The Guardian (Callista Ryan Series) (49 page)

             
Before they had enough time to come to grips with Emeric’s sudden escape, however, a high-pitched, piercing cry rang out from the depths of the forest. Time stood still for a second as everyone glanced outwards and listened as the cry morphed into a low, gurgling scream of struggle. And then it cut out all together.

             
They couldn’t see anything, but in that moment they all knew. The war had begun.

Chapter Twenty Six

Endings

             
As they fle
w
through the forest, soaring at a breakneck pace through the branches, Zeke barked orders.

             
“We round them up as best we can. One on one combat; remember, focus only on the person you’re engaging. Don’t be overwhelmed by their numbers. Cal, you pick ‘em out one by one, bring up those bright memories just like I showed you. It’ll weaken them just long enough for us to move in. With any luck, it’ll throw the rest of them off their game to see their friends go gooey-eyed. Our best weapon here is going to be distraction. You distract them, Callie, and we might actually have a shot,” Zeke shouted above the whistle of the soaring wind.

             
Alex, who held Callie securely against his chest, leaned in and whispered to her. “If you want out, even for a second, just let me know. I’ll get you far away from here.”

             
She met his gaze. He was regarding her seriously, taking in every part of her face, memorizing her. He wore such a mixture of emotions now: fear, love, worry among them. He had come so far from being the terse, emotionless man he had been when she had met him. The look they shared said everything, all the unspoken words they had little time to say. It was a vow, and it was a farewell.

             
“I love you,” she whispered, though she knew that he understood. She tried to absorb the memory of that moment, of the way his coffee-colored eyes adored her, the way his hands felt warm and rough against her skin, the way he looked so sad and yet, in the face of all of it, relieved to be holding her once again. He nodded, his jaw tight, his vulnerability stamped onto his face. Saying the words back to her would have meant goodbye, and so he remained silent. But she knew that he felt the same way.

             
“I see something,” Zeke said then. “Down there.”

             
Callie looked down just as Alex plunged through the trees, the huge trunks and vibrantly green foliage rising up about them in a hazy collage of color.

             
Zeke landed in a tree branch just atop a small clearing on the forest floor. Serena descended onto a branch just next to him, and Alex landed above them, higher up in the same tree. Callie peered through the leaves. She heard them before she saw them; the cruel, somewhat gleeful voices of Sirens. There were three of them, she saw, in that clearing. They were struggling to gain hold of two Guardians, and, even as Callie watched, she saw one Siren clutch onto the shoulders of a Guardian, while her friend savagely tore off one of the white wings. The Guardian screamed a bubbling, maddening wail, and collapsed onto his knees just as the Siren extracted the second wing.

             
“Callie,” Zeke hissed. Callie felt her heart begin to beat quickly as she focused on the Siren who had just ripped the man’s wings from his body.

             
She closed her eyes, and pushed herself into the Siren’s thoughts. She felt the familiar tug of wind against her skin, the sensation of being pulled in, and when she opened her eyes again she saw that she was on the ground, standing next to the Siren as she tugged the wings off once again. It was instant replay; Callie was witnessing the scene she’d seen just moments before. She took a deep breath, and then forced herself out of that memory. She stepped into the dark hallway, lit up with spots of memory, and began to run. When she found an image that held tracings of the forest in it, which shone a little brighter than those around it, she inserted herself into that memory. She didn’t stay to watch what it contained, however. She immediately focused on the feel of Alex’s skin below her fingertips, and withdrew herself from that particular piece of the past.

             
The Siren stood dazed on the forest floor. Callie watched as, with that same abstraction, the silver-winged woman glanced down that the white feathers she held in her hands. Her face began to contort into shock, and then horror. Suddenly, she hurled the enormous, bloody wing to the ground with a low moan, and began to yell in a language Callie couldn’t understand. Her friends, who had been about to rip the wings from the second Guardian, paused and looked towards her. The Siren was, by all accounts, having what could only be described as a mental breakdown. She was wailing, crumbling onto her knees, wracked with a guilt that she hadn’t anticipated.

             
And that was when Callie found herself alone on the branch. In practiced synchrony, Alex, Zeke, and Serena fell upon the Sirens, instantly rending the wings off of one as Zeke held her still and Alex tore off the silver masses. Serena had been reaching for the second Siren when the woman on the ground stood up, shocked, and seemed to remember her bearings. With a cry of rage, she flew at Serena. Zeke, mentally charting the woman’s path in an impossibly small second, stepped forward and, when the woman flew right by him, clutched onto her wings. The woman was propelled forward by her own momentum, her body falling lifelessly onto the ground at Serena’s feet while Zeke held the feathers in his hands.

             
Meanwhile, Alex had trapped the last Siren against the ground, her arms folded at a painful angle behind her back, while the Guardian she’d been about to attack flew away unscathed. Serena turned, and ran over to them. She and Alex each split a wing from the woman’s back at the same moment.

             
For a breath, there was silence on the forest floor, each of the protectors looking around for hidden enemies. Callie felt nausea rise in her throat as she saw the rivers of blood which soaked the moist, fertile dirt. It was a gruesome mingling of life and death.

             
“Alright,” Zeke said gruffly. “Let’s go.”

             
Alex glanced up at Callie, who still sat on the branch of the tree, and almost simultaneously he had lifted her in his arms and they were flying through the canopy once again.

