Imperial ((Imperial) Web of Hearts and Souls) (22 page)

“I know that you did.”

“No, I
knew
.”

“Okay, then. How?”

“Where do you think that black smoke goes when I pull it from those evil bastards?”

“Home.”

“Evil has no home.”

I had to think for a second. I knew when I pulled blackened souls out
of the Escorts that reached The Fall that they went home to The Realm, but those clones I saw Silas fighting—I wasn’t sure they had a soul; therefore, I wasn’t sure where their home was.

“Where does it go, Silas?” I said as I angled my head up at him and crossed my arms.

His fist hit his chest. “Right here.”

“You could not have possibly consumed that evil and still have the will to stand.”

“I do consume it, and I send it to its death.”

“Which is...?”

“The light.”

“You’re telling me that you pull this evil out, take it within you, and rise to some light and let it go?”

“You make it sound so simple. It doesn’t happen that way. Each one that I kill marks my soul, and when the marks tear at my armor I rise and the light cleanses me. It then pulls any remaining essence of that evil out of The Realm.”

“Is evil in you right now? How many battles do you live through before you need this release?” Maybe that was why he was so damn temperamental and stubborn; that darkness was in him.

He smirked. “In the past I could go years, decades; recently, more often than not.”

“And you think that is healthy? That your Creator designed you to be some kind of vacuum? A means to an end?”

“You’re the one that said you were designed for a means to an end.”

I guess I did say that. “We are above it; you are below it.”

“Well, then I guess the goal is to meet in the middle, huh?”

“There are more like you?”

He held out his powerful arms. “One of a kind.”

“You are
not
consuming evil anymore. That stops now, along with these emotions for this Charlie girl.” How could he want this for himself? I should have been a welcome sign of relief to him.

“Not a chance.”

“Listen to me. I can see into you. You can say whatever you want, declare whatever you want, but I know what is between you and her is not real.”

“Still love her.”

“Because it is
necessary
.”

“For me to exist, yeah, I have to feel it for someone.” With those words, he clenched his chest again. I knew he was in far more pain than what he was showing me.

“Perhaps someone else then, someone who is not firmly attached to a line that you cannot and will not bring down.”

“Sure, sure, girls that dig boys that can fight and consume evil and live for eternities at a time are easy to come by. I’ll ask one out to a show. Get right on that.”

“Are you always so sarcastic?”

“I’m always a bit of an ass, yes.”

That made me smile. I adored the fight in him.

“Come with me, fight evil the correct way.”

“No. I have a guard to keep,” he said, glancing at the broken chapel behind me.

“Memories. This place will be knocked down with the next swift wind. Nothing here for you.”

“You think I guard this building, that the Creator could find nothing better for me to care for?”

My soul seized. I knew he did guard something, something that Vade saw as precious.

“Do tell,” I said smoothly, not wanting him to see my earnest curiosity.

“I don’t think you can handle it.”

“You have no idea what I can handle.”

“Do I not? Do you think I don’t see the past abuse in your eyes, that pain and agony, that feeling that you are unwanted, appreciated, or loved in the slightest way?” he stated all too coldly.

“That agony did not come from the life of an Escort; long before it,” I admitted.

“I see that the life of an Escort has done wonders for you, allowed you to bury those demons. You should put that on the brochure so when you pop up and tell someone they are yours they can just read about all the perks.”

“Are you quite done?”

“It hurts you because you feel no love; if you did, whoever hurt you before would not even be a memory. I don’t want to wallow in my misery.”

“Yet, you do.”

“No, I don’t. I can’t even clearly remember mine. It’s been entirely too vague—that is, until you put my nose into hyper drive. I know that abuse comes from a scent you know.”

“I already told you that it did. Xavier.”

A hiss left his lips as his chest swelled. I assumed he was remembering that was the abuse he thought he had in the past. I made a mental note to look in the springs and see what horrid things that king did to my Fated just so I could add it to the reasons to kill him.

“I am rare; no other in my line remembers or cares for any harmful past, I assure them of that.”

“Then why do you have it?”

“What are you guarding, Silas? Give me a reason to leave you to do just that.”

“Come,” he said as he vanished and appeared at the broken doorstep to the chapel. I manifested at his side instantly, eager to learn his secret.

Chapter Fourteen

I could smell the rotten, decaying wood and the nature that was slowly consuming what was once a place of worship. I knew whatever he was guarding could not be that sacred if this were the home it was given. What beauty could be within this shack?

Silas glanced down at me. “Are you sure you want to see this?”

“I’m waiting for a reason to let you to stay as I found you.”

He pushed the door open. I expected darkness, a one-room chapel with a few pews, but that was not what I saw.

It was nothing less than majestic.

I had walked through numerous chapels of Earthly kings, but this one humbled them all. It stretched as far as I could see.

I stepped forward, trying to understand how the shack I walked into looked like this on the inside.

With my next steps, my soul seized. I heard an angelic chorus of voices; they were speaking as one, singing as one. Each word was carefully shaped in such a way that you literally heard bliss. They were all youthful, yet you could hear the power of them.

I kept a steady pace as I made my way through this massive chapel, and though I searched earnestly for them, I could not see the creators of this sound. I felt them, though, all around me.

