The Protect Her Box Set: Parts 7-9 (8 page)

Benjamin’s smile was anything but warm as he extended his fist and flipped it over so that we could all see what was inside as he opened his fingers. A small pocket watch sat in the palm of his hand. “Isn’t it ironic that the thing you sought has been with you the entire time?”

CHAPTER EIGHT –
PAIGE

My mind reeled as I looked at the small item that apparently had so recently resided inside my body.

“How could you do that to her?” Riley said crossing the distance between them and grabbing Benjamin’s shirt by the collar. He shoved Benjamin up against the wall, and Benjamin didn’t do anything to stop him. Benjamin’s gaze never left mine, and his hand still extended toward me. “That thing is a weapon of mass destruction and you hid it away inside of a person?”

I thought about the fact that Bruno Proctor had been after this relic for hundreds of years. It crossed my mind how chagrined he’d be to know it had been that close to him twice in the last week. It wasn’t processing yet what this all meant in terms of what might have happened to me otherwise, or the fact that I had been a walking plague.

“I have no control over where my spell chooses to hide the relic. It was a unique safeguard that ensured the relic never stayed in one place too long. I took the appropriate measures to shield it and ensure that it could not harm anyone when it came into my hands for safekeeping. She was perfectly safe.”

“What the hell are you talking about? What spell?” Riley asked.

“He erased all memory of its potential location but tied it to a breadcrumb trail in his memories,” I said.

“Memories of what?” Riley’s voice dropped to a sharp whisper.

“Happiness and home, two things that have always been in short supply in my life,” Benjamin said. “I have kept it safe, but now it would appear that it is time for it to have another guardian.” He untangled Riley’s hands from his collar and pushed Riley away. Riley didn’t resist. Benjamin stretched his hand closer to me. “Take it. It’s yours.”

I reached out. It was what I wanted, after all. But my hand trembled even as my fingers closed around the object that was the heart of all of this mess. The metal was cool against my skin. My thumb found the spring that popped the lid of the pocket watch open. It looked so ordinary, except for the place where the twelve would be there was a round stone that looked like a diamond instead. I knew that it wasn’t a diamond. It was a part of Eva’s life force transformed into physical form. It was the part of her that had been cursed by a cloaked man a thousand years ago.

“We can never allow Eva to set foot back into this realm. You know that.”

I nodded. Eva had once been a being of justice and light, but that was corrupted and turned against her after her Protector was murdered, and their shared life force was poisoned. She had gone mad, and that madness had increased tenfold after her judgment day when she was sentenced to the ether where her spirit would never find peace.

“I will never accept her,” I said. “No matter what. No more spells or tricks. I will do whatever I need to do to keep her out.”

“I know you would try,” Benjamin said softly. Then his face hardened again. “But it is my responsibility to do whatever is necessary to ensure that never happens. Not yours.”

I didn’t grasp the true meaning of his words until it was too late. But Riley was already there in front of me, and I felt his body jerk as Benjamin’s knife drove hard into his body.

“NO!” I screamed. But even as I felt Riley’s body fall back against me, I saw Benjamin’s body pitch backward into the darkness. A hard thud and a sharp snap erupted into the air followed by a small shriek.

Riley’s hand was on my back and pushed me further into the caves. “We need to cross the boundary,” he said. I could hear the pain in his voice. “He won’t follow us beyond the boundary.”

I felt him stumble and caught his arm to drag him with me even as he pushed me forward again. Moments later, I felt the shift in the air. It was as if the air had turned into a kind of jelly. Every movement forward required ten times more effort than it had just a few steps ago.

“PAIGE!”

I felt the rippled vibrations of the sound of Benjamin’s voice behind me, and then suddenly it was as if I was free again. Riley’s hand was on my back, so I knew that he was right behind me and had crossed over as well. We stopped, and he leaned against the hard stone of the cave wall. His breath came in hard gulps. I played my flashlight beam up to his chest. His shirt front was stained with blood, but he gave me a wan smile and a thumbs up signal.

