Fallen Eden

by Nicole Williams

  He broke his position and straightened, his gaze shifting to the right of my shoulder. “What’s up, William?” he shouted, waving his hand.

  He couldn’t have ever loved a woman if he expected I would be fooled so easily. I could feel William’s energy a good mile away and there’s no way I’d still be feinting around Patrick now if he were anywhere near.

  Patrick’s kick came half a second later, silent as the wind and fast as a bullet, but my tuck and roll was faster still. I landed behind him and before the dust erupted, I was on my feet. He spun around just in time for his chest to connect with my right heel. I relished his look of shock all the way to his collision with the big pine at the far end of the arena.

  My laugh was as loud as the crashing timber. “How’s that for taking the teacher to school?”

  “Ouch.” Patrick chuckled as I made my way over to him. “If you tell anyone, I’ll key your Camaro.”

  “Sore loser,” I said, extending my hand for him. He took it and I pulled him up from the splinters of pine scattered around him. I pulled a large chunk from his tangled hair. “I’m afraid I made a mess of your lovely locks.”

  I felt it a moment after his expression turned to stone. We were no longer alone, the energy surrounding us we both felt was not familiar . . . nor friendly.

  “What an opportune situation you’ve provided us with,” a voice called out from the shadow of the trees. It sent chills cascading down my back.

  “Consider it an early Christmas present,” Patrick called out. He placed his hand over my back and its firmness calmed my chills. “Although it would sure be nice to know who we’ve so pleased.”

  The sound of multiple footfalls came from all around us, like a battalion bearing down on an enemy target. Patrick’s hand pushed me towards the center of the ring as a circle of bodies erupted from the trees. All Immortal, obvious from the shades of blue staring at us and the way the decades of existence tainted their expressions.

  I scanned the dozen surrounding us, my stomach dropping when I recognized two of the faces. The two faces that had held William’s arms behind his back when my name had been called out in death. Two beings whose names I didn’t know, but their faces had plagued my dream and awake state for the past three months. Faces I prayed I’d never see again, but somehow knew I would.

  I cleared my throat, trying to force my vocal chords open. “They’re from—”

  “John Townsend’s Alliance,” Patrick finished, glaring around the ring of men that were easily double, if not triple, my size. “I thought I smelt your foul scent, Andre.” He nodded at a man standing several steps farther in than the rest. “These your newest set of goons created to do John’s dirty work?”

  Andre sniffed the air. “Patrick, Patrick, Patrick. I knew I smelt a rat, although I thought it would be the other Hayward rat.” He wrinkled his nose and sniffed the air. His eyes fell on me and he eyed Patrick’s hand resting on my back. “I guess Miss Dawson found she preferred another Hayward. But you’ll do for now. We can take care of William later.”

  I shook Patrick’s hand off, charging forward in Andre’s direction. Patrick’s elbow stopped my advance.

  “She finally came around, I guess,” he said, brushing his shirt. “Why settle for my bore of a brother when she can have all this?”

  “If there was anytime in your life to be serious, now would be the time,” I sneered through gritted teeth.

  “Especially when that life is so near its end,” Andre flashed us a smile and snapped his fingers. The brigade surrounding us took a unified step forward.

  Patrick snorted through his nose. “You mean you aren’t here to shine my shoes?”

  Andre unbuttoned his suit jacket, loosening his tie. The eleven others followed suit. “We’re here to complete a mission,”—he eyed me as if in explanation—“and to send a message,” he finished, looking Patrick over head to toe.

  “John wants the girl alive,” he hollered as I sucked in a breath, favoring death to whatever I’d endure at the mercy of John. “Kill the rat.”

  “Remember your training, Bryn,” Patrick ordered, the lightness no longer in his voice. “I’ve got your back, you’ve got mine.”

  “I won’t let you down,” I vowed and although there were twelve men—likely well-trained and merciless—to our two, these men wouldn’t succeed in at least one of their missions today. There’s no way I would let them take Patrick’s life. I would die in my defense of him as readily as I would his brother.

  Andre took a step forward and the rest followed, closing the gap between us to twenty paces. Patrick and I turned our backs to one another and began side-stepping in a circle, waiting for the avalanche of bodies to descend. Andre winked and kissed the air in my direction before turning into a streak of blue bolting our direction.

  It was like viewing a meteor shower in the night sky as twelve bodies streaked towards us. Three sets of hands seized on me, but their holds were barely set before I was able to crouch into a sweeper kick, sending them sprawling to the ground.

  There were two more on either side of me instantly, one’s fist connecting with my jaw. The pain was as intense as any I’d known as a Mortal, but only fueled the fire I could feel raging inside. My arms and legs were a fury with movement, delivering the strikes my teacher had taught me so well. Instinct and training took over, as if my body was being commanded by some third party, because I was making no conscious command of it. I heard the same yells of pain and surprise behind me, knowing Patrick was more than holding his own.

  My kicks and punches began to slow and only then did my consciousness resurface enough to realize I was only thwarting off two men, the remaining ten not in view. I lunged at them feet first, my legs spread in a v formation, sending them careening off into the tree-line before spinning around.

