits find rest. You and your little group come from a long line of powerful Affinities, a long line of people who thought what they were doing was right and just. In the end, they were keeping the dead trapped. I can promise them freedom, they will do anything for me, dear Faye. The world needs a change and the bringer of life shall be that for them. Hazel is special, her life will be a sacrifice for an even better world being built.”

  “Bringer of life? Are you kidding me?” Faye spat, shaking her head until the thick strands of her onyx hair swayed back and forth. “You’re just searching for power, there’s no bigger picture here, no lesson to be learned. You’ll try to take down each and every one of us until all those with a power, living or dead, are under your control. I know this story. Now, instead of sitting there monologuing, why don’t you leave me the fuck alone.”

  “It’s a pity I have to keep you alive for now, an even bigger pity you are such a nasty girl, little fairy. Perhaps I can help to teach you some manners while you are in my care.” Danira’s hands were extended in front of her, waving in the air as she closed her eyes. With each word she murmured under her breath, the room around them started to change.

  “Going to put me in the spell you threw Hazel into? Too bad I already know it’s fake! There’s no way to keep me in there if I can break it, idiot,” Faye taunted, not daring to use her power against Danira, but unable to stop herself from prodding the evil woman nonetheless.

  “Are you so certain of that? I’ll spend no more energy here. It’s time to collect your friends,” Danira growled, her voice rumbling around the room as if it came from the very walls around them, an echo of many different tones and voices atop each other, all blended to leave behind a powerful promise that chilled Faye to the very bone.

  A darkness took over, spreading over Faye and filling the entire room until nothing could be seen. Danira’s footsteps were heard as she slowly made her way back up the stairs and away from her prisoner.

  In the darkness, Faye’s screams echoed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  There was a thud and groan less than a half second before Hazel hit the bottom of the abyss w
ith Aiden. Her landing was softened by his sprawled body. They both hissed out breaths of pain, Hazel had somehow fallen on Aiden’s elbow, knocking the breath out of her body as she rolled off of him and onto the grass beside her.

  Grass?

  Light erupted around them, so bright after the absence of the pitch black tunnel of nothing they had fallen from. Hazel was blinking back the sunshine as she shielded her eyes, slowly pulling herself to her feet alongside Aiden as they struggled to understand what was happening. Her body tripped backwards, speckles eating at the side of her vision as her stomach lurched. The field she stood in was swaying and fading from view, a spinning collection of colors she wanted to escape.

  Aiden’s strong hand tucked under her arm, forcing it around his neck as he offered her his side to lean against. No matter how much Hazel desired distance to digest the situation at hand, she allowed him to steady her body against his, welcoming the touch and the stability he brought with it. His hand was at an awkward angle on her arm, avoiding touching her skin directly, despite how he tried to help her.

  “Okay, okay. Where are we now?” Hazel inquired, finally feeling human as the scene around her stopped spinning. Reluctantly, she ducked under Aiden’s arm and away from his side to further investigate where the spirit realm had dumped them.

  “We are in the fields of our home, still in the spirit realm. I’ve seen these lands from outside the window, they are all houses and apartments now,” his voice was soft, blinking back the brightness as his crystal blue eyes looked down at her.

  “Okay. I just need to focus or something…” But Hazel was exhausted, the muscles in her arms and legs twitching at random as she fought both the urge to run, and to fall to the ground and take a nap. Clearly whatever she had done had taken quite a bit of her energy but she’d be an idiot to think there wasn’t an expiration date to the amount she’d be able to do.

  “Hazel you need to rest, just for a moment. Unless you’ve been very busy in the years we’ve been apart, that probably was a bit new to you. If you rest, we can focus on sending you back.”

  “Sending us back, if you think I’m letting you stay here while I have a say, you’re as stubborn as I remember and twice the idiot.” The words were venomous, Hazel not looking at her Guardian as she forced her legs to take her a few steps forward and away from him. Looking around, she found all further words escaping her.

  There were only a few homes and buildings she could see, the rest of the land was separated with massive fields of vegetables, and fenced in livestock. There were cows as far as she could see, and just across the field rested her familiar childhood home. There was a grey haze that spread across the field, stealing the bright colors from the land as they were plunged into a world of dusty brown. Behind her, Aiden took a staggered step forward, a curse escaping him.

  “I haven’t felt pain in a long time, I am getting my fair dose. I assume, somehow, you’ve not brought me back to human form but about as close as I can come. So you’re to thank for the fight earlier and the fall.”

  “What fight earlier? Also, I don’t know how we didn’t splatter our brains out all over the grass, and I’m not taking blame for shit,” Hazel murmured back, eyeing a cow that had caught sight of them, head rising above the long grass as it stared in their direction curiously.

  “Hostile,” Aiden said, wiping his hands down the front of his suite as he evened the fabric along his torso, finally looking to the house in the distance. “Your friends are at the house in the human plane. As a plane jumper, we’re going to get you there and see if you can’t merge the two realms temporarily inside and get yourself back to them,” he paused “Get us back to them if you insist. It seems you are giving me very little choice in the matter and I want you out of here just as much as you do.”

