Chloe's Guardian

by Cheri Gillard

  CHAPTER 16

  Chloe screamed. With each popping explosion, she screamed louder, ready to feel the bullet rip into her.

  Horace collapsed flat on his face onto the sidewalk. Her screaming started again. She couldn’t stop it. It just shot out of her throat.

  Hands grabbed her from behind and yanked her back into a throat lock. Her arms were trapped across her chest.

  Someone yelled in her ear to shut up. She couldn’t. She had no control over the hysteria. Horace was dead on the ground next to her, and she’d be there soon, too. But not until after the “worse-than-death” stuff Horace had warned her about.

  The gangbanger squeezed the breath out of her and pulled her back into the alley. She picked her feet off the ground and kicked and flailed and squirmed as hard as she could. The guy grunted and cursed and smashed her tighter. He called her horrible things and screamed at her to hold still. Then he yelled to the others in another language. One of them wore Horace’s hat, grinning like it was a game. Another emptied Horace’s pockets. He distracted her captor showing him Horace’s ID. She rammed her heel back and clipped him hard in the knee. He ejected her onto the ground, yelling words she didn’t recognize.

  The crash to the ground stunned her. She couldn’t catch her breath.

  Then a mob of feet shuffled around her in a circle. She lifted her head and saw high tops, baggy shorts, and a barricade of hairy shins.

  Oh God. Help me!

  Rough hands grabbed at her and lifted her off the ground when Horace twitched. A gun swung around in one of their hands. Horace, don’t move. They’ll shoot you again.

  The gun blasted—a brilliant light flashed and obliterated the darkness. She couldn’t see, blinded by the bright explosion. Was she shot? Did a bomb go off? The gangbangers shrieked.

  They dumped her back onto the ground. She blinked and squinted, trying to make sense of what she saw.

  The spot where Horace had lain was empty. Above it was a mini sun. The sun hovered above the circle of their attackers. It held a flaming sword in one hand. Its face—it was the thing from Dunnottar Castle! And that thing was Horace! How could she have missed the resemblance before?

  The sheath of flame in his hand slashed down and cut through the waists of all those standing. No burn marks or blood showed, but they screamed like their insides were ripped out. Falling over each other and yelling, they tripped and ran away panicked.

  Chloe got herself up off the ground, not taking her eyes from Horace.

  “It’s you.” She was afraid yet drawn to him.

  “We can’t stay here like this. It’s too dangerous.”

  To punctuate what he said, an arrow of flame hit the sidewalk next to them. It burst into pieces of red light and noise. Up in the sky, a bright purple meteorite hurled toward them.

  Horace swung around and raised his sword. It crashed with thunder against another flaming arrow, knocking it aside where it exploded in deep red sparks. Immediately after it, another arrow came, then another. He kept whacking them away while the purple ball of energy catapulted closer and closer.

  Chloe was suddenly up in the sky. She was in Horace’s arms, flying through the air, zipping away from the mountains, over the lights of the city. The purple meteorite changed its direction and followed after them. He was a creature like Horace, coming at them with a bow of blue hot flame in his hands, pulling back hard with another fiery arrow.

  The burning shaft came right at them, but Horace dropped fast and the arrow missed, just barely, evaporating into a spray of ash. She buried her face into his chest and the overwhelming fear diminished. She gained enough courage to look out again. There were more purple meteorites chasing them, gaining on them. All the fear returned, only worse than before. One purple being went high, another low, and the third stayed on their tail. Three flaming arrows came at once, aimed to meet in the middle—right where she and Horace were flying. Chloe screamed and braced for the impact.

  ***

  Horatius had barely made it into the sky. Those bullets could have just as easily gone into Chloe’s back. Not only had he failed to guard her, but he’d shown everyone in the heavens where he was, and that she was important to him. He’d ruined everything.

  As soon as Satarel’s henchmen located him and sped toward his position, he snatched up Chloe and flew away like a bat out of hell. Now three of them were closing in on them. They were too close. He couldn’t out-fly them.

  In the distance was a church steeple, and just before three arrows converged on him, he dropped in altitude and dove for the sanctuary. He sent word to the sentinels of the church that they were coming in—with Fallen on their heels.

  The guards’ swords parted, opening a passageway for a brief moment. Horatius took control of Chloe’s quantum particles and skipped them past the roof into the church, leaving the Fallen outside for the sentinels.

  Horatius slowed when they materialized on the other side of dome ceiling and sunk to the floor of the sanctuary, which was lit only by moonlight through stained glass windows. He opened his arms and let Chloe slide down onto her feet.

  She whipped around to face him as soon as she got her balance.

  “You’re you!” she exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me? What just happened? That was incredible. You saved me! Again! You’re huge. Who was that chasing us? Could they have hurt you? How’d we get here?” She looked up at the ceiling. “How’d we do that?”

  “Slow down. Are you okay?”

  “Your voice! It’s amazing. It’s like we’re inside a kettledrum.” She inspected his face, his garment, then fixated on his wings. She lightly fluffed an edge. “Oh! Is it okay to touch them?”

