The Wardens Boxed Set

by Heather D Glidewell

  I sat there for a few minutes before lying back down and pulling the blankets up to my chin. I reached for my phone. It was four a.m. Woah! I had six missed messages. I selected the icon and looked over them. At first glance there was nothing really interesting.

  I had one from Adam telling me he got home okay. Then one from Wesley an hour ago telling me he loved me. I had then had another one from Wesley that looked like he had tried typing with his eyes closed. I couldn’t decipher what the words were. Finally I had had three from Wesley’s dad.

  Greg: Wesley just walked out the door. Is he coming to you?

  Greg: I followed him but when I got outside he was gone.

  Greg: I'm scared something has happened to him.

  “Mom!” I screamed, ripping myself from my bed and sprinting to her room.

  She was up and looking at me, her phone clutched in her hand. She had received the same three messages from Wesley’s father that I had. She grabbed her jeans and a t-shirt.

  “Get dressed quickly. We have to go over there!”

  I ran to my room and threw some clothes on, then grabbed my keys. In less than a minute we were out the door and on our way to Wesley’s.

  “You have to listen to me, no matter what,” my mother demanded as she reached seventy on the deserted highway.

  “I will,” I promised, my pulse racing.

  “I mean it, Dawn. There is no room for error.” My mother sounded more serious than I had ever heard her before.

  “What do you think it is?” I whispered, clasping my shaking hands together.

  “I don’t know. But there is one thing that I do know. Boys just don’t disappear from their back porch in the wee hours of the morning.”

  She stepped on the gas and the needle reached ninety. I hoped there were no cops on the road.

  Chapter Fourteen: Face To Face

  We made it to Wesley’s house in record time. My mother drove like a bat out of Hell as I sat in the passenger seat texting his father. My fingers flew across the touch screen as I tried to get more information from him on what had happened.

  Me: Have you found him yet?

  Greg: No, nothing, not even a single clue.

  Of all the nights for Wesley to disappear it had to be the one night that I had not seen him. The one night that he had told me he had something important to do.

  Greg: I found his hat in the middle of the field out back. There is blood on it. Dear God, I hope he is ok.

  Wesley had been known to sleepwalk. He would just wander the house, talking to himself. Nobody could wake him up, so Greg would simply follow his son until he lay down and went back to sleep.

  My mother pulled up outside the house, gave me a worried smile, and got out. I followed her up the steps to the door. She knocked loudly and Mr. Jensen answered immediately with his phone in his hand. He motioned for us to enter. My mother pulled me inside and secured the door behind us. We stood there for a moment in the entry as Mr. Jensen finished the conversation he was having.

  “The last I saw him he was in a white shirt and plaid pajama bottoms. He’s eighteen, six feet, brown hair and blue eyes. Yes. Thank you.” Once he had hung up the phone he embraced my mother. There were tears streaming down his face. “I called the police. They are going to look around town to see if he is there.” He looked at me and gave me a weak smile. “He hasn’t done this in so long. I mean, he always sleepwalks, but he hasn’t done it like this in about a year.”

  I looked over at my mother and she nodded at me.

  “Take me to the last place that you saw him,” she instructed Wesley’s father.

  We followed Mr. Jensen to the back door. Wesley’s keys were still hanging on the hook, the first sign that wherever he had gone he was not coming to me. My heart tightened and I felt a sting of pain seer through me, but I held strong, not showing what I was feeling.

  “It was right here.” Wesley’s dad ran his fingers through his hair. “He looked at me and smiled. Told me everything would be okay. He would make things right, restore the balance.” He sighed. “I stepped toward him and he was out the door. By the time I was able to get onto the back porch he was gone.”

  “Greg, do you have something of his that I can see?” my mother asked softly.

  “I found his hat. It was laying in the middle of the field out back. There is blood on it. Will that help?” He reached for Wesley’s blue baseball cap, which was lying on the dryer.

  “That will do great, thank you.” My mother looked at me. “Greg, go and check on Melissa. Dawn, stay with me.”

  Mr. Jensen nodded and left the room.

  My mother’s hands began to glow and her eyes turned bluer then I had ever seen then went milky white. Her lips were moving and her hands touched the baseball cap, first at the brim then moving around to the back. Suddenly her eyes shot toward the door and she smiled sweetly. It had only been seconds, but I was amazed. She shook her head and her eyes came back to normal. A look of realization took over her face and she gasped.

  “He’s alive! We have to go into the woods, you and me, right now. He’s in danger.”

  With startling speed my mother propelled me through the door and out into the field. Lifting her head to the sky she sniffed the air. We started running until we were at the edge of the woods where she stopped and looked at me once more.

  “I need you to open up to me. I need you to amplify my power.”

  I clutched my mother’s hand and willed the icy prickle to appear. I felt the familiar cold in my fingers and, just like that, we burst into white flame. So the white flame was connected to my mother after all. I had never seen her do this. To know that this power came from her relieved me some. Let me take a moment to explain the iciness of my fingers. When I summon the fire it burns like Hell’s flames are pouring straight from my body. When I summon the flame apparently connected to my mother it appears first as an icy prickle followed by a white flame. Up until now I had believed that my power was strictly from my father. I had never thought my mother also possessed the same type of power as my father. Maybe that explained her utter shock she had that day in the cornfield.

