by Ivy Sinclair
Protect Her: Part Five
By Ivy Sinclair
Copyright 2014 Smith Sinclair Books
ebook Edition
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CHAPTER ONE – RILEY
Talk about dropping a bomb that brought the idea of my whole life for the last five years to a halt. I was supposed to be getting Paige out of danger, and instead I could see that she desperately was trying to tell me something that she deemed so important enough that it couldn’t wait. I couldn’t process her words. I froze in place as I tried to wrap my mind around her revelation.
“What are you talking about? My family is dead.”
Paige vehemently shook her head. “No, that’s not true. I saw them.”
There was no way to control my emotions as they bubbled over in my mind. “No, there is no way that is possible.” I tried to control my tone. Paige had been in the clutches of a psycho for less than twenty-four hours, but yet it was clear that the demon official had fucked with her head. “This is what Proctor does, Paige. He manipulates everyone around him to his own ends. He knows you are important to me. He’s trying to get to me through you. You didn’t see what he did to my family. I watched them die.”
I could tell that Paige didn’t believe me, but then another voice cut through the air. “Mr. Stone, I suggest that we make haste in leaving this place,” Abigail said sharply behind me. “The magic that was used to extract your friend is traceable, and Bruno Proctor has the power and skill necessary to track it.”
I whirled around to find the tiny demon directly behind me. I stood twice as tall as her, but she showed no sign of fear at the fact that I towered over her. Her arms crossed over her chest as she regarded me coolly.
“That might have been a good thing to know going in. We couldn’t be more isolated out here in the middle of fucking nowhere Middle America.” My thoughts lasered in on what Abigail was saying. I needed to focus on something, anything other than the idea that Paige’s words could be true. “You sent me into the pits of hell knowing that I’d leave breadcrumbs on the way back? I would have suggested a more secure location.”
“It was irrelevant,” Abigail said. “You know as well as I do that it would have changed nothing and wouldn’t have stopped you from attempting the extraction as soon as you knew it was an option. You would still have risked it anyway to retrieve the vessel.”
“Her name is Paige,” I said through gritted teeth. “She isn’t a thing.”
“And I’m right here,” Paige said, stepping to my side. I watched her look Abigail up and down. Her expression was unreadable. “Who is this, Riley?”
Abigail’s face broke out in a broad smile. She reached out to take Paige’s hands, but Paige pulled away at the last moment. I saw Abigail’s smile drop just a shade, but she covered it quickly. “I am delighted to meet you, Paige. My name is Abigail Pearson. That is Fernando,” she said as she pointed at the silent man staring at us from several yards away. I’d only been in the man’s company for a few hours, but he was creepy as hell. “We want nothing more than to assist you.”
“Assist me with what?” Paige asked.
“With becoming Eva,” I said, taking her elbow and propelling her toward the parking lot. “The rest of the niceties can wait until we’re far enough away from this place that Proctor loses our trail.” I scanned the parking lot of the rest area hoping that someone else had pulled off the interstate since Abigail, Fernando, and I arrived there an hour before. Unfortunately, the only vehicle there was the one that we all arrived in.
Paige squirmed out of my grasp. “What are you talking about, Riley?”
“Things are complicated,” I said. “I’ve discovered quite a few things since you’ve been gone. We need to talk, but not here.”
“Well, you aren’t the only one who has new information,” she said, raising her chin. “But one thing hasn’t changed. I have no desire to be anyone’s vessel. They’ll have to kill me first.”
“It’s not going to come to that,” I said, trying to keep my voice low. Paige had clearly been through an ordeal. I was just relieved that she appeared to be in one piece. “Sometimes you have to make some compromises to get what you want. Abigail and Fernando have other information we need. They also were the ones who knew the spell required for me to rescue you, and gave me the magic boost I needed to get to you. The method may be questionable, but it got the results that I wanted.”
Paige was silent, and I wondered what she was thinking about. If Proctor had been brainwashing her, there might be other issues to contend with, and we didn’t have time.
I tried to picture the place where I found her. It had happened so fast that I didn’t get any clear vision of where she was being held, or even if there were other people around her. I had no way to validate that she was with my mother and sister. I couldn’t allow myself to hope for one second that she was right and that they were still alive. I firmly believed that whatever she thought she saw was nothing more than an elaborate hoax that Proctor wanted her to believe.
“Am I right that Abigail and Fernando are demons?” Paige asked.
I was surprised by the question. “How do you know that?”
“I remember everything, Riley. When those gargoyles attacked you and Benjamin in the church, it all came back. All the memories I had been suppressing for the last three years. That was what led to me being able to use magic to help you. Well, at least that plus the fact that I was scared out of my mind that I was about to watch you both die.”
“You remember everything?” Her revelations were coming fast and furious. I wasn’t sure what that meant for her. But the more important question that rose immediately to the top of my mind was how would that change things between us? Something had started to develop between us, but that was when Paige had no memory of who she was and where she came from.
