Darkness Arisen (7 page)

You failed to keep her safe. You suck.

Suck? He sucked? What the hell was that? But he knew it was true. He'd failed to keep her safe.
Failed
. It was his fault she'd died. It was his fault she'd suffered. It was his failure to fulfill his duty. What kind of a man was he, if he couldn’t keep his own soul mate alive? The familiar emotions of shame and despair spread through him, like a powerful poison eating away at him, and he swore, steeling himself against the onslaught he knew was coming.

He had to be stronger than the curse. It was getting old, so fucking old, and he was getting tired of being brought down by it. Ian fought to regain control of his emotions. If he died, if he killed himself, he would leave Alice unprotected.
Alice needed him
. Without him, Alice would not come back from the dead this time. He repeated the same litany of reasons why he needed to stay alive, how it was his duty, how his reason for being was to keep her safe, but this time, it wasn't working. The despair was getting stronger instead of weaker.

He was too vulnerable to her. He'd dropped too many damn shields, and he was treading in that dangerous position his father had been in before he'd killed himself—

"Pull your shit together, Fitzgerald!" Ryland swung a piece of driftwood the size of a telephone pole at Ian's head.

"Shit!" Ian raised his arm to block it, and the log slammed into his forearm with enough force to shatter every bone, if he were human. Conveniently, he wasn't. As his arm made contact with the wood, a loud crack split the night, and the log snapped in half, breaking harmlessly around Ian instead of crushing his skull. His arm throbbing and his fingers bordering on numb, Ian scowled at his partner. "Son of a bitch, Ryland. What the hell was that?"

Ryland shrugged, his eyes a bottomless pit of anger and violence. "We don't have time for you to lose your shit over a woman. I figured that saving your own life would get your priorities back in line." He cocked an eyebrow. "You feeling better now? You look better. Not so sweaty and weepy."

"I'm not weepy." Adrenaline racing through him, Ian leapt to his feet and slammed his fist on Ry's shoulder. "Thanks, man."

"My pleasure. Always happy to help. Kinda enjoyed trying to kill you, to be honest."

Ian eyed his teammate. "Dude, you're so fucked."

"Tell me something I don't know." Ry raised his brows. "You gotta ditch that curse, though, Fitz. You won't always have me around to try to take you out and trigger those self-preservation instincts."

"The curse can go to hell." But Ian knew it wouldn't. The curse was an unstoppable, persistent little bugger. It was irreversible, except by Warwick Cardiff, the black magic wizard who'd tossed the curse at his family in the first place. The spell had dragged every one of his ancestors into the grave, their will to live destroyed by the loss of the women they loved.

For six hundred years, Ian had fended off the need to slit his own throat, and he wasn't going to start sticking his fingers in electric sockets just because he'd finally found the woman his soul was meant to connect with. Yeah, he wanted her. Yeah, he needed her. Yeah, he was completely at her mercy every time she turned those green eyes in his direction. So what?

It was time to man-up and be the emotional island he was meant to be. Ian fought down his need for her and his connection to her. He called upon the survival tools that his father had taught him to keep from becoming too emotionally connected with any woman.

Regret and loss filling him even as he did it, Ian blocked from his mind the desperate need in Alice's green eyes, the softness of her skin beneath his palms, the beauty of her kisses that had awakened in him something that he hadn't dared access his whole life. Resistance surged through him as he tried to separate himself from her, a desperate need to keep the connection with her open, to carve every memory of her onto his soul forever.

Shit! It wasn't working. Why in the hell did she have to be so damned addictive?

He had to be like his father, before he'd finally succumbed. He had to shut her out. Ian looked down at the ring on his left index finger. He was wearing his father's signet ring, which was decorated with the Fitzgerald family crest and emblazoned with the symbol of the Order of the Blade. Their mission was to save the world from rogue Calydons, warriors who had turned their immense power against innocents. No one else would ever fall victim to the Order, no one but rogue warriors, but against them, the Order was ruthless. They had to be. The lives of many depended on the Order's ability and willingness to sacrifice a single life.

