Serena’s eyes fluttered open. Raphael’s face must have had a look of utter horror on it, because she raised her hand to her face shielding the bruise. “It looks worse than it feels,” she stated quietly. “Really. Have you come to fix the TV? They told me someone would be coming by this afternoon to fix it.”
“Uh…no,” Raphael croaked. “I, uh…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I’ll be on my way.”
I have to get out of here. Who the hell is she, some kind of witch
?
Why is this happening now
?
And where do I begin to process what I just experienced
?
“But wait. Who are you? Why did you come to my room?”
Now she doesn’t know who I am? What gives
? “I’m the one who found you and brought you here to the hospital, actually. I was checking to see how you were doing. Now I see you’re doing much better, so I’m going to leave you to your rest.” Raphael turned away and began walking out the door.
“Wait! Please, before you go I’d like to say something.” He cursed under his breath, crossing back over the room’s threshold, and stood transfixed by her glittering emerald eyes. “Thank you. You saved my life, and I’m forever grateful.” She smiled, with tears threatening to escape.
“Make no mistake,” he grumbled. “I didn’t save you. The doctors did. But you’re welcome for bringing you here. Now, I really must go.”
“Hey,” Serena shouted as he walked out the door, “what did you say your name was?”
He stopped in his tracks. “I didn’t.”
Should I tell her
?
Maybe it would prove to be a good test of what she knows
. He hesitated, and then faced her.
“It’s Raphael. My name is Raphael.” But there was no hint of recognition, just misplaced gratitude, in his opinion.
“Well, thank you again, Raphael.” A couple of bats of her eyelashes and they closed. She had fallen asleep.
Lost in thought and reeling from the explosive experience, he completely forgot why he’d come to see her in the first place.
Mission not accomplished. Damn it.
He’d walked as far as the elevator down the hall before he sensed trouble nearby. Moments later, he heard it.
“Oh my God! What do you think you’re doing? Get away from her! Charlotte, call security! Oh, help! Anyone, everyone, help…. Grab him…. He’s trying to kill her!” Feet scrabbled across the floor while people shrieked and grunted their efforts to help. Instinct gripped Raphael as he ran back down the corridor to Serena’s corner room. In the distance he heard, with his superior pinpoint abilities, the faint taunting of the assailant, “Pretty goddess ain’t no more, doo-dah, doo-dah!”
Reentering her room, all he saw was her bed surrounded by people, each shouting orders.
He shoved his way through only to find they were trying to get a tightened noose free from around her neck, but it wouldn’t budge. Choking and thrashing about, it looked to him as if she only had mere moments to live. Raphael’s training kicked into high gear.
“Move out of the way, now! I can save her.” He shoved his way through, whipped out his hunting knife, to the amazement of the nurses and doctors around her, and made quick work of cutting her free. Before anyone could utter an objection or try to remove the knife from him, he sheathed and concealed it. She coughed, sputtered, and gagged, but she was alive.
A flurry of activity had doctors pushing him aside to check over Serena’s latest injuries. Rage built within him, threatening to explode.
Where is security to make sure this kind of thing can’t happen
?
It’s obvious someone wants her good and dead. And obvious that she won’t be well-protected in her hospital room
. Clearly, this woman had a connection to him in the most bizarre way, and he felt compelled to watch over her until he knew what the hell was going on.
But what should I do
?
It was time for action, and although he wasn’t a Protector, he declared himself her bodyguard.
He knew exactly what needed to be done. He would take Serena to a safe place while she healed and the Brethren would take care of whoever wanted her dead. The Brethren had a safe house. Michael, a Protector, had shielded it. His wife, Emma, the Great Savior Mother, could heal Serena’s injuries with one visit. During her stay, they’d find out why she looked and spoke like his Sirona, his dead wife. Yes, a plan like that was sure to work. Now, all he had to do was get her to agree to it.
***
By the time everything calmed down, evening had settled in. Security hadn’t found the guy, but they posted a guard at Serena’s door and called the police to send out an APB using the nurse’s description. Raphael still wasn’t convinced she would be safe. Doctors were finishing up their evaluation. He heard them noting some bruising around her neck and a raspy voice, a condition they assured her would not be permanent. One of the nurses looked ready to send him home. He’d been pacing up and down the corridor for the past half hour. When the doctors finally left Serena’s room, he went in.
