CHAPTER 5: GUARDIAN
The elevator was quiet; no music here. The ride was painstakingly slow, but Karen and I finally made it to my floor. Sally was absent from her desk, and I wondered where she was. I checked my watch to see if it was time for lunch. Not yet. Maybe she had quit? Nah, I couldn’t be so lucky.
We approached her desk. It was cluttered and dotted with Post-It notes and randomly splayed files. I was embarrassed someone from outside our office was seeing this, but Karen walked on by as if it were no big deal.
My gaze turned from Sally’s disaster of a desk to the door of my office, which was ajar. My heart gave a horrible jolt and shivers ran up my spine. The images of the dark creature flickered again in my exhausted brain.
Had I not secured my door? I always locked it when I left; there were secure records and files, most of them for my eyes only. I pivoted to see that Karen also had a look of apprehension on her face. I shrugged to show nonchalance and forged ahead, nearing the door. With each step it felt as if my legs were filling with liquid steel. My nerves getting the best of me.
My hand made contact with the metal door, and I exerted only the tiniest pressure, easing it open. I was anticipating something horrific, something wrong, and I was prepared to pounce to protect myself. Though how do you fight darkness? That thing could take me, hands down.
I nervously peered into my office.
It wasn’t the blazing-eyed creature from before. It was Sally—close enough. She was leaning over the open box on my desk and gingerly handling the chest within. The box-cutter lay on my desk.
“What hell are you doing in here?” I barked, completely exasperated and a little relieved.
Sally jumped in surprise. Her red hair whipped around, and the chest went flying out of her hands. It somersaulted through the air, and I caught sight of the symbol engraved on it for the first time. In that instant, I knew I didn’t want the box to break open. Ever. Despite not wanting to touch it, for the second time that day I dove through the air, torpedoing across the floor to try and catch the chest before it hit the floor. But it was Karen, seemingly from nowhere, who snatched it from the air with force. I hadn’t even seen her come into the office.
She stood with the chest in one hand, cool, calm, and collected, and stared at us in amusement. I had skidded across the floor after my failed dive to catch the chest (another one for my old baseball coach), and Sally stood by my desk with a look of shock on her pale face. The moment was comedic indeed.
“Good God.” Sally put her hand above her heart as if trying to restart it. “You scared the hell out of me.”
I scared the hell out of her? “What are you doing in my office?” I snapped, getting to my feet and straightening my suit.
“I—well . . . I was just . . .” she trailed off feebly.
“Out,” I ordered, pointing furiously at the door.
Sally sprinted for the door, humiliated at being caught. And that was exactly why I kept my office door locked. Security was excellent from the outside, but once in the depths of the building, things were easily accessible. Maybe firing Sally should be on my to-do list, I thought angrily. I’d considered firing her in the past but hadn’t gone through with it because of the time it would take to find someone else. And, to be honest, she wasn’t always a pain; she could be good at her job when she wanted to be.
As the door clicked shut behind Sally, I turned around to see Karen eyeing the chest. The sun was hidden behind rain clouds, and the dark indigo sky dulled the room’s brightness.
“The craftsmanship is remarkable,” Karen said, delicately holding the chest away from her body. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Is it old?”
“Um,” I mumbled, walking towards her. My hands reached out to take it from her. They trembled like I drank twenty cups of coffee. But it wasn’t the coffee that made me so nervous to touch the chest, it was the images burned into my eyes. Blazing eyes, darkness, a black creature warning me.
Karen didn’t notice my shaky fingers. Actually, she didn’t seem to notice me at all. “Very old,” she mumbled to herself, frowning as if she had seen something she found very disturbing. “Tenebre, io scaccio fuori,” she whispered.
“Italian?” I asked, a little worried. That’s it. I’m crazy. Now I think I’m hearing people in a foreign language.
Her eyes shot up from the chest. They were blue, like the ocean, but they burned into mine like fire. “Yes, Italian.” Her fingers roamed over the symbol on the chest. It was the exact same symbol I had seen downstairs on the necklaces: the circle with a shield in the middle. The aged wood, a rich brown color, was worn on the edges. “Shadow of the Sun,” she whispered.
“The what?” I was utterly bewildered. She was really starting to freak me out. I had no idea what was going on, but she obviously knew something I did not.