“What is this place?” I whispered, not wanting to cover their voices.

“These are the souls of tomorrow, the children of them. The ones that will raise the human race above negative emotions, allow them to see each other as one.”

I gripped the pew that was next to me. I had lost the strength to move forward. “Are they metallic, their energy?”

When no answer came, I looked up at him to find him staring at me through a furrowed brow. “No,” he said under his breath.

That wasn’t a powerful enough denial for me. These were the souls Vade had dreamed of.

“This is the mist of the light,” Silas spoke so gently that at first I wasn’t even sure it was him beside me. I was glad to see that the awakening I had given him was starting to sink even further in, that the terminology was coming to him now. “I fight with others to forge their path…they are the souls that will end the evil that destroys.”

The mist of light…and they were guarded by one of my own. I knew there was truth to this simply because the voices around me echoed a sacred past and promised a blissful future. No doubt, these were the souls that were needed to defeat the evil I had seen created.

“I have to feel love for them in order to protect them,” Silas said quietly to me. “Your vocabulary lacks that word, for fevers are felt in passion and a rush is something that can only be felt for one. They need me to feel that emotion for all.”

“Yet, you do not. I’m here right now because you have threatened a line that cannot fall—if it does, it kills you. Do you understand that?”

“Not one damn word; it makes no sense to me.”

I slapped his chest for cursing in a place like this.

“They have heard worse. They don’t judge.”

“I’m not judging you. I’m protecting you. That is my charge, just as much as consuming emotions.”

“What do they call it? A catch-22? Instead of talking to me, why are you not talking to the others, raising them up to your palace in the sky, teaching them control so they won’t hurt Charlie? I would have no reason to hurt them then.”

“Charlie will slip away from you. You know that. Even if the Draven boy you fight had more control than the king himself, you’d be in her face, speaking her past. You are stirring the kettle because you know she is your lifeline and you
cannot
let her forget you.”

“Her life is threatened by more than the Escort that loves her. I have no choice.”

“Then you are not giving me one.”

“Are you telling me that you are willing to leave these souls unguarded for the sake of protecting another line?” Silas asked in utter disbelief.

“That line is connected to mine. I’m telling you that the voices in this room are more powerful than all of the kings combined, that we will find a different way to guard them.”

“You find that way, make it make sense to me, and I’ll come without a fight; otherwise, you are down to those two choices—prison or death—that you were so quick to tell me you had to handle the likes of me.”

Dear Creator, he saw death the same way I did: just another day at the office. I offered him no quick response.

“This is evolution,” Silas stated calmly. “I have no doubt that you—or as you say,
our
race—is failing. It felt no love, only loyalty to its line, and if they were lucky, a rush for another soul. To fight evil in a soul, you do not need some supernatural king and their line to remove dark emotions—you need love for yourself, for life. Your failure was declared at your creation. You expect humanity to move forward while using old ways. Impossible.”

The voices around me were so numbing that I could not find the wrath that I needed to argue with him. He had scorned my race, my life, and he had no right to do so. He was too arrogant and youthful even to think that he had a clue about evolution.

“I’ll let you mull over that. I’m due for a battle. Might as well do my job while I still have it.” And with that, he vanished.

I should have stopped him, but the fact that he was able to break my energy field told me I was in a weak state. I felt hazy. My first instinct was to flash back and check on my line—their peril would be the only reason for me to feel this way—but then I realized I was weak because I felt no wrath. I couldn’t in this chapel. I could almost see the faces of the voices. Children. Precious children.

I sat down on one of the pews and listened intently for an unmeasured amount of time. Something deep inside told me that my Creator had not left the universe, but had left us, because we had failed…the creation of my race failed. He moved on and created these beings.

I could swear then I was only let out of my death sentence so I could witness the end, so I could see how clearly I had failed. That wasn’t a good feeling to have.

I had accomplished nothing each time I spoke to Silas. He was still a threat to Vade’s line, and in turn, mine. If I protected him, I would ensure all those others under my care would perish—and eventually so would he and I. It seemed so cut and dry, yet I had no idea what my next move was going to be.

Maybe I should get Vade to reach out to his Fated, get him to instill control within them, and hopefully that would buy us some time.

I stood from the pew and bowed to the voices around me, then manifested outside. There I found Mazing viciously pacing back and forth in the distance.

“What happened?” I asked Rasp as I appeared at his side.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I swear every moment she becomes more insane. Each time we’ve been out, she has a come apart. How is it possible to hold in that much wrath?”

“It’s possible,” I murmured. I’d seen her do this right before a big hunt, right when the air filled with the scent of caramel.

“Well, the second we landed here she lost her f—reaking mind.”

“I know what curse words sound like, Rasp.”

“Yeah, but I’m fond of living,” he said, cocking his brow, meaning that Vade would not be pleased with him using foul language in front of me.

I breathed in deeply. “I don’t smell it,” I said, stating that no other line was near us, not Xavier’s caramel or Fielder’s lilies.

Rasp had done the same, coming to the same conclusion.

“Is it in The Realm? Is that what she is picking up from here? Silas said he was going to a battle.”

Rasp looked down with disapproving eyes, not believing that I had let Silas go to fight. But he did not know what I had witnessed in that place of worship, what he was really fighting for.