Eternal Eden (52 page)

The thought was too much to bear. “Please William, don’t,” I screamed my plea.

“Listen to her,” John instructed, nearing the top stair. “Although, I wouldn’t mind if you did so much as show your face around here one day in the future. I don’t think the Council would let you off the hook so easily again.” He stopped, and turned his head to face William. “I’ll look
forward
to seeing you again soon.”

The veins in William’s face were bursting through his skin, and his whole body was quivering from the emotions flowing within. “You will
die before I do John, that I vow to you. The only difference in our forthcoming deaths is that I will look forward to mine and what awaits me there.” William’s eyes tracked back to me then, indicating what would wait for him.

“So melodramatic all the time, Mr. Hayward,” John chided, still sounding unimpressed. “I suppose we’ll have to wait and see . . . although Bryn doesn’t have long to
wait
to see.” He chuckled, shaking his head with his amusement.

They were upon me then, the seven men taking their final, unified step which would place them on the flat stone landing where I now lay, awaiting their verdict.

Perhaps knowing his threats had done nothing to change what was coming, he turned his eyes back to me, not wanting to waste the last moments we had together in this world.

“I love you!” he cried over the space separating us, and the echo it came at me with after hitting off all the walls, corners, and crevices in the room, sounded like a symphony playing a song that had been written especially for me.

I bit my lip to keep the calm mask I held over my face from falling, and another tear escaped my eye and trickled down the left side of my face. I nodded my reply, because words were no longer attainable in this world I was now in—caught between the strongest and truest of loves, and the darkest form of evil which would settle for nothing but my life in its quest for blood.

Desperate as my eyes were to examine what was taking place immediately around me, I kept them locked on William’s face. His façade was melting at the nearness of my life ending, but I concentrated on gazing over the lines of his face, and keeping my breathing controlled—hoping these pieces of absorption would get me through this final stage with composure.

After all, William had given me what I’d requested—the final image of him not being an agonized one—and I would do all within my power to give him the same; so the image of me coiling in pain as my life was sucked from my very core would not haunt his dreams and nightmares alike.

I felt seven sets of hands come into contact with my skin, gripping over equally spaced locations on my now trembling body—the seven members of the Council, John now serving as a punisher. Their fingers felt cool on my skin, almost frigidly so, but they were strong and emitted determination.

John was immediately above me, having placed his hands over each of my shoulders, and I could feel his eyes burning into me, willing me to look at him; but when I stayed firmly focused on William, John turned his head to the figure that was keeping me centered.

“Look familiar, William?” John’s maliciousness spewed from his mouth in a concentrated dose. William’s eyes didn’t leave mine to look at him, but his sudden rigidness encouraged John forward. 

“The account of your Immortalization always stuck with me when I heard it told long ago. How loathsome one must feel knowing he was the one responsible for the obliteration of his entire family . . .”

William winced, but refused to look away from me.

“Stop it, John,” I whispered, fresh tears flowing down my face.

An evil chuckle sounded in John’s throat. “Here’s to reliving the past, Mr. Hayward . . . enjoy watching yet another woman you love die, while you watch helplessly on your knees.”

William slumped forward, and the age of living the decades he had clouded his hollow eyes. I prayed for the physical pain I knew would be coming to release me from the far more devastating kind I was experiencing now. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Draco signal the Council with a nod of his head, and I braced myself for what I could only imagine coming.

And then I felt it.

It was like nothing I’d ever felt in my life—both Mortal and Immortal—and as I searched my overwhelmed mind for words to describe it, none were nearly fitting. Agony, excruciating, misery, burning, insufferable, blazing . . . none came even close to describing what raged through my body. It threw me into sudden convulsions, and my eyes were forced from William’s as my head threw itself around.

“NO!”

I heard the excruciating wail, and sure as I was of it coming from William, and as desperately as I wanted to turn to face and comfort him—despite the hell coursing through me—something much stronger, and with inescapable hold, wouldn’t allow my focus to take place anywhere else but what was currently scorching every fiber of my body.

No, scorching wasn’t nearly right either. It was violent—like a hundred wild animals tearing the flesh from my bones and sucking the marrow from within.

Another surge of intensity overthrew my thought process, and my spent mind sputtered a weak response, but one that was the closest I could come up with. Given the exponential weakening taking place within my mind and body with each passing second, it would be the strongest explanation I knew I could find. It was like feeling the life siphoned out from every vein, muscle fiber, organ, and most importantly of all . . . your spirit.

And that was it, my mind went blank and words couldn’t play through it anymore. The lightening hot streaks of life-sucking spires that emitted from each finger of the seventy resting over my skin, took all remaining thoughts, dreams, and hopes. I was an empty shell, whose flesh and blood physicality was the only part of me still alive.  It was ironic. Here I lay as an Immortal . . . dying.

Another earth-shattering scream reminded me of something. I tried with herculean strength to hold onto the last scrap of my mind that would remember who this screaming being was, and then William’s face flashed over the nearly dead remains of my brain.

My waning eyes found him, but I did not find him in the same position I was sure I’d seen him in before, and there was a new figure beside him—also familiar and who invoked warm memories. There were now four motionless bodies lying in heaps around his prostrated figure. I saw him thrust the plane of his hand into the throat of a man standing beside him, sending him flying backwards

I viewed the scene with dumbfounded confusion, but it was hazed and blurred so badly by the dreadful fingers still pulling the final shreds of life from me. My eyes became heavy, and I had to concentrate all my remaining reserves on keeping them open as—whether reality or some dream like vision I was having now—the last figure I would see would be him when my eyes finally gave out from the destiny awaiting me.