“Yes,” Paige said quietly. “And most of it is bad. I haven’t even started to process all of it yet. Suffice it to say that who I used to be and who I think I am now seem to be at complete odds with each other. Add in the fact that I’ve got a deity out there hell-bent on possessing me, and I don’t know what the hell to think anymore.”
I paused as we arrived at the car. I looked back over my shoulder. Several yards away, Fernando and Abigail appeared to be in a deep discussion. I was tempted to use my abilities to eavesdrop on the conversation, but I had more pressing concerns at the moment.
“Look, I don’t like this any more than you do, but Abigail knows a place where we can go to lay low and figure all of this out. I feel like things have gotten out of hand, and we just need some time to put all the pieces together. We need a plan. I feel like we’ve been doing nothing but running around like chickens with our heads cut off reacting to a bunch of bad shit being thrown at us.”
“I know,” Paige said. She paused and bit her lower lip. She looked around my shoulder. “You can’t trust demons, Riley. Are you are sure this is the only way?”
“We’re together again, and I agree that we can’t trust them,” I said. I touched her shoulder, which brought her eyes back to mine. “But you can trust me, and that’s what matters.”
She gave me a small smile, and I felt a tight squeeze across my chest. That smile made everythin
g I had gone through in the last twenty-four hours to bring her back to me worth it. But then it disappeared just as quickly as it appeared.
“Riley, I need to tell you about your family.”
My hand tightened on her shoulder as I shook my head. “It wasn’t real, Paige. I’m telling you that they are dead. God only knows what other lies he told you, but he was messing with you. They are gone. No one can survive what he did to them.” My voice trailed off as I forced the images of that horrible night from my mind. It had been five years. I had to start letting go of the past, and I would if Proctor would leave Paige alone. Instead of trying to chase the ghosts of my past, I needed to start protecting the lives of the living.
She bit her lip, and I could tell that she wanted to say something else, but then Abigail and Fernando appeared next to the hood of the car.
“We should go,” Abigail said again. I noticed that she didn’t take her eyes off of Paige. “It’s dangerous here out in the open.”
Reluctantly, I opened the back door and gestured for Paige to get inside. I knew that she didn’t want to get in, but she trusted me. I had to hope that I wasn’t making a huge mistake. As soon as I shut the door, I strode to the front of the car. I stepped up onto the sidewalk, which equaled out the height difference between me and Fernando. Ignoring Abigail, I focused on the silent man and pitched my voice low. “Our deal is no different than before, with one notable exception. As well as full disclosure on everything that has to do with Eva, you will leave Paige alone. No funny business, or I’ll yank the cord that keeps you walking and talking in this world and send you straight back to that inner circle of hell.”
“We mean the girl no harm,” Abigail answered. I didn’t take my eyes off Fernando though. I had figured out the power play the moment that I used my necromancy to bring Fernando back in the flesh. Abigail was nothing but a talking head. Fernando was the one in charge.
“I can assure you that she is as safe with us as she would be with her own parents,” Abigail continued.
“Demons murdered her parents,” I said. “Because they wanted the vessel. I’m not naïve, and I’m not stupid. I understand the double meaning of your words. You won’t hurt her because you believe she’s Eva’s vessel so of course you’ll keep her alive. But Paige isn’t going to be possessed by anyone or anything on my watch. Got it?”
Fernando stared at me for several long moments. “We understand, Mr. Stone.”
Abigail threw her hands up in the air with an exaggerated sigh. “There’s no need to keep layering on the threats. Haven’t we been helpful to you in your quest? Haven’t we stayed true to our word? Now, if you truly care about the girl’s safety to the extent that you say you do, then we have to leave this place. Now.”
Fernando broke the stare between us and moved around to the passenger side of the car without saying anything else. I finally turned my attention back to Abigail. “Don’t you have the ability to do a masking spell?” I asked.
“The extraction spell weakened my abilities,” Abigail said. “Fernando’s strength has not yet returned. I’m afraid that we’re going to have to use physical distance in this case. When we get closer to our destination, there are certain safeguards that we will be able to leverage.”
“Then let’s go,” I said as if I hadn’t been holding us up the entire time. Spending the next several hours in the car with the two demons was the last thing that I wanted to do, but I had no choice. I spun around to the passenger side and climbed into the back seat next to Paige.
I saw the question on her face. She wanted to know what had been said in my short exchange with the demons, but I shook my head. “We’ll talk about everything later.”
Abigail got into the driver’s seat and then turned to face Paige. Her eyes barely made it over the back of the seat and would have been comical in another instance. “I truly am pleased to meet you.”
Paige stared at her in silence, and I had to admire her guts. Most humans who interacted with demons practically bowed down before them. Although Abigail gave no sign of it, I sensed a feeling of chagrin. But then the demon turned back around and started the car.
As we left the parking lot, I turned my attention back to the woman next to me. I felt as if I hadn’t seen her in months even though it had been less than a day. My eyes scanned her body looking for anything that I missed during my earlier inspection when I pulled her back from Hell.
