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.”
“I’ll be fine. You . . . drive.”
“Alright, Brother.” An amused chuckle sounded beside us. “Save the girl . . . again.”
His chuckle was joined by another, as the hands wrapped around me gripped deep into my flesh, and the most intimate, warm euphoria streamed into my body in electric currents. I drifted off into the somehow bright darkness to, “Stay with me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MONTANA
I was surrounded by a web of warmth and molded against something that fit my body as if hand-tailored for it.
These were the first signs I was coming out of the blackness that had consumed me. I heard humming next as a woodsy, cinnamon-laced scent filled my awakened senses, and the electricity that sparked between our united bodies confirmed—without the need to open my eyes—who was the bearer of all these pleasant gifts. My heart fluttered, and the restored energy within me surged.
“Mmmm . . . I can feel you again—the good way I remember.” The familiar voice ceased humming to whisper in my ear.
My eyes opened, no longer able to enjoy the sensory potpourri of him without adding the view through my eyes. As usual, the very sight of him invoked a cascade-like effect of reactions within my body, this time being no different. His warm smile paired with the glowing pale blue of his eyes made me dizzy. So dizzy, it was a good thing I was lying horizontally in his arms.
“Is this for real?” I whispered, reaching my hand to his face, still foggy from the extended slumber and from his ever present hypnotic aura.
He chuckled as I traced the pieces of his face. “I believe it is, although I don’t really care what it is.” His eyes closed when I traced over his lips.
“And why is that?” I asked, knowing I felt the same way.
His eyes sparkled. “Because I’m here with you, of course. And we’re surrounded by some rather impressive beauty.” His eyes left mine and trailed around us. “Although it has nothing on the beauty beside me,” he said, tracing his eyes back to mine.
With determination, I forced my eyes to pry themselves from the man lying beside me to view the landscape surrounding us. We were lying on a worn quilt in a vast field that coursed its way along irregularly patterned rolling hills, which were enclosed by tall spires of snow-capped mountains. The stillness and rugged beauty of the landscape could be nowhere else but Montana.
William had taken me to his home.
A stream cascaded over round, brightly covered river rocks in front of us, and the endless blue of the sky above contrasted with the vibrant greens, grays and yellows of the countryside lying beneath it in such I way I felt I was caught up in a Maxfield Parrish painting.
Having my fill of the less impressive landscape, I looked back at him. His smile was as bright and inescapable as the mid-day sun, but I was suddenly covered in a blanket of darkness when my mind recalled the final moments of consciousness I’d had.
The grips of seven sets of hands as they drew the life from me; the indescribable pain and tortured screams of the man I loved; the dark, advancing void I progressed into when the promise of a permanent sleep drew me in; the inexplicable release of seven sets of hands; and the fallen, crumpled-up bodies lying in piles. A full body shudder ran through me, and my jaw clenched together unnaturally when I tried to ward the evil memories away.