Unchained Melody (33 page)

‘What happened?!’ Nick sounded shocked as he came to stand beside them.

‘Is she okay?’ Clarice asked, breathless.

‘Oh shit! Shit you guys she looks-’ Rathe’s words broke off.’

Ryan was shaking his head. ‘She’s gone…’ His voice sounded resigned. Lifeless. ‘She’s gone.’

‘No…’ Hunter pressed his head to Callie’s forehead and let painful tears burn down his face. ‘Oh you silly girl… why didn’t you just leave Cal? You knew your heart couldn’t take this!’ She looked so sweet, so peaceful. She was eight year old Callie again, napping on his couch while listening to him unsuccessfully attempt the opening bars of Nothing Else Matters for the fiftieth time in a row. He sobbed, and tried to commit every inch of her face to memory before the ambulance could pull her from him. He needed to remember it. For another life. A life where he got to keep the Melody forever.

And when Ryan got up and lurched away, leaving Callie in Hunter’s arms, he held her so tightly against him that he wondered why he’d ever let go in the first place, and cursed her for running too fast for him to follow.

32.

Callie expected to be pulled lightly from sleep gently from dreams of Ryan’s arms and to open her eyes in Helicon again and probably surrounded by several freaked-out looking Muses who would call to her, search for her but never find her. But instead, she felt her eyelashes flutter for only a second between her final glimpse of Ryan’s own, before they opened upon nothing. Thick fog, a sense of grass beneath her, a sense of the sky caving in. But there wasn’t a Muse in sight. No Ardos. Not even Hendra’s ghostly presence- and not a sound. Just Calliope, completely and utterly alone with a yawning chasm within her chest.

‘Ryan…’ She whispered his name and parted the fog slightly, clutching at her heart when she felt it spasm, pressing her other fingers to her lips as though trapping the memory of his kiss there. Her eyes squeezed shut on still-leaking tears as she tried not to hear… nothing. There was nothing to hear. Not her heartbeat, not her breaths. She was in Oblivion, and she was alone, and the music abandoned her as she had it.

Calliope rested her elbows on her knees, caught her face in her hands and cried violent, breathless tears as the hole in her heart grew and grew and grew until all she felt was hollow. The kiss had been worth it, the love in his eyes, the peace on his face… she’d given him the only gift she had to give and he had deserved it. But he’d deserved more. He’d deserved eons of her time and she needed him so much now- so so much to fill that void. How long would it take Ryan’s memory to fade? How long until the scream of songs unsung broke her spirit and she began to drift away like the fog?

‘Calliope!’ Her head jerked up and when she saw Ardos through the mist towards her, his gorgeous face twisted in anxiety even through the heavy veil of air.

‘Ardos!’ Her shock was staggering, her guilt instant. Had he been sucked into Oblivion with her? Was that part of the soul mate deal? Calliope felt panic make her new heartbeat skitter like bare feet on ice. ‘What are you doing here?!’

Ardos answered by smashing into her and wrapping her into an iron-tight hug. ‘Callie!’ He sobbed her name. ‘You’re here! I was so scared Cal! I thought- I thought that was it!’ He pulled back, caught her open jaw in his hands and began to press frenzied kissed all over her face, his hair as golden as a halo around his head as he damn near squeezed the new life out of her. ‘But you are here! You waited for me!’

‘Waited?’ Calliope squeaked, stilling his hands with her own, wrenching them off her, turning away. ‘I don’t understand! Why are you here? How can you touch me? See me…?’ She looked down at her open palms which looked familiar, but not as familiar as the ones she’d been staring at for over two decades. ‘I’m supposed to be…’

Arms encircled her, tears were wet against her shoulder. ‘I’ve always existed on the brink of Helicon and Oblivion Calliope, dependent on you to keep me corporeal- on your thoughts to pull me near.’

‘So we’re in Oblivion together now?’ She asked, horrified.

‘Yes…’ Ardos pulled her hair over her neck and planted a feather light kiss there. ‘But I can draw you back to Helicon Callie, like I promised I would. My love for you can restore you now!’

Callie cringed away from his kiss, which promised to bring her pleasure if only, if only… She began to sob. ‘But I don’t want to be pulled back! I don’t want to feel anything, don’t you see?’ She pressed her hand into her face and wept brokenly into it. She’d counted on Oblivion to numb her pain and until the fog engulfed her, she would be forced to endure the loss of Ryan. That was going to be hard enough, without Ardos hanging off her, weighting her down with guilt as well! The pain burned her, emptied her- but it was her pain, it was Ryan’s memory, and she wanted to be alone with it before it slipped away. ‘I deserve to hurt! I betrayed the only two things dependent on me for one perfect moment with the man I loved; you, and music.’ She fell to her knees. ‘I feel like I’m dying, but I need to suffer. Music needs its Muse to have a broken heart, as much as it needed Hunter to. More.’ She wrapped her arms around her stomach and heaved in a painful, thin breath. ‘And I certainly don’t deserve to be rescued, least of all by you.’