My gaze settled on something that I had noticed earlier right after I pulled her from her prison. There was a hole in the thigh of her jeans, and given the dried red marks around the hole, it appeared that she had been injured. But the skin that peeked through the hole underneath the fabric appeared unscathed.
I gently set my hand on her leg. She didn’t pull away from me. That was a good sign. I wasn’t sure if this Paige felt the same way about me that she had before. I couldn’t even verbalize what had started to grow between us, and I wasn’t sure that I was comfortable defining it yet. I hoped that it hadn’t been lost with the reappearance of her memories.
“What happened here?” I asked. I kept my voice barely above a whisper. I knew that the demons up front could still hear us, but I couldn’t help myself from asking the question.
Her fingers moved to fiddle with the edges of the fabric. “It’s not a big deal. I guess you could say it was motivation.”
My eyebrows rose. I knew the kind of motivation that Proctor would find acceptable, and I felt the rise of anger in my chest. “Motivation for what?”
Paige put her hand around mine then and squeezed. “It doesn’t matter. I’m fine. You’re right. We’re together now, and that’s all that matters.”
There was much more that I wanted to ask her, but it wasn’t the time or place. Right now, the important thing was making sure that Proctor wouldn’t get his hands on Paige again. I had no doubt that the demon would try, but the next time I’d be ready. When the demon tried to take what was mine, one of us was going to die. I’d make damn sure that when that time came, it would be Proctor.
CHAPTER TWO – PAIGE
I wanted to pinch myself to make sure that I wasn’t dreaming. I didn’t know how he had done it, but Riley had rescued me. He had come for me. There had been a part of me that wondered if he would. We’d only known each other for a few days. It felt like a lifetime to me, but ever since we met my life had turned into nothing but a whirlwind of destruction and death. It had been shattering to learn that it was all because of me and what had been prophesized as my destiny. Riley had been an innocent bystander since the beginning.
Still, at every turn, he stayed with me and put his life on the line for me. I wasn’t sure how to process that because the concept was something foreign and unknown to me. After I watched my parents die in front of me, I had been on my own. I had to find a way to survive the dark underbelly of a world I’d known nothing about, all the while trying to find a way to save my soul.
My parents had tried to hide me away from those who wanted to take me. I had no idea why, but I had been chosen to be the new vessel for an ancient deity that had disappeared a thousand years ago. Just before the timing of the possession ceremony, I thought I found the answer to my salvation. Instead, Bruno Proctor kidnapped me. He said that he had done so to keep me away from those who wanted Eva to possess me. He said he’d help me now if I’d agree to help him at some point in the future. It seemed as if we had reached a tenuous kind of compromise when Riley pulled me out of my prison.
This was my life. Demons. Angels. Death. Always darkness and always death. Then a miracle happened. I escaped Proctor the first time, and he thought I was dead. My memories were suppressed by some kind of spell, and I arrived on Calamata Island to start fresh, never knowing the darkness that had been such an integral part of my life.
Between my amnesia and the Archangel Benjamin’s protection of Calamata Island, I had been granted three years of normalcy. I appreciated that time now more than I ever had before, and I hated that there was a smal
l part of me that wanted it back. Badly.
But I wasn’t born to be normal. That wasn’t my life. So I had to get over it. Still, I didn’t want to go back to being the manipulative, selfish, uncaring soul that I had been after my parents’ murder. I understood now that it had been necessary to my survival, but I wasn’t alone anymore. Riley asked me to trust him, and I knew with my whole heart that I did.
It wasn’t like me to cling to the idea of a man to keep me safe. And in my short time in Bruno’s captivity, he had showed me that I was far from helpless. I had access to a power unlike anything I had ever imagined, and properly controlled I could use that magic to protect myself. But ‘properly controlled’ was the key phrase, and for that I was woefully unschooled. Being able to access that power only came to me when my survival or the survival of those I cared about, was questionable. That was the little lesson that Bruno taught me when he jammed a six-inch hunting knife into my leg nicking my femoral artery. I would have died if I hadn’t been able to access my magic to heal myself.
Sitting in a car with two demons in the front seat made me incredibly anxious, and I found that I wanted to grab hold of that magic just in case I needed it. But it proved to be as elusive as it had always been so far. The only thing keeping me calm was the man beside me.
Riley alternated between squeezing my hand and gently stroking my thigh. His touch had been tentative at first, but as the miles flew by, it grew bolder. I couldn’t help but remember the intimate encounter we shared in the cave on Calamata Island. I was glad that it was dark in the car as I felt the flush of heat rise in my cheeks as I thought about how sweet and tender Riley had been with me.
With my memories returned, I had the ugly privilege of finally knowing my romantic past. It was ironic that during my time on Calamata I had been as chaste as a nun, but before that, I had willingly used every feminine wile at my disposal. That included using my body to wrap powerful, wealthy men around my finger. For years, I had used them as I tracked the elusive answer of how to protect myself from falling under Eva’s possession. And on the eve of what was supposed to be that guaranteed event, I found the answer that I was looking for.
