Echoes in Eternity (The Pella Series Book 1) (39 page)

“Why did she loathe Marcus?”

“Simple. He isn’t here, and had not protected her from Sarah!” I say in a dangerously low voice.

“But he has…” he starts, but I cut him off angrily.

“Yes, I know that! But, I couldn’t tell her that, yet. She already feels betray
ed. How could I give her that memory and devastate her about Gabriel and Stella? The first memory was the safest…” I groan in exasperation. I then start pacing the room again. “Sharing that memory was an excruciatingly hard decision remembering Nieto’s warning. But I wanted to be able to find her in heaven or Hades or anywhere in between. Now I know how to find her in
limbo
.”

The ever present danger of losing her to one of the
Fallen
may have caused me to keep her by force to provide her the safety she needs and possibly make her hate me for it. But, how could one contain a tornado in a bottle?

Henry nods at me to continue. “She would find a way to run, get caught by the ever present enemies, and be killed! That would not only destroy us, but change the balance of the universe providing a way for the
Fallen Angels
to take back Eden. They all fucking know that her sinless blood is the key! Elissa has no way of fully comprehending what the
earthbound rebels of Eden
are capable of doing. She’s a Nephilim; a strong one, but, the
Fallen
are able to fight even the
Watchers
. You know that Henry! They’re even devious enough to win some battles against Heaven’s Angels! I’ve seen it; an innocent girl like Elissa has no chance of surviving them, not without me. She’s not immortal yet, even if she was, being immortal doesn’t mean being indestructible!”

“How did you convince her to stay?” he asks. I exhale my exasperation with a deep breath.

“I don’t know if I really did convince her. When I addressed one of her doubts, she had another one springing up like Hydra’s heads…” My eyes are fixed on one point in Henry’s suite, lost in thought. Seeing and feeling Elissa’s goodbyes in all manners possible today with her body and soul forced me to take extreme measures. No one understands what it means to wait over two hundred years for your heart and soul to come back only to have Hades’ demons lie in waiting ready to devour her, not to be able to whisper a word to her about what she once meant to you, what she exactly means to you, now. Then hearing her doubts about Marcus who gave everything heavenly possible, a feat no earthly parent could ever achieve or endure, to see her through her very long ordeal was excruciating. Which included his bondage for all of eternity; providing the eternal
life for a life
exchange, forfeiting his existence in order to preserve his daughter’s in a deal brokered to satisfy the
Divine Laws
.

“She immediately loathed her father after I explained
to her what a Nephilim is and how she came to be. I’ve been telling her this for the last two days but I think it just finally sank in. She was so angry with her dad! I couldn’t have allowed her to continue thinking so lowly of Marcus when he gave himself up for her to exist…” I sigh.

“You’re loyal to Marcus. It’s natural for you to side with him.”

“My loyalties are not divided Henry! It’s not like Marcus and I are on different sides. Elissa comes before anyone and everyone, including Marcus, you, Anthony, me…
anyone!
But, I know honor! Honor, Henry!”

“That, I know you do, sir,” Henry responds softly.

“I could not have her torment herself that there is a father out there who didn’t care for her, or love her. Marcus isn’t like my father who sold me to Hades! If he was anything like my father, I’d find a way to shackle him in the depths of Tartarus myself! But he’s better than all of us combined. I had to make a split second decision to share the memory,” I say.

“That must have been very hard.”

“It wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve done…” I whisper. The hardest was leaving her when she begged me to leave when Phlegethon came to capture her with the fucking
Fallen
! That shredded me. But sharing a memory with her brings her to the precipice of existence and nonexistence. It was the second scariest thing I’ve done, because I could have lost her for all eternity. That’s why I anchored with her, tying myself to her with blood and sex. Even though the memory still contained the weakest vision of her, looking at her through a mirror, it still could have taken her away from me.

“I had a duty: Marcus has made the ultimate sacrifice for her. The ultimate!” I say with a bitter smile.

“And humans say that one made the ultimate sacrifice by laying one’s life down for another. Because if you give away what is most valuable to you for the sake of another human being, your life, then your ordeal is over. God made things easier for his favorite because the
Divine Laws
require them to be taken to the
Garden of Eden
. Immortals don’t have such luxury,” I say with a bitter smile. “Try being tied with the chains forged in Heaven for all eternity for an Angel’s ultimate sacrifice! There is no endpoint to Marcus’s suffering. No expiration date. Knowingly surrendering yourself to this end
is
the real ultimate sacrifice for love.”

“You can’t blame Elissa for getting angry at him! She doesn’t know what Marcus had done for her. Gabriel raised her as a human without a whisper of who she really is, what her existence means. It’s only natural after she learned what she is, who she is to feel hatred for her dad. She probably felt abandoned…”

“Henry, it wasn’t hatred Elissa felt for Marcus, but betrayal. I don’t think I could deal with it if she thought I’d betray her…” I say swallowing. Maybe I was putting myself in Marcus’s place. What if she thought that about me? “The resentment she exuded for her father and the fact that I was unable to explain it to her fully without destroying her existence, filled me with sudden rage and a nearly uncontrollable violence. Elissa tolerated Sarah who by the way sold her to her enemies. She
tolerated
that bitch for years and yet despised Marcus who gave his all! Marcus never betrayed his daughter,” I say with violent energy vibrating through me, oozing out of every cell of my being.

Henry approaches slowly, holding his hands up. “Alexandros!” he murmurs in a soothing tone. He only addresses me as such when I’m not completely myself. I blink and find myself in crouching position, ready to attack an unseen enemy.
I slowly rise; my eyes still wild. I couldn’t be less human than I am now. I take a deep breath, and lock my gaze on Henry who continues to talk to me soothingly.

