He has found a loophole in their laws that I slide through. I’m not Fallen and they can’t prove right now that I’m evil, I surmise. “Oh. I can choose anyone to fight for me?” I ask in confusion, but he shakes his head.
“No, you can only choose me,” he replies in a gentle tone.
Preben breaks in and says, “She may choose whoever called out ‘champion.’ I believe that it was just about everyone in the room, so she may choose anyone,” he clarifies for me.
“No,” Reed refutes with authority, pulling my chin back so I’m looking at him. “You may only choose me. I have earned the right to fight for you. I will not let you put your life in someone else’s hands. You must choose me,” he says, and my whole body goes cold.
“Maybe I can fight her…if they let me rest a little bit. I’ve been training and I’m getting pretty good—” I say as I wobble a little on my feet. The room is spinning and nothing feels that real to me anymore, like this is all a silly nightmare and I will be waking up any moment. A look of alarm crosses Reed’s face as his hand goes to my forehead. It feels so cool to have it there that I never want him to take it off of me.
“Genevieve,” Reed’s voice is stern as he shakes his head at me. He is absolutely adamant about fighting for me. I look over at Zee and he nods to me, indicating that I have to pick Reed if I know what’s good for me.
“But… I can’t live without you. I tried and it was like I was dying a little more every day,” I whisper to Reed, and see that my words make his eyes soften. He crushes me again in his embrace. “What do I need to do in order to choose you?” I ask him in a soft tone.
“Just say my name,” he breathes against my neck in the sexy voice that I can’t resist.
“And, they will kill me if you die?” I ask for clarification, because I need to know that I will be following him if he leaves me.
“Yes, but I won’t lose,” he says with assurance.
After closing my eyes and praying, I call out the name of the one who means everything to me. “Reed,” I say, feeling his body relax against mine. All of the tension is leaving him as he holds me close. Then, lifting me in his arms, he places me in Zephyr’s waiting embrace. My heart refuses to beat properly as it rests against Zephyr’s chest. I can hardly breathe; I can only get air in shallow gasps. Zephyr is trying to calm me down by speaking to me softly in Angel while petting my hair.
This is worse than anything I could have imagined. I would rather be facing Brennus again with Faolan, Goban, and Declan ready to carve me up, than to be standing here while Reed takes on the extremely agile and fatal Power who wants us dead. God, this is so painful, I think as Zephyr pulls me back from the center of the room. Zee is eyeing all the other angels suspiciously while his arms remain around me. Preben stays close to my side as well. I’m not sure now if he is guarding me from escaping, or just making sure nothing happens to me. He keeps looking at me with a concerned expression, but I can’t focus on him while Reed and Pagan are listening to the council speak to them, probably giving them their instructions.
Weapons! I cringe, panicking as Pagan selects a battle-axe and a spear-like weapon. This weapon has a wicked blade on the end of it, made to pierce and slice. I don’t even have a name for it because I have never trained with something so gruesome-looking. Holding my breath as Reed selects his weapons, I am confused, seeing him pick two small knives that look very much like spades on a deck of cards. Although these knives are sharp, they are no bigger then the palm of his hand. They don’t even have traditional handles on them, but small, notch-like, horizontal holders that fit between his fingers. Zephyr grunts when he sees Reed’s choice of weapons.
I pale and look at Zephyr’s face. “What, Zee?” I ask, because I need to know what he’s thinking.
“Reed is avenging you,” Zephyr says with approval in his voice.
“Why do you say that?” I ask, as my lips turn grim. My eyes skim over every muscle and contour of Reed’s perfect shape. The white, Egyptian-like sarong that he has on makes his charcoal-gray wings stand out in deep contrast.
“His weapons are very intimate. He will have to get very, very close to her to kill her and it will be extremely painful and…personal,” Zephyr explains. Reed remains still and calm, not even flexing his muscles to display his strength. I can’t read anything about him. I don’t know what he is thinking or which way he plans to attack Pagan. I can’t tell if he is weary, or if his chest is troubling him from the cuts and bruises that mar his perfection. He is blank—incomprehensible.
