Echoes in Eternity (The Pella Series Book 1) (56 page)

‘
I have not lost her yet! I have not lost her yet
,
’ I fervently remind myself. Closing my eyes, I shift Elissa’s body, allowing her to saddle me. Yet, this is not enough, her body temperature is plummeting! Skin on skin is best. Ordinarily, I would be insanely jealous if another man was to see my girl’s naked body. But at this moment, I just want her to come back. With a deep groan, abandoning my jealousy and the fear of losing her to oblivion or to the Duke, I rip her dress and my shirt to shreds in the blink of an eye. Her body is cooling rapidly. I merge the front of her nude torso with my bare chest. This act merges the energy centers of our bodies: our
Vertexes
at the crown of our heads, our
Life Principals
at our chests, the bridge between the
Divine and Mortal Soul
, and the
Vital Breath
of Spirit and Desire are all merged. I hear Duke’s involuntary gasp. With shaky hands, he presses on Elissa’s
Sacred Bone
gently as if he’s worried about crushing a delicate wild flower. That will not do anything to get her back! She needs her soul jolted back into her body. Even the first breath after birth requires a slap on the bottom to shock the baby into crying to help clear the lungs and force the baby to take the first big gulp of breath. What Elissa needs is much more than just a slap. We have to awaken her
Sacred Bone
to jolt her soul back to her system.

“You have to press harder, coax he
r life essence back to her body, Courcillion! Pretend you want her back! Like you are fighting me for her body and soul!” I shout.

“I’m doing that already!”

“Clearly you don’t want her bad enough!” I taunt him. “Shit! I can smell your arousal and your desire for her, but her horse did a better job coaxing her soul back than you did and she wasn’t even thinking of fucking her like you do! But then again, you’re not the man for the job! I wouldn’t let you fuck my woman even if her life depended on it! You don’t have the soul for it!” I castigate him further.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing!
” he hisses through his gritted teeth. “I am trying! It’s just not enough. We need something else!” he shouts back.

“What do the medics do when the heart stops?”

“Electric shock!”

“In this case she needs something to counter what Hedone triggered!” She needs a fucking memory, but not of mine. Shit!
Shit! Shit!

“What is it? Come on man, hurry!
Her head is already lulling!” I take a shaky breath and forcefully expel it out of my lungs with flaring nostrils. My eyes grow cold as icy shards. I’m determined to do whatever it takes to revive her.

“We need a memory, but I can’t share one of mine with her. It’s too dangerous. The last memory she remembered on her own was her very last memory…” I pause. He looks at me questioning.

“Her last memory with you,” I add grimacing. That lone declaration shimmers the Duke’s eyes with his first hopeful glint. To his credit, he nods, but doesn’t say anything. “That’s the safest revisit, because she recalled it on her own. We’ll get her back with that! You have to provide the memory, and I’ll share it with her. I’ll be the bridge. You have to let me into your mind first!” I instruct him. There is a satisfied pause for a fraction of a second. The Duke is overjoyed that Elissa remembered something about him. He remains silent until he recomposes his face to the emotionless façade.

“What do I do?” he asks with urgency.

“First I have to establish a bond between all three of us. Ellie and I have that naturally, but I have to create a bond with you to get her mind connected with yours. Just think of your last night with her during your mother’s masquerade ball. The night                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 she ran off. The night your mother pushed her into the River Seine!” I hiss. He winces, his jaw is taut, his lips are thinned into a tight line, but he nods his acquiescence.

“I’ll do it…” he says with only determination in his eyes. I take out the small glaive I used ear
lier. I prick my wrists with it first; the blood pools on the tip of the glaive and slowly follows the ridges of the eagles, slowly giving them life and putting them in motion as if being awakened from a long slumber. The wings of both the eagles flap with tremendous power as if taking flight. Their eyes glint crimson with singular purpose. Their strong beaks open wide and I can feel rather than hear the high pitch scream escaping their vocal cords and vibrating through my entire body. Shaking the feeling off, I prick Elissa’s wrists; finally merging my eagles with hers, giving them animation with my life essence and entering into my girl’s subconscious still holding onto my awareness of the here and now. Once her eagles start stirring and stretching their wings wide, I pull Duke’s right wrist and prick it twice. When his blood slowly oozes out and trails to create a course, the scent of his life essence hits my senses and the diversity of his otherness fills my nostrils. It’s not like anything I’ve smelled before. The metallic and salty taste of his blood is carried in its scent indicating his human nature, but that is not the strongest scent. I smell the flowers of Eden mixed with the scent of a freshly started fire. His angelic ancestry is in the scent of Eden but why is there an essence of fire in him?