Ian took a deep breath, drawing his shoulders back as he allowed the significance of the black onyx ring to settle over him. After six hundred years of keeping it locked away because he hadn't earned the right to wear it, Ian had finally put it on a month ago. Remembering his debt of honor had been the only thing that had enabled him to survive Alice's death the last time.

And now, he needed it to survive her being alive, because it was a hell of a lot harder to keep himself distant from her when he could feel her very soul with every breath he took. Shit.

He'd thought finding her would be his key to staying alive. He'd figured that his instinct to protect her would give him enough incentive to fight off the curse because he couldn't wave his manly weapons and beat down her assailants if he were lying belly up in a graveyard.

Yeah, well, that plan had worked out great. He'd managed to find her, but as it turned out, her impact on him was too strong. He understood now why his ancestors had all died from the curse. They'd been brave, powerful leaders who had crumbled. The truth was, the power of a woman over a Fitzgerald male was just too damned much. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair, still damp from his dive in the ocean. "I can take down entire armies of rogue Calydons, but I'm no match for a green-eyed siren who weighs a buck twenty and kisses like the devil."

Ryland grinned. "She's one hell of a woman. All angels are. They're more than we are, that's for sure."

"Yeah, I'm getting that now." Ian realized now that it had been a mistake to find her. A huge mistake. He'd been better off when she'd been invisible to him. Now? It gave the curse too much ammunition.

Ryland raised his brows. "You okay?"

"Yeah, sure." He shook out his arms, refusing to turn toward the water to see what she was doing. "I'm good."

The most deadly and almost-rogue member of the Order of the Blade shot him a skeptical look as he folded his arms over his chest. "Are you? Because you still look like shit."

"Thanks. You do, too."

A brief grin flashed over Ryland's face. "That's because I'm a totally fucked-up bastard. I'm okay with it. I got no girl to impress." He jerked his chin toward the ocean. "She's getting away, in case you hadn't noticed."

Against his instincts, Ian glanced toward the water. Alice was swimming hard out into the open ocean. The waves were rough, whitecaps rising high out of the water. Further away from her, the water was quiet, but all around her, it was rough, as if the ocean had decided to make her way a little more difficult.

Damn. What was it with this woman and the ocean?

Not that he could let it matter to him. His only chance was to figure out how to stop worrying about her, and divest himself of the need to take responsibility for her. Or to imagine her naked. Or to think of kissing her. Or to recall what it felt like to make love to her.

Shit. He was really not doing a good job at forgetting the girl, was he? Ian let out his breath, steeling himself against the sight of her putting herself in danger. His happy place was a lot harder to find now that Alice had gotten to him. "Figures I had to get paired with a woman who won't bond with me
and
who keeps trying to get herself killed." If she'd been uncomplicated and simply fallen into his arms and let him keep her safe, his plan would have worked. Finding her would have helped him.

But she was not the woman he needed, and it was a mistake to hook up with her.

"She's not trying to get herself killed," Ry replied. "She's on a mission. I admire that. And the fact she thinks you're a pain in the ass she doesn't want around? She's a smart woman, seems to me."

"You're the pain in the ass." Ian narrowed his eyes as he watched her lithe body stroking through the water. There was a focused determination in her movements, and her gaze was fixed on one of the huge black rocks jutting out of the water a few hundred yards from the beach. He shifted restlessly as she neared it, willing her to make it safely to the rock, willing himself not to dive into the water and chase after her again.

He had to let her go.

Ryland was on alert beside him, and Ian knew his teammate was equally primed to go after her if she needed help. "She's sure a firestorm," Ry said. "I'm digging on her."

"Shut up." Because getting jealous would really help his mental state.

Ian ground his jaw as Alice reached the base of the rock. She dug her fingers into the porous volcanic rock and hauled herself out of the water. The muscles in her delicate arms flexed as she crawled up the steep incline, her hair streaming behind her. "I buried her three times. I watched the demons take her soul. It's not easy to forget that."

"I know." Ry's voice was soft. "Trust me, I know."

