“E?” Her whole body froze. He raked his gaze over her. But it wasn’t condemning, and there was nothing threatening in his manner, the way there had the first time he’d seen her in Gabe’s villa.
It was almost as though he was fighting an internal battle as to how, exactly, he should treat her.
“You really don’t know, do you?” He folded his wings, but she had the feeling he didn’t expect an answer to his question. Not that she had one, anyway. “What a fucking mess.”
A shiver trickled along her spine and she curled her fingers around the necklace, drawing comfort from the ethereal pulse within it. There was nothing benevolent about him, the way there was with Gabe. Yet she wasn’t afraid of him.
He had called her E. Did that stand for Eleni?
Had her fragile hope been true?
Before she could untangle her thoughts to ask him, the earth rumbled, and she staggered. An earthquake in Cornwall?
Except it wasn’t anything as ordinary as that. A violet streak of lightning ripped reality apart, and a dozen nightmarish Guardians emerged.
No …
Mephisto gripped her arm and slung her behind him. Terror snaked through her. Why were the Guardians still after her?
“Explain.” Mephisto’s voice was low. Deadly. He did not speak in English.
He spoke the language of the ancients.
And I can understand him.
A screeching hiss scraped through her nerves, but deep in her brain dormant synapses reconnected and primal pathways reactivated. And then the hisses and shrieks formed substance and cohesion and the most ancient words of all clawed through her mind.
It belongs to us—
Anomaly of nature—
Outside of your jurisdiction—
“No matter what the parentage,” Mephisto said. “You touch the beloved of an archangel and you risk war against all Immortals.”
The beloved?
Gabe had elevated her to the status of a beloved. That was why the Guardians had backed away in Kala’s suite.
Why he had given her his precious archangelic necklace.
So why the hell were they back?
Section 188, Sub-Section 52, paragraph nine point three hundred of the—
“Don’t quote the protocols at me.”
We have the right to take all anomalies in order to maintain the integrity of the universe—
Such abominations cannot be allowed to survive—
The anomaly must be given to us for neutralization—
Slowly, he turned and looked at her, his wings outstretched, protecting her from the Guardians’ sight. Awe radiated from him in lethal waves.
“You didn’t just come back. You came back as the one thing outside of an Immortal’s protection. A trans-dimensional being.”
How had the Guardians discovered her dual heritage? And then she remembered. She’d torn her arms and left traces of her blood in the Voids when they’d rescued Evalyne.
Terror hammered through her. “I’m condemned because of my parentage?”
Mephisto’s eyes turned crimson with rage. But it wasn’t directed at her.
“Aren’t we fucking always?”
* * *
Gabe
Gabe pulled on a fresh shirt and ignored the trepidation that washed through him. He was an archangel. Trepidation was something mortals suffered from.
It didn’t change the facts. Apprehension snaked through him at his planned confrontation with Aurora.
The outcome wouldn’t change the way he felt. He’d always love her. But he had to find out if Zad was right. He’d rather his heart shattered into a million pieces a thousand times over, than have broken hers a single time.
He picked up her necklace and dropped it into his shirt pocket. Without warning, vertigo slammed through him, so violent that he staggered against the wall for support.
The oxygen burned his lungs, and a formless, primal, terror struck him, twisting his gut and squeezing his heart as the image of Aurora filled his mind. For a split second he saw the repellent shadows of the Guardians looming over her and denial crashed through him.
It wasn’t possible. His love protected her. Yet the dread ground through him that it wasn’t over. It would never be over.
Aurora, his beloved, was in deadly danger.
Chapter 34
Aurora
“There must be something you can do.” Aurora took an involuntary step closer to Mephisto as the Guardians began to fan out around him. “You’re the top archangel and you’re powerless against them?”
“Did I say that?”
“You mean you can help me?”
There was a crazy gleam in his eyes. “Nephilim were always flesh and blood. But you’re Eleni. I don’t understand you. You shouldn’t exist, yet you do.”
She briefly touched his arm, and he didn’t incinerate her for her presumption.
“So, what now?”
He cursed in the language of the ancients. She understood every word, and it was breathtaking in its imagery.
“If I twist enough of the sub-sections, dig deep enough into the protocols, there’ll be something I can use. There’s nothing that specifically cites Nephilim can’t return as trans-dimensional.”
He didn’t need to finish that thought because she already understood. No provision had been made because Nephilim never returned.
He swung around, wings fully extended, to face the enemy. She hitched in a breath and then, from the corner of her eye, saw a lone Guardian beyond Mephisto’s peripheral vision.
And it was pointing a gleaming, cylindrical weapon directly at her.
* * *
Gabe
Gabe arrived at the exact place where he’d first met Aurora. In a nanosecond he saw the Guardians surrounding her, saw Mephisto turn his back on her—and the weapon aimed at her.
No …
He didn’t think. Just reacted and teleported directly in front of her to deflect the beam. Regret burned through him that he couldn’t ask her, couldn’t give her the choice. Because there was no longer any option. For her to live, he had to take her back to his island.