             
They didn’t need to look for long before they heard voices.

             
“Shh,” Zeke said, holding out his arms and halting Serena and Alex. They froze in the sky, and Zeke cocked an ear. After a time, he pointed downwards. “On the falls,” he whispered. “Lots of ‘em.”

             
Slowly, they flew lower into the forest, gliding along the floor before curving up again as they drew nearer to the rocky, vertical face of the waterfall that Callie had come to know well. Zeke was the first to perch upon the stone; he clutched onto the jagged rock and hung off the side of the slope, his wings beating silently to suspend him. Serena joined him quietly, and then Alex, until they were lined up against the falls, a light mist spraying them from the left. Callie was cradled between Alex’s chest and the mountainous wall before them, her arms wrapped around him while he held onto the rock behind her. Though she couldn’t see anything besides the valley behind him, she felt his heart speed up when he lifted his head above the crest of the falls to ascertain the number of Sirens.

             
“How many?” she whispered.

             
He didn’t reply, his face as set as the stone he hung from. She craned her neck, and gasped.

             
There were dozens of them, their silver wings forming a forest of their own. They milled about in a circular formation, and Callie squinted to see what they were gathered around. There, amid the circle they made, were at least thirty Guardians, all tied up and seated in a rough clump of bodies. They were alive, she saw, but they were battered and trapped and outnumbered.

             
“Zeke,” Callie breathed. “I—I can’t. I can’t get to all of them.”

             
“It’s okay, kid,” Zeke replied, his words both rough and soothing. “Like I told you, just one by one. Nice and easy. As soon as one goes, the rest’ll get confused, and that’s all we’re looking for.”

             
Alex tipped his forehead down to touch Callie’s. He wasn’t holding her now, but she felt the gesture as she might a hug. She took a slow breath, steadying her nerves, inhaling his scent. It calmed her, and made what she was about to do seem more manageable.

             
“Are you ready?” Zeke whispered.

             
Callie swallowed, and then looked up at Alex. He was watching her tenderly, compassionately. She knew that her task was small in comparison to his, but he was gazing at her as though he understood her fear.

             
“You don’t have to do this,” he murmured. “Say the word, and we’ll go back to London.” She chuckled quietly, remembering, though his face remained somber.

             
She softly stroked the side of his face, savoring the feel of his warm skin beneath her fingertips. It was a moment she knew she would treasure, as the sun warmed his back and her face with its penetrating rays. It blazed through fear and uncertainty, worry and insecurity. It gave them that small space to claim as their own, shading them from what would come.

             
But then Callie drew back and looked away. She didn’t want him to see the tears in her eyes as she replied, “I’m ready.”

             
She turned in Alex’s arms, bracing her hands atop the lip of the falls, and silently hoisted herself up to sit on the rock. She crept into the patch of forest beside the watery clearing as quickly as she could until she was standing behind a tree. She leaned out and peeked at the women walking around the circle of Guardians. It astounded her again how beautiful these women were; most men would gladly die at their hands. But the ferocious expressions they wore marred their allure, and caused Callie to hesitate.

             
She focused on one Siren, a brunette standing relatively still, glowering at the Guardians with her arms folded across her chest. Callie closed her eyes and focused on the woman’s mind, and experienced the rush of being transported into her memory. The atmosphere was dark when Callie opened her eyes; this was an unpleasant thought. Callie was back on the Siren’s island, on the shore. Though the sun was midway across the sky, the air was tinted a deep blue as though it were evening.

             
Emeric stood on a boulder above a throng of Sirens, and he was in the middle of giving a speech.

             
“…the battle would be useless. Therefore, do not
kill
the Guardians until they have all been collected and confined. Your first priority should be to gather them, to make sure that you have successfully gathered each member of the village. Some may try to escape; this must not happen, for if any escape they will seek vengeance at the war’s end. We will not be safe until we have killed every last Guardian. Entrap them first. And then, once they have been collected, you may do away with them,” Emeric boomed, sounding less like a human than a demon.

             
Callie understood why this memory was so dark. The woman did not like the fact that she had to wait to dispose of the Guardians she was babysitting. This, to her, wasn’t real battle. Callie shivered at her thought process, and exited the memory with accelerated speed. She was in the gloom again, surrounded by pinpoints of images. Just as before, she raced backwards, trying to locate a scene which was more illuminated than the rest.

             
She halted next to a face she recognized. With a roll of her eyes, she stepped into a particularly bright memory of Alex.

             
The room she entered was Alex’s bedroom. She turned away when she realized exactly what was going on in that room, and exited the memory soon after, using the bark beneath her palms to draw her out.

             
The Siren had stopped shifting back and forth, her arms had fallen to her sides. Her whole face was glazed in confusion, as though she didn’t know where she was. Another Siren stopped, realizing that her friend seemed to be in a trance, and began yelling at the girl in a harsh language that Callie didn’t recognize. This garnered the attention of other Sirens, each pausing in her march to see what was the source of such commotion.

             
And that was when the three protectors leapt out from behind the rock, each rising up with angry vengeance, charging the field in the form of true warriors. The Sirens fumbled for just a moment, caught off guard. But that moment was all that the three needed to strike with confident speed, instantly felling at least five Sirens before moving into battle with the rest.