The Last Guardian (2 page)

“I didn’t have a choice but to keep going. And exhaustion taking my soul would have been preferable to the Soul Eater.” She shivered and set the rest of her cooling soup aside. When she glanced up, he stood next to her, so silent she hadn’t noticed him move.

“Will you help me?” she asked, staring up into his dark eyes, eyes that seemed to drink her in.

To her surprise, he reached out and touched her cheek, a gentle caress that made her breath hitch. The loneliness in him beat at her, made her heart ache until she wanted to cry. She couldn’t afford to cry yet. They weren’t safe. But in that moment, she wanted desperately to ease his loneliness. And her own.

“Will you stay with me if I help?” he asked.

The words were out before Gehan could stop them. He hadn’t meant to bribe her, to set conditions on his help. Not for her. For her, he would do whatever it took, even if it meant his own death to make sure she was safe. He dropped his hand and took a step away from her.

Her eyes were wide, her silence stretched out for a long time. He wanted to take the words back but wasn’t sure how.
I didn’t mean it. I’ll always help you.

Before he could force the apology out, she spoke.

“If you help me, I’ll do whatever you ask.”

He swallowed hard, his hands flexing and unflexing as he fought conflicting emotions. She would stay. But only because he helped her. He didn’t want that. He wanted—needed—her to stay because she wanted to, not because he’d coerced her.

He shook his head. “No.”

Her breath left her in a whoosh, and her eyes filled with tears. Panic trickled through him as the first few tears tracked down her cheeks. She sucked in a deep breath and rose from the bed. She wobbled a little. He reached out to steady her, but she backed away from his touch.

“I have to go,” she said. “It will probably pass you by if I’m still moving.” She stumbled toward the door.

Terror made his movements quick and too rough. He grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around to face him.

“Where the hell are you going? You can’t go out there now.”

“You don’t want to help me. And I don’t want to force your hand. If I’m not here, the Soul Eater won’t come here. He wants what I carry.”

When he couldn’t interrupt, he gave her a shake to stop her talking. Her eyes widened, and the shocked outrage in her expression helped calm his rising panic. He liked seeing that flash of spirit instead of the desolation he’d seen a moment before.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t help you,” he said.

“But—”

His grip tightened to cut off her interruption. When she winced, he cursed and let her go.

“I’m sorry. I forget sometimes.” What, he thought with derision. He forgot how to touch another human being without hurting them?

“What I meant was that I wouldn’t ask anything of you in exchange for my help,” he said instead. “There won’t be a price. I shouldn’t have even asked.”

He turned his back on her, bewildered by his emotions. The power he’d been given all those years ago required a great deal of self-control. And he’d had more than 300 years to perfect that control. Why he suddenly couldn’t seem to exercise any around this one woman—now when she needed his control and power—baffled him.

He stared into the hearth fire, waiting quietly for her to decide if she would stay or go.

*****

Neeka stared at his back for a long moment, watching the rise and fall of his shoulders, the tense lines of muscle, the bent angle of his head, as if dreading her next words. Her mouth fell open in awe. He thought she might leave.

Didn’t he realize? Didn’t he know? All he’d ever had to do was ask and she would have stayed.

She crossed the room to him. His head came up, but he kept his back to her. She eased her arms around his waist, pressed close to his strongly muscled back, shocked by her own bravado. But she needed him to know. She hugged him tight, settled her cheek against his shoulder. She could feel his breathing, harsh and fast under her palms. He kept his arms at his side, didn’t move to either encourage or discourage her touch.

She took a deep breath.

“If we survive,” she said quietly, “I would like very much to stay with you. Not because you helped me when I needed it most, but because…”
Because?
“Because I want to.” It was as simple as that. And always had been.

His big body shuddered against her. He turned in her arms and cradled her face between his palms.

“I don’t have the right words,” he said. “It’s been too long.” He opened his mouth to say more, but when nothing came out, he shook his head and captured her lips. His kiss said more than words ever could.