“Why didn’t you just talk to her? She’s a smart girl. Given the events of yesterday, I’m sure she has had some inkling of what or who she really is. By the way, Stella told me what Sarah said to Elissa to demean her. How Elissa cried when she was presented to Sarah after birth, and how she picked, actually
picked
Stella over her mother. That incident couldn’t have helped Sarah bond with Elissa.”

“Elissa is
not
her child!” I scold Henry.

“For all intents and purposes, Sarah’s body delivered Elissa into this existence. In a way she’s her surrogate mother though they have no biological relations. It must have also freaked Sarah out when her newborn daughter uttered her first word only a few minutes after she was delivered. Do you know what that was?”

“What?” I ask sharply.

“It was ‘
Alexander
’,” Henry says raising his eyebrows. My hands run over my face, pushing my fingers hard into my hair, digging into my scalp in anguish.

“In her soul, she knows and trusts you…” Henry adds.

“Her soul knows me, but her trust is something I have to earn all over again.”

“Is that why you didn’t just tell her the story? You’ve taken a big risk by sharing the memory in the fabric of time…” he says without judgment.

“True, I could have just told her the story. But, that would not have made the same impact since she doubted my truthfulness. And even if she had full confidence in me, the shred of her vision through the fog of my mental eye could have ripped her away from me, and if I was just telling her the story it would have made it impossible for me to retrieve her from
limbo
for all of eternity. I wasn’t going to let her go without me this time…” I say.

“Alexander, you are one of the few Nephilim
s with the ability to share memories. Sharing your memory with a Nephilim who has never matriculated through the fabric of time with a blood bond you established isn’t difficult for you. But an ordinary Nephilim didn’t exist in that realm like Elissa did! Her subconscious memory remembers that existence, and she’s drawn to them; an affinity Marcus created for her to save her soul through matriculations, but it’s also detrimental to her when you simply want to share a memory with her,” Henry reprimands me.

“Don’t you think I’m
aware of this Henry? I have seen the
Sirens
that roam between Elysium and
Mediis,
a place that is neither Hades nor Elysium, a passageway that kept my wife… Elissa,” I correct myself, “until her matriculation –
ironically, a place only Marcus and Nieto knew
and neither one of them has shared the location with me. Well, now Marcus is gone, and Nieto won’t appear until Elissa calls him. I needed to know how to find her if she is ever taken to
Mediis
again!”

“Fucking Sirens?” Henry hisses his question completely surprising me. Henry never curses being a gentleman. “They are deadly to her and would completely dissipate her past memories like a sandcastle at the beach washed away by the waves, Alexandros! How could you expose her to that danger?”

“It was a calculated risk! If she ran, and she still might, how do we find her before the
Fallen
or one of their minions? I saw the passage, and I tied her to me in every way possible. The passage was incredibly treacherous…”

“Of course it was! I don’t have to have your abilities to know that! The Sirens have the glance of the basilisk, such beauty that enchants your mind until you lose reason and their voices and sight combined can deal destruction of mind causing you to lose all memory and death in a sense that you cannot return from where you came from,” he hisses at me.

“Elissa had been through that passage before… fifteen times!” I shout.

“But she was protected each time! Marcus or Nieto had her covered for that. This was careless, even for you Alexandros!”

“I had to tie her to me physically not just with blood but also with sex; because it’s a bond that makes a man and woman one body and one soul for a time and the effects are lasting far after the connection has been broken. Even that wasn’t enough to keep her. I had to call Boreas to help, when her soul nearly vanished to the Sirens’ call. They tell you what you want to hear, what you yearn to know. Elissa is a big draw to any creature because her soul is pure, light and a source of life. No darkness or a spot exists on it. But, Elissa has a bond, a virtual umbilical cord that ties her to me, and bounds her to earth to come back when the time is right. That was nearly severed when she pulled away to the Sirens.”

“Fuck a
minion
!” says Henry both exasperated and amused at the same time. “Well, my friend, I never thought you’d
not
utilize all the bonds with her,” he says as his mustache twitches in semblance of a smile.

“She’s my wife!”

“She was.”

“There’s no past tense for what I feel for her. She’s not a reincarnation! She’s the same soul and the same DNA! What we have is always in the present. She’s mine and mine alone! And everyone would do well to remember that!” I utter in a commanding tone. Henry holds his hands up in acquiescence.

“I’m not doubting that, Alex. She’s my God-child, and she doesn’t remember that, either. We have to give her time to remember and meanwhile protect her. Tell me, if Elissa encountered the Sirens, how did you get her out of their pull?”

“I had to be in control at all times. I remember
shouting at her to remain awake. I heard what she heard. But my voice was distanced, and the call of the Sirens was too sweet…” I say thinking back as I relive the anxiety.

‘Elissa! Open your eyes baby!’ I shouted with desperation. I couldn’t allow her to leave me again; not this time! All she had to do was to look into my eyes so I
could reinforce our bond with sight, sound, soul, touch, scent, and the tie between our union: our children who still existed somewhere with
Zephyr
, the colt of my horse
Bucephalus
and Elissa’s horse
Boreas
. Our twins are alive somewhere because we both exist. But Elissa was too mesmerized with what the Sirens had to sing to her. It could have been that my burden was heavier with the immense distress due to the possibility of losing Elissa again, and in return losing all means and hope of finding our children.

“I could hear what she heard, and see what she’
d seen. If she was gone, I’d go with her, but I needed to anchor us in the here and now. Despite the dangers, I had to allow her to hear the Sirens. Because, I needed to know exactly where she was taken during her former matriculations. But once she heard the Sirens, she was completely overwhelmed and was drifting to them. I had to shout at Boreas for help, the only other being besides Elissa that had been in
Mediis
.