by Kristie Cook
Brock and Asia straightened up after closely inspecting the two words that had mysteriously appeared kind of like the phoenix marks on our arms. Brock scratched his head, and then he shrugged.
“No idea. Who else could it be from?” he asked.
“My only other idea was the Keeper,” Leni said. “But it doesn’t feel right.”
“Who’s the Keeper?” Asia asked.
Leni and I both cocked our heads at the same time.
“She means the Keeper of the Space Between,” I clarified.
Brock and Asia exchanged a look that seemed pretty meaningful, but then again, maybe I was reading too much into it. An old habit left over from being deaf for so long.
“What is it?” Leni asked. Had she noticed the silent communication, too?
“I didn’t have anyone called a Keeper when I was there,” Brock said. “Did you, Asia?”
She shook her head. “No. I’ve told you all about it. There was just a bodiless voice surrounding me, telling me my options.”
“Wait,” Leni said, “you two weren’t at the Space Between together?”
“No,” Brock said. “You were?”
“Well, yeah,” Leni said. “Wow. You guys got lucky then, to come to the same world at the same time.”
Asia shrugged. “The Space Between is weird. From what I’ve heard, it’s different for everybody and from life to life … or death to death, however you want to put it.”
“I know it changes,” Leni said, “but you really didn’t have a Keeper? Someone who explained everything and your choices?”
Asia shook her head. “Just the voice.”
“I had a guy, but he didn’t call himself the Keeper,” Brock said.
Asia’s mouth twisted, and her wide eyes narrowed as she appeared to be considering something. “You know what I think? I think the voice—or your Keeper—or whoever is supposedly divulging secrets is really a manifestation from our own souls, telling us what we already know deep down. I mean, it’s not like we get real answers. Like, don’t you wonder more about what there is besides the different worlds our souls can go to?”
Leni leaned forward, and I could feel her interest spark. “Yes! Like, is there a Heaven and a Hell or just other worlds?”
“Right,” Asia said. “As high up on the echelon as we had gone, almost to the level right below the angels or spirits or whatever you want to call them, shouldn’t we know more about those things? But we don’t—Brock and I don’t, anyway. We have all these fat holes in the memories of our past lives and the other worlds we’ve been on. And we remember nothing beyond what we experience in physical forms. Like, the Space Between, for example. It’s always different, and we never remember it every time we go. Don’t you think that’s weird?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “You think we’re just talking to ourselves in the Space Between?”
“Not exactly,” Brock answered. “Just the remembering part. We think our souls remember everything we know while we’re in the Space Between, but as soon as we move on to the next life, we forget it all.”
Asia nodded. “There’s someone or some force, like a higher power or the angels, guiding us to the decision for our next life, but we don’t think they give us any answers we don’t already know.”
“Huh,” Leni said as she leaned back against the headboard and rested her chin on the back of her hand. “So, if that’s true, and we’re really only helping ourselves even in the Space Between, then it’s probably true that we’ve left clues for our future selves.” She paused as she thought harder on this idea, and then her excitement grew again. “And I think we did that with the Book! My gut’s telling me that we’ve used the Book in the past for many things, like discovering our missions. That would explain why the Lakari would want it—so we wouldn’t discover our own secrets before they killed us.”
She paused for a moment, staring at her hands as her fingers tapped a rhythm on the blanket, and I already knew her next thought. I had to control myself from clamping my hand over her mouth to keep her from saying it, as though that would prevent the thought from already being a reality. Because remembering our pasts was kind of fun, like solving a weird mystery, but what she was thinking took us to a whole different level. One I wasn’t ready for.
“I have this strong feeling the guy in the Gate who’d sounded so desperate was Nathayden. And I think … saving Rebethannah is our first mission.”
She lifted her head to look at us. I turned mine to stare at the wall, my jaw clenching. She already knew my feelings on this theory.
“What do you guys think?” she asked when nobody said anything.
My eyes cut to Brock and Asia, who shared another look, but they didn’t hold back this time. Asia reached out and laid her hand on Leni’s knee.
“You tell us,” she said to my other half. “We remembered last night that this has always been your thing, like your super power—you lead us to the souls we’re supposed to help.”
The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I jumped to my feet as though the bed itself had caused the feeling. But what I felt came from inside, and no matter how much I wanted to deny it, to make it go away, to pretend it didn’t exist, I couldn’t. The truth is the truth, and what Asia just said was no doubt a truth. I knew it in my gut, or in my soul, as everyone else would say. Leni—or Jacquelena, to be more accurate—was our light, showing us the way. Theo and Mira had emphasized this when we’d been Forged at the Gate. Not just mine, but everybody’s. I hadn’t fully understood what that meant at the time, but it was starting to make more sense.
Didn’t mean I liked it.
“No,” I said, unable to form the words I wanted to say. “Just … no. Not yet.”
“Jeric—” Leni started, and I spun on her.