“Not what—who.”
“Karen,” I said tentatively. “You’re beginning to, well, scare me a little. What does Tenebre whatever you said mean?”
Again her eyes met mine. They were full of benevolence and oddly enough her face suddenly appeared ancient. “Darkness, I cast you out.”
A dreadful blast of realization hit. My legs moved without conscious thought as I backed into the wall. A framed photo above my head almost fell before I reached up and steadied it. I was reliving the feeling of the velvety darkness wrapping itself around my body, swallowing me whole. I shivered.
She knew.
Karen placed the chest down and rushed toward me, her face full of concern and worry. “You’ve seen it?” she said, delicately taking my hand. She must have seen the look of fear in my eyes. “There goes protecting you,” she muttered to herself.
I yanked my hand away. Words just exploded out of me. “What are you talking about? Protect me? Shadow of the Sun? Speaking Italian. Who are you?” The words came out in a rush. It was all a practical joke. It had to be. April fools, Gabriella. Except it was October.
“Gabriella.” She sighed. “I’m so sorry. I was supposed to be here earlier. Weeks ago, truthfully.” Karen’s fingers traced my face, looking me over like a mother tending to their kid who’s just fallen off a bicycle. “You aren’t hurt, are you?”
I couldn’t help it when I exhaled in relief. Her touch brought warmth—a calming force I so desperately needed. Inside this office, people didn’t really know who I was, but I struggled more than anyone around here could understand. It was hard to make friends when everyone my age was just beginning their lives, and I was already living mine. The only person who has never held my intelligence against me was my sister, Jenna. Work was my life. Whenever I tried to live outside the bubble I had created, I failed miserably. And here was Karen, taking this giant weight off my shoulders just by her touch, as if she were healing me. And honestly, I trusted her.
Why did I trust her?
“I guess we need to talk,” I mumbled.
“No time now.” She looked over her shoulder. The chest sat on my desk. Tension rolled through my body. “It can’t hurt you. Not anymore,” she soothed, as if reading my mind.
I nodded.
Karen moved back to my desk. Her fingertips fluttered over the chest again. “Rivelano.” The chest flew open.
I wanted to fall back, to run and hide from whatever was within. I waited for an explosion or for the room to turn into a dark mist or for the apocalypse. I waited and waited.
Nothing happened.
My vexation was far from gone, but it had lowered from a boil to a simmer. My heart beat steadier as I moved towards the open chest. Karen loomed over the box, looking into the depths. Her hand reached out and met resistance.
“What did you say?” I barely whispered.
“Reveal.”
“Oh,” I said. My anxiety grew as I approached the small chest. It seemed such a mundane object to cause such a stir in my brain. The area associated with fear and panic was hit hardest. Inside the box lay two tarnished silver keys, each with a symbol I hadn’t seen be
fore: two spearheads crossing inside a golden circle. The circle looked familiar. It was the one I had seen on the necklaces. The braided motif was intricate, the design flawless.
I don’t know why I did it, but I reached out and seized them both. Just like with the necklace, I needed to hold them. To touch them.
Karen gasped, a look of dawning wonder replacing her careful composure. “I thought the necklace was a fluke, but now, the keys.” She stared at me with a new light feeding her blue eyes.
“Listen, Karen. If that’s your real name . . . Karen. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m clueless about everything that’s exited your mouth since we entered my office. Who are you?”
“I’m an angel,” she stated simply, like it was obvious.
Did Sally drug my coffee this morning? Be right back while I go fire her.
“My kind are known as The Light of Heaven.”
“Heaven?” I asked with as much nonchalance as I could muster.
“Well, I wouldn’t know. I’m immortal. Haven’t died.”
Her words fell oddly upon my ears. I was lost in frantic speculation about how to best approach the subject. Instead of wording it in my head, I just gave in and blurted out, “An angel? Like God’s creation?”
“An angel, yes. That’s true. God? I’ve never met His holiness. The angel stories in the Bible are mostly myths anyway.”
“Myths?” I interjected. “You don’t know God? You have to understand that’s hard to believe.”
She sighed, exasperated, as if she had explained this a million times before. “No. We aren’t some mythical creature sent from some almighty God. That was just some of my kind being full of themselves, so to speak. Ours is an ancient people who were deeply involved in magic.”
