Ivory Guard (6 page)

He stopped close to the bed
, staying in the shadows. What should he say? “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

Raz knew she was lying. Raking a hand over his short cropped hair, he asked, “I think it usually helps to talk about it, doesn’t it?”

With the orange light flooding in from outside he could see one corner of her mouth curl up
in a rueful smile. “I dreamt of Amber. Of what happened to her.”

Shit
. “Oh.” For one moment a foreign, stabbing pain pierced him at his own memory of the blond angel with her green eyes smiling sadly and throwing one of his couch cushions at him. Frowning, and puzzling over it, he sat down on the bed.

Lillian
looked at her hands, bunching the covers in her lap and went on, “She was nice to me. When I called for her. She didn’t mind me asking questions.” She gazed up at him, her gray-green eyes strong but not able to hide the tears behind them. “I didn’t know her and yet I feel as if I lost a good friend.”

“She liked you too.
Amber was looking forward to training you.”

That sad smile again.
After a moment she shook her head, rubbed her hands over the corners of her eyes and took a deep breath, pulling herself back together. Somehow it was amazing to watch, how she grabbed all the pain that had been nearly tangible moments before and stuffed it away.

“Wi
ll you get a new partner now?”

“No,
it’s hard to explain. Suffice to say that it doesn’t work like that and we’ll be on our own.”

She nodded softly.
“So. Iowa.”

“Iowa.”

“I don’t think I want to go back to sleep.”

He understood the hidden question and got up from the bed
, glad to be his charming self again. “Then let’s hit the road. Oh, and no playing around with the radio. No complaints either. I’m older, I’m wiser.”

SIX

Lillian
soon had the feeling that wide-ranging didn’t even begin to describe his taste in music, though rock and jazz seemed to be his top choices. Somehow she had associated angels with classic music. Brows knitted together in confusion she glanced sideways at him. The last song had been classic rock.
Journey
blasting through the car as the road ahead of them spread into the black night had suited him. Amazingly, so did the slow, jazzy song currently playing since he had switched to a European station with some kind of angelic power. She didn’t recognize it.

“What’s that song?”

“
Port Coton
, by a French singer.”

“It’s beautiful.”

He only nodded and the both of them continued staring out the window, absorbing the sad beauty of the song and silence settling over them once more. Not the awkward kind, but the peaceful, lost-in-thoughts kind.

The
rest of the night flew by and soon morning touched the horizon, turquoise and then gold exploding over the still dark landscape in the eastern sky. As the sun climbed higher, exhaustion finally caught up with Lillian and she fell asleep against the side window, the steady hum of the engine her lullaby.

A
round noon she awoke finding that Raz had stopped the car on a rather hidden path at the side of a field to rest as well.

Slowly waking, she
took a moment to stare at him. Even in sleep he had this confident presence about him. He didn’t look like an angel. In her imagination an angel should be eerily beautiful or boyish somehow. Raz was neither. Well, he was beautiful, but in a tempting, rugged way with his short cropped hair, the strong, straight nose and the stubble that began to dust his skin. His body wasn’t that of an angel either, it was that of a man who moved, who fought. He would never be lean, but he wasn’t broad in a clichéd bouncer kind of way. Tall and sinewy. Beneath his black shirt she saw the strong biceps and, as she looked closer, the beginnings of a tattoo. Amber had said he was the angel of mysteries. How fitting, Lillian thought now.

As if he could sense her eyes on him he awoke.

“Good morning. Well, noon actually.”

He grunted
in return and rubbed a hand over his face. Lillian had to bite back her smile. Apparently he wasn’t a morning person.

Without a word he turned on the ignition and soon they were back on the road.
With the sun the temperature had risen as well and so Lillian pulled off her light sweater, slipped out of her shoes and rolled her jeans up to above her ankles. The breeze coming through the open windows – Raz obviously wasn’t a fan of air conditioning even if it was vintage and preferred the real thing – was warm and promised to be even warmer and more humid during the day.

When they crossed the Missouri in Decatur Lillian wondered to where exactly they were headed in Iowa and asked Raz.

“There’s a new hellhole near a city north of Des Moines, so that’s where we’re going.” Lillian shook her head at his reply, which made him glance at her and ask, “What?”