“Can you really say you feel ready to do this?” I demanded, leaning over her on the bed. “Do you even know what you’re doing?”
Leni stared at me for a moment, opening her mouth then closing it like a carp as she considered my question.
“Yes,” she finally said, and when I lifted my brow and sucked in a breath to argue, she held a hand up. “It’s not knowledge to be gained, Jeric. I don’t have to learn this. It’s intuition. Instinct. My soul talking to me. I know how that sounds, but look at our lives now. Look at what we do know and tell me that relying on our instinct, on our souls that have existed for eons compared to our measly human brains, isn’t what we’re supposed to do. That’s the lesson we’re supposed to learn more than any others. Am I right?”
She turned back to Brock and Asia, who both nodded.
“So we’re just supposed to cut off our brains and all logic?” I snapped.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Asia said with a sigh. “You just have to let your brain catch up to what you already know in your soul.”
I glared at each of them in turn, not sure why this bothered me so much. I’d practically vowed to trust Leni and her intuition, to accept her as our light to lead the way. And I knew deep down that she’d be right—that her soul would know exactly what we’re supposed to do. The “normal” side of me, the Jeric I’d been for the last twenty-three years, however, bristled at the thought of going out and being some kind of supernatural-like ninja, helping people who probably didn’t even know they needed to be helped. How were we supposed to do that anyway?
“So you think your soul will lead us right to whoever Rebethannah is now?” I demanded. “And you really think that’s our mission?”
Leni pressed her lips together and dropped her gaze to the blanket again. “I don’t know yet,” she nearly whispered, but then she lifted her eyes to me and raised her voice. “But it’s time to find out.”
We argued about it some more until Asia finally suggested we talk to Melinda and Uri or to some other Guardians since we didn’t real
ly know the protocol for missions yet anyway. I hoped they’d be too busy for a day or two so we could think through this further, maybe gather more information and figure out if we were really supposed to find Rebethannah. No such luck. Life was definitely a woman with her mood swings, and right now, she was a bitch. Melinda and Uri invited us down right away, and a few minutes later, we were all gathered in the same meeting room C where they’d told us we were part of the Sacred Seven—which, by the way, we still had no recollection of. Mira and Theo were also in there. Leni and I glanced at each other as we took our seats across the table from them.
“This was good timing,” Theo said. “Mira and I were about to leave the manor for a while and were going to call you to say goodbye.”
“Where are you going?” Leni asked, curiosity getting the best of her when she’d been acting like she didn’t care about them the whole time we’d been here.
“We have a pair of Twin Flames to help,” Mira explained. “We’ll be out of touch for a while. They’re older than you two were when you needed us, so we should only be gone for a few months. But it could take longer to bring them together.”
Theo lifted his clasped hands to rest on the table. His eyes were full of warmth as he looked at Leni. “We wanted you to know first that we believe in you. That we know you—all of you—are ready to serve your roles for the Guardians.”
His eyes traveled from face to face, but lingered on mine the longest.
“It’s time for you to go out on missions,” Mira clarified, and I wondered if she and Leni were conspiring against me. All of them, actually.
“What a coincidence,” Leni said. “That’s what we wanted to talk about. How, exactly, do missions work?”
Melinda leaned forward in her chair and folded her hands together on top of the table. “You go out into the world, and your souls will lead you to your target—a soul that’s very close to going Dark.”
“And how do we know?” Brock asked.
“There are usually Lakari nearby,” she said, “shadowing the person with their Dark presence, sometimes even influencing their decisions. Usually they wait for the body to die to take the soul, but they’re known to murder, especially if it serves another purpose for Enyxa.”
“And they’re all Broken?” Leni asked. “Separated Twin Flames?”
Uri shook his head. “Not necessarily. Some are single souls who are almost completely Dark. Besides Broken Twin Flames, they’re the souls the Lakari are interested in, and the ones you must help, if you can.”
“You may find a Broken or Lost soul, though,” Melinda said. “And if you do, if you get any indication at all, you need to help it. Broken Twin Flames go Dark faster than other souls because of the pain and despair they feel. It only takes them two or three lives before it’s too late. Lost souls go even faster, because their other half, whether a Twin Flame or their soul mate, has already gone Dark.”
“So how do we help them?” Asia asked.
“If they’re not Broken or Lost, you keep the Lakari in check,” Uri replied. “They feed off of souls that are tainted with Darkness, especially when the physical body is dying, but that doesn’t mean they’ll get the soul in the end. We always have free will, so it’s up to the soul itself. But the Lakari try to give them more Darkness, pulling the soul their way.”
“Like they did with you, Jeric,” Leni said. “Right before we were Forged.”
“Yes,” Mira confirmed.
“If the soul is Dark enough, it may deny the Light and choose to go with the Lakari, and there’s nothing you can do about that,” Uri continued. “But if the Lakari attack, or try to take souls against their will, then you can act. Then you can fight them.”