When Pagan faces off against Reed, I find that the space around me is becoming too small for me to exist in it. The vastness of the space is caving in on me. I feel like the air is too heavy for me to abide, so I have to retreat into myself, to a place where I can detach from the outside world. In this place the noise around me is muffled and the colors are dimmer and nothing really makes much sense. I can watch what is happening from this place because it’s surreal and there is less emotion attached to any of it. It just is and I am not.
The signal, given by Gunnar, means the slaughter instantly begins. Reed melts into the air with a quickness that I can hardly follow. I think that Pagan is not expecting the velocity of his attack either. When she does manage to launch into the air, Reed is there above her, knocking her back to the ground with a slashing blow that leaves a long, jagged slice along her left cheekbone. The blood from her wound seeps out as she tumbles and pivots on the ground, coming back up to her feet only to be knocked back down to the ground by Reed. He slashes her other cheek, causing her to drop her axe from the cruelty of the blow.
Pagan, slashing desperately at Reed with the spear while prone on the ground, catches him in the forearm, tearing open his flesh. He doesn’t even flinch when his arm begins to bleed; he just moves back to evade the next swing.
Something becomes clear to me in the next instant. I realize as Pagan stands, using her spear to try to pierce Reed’s left side while he counters the move by gripping the spear in his hand, tugging her to him and cutting a deep, painful rend into her side, that Reed is by far the superior warrior. It’s no contest at all. He is killing her slow, in pieces and by inches. He is paying her back for every branch she threw at me in the woods, when I ran for my life because I had no ability to do anything else. He is paying her back for chasing me over a hundred miles through the snow in freezing temperatures while I cringed in terror that she would rip out my heart. He is paying her back for every day that we spent apart because I was afraid that Reed would be taken by Dominion. He is paying her back for what the Gancanagh were able to do to me without his protection to aid me. He is killing her in the most ferocious and merciless way because that is what she would’ve done to me, if she had been allowed to fight me now. As I gaze around at the faces of the angels, I see that they feel that this is justice.
I push away from Zephyr and stumble toward Reed in the middle of the room. Zephyr is at my side in an instant, holding my arm back to stop my progression and gathering me to him to pick me up in his arms, but I look in his eyes and I shake my head. Zephyr won’t let me go any closer to the fight, so I call out to Reed across the room, “Mercy… please Reed, mercy… please…” I beg him. Reed stiffens and stills over Pagan who is now barely able to fight back and bleeding from a multitude of wounds. He is owed her death, but the brutality of it is more than I can take. Her pain is killing me.
I learn then that “mercy” to a human means something entirely different than “mercy” to an angel. In the instant between me saying the words to Reed and what happens next, I feel certain that no one would have been able to explain the difference to them. After Reed hears my plea, he kneels down beside Pagan, slicing her throat, effectively dispensing angel mercy in the form of death. Zephyr explains to me in my ear that Reed can’t allow Pagan to live. The council will demand that he finish her and the other angels will see him as weak. Reed has to send the message to everyone that if they hunt me, they will cease to be because Reed wil
l protect me by any means necessary and there will be no other mercy for them except death.
CHAPTER 17
Binding
The war council reconvenes after Pagan’s body is carried away. There is nothing poetic about her death. I find nothing noble in it and I grieve inside because I can’t make sense of it. I’m truly grateful to Reed for fighting her because I know that Pagan would have killed me without hesitation or remorse, but I just cannot comprehend why it had to come to that. Maybe I’m still too human to understand their world. I have to keep reminding myself, that although I see myself as being on their side, it is not how I’m viewed by most of them. I should remember that I’m a pawn in this world, I think, standing between Preben and Reed with Zephyr on Reed’s other side. We are near the middle of the room now, but we are no longer on the raised platform, just near it, which somehow feels less conspicuous than being on it.
