The Guardian (Callista Ryan Series) (52 page)

             
The silver feathers fell to the ground, meeting their final resting place atop the decaying flesh growing from the field. Alex whipped around, catching Adeline as she fell forwards, her arms still gathered around his neck.

             
“Adeline,” Alex yelled urgently, tilting her face upwards with one hand. “Addy, can you hear me? Come on, stay awake.”

             
The Siren stood at the edge of the cliff, watching in horror as she realized what she’d done. For a quiet moment, she may have wanted to stay, to seek retribution from the victim in the last moments of her life. But then her expression set into steely detachment, and she took wing again, never sparing a glance behind her.

             
Adeline’s eyes had glazed over, her face was beginning to lose its color. She kept her vision trained on Alex, her beautiful features trembling into a valiant smile. Alex held her face on his hand, his expression shocked.

             
Adeline began to stutter. “Shh,” Alex said, “it’s alright. Don’t—“

             
“Promettez—“ she muttered, and then sighed in lusterless frustration. “‘Promettez-moi de me…donner un baiser…s-sur le front. Quand je serai morte.’”

             
The smile grew a small amount, as though she had just cited a private joke between them. Here, in this unholy place, she lost the bitterness with which she had lived. Shed from her character was the harsh suspicion, the defensive threat of fatality. She was pure once more, and Callie glimpsed that Adeline whom she had met once, in a memory.

             
Alex’s face fell. “Addy, don’t. Please,” he said.

             
Adeline reached up, her hand quivering and pale, and placed two fingertips on his lips. And then her eyes rolled to the side, sightless. She choked once, the sound a gurgling echo of the life which was parting from her body. And then her figure sank more deeply into Alex’s arms as the fiery strength which had defined her was lost to the shadows of the forest.

             
“Adeline?” Alex whispered.

             
Shouts began to erupt from somewhere nearby. Callie jumped a little to hear them, startled by how close they sounded. Snapping into action, she emerged from the forest patch and ran to Alex.

             
“Alex,” she said softly, touching his shoulder. He didn’t move. “Alex, come on,” she said urgently. “We have to go.”

             
He blinked, surfacing from the trance-like state he had fallen into for a moment. He turned to her, but his eyes were hollow. He didn’t seem to recognize her.

             
“Callie,” he murmured.

             
“It’s me,” she said, glancing down at Adeline’s body.

             
She looked peaceful now. Her eyes had closed, hiding the violet spirit which had marked her in legend, and she rested tranquilly in Alex’s arms. It wasn’t hard to believe that this was a woman Alex had loved once.

             
“Alex,” she sighed, understanding now the meaning of this moment. “I am so sorry.” And the truth was, she honestly felt sorry. She knew that Adeline had been dealt an unfair hand. She had been made to love and to lose several times over. And she had needed to shoulder the burden of others’ grief in the process. Here was a fallen woman whose strength and passion had led to her death. For the loss of such a person, Callie was sorry.

             
Alex inhaled deeply, his eyes upon Adeline’s face once again, and he nodded. Gently, he leaned in and kissed her on the forehead, his eyes shutting briefly as he said goodbye. He then lowered her to the ground and devotedly arranged her so she laid comfortably, her arms crossed atop her chest. The breeze wafted through her hair, swaying the tendrils back and forth, in rhythm with the ocean. She was the very image of serenity.

             
“We have to go,” Callie said again after a small space of time had elapsed. She tugged on Alex’s hand, and pulled him towards the cliff. “They need our help.”

             
But before she could walk too far from him, he had pulled her back into his arms in a suffocating grip, drawing her into his very being, hunching his shoulders around her as his arms tightened her against him. She felt his heartbeat, so vital to her own existence, against her cheek, and felt when he let out a soul-deep shudder.

             
“I thought I’d lost you,” he sighed.

             
“I’m alright,” she replied, quickly becoming lost in the feel of him, so warm against her skin. In his embrace, the war beyond ceased to exist. She felt safe, loved. There was little else that she could think about when he held her that way, as though she were the most precious thing in the world.

             
As her head lay across his chest, she saw the smears of blood and dirt which stained his tanned skin.

             
She frowned as she realized how close he must have come to death today. Even though she knew that it should bother her that she was being held tenderly by hands which had just ripped the life out of dozens of furious Sirens, all she could think about was how easily they could have done the same to him.

             
She raised her head and met his eyes, plagued by the shadows which the day had yielded. “Are
you
alright?” she asked.

             
He gazed down at her for a long moment, drinking her in, before he answered. “I wasn’t,” he admitted, and then rested his chin atop her head. “But I am now.”

Chapter Twenty Eight

Winged Warriors

             
The shouts gre
w
louder as Callie and Alex neared the beach, rising up around them as though being born of the trees themselves. Callie felt her palms begin to slicken as they flew the final few feet, somehow realizing before they even arrived that the scene she was about to witness would be terrible.

