Bodyguards (5 page)

“What are you doing?” Bradan
asked, confused.

Vivien stood in front of the
drawer, her lips pinched tight and her brow furrowed until she finally said,
“This morning, Ana said something. She said... She said she had to talk to me
about something important, but I didn’t have time. So she hugged me and she
said my birthday present was in her first drawer.” She turned to look at
Bradan. “Do you think she knew they...they’d come and take her?”

Bradan sighed softly. “I don’t
know. It’s possible.”

She returned her gaze to the empty
drawer, still frowning. “What were they looking for? Why did they search our
rooms?”

“I don’t know,” Bradan said again.
Maybe Aedan knew, but Aedan was outside, standing guard and growing restless.
They had to Pass Through, and soon. “But they could return. We should...”

His voice trailed off when
Vivien’s eyes suddenly widened.

“Not in her drawer,” she muttered
as though to herself. “Under it.”

She pulled the drawer completely
out of the dresser and set it on the floor before turning it upside down.
Something flat, wrapped in tissue paper, was taped to the recessed underside.

“How did you know?” Bradan asked,
stunned.

“It was in a movie we watched a
few months ago.” With feverish hands, she pulled the tape apart and freed the
wrapped object. “Anabel said, if she ever had to hide something important,
that’s where she’d hide it.”

She opened the tissue paper, and
something round and metallic fell into her open palm. Bradan held his breath as
he recognized it. Each Celden ruler had worn the QuickSilver insignia, the men
as a pin over their heart, the women as a pendant around their neck. It had
been the visible symbol of who they were, like human rulers wore crowns. And
from the time of Lahien the Great, all members of the QuickSilver Guard had
worn the same symbol imprinted on their skin.

Without thinking, Bradan dropped
to one knee in front of Vivien and raised his hand toward her, closed into a
fist, his wrist facing up.

The swirls and spirals of the
tattoo gleaming on his skin were a match for the finely crafted metal in
Vivien’s trembling hand.

CHAPTER FIVE

QuickSilver

The instant Vivien unwrapped her
birthday present, her entire world shifted on its axis.

Brad’s story still made no sense.
The magic he had performed for her was still beyond anything she could
comprehend. She was still scared and confused.

The difference was that now she
believed him.

She’d been meaning to ask him what
his tattoo meant from the first time she had noticed it. Now that she’d found
an exact replica of that strange symbol where no one but Anabel could have
hidden it, she had all the proof she needed: the link between the strange
stories he was telling her and her real life, the one in which Anabel had taken
care of her since she’d been five and her parents had died.

“What...” She gulped. Her throat
felt too tight, too dry. Her eyes went back and forth between the pendant in
her hand and the elegant lines on Brad’s skin. If she had laid the pendant
against his wrist, it would have only been a little smaller than his tattoo.
“What is this a symbol of?”

“It depends who wears it,” Brad
said with a small smile. “On my skin, it’s a symbol of the oath I swore as a
QuickSilver guard, a reminder that I’ll give my life if need be to protect the
true king or queen. And when you wear it, it’ll be a symbol of what you are.
The heir to a long tradition of rulers. The person who takes care of Foh’Ran—”
He reached into her hand to follow one spiral of the pendant with a fingertip.
“—of those who channel the Quickening—” He brushed against a second spiral.
“—and of the vampires.”

His finger followed the last
spiral, ending where he had started. As he pulled away, his fingertips brushed
against Vivien’s. She shuddered, and the pendant fell from her hand. Brad
caught it before it could tumble to the floor and offered it back to her in his
open palm.

“I can’t be a...a ruler,” she
murmured, crossing her arms over her chest so she wouldn’t be tempted to take
the pendant again. She didn’t want it or anything it symbolized. She didn’t
want to be part of this strange world where people were kidnapped or killed in
broad daylight. “I don’t
want
to be a ruler.” Her voice was firming up
with her resolve. “I just want to live here and be me. You can tell that to
your king.”

Brad looked crestfallen. He got
back to his feet, his hand still extended in front of him. “Vivien, this is
you. You can’t just push it away like this.”

“Why not?” she challenged. “How
can I pretend to be a ruler when I know nothing about your world or its people?
I can’t do magic. I’m not a...a vampire. I’m just a college girl.”

“You’re a lot more than that.”
Brad’s gaze was burning with the same intensity as when he had first told her
about his oath, back at his apartment. “And what about Anabel? Are you just
going to leave her in Rhuinn’s hands?”

