The Guardian (Callista Ryan Series)

by Alexandra Weiss

  She felt Emeric pat her knee. “We shall try again tomorrow,” he said. “Each day, your mental capability will become stronger. Soon, this will seem second nature to you.”

  Callie nodded, but dreaded the thought. She never wanted to do that again—it was horrible.

  She heard Emeric stand up. She opened her eyes, and saw that both he and Alex were at the door now, about to leave. Just then, she remembered something that Shay had said.

  “Wait,” she said. The men stopped and turned towards her. She stood up, holding the arm of the couch for balance as she swayed a little.

  Alex stepped towards her, but stopped himself. It seemed as though the move had been involuntary.

  “Alex,” she said, “Shay said something this morning. I think she meant you’re the person to ask.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Yes?” he asked coolly.

  “Why is everyone so concerned with what you think about what I do?” she asked awkwardly, not quite knowing how to phrase her question. “I mean, yesterday, when Emeric wanted to call a meeting, it seemed like the idea had to be run by you first. Why is that?”

  “Because he’s your protector, of course.”

  Callie turned at the sound of a new feminine voice in the room. There, in the window, leaning against the frame like some beautiful portrait, was the blond woman from last night. She tilted her head sympathetically at Callie’s amazed expression.

  “Oh, how sweet,” she said, and hopped down from the window in a graceful pounce. “You didn’t think he was spending so much time with you because he actually liked you, did you?”

  “What are you doing here?” Alex growled.

  The harshness in his voice made Callie jump a little. The woman didn’t seem to hear him. She walked towards Callie with slow, deliberate steps, her vibrant blue eyes dancing with mockery. She circled around Callie’s back, appraising her.

  “Well, you’re not very handsome, are you?” she asked in a sweet tone.

  “I made my orders clear,” Emeric said coldly. Callie swallowed, unsure what was going on. “You are currently interfering in this business.”

  “And you, Alex,” the woman said, coming to a stop, looking over Callie’s shoulder at Alex. Callie turned her head to look in the same direction, and saw that Alex was glaring at the newcomer, his eyes narrowed, the tendons in his neck protruding. The woman clucked her tongue at him. “I see that you are spending all this time with the new girl, and I must wonder—what would Addy think?”

  “You should leave,” Alex replied slowly, evenly.

  “Oh, but I’ve just come to extend my welcome,” she said in a bubbly voice, placing her hands on Callie’s shoulders with a wide smile. “You know, the village and I have been talking about you. I must say, for someone who hasn’t been here very long, you have surely made a lot of enemies.”

  “Leave, disobedient child,” Emeric hissed cruelly.

  The woman laughed, the sound tinkling throughout the room like wind chimes. “Oh, Emeric, what are you going to do? Banish me?” she asked, defying her leader with each word. “I am your chief liaison to the Sirens. You can’t touch me.” She returned her eyes to Callie. “In fact, maybe it would even be my duty, as a member of this village, to simply kill this spy now.”

  Callie gasped as the woman took her chin harshly in hand. She winced at the brutal hold, but then the pinch turned into a caress. “Hmm?” the woman asked, softly stroking her fingertips along Callie’s chin. Callie saw the patronizing condescension in the woman’s eyes, the look that a parent would give a child who had made a silly mistake. “Come now, you must have known this would happen,” she murmured. At first, Callie thought she was talking to her, but then the woman continued, “Bringing a human into the village? And one who can Perceive, no less. Quite foolish, Emeric. This way, she could be a spy neither to the humans nor the Sirens.”

  Callie felt herself beginning to shake, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Every gesture the woman made alerted Callie to the fact that this was her killer, finally. She had been on the brink of death for days; now, at last, she came face to face with the person who would put an end to the uncertainty. This woman would snap her neck before Alex or Emeric could so much as move.

  “Let her go,” Alex whispered, his voice pleading.

  The woman sighed, her hand running soothingly up the base of Callie’s neck. Suddenly, she yanked her fingers through Callie’s hair, pulling her scalp backwards, throwing Callie down savagely onto the floor. “Alright, fine,” she said as Callie’s head smashed forcefully into the wooden floor, causing an explosion of red spider webs to fire across her vision. The woman stepped over Callie’s body, closer to Alex and Emeric. Callie felt tears spring to her eyes, but forced herself to hold them in check. There was no use crying anymore.

  “Serena,” Emeric said, his voice deep and steady. “That was incredibly inappropriate.”

  “Why?” the woman asked. “You’ll just have to kill her anyhow, after you’re done using her. It’s not like she’s anything precious.”

  “Actually, she may prove to be,” Emeric said. “But that is not what I meant. Your direct defiance of my orders is disturbing and disrespectful, especially as it is founded upon an incorrect premise; Callista will not be killed, and had you killed her yourself just now you would certainly have found yourself banished despite your political position.”

  “What?” the woman asked, her skin paling. Her face contorted, and she hissed, “What do you mean, she won’t be killed?”

  “We will be returning her to human society once she has played her part,” Emeric explained calmly.

