The Guardian's Protector: The Chamber of Souls (23 page)

Amy saw the tables and chairs of the living room had been rearranged to fit up against the front window, a tablecloth full of food waiting for everyone to tuck into. Walking into the long, spacious room, which felt so empty considering the amount of chairs, TVs and entertainment areas there were, she smiled at two men who were playing pool in the centre.

Passing the three side windows, which looked out onto the gardens’ many landscaped areas, she strolled to the back window and peered out onto a huge back garden, which, amongst the many trees and tropical flowers, held the biggest waterfall and pond so far. Amy could see flecks of colours dashing in-between the water lilies and knew they must have been koi carp. Next to this beautiful area was a little park that contained a small swing and slide under a huge oak tree. As her eyes followed its height, the top of the leaves almost reaching the top three floors, she saw it held a sturdy tree house. She sighed, picturing how nice it would feel for her and Tom to live here.

Jack came through with the drinks and Mark with a lit cake. Tom leapt off the bike and joined them as they sang ‘Happy Birthday’. They spent the rest of the afternoon playing party games. Mad-Doris was unable to keep still during pass the parcel, but it entertained the children.

One thing Amy enjoyed was watching Lucy. Laughing and joining in, starting to come out of her shell, it showed what a great job Mark was doing with her. She also held Tom’s hand in a big sister type of way whenever he asked for it. Her eyes came alive whenever he spoke to her.

Before it went dark, Amy told Tom it was time to go but, as Tom said his thanks and goodbyes, Mark pulled Amy into the hall, a strange, worried look on his face.

‘What’s wrong?’ she said, squeezing his hand hard.

‘I’ve tried to tell you by showing
you. I want to
tell
you,’ he began, his voice desperate, ‘but I’m…afraid.’ He paused for a moment before continuing and a shiver of dread washed over her. ‘At what point does withholding the truth become a lie?’ he asked, his eyes full of pain. Amy’s heart went over—here it was, the answer to the puzzle.

‘Just tell me!’ she said but, because of the look in his eyes, she suddenly realised she didn’t want to know. She could sense bad news: a let down imminent.

‘Do you know how much I feel for you?’ he asked. ‘I need you to know…’

‘I’m ready!’ Tom interrupted, bounding to the door with David. Mark let go of her hand and gave Tom the same, morbid look; a look that indicated he may never see him again. Amy looked at Mark, waiting for the rest.

‘I’ll see you later,’ he said, with a subdued smile, obviously not willing to carry on the conversation in front of Tom.

Amy stood looking confused for a moment, her heart pounding against her chest. ‘Right,’ Amy replied. ‘Let’s go, Tom.’

After making the best of what evening they had left, Tom went to bed extremely happy, which made her feel much appreciation for Mark. Once Amy was alone however, a deep sense of loneliness set in. Going from having lots of noise around her all afternoon and feeling a big part of something to now being alone made her realise that even though she’d built up this pretend relationship with Mark in her mind, she was so very single. Now she knew Mark loved her as much as she loved him, she just didn’t understand the problem.

Amy was taken from her thoughts by some commotion coming from her front door. Her heart did a somersault as she crept into the hall and heard two voices. She looked through the spy hole and froze to the spot. Kate knocked on the door, but the noise could have easily come from the pounding of Amy’s heart.

‘I’ve brought a birthday card for Tom,’ Kate said, pushing a sealed envelope through the letterbox. ‘I’m sorry it’s a bit late, but…’ She stopped and stood back, looking at the door in desperation. ‘Can I come in? I need to talk to you.’ Her withdrawn face pleading, she looked lonelier than Amy felt. Amy opened the card, which was blank inside, and looked back at Kate.

Amy didn’t know if she was drunk but, smiling eerily, her eyes in and out of focus, she looked out of her mind. ‘I’m sorry, Kate, but no.’ Amy avoided the dark eyes that were peering up at her by Kate’s side. ‘You need to go away,’ Amy asserted, her knees shaking.