“Nothing.”
  She smiled a little, looking out the window at the endless fields stretching at her side before shifting her gaze back to him. “It still sounds so weird. Hellholes and all that, you know. And yet not.” Her brow knitted before a sad laughter burst from her. “And that’s kinda scary.”

He nodded, not taking his eyes from the road. “I know what you mean. Your human part has trouble taking it all in.
The changes. But your Ivory half, which you’re just starting to become aware of, knows this stuff. Deep down a part of you is looking forward to these changes.”

“
Maybe.”

Once again Raz glanced at her.
“You think we destroyed your life, I get that. But let me ask you this. What exactly had you planned to do with it anyway?”

Lillian shrugged. “Go to college. Study and have fun. Meet people. Get a nice job and maybe even have a family on
e day.” She shrugged again suddenly self-conscious about her ordinary dreams and the lack of any actual and accurate planning in them. “The usual.”

“So you didn’t really have any clear plans, did you?
”

She looked out the window again. “No.
I guess not.” Suddenly anger rose in her and her eyes flew back to him, accusingly. “But…so what? So what, that I had no real idea what to do with my life? Doesn’t mean it makes this any easier. I nevertheless have to go and probably won’t ever see my parents again. It hurts, it sucks, whether I had any fricking plans or not.”

“Hey, calm down! I’m just saying that maybe a part of you didn’t have any plans because it was suspecting that you wouldn’t need them.
Didn’t say it makes any of this easier on you, just that…” He glanced at her, his intense gray eyes seeing more than she wanted them to. “It’s not what has happened that hurts so much. It’s your sense of…obligation that makes you think you have to feel bad about all of this. But that’s not true. Be honest to yourself. You shouldn’t feel bad or even guilty for
not
having trouble accepting the changes.” Pause. “For being thrilled by them.”

Shit. His words hit a little too close to home and she had no idea what to say to that.
Didn’t even want to think about it. Not now. It was too fast and too much to think about. And so Lillian didn’t reply, only stared out the window, and silence settled once more upon them.

About h
alf an hour after passing through Boone, they crossed into purgatory again. One moment the afternoon sun drenched the green fields, nearly burning them, and laughed from the blue sky and suddenly all color bleached from the world. Her eyes blinked rapidly as her brain tried to catch up with the change and, after a short stab of pain that nevertheless made her gasp in surprise, she could feel her new wings at her back.

Lillian looked around. She liked black and white; in some movies or photos it seemed to give eve
rything a touch of elegance. Not here though, not in purgatory. There wasn’t a touch of elegance but of menace. The sunlight, only moments before so lively, was a harsh glare now and would soon lose the battle against the clouds gathering in the southeast that Lillian hadn’t even noticed before but which now looked ominous.

Raz turned the car onto a bumpy, barely-there road between fields that
soon moved to the sides and made room for a house. An absolutely ordinary, farm house…except for the fact that it was abandoned, dark gray and crumbling with age and defying the laws of physics - barely. Somehow Lillian had expected something else.

She shot a glance at Raz, lifting her eyebrow.

He shrugged. “This is purgatory, not some kind of fancy spa.”

They parked the car and got out. After Lillian took her duffle bag she looked once again around, taking it in. The house was a wooden, two-story construction with a porch running along one side
of it and wounding its way through rampant grass and around to the back. A couple of shrubs, barren trees and lonely split trunks stood around it. Silent guardians that weren’t happy to see them and that looked about as welcoming as the house. Charming. But what really gave her the creeps was the silence she only now really noticed. There were no sounds of nature, no rustling from the wind, no chirping birds, no crickets. Nothing. A cold shiver ran down her spine and she involuntarily shook herself to get rid of it.

Together they
walked up the stairs and after Raz opened the surprisingly stable door they went inside. Dust covered the wooden floor. Well, every surface it had found actually. She plopped her bag in a corner next to Raz’s and followed him on a tour through the house.

