The Guardian (Callista Ryan Series) (33 page)

             
They sat in silence for a moment, watching the evening sun slink below the clear sky. Callie traced a pattern of water stains onto the face of the rock, and was reminded of something that Zeke had said in Serena’s cottage.

             
“What did you mean when you said you’d teased Serena about the Trojan War?” Callie asked, turning to Zeke. She had to stop herself from looking across Zeke at Alex, who, she saw from the corner of her eye, was reclining back onto his elbows, the smooth contours of his chest reflecting the pink glimmer of the sun. He was Apollo, lounging with muscular ease without a care. For a moment, she was reminded of the Alex whom she had seen in the memory, before heartbreak had ever threatened him or fate had ever treated him unjustly.

             
Zeke chuckled. “It’s Lennie’s shining moment,” he said. “You’ve heard of the thing, right? I mean, not the horse, but how it all got started?”

             
“Yeah,” Callie said. “I thought it was just a myth.”

             
“You and every other human on the planet. Took us generations to convince your species it was just a story.”

             
“Oh,” Callie said, frowning at the news. “The prince of Troy stole that other king’s wife, didn’t he?”

             
“Something like that,” Zeke said. “But, really, it started way before that. Helen, Menelaus’ wife, was said to be Zeus’ daughter. The story of her birth is all about how Zeus was chasing Helen’s mother around while he was in the form of a goose, and when he eventually caught her, they had a little fun, Greek-god style. Helen’s mom laid an egg, and a little while later, a beautiful baby girl with the wings of a goose was hatched. That’s the reasoning the humans give for her having wings. Most translations miss that part, though; Helen is always painted as a normal person, wing-free despite her birth. What really happened, we know, is that she was born of two mortals, and began to grow her wings when she turned ten. Once that happened, suitors came from far and wide by the dozens, seeking to claim her as their own. She was the most beautiful person in the world, the rarest creature anyone had ever seen. A winged creature isn’t so easy to find, after all, especially one so gorgeous. And so Menelaus insisted on having her, and Menelaus was a man who got what he wanted. She married him when she was only twelve years old; I guess you can thank her spineless mortal father for that.”

             
Callie interrupted him. “But didn’t people usually marry young back then?”

             
Zeke’s jaw clenched, and a momentary flash of ancient bitterness stole the goodhearted grin from his face. “Still,” he argued, “she was practically a baby. She didn’t deserve that brute for a husband.”

             
Callie felt suspicion kick in full-force. He seemed almost…jealous.

             
“One day, when Paris was in Sparta for what was essentially a business trip, he saw her. He spotted her wings and, as often happens with men when they see valuable gems, decided he’d have to marry her no matter what. And so he kidnapped her.” Zeke rolled his eyes as he continued, “Some authors have romanticized the story, saying that he fell in love with her, that she was being abused by her husband, that they ran away together. But really, he just…took her. And that was how the war began. Menelaus sent his ships to Troy, insistent upon having his wife back; I don’t even think he missed her, he just didn’t like being robbed. He ravaged the city, destroyed many of its citizens, but never found her.”

             
“Why not?” Callie asked.

             
Zeke smirked.  “Well, we’d picked her up by then,” he said.

             
Callie gasped. “A Guardian?” she whispered. But of course she’d been a Guardian. The wings ought to have been a give-away. Still, the new edition of the classic tale didn’t seem real. Winged creatures didn’t actually exist. Except here.

             
Zeke nodded. “I kind of fell off the map for a while there. I should have gotten her to the canopy at the first sign of feathers. But she was so protected back then, and so attached to her parents…. I couldn’t bear to do it. Sounds strange, I guess.”

             
“You were her protector?” Callie asked.

             
“Yeah,” he said. “Still am, though she hates it when I remind her. But once you’re someone’s protector, you never
can
quite shake the habit. That’s probably why Emeric only assigns a protector one charge; the rest of their missions are usually just war zones and nuclear labs and such. But Lennie…well, she’s enough of a headache for me, anyhow.”

             
Callie’s eyes widened. “Serena? She’s your charge? Wait…Serena was
Helen of Troy
?”

             
Zeke looked at her fondly, amused. “Yeah, kid, what’d you think?”

             
Callie swallowed. “Well, for one thing, that her name isn’t Helen.”

             
Zeke brushed that aside with a hand. “Mistranslations. It was never Helen, it was Selena. Someone thought it was Helena, another got it down to Helen. Damn Greek letterings. At any rate, after I started calling her Lennie, she hated the nickname so much that she changed her name. Serena’s what she goes by now, apparently. But to me, she’ll always be Lennie, the bird who punched Paris in the socket just for trying to touch her feathers.” He grinned, and a sparkle was in his amber eyes. “She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen when she did that.”

             
Callie tilted her head, touched by the strange story.

             
Zeke continued, “Glad to know she hasn’t lost that bite.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “She almost took my head off back there. Pulled a butcher’s knife on me when I first showed up. Threatened to cut off my—“

             
“Zeke,” Alex warned.

             
Zeke paused, and then looked sheepishly at Callie in realization. “Oh, sorry, kid,” he said.

             
Callie smiled, unable to help herself. Even though he was a little rough around the edges, he had a certain charm about him. She couldn’t stifle the yawn, though, which stole over her then.

             
Alex frowned and leaned forwards as he heard her yawn, looking at her across Zeke. When he saw her press a hand to her mouth, he stood and brushed his hands together. “Alright,” he said. “That’s my cue.”