Guilt flashed through Vivien. How
could she have forgotten Anabel?

“How am I supposed to help her?”
she protested. “I don’t even know where she is. You said you don’t know
either.”

“But we can find out,” Brad said
urgently. “We can go to Foh’Ran, find out where she is, and find a way to free
her.”

“Why don’t you go and do that? You
and your brother. I’d be of no use to you.”

He shook his head. “We swore to
protect you, not her. We aren’t going anywhere without you.” He hesitated for a
second before he added, “Aedan and I... We’re not as strong here as we would be
in Foh’Ran. I can use the Quickening to make it more difficult for Rhuinn’s
guards to come into this house, but you’ve seen how it didn’t stop them before.
Any shield I build here will fail eventually; that’s the nature of this world.
Come with us back to Foh’Ran, and we’ll get Anabel back.”

“But I can’t!” Vivien folded his
fingers over the pendant. “My life is here. We’ve got that presentation
tomorrow. Finals are in a month.”

“Anabel could be dead already.”

Vivien had never been
sucker-punched before. As she struggled to find her breath, she imagined it
felt a bit like this.

“Time passes faster in Foh’Ran
than it does here,” Brad continued, stone-faced. “Every minute we argue here,
five minutes pass there. If she was taken two hours ago, she’s already been
there for ten hours. Rhuinn is not a pleasant man. If he wants her to tell him
everything that ever happened to you, from how many times you skinned your
knees while growing up to how many years you studied fencing, she will tell
him. It’s only a matter of time. And when he has what he wants from her...”

He let the sentence hang between
them. The men downstairs, whoever they had been, had had no qualms about
hitting Anabel, however old or frail she might be. She was the only family
Vivien had, and someone might be hurting her at that very moment because of
Vivien. She swallowed back the tears that stung her eyes.

“Should I... Should I pack a bag?”
she asked, looking at the ruined room around her rather than at Brad’s cold
eyes; he resembled his brother more in that moment than he had before. “How
long will we be gone?”

“I don’t know,” he said more
softly now. “But it’s best to assume you won’t be back. Or at least not for a
while.”

That last part was clearly an
afterthought. It made it harder to believe she’d be back at all.

The strangest feeling took over
Vivien, and she felt like she was watching herself as she left Anabel’s room
and entered her own. She dug the duffel bag she had once used to carry her
fencing gear out of the closet and set it on her bed. She picked up clothes
from the floor and threw them in, not really searching for anything in
particular, merely filling the bag.

She put her MP3 player in there.
She’d have taken her computer, too, if it hadn’t been destroyed. The thought
gave her pause; she wouldn’t be able to keep in contact with her friends from that
other place, would she? There’d be no one there she knew other than Brad—other
than the man she’d had a crush on for so long and who had rejected her that
very morning. She grabbed a few favorite books from her shelves, too; at least
she’d have something to do.

The entire time, she was aware of
Brad’s presence just outside her room. He watched her without a word, offering
no advice about what she should pack. Was that place cold? Should she take a
coat? Would she need sunscreen? She was beginning to resent him, both for the
bad news and for his silence. When she pushed past him to go to the bathroom
across the hall, she gave him a hard look. He stopped her with a brush of his
fingers against her arm.

“I know you’re upset,” he said
quietly. “I’m sorry the life you knew is about to change forever. But don’t be
mad at us. We didn’t decide to send you to this world, or to hide the truth
from you, or to bring you back to make sure you wouldn’t plot to take over the
throne. Aedan and I are the only ones you can count on right now. Being mad at
us won’t make your life any easier.”

He retreated to the top of the
staircase; she had a feeling that, if she hadn’t run out from under his nose
before, he would have given her even more space. Troubled, she entered the bathroom
and transferred her necessities to the bag. She didn’t know what that other
place was like, but she doubted she’d find her favorite shampoo there.

She finally closed the bag. The
sound of the zipper had never seemed so final. Before leaving, she took a deep
breath and looked at herself in the mirror. With flyaways that had escaped from
her ponytail framing her face every which way, she looked nothing like the
princess and potential ruler Brad claimed she was. She raised a hand to comb
her hair behind her ears, but froze when she saw the dried blood still staining
her fingers.

Anabel’s blood.

In her search for her present and
then in her packing, she had forgotten all about the blood on her hand. Shaking
hard, she turned on the water in the sink and washed her fingers, rubbing
frantically until her skin felt raw and no more pink swirled down the drain.
After she shut off the water again, she pressed her wet hands to her face and
took another look at herself. The panic lingering in her eyes made her look
even less like a ruler than a moment earlier. Maybe all that king needed was to
see her to decide she wasn’t a threat to him.