Ian glanced at Ryland in surprise, wondering who had died in the warrior's life. But before he could question him, the images of Alice's deaths flashed through his mind. Too real. Too visceral. Too debilitating. Those thoughts were really not helping his cause.

Ian ground his jaw, fighting to distance himself from the agony of losing her. He focused on her as she crested the rock, drinking in the glint of the turquoise moonlight on her wet hair. He breathed deeply, inhaling her scent even from a distance. She was alive. In front of him. Not dead. Not right now. See? It was a rosy day on the beach, right? All good.

As he watched her, he felt himself beginning to separate from her as he rebuilt the walls that had protected him from the curse. The emotional shields that had kept him from noticing any female, let alone bonding with one.

"Hey." Ryland glanced sharply at him. "You going to go get her or what?"

"Nope." Ian knew he had no choice. "She's alive. I saved her. My job's done."

Ryland's eyes narrowed. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Paying my debt to my father." Ian felt the familiar lack of emotion settle over him, wiping away the flash of regret that he was isolating himself from her. He'd had to rebuild himself after Alice had died in his arms the first time, and he was better at it now. No more spending months in chains just to stay alive. He was a veritable rock. Go, him.

Now that he knew she was safe, he had to let her go. He had a promise to keep, a debt owed, family honor to restore. He had to find a way to release the souls of his seven dishonored ancestors from their ignominious hell reserved for Order of the Blade members who died ignobly...by their own hand.

Until Ian broke the curse and freed the souls of his father and grandfather, they would suffer in eternity. And if he died before he broke the curse? Eternal hell for all. He was the last Fitzgerald. There would be no one left to save them. There was no way he was going to risk that just because he had the hots for a certain angel.

He'd spent too long chasing her down. It was time to move on. Refusing to acknowledge the regret, he forced himself to turn away. He grabbed his shirt off the beach, the one she'd rejected. He yanked it over his head and began to stride back toward the road, toward the SUV that had brought the three men there.

"Hey!" Ryland jumped in front of him and shoved at his chest. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"Leaving." Ian sidestepped him and kept walking, keeping his back toward the water and the woman who could so easily reach into his soul and crush it. Because who had time to have their soul crushed? No one he knew.

"The hell you are." Ryland grabbed his arm and spun him back. "Some bastard we don't know is trying to destroy the Order, and he's trying to wipe out our trio of guardian angels. We've found Sarah, but there are still two more, one of which we're pretty damn sure is the woman who's got you all twisted up."

"What are you talking about?" That was the first Ian had heard about someone trying to destroy the Order. He knew they'd had some close calls recently when one of their teammates, Kane Santiago, had tracked his
sheva
into a hell storm, but Ian had been hunting for Alice at the time, and he'd missed out on it. "Who's trying to take down the Order?" Battles were one thing, nothing more than a typical day, but someone targeting the Order specifically was a different matter. No one dared take them on.

Frustration flashed across Ryland's face. "We don't know. Kane saw him, but he was insane at the time, so he doesn't remember much. Gideon and Quinn are trying to track the guy. You and I have been assigned to find Alice and determine whether she is one of the Order's guardian angels."

"
Him
? What do you know about him?" A dark foreboding began to seethe inside him, an ominous sense of something seriously wrong. "What did I miss?"

"What did you miss?" Ryland spat at him in disgust. "You missed a hell of a lot over the last year while you were pining over the death of your
sheva
instead of being where you needed to be."

Ian was not interested in revisiting the months he'd spent chained up because he'd been too pathetic to keep himself alive after Elijah had done his Order duty of protecting his teammate by murdering Ian's
sheva
before she could turn him insane. Ian was aware that he'd failed to deliver as an Order member, and it was a bitter taste in his mouth. "I'm not talking about what happened back then. I'm talking about what's going on now." The past was a done deal, but if there were problems now, he wanted to be a part of the team that would handle it.

Ryland shook his head, and Ian didn't miss the unflinching evasiveness in Ryland's gaze. "You and me pulled angel duty. That's all that matters. If Alice is part of the trio that protects us, then we bring her back to Dante's mansion where we can keep her safe. That's why we're here."