Their gazes collided, and fear and endless love reflected in her eyes. Then she shoved at him with her mind, a psychic punch, trying to push him from the path of danger, just as she’d tried to physically protect him from the Guardians on the day they’d met.
Time stood still, balanced on the precipice of eternity. Her psychic barriers opened for him, and their minds linked together in a way he had never imagined. Vivid images smashed through him, memories saturated with Eleni.
Her eyes, her laughter. Her fragrance.
Vibrant visions of their life together. Flashes of memory that were familiar, but they weren’t his.
They were Eleni’s.
The memories he’d lost last week came flooding back. When she had breached dimensions, the psychic core that forever bound him to his beloved had burst into life.
Instinctively, he’d connected with the pure essence of Eleni—of Aurora—on the astral planes. And against all laws of physics he’d crashed through them, with only one thought thundering through his being.
Eleni was in danger. And this time I can save her.
The knowledge seared through him, and as he wrapped his arms around her, a cosmic blast from the Guardian’s weapon smashed into his back and arrowed through his chest.
What the fuck …
It shouldn’t hurt like this. But their technology was alien, and the very air they breathed within the Voids was corrosive to archangels. Who knew what damage their weapons might inflict? He’d forgotten that, when he’d leaped in front of Aurora. Not that it would have made any difference.
He glanced down and saw her necklace glow from inside his shirt pocket. How the hell is that happening?
She sagged in his arms, her head falling back and eyes flickering shut. He clasped her tight against his chest, acidic fear scorching through his heart.
She couldn�
�t die. He should have been able to save her.
I failed.
As blackness descended, the glow from her necklace expanded, connecting to an identical white-blue beacon of light that radiated from the archangelic wings around Aurora’s throat.
Despair consumed him, and then there was nothing.
A red-hot psychic flame seared through Gabe’s brain and he shot upward, heart pounding, mouth dry. Every bone in his body ached, and through his blurred vision, he could make out only two things.
He was attached to a drip. And Mephisto, whose primitive psychic prod had slammed him awake, was glowering down at him.
Wait. A drip? He grasped the needle with uncoordinated fingers and pulled. It hurt like shit and he collapsed back onto the bed. He was in his own bedroom, on his own bed—and Aurora was by his side.
He shoved himself up and leaned over her, fear spiking through his chest. Why was she hooked up to a drip and all those monitors?
“Don’t touch her needles.” Mephisto sounded rabid. “I need to talk to you.”
Fuck that. Gabe began to unwrap the dressing around her hand. He could heal her in a heartbeat without all this primitive junk surrounding her.
Zad appeared from nowhere and gripped his wrist. The fear punched deeper and he glared at the other archangel.
“What’s the matter with her? Why can’t you just heal her?”
“She’s no longer injured,” Zad said. “We were simply keeping her unconscious. Same as you.”
“What?” He pulled his wrist free, and damn if it didn’t feel like he cracked a couple of bones in the process. Disjointed fragments of memory surfaced.
Aurora was Eleni.
Somehow, that wasn’t important right now. The only thing that mattered was that Aurora was okay.
“If she’s no longer injured, why are you still keeping her unconscious?”
Mephisto unfurled his wings.
“Forget about E for just two seconds, will you?” He loomed over Gabe, and his eyes flickered crimson. “The Guardians fired on an archangel. According to the protocols, that gives us the right to decimate their ranks. But since they claim this fucking archangel appeared from nowhere after the beam was fired, the case is not clear cut.”
“Aurora’s not being sacrificed to the Guardians.” Gabe glared at Mephisto and ignored the worrying fatigue that snaked through his body. “If Armageddon is what they want, then Armageddon is what they’ll get.”
Mephisto offered him a feral grin. “I’ve spent the last six weeks negotiating with those bastards. Six weeks while you lay here, oblivious. And I finally managed to broker a deal.”
Gabe reared off the bed and grasped Mephisto’s shirt.
“Six weeks?” He’d been unconscious for that long? It was the only thing his bruised mind could latch onto. And then the rest of Meph’s comment thudded through his brain, and that didn’t make any sense either. No one negotiated with the Guardians.
“The blast from the Guardians went straight through you and hit Aurora,” Zad said. “You were knocked out and she almost died. She would have died. There was nothing we could have done to save her, Gabe. Except—we’re not sure how—your souls entwined. You kept her alive. Gave her time to heal.”
A shudder crawled along his spine. Souls didn’t entwine. It wasn’t possible.
He released Mephisto, who hadn’t retaliated, and looked down at Aurora. Since the moment they’d met, so many of his long-held convictions had crumbled.
Just because he’d never believed souls could entwine, didn’t make it so.
Once, he had believed Nephilim could never be reborn.
“Yes, you kept her alive.” Mephisto glanced at Aurora before turning his blazing gaze back to Gabe. “But at what cost? Your fucking immortality.”
“What?” His immortality? He’d given up his immortality so Aurora could live?
“Do you really think I would have let the Guardians take her? She’s one of ours.”
So Mephisto knew. But he hadn’t seen the threat of that lone Guardian.
