Last Ascension

  “Shit, Draco.”

  His oldest brother held out his hand. “Let me get through this. I"m not good at it. Not even with Wendy and the kids. You made us a family. Ace and I were two guys who lived together, worked together, but mostly minded our own business. Wendy thought we were gay. Did you know that?”

  Lael laughed. Draco"s announcement had lightened Lael"s mood. “No, I"ve never heard that story before.”

  “Yeah. She thought she was in love with me, and I was in love with Ace.”

  “Damn.” He laughed again. “Sorry. I shouldn"t find it so amusing.”

  “And then I found you. I followed up on a lead on a dead case, and there you were. Like you were waiting for me.”

  Lael forced down the tears, threatening to spill. He both cherished and despised the memory of Draco, the great Guardian, arriving to bring him home. Every homeless kid"s dream. Yet remembering always reminded him of the loneliness and the utter lack of a future.

  “I remember it perfectly.”

  “What you can"t believe is how close you brought all of us. Having you with us, it made Ace and me better. Made us family. I don"t know if we"d be this close with his family if not for you. We actually used to fight about who you lived with.”

  Really? “I didn"t know that ether.”

  “How could you? We never argued in front of you.”

  “I went with Ace. I wanted you to have your life with Wendy. Then he found Alice.”

  Draco nodded. “And you must have felt the lost boy with nowhere to go. You didn"t

  understand. There wasn"t a person in our family who didn"t want you. I thought you preferred Ace. You stayed with him.”

  “Seemed really pointless to keep moving around.”

  “I get it. I didn"t see it then, or I would have insisted. You would have been with me, brother. For as long as you wanted.”

  “Thanks for telling me.”

  Draco walked toward him and put his hand on his arm. “What you did in that place, the way you saved us, the way you were clearheaded and in charge, it was really a sight to behold.”

  “Thanks. Can we return to Margot?” He didn"t want to ask Draco to get his hand off him, and he didn"t want to step away because doing so would be uber-insulting. Except he hated intimacy with anyone but Margot.

  “In a second. I"m trying to tell you I was wrong. You"ve come a long way since the

  accident. I didn"t see it because I wasn"t looking hard enough, or maybe I didn"t want to believe you could be trusted with the big stuff. Easier to keep you in bubble wrap babysitting Ambassadors' spoiled kids.”

  “Draco.” He patted his brother on the arm before he stepped away. “I don"t think I"m cut out to be a Guardian.”

  “Surely there has to be something there you want to do.”

  “I"ll think on it. The only thing I want in the world is Margot. Get her for me. Won"t you, big brother? Get her back.”

  Draco narrowed his eyes. “What she did in there, I"ve never seen anything like it before.”

  “The Organization experimented on her. Dad kept calling her my present. Made her able to do things, talk to machines. She responded to an ad saying they could take away fears.”

  His brother shook his head before he walked over to Margot. Draco squatted down in front of her and looked at her pupils. He"d been doing that over and over for the last two days.

  “Not possible. You can either talk to machines or you can"t. When I pulled her out of their clutches, they were in the process of experimenting on her the same way they did on us.”

  He tried to make sense of what Draco said. “Are you saying they were Guardian-

  experimenting on her?”

  “Exactly. Your girl here, I think she"s one of us. A mild talent. Not developed. But one of us just the same. When she exploded and her energy burst out of her, all the cuts in my body healed all at once. I"ve got this limp left, that"s it. Ace breathed easier. And you woke up from death.

  She did what you did, only bigger.”

  “I can restart hearts. I can"t magically remove bullets.” If anything, she was more impressive. His Margot. “She suffers from tremendous fears.”

  “Hmm.”

  Lael tapped his foot on the ground. “I"m not good at noise interpretation. Help a fellow out here.”

  "This is an overdose.”

  “Go on.”

  “She"s a Guardian, and she drained herself to the point of failure. Like you used to do when I taught you to fly. You"d fall out of the sky.”