  “Are you hurt?” he asked. He turned her around as though to inspect her back to stop her from staring so intently at him.

  She wouldn’t stay turned away and whirled back to face him. He ducked. He feigned to look down at the dark spots on her knees. They appeared to be scraped. Specks of different colors spotted her skin from the stained glass. He couldn’t tell in the dim light what was injury and what was shadow.

  “No, no. I’m fine. That was incredible! We actually flew!”

  “It helps at times.” Horatius swept his arms in an arc and the candelabras sputtered to life and cast a golden glow about the room. Her knees looked fine.

  Chloe grinned at the candles then got serious. “Who were they? Why were they chasing us?”

  He tried to think of a simple explanation. There wasn’t one. “It’s a long story.”

  “Tell me. I want to know.” She contemplated the ceiling some more. “That was amazing. We were on one side, then the other. We didn’t even go through it. How did you do that? Could those arrows have hurt us? Are we safe here?”

  Horatius mentally checked in with the sentinels a moment. “For now. We can stay awhile. They’ve suspended the security alarms for us.”

  “What were you just doing? That looked cool. Are you communicating? I heard you before we came in. Who are you talking to?”

  “Slow down. Please. Let me think a moment. I need to make sure everything is secure. Just because we’re in Sanctuary, it doesn’t mean I can be off guard. I’ve made some grave errors.”

  “Okay. Okay. You do your…your…whatever it is you do, and I’ll just sit here and wait.” She scooted behind the wooden pew front into the first row and sat on the edge of her seat, watching him like he’d perform or something.

  She is liking this far too much.

  “You know, you could have died out there. This is very serious.”

  She waved him off. “Obviously no big deal for someone like you.” She grinned again. Much too enthusiastically.

  “First I need to change back.”

  She grinned even bigger.

  He felt exposed with her watching him so intently. “Ah…”

  Her face turned proper and knowing. “Of course. I’m sorry. You want some privacy.” She twisted away and folded her arms across the back of the pew. “I wish I
could watch. I mean,” she threw in quickly, “I just want to see it again. It was so incredible back there when you started glowing.”

  “All right. I'm finished. You can turn around.”

  Her expression was totally new. Nothing would be the same again. He’d really changed everything.

  A bottle of Evian was on the pulpit. He jumped to grab it. “Thank God. I need a drink.” He concentrated on the hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The water churned and darkened to a deep, dry burgundy. He unscrewed the lid, took a deep whiff, then gulped. “Oh, that was a good year.” He savored the weight and viscosity of the wine then finished it, oblivious for a brief moment of the girl and everything around him. “La vie est trop courte pour boire du mauvais vin.” When he reopened his eyes, she was staring at him like she had fallen in love.

  “Oh. My. God. You just,” her voice went up into a shrill shriek, “turned water into wine!”

  Maybe not just such a smart idea.

  “How did you do that?” she said in her same shrill screech.

  “Um, I can, ah, alter matter.”

  “Oh. My. God. You are so cool! That was French, right? Something about life and wine? How many languages do you speak?”

  He wasn’t sure if he should say. After hesitating, he went ahead and answered. “All of them.”

  She actually squealed and her hands shook. “Oh. My. God. You are just the most amazing, most brilliant creature I’ve ever met.” She beamed, not even attempting to rein in her admiration for him.

  “We better have a talk,” he said.

  She scooted over and patted the red bench pad, still grinning like a monkey.

  When he sat down, she said in a whisper, “I cannot believe this. You’re like the coolest thing I’ve ever, ever, ever seen.”

  What could he say? He’d never shown himself like this to a human. If Chloe knew what he was, she’d give him away. Safeguarding his secrets was the only defense against his father. But Satarel would specifically target her now that he knew she was tangled with Horatius. More than destroying Keiths and their descendants, Satarel wanted to destroy Horatius and anything he valued. What a mess! How could I have been so careless? He looked at her, grinning up at him, like it was a game. She was so vulnerable. She would need to know how to protect herself. He’d have to tell her his secrets.

  “I need to tell you some things. Some very important, serious things.” He paused to give her a moment to prepare. “I am Nephilim.”

  Her intoxicated grin did not change. “Is that somewhere in the Middle East?”

  “No, that’s a people. A race of a certain type.” He took a deep breath. “I better start back in the beginning.” He pulled a Bible from the rack in the pew, opened it a few pages in, and tilted it toward the light. “I want you to read something.” He handed her the Bible and pointed in the middle of a page. “Genesis, chapter six. Start at the first verse there.”

  “When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.” Chloe’s eyes opened wide. “What does that mean? Your father is an angel?”

  “Not anymore. He went with Shemhazi, who followed Lucifer when he led over two hundred Celestials to earth to take the women of their choosing. My mother was one of them, from a place near Egypt.”

  “So, um, you’re like a billion years old?” It was hard for him to read Chloe’s face. Was it incredulity, fear, mockery?

  “Not a billion.”

  “And you’re…a…demon?”

  “No!” He didn’t mean to yell. “No. I am not like my father.”