“That’s it?” Brock asked, and I understood his disappointment. All of the buildup of our powers and everything, and all we had to do was scare off the Lakari, maybe fight once in a while?
“That’s it for most souls, but your greatest concern is always the Broken and the Lost,” Melinda said. “That’s who you need to search for and to help. They’re definitely more difficult because you have to try to convince them that there’s a reason for their misery. If they’re on their third or more life since their Separation, they won’t take as much convincing. They’ll be desperate and pretty Dark. It may take a few weeks or months, but eventually, they’ll do whatever it takes and will agree to come here with you. And then we escort their soul to the Gate so they can meet their other half or at least find solace in the Space Between.”
“Okay,” Leni said, a little too cheerfully for my liking, “so how do we get a mission?”
“If we know of a Broken soul and don’t have dyads available, we’ll assign a mission to those who are here on Gate duty,” Melinda said. “But usually, you go out and discover your own mission. You, Jacquelena, are supposed to be especially adept at that.”
“Damn it,” I muttered. Were they all in on the conspiracy against me? I’d stayed quiet through all of this, letting them clear the air, while hoping the whole time Melinda and Uri would say only more experienced Guardians went out on missions. I knew deep down that didn’t make sense, since “experienced” was a relative term here. Guardians were lucky to survive three or four missions in a life.
“That’s what I needed to hear,” Leni said. “We think we have our first mission.”
“This really was perfect timing,” Theo said. “We were just telling Melinda and Uri that it was time for you to leave the manor and seek out your first one.”
“We’re not ready, though,” I growled, no longer able to hold it back. If I had my way, we’d never be ready. Because missions meant danger and danger meant Leni’s life would be at risk and just the thought of that killed me. I relived Jacey’s death every night in my dreams. I would not watch her die again.
“You are,” Theo insisted. “But you will only believe it once you are out there, living the life of a Guardian. You won’t have a choice but to be ready to fight—or to die.”
“Exactly,” I muttered. “So we’re supposed to go out there and find a soul when we don’t even know where or who it is?”
“It’s not too difficult to find the single souls on the verge of Darkness, especially in this day and age,” Mira said.
She meant those souls who had repeatedly refused to acknowledge their soul mate or their soul mate had refused to acknowledge them. Or they’ve gone to different worlds, and may never be on the same one at the same time. After several life cycles of never finding the soul created especially for theirs, despair and depression set in, worsening with each life, until the soul becomes completely hopeless. That’s when they’re at risk of choosing to go Dark permanently, which was when the Lakari could conquer and take the soul to Enyxa. See—I’d learned a lot. Still didn’t mean I felt ready to put it all into practice.
“You have Leni’s camper, so you already have a place to live,” Mira continued, taking their argument in a different direction. “That’s one thing you don’t need to worry about. And if you need to travel, you can take the camper with you. A perfect setup for Guardians.”
She was appealing to my logical side. She knew me too well. More than I cared for. It aggravated me even more.
“We don’t think you’ll need to, though,” Uri said. “According to recent Guardian reports, there seems to be Lakari activity in Lake Haven, the town where Leni’s camper sits right now.”
I stood with such force, my chair fell backwards, and I leaned over the table, right in front of Mira and Theo.
“You’re putting Leni’s—and my—life at risk because it’s convenient?” I seethed.
Mira glared back at me. “You may have brought them to the soul they’re swarming.”
The accusation—and the feeling of responsibility—tightened my throat. “Only because you disappeared with no answers or instructions! If it’s a
nyone’s fault, it’s yours and Theo’s. And anyone else who refused to help us out.”
That last bit had been for everyone else in the room, who had all known Leni and I had been struggling and could have used their help. Supposedly nobody was allowed to give it—we had to figure out everything on our own because that would somehow make us better Guardians. Funny how we were supposed to help other souls avoid exactly what we were forced to face on our own.
“You can’t live here forever, Jeric,” Mira said. “It’s time you do your job.”
“We’ll do it when we’re prepared!” I barked as I leaned closer. I had to give her props for not moving away or even flinching.
“You will never be fully prepared as long as you don’t believe,” she bit back. “That’s the only place you’re lacking, Jeremicah. Believing is your fuel for everything. Melinda and Uri can heal you because they believe they can. They trust in themselves, in their former selves, in everything they know in their souls. Our warriors fight so well because they believe they can. They are faster and stronger because they always have been, in every life, just as you always have been. When you fought the Lakari on your way here, you believed in your abilities. You believed in Leni’s ability to jump over their heads and run up the side of a building. You believed she could break the glass and the two of you could jump from eight stories high because you’d done it before, countless times. It’s been proven to you over and over. You only have to trust in what you already know in your soul.”
My nostrils flared as I glared at her, refusing to admit she was right about it all. Believing in all this mumbo-jumbo-crazy-ass-supernatural-sci-fi shit wasn’t exactly easy.
“Jeric, we can do this.” Leni had risen to her feet next to me, and her small hand gripped mine. “We need to do it.”
