Protect Her: Part 10 Page 4

  I recalled Riley had told me that story a couple of days after we met. He had explained to me what a necromancer was; that was before I had my memories back, and I had no knowledge of the dark world I had been a part of before the accident. That seemed like a lifetime ago. Our days and nights since then blended together, but all told it still hadn’t been more than two weeks since meeting Riley Stone in a graveyard not unlike this one. We had been to hell and back and come out together on the other side but not completely unscathed. Riley was a dark angel, and I was about to be possessed by a cursed, tortured, banished, pissed off goddess. These were truths a part of me wished I had never discovered. For a long time, my parents had been the barrier between me and that world. Ever since they’d been taken from me, my life had gone to shit.

  “Blackmail is hardly giving innocent human beings over to demons,” I said.

  “Oh, doesn’t that kind of thing all start so innocently?” I didn’t care for his sarcastic tone. He still had his back to me. “Once it started getting around in the creature circles that there was a new necromancer in action, I had entities other than ghosts suddenly knocking on my door. Alice had prepared me for that inevitability. You’d have thought that she’d have done a better job and not dumped me in the middle of all of that considering what she knew about my destiny to became a dark angel. I have to say, thinking back on it now, my family was, or is, pretty fucked up.”

  I understood Riley was still processing the fact that the parents he had always known weren’t his birth parents. Viho and Alice had tried their best to protect him from his destiny when he was born. But Viho was kidnapped by archangels, and Alice sent him to her childhood friend to raise before going into hiding in the most unlikely of places, a Catholic convent. Riley and I had just discovered those truths in the last few days.

  “It was your destiny to become a necromancer. It’s in your blood. You know that now. You couldn’t hide from it any more than I could hide from what was supposed to happen to me,” I said.

  Riley gave a short laugh. “Destiny. I never believed in destiny. I thought that as long as I wanted something to happen, it could happen. I wouldn’t let anyone tell me any different. I was different, after all. I didn’t fit in the human world anymore, and demons and angels came to my doorstep looking for favors, but it was obvious they always thought they were better than me. I had a little bit of power but no respect, so I settled for the next best thing. I decided that at least I could get rich off them in the meantime.”

  “That sounds ugly and petty,” I said.

  “Perhaps. But when I was twenty-one, I couldn’t have cared less how it looked to anyone if it meant dollars in my bank account. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the nastier the job, the more money I’d make. Sure, there were times when I felt a little uncomfortable, but the number of zeros on the check dulled all of that. For a while, I actively went out looking for those types of jobs. Alice tried making contact with me once she heard what I was up to. She laid the guilt on pretty thick, but I was too far gone to give a shit.”

  “This context isn’t making me feel any better for what else you have to tell me,” I said.

  Riley turned to me then. His face was grim. “No, I didn’t think it would. It’s important for you to understand what I was like back then because I hope you can see how I’m different now. I fucked up a lot of things, but I learned that wasn’t the right away. You’ve helped me see that. We can’t always be held accountable for the sins of our past.”

  “Our past defines us and makes us who we are.” I was growing tired of his avoidance of the topic at hand. “Stop beating around the bush, Riley. We’re both adults now. Tell me the truth. How were you involved with my parents?”

  “It’s not a long story. That’s the point,” Riley said slowly. “I did hundreds of jobs just like it over the years. At some point, I’d get bored and restless, so I’d jump into my car and drive. It didn’t matter where. I’d blow into a town and find the nearest demon bar. I’d spread the word that I was in town for a week or two, and I was open for business. It was first come, first serve. Demons would show up and give me a lead or tell me what they wanted from the dead. I was particular about what I accepted, and I had a steep fee. It had to be worth my time. That’s why I remember the job at all. The Pollball demon who set it up was willing to pay me three times my normal fee.”

  I wanted to strike out at him then. “Don’t ever describe my parents’ murder as a job ever again.”

  Riley shook his head and grimaced. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to be factual and neutral. I know this is hard for you to hear. It’s hard for me to tell you.”

  “Why would you think that?” My laughter was almost uncontrollable. “I met you and fell in love with you before I think I even knew who you were. I think it was because I trusted you with my life because you kept saving me for some reason I didn’t understand. I’ve followed you with barely a question because I thought you knew the right way. Now, I find out that you were part of the plot to kill my parents. There’s nothing remotely emotional or hard to hear about this situation at all.”

  Riley stepped toward me, but I stumbled backward. I put out my hands as he reached out to help me as I faltered. “Don’t. Tell me the rest. Spit it out.”

  “I was in the Midwest. Christ, I don’t even remember where,” Riley said. He closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face before continuing. Suddenly, he looked years older than his twenty-eight years. “I was drunk as a skunk that night. A demon official came around looking for me, and that was still new to me. Demon officials had the jobs that paid by far the best. He told me he was trying to find a guy who sold his soul to him, but had skipped out on the deal.”