  Hazel looked over her shoulder at him, silent as her eyes searched his familiar face. “Okay, let’s get going then,” she said directly, extending a hand towards him. Instead of grabbing for his hand, her fingers beckoning him roughly to follow her before she started making her way through the long grass. The blades clung to her jeans, leaving behind brambles and dandelion seeds. “So somehow you have the Affinity of death back, huh? Seems weird to me your psycho bitch sister is hellbent on killing Affinities but she’s life, and you want to protect others but you’re death. How exactly does that work?” she shot over her shoulder.

  “I - Well I don’t quite know if there’s really a reasoning behind-”

  “So, question,” Hazel interrupted, kicking at a branch in her way, frustration and her own desperate need to get to the house appearing to amplify with each step towards the cows. “Danira is your sister, I figured that much out. She has power over life and the ability to drain power and life from others with Affinities…which, by the way, is the worst cocktail of powers I’ve ever heard of. I’ve just now plunged into this world and I think that’s a badly written ‘evil criminal mastermind’ character that can’t be stopped. How the actual fuck are we going to destroy someone who can do those things? Do you even have any ideas? Can’t you use your newly rediscovered powers to send her to the spirit realm once and for all? Insight here.”

  The only response to her angry words was a barked laugh that warmed her instantly, a laugh that brought her back to a cozy time in her life when things had been simpler and her life had not been on the line. She turned around to face him, stopping when she ran into the brick wall of his chest. His hands moved out to steady her, Aiden’s mouth still turned upward in a sad smile.

  “You are certainly something, Hazel the Plane Jumper,” he murmured, looking to her lips before his eyes trailed back to her light brown eyes. But they did not focus there, instead they flashed to look beyond her shoulder. When his eyes widened in surprise, Hazel whirled around to see what he was gaping at.

  Her family home stood out before them on the hill, the darkening sky behind, carrying storm clouds towards them. But there was something off about the house, something bright, as though a red aura surrounded the windows and doors, red smoke drifting upward towards the sky to meet and be consumed by the storm clouds above.

  That was when it started to click for Hazel and the fear settled in.

  Aiden had begun to run, Hazel following close behind as they stumbled through the field towards her old home, cows disrupted and moving reluctantly as they raced through their home. As they got closer and closer to the house, Hazel knew what she was seeing had been correct, a deep dread sinking into the pit of her stomach. The red aura in the windows, pouring out into the sky looked just like…

  “The house is on fire.”

  Behind them, a terrible groaning filled the air, the dark storm clouds sliding into place and casting a darker shadow down upon them. Hazel looked over her shoulder and a terrified scream bubbled out of her, alerting Aiden immediately as he stopped running to look at what had alarmed her.

  They both knew better than to stick around to find out if what they saw could possibly harm them, and based on his reaction, Hazel was certain the spirit realm did not produce things of that nature often. Which meant it very easily could be a gift from Danira.

  The grass behind them was being consumed by a black mass, everything the mass touched shriveled until it was nothing upon the ground. The evil energy started to pour over the livestock grazing nearby, their agonized sounds filling the air as they became nothing but bones left behind. The substance raced on, biting at the gardens right behind their ankles as they ran.

  Hazel’s chest was heaving, her body being flung forward as fast as she possibly could, but Aiden was faster and the darkness was reaching for her. It was gaining speed and fear gripped her every step as she realized there was no way she’d be able to make it to the house in time, if that was even a safe place for them to escape this evil.

  Suddenly, Aiden turned around and grabbed for her, swinging her forward as he lifted Hazel into the air and over his shoulder. With a grunt of pain, Hazel clung onto him for dear life as her body bounced w
ith each sprinting step he took. Facing the darkness that came for them, her eyes focused on the shimmering black swirls of color as they bubbled over the earth below, entranced by the lava-like eruption of death. In the middle of it all, racing towards them, was the dark being she had seen in Danira’s spell. The thing that had followed the woman in the stroller as she crossed the street in front of her car.

  The black power at its side rose upward into wings, blue eyes watching them as it ran across the field towards the home.

  That was when she realized Aiden’s hand that held her was glowing a soft blue as well, the veins on Aiden’s skin were black and spiderwebbed, the color trailing up the sleeve of his suit jacket. Hazel said nothing, facing the darkness once again as they reached the home and Aiden started up the stairs to the front door, taking them two at a time.

  He didn’t reach for the door, foot rising and kicking at the old wood, wood that looked nothing like the door she had been accustomed to. It bent inward, Aiden throwing his body and hers inside with the red aura of the fire just as his own power, death, consumed the home.

  Caden was pacing outside the reading room, looking down at the phone in his hand routinely before glaring at the door.

  “Just go inside, she’s been in there long enough,” Tucker called out from down the hallway where he had been scoping.

  Caden gave him a sharp nod, only moments away from having made that very same decision himself. He opened the door, taking a few steps inside before pausing. Hazel’s body was slumped down in a chair, her head resting against the wall with her long brown hair in her face. It only took Caden a stunned second before he jumped into action, rushing over to her and placing two fingers at her neck, pressing into her carotid. Pleased with her rapidly beating heart, Caden sighed, sitting back on his haunches on the ground as he recovered from the brief wave of panic.