  There was a long moment of silence. Everyone was frozen except for the blond woman. Her fists were in balls, her face was beginning to turn red. Her arms were shaking in anger. Suddenly, she let out an unbearable screech of anger, and whipped around, lifting off of her feet before Callie could blink. She soared towards Callie, her face etched in fury.

  Alex was too quick this time. He lunged forwards and yanked on Serena’s wings, pulling her backwards and heaving her across the room. She smashed against the wall so forcefully that splinters ran out from the point of impact like fireworks.

  Before Callie had time to react, he was scooping her up and flying out the window in one liquid movement, and Callie felt as though she had left all of her internal organs behind. She barely had time to inhale, they were airborne so quickly.

  After a few seconds, Callie got her bearings, and looked around. They were flying low in the forest now, which Callie suspected was intentional. Alex didn’t want to risk the woman chasing after them and seeing them flying atop the canopy. She looked behind them, seeing if they were being pursued. But there was no one.

  “Who was that?” Callie asked, her voice breaking.

  Alex looked ahead grimly, focused on the destination. After a moment, he replied.

  “Serena.”

  Chapter Nine

  The Falls

  They landed atthe grassy brim of a pond. Almost as soon as Alex landed, before he had even put Callie on the ground, he checked the sky for interlopers. When he was sure that they were alone, he placed Callie at the pond’s edge, though he continued to watch the horizon.

  Callie was still trembling a little. The thought that she had been on the verge of dying not ten minutes before was something that she wouldn’t soon get over. To hide her quaking knees, she sat on the pond’s lip, letting her bare feet sink into the cool water.

  She thought about the woman, Serena. She knew she’d seen her before, first when the Siren had come to collect the girl and then again on the beach last night. What she couldn’t understand was why the woman hated her so much, and what she had meant when she’d told Callie that she’d made a lot of enemies. Callie had barely spoken to anyone in this forest, and those to whom she had spoken were the ones keeping her here.

  A shiver ran up her spine at the memory of the woman flying at her, the picture of an enraged harpy, in her eyes the threat of bru
tal murder. She turned to Alex.

  “Here’s what I don’t get,” she said. “Why did she want to see me dead? I mean, even before Emeric told her that he wasn’t going to kill me, she had threatened to.”

  Alex didn’t answer for a moment, focused on his task. “Serena,” he began, and then his voice faded as though he were unsure how to continue. “She’s very territorial,” he said vaguely.

  “Territorial…of the forest?” Callie asked.

  Alex nodded, his eyes shifting across the sky. Callie got the impression that the forest wasn’t what he was talking about. But then she remembered something else that hadn’t made sense to her at the time, and had the creeping suspicion that it was related to this.

  “Who’s Addy?” she asked.

  Alex’s shoulders stiffened. It was barely noticeable, but Callie saw it. She could tell that she’d hit a nerve. She turned her whole body to face him, crossing her legs on the grass, unable to resist pouring out the rest of her questions.

  “And what did she mean about you being my protector? Is that why you’ve been my personal secret service, why everyone has to consult you about me? What does that even mean?” she asked.

  Alex closed his eyes, his shoulders rising and falling in a deep sigh. After a moment, he turned, and settled into the rock beside her. He looked out across the pond for a long while before he drew breath to answer.

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “I am your protector.”

  Callie waited, unsure of what to do next. She didn’t really understand why this was such a big deal. “Okay,” she said. “So…what does that mean? I mean, it’s no secret that you’re always hanging around. I kind of figured that Emeric had put you on watch-Callie detail.”

  Alex smirked. “It’s a little more complicated,” he said.

  “How?”

  He turned his eyes on her, meeting her with a questioning gaze. She knew he was wondering how much he could tell her. “Do you remember Emeric asking you about the meteor shower which fell over your town on the day you were born?” he asked.

  Callie nodded, swallowing. His eyes were such an uninhibited brown, exactly the color of coffee. When he looked at her like this, she felt herself leaning forward, towards him. It was like she was half of a magnet, and he was the opposite piece, pulling her in. She traced his face with her eyes. His strong features, each distinct and separate, melded together in beautiful harmony. His was the kind of beauty which was so obviously unattainable that something in Callie deflated a little. And yet, as he sat there and spoke to her, something else thrilled to the attention. She couldn’t begin to understand why this was.

  “That day, the day you were born. That was the day that I first met you,” he said.

  Callie blinked, the trance suddenly broken. She could barely understand those words, though, they were so odd.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Every few hundred years,” he continued, “a Guardian is born. From what I understand of Shay’s findings, certain humans are carriers of the gene that causes one to become a Guardian, but only once every few decades is a human born who has the genetic make-up to actually mutate.”

  Callie had sudden flashbacks to her eighth grade classroom, when she’d last heard about alleles and genealogy.

  “That isn’t all that needs to happen, however, for an infant to have the potential to be one of us. The buds of the wings are always present in the child, having already started to form in the womb, though they won’t begin to grow until the child reaches puberty. But when one is a baby, the buds are at a high risk of being killed off by infection. Meteor showers allow the child to have a chance of fighting off these infections. You see, meteor showers emit electromagnetic pulses which have very specific distinctions. These pulses stimulate an increased production of lymphocytes in the newborn, which are what the child needs to have in order to build an especially strong immune system. In that short gap of time during the meteor shower, any baby that is born has the chance to become a Guardian so long as they have the correct genetic makeup.”