  Together we moved forward, hand in hand, walking slowly and looking in both directions, searching for the one thing that my heart desired more than anything. I could hardly breathe. The fact that I was holding myself together even now amazed me. There was a pulsating pain in my heart. It was as if I knew something was happening to my beloved. Something unnatural—someone—was hurting him.

  That was when we saw them. There were five of them, two females and three males, bent over an unmoving body. I screeched and my mother broke contact. The faces looked up at us. They had deep red eyes and their mouths and chins were covered in blood.

  I freaked out. The burning sensation in my fingers turned from ice to fire in a second. My mother touched me and the fire subsided, but the rage was still present. She threw her head back. Her eyes turned white and a silvery flame shot from her body, incinerating four of the creatures with one burst. The fifth, scared to death, stood rooted to the spot in horror.

  My mother’s voice was hollow when she spoke, her white eyes penetrating the evil in front of her. I was in awe, shocked, and oddly proud of her.

  “What do you want with the boy?” she demanded of the terrified creature.

  It tried to turn but was held fast. Nothing it did would allow it to move from where it stood.

  “We are only doing as we were told,” the creature stammered unwillingly, choking.

  “And what is it that you were told?”

  I had never seen my mother use her power like this. I had to I admit it was very scary.

  “To drain him to the point of death, so that he could be changed,” the creature gasped. Its eyes were darting in all directions in terror and confusion.

  Then I saw her. A girl with red hair stepped out in front of the creature my mother was addressing.

  “I am getting more
curious about you, Raven Princess,” she said to me in broken English. “First you shoot fire of Hell, now you shoot the flame of Heaven. I demand to know what you are.”

  My mother turned to me.

  “I told you already,” I responded. “I am your death. I am your salvation.” The words were not forced. I was simply repeating a line that had once been said to me.

  The red head smiled. “Oh, sweet princess, how misguided you are.”

  “How do you know her?” my mother asked me as she snapped the other creature like a twig in two pieces. The head went one way and the body went another.

  “She is the woman from my dream,” I told her as anger filled me. “She is the one who is after my boyfriend!”

  My mother focused on the girl. I could see both anger and concern on her face as she grabbed my hand once more.

  We need to hurry. Wesley is fading.

  I heard her voice in my head, though she said nothing out loud. It took me a moment to realize that she was in my head. Then I let the anger fly.

  The fires of Hell burst from my fingertips and the flames of Heaven from hers. When the smoke cleared the redhead was gone. All that was left was my Wesley, lying covered in blood on the forest floor. I pulled away from my mother and raced to his side, laying my hands on his face, his shoulders, and his chest, feeling for anything that would tell me he was okay. He was so cold, and he wasn’t moving.

  My mother had pulled her phone from her pocket and was dialing frantically for help. Then she sank at my side and gently pushed me back as she touched his neck in search of a pulse.

  “He’s alive, but barely. Give me your hands,” she instructed.

  I felt energy burst from her. Wesley’s face lit up brightly, like a star. The moment my mother relaxed, out of breath, his eyes cracked open. I was right there; I was the first thing he saw.

  “I knew you were an angel,” he whispered. It was all he said as he touched my face, and then he was out cold again.

  While we waited for help to arrive, my mother was able to close most of the wounds on Wesley’s body where he had been fed on. She decided on leaving only one deep gash open on his leg. This, she explained, was to mislead the emergency crew she had called up into thinking that was where the blood had come from.

  “Is this him?” I heard a woman’s voice say at long last. My mother’s expression turned from fear to relief as the emergency crew appeared around us.

  “Yes, he’s lost a lot of blood.”

  My mother grabbed me and moved me out of the way so that the crew could get to work. It didn’t take long for them to get him on a board and out of the woods.

  “He’s in good hands,” my mother assured me, gripping my arm.

  “How do you know?” I asked as we followed the paramedics across the field.

  “I just do. Trust me.”

  ***

  When we reached the house Wesley’s father hugged my mother tightly, thanking her. Though his son was not conscious, he could see that he was alive. The paramedics wouldn’t allow me to ride with Wesley since I was not his spouse or a family member, even though his father pleaded with them to take me. Instead he opted to drive in with us to make sure we knew where we were going.

  “Thank you, Angie. Thank you for finding my boy,” he repeated, tears in his eyes, as the ambulance set off.

  My mother decided it would be best if she drove since Wesley’s dad was obviously in no state to do so.

  “Dawn,” she added, “go inside and get Melissa up. We can’t leave her here alone.”

  I did as I was told and went up to the second floor to Melissa’s room. Wesley’s sister was already awake. She looked very pale.

  “Melissa?” I asked as I entered her room.

  Her face turned toward me and she huffed a sigh of relief.

  “Dawn, thank goodness it’s only you.”

  She pushed the blankets off and stood up. I could see she was shaking.