When he finally lifted his mouth from hers, she felt better than she’d felt in weeks, more content than she’d felt in years. She smiled up at him and realized it was her first smile in a long time.

The moment of peace slipped away as she realized the hope she saw in his eyes, the hope she felt in her heart, might never come to fruition if they couldn’t stop the Soul Eater. She had to tell him everything.

Gehan stared at the pink and gold charm Neeka held in front of him. It glowed in the dim light from the fire. The charm itself was a tiny glass vial, capped with a stopper of twisted glass and gold. It looked delicate and fragile hanging from the thick silver chain.

“And so,” he said after a quiet moment. “This is the soul of a goddess.”

Neeka nodded, her gaze intent on his face. “Baudowa placed her essence in our care nearly 300 years ago. She was new, only a baby. Our legends say he wanted his daughter protected from the Soul Eater. He wanted her hidden in a place where the monster would never think to look. He couldn’t keep her with him any longer with the Soul Eater stalking him—even a god can only hold out against it for so long before it would weaken him. So in secret, she was entrusted to us. And we’ve kept her save for nearly three centuries.

“But over the years, we’ve come to consider the Soul Eater a metaphor for all the dangers we protect this proto-goddess from.” She sighed, closed her eyes briefly. “We forgot too much.” When she looked at him again she said, “Until she’s of an age to protect herself, she’s vulnerable to the Soul Eater. Baudowa never told us when she’d be…ready, but until then I have to keep her safe. If the Soul Eater gets the essence of Baudowa’s own daughter, the monster will be invincible.”

“A god to devour all other gods,” Gehan murmured. He couldn’t take his gaze from the vial. The essence of a future goddess waiting to come to full existence. Neeka and her people probably never realized the power they held. He imagined that’s why Baudowa had never told him about this thing the K’ali protected.

He knew the power in that vial. Invincibility. Immortality. The power of a god for anyone willing to grab it. It wasn’t just the Soul Eater who could use the power of this essence. Anyone could use it—and become a god.

He met her gaze over the swing of the glowing pink charm. Did she understand what she risked by telling him this? Maybe. Or maybe she was too desperate for his help to realize the temptation she placed in front of him.

He sat back slowly from the hypnotic swing of the vial, and Neeka tucked it back under her shirt.

“Can you fight the Soul Eater?” she asked. “Do you remember the spells to contain it and send it away? All our weapons, all our spells failed. It’s stronger now. But there was a way to send it back once.”

“Yes. And yes. It was a long time ago. But part of the Trickster’s…gift—” he sneered the word, “—was a perfect memory.”

“What was the other part? Besides the power.”

“That I would live to serve his whims for as long as he saw fit.”

“So, he could take that away at any time? You could die?”

His grin held no humor. “At his whim. But he hasn’t seen fit to come near me in more than two hundred years. He must have owed Baudowa a favor to place me into the K’ali god’s service. Until that service ends, there’s no reason for the Trickster to deal with me.” He refused to say the god’s name for fear it might attract his malevolent attentions.

“But…” She swallowed visibly and stood to pace away from him. “But once you’ve defeated the Soul Eater….”

She let the sentence trail off, but he heard the unspoken question.
Will your service to Baudowa be complete?

He crossed the room, pulled her into his arms. He couldn’t lie to her, not her. But he could try to comfort.

“Until your goddess comes to full power, I’ll still be of value to Baudowa. It could be centuries before my usefulness to him and your tribe is finished, even if the Soul Eater is banished.”

He ran a hand through her fire red hair, luxuriating in the freedom to do so. It was even softer than he’d imagined. “Unfortunately,” he murmured, more to himself than to her, “I may well live for another three hundred years.”

He tried not to imagine what it would be like to watch her grow old and die, tried not to think about how he’d manage to go on another day after she was gone.

He watched her green eyes widen as she realized the implications of his immortality. But before she could speak, her expression changed and she stiffened in his arms. He felt the break in his protection spells in the same moment and the air around his cabin shifted uneasily.