             
The trees parted, and Callie felt her blood run icy. This was not like the battle she had seen on top of the waterfall; this was the kind of war that she had only read about in history books, or seen on the news. Everywhere, for miles around, the stretch of sandy shoreline was decorated with vengeful soldiers fighting boldly and without restraint. The sound of intermingling cries was deafening, the sight of the living falling dead in either direction stunning. Callie couldn’t make sense of it. This was utter chaos.

             
All of the Guardians were fighting, not only those who had been trained in war. She recognized glimpses of faces from the waterfall, and understood that these white-winged warriors had either been recently liberated or had joined the fight willingly. In any case, there were hundreds of them now, and each was determined to fight until death claimed him or his foe. The Sirens bore the same mentality, from the looks of their expressions. Callie was relieved to note that the numbers had evened out.

             
“There’s Serena,” Callie said, shouting to be heard above the noise, as she pointed to the blonde battler below.

             
But Alex didn’t fly immediately towards his friend. Instead, he veered off, returning to the near outskirts of the forest. He landed on a thick branch a few meters off the ground, and set Callie on her feet.

             
“Stay here,” he ordered, his wings remaining extended as he prepared to fly away.

             
“Wait,” she said, grabbing hold of his wrist. He turned back to her. “You can’t just leave me up here. I have to help.”

             
“You have to do no such thing,” he said, his voice firm. “You will stay up here where you will be safe, and when this is over I will return for you.”

             
“Alex!” Callie protested.

             
“I demand it, Callie,” he growled. She raised an eyebrow at him in challenge, detesting the insinuation. He let loose a weary sigh, his features softening in exhaustion. “Please, Cal?” he asked. “Don’t make me lose you twice in one day.”

             
She rolled her eyes, but he understood that she was complying. He held up the wrist that she had captured, and quickly kissed her fingers, before peeling them off with his free hand. She sat down on the broad branch as she watched him fly away, disappearing into the crowds.

             
Callie watched the battle unfold. The silver-winged Sirens seemed to be falling alongside the white-winged Guardians in equal measure; no side was yet winning. Every time someone was about to die, she looked away, still unable to stomach the sight. A part of her was glad that she wasn’t immortal, that she hadn’t developed the wings of a Guardian. She would never have been able to engage in combat so readily.

             
Zeke burst forth from the crowd then, chasing after a retreating Siren, trapping her before she was able to escape into the woods. Callie saw why she was running: one of her wings had been completely torn off, and the other flapped limply from a small patch where it was hardly connected. Zeke caught her by that final wing and, with a sharp tug, dismembered it.

             
The Siren fell forwards, motionless, onto the sand. Zeke tossed the wing aside and brushed his hands together, unaware of the Siren walking stealthily towards him from behind. Callie gasped, and looked around. Surely he had to see her. He should turn any moment. But the woman kept crawling closer, and her hand took hold of one of his wings, and Callie watched in horror, crying, “
Zeke!
”

             
Except her call was unnecessary. Because at that moment, Serena descended from the heavens, planting both feet squarely in the woman’s chest and knocking her back. Serena landed, and wasted no time in picking up a nearby rock with a pointed edge. She pounced on the Siren then, digging the rock into her throat, and then yanking the woman’s hair back so forcefully that the head seemed to pop upwards for a moment, and then fall backwards, hanging on by skin alone.

             
The Siren’s body crumpled to the ground. Serena stood above it, panting, for a short second. Then she lunged forwards and punished the body with a solid kick.

             
“Bitch,” she muttered.

             
Serena turned, and found Zeke staring at her in wide-eyed surprise. Callie listened closely, and was just able to make out the next words.

             
“What?” Serena drawled. “You think I’ve put up with you all these years just to let some
other
woman kill you?”

             
Zeke chuckled in amazement, and Serena rolled her eyes, returning to the crowds once again. Zeke shook his head, still smiling at her, as he bent down and took care of yanking the Siren’s wings out. He discarded them, and then leapt back into the chaos.

             
Callie began to get nervous a while later, when, as the numbers of the living began to dwindle, she saw that the silver wings outnumbered the white ones. She shifted her eyes back and forth across the beach, aching to realize just how many Guardians littered it with their corpses. Alex was still off somewhere, alive, for she had seen him just a moment ago.

             
She knew that she had led him to believe she’d stay put. But, when she saw yet another Guardian fall, she realized that she needed to help. She had watched for long enough; she had garnered some information. Three Sirens that consistently won were relatively nearby. She could Perceive upon them as they fought, and thereby help the Guardians to defeat them.

             
Holding her breath, she pushed off of the branch, falling through the many feet of empty air before landing on her feet. Her ankles cracked beneath her, and she toppled over onto her back. But the fractures healed quickly, and she was able to stand up and peer out at the Sirens.

             
One of the three was close. She was engaged in battle with a frail-looking female Guardian, and Callie wondered how such a person had survived so long. This was a scientist or a philosopher, not a soldier. Then again, as Callie watched, the Guardian managed to land a powerful punch to the underside of the Siren’s jaw.