  Patrick was moving faster and with more skill than I’d ever seen him, but it was futile against the ten men pummeling him from every angle.

  “Patrick!” I screamed, lunging at the ball of Immortals who were gripping their fingers into his skin in a way that terrified me. I knew what those fingers were capable of and what they were taking from him. His face fell a moment later, his body going limp as it fell to the ground.

  I charged forward, my fingers circling around the first neck I came in contact with, and something exploded inside me. My vision blurred, my senses muted; I could feel and see nothing but the fire raging inside me. My skin was sparking with my rage.

  “No!” A voice penetrated my shell of fury, but it couldn’t extinguish the wildfire running rampant. It was as if I was watching my life on a movie screen, knowing what would be coming next, screaming at the girl on the film, but not able to make a lick of difference in what happened.

  “Bryn.” I felt his hands connect with my skin for a split second before they fell away. I heard his body crumble to the ground beside me as the rage within dulled enough to clear my vision, but I didn’t need my sight to know who I’d find.

  “William!” I screamed, aware of nothing around me but his body lying dormant at my feet. “Please, God, no.” I fell to my knees at his side, reaching palm-first for his heart, dreading the silence I might find there.

  “Don’t touch him!” a voice commanded before I was thrust away from William with a force that jarred my insides. It was only then that I noticed the absence of John’s army, the addition of five Haywards, and the three bodies sprawled in awkward positions over the red stained dirt. The metal taste flowing in my mouth was evidence of where the red had come from.

  Charles had a hand on each of his downed sons, his eyes closed and his face contorted in concentration. It was in these seconds that aged me in centuries that I finally understood why the Council had denied us again and again. Why they’d not, and would never, agreed to William’s and my Union. It was because they feared this very day.

  The day when I’d kill him.

  Looking at his expressionless face, not knowing if his eyes would ever open again, I wis
hed with all my might that I could travel back in time to the day seven sets of hands attempted to take my life from me. I wished they would have succeeded.

  Charles’ eyes opened into mine, fifty yards away, and there was hate in them. “They’re alive,” he said, his eyes leaving me as if he never cared to look at me again. “Barely.” He moved to the third body, the one whose neck I’d interlaced my fingers over.

  I already knew what he’d say before he hung his head. “This soul was not so fortunate.” He closed the eyes of the man before standing. “Nathanial, Abigail,” he said, nodding at the pair whose eyes hadn’t left the bodies of their brothers. “You carry Patrick back to my house. Cora and I will take William.”

  With the mention of her name, Cora shook, as if being awakened from a coma only to find herself in a nightmare. Joseph wrapped both of his arms around her as she broke into sobs.

  “Joseph,”—Charles nodded at his son—“take this man’s body to your place. I need to seek the advice of the Council as to what to do with him. We’ve never been faced with this kind of situation before.”

  Four sets of eyes glanced back at me, save for Charles’, and they were filled with a mix of fear and anger. Even Cora and Joseph were looking at me as if I was the enemy. I didn’t blame them though, I was the enemy—the wolf in sheep’s clothing—and they’d nearly lost two of their brothers because I’d been welcomed into their flock.

  I watched William’s limp body being hoisted over Charles’ and Cora’s shoulders and carried off before I curled into a ball, closed my eyes, and let my agony tear me into pieces.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  COWARD

  I watched the last flood of yellow light inside Charles’ house extinguish before I worked up the nerve to come out from my hiding spot beneath one of the combines on the farm. The same combine William and I used to sneak away to so we could be alone. The same combine where only a month ago he’d begged me in between our parted lips to leave with him. If I’d listened, lord only knows where we’d be, but we’d have been together and he would have been vertical.

  I crouched as I ran towards the house, hearing a neigh of welcome as I passed the barn. I’d already said good-bye to the precocious filly William had given me several months earlier and it hadn’t been easy. She’d looked at me with liquid brown eyes as if to say, Why are you leaving me? What did I do?

  That good-bye had been hard enough and I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it through the next one, but I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I could say good-bye and he could live, sure to find happiness one day in the arms of another woman, or I could stay behind and end up killing him. It should have been an easy decision, but it had been the hardest I’d made to date.

  I sprinted across the yard and hugged the east side of the house, side-stepping my way until I was beside his window.

  Sometime after I’d awakened in the arena hours ago and realized it hadn’t all been just a bad dream, a layer of numbness had crept through my body, entombing it in a balm of nothingness. It was my only defense mechanism to protect me from having a total breakdown when I faced the fact I’d have to leave—I’d never be able to see him again after tonight.

  I sucked in a breath, praying it would get me through these last moments I’d ever have with him. I slid open the window and ghosted in through the sheer panels until I was standing beside him.

  The motionless, expressionless form of William would have dropped me to my knees had I not been stiff from the numbness. The pale moonlight diffused through the curtains, casting its spell on his face, and had it not been for the rise and fall of his chest, he could have been a corpse.

  I felt a sob explode from my throat, but it was caught and stifled by the numbness before it reached my mouth. I took a rigid step towards him, reaching my hand out to brush the long tufts of hair covering his forehead, but stopped short just inches from his face, remembering what the last touch from me had done to him.