I can’t understand anything they are saying because they refuse to speak English. Reed and Zephyr are answering a stream of endless questions. I’m fairly sure that I wouldn’t be able to follow the exchange, even if it was in English, because they talk to each other so rapidly that I hardly know that there is any pause between one of the council members speaking, and then Reed’s or Zephyr’s reply. Every once in a while, they all pause and look at me with baffled expressions on their faces. I don’t shrug when they do this because I know they hate shrugs.
I have to fight hard to stay alert and focused on what is happening now because I’m at a loss for what to do next, since the plan that I had made before I came here has already been executed. My plan, to last long enough for the divine angels to see why Reed and Zee could be confused about me, has been carried out successfully. Well, I think it’s been successful, because they all look confused about me now, except for Reed and Zephyr, because they are used to me.
Coming here, I didn’t have any hope beyond that, no plan B. I thought that if I achieved my plan, it would be enough. Whatever happened after that would be okay because it would essentially be over. No more running, no more hiding, no more endless days of trying not to think of Reed from one moment to the next. No more Gancanagh or Brennus…no more of anything. That had seemed peaceful to me on my frantic journey from the cave of the Gancanagh to the island of the Chateau. But now, I feel warmth radiating off of Reed next to me. I smell him; his sensual scent is in the air, on my hair, all around me and I find that I crave more…I want so much more, but I didn’t negotiate for more. I didn’t negotiate for my life. How much time do I have left? Will they let me say goodbye?
Slowly, I become aware that everyone in the place is looking at me again. Reed, standing just next to me, has a pained expression and Zephyr looks worried, too. Is my time up? I wonder as Reed’s fingers tense in my hand. “The council would like to question you further about the Gancanagh. They need specific information: how many Gancanagh did you see, how do they operate, who is their leader, and they want to know if you have precise locations?” I nod to him, because I have that information. “The council realizes that you were injured in your struggle to get away from the Gancanagh. They want you to tell them as much as you remember. Can you do that?” he asks, and I nod again.
“May I have some water?” I ask, because my throat is as dry as it was last night right before I started trippin’ out. Luckily, the extreme hunger isn’t back, in fact, I don’t have any appetite at all. I just want to crash on the floor and not move for a long time.
I am given some water, and then the questions begin. I answer as many as I can as thoroughly as I can, but I don’t name Finn. I know it’s a small point in this because he will be wherever Brennus is, but I feel something for him—a messed up sense of loyalty for the help he gave me when I needed it, and I can’t overlook it despite his hand in my capture.
I also don’t mention Russell because I have to protect him. I tell the council that I managed to get a grenade from their arsenal and I threatened to blow them all up if they didn’t let me go. It sounds plausible enough and no one seems to notice the lie except for Reed who studies me with tightness around his eyes. His jaw goes rigid when I explain the cell and not being given enough water for days, but when I talk about my fight with Keegan, he has to pace the room until I finish. He is deathly still when I speak of Brennus, hanging on my every word and studying the marks on my neck when I am again asked to show them to the council.
Maps are brought out and I try the best I can to pinpoint the location of the cave and describe the entrance. I tell them that I had dropped the grenade back down the hole once I had escaped, destroying that way out so that the Gancanagh couldn’t follow me immediately. I indicate that there are several ways into and out of the tunnels, but the only way I had been shown was by the big rock that looks as if it has been placed there to hide the cave entrance.
I know that there are several holes in my story that are going to come back and trip me up later. When they analyze the fact that I had been bitten twice and wouldn’t have been in any condition to walk, or do much else, I hope that they will think, that because I do not share the same physiology as angels do, it will make my story more plausible. Maybe they won’t expect me to react like one of them to a bite from a Gancanagh because I’m also human. Reed knows something is not right about my story and I can only hope that he realizes that I’m protecting Russell.