She dried her face and hands,
picked up her bag, and finally left the bathroom. When she reached Brad in the
hallway, she didn’t say anything, but he smiled softly when he took the bag
from her and swung the strap over his shoulder. He led the way back down to the
kitchen. As they reached the bottom of the staircase, Vivien tried very hard
not to look toward the front room.

When Brad gestured toward the door
the same way he had when summoning his magic earlier, Vivien held her breath,
expecting another show of lights. But while the doorway did glow, the effect
was much more subtle, as though sunlight were pouring in on a bright summer
day. She could still see through.

Aedan was standing in the
driveway, apparently ready to come in. He nodded once, his gaze directed at
Brad when he said, “Thirty.” He then walked through the doorway, but rather
than entering the house, he disappeared in a flash of light. Vivien gasped.
Even after what Brad had showed her, she could barely believe what was going
on. Was this what that other man had done in the front room?

“Where... What happened? Where is
he? Thirty what?”

Brad offered her a small smile. “Thirty
seconds. He went ahead to check that the shields on the castle are still
secure.” His lips moved silently for a few seconds, then he held his hand out
to Vivien. “Are you ready to go back home?”

“I am home,” she protested, but
even to her own ears the words sounded weak.

She took his hand, clinging to the
very tips of his fingers, and let him pull her into the light.

CHAPTER SIX

Roseberry Jam

A strange sensation coursed
through Vivien’s body, like tiny slivers of ice pressing everywhere against her
skin. Before it could become painful or even uncomfortable, she stumbled out of
the doorway. Brad released her hand and caught her waist instead, holding her
steady for a few seconds before he let go and took a half step back.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “I should
have warned you. I didn’t realize it’d been so long you’d have forgotten about
Passing Through.”

“Passing through?” Vivien
repeated. “Through what?”

If Brad answered, Vivien never
heard him. She was too busy staring around her. She had walked through the door
of her house, and instead of stepping outside, she had entered a round room
paved in gray and black stones laid out to resemble the tattoo on Brad’s wrist:
three spirals linked together by organic-looking tendrils. She looked up; the
ceiling was maybe fifteen feet high, with lozenge-shaped windows at the very
top letting in a faint light. The walls were stone like the floor, with
arabesques of gray stones surrounding the room in a continuous spiral.

“What is this place?”

“This has been your family’s
estate for centuries. You were born here. It is your home. Come, please.”

He opened the door for her and led
her down a long stone corridor. Here, too, narrow openings at the very top of
the walls let light in without allowing direct sunlight to shine through.
Judging by how dark the corridor seemed, Vivien figured it was either very
early in the morning, or close to sunset.

At the end of the hallway, a heavy
wooden door stood slightly ajar. Just as they reached it, it swung open to
reveal Aedan on the other side.

“The shields are still up,” he
said curtly. “No trace of anyone but us being here since last time.”

Brad nodded. “Good.” He then
glanced at Vivien. “Are you hungry?”

Vivien opened her mouth to say no;
with everything that was going on, how could she even think about eating?
Before she could say anything, however, she was surprised to realize that she
wasn’t only hungry, she was famished.

Aedan took the duffel bag from
Brad and turned on his heel, disappearing before they had even passed the door.
Brad led Vivien through long, nearly identical corridors. Every twenty yards or
so, candles were affixed to the wall. Every time they entered a new corridor,
Brad’s right hand made a sweeping motion, and flames came to life, throwing
dancing shadows over the stones.

Was he showing off for her or
merely providing light? Either way, she decided not to mention it. They finally
reached their destination. As soon as Brad lit the candles hanging from a
candelabra in the center of the room, Vivien realized it was a kitchen, with a
high table in the middle of the room, cooking utensils and knives hanging from
hooks on the wall, a stone basin with an old-fashioned hand pump, and a
fireplace with some sort of grill above the empty hearth. Somehow, the fact
that even here, wherever she was, a kitchen still looked like a kitchen made
Vivien feel a little better.

“I’m afraid tonight’s meal will be
all about improvisation,” Brad said as he opened a cupboard and pulled out a
large, round bread, a clay jar covered with cloth, and two smaller ones. “We
didn’t expect to bring you here now. I’ll go find more food in the morning.
Fresh food.”