  And Draco caught him. “Thanks for the reminder.”

  “You"d pass out. I"d drag you home, and you"d sleep it off. We"d go out again a few hours later.”

  “She"s not sleeping. Her eyes are wide open.” Unseeing. Lost. His girl. He wanted to wrap her up in his embrace and never let her be wounded again. “She"s not there.”

  “This is how she comes down.” Draco stood up. “I think we can help her.”

  He perked up. Finally, something he could do. “Tell me. I"ll do it.”

  “You"re delving into her mind, and you"re going to get her.”

  “That"s possible?”

  Draco grinned. “We"re Guardians. Anything is possible. Haven"t you figured that out yet?”

  “I"m not a Guardian.”

  His brother shrugged. “Same difference.”

  “Right.”

  “Lael?”

  He took his eyes off Margot"s precious face to regard Draco. “Yes?”

  “I love you.”

  “Are you planning to say emotional stuff all the time now?”

  “Yep.”

  Fuck. “I love you, too.” He"d stepped into the uncomfortable feelings stuff big time.

  “Oh, and little brother?”

  Lael sighed. “Yes, Draco?”

  “Couple of things.”

  His brother could really draw out a conversation. “Go on.”

  “We found Henry. I"m sorry to tell you that he"s dead. He was one of the people the Organization experimented on when they were searching for people with Guardian abilities.

  They"ve apparently been promising to help people kick their addiction issues forever.”

  Lael sighed. He felt terrible for Henry and anyone else who"d been abused and murdered by the Organization. If they had known about it, if they had suspected, they would have saved them.

  Lael had been so close, and still Henry had been taken.

  “Any sign of the woman I never found? Penny Nevada?”

  Draco rubbed his chin. “An Organization agent.”

  Lael clenched his fists. “Is she handled?” Because if she wasn"t, he would take care of the business himself as soon as he made sure Margot was okay.

  “Handled is a polite way of putting it. The other Guardians had some fun with her before they turned her over to the police.”

  That was good. There would be justice for Henry and the others. He"d make sure of it.

  Draco wasn"t done speaking. He took a step forward.

  “The woman you heard screaming when you met Margot? I"d put money on it being Margot who had been yelling like that.”

  Lael shook his head. “No. She was perfectly silent when she collided with me.”

  Draco shook his head. “Your girl was screaming on the inside. Like the way you can hear her heart beat? You"ll always know when she"s in that much distress, too.”

  “She wasn"t my girl then. How did I hear her?”

  His brother sighed. “She was always yours, Lael. You just didn"t know it. That"s how it works with us.”

  ****

  The ghost chased her. Margot breathed heavily as she ran down the street in Anchorage. It was winter, and she didn"t have her coat. If the ghost didn"t get her, she"d be dead soon from exposure. Why the hell didn"t she have something warm on?

  What could she have been thinking? Well, of course that was a ridiculous question. She hadn"t been thinking, she"d been running for her life from a crazy ghost who wanted to kill her.

/>   Margot ran faster. Her hands tingled. Why did it keep happening?

  “Margot.” She shrieked and tried to dart left, but a hand came and grabbed her. The ghost. It had her, and she"d never get away. She"d die by its hand. She"d never get to see Europe.

  “Margot, stop.”

  She turned to see who held her. It was a man. A tall, god-like, blond man with blue eyes and chiseled cheekbones. He belonged on the cover of a men"s magazine, not on the street in Anchorage.

  “Margot, do you recognize me?”

  He kept saying her name, which she found really discomforting. Why did he keep doing that?

  “No, I don"t.”

  “Give it a second. Your brain will place me. First, it has to accept the fact I"m in here with you.”

  She swallowed. The ghost seemed to have fallen off so if mister hottie wanted to talk to her on the street, then that was fine. Maybe he was a natural ghost-repellent. “In Anchorage? My brain has to get used to you being in Anchorage? Should you not be here?”

  Good-Looking glanced around. “Is that where we are? Interesting. Yep, this is Anchorage.”

