The Guardian (Callista Ryan Series) (22 page)

             
“I was there that day,” he said.

             
“—that I must have fallen out of the open window. I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt—“

             
“I saw the truck coming over the hill, and it was swerving between lanes, but your father couldn’t see it.”

             
“—and so when the car was turning over, I fell out of the window—“

             
“I pulled you out of the door before the car hit the ground.”

             
“—and I landed on the street. They took me to the hospital,” she finished. Reciting the story to herself, solidifying the details in her mind, didn’t help. She looked up at him helplessly. “It was a miracle, they said.”

             
Alex gazed down at her with a sad expectance, and she knew then beyond doubt that he had saved her. Everything she’d thought she’d known for the past four years…all of it vanished with a breath of realization. He had been there, had pulled her from the car, had saved her life.

             
The white feathers…

             
Tears dwelled in her eyes again. She shook her head. “It isn’t fair,” she whispered, her voice failing her. “It isn’t fair that I had you and they didn’t. I shouldn’t have survived. I shouldn’t have survived if they couldn’t,” she said, her words dissolving as he drew her near to him again. She couldn’t stop the tears; her body shook with them. All of the sadness that she had bottled up, unwilling to show to anyone in the past couple of weeks, broke forth. Without a word, he rocked her back and forth, letting her spill them onto his chest; it was as if they both knew that no simple speech could comfort her in that moment. No words could make this better.

             
He held her that way, without complaint or question or advice, until she had exhausted herself. She lay limp against him, not willing to speak or move. She felt utterly drained, and began to sink into a coma-like state.

             
“That day,” he said, the rumbling of his voice sending ripples down his chest. Callie closed her eyes at the sensation. “I was supposed to make sure that you were on your way back home before I left, so that I knew where you would be. I was only supposed to stay until you had left your sister at college. But for some reason, I couldn’t leave. I had this feeling—”

             
He paused, and took a deep breath.

             
“And then when I saw the truck, and knew what was about to happen….I have seen men butchered before me, Callie. I have watched as the life drained out of whole generations. Entire races have wasted away while I stood witness. I can remember almost every worldly horror, and yet
your
death,” he said, and Callie felt his heart begin to speed. “That I could not have watched.”

             
She forced herself to peel back from him, to watch him as he spoke. He hid his emotion as he studied the falls.

             
“In that second, I knew I’d be breaking the most important rule. I would be defying practices which I have placed my faith in for thousands of years. And yet…I realized that I couldn’t
not
save you. It wasn’t in my power.”

             
“Why?” she asked, confused by the urgency in his proclamation.

             
He glanced downwards. “I have no idea.”

             
She lifted an eyebrow. “Well, that’s a first,” she remarked drolly.

             
He looked at her in question, and saw that she was smirking. Though her heart was still heavy, weighted down with guilt, she felt a little lighter when he looked at her like that. Like she surprised him, and yet like she was what he knew best in the world.

             
She drew a fortifying breath, and then looked back in the direction of Shay’s house. “What do you think he’ll do to her?” she asked.

             
“He’ll let her stay,” he replied solemnly. “He wouldn’t risk losing you.”

             
Callie nodded, expecting that. She returned her focus to him, and saw that he was watching her intently. She swallowed under the scrutiny of his deep, liquid brown eyes, and felt herself being drawn in again. This bond between them, whatever it was, was powerful. It pulled her in.

Without warning, Alex
drew back, away from her. He stood up and offered her his hand. She took it, allowing him to pull her to her feet. “Where are we going?” she asked.

             
“We should probably get back,” he replied. “Emeric will have left by now.”

             
“Right,” she said. But when he turned his back to her, taking a step backwards so that he might lift her on more secure ground, she realized that she didn’t want to leave. Not yet. She didn’t like the sight of him retreating from her.

             
When he faced her again, and opened his arms to her, she caught her breath as nerves overwhelmed her. With a shy, small step towards him, she closed the distance between them. But instead of stepping off of the ground and into his arms, she placed her hands against his shoulders and allowed herself to be lost once more in his face. She drew a deep breath, closed her eyes, and tilted her head….

             
“Callie,” he said, so low and soft that it barely existed atop the rumbles of the falls. And yet somehow, perversely, that murmur acted as a slap, especially once he took a step backwards.

             
Callie opened her eyes, feeling the immediate rush of hot blood to her cheeks. She didn’t know if she would blush or cry, but her nerves became steel daggers to her gut. She felt slightly winded as she noticed the cold resolve written in Alex’s features, the blatant rejection which it signified.

             
“We can’t do that,” he said, more softly still, and Callie then knew the sharp, ruthless sting of rejection. It hurt all the more because she had never been in this position before. She had never been one to obsess over boys. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to care about much in her teenage years. But now, once she recognized the strange sensation for what it was, she felt ashamed. Humiliated.

             
She swallowed. “Okay,” she said, detaching her voice from her emotions.

             
A twinge of guilt flashed in the little triangle between his eyebrows and his nose, but then the vacant, hard expression was firmly in place once again.

