Guardians(39)
I enter and find Wolf on the floor with half of his left wing torn off. There’s a chunk of his torso missing. The only thing preventing him from bleeding out is the bandage at his side. The light in his perfect face has dimmed significantly. At this rate if he doesn’t get help, he’ll die.
For once, Ameana and I are on the same page. She looks up at me with profound sadness. Wolf looks stubborn and unwilling to listen to whatever it is she has been saying to him. He greets me with a small voice.
“You’re really a centered human to survive the Cray. I would love to feel your Aura sometimes.”
“Um…sure,” I say, not really understand what his request would entail.
“Wolf, you have to go back. Isabelle or one of the Twins will go with you,” Ameana says.
“I gave the team my word. Do you know what happens when you go back on your word? Ever hear of Karma?”
“You ever hear of an Angel surviving injuries like yours without going to Daraquin to get treated?”
“I’m not going.”
“Why are you so damn stubborn?” Ameana shouts, about to lose it completely.
“She’s right. You need to get help,” I insist.
“I’ll send the guys for some herbs and healing crystals. There’s got to be some around here.”
“What about Woe, won’t that help?” I ask.
“His wounds are too severe for Woe to have any effect,” Ameana replies.
In the short time that I’ve been in the cave with them, even more light has dimmed from Wolf’s face. As Ameana tried to convince him to go back, I glimpse a familiar expression on the Para’s face. It’s a look that I saw just a moment ago on Marcus.
Wolf isn’t worried about the mission. He’s worried about who he’s leaving behind…
“Hey, can I see you for a second?” I asked Ameana. She reluctantly leaves Wolf and follows me outside.
“What is it?” she demands.
“Wolf is never gonna agree to go home and leave you here.”
“Why? I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah, I get that. But he’s…Wolf. He’s always trying to do the right thing. And leaving the girl he…he’s not going if you’re staying.”
“You think I should offer to go back with him?”
“It’s worth a shot.”
“The team needs my help. They can’t handle Kairo when they’re two Angels down.”
“We’ll be fine. Once you get to Daraquin, you can always come back. We can’t let anything happen to Wolf, or any of you.”
She says she needs to run it by Marcus. We head back into the Cob that holds the rest of the team. They discuss it and agree that Ameana should take Wolf back and stay with him. When Ameana tells Wolf she’s going to accompany him home, he tries to hide his smile but everyone sees it. He has it bad for Ameana. Once Ameana saw how pleased Wolf was by the news, she supressed a smile by focusing on fixing his bandage. Although there was nothing wrong with it.
I swear somewhere behind that wall of perfection and coldness, a girl is falling in love…
CHAPTER ELEVEN: TIME WITH YOU
After Ameana and Wolf head back home, I tell Marcus that while I’m not a hundred percent yet, I’m well enough for us to keep going. He takes me to the top of the cliff across from the castle. I hate to admit it but it looks intriguing.
Castle Relinque looks as though it was carved out of the mountain it sits on. It’s built from some sort of smooth, glossy black stone. It reminds me of something out of a gothic romance novel. It would be a wonderful place to spend the night; well, that is, if a deranged lunatic didn’t live there.
Although Kairo is the ultimate problem, the immediate issue is the vast lake that separates the castle from the cliff we’re on.
“I’m a pretty good swimmer, if that’s what you’re worried about,” I tell Marcus.
“Look at the water carefully.”
There’s a light reddish hue to the lake I observe.
“That’s because he’s making a stew,” Marcus says bitterly.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s just a morbid joke. Angels call this type of lake a Stew Lake. It’s what we call a body of water with a Vsk at the bottom. And before you ask, a Vsk is a device that takes anything solid and mangles it into chucks. The Council has used it in the past to keep anyone from getting to them.”
“That’s why the water’s a weird reddish color?”
“Yes. It’s a mix of the red from human blood and silver from ours.”
“How do we get around it?”
“We don’t.”
“We could fly overhead.”