  His near lifeless form before me was all the reprimand I needed. I withdrew my hand, having to come to terms that, along with my goodbye, I’d have to settle for our last intimate touch to have been shared last night. I bit my lip, wishing the numbness could have been more encompassing. I would have preferred to have been run over a hundred times by the rotary tiller the tractor pulled than to experience the pain that was shredding me at present.

  More than anything, I wanted to be with William. I didn’t want to leave him . . . but I also knew this was the selfish piece of me that I couldn’t seem to bury. All the other pieces of me wanted him safe and since I knew without a sliver of a doubt he would never be safe if he was anywhere within a thousand mile radius of me, this was the only answer. I had to leave.

  To vanish as if I’d never entered his life and turned it upside down. The woman he’d dreamed of for generations was not me.

  His body suddenly jerked, as if able to hear my dark thoughts. I wanted to press my lips to his and have him suffocate away every worry, until he’d injected enough wistfulness that I felt nothing but him in my drug-induced state. I didn’t stand a chance against the persuasiveness of his lips. His mouth parted and his breathing became heavy, as if tempting me to do just that.

  I took a step back, not trusting myself, and dug in my pocket for the damp piece of notebook paper that was the only thing I had left for him. A lousy, wide-ruled, recycled piece of paper I’d scribbled down a string of lies on. Lies that felt blasphemous given everything we had, but things I had to write so he wouldn’t come looking for me the moment he came to. Lies that I knew would be just enough believable so he’d leave me alone and not search the world endless times over.

  Because I knew if William suspected, even in the slightest, that I’d left to keep him safe from me, he’d somehow find me even if I sequestered myself to a dried-up, boarded-up well smack in the center of the Serengeti. So my lies had to be selfish requests, I had to make him believe I wanted out for me, and I knew—despite the pain it would cause him—he could never deny me anything.

  I’d scratched down vile things, things that said I was tired of waiting for the Council, sick of him being gone all the time, weary of his family and not fitting in, and the worst of them all, that I didn’t love him anymore.

  It’d taken a solid thirty minutes to write down that last sentence that included a handful of words that on their own were harmless, but when combined formed a wedge that promised to divide. Words that, when read, would cause pain, but that pain would one day melt away and there would be more than one set of arms eager to suck away the pain that rebellious girl from his past had left behind.

  Years from now, William would be reclining in the body of another woman and wouldn’t be able to recall the way I smiled at him or the way my cheeks flushed when he touched me. Yes, there would be pain, but it would be short-lived for him. For me . . . that was another story.

  I gazed hard at his face, photographing it into my mind. I dropped the letter on his nightstand, trying not to imagine his face when he read the last sentence. My last words to him, the last thing he’d have of me, words that basically told him I was in love with someone else.

  Not able to resist it, I leaned down to feel his breath break across my face, inhaling him one last time.

  “Goodbye,” I whispered beside his ear. “I won’t hurt you anymore.”

  The tears weren’t flowing as they should have been, probably because I was more shell than soul now, but I didn’t mind because I was able to take my last look of him with perfect vision. The man who’d filled me with a love and desire I never dreamed possible and the man I’d always known wasn’t meant for me.

  “Thank you . . . for everything,” I said, looking my last on him before turning and leaping out the window in the same second. Now I’d said good-bye, I needed to put as much space and time between us as I could.

  I ducked into the shadows outside the house, preparing to launch down the gravel trail and away from this place that now felt like foreign soil.
>
  “Maybe I should start teaching you the fine arts of espionage,” a voice commented behind me. “Rule number one—always be aware of your surroundings.”

  I somehow stiffened and relaxed at the same time. “Patrick,” I whispered, “you’re alright.” I turned around to see him getting off the wooden swing hanging from the sprawling maple in the back yard. He walked towards me, adorned in blue scrub bottoms and a white undershirt. His sandals flopped his way towards me. “You mind telling me what you’re doing sneaking in and out of my brother’s bedroom at this hour?’

  His eyebrows peaked and he stopped several feet in front of me. “Because, given his current state, I know you weren’t doing what you two are normally up to.” His impish grin didn’t quite explode with its normal force, plus his shoulders slumped a couple inches lower than normal.

  “How are you feeling?” I whispered, not able to look him in the eyes. “Are you alright?”

  “Never been better,” he joked. “Nothing like the zap of ten of John Townsend’s thugs to make you feel alive again.”

  “That’s not funny,” I said, reprimanding him before glancing at the window behind me.

  “He’s going to be alright too,” Patrick said, noting my stare, before chuckling. “Although William will now have a working knowledge of the phrase, ‘love hurts,’ don’t you think?”

  My eyes narrowed into slits when I looked back at him. How was he able to make light of something so serious? Had William’s hand connected with my skin for another heartbeat or two, Patrick and I would be having a very different conversation.

  “Sensitive, are we?” he said, raising his hands.

  “You should be resting,” I said, changing the subject.

  He snorted. “Sleep is for the weak. Besides, I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you’re up to.”

  I looked down, not able to look him in the eyes. “I’m leaving,” I mouthed, not making a sound.