  “Okay, I"m out of here.”

  He said weird things, and she did not have to stand on the street and put up with it.

  “Margot.” He held her arm when she wanted to run. “Who am I?”

  His voice did sound familiar. Her eyes blurred for a second before everything cleared up again. The sensation made her nauseous, and she hoped she wasn"t actually going to hurl. It took a few seconds for the nasty sick feeling to pass, but, when it did, she felt clearer.

  And she knew who he was.

  “Lael.”

  Her eyes filled with tears; an overwhelming and different kind of pain actually brought her to her knees. Only in her dream, Lael"s hand on her kept her from toppling over.

  “Oh, God, you"re dead, and this is all a dream. A hell-filled, never-ending nightmare where I"ll have to remember over and over how I let you die.”

  Lael raised his eyebrow. “How you let me die? I got shot, and I was weakened from sending my life force into Ace. I wasn"t able to resist the bullet.”

  “If I had paid attention to the noise earlier, if I had noticed, I could have warned you.” She sniffed and let herself touch Dream-Lael"s hard chest. Underneath his fingers, his heart beat strongly. A constant torment, a reminder of what wasn"t true. “Or if I had just killed Ben. He couldn"t have hurt you.”

  “I told you not to kill him. I actually think you"d have ended him if I hadn"t interfered. And I still think I was right.”

  She shook her head. “You sound just like Lael. My brain is really pulling out all the stops on this one.”

  “Margot.”

  He tugged her against him, and she could feel just how accurate her imagination was in this case. Leal"s heat, his strength, the way he made her heart flutter when he held her, all of the same happened. Sweet, hellish torture. Maybe she should just give in and go with it? Maybe there was a way to live like, to keep him to this small extent within her own head. Could that be enough?

  “Listen to me, because I need to make this very clear. I am not dead. I should be, but you saved my life. I don"t remember it, but Draco tells me a burst of energy flooded the room, sent

  from you, and we were all relatively healed. Or much better in any case. You returned me to life.

  But you don"t know that because you disappeared afterward.” He brushed her hair off her face.

  “You overdosed on the power. You"re incredible. You"re a Guardian.”

  “You"re spouting nonsense. The stupidest thing I ever heard. How could I be a Guardian?

  I"m afraid of everything. Guardians are brave, like you. They rush in and don"t worry about anything.”

  “You seem pretty brave to me, sweetheart. Also, the fact you didn"t realize you were one of us could explain a lot. Your body can"t handle its over stimulation. Ace has a hard time managing his, too. He meditates, but he used to throw things around.”

  She patted him on the chest. “And you"re suggesting my powers come across as mindless terror which incapacitates me for a while.”

  “It"s a theory. You weren"t overly terrified when you were in your little apartment. Well, not more than you should have been. This thing you"re doing now? The losing your memories, the trapping yourself in your own mind. You did it then, too. To a lesser extent. You had no idea who you were. You lost your memories. But they returned to you. It"ll all come back again. If you take my hand, and let me lead you out of here.”

  His words made sense, and the way he looked at her, with the heat in his eyes and the touch of the ever-present insecurity—even if he didn"t know it—made her heart speed up. Was it possible? Could he be telling her the truth?

  “How are you here anyway?” None of this made any sense.

  “We altered the machine I used to find Draco and Ace. Had to wake Ace up for a bit to do it.

  Practically had to shoot caffeine directly into his veins, but we got it done.”

  Now this was when it all fell apart. “That"s a blood machine. You and I don"t share any.

  Unless you"re aware of something I'm not, in which case what we have been doing together is wrong on so many levels.”

  Lael kissed her knuckles. “When you wake up from this place, your hand will hurt very badly.” He held up his own. “But, then again, so does mine.” A long red mark appeared on his palm. “I"ve got some of your blood in mine now, too. I told you we altered the machine.”