We both turned, and I saw a beam of light directed toward us. I couldn’t see the archangel beyond the beam, but I felt his presence nonetheless.

“You forgot to remove your protection spell, didn’t you, jackass?” Riley called out at the beam of light. “Thanks for that, by the way, but I think you still need to work on it.” He pointed at the blood on his shirt with a frown.

I wanted to laugh, but the joke of it all really wasn’t that funny. Then I looked down at my hand. The relic was still in my fist. I felt the anger starting to build in my chest as I considered what had just happened. I held it up so that I knew Benjamin could see it.

“You were never planning to give it to me, were you?” I said. “You didn’t know where it was. You were telling me the truth that you didn’t know that I was the vessel. Once you realized your mistake, you knew that you had to find the relic before I did so that you could hide it again from me. You needed my help to do it, so you lied to me.”

His answer was nothing but silence. Then the beam of light clicked off. I felt the feelings of hurt and betrayal running through my whole body. I wasn’t sure whether to cry or scream.

“We need to go,” Riley said as he pushed away from the wall. “We’re sitting ducks here.”

“You’re hurt,” I said. “But I don’t want to risk trying to heal you here so close to the gate.”

“I’m okay,” Riley said. He couldn’t keep the wince off his face though as he took his first step. “See? It’s nothing but a flesh wound.” He drew his knife and winked at me. We both knew it was more than a flesh wound, but the only place we could go was forward. We had an archangel at our back that wanted to kill me, and demons in front of us that would kill us without a second thought. Talk about a rock and a hard place.

“The odds seem stacked against us,” I said. I slid the relic gently into the front pocket of my jeans, and then I pulled the small gun at my waist out of its holster. It wasn’t much, but it made me feel better. “I don’t think I have enough ammo for a horde of demons.”

“They’re better odds than some situations I’ve been in,” Riley said.

“Really?” I was looking forward to the point in time where we’d be able to sit down and talk like two normal people in a relationship, and I’d finally get to hear Riley’s full life story.

Riley chuckled and shook his head. “I’ve been in some pretty bad messes. This might take the cake though.”

“We’re never bored,” I said.

Riley looked back at the darkness behind us. I wondered if he could see something I couldn’t see. Benjamin might not still be there, but I didn’t think that he would go far.

“I know the whole point of coming back to the island was to get that relic. I’m sorry that we have to take this little side adventure. Are you sure you are still up for this before we go find ourselves a goddess to pick a fight with?”

I realized I had never considered any other alternative. The course of our actions was taking us into larger, uncharted territory. “I think we’re the only ones who can.”

“Yes,” Riley said. He reached out and twirled a piece of my hair through his fingers. “Once this is all over, I’m never letting the people I care about out of my sight again.”

I smiled at him. “Once this is all over, I’m going to need a new job and place to live. I hope you’re hiring.”

Riley’s face grew serious. “Your place is with me. Don’t ever doubt that.”

My heart fluttered at his words. I didn’t know how he did it. We were in the middle of a crazy mess, and somehow he had managed to make me feel like everything was going to turn out all right.

“I’m in if you are,” I said softly.

He leaned forward and kissed my forehead. We stood like that for a long moment. I never wanted it to end, but I knew it had to eventually.

Riley leaned back and glared at the darkness behind us.

“You hear that? We’re going to go do what you and your prick brothers should have been trying to do all along. Oh, that’s right. You can’t. Let the mere mortals save the world from a demon invasion then.”

“Stop. He’s not worth it, Riley,” I said. I had shut off every emotion I had about Benjamin. I would deal with it later. I reluctantly pulled away from him. We nodded to each other, and then I followed him as he started down the tunnel. Two steps later, I smelled the pungent odor of sulfur.