             
Callie looked up at him in confusion as he reached out a hand. “For what?”

             
He cocked a head towards the ocean. She looked across the water and saw that the sun had completely sunk behind the horizon. Stars were starting to pierce through the cobalt sky.

             
She groaned. “I can’t be tired already,” she said, accepting the hand. “I’m turning into my grandmother.”

             
Alex smiled at her tenderly, his eyes mocking as he pulled her into his arms. As his wings lifted, Callie looked down at the cock-eyed Guardian still lying on the rock.

             
“Good night, Zeke,” she said, hugging Alex’s warm neck as a chill ran down her spine.

             
Zeke saluted her with one hand, and Alex lifted off.

             
As Alex flew them towards the stars, Callie leaned her head against his solid shoulder, listening to his heartbeat. In the silence of the evening, the forest closed in around them, wrapping them in an ivy cocoon. She could barely remember the unhappiness of the past two days as he held her. She couldn’t be upset with him now if she tried. It was the same, indescribable feeling of being a part of him. They were connected; no amount of discomfort or clumsiness could break that.

             
When they landed on Shay’s doorstep, Callie took a moment to process what her eyes were seeing. Strewn across the cottage’s every surface were metallic, pointed, clinical instruments, gleaming with polish and settled into various crevices. The couch was completely covered with thick, age-softened journals.

             
Elsewhere, something was smoking, emitting a foul smell that must have been a mix between newly-cut grass and whiskey. Callie gagged and the scent. She waved a hand in front of her face as she stepped into the living room.

             
“Shay?” she called. She felt Alex move with her.

             
She circled the counter and found Shay sitting on the floor, cross-legged, one pen behind her ear and one in her hand, a spiral notebook with jagged scribbles marring its face open on her lap. Above her, a pot boiled with greenish-brown liquid.

             
“Purple,” Shay mumbled to herself now, violently scratching out certain letters. “The petunia turned
white
, which means if we manufacture a cell that resembles—“

             
“Alex?” Callie whispered, afraid to talk too loudly now that Shay had gone insane.

             
“—the mutation and insert it into the bloodstream….”

             
Alex sighed. He took Callie’s hand in his own, making Callie’s heart stutter. He tugged her towards the door, and only once they were out of ear-shot did he say, “The last time I saw her like this, she was coming up with the cure to smallpox.”

             
He nodded his head at the door, and opened his arms to Callie. Callie crawled into them without question, without second thought.

             
“Come on,” he said as she settled in again.

             
“Where are we going?” she asked.

             
“You’ll stay at my place tonight,” he answered. At that, her stuttering heart went into over-drive, beating so loudly and thickly that she was sure he could hear it.

             
He had said those words with such ease, but the thought of sleeping at his cottage, mere feet away from him, turned up the temperature of Callie’s bloodstream and made her stomach twist into a tight knot.

             
And yet, as they flew over the treetops, the stars shimmering like stray diamonds in the night sky, a perfect sense of peace overwhelmed her. There was magic in this night. The atmosphere was brimming with promise. Possibilities clung to every breath that Callie drew.

             
She nestled her cheek into Alex’s neck, her eyelids growing heavy despite her excitement. The tranquility that enveloped her had everything to do with the way his arms curved gingerly under her knees, around her back. His hands cradled her carefully, the feel of his skin against hers at once exhilarating and soothing. She tightened her arms around his neck, hugging herself more closely to him. Her fingers fell across the pucker on his back, and she blindly traced the scar that she knew to be there.

             
She wondered if he knew that he made her feel this way, like there was exactly enough time left for them. Like happiness was a probability, not an exception. She couldn’t remember ever feeling that way before she’d known him. For years, she had assumed that happiness was behind her. But now, she felt like her life might be about to begin. Like she’d only had a taste of the good things to come.

             
Another yawn consumed her. He smiled dotingly, meeting her with his glittering brown eyes, so full of warmth that her breath caught in her throat. “Sleep,” he whispered, his mouth close to her ear. “I’ve got you.”

             
She took another deep breath of the sultry air, enchanted by the whole night. And then she closed her eyes, allowing herself to feel heavy in his arms as she sank into sleep, the vision of stars dancing overhead at play on the backs of her eyelids.

             
The last thing she thought about as they soared through the sky was how safe she felt, how at home she was all these hundreds of miles away from California. How at home she was as he drew her snug against his heart.

Chapter Eighteen

Revelations

             
Callie awoke t
o
pillows of white fluff. She was startled to find that she was practically swimming in the cream colored fabric. It took a moment to gather her bearings. She couldn’t, at first, make sense of the scene.

             
Sitting up, she saw that the white down was a large, luxurious duvet cover. It wrapped her in cushiony warmth, stretching out to cover the huge bed. Coral sunlight rushed in through the windows, reflecting off of the mirror in the corner and playing in prism-filtered diamonds on the bed.

             
Callie looked around the room as the light warmed her skin. It was a spacious collage of cream-colored furniture and soft brown accents. The walls were painted a gentle, buttery yellow which was especially vibrant in the morning light. The tiki headboard released a rich, earthy scent. The bed bore at least six plump pillows, each white and full of plush feathers. There was a cherry wood armoire settled against the far wall, and a mahogany bureau to the right of it. Callie pushed back the duvet and walked over to the desk.