The inside was luckily not as neglected as the outside. It really could have been worse, Lillian
guessed. Only two walls, one of which separating the living and dining room, boasted crumpling holes that showed splinted strips of wood. The paint on the walls was gray now; flakes of it covering the floor. The kitchen, like the rest of the rooms, was old and a little…rattly and could definitely see some chemicals and water. Under the dirt there was tolerable potential though. There was a gas stove, but no electricity. An old, dusty couch in the living room and a mattress in one of the three rooms upstairs would have to do regarding sleeping arrangements. Moving along and walking into the bathroom upstairs, Lillian exhaled in relief as she discovered they even had running water and a functioning bathtub. A glance at the rest of it, the tiles covering the floor and walls, assured her that after some in depth cleaning it could live up to basic hygiene requirements.

Lillian followed Raz back out to the car. “You got anything that could help me clean that a bit?” she gestured towards the house.

He popped the trunk, grabbed inside and then tossed her something. Lillian caught it and stared. A big can of salt.

“Huh? What…”
Lillian stared at him, bewildered.

“First things first.
We’ll need that to keep the house safe.”

She still had no idea what he wanted. “
Okay.” Pause, breathe. No elaboration came. “But what the hell’s the salt for?”

“Protection against Ebonys and demons.
Scatter it along the windows, doors and any other openings you can find.”

Right.
Her mind had still trouble digesting that but noticed one thing. “That damn house is a damn Swiss cheese.”

“Better get started, then. Don’t forget this, though.”

Another can came flying. Cayenne pepper.

“Against angels?”

Wrong thing to say judging by the dark scowl. “Of course not! Why the hell would you do that?” Shaking his head he continued rummaging in the trunk. “It’s against mice. They eat all the good stuff otherwise. And besides, I don’t want to wake up to girly squealing in the middle of the night.”

Right.
Protection against demons and mice. Shaking her head Lillian went back inside. And she had thought their Iowa-discussion had been weird. This one topped it, by far.

SEVEN

After she finished scrubbing the house from top to bottom and scattering the salt and pepper everywhere, the sun had long disappeared behind storm clouds and Lillian was barely able to drag herself up the stairs to the bedroom. Already half asleep she got rid of her jeans but decided to leave the top on since there was just no more energy left in her for more movement. As she crawled into the sleeping bag that lay atop a new mattress that Raz had gotten from who knew where, she had a moment to be thankful before the utter exhaustion that had been clinging to her every bone took over, not leaving any place for bad dreams this time.

Her mind and body told
her that she’d barely closed her eyes as firm shaking awoke her again. “Get up and pull on some sweats.”

Lillian mumbled something incoherently and turned onto her other side, snuggling back into the warmth of sleep. The next moment she yelped as her sleeping bag was abruptly pulled open
and cold air kissed her bare legs.

“What the hell?” Her searching eyes were wild until they found
the source of disturbance. Raz.

The angel stood
in her room with a too happy grin on his face and arms folded across his chest, dressed in black sweatpants and tank. “Your training starts today. What did you expect?”

Oh, maybe a snatch of sleep? After all that happened Lillian had thought it wasn’t too much to ask for. Apparently she’d been wrong. A glance out the window
as she sat up confirmed her suspicions that the sun was barely flirting with the horizon, and she had to stifle a groan.

“Come on, get up and get moving!”

God, he was such a pain in the ass. She got up and stumbled over to her duffle bag to grab her sweats. Apparently satisfied that she would obey his commands he went back downstairs.

“Coffee!”
she yelled after him.

“We don’
t have any,” he yelled right back.

Now there was a definite hint of desperation in her voice
, “WHAT?”

This day got worse with every word he said.

After she’d slipped into her sneakers and tied her hair up in a messy bun Lillian ran after him and into the kitchen. “What do you mean we don’t have any? What the hell did you go into the store for?”

He looked at her as if
she
had gone mad and didn’t have some good arguments on her side. “Salt, pepper and cereals. You can have a bowl when we get back.”

Her jaw very nearly
hit the floor. “Oh wow, how gracious of you.” After staring at him for about a full minute, she shook her head. “Raz. We’ll have to work on this. The mornings, I mean. You drag me out of bed at who knows what abnormally early hour. Okay. I can do that. Training, that’s what we’re here for, so I can do that as well. But the rest? No. You want anything from me before the sun is up, you better have a cup of coffee in your hand. And,” she walked up to the counter against which he was leaning and grabbed the box of cereals he had referred to. It was the healthy kind, not the sugary variety. Ugh. “I need sugar, which means this won’t do.”