The man fell to the ground, sounding like rock colliding into metal. William turned to the encroaching stairs, his eyes meeting mine again, and the glimmer of hope burning in them filled me with something, but I was too far beyond emotional comprehension now. There was nothing left within me to recognize what he was portraying, nor to respond to it. There was only him in those final moments, and that was enough for me.

My body was burning, but my soul rose above the flames in a trail of smoke that escaped into the garden of his soul. He was my eternal Eden—where I would forever dwell.

As I prepared to close my eyes, and free myself from the fires siphoning the final threads of life from me, I felt the boney fingers falling from me in unmatched intervals.

My eyes were weak though, and my spirit even weaker, so I couldn’t process why they’d been removed. Maybe their job was complete, my life completely removed, the only remaining remnants of it shooting reflexively through me, allowing another second or two of vision and cloudy, misshapen thoughts . . .

 I heard a couple shouts of pain, which were followed by crashing sounds, as something or
things,
careened over the sharp edges of the stone staircase. My eyes moved from the blinding, incandescent white light above me, and my muddled sight confirmed what I’d felt—the Councilmen were no longer standing over me. My eyes flew about, but I couldn’t see any of them . . . where had they gone? And why was I still alive, faintly as it was?

My eyes found him, and all the hysteria dissolved away as he sprinted over the last few stairs and glided to my side.

“Bryn!” he shouted, sounding grave and unsure. “Can you hear me?”

I couldn’t speak, and I couldn’t find any muscle coordination to nod my head, so I just let my eyes fall upon his, and rest there for what felt like a long time.

He took my shoddy response skeptically, but some of the stress melted from his eyes when he leaned down to kissed my forehead, and whispered, “I’m here now, my love. You’re not going anywhere without me.”

I attempted the tiniest of smiles, and took his worry-filled chuckle to be an acknowledgment I’d managed some kind of a contortion with my mouth.

“I’m sorry, William,” a frantic voice called out as he joined us at the sacrificial alter. He was so familiar, but I was too far gone and not going to let the final remnants of my consciousness wander from the man hovering above me. “I shouldn’t have waited so long—”

“Don’t apologize, Patrick. You’re here just in time.” My dark angel replied, his eyes not leaving me.

“Well I suppose this explains Nathanial’s hunch . . . and we thought
you
were crazy powerful.” The voice of the other man was familiar as well, as he gazed around at the chaos decorating the room. “Come on, let’s get her out of here.”

My dark angel’s face grew determined, and he was all business, moving swiftly over the four metal shackles encircling my lifeless ankles and wrists. Freed in less time than it took me to suck in a ragged breath in an attempt to say something, he placed his strong arms under me and lifted my body to him.

The only assurance I was still alive, was my mind still working—weak and disjointed as it was—at least enough to be overcome by his beauty, and comforted by his embrace. He tucked my comatose head carefully under his chin, and I heard him exhale deeply, thick with resolve, and then we were flying down the stairs.

Despite the gentle lock he’d put my head into, my eyes were able to move around the room, and I did not miss the withered bodies of the Councilmen on the ground as he leapt over them. Some lay quiet and in unnatural positions over the stairs, and a couple lay wrenching in obvious pain on the floor beneath the stairs.

While I could view the images before me, my mind was incapable of coming up with any explanation as to how these men had come to rest—so suddenly and so nearly lifeless—in these positions.

“Patrick,” he said, and I felt his head nod towards another familiar face that filled me with evil memories, who was crawling on his stomach towards us.

“Gladly.” I heard the pale angel’s response, before he kicked the head of the man I somehow knew would haunt my nightmares. The body of the crawling man launched into the air and crashed into the table, breaking it in half. When we passed him, he didn’t move, but his dark eyes found mine, and filled me with his venom before I could roll my eyes away.

I was carried with unimaginable speed up the endless stairs, and my mystified thoughts were quieted once the Councilmen’s lifeless bodies were no longer directly in my view. My mind was not strong enough to hold anything new in it for longer than my vision could keep it there.

The pale angel kicked open the steel door and it keeled open without a protest. We sprang through the kitchen, flew through the dining room, and sprinted through the foyer. We blazed through the open front door, down the front steps and across the lawn to where the garage stood glowing like a beacon of hope.

“We’re taking Bryn’s car,” the sprinting figure beside us yelled out as he kicked open another door—this one splintered from the force.

“Her car’s back in Pacific City.” The voice that kept me alive, replied.

“Not that car . . .
this
one.”

I heard the shrieking sound of metal retracting, before I was slid inside a confined space, molding around the shape of his seated body beneath me.

“I’ve been dying to get behind the wheel of this thing.”

An engine exploded, and why the sound seemed to invoke something from within, I only cared about the sound of the breathing beside my ear.

“I really feel like I need a cool pair of shades to drive this thing. Have you seen any lying around?” The voice in the seat next to us, jested in a familiar way. The arms holding me upright tightened around me.

“Can you be serious for one moment in your two centuries of existence?”

“I can try, but no promises.” A familiar revving sound exploded. “Besides, someone needs to keep things light around here with you two, intense individuals—”

“Will you please shut up and drive, I’ve got to concentrate.” Determined words flowed like honey from the mouth beside my ear. “I’m going to be out of it for awhile. Do you think you can take care of things on your own?”

The angel beside us grunted. “She’s fine. They didn’t get it all out of her.”

“Do you really think I’m going to take a chance on that?”

“No . . . not really. I’m just not looking forward to you waking up like an angry bear out of hibernation from the pain you’ll be in.”