‘Yes,’ Kate murmured, although she stood there like she was waiting for Amy to open the door. Amy’s heart went out to Kate, she wished there was something she could do for her and made a mental note to ask Adaizi if they could help save her from Ethan’s influence. Ethan also influenced everyone around Kate, including Luke and the Dark Army, but surely they could maybe capture Kate and keep her safe.

Ethan began shaking. Red in the face, he glared at the door and the lock broke. Amy forced herself against the door but it flung open, hitting Amy hard and knocking her off balance.

‘Thank you,’ Kate said as she made her way through to the living room and sat. Ethan strolled in behind her, weighing up the place with his malicious eyes.

Pain slamming into her temple, speckles of light floating in front of her vision, Amy held the side of her head as she followed.

Kate leant forward and mouthed: ‘I think Ethan can make fire.’ Her face was blank, her stare haunting.

‘What have I told you about whispering, Mother?’ Ethan hissed with a horrid, deep tone. Amy watched in horror as his oily eyes deepened, leaving no white to be seen. His glare fixed on Kate; she turned stiff. Fear rushed through Amy as he turned to her. She knew she was next and her talisman wasn’t working.

She knew, if she survived, that she’d have to fulfil her end of the deal but, not willing to put Tom in any more danger, she began to shout for Adaizi. As she hit the first syllable however, Ethan raised his hand and her jaw clashed together.

‘You’ll sit and be quiet,’ he said, his gruesome face contorting with pure hatred.

Amy felt her knees draw forward while her body tightened. She struggled to fight it, but the more she moved the tenser her body became.

‘Sit!’ he seethed, his voice booming. His eyes like a predator’s, he held his hands up and forced dark energy into them, and an added pressure dropped her to her knees. ‘While I burn your son!’

Her eyes could only dart from side to side. She was stuck, cemented to the floor. With every effort to free herself only increasing the pain, she was powerless. Kate, as stiff as Amy, looked calm, accepting even. The pair of them sat while Ethan laughed a retched, spine-chilling laugh. With a sly look to them both, he turned and headed for the stairs.

Tears streaming from Amy’s eyes, she tried desperately to open her mouth. Her head pounding with the pressure, she felt like her body would break into pieces if she continued. All she could do was watch as the petrifying flames erupted in the doorway to the front room.

As Ethan set fire to the kitchen and then ran upstairs, Amy was desperately thinking of Adaizi, screaming her name in her mind. She couldn’t believe she’d allowed this to happen. If she would have listened, invoked the power of light already, she could’ve stopped Ethan herself before he left the room.

She now wanted nothing more than to have the opportunity to kill the beast. Flames rapidly ate into the hallway of the maisonette, crumbling and incinerating everything they touched, then crept into the living room. As the sound of destruction grew, Amy’s skin tingled as the heat and the smoke crept up her nose and into her lungs. Amy heard David barking manically and she knew the upstairs was alight too.

Unable to get back into the room past the flames for his mother, Ethan left the maisonette. Powerless and distraught, Amy knew they wouldn’t get out alive. Flames licking the carpet a foot away from them, she lost hope.

As Amy closed her eyes in preparation for her death, a huge, bright figure ran through the flames and picked Amy and Kate up, one under each arm. The masculine figure provided a bubble of light around them and then, with a huge effort to keep his light going against the flames, fought his way back through and out of the front door, placing them both on the ground.

Ethan, screaming in a fit of rage at the figure of light, grabbed Kate’s hand who stood, trance-like, to follow him. The figure of light grabbed Amy’s face and sent a wave of light up her nose and into her throat, taking away the smoke and the spell, and she instantly screamed, ‘TOM!’

The luminous figure left her and, letting the fire tear through his light and rip into his skin with each step, ran straight up the stairs. Amy stood and watched Ethan drag Kate down the road.

‘I’m in here,’ Tom’s muffled voice screamed, followed by barking from David.

As Amy looked up, Tom’s bedroom window smashed open. Amy ran backwards as the figure punched the rest of the glass from the pane. Pulses of dazzling light fought to dispel the flames that were tearing deeper into his skin.

Amy screamed as she watched the man flip Tom’s mattress to blanket the majority of the flames while Tom hammered his fists on the wardrobe.