  “What? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “He had a picture of your father, and that was the story he gave me along with a guarantee of a fat paycheck that would practically buy me a house anywhere I wanted,” Riley said. “Do you think he told me he was searching for the future vessel of a goddess who had been dead for a thousand years? It was a cover story.”

  “Would it have mattered?” The question hung in the air between us. I gave it ten seconds before I continued my clarification. “Say the demon official told you exactly who he was looking for, a human teenage girl and her parents. And that once he found them, he would let his demons torture and kill the parents before whisking the girl away to an unknown, terrible fate. Would you have done anything different? Turned him down? Told him to take his money and shove it up his ass?” The silence after I finished my tirade was deafening. I held up my hand. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

  “Paige…”

  I stopped him. The sky above us began to darken. It was the perfect reflection of what I felt inside of me. “It doesn’t matter. The details don’t matter. My parents managed to hide from all the bad things hunting us for fourteen years. Now I understand what changed. The dead can’t hide their secrets from you. It was George Franklin who gave us away, wasn’t it?” Riley looked stunned. “I knew what my father did. That was the reason we left the last commune. George Franklin wanted to accelerate the possession cycle. He was in the process of gathering supporters to take me into custody, away from my parents, and call on Eva. I found that out from a friend of my father’s who helped me after their murders. I always wondered if my parents killed him to stop him from talking. They did, didn’t they?”

  Riley looked away from me, but he gave a short nod. I felt a ripple across my chest. For my entire life, the people around me killed to protect me. My parents, Riley, and even I had killed to protect myself. Too many people had lost their lives for me. That had to stop, and it had to stop right now.

  “I guess I should say thank you, Riley.”

  That got his attention. “For what?”

  “For making it very clear what I have to do next.”

  CHAPTER FIVE – RILEY

  A part of me was grateful that Paige didn’t want any further details. It was clear that
she had an idea of what her parents had done in the name of keeping her safe, but I didn’t think she knew the extent of it. There was a part of me that wanted her to be able to hold onto those idealized versions of her parents in her memories. Because in truth, now that I knew who her parents were, I knew they were far from innocent.

  I wasn’t sure how she might have responded to that truth. The only reason I had been able to track her parents at all was because they left a path of dead bodies across the entire Midwest. It had been the first investigation of my new career as a PI. Hell, that job was the reason that I decided to go into business for myself to begin with, and the fee I received was the seed money for my new venture.

  It was surprising that the dead souls I spoke to on my search for Peter Davis never mentioned that he had a daughter. It was proof of how clumsy and unskilled I was in my questioning back then. They had all been pissed off that they let their guard down and never suspected that Peter had a murderous bone in his body. They talked about his pretty wife, Frannie, and how she had been at his side as they drew their last breaths. They happily told me everything I wanted to know about how to track Peter and Frannie because the two had been exceedingly sloppy about talking to each other about their plans even as they buried the bodies. Perhaps if I had known the right questions to ask, I would have found out about the existence of Eva long before the tattoo appeared on my back and marked me as the future Protector. I would have known that the demon official’s real target was Peter and Frannie’s daughter.

  The irony of how intertwined my life was with Paige’s long before I ever met her wasn’t lost on me. I could tell her what I learned from the ghosts of those her parents killed to protect her, but what would be the point? It would only serve to tarnish the memories of those long gone. It also wouldn’t absolve me of my part in their deaths. It hadn’t been hard for someone like me to follow their trail. The demons had marked their informants. I just needed to find out the description of the ones who had done the dirty deed and buried their bodies in unmarked graves.

  I wondered if Paige’s parents understood that dead didn’t mean gone. Not by a long shot. They probably figured that because they took out humans they were safe. Back then, I hadn’t ever determined what motivated them to kill. That wasn’t what I was paid to find out anyway. I just had to find them. I just figured they liked killing and kept doing it to keep themselves off the grid. Turns out, Paige’s parents had done what was necessary to protect their daughter.

  It was a grudging admiration I felt building inside of me for these people now. I wished that our location wasn’t just a memory inside of Paige’s head. Maybe someday we could visit her parents’ graves for real. Then I could do something far more powerful for her.

  “Paige, come back with me. We’ll go to your parents’ graves together, and I can call them up for you. You can finally say goodbye.”

  Her face lit up for a moment before it fell again. “You don’t even know if you are a necromancer anymore.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. There were a lot of things I didn’t know about my new state of being, but I thought it wouldn’t make sense for me to lose something I had before in my lower being state. “I’ll try it before we leave so we know for sure,” I said. “I think it’s still there. All you have to do is come back with me and wake up. This doesn’t change anything between us.” Her words about solidifying her next move scared the shit out of me. I hadn’t failed to notice the shifting of the clouds in the sky above our heads. A storm appeared to be brewing. She was severely agitated. I needed her calm and level-headed.

  “I can’t come back with you, even if I wanted to,” she said. Her face held no emotion. “This might not change anything for you, Riley, but I can’t just forget about this and what you did. How could you think that I would? I know you were hoping to persuade me that I was making the wrong decision, but it isn’t even a decision. I need you to understand that. Even if I thought it was, I don’t know how I feel about what you just told me. It makes me feel…dirty.”