Neeka spun to face the door. “It’s coming,” she breathed.

It was the middle of the night now, and the Soul Eater’s powers were at their strongest. It had broken through the wards lower on the mountain and was nearing the outer wards on his home. His cabin was well protected by spells and shields, but they wouldn’t hold out against the monster for long at this time of night.

He felt Neeka pulling in the last of her power and strength, preparing to fight with whatever she had left. A guardian to the last.

His heart swelled with pride. And fear. He couldn’t let the monster have her. Not even if it cost him his own soul.

But he couldn’t stand against the Soul Eater here. He needed space. He needed the power of the stones.

He grabbed Neeka’s hand and pulled her toward the back of the cabin. “It’ll take time for it to work its way through the spells guarding this house. That gives us time to get to protected ground.” He swiped his palm over an area of the back wall of the cabin and an oval hole opened. His secret escape route.

He led her through the darkened woods, supporting her when she stumbled.

“I think I might hate trees,” she muttered under her breath, and he felt an incongruous desire to laugh, despite their perilous situation.

“We’ll move closer to the plains if you like,” he offered, helping her around a fallen tree trunk. “You’ll need space. And your own herd of horses, I imagine.”

He glanced at her. With his heightened eyesight, another side effect of the Trickster’s “gifts”, he could see her clearly even in the darkness under the trees. The smile of pure pleasure that lit her face nearly brought him to his knees.

“You’d do that for me? Move away from your home? You’ve lived here for centuries, haven’t you?”

He had to turn away from her to watch the path, but her smile still glowed in his mind’s eye.

“It’s time I had a change of scenery,” he said and was rewarded with the sound of her quiet chuckle.

He felt the spells around his cabin disintegrate just as they reached the stones. The circle was no more than forty feet in diameter. The stones of power glowed faintly green in the dim moonlight of the clearing. At one point the stones had stood twice the height of a man, but they’d been worn away by time so that the tallest only came up to his thigh now. It wasn’t the stones themselves that imbued the circle with power, though. They were merely markers for the power in this place. A power that had drawn him to this particular mountainside after his exile.

A subtle shifting in the air currents warned him the creature was coming. No time to waste. Pulling Neeka into the center of the circle, he set up the first layer of spells, priming the circle to become a place between worlds where it would be safe to battle the creature. If the Soul Eater entered this circle, it would not get out again.

He sensed the deep blackness approaching before he saw it, knew the creature was near. He added another layer of spells to the circle, these to bind and hold the magics used within. Another layer to keep out other forces that could disrupt the circle’s balance. As he finished these, the blackness oozed out from the trees, into the clearing around the circle.

The shape of the Soul Eater was obscured in shadows so dense no light filtered through. It flowed forward, blotting out everything behind it. In its wake, the trees steamed and withered.

Gehan laid down the last binding spell as Neeka pulled a dagger from her belt. It was a spelled dagger, a weapon the K’ali had designed to fight the Soul Eater. But she’d already admitted K’ali weapons had failed this time.

*****

Neeka watched in growing dread as the blackness oozed closer to the circle. The hair on her arms stood up, her body trembled. She tried to block out the images of her friends, her fellow guardians falling to this thing, but some of the terror leaked through, making it hard for her to breathe.

She took a step closer to Gehan and let his strength settle her. He was a powerful mage. The Soul Eater wouldn’t take him. She pulled in what she had left—not much after her weeks on the run—and prepared to face her biggest nightmare as it butted up against the edge of the stone circle.

“Do you dare?” Gehan murmured, facing the monster without flinching. “You want her? You’ll have to enter my circle.”

“I will cross,” a voice said from the blackness. The sound grated against Neeka’s ears, like the buzzing of a million insects, making her cringe.

She swallowed hard as the blackness crossed between two of the glowing stones. She felt the circle close behind it and knew this was the final stand. Even if she and Gehan died here, the Soul Eater would not get out again.