“We don’t know how it happened.” Zad gripped his shoulder. “We tried to separate you, but it wasn’t just a case of you keeping Aurora alive. The connection went both ways. Your life forces were as one.”
I’m mortal. The concept was too alien, too immense.
Except …
If he was mortal, he wouldn’t have to exist for countless centuries without her. Their souls were entwined. Neither could live, nor die, without the other.
Wild hope flared, illuminating the dark abyss of his no-longer endless future. Aurora would be reborn, and so would he. And they would find each other, two halves of the whole, life after life.
For eternity.
“In exchange for holding off your Armageddon—and let’s face it, as a mortal you’d be fucking useless in that battle—the Guardians have agreed to relinquish all rights over Aurora and her direct bloodline.”
She’s safe.
Mephisto folded his wings before continuing. “I told them I made you a mortal because of your actions. Couldn’t have them suspecting we had no fucking idea how it happened. I thought it’d take a lot to convince them, but they accepted it right away.”
Zad tore his gaze from Aurora. “Her parents are safe too. Meph constructed a magnificent defense. He argued that they were immune from the Guardians’ jurisdiction because it was love alone that had allowed her mother to breach dimensions. Since the Guardians have no concept of love, they had no rebuttal.”
Gabe gave a hoarse laugh. For millennia he’d cursed the fates that he couldn’t turn back time so he could hold his beloved once again. That, somehow, given a second chance, he’d be able to thwart his goddess and save the lives of those he loved.
He would have sacrificed anything, everything, to change the past.
And then he met Aurora, and for the first time in forever found someone worth surviving for.
Someone worth sacrificing everything for.
He had craved redemption, never believing it could be possible.
Yet in a paradoxical twist, the universe, for once, had got things right.
* * *
Aurora
Aurora stirred, and strong arms tightened around her. She smiled against Gabe’s shoulder and a comforting sense of floating on clouds filled her mind.
Where was she?
Slowly she opened her eyes. She was lying on top of Gabe, near the woods on the outskirts of her village, and the early dawn glow gave everything a mystic haze.
For endless seconds she basked in the warmth of Gabe’s embrace, inhaling his unique scent as unformed images drifted like feathers through her languid psyche.
And became solid.
The Guardians.
Where had they gone? What had happened?
She raised her head and her gaze locked with Gabe’s. And she remembered.
“You saved my life. Again. You’re making a bit of a habit of it.”
“You saved mine first. A long time ago. I just never knew it.”
Memories flooded through her mind, of another life, another time. Memories of Gabe, of Helena, and Zad.
Eleni’s memories.
Mine.
“I came back.” Her voice was awed. And then she linked to him telepathically. “And you found me.”
“If I’d known, I would have searched for you, Aurora.” Millennia of guilt and regret seeped through every word. “I would have found you years ago. You would never have put yourself in danger with the Guardians, if only I’d found you.”
“Stop it.” She speared her fingers through his glorious hair. “How were you to know? We always believed the legends were true. And maybe they were. Maybe Nephilim and their descendants can only be reborn with an extraordinary pairing of trans-dimensional DNA. Something that even the ancients, with all their knowledge, had no concept of.”
“Or my fucked-up goddess lied to us, and the demons, right from the start. That sounds more likely.”
“It’s possible we might never know.” She gave a shaky sigh. “But I’m going to dedicate the rest of my life in trying to find out. If it’s happened once, it can happen again. Helena could come back too. It’s possible. You know it is.”
She saw the hope, the longing, glitter in his eyes as he struggled to overcome millennia of ingrained inevitability. Finally, he rolled onto his side, still holding her, so they faced each other.
“Yes.” So much heartache echoed in that one simple word. “It’s possible. Anything’s possible.” His mesmeric gaze ensnared her, the way it had so many years ago. The way it had, once again, just one week ago. “I’m no longer an immortal.”
“What?” She pressed her hand against his heart, and something grazed her palm through the material of his shirt. “But you’re an archangel.” A different kind of fear spiked through her. “Did the Guardians’ weapon destroy your immortality?”
“No.” There was a smile on his face. Why wasn’t he totally freaking out? “It was the price of having my wish granted.”
Her heart ached with all he had lost. “It’s a high price to pay, Gabe.”
“It really isn’t.” He tugged her closer. “All that matters is we’re together. Remember I told you I’d accumulated several fortunes over the centuries? You can have a state-of-the-art lab on every continent on the planet, if you want.”
“Excessive.” She gave him a watery smile. Was it her necklace he kept next to his heart? She slipped her hand into his pocket and pulled out the delicate chain.
And gasped.
“Shit.” Gabe stared at the shard of fossilized charcoal that vaguely resembled her substitute archangel wings. “What the hell?”
She curled her fingers around the necklace at her throat. No ethereal pulse warmed her flesh. A small, silent grief washed through her. It’s dead.
He unclasped the necklace from around her neck. The rainbows were scorched, the gold destroyed. The magical, beautiful life that had survived for millennia had been extinguished.
Redemption: A Realm of Flame and Shadow Novel Page 26
