"... Liam," Phidian called loudly, raising her voice above the noise and loud music of the bar but only just enough that he could hear her, she shoved him lightly by the shoulder. Liam blinked twice then rose his head to look at her.
"Where did you go?" She inquired, leaning in a bit closer.
"What do you mean?" He half smiled and downed the last gulp of the barley. "I am right here, seated here, or am I not?"
Phidian dropped the empty tray she had been holding and pulled a seat closer to Liam and sat. She placed her left palm on his right forearm and felt his biceps flex beneath her touch, he was nervous, that much she could tell and it worried her because Liam was not one to be nervous.
"Liam..."
"I feel suffocated." He cut her off. "I need some air."
"Then let us step out." She held him by the hand, pulling him out of his seat, and maneuvered them both around the drunk and loud demons chattering away in the bar until they were out.
They walked around the bar till they were behind it and headed towards the edge of the forest which ran all the way behind the bar. Liam peeled the cloak off his body and held it in his hand as he breathed in deeply, closing his eyes and stretching his arms until he heard them pop by the joints. His wings spread out wide and he flapped repeatedly to stretch them, feeling the heat rising from them and running into his body. He felt clustered and just wanted to scream, he wanted to set this energy trapped in him free somehow, to send the emotions wrecking in him free and far away.
Yes, he really wanted to scream.
"Feeling better?" He heard Phidian's voice break through his thoughts and he opened his eyes, exhaling and releasing his emotions as he calmed down.
Turning to her, he smiled weakly and nodded. "Let us walk for a bit."
"You enjoy coming up into the forest a lot." Phidian pointed out, Liam only nodded as they kept on walking.
"Why?" She pressed on.
"It is nature. Nature is free." He breathed out.
"But it is dark and haunting and crawling with other nightly creatures. You like that?"
"Still part of nature, I can not exactly complain, can I?"
"I think that is what you have been doing." She laughed and he joined in briefly. "But I do not think the nightly creatures are nature. At least not the ones now."
"You sound afraid Phidian."
"I am not." She defended
Liam chuckled. "I like it though."
"You like me being afraid?" She was confused. "Why?"
"It helps me forget. Asides from the tail and claws, I sometimes forget that you are supposed to be a demon."
Phidian smiled. "And... that is supposed to be a good thing?"
He looked at her briefly and sighed then turned his focus back on the road. "I guess you could say that. I like to remember you as you were."
"As I was? How do you mean?"
"As a human."
They stopped by a small clearing just by the edge of the forest and settled. Phidian chose to sit on a low tree stump while Liam sat on a flat rock and leaned against a tree. The night was chilly and the wind whistled, lifting the calls of the birds of the night and crickets and roads and all that come alive at night up out of the forest and into the pretty much awake town.
From where they sat, Liam could still see the lights coming from the bar, and he could hear their noises too, like groups of men huddled in the bar on a Friday night, drinking their troubles away, singing, and laughing merrily. He smiled absent-mindedly, now thinking of it, the human world was not all that messed up, well it was but still, they always took out the time to have fun and catch up on old friends and to share old memories and tell silly jokes and get together. Then nature was still in a sort of comfortable balance and he had been able to observe them undetected, unseen, untouched ad unheard. The human world had some sort of stability then.
"Tell me." Phidian broke into his thoughts again.
"Hmm...?" Liam looked at her. "Tell you what?"
"About me."
"I should tell you about you?" Liam laughed out. "Who would know about you more than you do?"
Phidian laughed too but softly. "I mean, tell me what you like to remember about me. What you like to remember about the human me, or her."
Liam's expression hardened gradually and he turned away from her looking into the forest. He remembered Sharon, the sweet and charming sixteen-year-old of whom he had been a guardian. She was the last human he had been bonded with before the war had fully broken out when the demons were still daring and before the corruption had spread among-st some of the Angels. The practice of harvesting souls had just begun, it was something that had already started and the demons had been very eager to perform that ritual, humans were just there for the picking and they had chosen to come for his human.
He remembered everything as it had happened. He remembered every single detail. She had been sleeping when the attack started and he knew more than anything, he had to ensure her safety and so, without waking her up, he had picked her and placed her into her closet, gently closing the door, and then he took a defensive posture, guarding the closet door. He saw them rise, saw them rise from the floor like thick black smoke, swirling round and growing until they took form. He had been enraged, he sliced through them as easily as a knife through butter and he had watched them go up in flames with a shriek, crumbling to ashes almost immediately and disappearing.
They had come prepared in their numbers but as easily as he took down the first, he took down the rest. It had been easy. But then something had distracted him, it was the body of Sharon's mother, stabbed with several knives and thrown out the window, shattering the glasses and landing in the garden. It was in that few seconds' space of distraction that the closet door opened and Sharon stepped out.
Liam had fought his way through the demons and had now moved to the other side of the room, he had seen the girl step out, he had seen the demons rush to her and he had run too, slashing his sword in the air as he yelled. It had cut the demons in two and they had disintegrated. But as soon as he rushed to the girl, she dropped in his arms lifeless, they had taken her soul.