“It seems I owe you another thank you, Raphael, for saving my life again,” Serena croaked. She took a sip of water and placed the cup on her bedside table with a trembling hand. “It’s the same guy, you know. The same guy who put me here in the first place. I think I really pissed him off when I fought back and head-butted him. He’s a lunatic. I don’t think he’ll stop until I’m dead.” Her lips quivered, and she said nothing more as she began to cry softly. Tears overflowed their shores and cascaded down her cheeks.
“Hey.” Raphael swiftly came up next to her. “It’s going to be all right, Serena. I promise.” He reached out and lightly caressed her cheek, creating invisible threads of connection between them. Her eyes fluttered while he sent minute waves of comfort coursing down those threads. It was the least, and yet quite literally the most, he could do.
Her crying slowly ebbed, and she looked at him, really, for the first time. What she saw took her breath away. Raphael stood solid. Quite a man, with broad shoulders that seemed to be able to hold the weight of the world and probably did, she guessed. His muscular arms stretched the black T-shirt he wore to its limits, and yet he had touched her tenderly. When Serena looked at his chiseled face, she lost herself in its symmetry and the beauty of his eyes. Two pools of brilliant blue, like the Aegean Sea, stared at her through long black lashes and made her cheeks flush. For a breathless moment, she dared to stare back only to retreat seconds later.
“I…I’m so tired, Raphael.”
“I should go then.” He dropped his hand from her cheek.
“Please don’t,” she blurted out before she could stop herself. “I mean, I know I have a guard at my door. But they’re zero and one, and you’re two for two. I’d just…I’d feel more comfortable if you were here. Can you…would you…consider staying? Only until I fall asleep?” She felt an irrational need to have this man near. This stranger. But for some reason, the doctors and nurses felt more like strangers than he did.
“Yes,” he answered without hesitation. “I’ll stay.”
He stroked her hair softly, lulling her to calm. “Now close your eyes and sleep. Tomorrow will take care of itself. You’ve nothing to fear tonight.”
***
Serena slept fitfully, at times calling out for his help while jerking and flailing her arms about and at others, having full-blown, one-sided conversations in Gaelic. He stayed right there to soothe her with shameless murmurings of love, and stolen feather-light kisses on her worried brow. Through it all, she never awoke. He knew he’d pay dearly for those indulgences later, but he could no more stop a tsunami from wiping out an entire village than stop the desire to touch who could somehow be his long-lost love.
In the moments of calm, Raphael worked. He called Michael to get the safe-house ready, and Kemuel to help with locating the thug hell-bent on killing this enigmatic woman. He knew they would act first and ask questions later. To know the why of Serena’s predicament would be the all-important question when she awoke. Then he called E.L.
He would surely have some answers for me regarding Sirona. But am I ready for them
?
***
“I’ve been expecting your call.”
“Whatever happened to saying hello first, E.L.?” Raphael jabbed.
“Why bother saying hello when I knew you would be calling?”
“So you know that I’ve just had my past come back to life. That I also met a woman who speaks and looks like Sirona, but isn’t, since we laid her to rest a millennia or so ago!” He paused to take a deep breath and try to calm his uneasy nerves. “So, I’m asking you. What gives?”
“I would imagine that as much as you wanted to erase all traces of Sirona from your mind and heart, your soul couldn’t bear the thought and retained some essence of her. This woman seems to have triggered something within to make you believe she is Sirona. Mortal or immortal, our souls are tricky buggers. If you’d like, I could try again. It would only take a moment for me to wipe Sirona and all memories of her from your mind. I could do so right over the phone. The woman you speak of would be only that to you, a woman. She would no longer conjure up the images of your long lost wife.”
“No, no,” he said hastily, and decidedly eased back. “Not yet, anyway.”
“So that’s the way of it, is it?” E.L. chuckled. “You feel something for this woman who’s channeling Sirona’s soul. It’s been a long time since you’ve felt that kind of connection. Tread carefully. The first time you lost her, for all intents and purposes, you lost yourself.”
