Guardian: Chapter 5

"The whole story Shawn, I think she deserves to hear it."

Mr. Roberts's voice was firm, but gentle from the other side of the room. I don’t exactly know how I ended up back inside Shawn's house. I had screamed and kicked with everything I had in me when Shawn bent down with his hands locked around my wrists, and even went so far as to bite him when he tried to push a warm palm up against my mouth. He had yanked his hand away and then gripped me harder than I'd ever been handled before, his fingers digging into my shoulders.
Then, he yelled at me. Something along the lines of 'Get up off your ass and I'll tell you what happened.' I didn’t argue, because he was not suggesting. His voice had adamant acid in it and he yanked me up harshly and didn’t let go. I was too afraid to run away from him, there was something about the way he carried himself that frightened me. Even with the limp his walk was aggressive. His limbs rolled with such force that he seemed much stronger than his body should allow, and for some reason I didn’t think I would be able to outrun him if I tried.

So, I was sitting on the couch back inside the Roberts household, white faced and sweaty. Shawn sat on the other side of the furniture from me, his knees pulled up and his eyes distant. He was deep in thought; that was apparent. He sat like that for what seemed like an eternity after his father spoke until movement suddenly twitched within his body, and he took his palm and ran it through his pale blond hair. He drew in a slow breath through his mouth and then closed it in a frown, exhaling through his nose. He shifted, and then looked to me.
His look chilled me, even though it was gentler than I'd ever seen it.

"I don’t even know where to start; she'll think we're all crazy," he murmured.

If I had been less afraid, I would have snorted. The kid had just attempted to murder me, and now he was afraid to tell me something because he thought I would think he was weird? I pressed the lower part of my back closer to the rough arm of the couch, and chewed the side of my lip. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Roberts had anything to say, and they stood with their backs on the wall. Mrs. Roberts looked more shaken up than I was, and her face had lost all emotion and color. She looked as if she was to pass away, right then and there. Shawn figured that he wasn’t getting any help from his parents, and scratched the back of his skull.

"You have a religion, Lauren?" he asked slowly, he seemed to be choosing his words very carefully.

I shook my head. I couldn’t really say I did, I went to church a few times when I was little but I never practiced or really followed anything. I wasn’t against religion in any way; our family just didn’t have the time or patience for it. Once I had told him, Shawn looked frustrated and he started again.

"You know about angels, right?"

I would have been skeptical, but the need to tease him was not present in my head. I was either in shock still, or so horrified by what had happened that I was ready to believe anything that would sort it out. So, I nodded softly, the movement made me dizzy.

"You've read stories too, right? Like old stuff with angels healing pain and suffering?"

There was a part of my head that was beginning to understand where this was going. But I refused to follow the trail of thought that was slowly gaining momentum, and tried to stay concentrated on the boy's drawn face across from me. I blinked and nodded once again, flinching as he let one fluid motion bring himself over closer to me. He extended his hand, the one I'd bitten. I was quite proud of the purple and red marks I'd left across his flesh, but I couldn’t find the muscles to smile. Shawn couldn’t either, and his expression stayed stony as he raised his eyes towards me.

"Watch it, carefully."

I assumed he was talking about the bite wound, and reluctantly, I shifted my eyes and fixated them onto his hand. I blinked, and when I opened my eyes there wound had vanished. I stared at his hand in confusion and then looked up.

"You missed it, didn’t you?" he asked dryly.

I didn’t answer him and watched as he lifted himself effortlessly off the couch, his scrawny body staggering into the kitchen. He returned a few moments later with a steak knife, every single muscle in my body freezing as I made a soft sound of discomfort. I was tempted to run, but I stayed immobile when I saw his expression, it was anything but angry. He sat down again carefully; he seemed to be handling me like a bird. Any sudden movement could frighten me and make me fly away.

"Alright, keep you're eyes open this time," he ordered impatiently, and gently rested the knife across his forearm.

"Shawn," his mother protested, but he ignored her, and before I could even scream he let the blade sink and rip through his pallid skin.