“We’ve got company,” Riley said. I saw his knife flash in the flashlight’s beam, and then I heard the squeal of what sounded like a million bats fill the air. I felt a rush of heat and then my body flew backward. My heart leapt into my chest even as I struggled under the crushing weight of the thing that was suddenly on top of me.

“Paige!”

I tried to answer, but then I felt the strong grip of hands around my throat. I swung the hand with the gun up to connect broadside with the general area of where the head should be of the thing on top of me. I heard a grunt but nothing else that indicated my action had any other impact because its grip only increased. I started to choke as I felt the pathway to my lungs closing. I could hear the sounds of a struggle close by, and I knew that Riley was overwhelmed.

“The relic.” His voice traveled to my ears, and I dropped the gun and twisted my body as hard as I could so that I could access my pocket. I yanked the relic back out. Immediately, I felt a surge of power drive into my body, and I gasped even as the thing’s grip loosened on my throat. I pulled in a deep breath of air, and I shoved against its body as hard as I could. As soon as I felt the weight release on my body, I pushed backward on my heels to back pedal away from it.

My flashlight, which had flown out of my other hand when I hit the ground, illuminating a view ahead of me that rocked me to my core. From a few feet away extending as far as I could see down the tunnel was a wall of demons. Demons that looked like humans, and demons that looked like creatures out of my worst nightmares. Then I saw the one writhing at my feet, and I brought the back of my hand to my mouth to calm the retching sensation building in the back of my throat.

At first glance, it looked like a gigantic centipede, but it had the arms and hands of a human. Small tendrils of putrid smoke wafted from its body as I watched multiple pairs of feet across its belly jerking in the air. I stepped backward again as the ooze started to build on the ground around it. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought that it was melting in front of my eyes.

I didn’t want to look at it, but I didn’t want to look at the waiting crowd of demons either.

“I don’t think they are supposed to attack unless they think that we are going to try to go forward.” Riley’s hoarse voice against my ear pulled me out of my shock. “I saw something like it on the road on the way here earlier. That’s why Samuel and I were coming in the back way.”

I was relieved that he was okay. Everything had happened so fast that I didn’t even have time to think. “What are we supposed to do?”

“I think you know what we have to do,” Riley said. “I’ve got your back.”

For the first time, I realized what happened next was falling squarely on my shoulders. It was surreal and scary, but at the same time, it felt oddly comforting. I was in control of my destiny now. No one else was setting the course for me, and I was okay with that. I was more than okay with that. And in the process of finding myself, I had also found Riley. I was more than okay with that too.

I held the relic up, and I saw the demons at the front of the pack shift backward slightly even though I hadn’t even moved toward them.

“Are you feeling any different?” I asked him in a low voice. I was more than a little concerned about the relic’s effects on us now without the shield Benjamin had kept around it.

“I think we’re okay for at least a little while,” Riley said. “That isn’t normal metal that the watch casing is made out of. It’s Plythen steel. That’s no doubt why every bad event attributed to it takes some time to unfold.” Riley was always full of fun facts like that.

“Okay then. You’re sure about this?”

“I didn’t have anything else on my agenda for this afternoon. Closing a Hell Gate sounds interesting enough.”

I smiled, which I knew had been his intention. Taking a deep breath, but keeping the relic in front of me, I knelt down and picked up my gun. I wasn’t sure if I’d need it, but having it made me feel better. I grimaced at the long trail of ooze that accompanied it as I pulled it off the ground. The demon that had been at my feet had dissolved completely.

“That’s one I haven’t seen before,” Riley commented.

“I’m just full of tricks today,” I said. I put the gun back in its holster, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the demon ooze remains would cement it in place. I forced myself to stop thinking about that. I was doing nothing but procrastinating against the inevitable.

I stood there because I realized that my feet didn’t seem to want to move. I felt my arm holding the relic start to shake. Then I felt Riley’s hard body press against my back and his fingers wrapped around my wrist steadying my arm.

“I’m here with you every step of the way. I’ve got you,” he said.