Arms turned her, lifted her face to his, and dazzling blue eyes bore into hers where green ones should have been. ‘But you didn’t give your heart to a human, Calliope.’ Ryan’s blood-flushed lips spread into a glorious smile. ‘You gave it to me.’

Calliope felt the world tilt dizzily when Ryan rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip and leaned down to plant an achingly-soft kiss there. But she pushed him back, mystified. ‘What..?’ she sank her fingernails into his shoulders, testing his mass for authenticity. Then she slid her hands up and let her fingers trace the outline of his throat until his face was in her hands- Ryan’s face! Ardos had vaporized and left her love in her arms, his stubble raking against her fingertips. ‘Your face! Am I hallucinating this?’

‘Actually no this is the first time that you’re seeing me with clarity.’ Ryan’s eyes shimmered like precious stones, the whites so stark against his dark skin- not tanned, not Japanese hues passed down from his mother, but Grecian, like hers. ‘It’s all perception here Calliope, remember? You were told that I was this perfect specimen of man, a golden god, and so when I first tripped you, and you looked back up at me with that furious glare of yours…’ he chuckled softly. ‘ And that was how you saw me; Golden. Too perfect to be real or intriguing to you. And that was how I stayed. Until now.’

Calliope swallowed. ‘What’s changed?’

Ryan pulled her into his arms, drew her hair over her shoulder and kissed her temple. ‘Your heart is finally open. Everything looks as it should be and this face is my own. It was how I looked as a human, before Zeus brought me here Callie.’ He raised one dark eyebrow. ‘The hair cut is new though… but it’s growing on me. Just like the name Ryan is.’

Calliope gulped, afraid to believe what she was beginning to believe. ‘Was it always you?’

Ryan nodded, stroking her hair. His fingers were in constant motion, he couldn’t seem to stop shifting his weight against hers as though he needed to press against her in every way possible. Callie understood, for her fingers were twisted in the fabric of his shirt, hanging on for dear life. Her poor heart had never had a work out like this and when the thinnest tendril of fog came between their skin she felt bereft from the separation, however temporary.

‘It was, only, well I didn’t always know.’ He nuzzled the tip of her nose. ‘When your sisters were about to agree on the curse I flew into a rage and made them see me. I was too weak to influence them, and part of me actually agreed that you needed to open your heart in order to do your gift justice-’ he raised their fingers to his lips, kissing each knuckle as he spoke. ‘-so although Imogen got her way, your mother approached me after they left and commended me for my strength of will. She was a mess, Callie, and to add to her horror, she sensed that she was going to fade away in your absence, and knew that I was the only one left who would try to protect you after she was gone.’ He turned her hand over kissed her wrist, inhaled her and smiled drunkenly. ‘But I was trapped here, and would be blind to your human life, so she asked me, that if she could manipulate me into a human like you, would I exchange my mortality, for the chance at a fresh start with you? To return to Helicon only when you did, to die as a human if that came about before our souls found one another.’

‘Oh good grief…’ Callie shook her head, astonished. ‘That was a huge risk to take Ryan.’

‘I know.’ He grinned. ‘But I had faith in the soul mate thing. So I told her yes, of course, agreed to the terms without giving them a second thought and went into a deep sleep. The newborn baby kind.’

‘You were adopted too? And you never told us?’

‘I didn’t know Cal, they didn’t tell me until they disowned me.’ He shrugged. ‘Memoria had to birth you on the mortal plane to be born mortal, but with me, she simply reversed time, and left me in an orphanage. The Weavers adopted me, and like you, I was raised as a human kid, one who always felt slightly out of place among the other kids, slightly out of step with the human race. I picked up a guitar and I made friends with another boy who couldn’t afford his own yet. We became best friends and when I was eight, swimming at the gorge, this little girl rocked up and saved my best friends ass.’ He grinned at her adoringly. ‘I think it was love at first sight for me Callie. You were so brave that day! So smart! So unlike the other girls...’ He pulled her more tightly against him. ‘And you loved music so much that I made it my mission in life to win as many of your smiles as I could, complete unaware that there was so much more to our connection.’

‘Soul mates.’ Callie had never felt the beauty of the word until then. ‘All along.’

His smile melted her. ‘You just got prettier every day. Cooler, sweeter, more loyal. My need for your attention became a crush, and that crush became puppy-love and then when when we hit that, er age…’ he winced. ‘God I couldn’t sleep.’ He pressed his face into her shoulder and sighed, running his fingers down her arm, making her breathing hitch. ‘But I didn’t know that I had some greater purpose. I was a confused, horny teenage guy and you were the hottest girl in school who I suspected was in love with my best friend.’