I put the thought aside to reexamine it at a further time when I’m not facing a life and death emergency. When the combined life essences from all three of us are applied together the
eagles on mine and Elissa’s wrists completely come alive with colossal force and a ritualistic show of power, a hypnotic dance begins between them; chasing, diving, rolling, swooping and at one point locking their talons together and then tumbling and somersaulting at such a blinding speed it would only look like a blur to the weaker human eyes. The eagles take flight and dive into the meniscus of the bright crimson bubbles forming on the Duke’s wrist combining our psyches and creating an unexpected force akin to a mental super storm. It is expected for our mental powers to collide and churn as our life forces create a virtual cyclone until they find the necessary harmony to synchronize. But that doesn’t happen. It takes a monumental amount of concentration and letting go of the self to find the rhythm of the other souls.

“Don’t resist!” I hiss at
Courcillion as all three of us violently tremor within the grasp of our own powers. Elissa’s body is roiling. Courcillion is out of synch and he’s combating the invasion. The physical entry into someone’s mind isn’t like the
Psyche
probing your thoughts. With this type of meta entry, you allow another entity, another mind to enter and occupy the same dimension and space where your soul dwells. It’s very intrusive and violating, but that’s what needs to be done.

“I’m trying to swim in this rush of images, and thoughts! I’m being flooded!”
he shouts over the noise of our combined thoughts and memories cascading around us as a mental onslaught, rushing to drown us under its weight and flow.

“You’re doing it wrong! You cannot
fight against the mental current. Take charge of your own power! You’re not dipping your toes in the mental waters; you’re violently splashing and taking us all down! Look around you…” I shout. Then I lower my voice to a calm and soothing level so he strains to hear me, isolating my vocal signature out of the noise of his own thoughts.

“Ease up! When you’r
e violent, I react the same way. We’re both alpha males; our opposite energies have the capacity to create a disaster! Don’t fucking resist!” This is the first time he’s sharing a memory and the experience is unknown to him. He’s like a powerful toddler who has never walked before. Not only is he unable to walk but he’s also pulling down everything in his attempt to stand on his mental feet.

“Borrow my strength!” I ext
end my wrist once again. I can feel our energies creating a physical storm around us; the papers and anything that has not been nailed down shuffle and fly around us as a centrifugal force whirls within the Centurion Command Center. Once Courcillion’s wrist connects with mine in a bind, the eagle on my wrist spears one of the golden arrows into his wrist making Duke cry out in agony. But to his credit, he doesn’t let go of my wrists, and doesn’t allow our connection to be broken. When he stops writhing, I see the live fire forming on his wrist slowly turning to ashes, and a Phoenix with flames still licking the tips of its wings approaches from the still glowing ashes. Duke Courcillion is a
Resurrector
! Fuck!

I have no time to process this revelation
. But I know that it means I’m going to need him should I ever lose Elissa in this rescue attempt! The Duke is now marked with the mark of a
protector
. I’m not at all sure if granting this power to him is even slightly acceptable knowing what his mother was and how she tried to kill Elissa! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I force myself to focus on luring Elissa’s soul back to me. Duke closes his eyes, completely immersed in our combined psyche while still applying pressure to Elissa’s
Holy Bone
now with both hands. The memory he’s about to share might push Elissa to Courcillion. It might even permanently bond her with him and maybe even sever her bond to me. I love Elissa enough to take that chance because I can’t think of a world where she doesn’t exist. I decide that her survival is enough for me to be willing to be waiting on the wings, fighting to win her affection back so long as she’s alive, breathing, safe and happy in the here and now.

Resigned to my fate of only being her bodyguard, I slowl
y enter into Duke’s memory, dipping my toes and then my feet into cool unfamiliar waters of his mind. Soon I’m immersed in his thought and the memory he needs to share with us. I’ll be seeing the events through Maximillian Courcillion’s eyes and thoughts. Combining his visions with my own recollections of the same night, I get ready to reflect the memory from multiple directions.

As soon
as he starts opening the mental doors to that fateful night, I’m doused in Duke’s feelings for Elissa. It’s not as strong as what I feel for her, but it is very intense. The thought of experiencing this emotion for Elissa; my wife, my woman, through the eyes of another man arouses jealousy and resentment in the depths of my soul.

“Elissa,” my whispered voice calls out to her. Our bond stretches to its limits and when her consciou
sness travels far enough as our bond would allow, it’s pulled back with intensity and I catch her around the waist letting her speed float us right into our former selves in Duke’s memory.

“No, Alex
ander! You have to let her go. If you pull her back at this stage, her ties to the living world will snap!” an unexpected lulling voice commands.

“Nieto?” After over two-hundred fucking years, he’s back?

“The same,” he replies in his ever boring monotonous voice.

“I’m not letting you take over this time!”

“You have no say in this, Alexander. Her course has already been charted. I can’t stop her descent, but I can change her destination.”