The man opened the wardrobe, and a burst of light rid him of flames as he grabbed Tom and David. Amy saw the man’s back catch fire again. The fire ripped through his skin but he steadily leaned out of the window as far as he could and dropped David into Amy’s arms, then, with Tom tight to his chest, the man leapt out of the window, landing awkwardly on his back so Tom had a soft landing.

Amy, still screaming, threw herself at Tom and the man, beating them both to put out the flames. Even though the man was unconscious, little bursts of light came from his body as if to help her in her quest.

It was only once the flames were dead and his light gone that Amy could clearly see the man who lay as though dead. Even though he was burnt beyond belief, his face almost turned into ash, it wasn’t hard to recognise him. How could she not recognise the man she loved?

Tom looked fine but, from the state of Mark’s face, and his body, which could be seen through the bits of material his clothes had been reduced to, Amy became hysterical.

‘Where’s Ethan?’ Mark whispered.

Amy couldn’t believe he was alive; she could see he was in sheer agony. ‘They ran off,’ Amy stuttered, crying at the state of him. She couldn’t believe he had run through all those flames and damaged himself for Tom.

‘Shout…’ Mark started, then fell unconscious.

She glanced at his body and saw his right knee bent out the wrong way, the bone sticking out. ‘I…need…to phone…an ambulance.’

‘I can heal Mark,’ Tom offered, placing his hands on Mark’s face. As light emanated from his palms, Amy sat back in a mesmerised stupor.

In the dark of night, it wasn’t the sound of the windows exploding or the roaring flames that startled Amy; they paled in significance. All she could see, while her jumbled, traumatised mind registered what Mark had done, was the immense, silvery-white light Tom had conjured.

Swirling and gleaming with tiny, luminous speckles, pulsating like it had a mind of its own, it seeped into Mark’s pores. The bedazzling light then glided up and down his body as if finding all the right places to heal, hypnotising Amy as it did. She gasped in awe as Mark’s completely burnt face began to reform to its natural skin colour, all the burnt bits flaking off him as if it had been just a mudpack. Tom took Mark’s arms and did the same. The concentration on his face was immense as the flesh reformed and healed.

Tom then placed his hands on Mark’s broken leg and, with a blinding flash, it twisted and popped then, after the bone re-entered the broken skin, it knitted back together, healing the wound it had caused.

The cracking sound made the hairs on Amy’s body stand on end. It glowed for a moment longer before giving off one last, blinding flash and then seemed to sink fully into his skin.

Mark lay peacefully as if the doctoring hadn’t caused him pain while Amy dropped back, cuddling David, and continued to watch in awe as Tom cured each of Mark’s burns. She wondered for the first time whether what she was seeing was a dream. What was this miracle before her? How could what Tom was doing be possible? The true nature of who he was hit her like a physical blow.

Another blow hit as she then realised that it must have been Mark who saved her from the dark alley years before.

‘Mum, can you help me turn him over please?’

Amy just stared, shivering on the freezing floor, in shock. In her dumbfounded state, she barely heard him.

‘Mum,’ he repeated, clapping his hands to get her attention, ‘his back’s hurt!’

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘Mum.’

‘No, no, no, this isn’t happening.’

‘Mum!’ The sternness of his voice made her leap towards him and do as he asked. She then watched him rub his glowing hands down Mark’s spine. Through the tatters of his clothes she could see more of his burns being healed. As if they were on rewind, the crumpled, black skin flaked off and new fibres of fleshy, white skin appeared.

‘Mark,’ Tom said, ‘are you hurt anywhere else?’

Mark stirred and lifted his head. ‘Hurt?’ he said, disorientated, turning over and sitting up. He looked down at himself, rubbed his healed leg and looked confused.

Amy threw her arms around him, weeping uncontrollably, as Tom, after all his hard work, sat back and cuddled David. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Amy asked, squeezing him to the point of strangulation.

‘I tried,’ he said, holding her close to his body, now fully allowing himself to do so. He wasn’t rigid and uncomfortable any more. His body, as if trying to absorb some kind of love he’d not allowed himself to feel until now, was totally pressed against her. Embracing her. Loving her. She could sense the relief inside him.