Liam blinked and leaned his head against the tree as his body vibrated with guilt and hurt. Phidian who noticed, came up to him, kneeling beside him, and held on to his arm.
"Liam?" She gently shook him.
But his mind was back to those memories, back to the time when he had failed and he remembered. He remembered Renard, standing over the body of Sharon's mother, and when he had looked up to Liam, an evil smile was across his face. Renard had given into the corruption and it had been eating at him slowly from the inside since then but what he don't know was that it would eventually overwhelm him. Liam knew it was already happening now.
"Liam!" Phidian shook him forcefully and he looked at her with pain in his eyes.
"She woke up..." He said.
"Who woke up Liam? What are you talking about?"
He had heard her gasp for breath. She had breathed in through her mouth, taking in the dark smoke which sipped in easily through her parted lips and her eyes had shot open.
"Liam!" The voice shot him out of his thoughts and he turned to look at Phidian who was looking at him with worry etched across her still human face, but it was not her voice he had heard. It was...
"Liam...!" It came again, this time more desperately than it had the first time.
No, it was not Phidian's voice because the sounds were inside his head. Leticia.
His guardian instincts immediately kicked in and he was up on his feet in a flash. His sudden and unexpected move knocked Phidian to the ground, she landed flat on her back and looked up to Liam in surprise.
"Sorry." He threw at her and took to the skies, flapping his massive wings to propel him faster through the air. He had a human to protect and whether he welcomed the idea of being responsible for a human again or not, he could not let this one be taken like they had taken Sharon. It was his duty to protect.
Leticia was forced awake from sleep by the terrible nightmare she just had. Her heartbeat still accelerated and perspiration had soaked through her cloth around the collar. The room was dark and the fear was still in her and for a brief second, she wondered where she was and how she had gotten to be here. In the darkness, she felt beside her for her sword and found it, the feeling of the cool steel sheath steadied her and slowly she began to calm down. She breathed in and out as her pupils dilated and her vision adjusted to the darkness.
Leticia screamed and unsheathed her sword when she noticed the dark silhouette figure standing rigidly at the foot of the bed. She fumbled a little still on the bed in her attempt to get up into a comfortable, battle-ready position, until she was on her knees, positioning her sword's tip towards the shadowy person. In an instance, the whole room was suddenly illuminated when the person flexed his muscles, but it wasn't muscles that were flexed as Leticia came to notice, it was a flap of the wings with Liam standing domineering over her, a deep frown on his face.
His wings opened up slightly behind him, emitting bright and white-hot energy of light that attacked Leticia's eyes with the intensity that she had to blink and shade her eyes from the light using her free arm.
"You had a dream," Liam spoke first. It was more of a statement than a question.
"Liam? You?!" Leticia screamed, her initial fear slowly vanishing. "Why would you stand guard over me that way?! You scared the hell out of me."
"It is in the name description, "guardian angel". That's how I always stand guard, plus back then you would not be able to see me."
"Well, I can!" She fired back. "And now that I can please be more considerate next time with the way you reveal yourself to me. You almost gave me a heart attack."
Liam ignored her rantings. "You had a dream?"
Leticia calmed down and lowered her sword, sliding it back into its sheath, and placed it beside her. She sighed.
"A nightmare, yes."
"About your brother?"
She looked up at him with her eyebrow raised. "Yes but, how did you...?"
"I saw." He replied before bringing his wings to close together, sending them into the darkness of the room. He turned away from her and made to walk outside. Leticia sprung up from the bed and went after him.
"You saw?" She asked, stepping out of the house with him. The sun had not risen yet but the day was a little brighter. "How did you see and what did you see?"
"We are... bonded."
"Bonded? You say that like it is a bad thing."
"Because it is!" He snapped, turning around to face her. He saw the frightened look on her face and exhaled to calm down. "It means now, I am responsible for you, something I was and am still not ready to face."
"I can pretty much take care of myself if this bonding bothers you so much."
"I wish it could be as easy as that Leticia but that is not how a guardian angel and human relationship works. I am responsible for you means you are now under my protection and my number one priority."
Leticia frowned. "I am not a child that I need to be babysat. I can take care of myself."
"Yeah, sure you can, with what? Your Angel disguise perfume and a sword you probably should not own?" Leticia fumed at his choice of words. "Trust me, I do not want to babysit you either."
"We had one deal; help me find my brother and I will be out of your shiny angelic hair." She brushed him off.
Liam smirked and absent-mindedly combed his fingers through his hair. Speaking to her in his thoughts, he said. "I do have shiny hair, don't I?"
Leticia scoffed, folded her hands across her chest, and looked away, a soft smile on her lips. He just had to be cocky.
Looking beyond her towards the cold mountains, he told her. "If anyone can know anything about your brother's whereabouts, it would be Sheila."
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