Callie’s chest tightened. She burrowed into Ryan, slipping her hand under the collar of his shirt. ‘I was just as confused Ry,’ she whispered. ‘Maybe because the Muse in me is stronger than the immortal in you… but I just knew that my purpose on earth had something to do with Hunter, and music.’ She glanced up at him. ‘But don’t think for a second that I didn’t drool over my other best friend every chance I got.’

‘Oh I know.’ He winked at her and his laugh echoed in his chest. His heartbeat sounded different on Helicon, lighter, more rapid like insect wings. ‘I mean clearly, I was the hottest guy in school, right?’

‘Right.’ Callie pressed her lips to his but they couldn’t kiss deeply for their broad grins so he nuzzled her nose again.

‘But like I said, you were off-limits. I always wanted to take you out on a date, to make it clear that you were more than a pal to me, but Hunter was always right there and I didn’t want to lose him. So I waited. I waited too long and then when I finally worked up the guts to try and kiss you… there was Hunter again.’ He sighed. ‘And you know what happened from there…’

Callie cringed. ‘So when did you work it out? When we were little? When we met here in Helicon?’

A blush stained Ryan’s cheeks. ‘Um… no.’

She sat up, her curiosity piqued. ‘Well?’

Ryan bit his lip, looking down at their hands. ‘The cyclone Callie. When we had you in that uh, compromising position and you had this moment when your eyes… they did that swirl thing and I saw it and it must have been a trigger Memoria left for me…’ he blew out his breath, shaking his head. ‘My world exploded. One moment I’d been chomping at the bit and the next I wanted to shoot myself. Humanity, or should I say, testosterone had me acting more like an ape than a Demigod so to say that realizing that I was about to share my soul mate, the Muse of music, with my best buddy in the middle of a category five storm was mortifying. I freaked the hell out! I was so shocked at first that after you ran, it took me a while to work out what had happened, and how you had vanished, and to convince Hunter that I saw you enter the rainforest.’ He held her tightly. ‘Callie I’m so sorry! I should have come straight away but I couldn’t just leave him, so I waited about two months, then pretended to get a job away from Horizon so I had a good excuse for taking off before I followed you.’

Callie’s eyes widened. ‘Hunter said you were gone a year working…?’

Ryan nodded. ‘One day here. One day with you, trying to give you as much clarity as I could, while you know…’ he made a face.

‘Giving me a hard time?’ She supplied. ‘Omitting details to keep me here longer?’

He nodded. ‘It was low. But there was so much on the line and I truly did have that fresh start with you again only this time, I was aware of it. I could think, plan… try and catch your heart in the hopes that maybe you’d stay for Ardos instead of returning to Hunter.’

‘I returned for both of you.’ Calliope whispered sadly. ‘Hunter and Ryan.’

‘I didn’t know that. He’d kissed you Callie and you’d melted to him. I thought I’d lost again, on both playing fields, and I was shaken.’ He blew out his breath. ‘I left the moment I awoke here and realized you were gone, and knowing that in the end, you would do what was right by music, I returned to Hunter, and tried to do some of the ground work for you- starting a band, keeping him on his toes- pushing him to be more, to enroll in AVPAC.’ He groaned and pressed his face into her shoulder again. ‘It was an eternity. So many times, I started to give up on you, on us- and all I could do was wait.’ He looked down at her lap. ‘And the longer you took, the more despondent I got. For all I knew, you were back to your old tricks, happy to blow Hunter’s destiny off and pursue other avenues until you died and were born as a human again. I mean, I didn’t know what was going through your mind, given the way you’d slipped back to earth while I slept.’

Callie knew what was haunting Ryan; the temptations he’d given into while she was gone. The women he’d bedded in human frustration, the secrets he’d kept from Hunter; the secrets he’d kept from her. She sensed that he wanted to apologize, but Callie brushed her lips against his to let him know that she understood.

‘And then when you came back and I saw you on that stage I swear to Zeus that I had a heart attack. We were on dates, and I damn near shoved her into a trash can in the lobby for fear that you’d think I’d moved on.’ His fingers strummed a silent rhythm down the nape of her neck. ‘That was why I just blurted out the whole: ‘I love you’ thing. Because I’d known you’d come to break Hunter’s heart and in order to do that, you’d have to win his love first. And I wanted to keep you from falling harder than I could pull you back from- keep you divided so it wouldn’t be his arms you died in.’ He grimaced, rubbing his temples. ‘And then… then I saw you flipping out with that Lyre in your hand I knew I’d accidentally left your trigger right under your nose, and that you were being ripped apart because of me.’