  “I was a stupid kid. We didn’t know each other then,” I argued. “Of course if I had, I would have done things differently. I’m sorry I didn’t say that when you asked me before.”

  “You were confused, hurt, afraid, alone, and angry,” she said. Her face turned toward me, but it was as if she was looking through me. That scared me even more than the words she was saying. It was as if she had checked out and wasn’t fully present with me anymore. “How many more excuses can you throw at me trying to justify actions that you knew were inherently wrong? There is nothing you can say or do that is going to make it okay in my head for you to have given my parents over to a demon official. Nothing. You might as well save your breath.”

  I was losing her. This was even worse than when I found her comatose on the bed in the back of Slinky Pete’s. In this instance, she was present with me but telling me to go fly a kite. “You don’t want to make any rash decisions. You need to slow down and think about what you are saying.”

  “I can’t make a rash decision anymore,” she replied. She turned her face up toward the sky. I hadn’t failed to notice that the sky had turned a deep shade of red. It was as if I were looking at a sea of blood. “I made my decision three years ago or weren’t you listening? It’s your job to listen, right? Everything about you always comes back to your job.” She was angry. There was a flicker of lightning in the sky.

  “I could have done things differently, that’s true,” I said, putting up my hands in defeat. “I own those mistakes, and I’m sorry for my part in them.”

  “Of course, you are. You act as if you didn’t have any choice in what you did,” Paige said. She laughed, but it was an ugly sound. “Just go ahead and unfurl those wings on your back, and take a look in the mirror. That’s the result of what you brought upon yourself, Riley. You are a dark angel because of what you did to people like my parents.”

  Her words were meant to hurt, and they did. I had looked at myself in the mirror not more than a few hours before, but Paige’s tune had been a lot different then. She was the one who pulled me back from the brink of uncertainty and darkness. She convinced me there was a part of me worth saving. Now, listening to her tirade, I wasn’t so sure.

  “A dark angel. How curious.” The unexpected voice caused me to whirl around. Eva stood there plain as day. She wore a carbon copy of the dress that Paige wore. That was the last similar thing about them. Where Paige was tall, Eva was slight and petite. Paige had long, blond locks that flowed down her back. Eva’s hair was the color of the darkest night. Paige’s skin tone aligned itself with frequent sunbathing. Eva was pale and looked as if she had been inside a cave for decades. In truth, it had been much longer than that.

  “You stay away from her.” I moved to block Paige from Eva’s view.

  Eva laughed. The sound bristled the hair on the back of my neck. “You are funny. Paige told me you were funny. We are inside of Paige’s mind. It’s quite difficult to stay away from her in that case, don’t you think?” Her words carried a stiff kind of formality and an unfamiliar lilt to it which made it difficult to understand her. Still, I caught enough of the gist to understand. That she had come out of hiding told me she was ready to throw down to get what she wanted, and what she wanted was Paige.

  But I was there to show her nobody was giving up without one hell of a fight. Eva had been an angel far longer than me, but I wasn’t afraid to play dirty.

  “Paige isn’t giving her permission or anything else to you. You’re a damn liar trying to convince her that she gave you permission for possession the last time.” I bared my teeth at her and let my wings unfurl behind me. There was no way I was going to let her intimidate me.

  She looked thoroughly unimpressed, which pissed me off and scared me all at the same time. “You act as if I manipulated the situation. If you question what happened, then see it for yourself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Paige was there.” She twirled her
hands around in the air around her. “Are we not in Paige’s memories? If you have a question about what happened and if Paige agreed of her own free will, let’s go there and see.”

  CHAPTER SIX –PAIGE

  I felt stupid for not thinking about what she said sooner. We were in my head. Of course, I could go back to that memory and check out if she was lying to me. But surely she knew that, so what would be the point in lying in the first place?

  That was when I realized there was a part of me that hoped I was going to wake up, and all of this had been a nightmare. Eva confronting me in my happy dreams and telling me my life was over and then finding out that Riley had been involved in my parents’ murder was surely the definition of a nightmare. I felt a sense of wallowing self-pity roll through me. There was nothing fair about my life. It had been a mere blip on the radar. I never had a chance. I was nothing more than a means to end, and that end was Eva’s rebirth.

  “We’ll go see for certain,” Riley agreed. He was doing what he had always done. Protect me. But in the end, he couldn’t protect me from myself, and I was growing more uncertain by the minute if I was even worthy of it. There had already been enough death and destruction because of me. I wanted it all to end. I was tired.

  “Enough,” I said. I didn’t want to listen to any more arguing. Riley needed to let me go. That was the sad reality. Even worse, there was a part of me that had already disentangled itself from him. I couldn’t process how hurt and betrayed I was by his actions. He had acted in his own self-interests back then. So had I. Our similarities continued to be shown to me, but I wasn’t so certain that was a good thing. What we had in common were the bad things.