I scoffed, disbelieving.
“We were called Senza Tempo. Translated, it means timeless.” She ignored my pursed lips of incredulity. “When my people were taken by a king and turned into slaves, they came together and decided to combine their magic to become truly timeless, just as their name foreshadowed. Immortals, as you know them.”
“So,” I said, “let me get this straight. No God? Just a bunch of really old people turning into immortals?” I needed to lie down.
She nodded. “To sum it up, yes.”
This was all too much to take in. One day I’m plucking feathers from a dead man—who had sewn them into his skin to make people believe he could fly—and the next I was speaking to an actual, live angel. I must be dreaming. Or I was going crazy. And why the hell would she just come right out and tell me?
“How did the angel thing come about?” I asked, skeptical. This had to be a practical joke. It had to be.
“Well, some of my people became arrogant,” she admitted. “When Christianity was on the rise, they took advantage of many souls. Because of our magical abilities, one could seem god-like to a mortal. But flaunting power in front of those without it is dangerous. You see, while each of us has our own special abilities, we also share many of the same. You can blame some of my brothers for the tall tales of angels and God. The name sort of stuck, though.”
“Okay.” I paused, reeling in the information she had freely poured for me. “All the knowledge we have about angels is a fib that your brothers made up?”
“Sadly, yes. We pre-date Christianity, and even Jesus. In the time when I was only a mortal, people prayed to the Olympians.”
I sat, my mind soaking up the information like a flower soaking up the rays of the sun. My thoughts were too unwieldy to form any kind of coherent response. I believed her, and yet I barely knew her. Was this the divine intervention I had fiercely begged for? Remind me to ask for a refund.
“Should I even ask where the cameras are hidden?”
“You saw the dark one.” She knelt before me, taking my hands in hers, completely ignoring my camera joke. “Yet you survived.”
My heart skipped a beat. “People usually don’t?” I choked.
“Not humans. And no one, human or angel, has ever been able to break the bindings of the Shadow of the Sun. Yet you . . .”
“Did?” I offered.
“Precisely.”
“So the ‘dark one’ is a member of this Shadow of the Sun?”
“Not exactly.” She stared at the keys in my hands longingly. “It’s not like a club. There is no membership. They are what they are. Part of the sun, the light, cast out to forever to be shadows of blazing light.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You know, that’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one.”
Karen giggled. The sound was like tinkling bells. “Yes, I’d say it is. But you saw one. They are dark as charcoal, yet their eyes blaze like the sun. They can play with fire, but it remains contained inside of them, no longer part of the sun. They’re doomed to be held in shadow.”
“Oh,” I said, as if I totally understood. I didn’t. Not really. But I had always wished for the supernatural and now I had it. In my office. Talking to me. Fabulous.
Karen rubbed my arm, her eyes boring into mine. The blue intensified until I was calm, as if I had drunk some extraordinary tonic and was tingling with a secret magic.
“Did you do that?” I asked, shuddering.
“How do you feel?”
“Strangely enough, I feel peaceful.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “That was me. I’m an empath. It’s one of my many magical abilities. Empathy is a more precious gift than most.”
“But that’s ficti—” I cut myself off. I had to remember this was what I had wanted, and it was in my life now. The supernatural, the weird and strange and unexplained. Get used to it, I ordered myself.
Her hand patted mine gently. “I wanted to reassure you, send you the feelings I thought you should be feeling, but I didn’t want to intrude. It seems I can only change your moods when you wish for me to. I’ve already tried to steer you in other directions during our conversation, but you deflected all of them.”
“I did?”
She smiled and nodded, and her long gold-brown hair bounced lightly. “It’s rare that I’m sent to protect someone, but I show up and you already have three angels in your care. Then I find out you lived through a meeting with a Shadow and that you’re able to penetrate their barriers and shield yourself from me. I have to say, I’m highly impressed and a little speechless.”
My mind did a little spin as I took it all in. Why would someone be here to protect me?
Oh! The thought hit me suddenly, and if I were a comic book character, you would have seen the light bulb above my head. Duh, I must be in danger.
“Why are you here?” I pondered aloud, feeling more stupid by the minute—a feeling I wasn’t used to but continued to come across today.
“I’m your guardian angel, of course.”