  Callie’s mind struggled to absorb this. “But…how? How do you know who it is?”

  “As soon as word is received of a meteor shower, Emeric is obligated to send a protector to find the newborn. Sometimes, if there is more than one child born in a town on the day of a shower, the protector becomes responsible for watching all of those children, and checking in on them throughout the years until one of them begins to show signs of wing development,” Alex said. “More often than not, none of them will.”

  “So what does that mean, though?” Callie asked, confused. “What does that protector do once they find a kid? With wings, I mean.”

  “Once the child’s wings begin to grow, it is no longer possible for the child to remain with his or her family, and the protector retrieves the child and brings him or her to the village. At least, that is how it is supposed to happen.”

  “What happens then?” Callie asked. She was mesmerized by the story. Maybe it was just the way he was telling it, though. His voice was low and soft, and his words wrapped around her like a blanket. She could have listened to him talk for hours, and suspected that she was only asking him questions so that he would.

  “Well, hopefully, it is a normal case, and the new Guardian can live with us for a very long time. In certain cases, though, there are abnormalities.”

  “What do you do with those cases?”

  Alex looked at her again, searching her face. “We have been wondering the same thing,” he murmured.

  Callie blinked, and shook her head to gain some clarity. “Wait. Back up a second. You said you have known me since the day I was born?”

  Alex smiled again, though he was trying to hide the laughter tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Yes,” he said.

  “But….” She was unsure how to attack the million questions that had risen in her mind. How did one go about voicing seventeen years’ worth of questions? How was any of this supposed to make the slightest bit of sense to her? “I’ve never seen you,” she settled on, sounding dumb even to her own ears.

  “No,” Alex said simply. She huffed at the monosyllabic answers.

  “How?” she asked.

  “I’ve only performed routine check-ins twice every year or so, and have only stayed a few days at a time. And during those times, I’ve stayed hidden in trees, or on rooftops. It is amazing how little people look to the sky.”

  Callie shifted, an inexplicable sense of inadequacy overwhelming her. “What were you looking for?” she asked.

  He lifted a shoulder, his prominent wing heaving and falling with his shrug. “Nothing,” he replied. “I was monitoring your progress. I made sure that you were always somewhere that we could find you, that you didn’t move anywhere unexpectedly. As soon as I saw your wings, I would have brought you here,” he said, looking around at the forest. Callie lifted her gaze, and realized in awe that she had been destined to come here since the day she’d been brought into this world. The trees swayed above her head, the vines and leaves rippling in the wind. The fog which coated this bottom layer of the rainforest clung to the trunks in a slow-gliding hush. This mysterious, dark, often terrifying place had always been meant to be her home.

  She felt Alex’s attention. She looked at him and saw sadness behind his eyes, and he said, “But you never grew wings.”

  She felt the sorrow in his words. “So…what does that mean?” she asked. “Am I going to be one of you?”

  Alex shook his head and drew a breath, and then turned his whole body to face the pond once again. “I don’t think so,” he said, a hollowness in the sentence.

  She waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. “But why not?” she asked. “How can I Perceive, and not be one of you?”

  “Not even Emeric knows,” he said, not meeting her eyes. Maybe it was because he always looked at her, always kept his gaze riveted on her face, but the way that he studiously did not look at her now made her wonder what he was h
iding. “I can tell it upsets him to be so unaware. He spends time like these wishing that Milo were still alive. Milo knew…everything.”

  Callie saw the emotionless mask return to his face. She was coming to realize that he wore this mask when he was at his most vulnerable, when he didn’t want anyone to see how he was really feeling. She placed a hand on the back of his, which was splayed across the grass to prop him up. He turned his face to her fingers, which were wrapping around his now.

  “If he were here today, he would know what to do with you,” he said, his voice slightly hoarse.

  Callie hesitated, and then said sincerely, “I’m sorry.”

  He glanced at her strangely. “It was seven thousand years ago that he died, Callie. It would be absurd to mourn him today.”

  “Still,” Callie said. “I know what it’s like. To lose someone you look up to, I mean. And…I’m sorry.”

  He kept his eyes focused on her face for a long time. She let him stare at her as she held his hand, and the atmosphere around them changed slightly. It wasn’t so empty anymore, now that they were in it together. At last, he nodded in silent thanks, and returned his gaze to the slowly churning pond.

  She watched his profile. Only then did she remember: he had called her Callie. No one here seemed to know that this was the name she preferred. Everyone addressed her with her full name. But then, she supposed he would know this preference, if he had been watching her throughout her lifetime.

  That thought was so unreal. He had seen her making memories that she couldn’t even remember now. He had seen her awkward years, her toddler days. He had been around when she had worn braces, when she had gone through junior high, when she had started high school.

  She shook her head and turned her attention to the water. The thoughts were too strange. She couldn’t fathom that he had actually been with her for all of that. And yet she couldn’t shake the feeling she’d had that first time she’d seen him—something about him was just too familiar, she couldn’t discard his words.