“The first time? You say that as if she really is Sirona. Yet you say she’s channeling her. How is any of this possible? I need to know how she can call out for me as her soul mate when asleep, yet see me as just some kind stranger when awake. Is or isn’t she Sirona?”
“I wish I could be of some help, but….”
“Yeah, right. I know your line of bull. All things become clear in the end. But until that time, you move us around like we’re your own personal chess pieces. Ahh! I knew I probably shouldn’t have called you. I’m more frustrated now than before. Promise me something, all right? Promise me that this will all work out when all is said and done.”
“Now, Raphael, you do jest….” Dead air on the phone. His boss had disconnected.
He returned to his vigil next to Serena’s bed and studied her more closely. She puzzled him, and the startling likeness of Sirona from the build of her body to the long lashes that lay fringed on her cheeks, right down to the way her hair fell about her shoulders, toyed with his mind. The unsettling image brought with it an unwelcome rebirth of feelings long since dormant. How would he reconcile the two women? He had no clue.
Deciding a game of solitaire would be the perfect mindless distraction to help solve the issue, he pulled out a deck of cards. After three games, he found himself no closer to an answer.
“Queen of Hearts to the King of Spades.”
He turned to discover Serena awake. “Thanks. You should go back to sleep. It’s early.” He put the cards down and frowned. “Are you okay? Are you in any pain? Should I call the nurse?”
Do you remember my touch and kisses during the night
?
I do, damn it
. Looking at her innocent eyes, however, he could detect no awareness of what had gone on during the night.
Lord, I’m so relieved. And she’s fascinating. I’m so screwed
.
“I’m fine, Raphael,” she said with a yawn. “I don’t want to sleep anymore. You’re here early. Wait, you’re wearing the same clothes as yesterday. And you’ve got a bit more than a five o’clock shadow going on…. Oh, hell, you never left, did you? You must’ve misunderstood me. I only asked you to stay until I fell asleep. I’m
so
sorry.”
“I understood you well enough. I felt better staying though. And I’m not sorry, so don’t you be. Now, if you’re not going back to sleep, what would you like to do?” He fanned the cards out in his hands. “We could play cards.”
“Can we talk, maybe?” She bit her lip. “Would you mind?”
“What do you want to talk about?” he asked, guardedly.
“I’d actually like to share with you the whole story of why you found me in the desert. I think you deserve a full explanation given all you’ve done for me. That way, there are no secrets between us.”
That’s what you think, sweet goddess
. “All right. Go on.”
***
“You can’t say anything about the statue to the police, Raphael. I’m not even sure I should have told you all that I just did, but now I’ve got to trust that you’ll keep this between us.”
“I won’t say a word, I promise. You’ve gotta know, you’re not safe here anymore. I know there’s a guard outside your door, but he could be compromised easily enough. I’d like to make an offer, which I hope you’ll accept.”
“What kind of offer?” she asked, warily.
“My company has a ranch house we use when we want to get away from it all. It’s secluded, has all the latest security, and is beautiful and serene. I’d like to take you there with me…to recuperate. One of my teammates is a healer, so she can ease the pain away. You wouldn’t have to worry about a thing, and I’d have peace of mind knowing you’re safe.”
“That’s quite an offer. I don’t know what to say, really. I’m grateful, mind you. It sounds wonderful. But when I’m eventually released, I’ve got to get back to my place and…oh, my place. I can’t really go back there now, can I? At least not the way it is….” Her voice trailed off as her mind began to wander and worry.
“Serena, you need to drop off the radar for a while,” he pressed. “My company and I can help you do that.”
“What
is
it that you do, anyway?” she asked, refocusing on their conversation.
“The Brethren and Brethren Security provide protection, healing, and…law enforcement services to anyone in need.”
“I definitely don’t think my insurance would pick that up, and I don’t have the kind of money it sounds like one would need to acquire your services. I’m tapped out. That’s why I gave up my search for my brother. Otherwise, I’d still be out there, and probably a lot healthier than I am right now.” She grimaced as she readjusted her position on the bed. He helped her with a pillow.