The blood was thick and fast across his arm and I wanted to turn away and hurl. But I stayed obedient and kept my eyes on the cut, Shawn's fingers pressing gently at the edge of the line. Then, right before my eyes the blood crawled backwards into his arm and the wound folded together. His skin was perfectly smooth and dry again, as if nothing ever happened. I sank back farther into the couch's edge, my muscles limp.

"That’s not fair to her, Shawn," Mrs. Roberts interjected sternly, but her husband put a comforting arm on her shoulder.

Shawn didn’t even look over; his eyes were locked on my face to see my reaction. I was staring at my hands, upturned and shining with perspiration. I was watching the blue veins that rose up underneath the nearly translucent skin at my wrists, frowning. My head was spinning, how in the world had he done that? The blood had just spilled right back into the wound…that couldn’t be possible.

"I guess you could call me an angel."

I could hear the faint trace of a smile in his voice, and when I raised my eyes towards him I saw him suppressing a smirk. I was too shaken by then to say anything back to him and watched him with a futile attempted to slow down my heart. With my gaze, I suggested he continue.

"Alright, I'll try to make this simple," he started, "There are angels and demons, just like the Bible and all those stories say."

Again I found myself not being doubtful of what he was saying; my rational head was still searching for some kind of explanation.

"Angels are called Shamira, and they don’t have wings or stupid shit like that. They're usually really long, big boned and white colored, they drag their arms and stuff. Then, the demons you know about are called Pyrrhus. They're rusty colored, and very toned and skinny. No wings, no claws, nothing like you've probably heard of."
He took a small breath and ran his hands through his hair again, his brow knitting together in frustration.

"We're –the Shamira are ruled by Amalric. The Pyrrhus by Azazel," he murmured.

"Like, God and Satan?" I asked meekly, shifting my hands until they looped uncomfortably by my ankles.
My voice was hoarse and my throat was raw, I swallowed hard after I spoke to try and ease the burning sensation.

"Exactly," Shawn said, he sounded relieved.

"Amalric likes power, and he was ready to do anything for it. Granted, he wanted the power for the Shamira as much as he wanted it for himself. But, Pyrrhus and Shamira have always been in balance…like Yin and Yang. Each has its good and evil parts, they level."

"Aren't demons all evil and angels all good?" I interrupted him again, but he didn’t seem angry.
I liked the way his face lit up attentively when I opened my mouth.


"Pah," he scoffed, and then snorted.

"Shamira are far from what's depicted here on earth, and so are Pyrrhus. Neither is particularly good or particularly evil, that’s why I said they level with each other. Shamira are actually pretty brutal and heartless, especially when it comes to warfare."
I watched him shudder, the last comment of his seemed to make him uncomfortable. He grimaced, and then looked up again to see if I had anymore questions. I said nothing and kept staring right on back, and he started up again.

"Amalric started a war; he upset that balance I was talking about. He wanted Azazel's power, and even here on Earth this happens. One country wants something they can't have, and blood is spilled. Same thing happened with Shamira and Pyrrhus."

I screwed up my face slightly, my nose wrinkling.

"How do the Shamira and Pyrrhus…like, have a war? Do they have guns or something?"

I expected him to laugh, but he didn’t. His face only darkened and a slow slur of a word passed through his pale lips.

"Ardeo. They use Ardeo," he whispered, his eyes pained as if the very word across his tongue hurt him.

"I guess you could call it like a spell or an incantation, but I don’t really believe in magic. It's more like power, squeezed into a teeny word. It burns a body from the inside out, chars the flesh and all the organs."

Frightened, I wrapped my arms around my core and made sure my stomach didn’t feel warm and my organs weren’t melting. I heard Mr. Roberts take a seat in the big arm chair to my left, and then Shawn's soft laugh.

"Don't worry; it doesn’t work here unless it's preformed by a holy figure. And I'm not holy anymore."

I cocked my head to the side, but didn’t have to ask him to explain. He was already on to it. I folded my legs pretzel style and relaxed a bit into the cushions, growing more relaxed by the minute.