  “Are you a god? ‘Heroes of old’ sounds like mythology.” She was smiling again, clearly missing the gravity of the situation.

  “I am not a god either. But those who spread the stories of mythology based them on many of the Nephilim.”

  “Which god are you?”

  “I’m not a god. The stories grew out of things people didn’t understand.”

  “But which one were you? Which stories did you inspire?”

  “What does it matter? I am not the same anymore.”

  “If it doesn’t matter, then tell me.”

  He waited while he decided what he would say. “Horus. The hawk god. I don’t want to talk about it.” He hated to think of the time when he allowed humans to believe he was a god. It was part of what condemned him, what he was trying to undo.

  “Were those demons chasing us?”

  Horatius didn’t want to scare Chloe, but needed her to understand the danger. “They work with my father.”

  “But we’re safe here?”

  “For the moment. The sentinels stationed here will fend them off. They will attack a little while, but it is almost always futile. But we can’t stay too long. I don’t want to draw attention to this place.”

  “Almost? What does that mean? What happens if—?” She didn’t finish her sentence. “You know, they made me feel horrible. I was so scared.”

  “You need to understand how to defend yourself. You are going to be under attack. I don’t know when or where, but if you understand what you can do, you will have the advantage.”

  “Against the purple guys?” Her voice went up two octaves. “Won’t you help me?” She wasn’t as brave as she pretended to be.

  “Of course I will, but you have strength. Even against my father. You have the power to withstand them. If they enter your thoughts—”

  “What?” she screeched. “They can get into my head?” Her grin was gone.

  “You need to resist them. Tell them to leave you alone. Deny them, decry them. And they will go.”

  “I just think against them and those big purple scary creatures will stop shooting their flaming arrows at me?”

  “I am talking about when they attack your thoughts, your spirit. I will take care of you when they attack in the physical realm.”

  “I just think against them?”

  “Yes, you have the freedom to deny them. Do you ever have thoughts or ideas that don’t seem like your own, or seem to want to destroy you? Like when you jumped from the cliff at Dunnottar?”

  Chloe squirmed at the mention of that incident. She shrank into herself, becoming a smaller presence.

  Her bravado is just a show.

  “All the time,” she said in a quiet hush. “Is that them?”

  She so clearly needed a Guardian. “My father relishes suicide. He loves to wipe out all hope. Especially for your family line.”

  Chloe looked confused.

  “You’ve heard of Guardian angels, right? Everyone has one. You also have Watchers, the opposite of Guardians. They do all they can to ruin you. Keith is your ancient family line, who the Dixons come from. My father is a Keith Watcher. And a Watcher for all the descendants of the Keith Clan, such as your line. He has been for centuries.”

  “You mean there are things out there—like your father—trying to destroy me?”

  “But I am working against them. That is what I do. And the other Guardians. You aren’t alone.”

  “Wait until I tell Kaitlyn. She’s going to die to hear about you.”

  “You can’t tell anyone. The Fallen can’t hear me when I’m in human form and not tuned into the Common Thoughts, or when I’m in Sanctuary, but they can hear you. And if you talk about me, or even think too specifically about where I am, you will give me away. And that would be a bad thing.”

  She twitched as though a shiver ran up her spine.

  Horatius heard from one of the sentinels. “The Fallen have left. We can go. We will have to find a way to get you home. I brought you quite a long way distance.”

  “Are we in east Denver?” she said.

  “We did go east.”

  “Aurora?”

  “A little
farther than that.”

  She went to a window and tried to see through the colored glass. “What church is this?”

  He cleared his throat and stalled. “Ah…Saint John’s.”

  “Downtown? On Washington?”

  “Saint John’s in Washington.” Her eyes turned their biggest yet since Horatius had met her. “I had to do something fast.”

  “We’re in Washington D.C.?” Her voice was up two octaves again.

  “But don’t panic. I’m going to find a way to get you home.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “When we go back out there, you’ll keep us safe from the purple guys again, right?” Chloe’s voice trembled. “I can’t wait to fly like that again—as long as those purple guys aren’t following us.”

  “I can’t fly right now.”

  “Okay. You rest fifteen more minutes. Twenty if you need it.”

  “I’m afraid fifteen hours isn’t going to be enough time.”

  “Why not? What’s wrong?”

  “If I were to transfigure right now and leave Sanctuary, Satarel—my father—would be back in no time. I have to stay in my human form, undetectable for a while. He can’t perceive me when I’m like this. He won’t see me unless he possesses a human and looks through those eyes, or I transfigure. It is as though I am in a blind spot to the Celestials when I am on earth in human form and they aren’t here looking at me.”

  “So we’ll hang here all night. Then what?”

  “No, no. I need to find a way to get you home. I’m probably already in extreme trouble. I’ve broken a plethora of regulations. And after Scotland, your parents don’t need to go through the anguish of losing you again.”

  “I don’t mind. As long as I can stay with you.” She tentatively reached out again and rested her hand on his arm.

  “I’m not certain that can happen. I may need to disappear for a bit.”

  “You can’t leave. Not now. I want to stay with you.”

  “I’ll have to see what my superiors say.”