He seemed to think it over.
“Earn it.”

“Come again?”

“Earn the coffee and the sugar by adding half a mile to the daily jog.”

Lillian
shrugged and smiled. “Okay.”

She should have asked for more details before settling on his offer. Her smile was a thing of the past
over half an hour later as she ran behind the angel. In her mind he was leaving a cartoon-like dust trail - in the clouds of which she suffocated.

Three miles.

Three and a half if she wanted her coffee and some nice cereals.

Damn that angel.

She had managed half of it rather well and had liked gazing at the fields, the birds that were scattered here and there
today, but the way back was torture. A hole in the sandy road made her stumble. She bit her lip, concentrating on continuing, on holding the pace, on settling back into her rhythm. Her only focus was her loud but regular breathing and the house, which she could already see again whenever she topped another lazy slope of the sea of rolling hills surrounding them.

He waited in front of the house
, sitting on the steps and leaning back on his elbows to enjoy the sun on his face, when she finally caught up with him. Lillian stopped, her thighs burning, and bent over, hands on her knees trying desperately to get some oxygen back into her lungs. How could she be so out of shape?

And how could he look so
relaxed and so damn not out of breath?

The moment she had enough breath she got out, “You sure…you’re…an angel?”

He watched her, his expression a mix of a mischievous smirk he tried to hide and a curious frown at her question. “Why?”

“I’m…pretty sure…you’re the devil!” She straightened and motioned
in the direction of the house. “This morning, in the kitchen. If that wasn’t me getting tricked out of my soul, or at least my functioning body, over coffee and sugar, I don’t know what is.”

The smirk won out
, even turning into a small laugh that had the hint of his dimple flashing. Hmm.

The sun had risen and already announced a hot day. Lillian wiped her forehead with the bottom edge of her top
, put her hands on her hips and looked back the distance they had run, her stomach sinking with dread. “Please, don’t tell me we’ll do this
every
morning?”

“
Okay, I won’t.”

Damn.
“But at least I’ve earned my coffee, right?”

“You’ll get your dose.” She sucked in the breath for a
sigh of relief when he added, “Not quite yet, though. We aren’t finished.”

She only just managed to bit o
ff the groan that wanted to escape her. Shit. What had she gotten herself into? Boot camp from hell run by angels?

“Before we
go back inside I want you to work with your wings.”

This time she did groan.

Raz had to bite his lip to stop from laughing as he watched Lillian wolf down her breakfast. Her healthy, sugarless breakfast. She had taken a shower upstairs while he had prepared coffee and cereals with some strawberries and grapes on top of it. Her hair was still wet, the braid leaving a damp imprint on the back of her gray tank.

When she finished and came up for air, a hand on her stomach, she smiled. “That was good.
Really good. Thanks.”

He shrugged. “Breakfast is about the only thing I can manage in a kitchen.”

“Well, then I’ll take care of dinner.” With a glance around the empty kitchen she added. “Though I’ll need some ingredients for it. I’m good but not that good. I can’t conjure stuff out of thin air.”

“We’ll go grocery shopping.
Later. After training.”

She shrugged, leaning back against the chair, her eyes on him, sharp and awake. “Alright, we’ll train.
After
you answer some of my questions. You were lucky I was so tired yesterday and that I didn’t have the breath for it this morning…but now I want some explanations.”

As he moved forward to take her bowl
, her scent, light and pleasant with a touch of vanilla drifted to him. He liked the scent, had noticed it before when he had touched her soft wings, and that confused and annoyed him. He had never cared about a human’s scent, or even anyone’s for that matter. Frowning as his mind flashed him the unwanted image of her bare legs from this morning, he decided it was better to keep some distance and set the dishes into the sink before settling against the kitchen counter, arms crossed over his chest. “Why?”

“Why? Because I’m literally in totally unknown territory and knowledge is a better weapon than most.
You should try it some time.”

That last snide
comment got a surprised chuckle out of him before he could hold it back.

Raz sighed, knowing she was right and that he had to get a grip on himself. He couldn’t very well refuse her answers just because her scent troubled him.
“I’m all ears.”