"My best friend Sephine, and another good friend Matthias and I took a vow. I was still of Shamira blood then, like the others. But we didn’t approve of the war or Amalric, he'd ruled for so many centuries with a kind hand and we couldn’t understand his drastic change. So, we swore to stop the war. We tattooed black crosses in the corner of our mouths," he said, pointing to the area in the diamond shaped slit of his lips, "and decided that we would go out one day and find Amalric. Then, we'd kill him.
We started in the war cemetery; we were going to smell him out. And then –Matthias, he…he started screaming."

Shawn's face was heart wrenching, and I could have sworn I saw tears in his eyes. Although, when he looked up they were perfectly white. His lips quivered as he took in a slow breath, fidgeting.

"He called for Amalric…he'd been a spy the entire time. He wanted to be Amalric's favorite, and I'm positive that he promised Matthias a bit of the power he'd soon be able to obtain. Sephine figured out what was happening before I did, and he saved me. Saved me from that Machiavellian Shamira, from Amalric, from the torture that I'm sure he's already gone through for betraying Pyrrhus and Shamira alike.
Sephine used Caedo on me. It's usually for punishment; it’s one of those 'power' words. It’s the one to banish angels to Earth, to have them be reborn on unworthy soil and grow up around humans. The intent is to have them die and become Shamira again, better than they were beforehand. But, Sephine wanted to save me from trouble so he sent me to Earth. It was one hell of a ride, actually, because he didn’t do it properly. There's a load of rituals supposed to be preformed beforehand, but he just said it. That's why I'm too skinny. The limp is from that too."

There was silence afterwards and Shawn's expression was unreadable. He was still as stone, and I heard no movement from his parents behind him. I was bursting with questions; so many things had gone unanswered in his story. But I pressed my lips together and tried to outwait the quietness, but the prominent question that was rolling around my tongue couldn’t be suppressed any longer.

"So, why did you slit my throat open and try to kill me?" the attempt to keep my voice at a normal pitch was futile.

Shawn cracked an uneasy grin and his eyes trailed slowly to my hip. I tightened up in slight paranoia, but his gaze was already turned away. He pursed his lips together and rubbed his index finger lightly across the smooth skin on the bridge of his nose. He sniffed almost thoughtfully before resuming his talking.

"You've heard sayings about guardian angels and what not, correct?" he asked softly, his voice was cautious again.


"Yup," I said with a weak smile.

When my Grampy died, my Mom used to tell me that he would be my guardian angel up in heaven. When I was seven, I didn’t really realize that she was helping me cope with his death, but as I grew older I began to rely more and more on her method. Any time I was nervous, I would pretend my Grampy was next to me, looking over what I was doing and making sure nothing bad happened.

"Well, each Shamira has a human on Earth that they watch over. The human is linked to their guardian, their hearts, veins; everything is connected and intertwined. They are recognized as each other's by some sort of marking, it will be the same on both Shamira and human. So, the first day I met you I saw the scar on your cheekbone."

His face screwed up painfully, as if these were memories he didn’t want to stir up again. I saw his jaw tense before he sucked in a gentle breath through his nose. He opened his mouth again, wet his lips, and tried to continue.

"Amalric has that marking, or so I thought from memory. And, the thing is, if the human dies…their guardian dies with them. So I thought that if I killed you, Amalric would die and I would carry out my mission to Sephine, what ever his fate may have become."

The puzzle immediately snapped itself together, and my face grew red. I didn’t have to ask why he had spared me, and gingerly placed my fingers at my hipbone. I had surgery there when I was little, and the scar had never left me.

"That means, that you're… --you're," I tried talking but the words wouldn’t really come out.

I was too afraid to speak them almost, I was afraid that if I said guardian angel they'd all start laughing and he'd sputter out that it was all a big joke. But he only nodded gravely across from me, a small tweak of a smile curling his lips.

"I'm the only guardian angel in the world that tried to kill the human he's supposed to be protecting."