It’s apparent from the way the war council is barking out orders that they are mobilizing to check out my story. Units are being assembled as I notice angels that appear to be officers, getting their orders from Cillian and Ursus. For the moment I am forgotten and that is just fine with me. I drift off into a daze again while things heat up around me.
I come crashing back to reality when I feel a Power behind me grasp both of my arms, hooking them together. There are several more Powers approaching me in a casual mien. Reed argues with them in Angel, like he is trying to reason with them. As I look around with wide eyes, I see concern on Preben’s face as he watches me being held, but he doesn’t try to stop the Powers swarming around me. Intense fear radiates through me when I see Zee turn away so he doesn’t have to see what is coming.
My breathing become erratic as I hone in on the Power angel coming toward me. His face is not registering any enjoyment, rather, he looks like he is here to do a job and the quicker he gets it over with, the quicker he can be doing something else. Killing scenarios pulse in my mind when he lifts the knife in his hand. He has pulled it from a brazier that a couple of the other divine beings had brought in. The knife blade is glowing evilly and his intentions are clear to me. He is going to kill me with that freaking hot knife. I struggle to get away from the Power holding me—I can’t hear anything now but the pounding of my heart. I didn’t get to say goodbye, I think, watching the blade coming closer to me.
Then, something in me snaps and I stop futilely pulling my arms forward. Instead, I use all of my strength to flip my legs up so that I launch my body up and over the head of the angel holding me. I straighten my arms while in the air and manage to wiggle out of his grasp by using velocity and force. When I come down behind him, I plant my foot in the middle of his back and thrust him toward the knife-wielding angel in front of him.
Preben catches me just as I try to evade another angel coming up on my left side. I attempt to roundhouse kick Preben, but he catches my leg easily, scanning its length as he holds me to him. A deep growl sounds from behind me as Reed approaches us. “Who has been training you?” Preben asks, continuing to hold my leg, while he smiles.
“Zephyr trained me…and Bruce Lee,” I reply in a stilted voice, trying to pull my leg back, but Preben won’t let go of it. His face is registering humor and something suspiciously like desire.
“Let her go,” Reed orders Preben. Preben’s eyes lock on mine. He lets go of my leg gently, allowing his fingertips to tail up my calf as my leg eases down to the ground.
Reed pulls me into his arms. Everyone is watching us again, but I don’t care because I
only have a couple of seconds before someone else tries to kill me so I have to say goodbye. I grasp Reed tight around his shoulders, burying my face in his neck. “I’m sorry, Reed—I don’t want to be a coward, but I didn’t get to say goodbye to you—I just need to say goodbye. Then it will be all right…I have to tell you… how much I want to…that I need…” I breathe, but my throat is too tight and I can hardly talk, but this is too important to fail at so I try again. “I want to tell you how much I…” the tightness in my throat gets worse so I have to whisper the rest, “I love you.”
Reed’s arms tighten on me. “Shh—they weren’t going to kill you, love—it’s okay—I’ve got you. No one here will ever call you a coward, Evie,” Reed says quickly, trying to soothe me as he rubs my wings gently, making my legs feel wobbly beneath me.
“But, I thought…” I say, choking on my words.
“Shh—it’s okay…” he hushes me, leaning his forehead against mine. “They want to fix the Gancanagh bites on your neck. The wounds will not stop bleeding on their own. We will have to sear them so that they close, and then they will heal,” he explains, continuing to hold me tight.
“So, they aren’t trying to kill me right now?” I whisper, because it doesn’t make any sense to me. Why are they going to keep me alive?
“No. You are proving to be too intriguing to kill,” he says in a soft tone.
“What about you? Are they going to let you and Zee go?” I ask.
“They have not ruled on that, but it looks promising,” he says. My arms tighten on him as hope surges within me.
“We have to take care of your bites now, Evie,” Reed whispers in my ear, pulling back from my embrace to look in my eyes. There is worry and pain in his eyes because he knows that this is going to be painful for me. “Zee. Can you help me?” he asks over his shoulder.
Intuition: The Premonition Series Page 41