“
Why do we have to protect the house against Ebonys and demons with salt? Don’t you angels have some kind of good mojo that could do that?” Her brows knitted together and he could literally see the mind working behind her eyes. “Although, come to think of it…how the hell could demons come into purgatory if it’s a place where
human
souls are purified?”

“We have the… mojo as you call it, but this house and your future team haven’t earned that kind of protection yet. Later, once you
have established yourselves, the coat of arms of your Ivory Guard will appear on the front of the house and protect it. Like a sigil or spell, if you want.”

She sat up straight, a frown darkening her face. “Why the
hell not do it now? Why aren’t we protected that way while still in training and therefore more vulnerable? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“
The Lord moves in mysterious ways. I guess it’s His way of training.”

Lillian snorted, “Or selecting.”

He continued as if she hadn’t said a word, “As for the other question. Yes, purgatory is a place where human souls are purified, but that doesn’t make this…realm inaccessible for them. We can enter hellholes, but not hell mind you, and they can enter here.”

“And the rest of
purgatory, how does that work? Human souls are here, so I guess you normally have to be dead to enter, is that right?” As he nodded she went on, “Is it the same for the hellholes?”

“No. Purgatory takes care of the deceased soul while
in hellhole bubbles demons try their best to corrupt the living ones. Between let’s call it the normal world, the one where you grew up in, and a hellhole is not a big difference. Here, you know you’re in purgatory since there’re basically no people around you and the more evident black and white, whereas hellholes are much more difficult to make out since they kind of blend with the normal world. A living human can’t pass into purgatory but he can enter the demons’ realm without even realizing it. Therein lies the danger of the hellholes, because once a human enters he isn’t likely to come out with his soul intact.”

“What happens to them?”

Raz shrugged. “The usual. Demons try to seduce the soul from the humans, using the usual tactics or rather human weaknesses, which mostly means jealousy and lust. Lust for power, money or revenge. Though, sometimes when they notice a victim’s natural potential of becoming a killer they don’t have to do much of anything and just give a gentle push.”

“Really fun place to be, huh?”
Really a comforting thought to know that soon she might be ‘working’ there. “So while we were on the road and suddenly passed into purgatory, what did …everybody else see?” She couldn’t bring herself to say humans as if she wasn’t one of them. All her life she had been one and in her mind she still was. “My guess a disappearing car wasn’t it, since your cover would have been blown years ago. Right?”

“
Don’t be so sure about that. Suppression is an amazing thing. But you’re right in so far that they didn’t see us disappear, for them we were on a road and then made a turn, nothing suspicious.”

“And the house?
Does it exist only here?”

“No and yes.
For the time being it exists in both realms, though the moment you and your Guard are established here, it’ll become a permanent feature here, which means that it can be a safe house for other Guards if need be, and it’ll be destroyed in the normal world. Probably by a tornado.” Knowing her curiosity wouldn’t be satisfied he explained, “That way the Ebonys won’t be able to use it as a portal to get inside of this house.”

“
They could do that?”

“Yeah,
with magic, but they would have to find the house first. And, well, there’re quite a few abandoned ones around. Nevertheless, I’d like you to stay inside the line of salt whenever I’m not around.”

He pushed away from the counter a
nd the little mischievous grin that made his mouth curve must have warned her of what was to come.

She moaned,
“Oh no.”

“
Oh yes.”

“Of course, tr
ust the angels to use weapons that are basically giant crosses.” Lillian looked at the swords and crossbows displayed on the floor of the back porch.

“Stop the oh-so witty comments for a sec and tell me which one of these you
feel the most comfortable with,” Raz demanded while he fumbled with the old radio he had dug out and positioned on the porch railing. After another moment rock began to purr out of it, in a sound that the small thing shouldn’t be capable of.

Lillian
put the crossbow she was holding aside and grabbed a sword. It was the simplest in design of the three to choose from, with a rather slender blade and wide cross-guard. The hilt felt good in her hand, the weight foreign and yet pleasant. A thrill went through her as she raised the sword in front of her and let the sunlight reflect of its sharp edge.

“An Italian longsword.
Interesting choice.”