At his urging, Vivien sat at the
table and watched him set a plate and utensils in front of her, uncover the
jars, and pump water into a metal cup for her. He then stood there, rubbing his
wrist with his thumb, observing her so intently that Vivien began feeling a
little uncomfortable.

“Aren’t you going to eat with me?”
she asked, trying to loosen the knot in her shoulders with a small shrug.

Brad blinked slowly, as though the
thought hadn’t occurred to him. “It wouldn’t be—”

If he said ‘proper’ again, Vivien
thought she might snap.

“Brad, I followed you God only
knows where after you told me a crazy story about magic and princesses in hiding.
The least you can do is sit down and eat with me.”

After a beat, he set a second
plate on the table, drew a chair, and sat on her right. When she didn’t reach
for any food, he picked up the bread and cut two thick slices. He cut the crust
off one before offering it to Vivien. It gave her pause, reminding her of the
countless times Anabel had done this for her when she had been just a child.
Shaking the thought away, she tore a bit from it, and after tasting it, she
could only look at Brad in confusion.

“Don’t you like it?” he asked when
he noticed.

“It’s very good. Like it was
freshly baked. I thought you said there was no fresh food here.”

A half smile tugged at his lips.
“The Quickening keeps whatever is in that cupboard fresh. Better than a fridge.
I put these in the last time I was here. Try dipping the bread into the
ferbec.”

He demonstrated by ripping a small
piece of bread and dipping it into the largest jar. When he pulled the bread
out again, it was coated in a reddish sauce with green flakes. It reminded
Vivien of tomato sauce, but when she tried for herself, it tasted a little like
the hummus Anabel always kept in the fridge, although it had a looser texture.
She wondered if Anabel liked hummus so much because it reminded her of this
‘ferbec,’ whatever it was.

Vivien ate with gusto, enjoying
the flavors of both the bread and dipping sauce. For dessert, Brad cut a
thinner slice of bread, spread something that looked like butter over it, then
added some kind of fruit jam from the last jar. When he offered it to Vivien,
she was struck by how familiar the smell of it was, with the slight smoke scent
of the wood-fire baked bread mixing with the rich sweetness of the fruit. She
took a bite, and that same sense of familiarity only increased tenfold.

“I’ll get more appropriate food
for you tomorrow,” Brad said; of all things, he seemed contrite.

“More appropriate?” she repeated.
“What’s wrong with this? It’s delicious.”

“It’s a child’s treat. That’s what
my mother used to give us as snack when we were small children.” He tilted his
head, his eyebrows rising ever so slightly when he asked, “Do you remember?”

She swiped a bit of jam that was
running down the side of the bread and licked her thumb, looking at Brad in
confusion. “Do I remember what? The jam? I don’t know. It tastes familiar. What
is it, berries?”

“Roseberries.” The answer came not
from Brad, but from Aedan on the kitchen threshold. “It used to be your
favorite, Dame Vivien.”

Vivien couldn’t have said what
irked her most: the title Aedan bestowed upon her, or his assertion that he
knew what foods she enjoyed.

“How would you know what I like?”
she asked, barely refraining to scoff.

“I know because more than once
Bradan and I went to the lake to pick roseberries for you.”

Vivien almost choked on her next
swallow. Her eyes watering, she set the bread on her plate and picked up her
napkin to cover her mouth as she coughed.

“You what?” she finally said in a
strangled voice.

Brad threw Aedan a quick look
before he answered. “We were raised in this house, too. Our mother was your
nanny. We used to play together as children.”

If Vivien’s confusion had started
to abate, it returned full force as she stared at both brothers in turn. They’d
been raised together? In this house? She’d had a nanny? Why couldn’t she
remember any of it?

“You were very young,” Brad said
as though he could understand her confusion. “It’s normal if you don’t
remember.”

Picking up the bread and jam
again, Vivien took another small bite. No, she couldn’t remember any of it. But
at the same time... The more she tasted the roseberry jam, the more familiar it
seemed, as though the memory were lurking just out of reach. Could it be that
her body was remembering when her mind didn’t? What about the way Brad had
sliced off the crust, a ritual Vivien had insisted on as a little girl? How
could he have known that?

She started to feel a little
self-conscious as they both watched her eat, and in the end she asked Aedan,
“Aren’t you eating? There’s plenty of food left.”

A thin, humorless smile stretched
on his lips. “I will eat, Dame Vivien, but not this food.” He turned to Brad
and added, “Will you be all right if I go hunting now? I won’t be long.”