  She opened and closed her mouth. Finally, when she could find words, she used them even though they burned, even though they made her want to melt into a puddle on the floor. “What if I wake up and this was a dream? What if I wake up and you"re really dead?”

  He shook his head. “I"m not.”

  “But….”

  Lael kissed her, hard on the mouth. She let herself taste him, let herself know what it felt like to be wrapped in his arms. “Wake up, Margot.”

  Her eyes flew open and she gasped. Lael knelt in front of her, but other than his face, she couldn"t make out anything else around her. The room was too bright. The machines running near her were too loud, and she felt so weak she didn"t know how long she"d keep her head up before her neck gave up the fight.

  “I told you.”

  She nodded, but it was too much. Her head lolled forward onto his shoulder. “It"s okay, sweetheart. Sleep. Real sleep. Normal rest. And when you wake up, I"ll be here.”

  That sounded like a plan.

  ****

  The next time her eyes opened, she was in a bed beneath sheets that smelled like Lael. She snuggled into them. Had she imagined the whole thing? She rubbed her eyes. The patter of rain on the roof sounded soothing. Maybe she could drift for a while and not deal with the big questions right upon waking.

  A sound to her left caught her attention. Lael leaned against the wall.

  “You wake up slowly. I like that. I always come to immediately. One second, I"m out; the next, I"m aware of everything around me.”

  She sat up straighter in the bed. “Might you say the way I wake up negates the 'Margot is a Guardian' theory?”

  “No. You wake up like Margot the Guardian. I wake up like Lael the Guardian. I don"t think there"s any kind of hard and firm rule about any of it.” He shrugged. “I couldn"t care less.”

  He looked funny. His eyebrows were slanted, and his jaw looked strained.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?” She flipped the bedding off and went to stand up, but he stopped her, crossing the room faster than she could blink.

  He took a deep breath through his nose. “Don"t move.”

  “Sheesh, Lael. What is the problem?”

  “I haven"t kissed you in days.”

  His mouth met hers, demanding, cajoling, insisting she think of nothing but him. She was more than happy to comply.

  Chapter Eleven

  Post-coital bliss. He finally understood the term. This
was bliss. He stretched, letting his hand stroke Margot"s stomach to feel the slight tremors there. Maybe they could stay this way forever. Who needed food? Who needed to work? They"d live on hot sex alone.

  “I think I need to go somewhere.”

  Lael grinned. “Bathroom is the second door.”

  “No.” She pinched him. “I think I need to go see my Aunt.”

  And reality came crashing in. He took a deep breath and sat up. “Your Aunt?”

  “That"s right.” She sat up next to him, letting the blanket fall down a bit, which gave him a view of her breasts. His cock jumped in response. He"d been inside her less than ten minutes earlier. There would never be a time she didn"t do this to him, never be a time when he didn"t feel an overwhelming urge for her. He knew this like he understood he had to breathe. Margot was a necessity. He couldn"t lose her again.

  “In Anchorage?” He hadn"t been to Alaska in years.

  “That"s the one.” She stretched her arms over her head. Sweet heaven.

  “Missing home?”

  She snorted and got up. “Not hardly. Do I have any clothes? Or was that t-shirt you discarded somewhere in here all that there was?”

  “Wendy got you some clothes. They"re in the top two drawers.” His were below hers. He"d essentially moved her in while she slept. If she wasn"t okay with her new living arrangements, they"d have to deal with her feelings later. For now, he"d pretend everything was fine because that"s how he wanted it to be.

  Didn"t they both deserve a little "all is well" for a change?

  “Thanks.” She pulled out some clothes and started dressing. It should be just the opposite, but watching his girl put on what she"d wear for the day became strangely erotic. They were temporary dressings. Sometime later—not too long he hoped—he"d get her out of those things.

  Seeing her put them on was foreplay.

  His mouth watered.

  “Lael?” The pink in her cheeks told him she knew the path of his thoughts. That was just fine with him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Much as I want to do what you"re thinking, and I really do, I think it"s important we go see my Aunt.”