  “I need you to get dressed. We need to get going,” I told her softly, reaching out and touching her shoulders.

  “You found him, then. Is he okay?”

  “Yeah. We just have to go to the hospital for a bit tonight.”

  I felt her arms wrap around my waist and my heart fluttered. I loved this little girl.

  “Okay, let me get some clothes on.” She grabbed a pair of jeans and a shirt and changed quickly into them. Once she was done she grabbed my hand. “Did you see anything out there?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked as we walked down the stairs.

  “Oh, nothing,” she said, looking away from me.

  I immediately sensed that something was up. What did she know?

  We drove to the hospital in silence, my mother holding Mr. Jensen’s hand tightly as he stared out the window at the road ahead. I sat in the back seat with Melissa, my arm around the girl’s shoulders, running my fingers through her hair. She looked lost and terrified at the same time.

  “It’s going to be alright,” I whispered in her ear.

  She nodded and looked up at me. “I know.” Then she smiled. “As long as you are around everything will be alright.”

  Once we arrived we hurried to the emergency room entrance. Mr. Jensen made his way straight to the reception.

  “My son was brought in by ambulance,” he told the woman behind the desk.

  “Name?” she asked flatly.

  “Wesley Jensen.”

  “He arrived a few moments ago. The doctors are with him now. Please have a seat and someone will come out and speak with you soon.” She motioned towards the waiting room.

  As we retreated from the reception desk my mother leaned close to talk privately with me. “Dawn?”

  “Yes?”

  “Who was that girl?”

  “I already said she’s the one from my dreams,” I told her.

  “How long have you dreamed about her?”

  I glanced at her and knew she was thinking about something. “It’s been a few weeks. She started out as nothing more than a victim in one of my dreams. Then it turned into a face-to-face verbal fight.”

  My mother pulled a face as we sat down in the plastic chairs provided for us. “Honey, those aren’t dreams.”

  “Then what are they?”

  “Summons. She’s summoning you to an astral plain. She probably doesn’t have the strength to summon you all the way to her, so she’s making do with what she can get.” My mother put her head in her hands.

  “What are you talking about, Mom?” I hissed, my throat suddenly dry.

  “She doesn’t know what you are, as such. However, she does know that you have demon blood, hence why she is able to summon you.”

  “That’s something new,” I groaned, after checking that Greg and Melissa weren’t listening in.

  My mother raised her head and looked hard at me. “Be careful with this woman, Dawn. Otherwise she will eat you alive. If she finds out about the other half of your bloodline I don’t know what will happen.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m pretty sure she has an idea now. You know, the two of us being together in the woods like that.”

  My mother sighed. “Maybe.”

  I shook my head and tried not to think about it. Then I nodded at Wesley’s father and sister. “For now, Mom, let’s just worry about them.”

  Chapter Fifteen: Enigma

  Sitting in the waiting room of the Midvale ER was the most nerve-wracking experience of my life. People came in and people left. The place got crowded and then it was dead. After four hours of waiting and praying, pacing the linoleum floor over and over again, and constantly checking the time, a doctor finally appeared and took Wesley’s father aside. There was a lot of nodding. When the doctor had finished speaking Mr. Jensen gave him a tired smile and came back over to us.

  “They’re going to admit him so that they can observe him over the next few days. The doctor said that they stitched up his wound. He didn�
��t know how Wes had lost so much blood from that one gash, so they want to make sure that it’s not a blood condition or something. They had to give him a transfusion.” He looked at me with sad blue eyes. “Dawn, without you and your mother my boy would have died. I am forever in your debt for this.” With that he hugged us both. “They’re moving him to the third floor, room 302. Let’s head up there so we can meet him.”

  We took the elevator up the two floors. Melissa’s hand was entwined with mine. She was still crying from time to time but didn’t say what was going on in her head. Instead she just wrapped her arms around me and sobbed into my shoulder. When we reached the second floor, however, she suddenly pulled me out of the elevator and dragged me down the hallway ahead of the others to Wesley’s room, where she pushed me inside.

  “What’s going on, Melissa?” I asked as she sat me down on the visitors’ couch.

  “I saw her!” she said urgently.

  “Saw who?”

  “Miranda! Wesley’s ex.” She looked worried. “She told me that she would get Wesley back from you. She said that you couldn’t protect him forever.”

  “Really?”

  Who the Hell was Miranda?

  Before Melissa could say anything else my mother and Wesley’s dad caught up with us. My mother gave me an inquiring look but I shook my head. I would have to tell her later.

  Wesley was awake but by no means alert when they brought him into the room. He looked at me and smiled feebly as I came to the side of the bed. He was groggy, but he gazed at me like he couldn’t believe I was there.

  “I love you,” he murmured, softly touching my face. Then he turned his head and offered my mother another weak smile. “Thank you.”

  “I’m just glad you’re okay,” my mother told him.

  Then Wesley spotted his father. “Dad,” he said, wincing.

  Mr. Jensen stepped forward and ran his hand over his son’s hair. “I’m right here, son.”

  “I’m so sorry, Dad. I am so, so, sorry.” He looked up at his father with pain in his eyes.