Brad nodded at once. “Of course.
Be careful.”

Aedan’s smile, this time, was
wider, warmer. He walked around the table, patting Brad’s shoulder twice as he
passed behind him, then giving Vivien a little bow before he left through a
door that opened into the night. He closed the door behind him, but seconds
later Vivien was opening it again to peek outside. She was disappointed when
she couldn’t see much. She couldn’t even see Aedan anymore. Night had fallen,
and the sky was pitch dark, with no moon or stars to lighten it.

“Are there no stars in this
place?” she asked, unable to keep the longing out of her words.

“There are.”

Brad sounded very close, and when
she turned, Vivien found him standing a mere step behind her.

“I have set a shield over the
house and yard,” he continued. “So that no one can get in who isn’t Aedan, you,
or me. Unfortunately, it blocks the sight of the stars.”

Vivien looked out into the night.
Maybe it would be different tomorrow. Maybe when she saw the yard or got a
better look at the house, she would remember being there before. Maybe.

“Would you like me to show you to
your room now?” Brad offered.

Vivien had a dozen, a hundred
questions, but after everything that had happened, everything she had been told
and shown, her mind felt too heavy for anything more than sleep. After she
rested, she’d be ready to get answers to everything that still seemed odd.

Again, she followed Brad down long
corridors. The house seemed humongous, more like a mansion than simple house.
Brad had called it a castle. They climbed a stone staircase to the second floor
and finally reached their destination.

Brad opened the door to a dark
room. He preceded her inside, and as she followed, she caught the end of his
hand gesture as he once again used his magic to light the candles around the
room and the fire in the fireplace. Like the rest of the house, the floor was
inlaid with wide, light-colored square stones.

Two large rugs softened the feel
of it: one long enough to extend all around the four-poster bed across from the
fireplace; the second smaller, set in front of a chest of drawers to the right
of the window. Both rugs had a thick, heavy look to them, with organic green
and tan hues.

The stone walls were bare, save
for the same gray-stone pattern that was repeated through every room Vivien had
seen so far. The bed looked welcoming, with a pale green comforter and pillows,
and when she saw it, Vivien’s body yearned for sleep. On the left wall, near
the fireplace, a door was ajar, though the room beyond it was dark. Her duffel
bag was near the door.

In a strange way, the room felt
familiar. The colors, the patterns of the heavy curtains, even the softness of
the comforter when Vivien ran her hand over the bed—all teased at the edges of
her memory. Whatever doubts had clung to her subconscious faded away as she
slowly understood where she was.

“This...” She had to swallow hard
before she could continue. “This was my room, wasn’t it?”

Brad gave her a curious look.
“When you were a child, yes. Do you remember?”

Vivien tried to hold on to those
feelings, press them together like clay, and force them to coalesce into actual
memories, but she couldn’t make the vague impressions any clearer.

“I’m not sure,” she said,
shrugging uncomfortably. “It all feels...familiar. But I don’t actually recall
being here.”

She could hear the frustration in
her own voice. Brad patted her arm a little awkwardly.

“I know much has happened,” he
said when she looked at him. “And it’s a lot to take in all at once. But
please, know this one thing. You are safe. We will do anything to keep you
safe.”

His last words rang with a deep
intensity that felt like a blanket settling on her shoulders. She offered him a
small smile that quickly slipped into a grimace.

“Anything as long as it’s proper,
you mean.” God, but that conversation felt like it had taken place weeks
earlier, not merely that morning.

With a stricken expression, Brad
took a step back and lowered his gaze. “I didn’t... I didn’t mean to offend
you. You have to understand—”

“But I do understand,” she cut in
quietly. “All this time I thought you were running with me because you liked
me, but you were just doing your job.”

When he looked up again, his eyes
held the same intensity he had voiced when talking of keeping her safe.
“This—protecting you—is the cause I chose to dedicate my life to. It was never
just a job. And it never will be now that I know the woman you’ve become.”

Had Vivien still been looking for
signs, she would have taken those words as more proof that he was interested in
her. She knew better now, though.

She only wished her heart would
catch up with her mind.

Brad held her gaze a little longer
before he took a step back and offered her a stiff, formal bow, much like
Aedan’s in the kitchen.

“I’ll leave you to get some rest.
If you need anything, Aedan and I are just across the hall.”

Vivien watched him shut the heavy
wooden door behind him with a light creak and wondered at what point she would
stop expecting this dream—or maybe it was a nightmare?—to end.