             
A subtle movement caught the corner of her eye, and she turned to look into the forest. She gasped as a pair of purple eyes stared back at her from between the leaves on the other side of the small valley, seemingly disassociated from any face, existing all on their own. They blinked at her once, but when Alex noted her surprise, and turned to see what had caused it, they disappeared altogether.

             
“Callie?” he asked.

             
But she could barely look at him, let alone tell him what she’d just seen. Her heart began to race, the mingled sensations of shock and heartache causing her blood to surge. “I think you’re right,” she mumbled. “You should take me to Shay’s.”

             
He didn’t move for a moment, but then she saw him nod. Wordlessly, he gathered her in his arms and leapt from the ground. And it was in such silence that he placed her minutes later on Shay’s doorstep.

             
She walked inside, not brave enough to look back at him.

             
“Callie,” he said hesitantly. She paused, though didn’t turn.

             
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m okay from here.”

             
She heard no motion for a long while, and she stood frozen in panic, hoping that he wouldn’t try to console her. That would be even worse, having the man who had bruised her heart try to bandage the wound. But then, after another second, she heard the rustle of feathers as he left.

             
She didn’t waste a moment. “Shay?” she called, sprinting back to Shay’s room. Her leg stung a little with the motion. It was empty. She returned to the main room, and found Shay hidden behind the couch, bent over a notebook on the floor, scribbling furiously.

             
“What are you doing?” Callie asked.

             
Shay looked up, seeming confused with the question.

             
Callie sighed. “Never mind. Listen, Sirens were all Guardians at one point, right? So if I describe a Siren to you, you might recognize who I’m talking about?”

             
Shay pushed up from her crouch, and eyed Callie with suspicion. “If she changed after I was already in the village, then yes, I would likely know her by her description. Though it depends on the accuracy and the detail which you—“

             
“Right, whatever,” Callie said. “Look, when I was on the island yesterday, I saw this one Siren, and I think I’ve seen her before. She had red hair and purple eyes, really pale skin. She was kind of…psycho. Ted Bundy psycho. You know, cold, calm. I think I just saw her in the trees. Do you know who I mean?”

             
Shay’s eyes widened. “She was here?” she asked.

             
“Yeah,” Callie answered. “Why, who is she?”

             
Shay blinked a few times, and then shook her head, retrieving herself from her thoughts. “I have only known one Guardian to have violet eyes,” she said, already on her way to the bedroom. Callie followed her, and stood in the doorway, watching as Shay dug beneath the bed for something. “It was hundreds of years ago, in Egypt, that she appeared. Her name was Alexandria. As legend has it, one night, a shower of stars flashed across a moonless sky and landed in the deserts of her homeland. That night, a girl was born.”

             
Shay grunted as she retrieved a box, and then began to pick through it. Callie saw that she was discarding piles of old, black-and-white portraits, newspaper clippings, and jagged notes. The papers were so aged that they left flecks of dust on Shay’s fingers.

             
“The girl became known to all who lived near her, and eventually to foreign peoples as well. Her skin, they said, shimmered with silver; this was because she was so pale, a rarity amongst the Egyptians. She had hair the color of fire. But her most striking features were her eyes. They were precisely the shade of the Nile lilies. This girl was considered the true beauty of her people; men came from continents away to lay eyes upon her. And then one day, around her thirteenth birthday, she disappeared. They all whispered that the gods had reclaimed her for their own, jealous that mortals had possessed such loveliness.”

             
“She was a Guardian,” Callie said, sitting at the foot of Shay’s bed as she watched the woman search with frustration through the box.

             
Shay nodded. “Ah!” she shouted. Callie jumped a little. Shay pulled out a carefully constructed watercolor of the woman that Callie had seen yesterday. In this picture, the woman wore an impish, secretive smile, her ruby lips barely turned up at the corners though her purple eyes danced with mischief. She looked incredibly beautiful, glowing with the kind of perfection and distinctiveness that clung to a person’s mind long after they’d seen her. She was almost likeable there, none of the brutality showing through. But the picture was aged and distorted by time, and Callie couldn’t be sure that this was the woman she’d seen.

             
“This
might
be her,” Callie said. She looked up at Shay. “Who is she?”

             
Shay shook her head in disbelief, her eyebrows raised. “This is Adeline. Born Alexandria, she changed her name around the time of the French revolution. She was an agent sent to bring about the downfall of the monarchy.” Her eyes flicked up to meet Callie’s. “She was…very important to Alex, at one point, though she was banished when her wings began to shine silver.”

             
Callie frowned. “What do you mean, she was important to Alex?”

             
Shay bit her lip. “I am uncomfortable sharing what I know, as I don’t have all of the facts. I never actually met her, you see. I saw mere glimpses of her from time to time.”

             
“Oh, come on, Shay. I’m not going to grade you on this,” Callie said, annoyed.

             
“What I know, I have learned from the bits of gossip I have overheard. There has never been any concrete evidence—“

             
“Fine, then,” Callie said. “Where do we need to go to get the facts?”

             
“Normally, I would not encourage meaningless investigation. I find it to be a waste of what could be otherwise productive time. However, in these circumstances, seeing as how she was in the forest today….”

             
“Yes?” Callie encouraged.