Page 6 of Custodian

Garrett’s face went deathly pale, his entire well-muscled frame becoming rigid in the sudden uncomfortable silence of the room. Mordecai forged ahead; “Did you know he’s still alive?”

“Alive? Mordecai, what are you talking about? Why are you saying these things? You know how much his death devastated me and his mother. Why are you bringing this up?” Garrett looked sick and grief-stricken, truly confused and Mordecai felt himself breathe once again.

“Garrett, Emmanuel is alive. A chade – but alive nonetheless,” he revealed.

Garrett spun around, turning his back on him, “What are you talking about? Emmanuelwasa chade. We toiled for years to find a cure. When one could not be found and we were beyond all hope, I took his head myself.”

Despite the sincerity in the man’s voice and countenance, Mordecai had to be sure. So, with Garrett’s back turned, he took the opportunity to look at the man. As in,lookwith his element. Although Mordecai couldn’t see truth and lies within a person’s aura like a Life Warden could, hecouldsee the scars buried within a person’s body and mind. And now that he looked at Garrett, he could see the open and rotting holes in the man’s aura. The scars weren’t healed over like they should have been after all this time. No, they were wide open and festering, leaking foulness and infection.How could I have not seen this?Mordecai wondered, incredulous.How had the man managed to hide such a taint all these years?

It was true, Mordecai never deliberately examined his fellow wardens, nor paladins for that matter. He hated intruding on people’s privacy. It was a fine line. Whereas most other wardens dealt with nature, death wardens like himself – and also life wardens – dealt with people. The balance between fulfilling their purpose by maintaining balance, and invading people’s thoughts, bodies, and emotions was a tricky thing. But even so, the degree of sickness in front of him should have been obvious. It practically oozed from the man’s pores.

The one breath Mordecai had been able to draw in turned to dust. He barely managed to swallow down the bile in his throat as Garrett turned to face him once again. The stricken look on his face must have been enough for Garrett to realise the jig was up, and his face morphed from baffled pain to smug calculation.

“You should see your face!” Garrett laughed. “Oh, I’ve been waiting years for you to see me – really see me. And I dreamed often what your face would look like, but it doesn’t compare to reality. You look like a kicked puppy – a sick, kicked puppy.”

“Garrett …” it was all Mordecai could manage. The man in front of him did not resemble his friend of over a millennium in any way.

“Garrett…” the Life Warden mocked, laughing once again, “I was hoping you would be around to see all my plans finally come to fruition. Over fifty years in the making and finally, with the appearance of your bastard daughter, the end is in sight.”

Mordecai was shaking with rage, but denial was still strong in his mind – and in his heart. It was the only thing keeping him from launching at the man. “What about Autumn? Does she know what you’ve been doing?” he asked.

“My dear, Mordecai. It was my idea.”

The pleasant voice came from behind him and he felt his four paladins move swiftly to surround him, scythes at the ready. Garrett’s four paladins and Autumn’s three paladins were quick to mirror his Order’s actions, forming a barrier around their respective lieges. Mordecai watched as Autumn strolled leisurely into the room. The smile on her face was familiar but the look of pure malice in her eyes was completely new.

“My love,” Garrett crooned, holding his hand out to his wife as she made her way slowly to his side. She placed her hand in his and smiled softly when he raised her hand to kiss the back of it with reverence. “And how is our son today?” Garrett inquired of the woman by his side.

“Strong. Very strong,” she assured her husband, smiling widely. “He’s been feeding well.”

Mordecai felt his heart stutter in his chest,feeding?“What do you mean feeding?”

“Emmanuel is a growing boy. He needs to eat,” Autumn informed him, primly.

“You’ve been feeding your son wardens?” His voice sounded thin even to his own ears. He felt sick to his stomach and had to close his eyes against the sight of his two best friends standing in front of him.

“What would you have me do, Mordecai? Watch him starve to death? Watch him suffer? I’m not like you – I can’t stand by idly while my child is in pain.”

The words were a direct hit and Mordecai felt the sting of them down to his very soul. “You’re sick. You’re both sick,” Mordecai shook his head, his heart reeling from the betrayal. “All those wardens that have gone missing over the years. All those wardens converting to chades. Our dwindling numbers … that’s because of you?!” He could barely wrap his mind around what he was hearing and found himself praying with everything within him that he was trapped in some kind of nightmare and would wake up any minute.

Garrett and Autumn smiled, looking smug and proud. “Well, we can’t take all the credit,” Autumn demurred. “Emmanuel is the real hero here.”

“Hero?” Mordecai whispered.

“Of course. He’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before, Mordecai. The energy he has? The power he can wield with a thought? It’s staggering. Not that he was always like this. No, once he was so sick, so weak …” Garrett shook his head, sadly. “We were ready to give up. But then we tried one last thing and our son returned to us. And then, a few years later, you came to me spinning tales of a drunken encounter with a Goddess and a mythical love-child.” Garrett laughed, a happy sound that grated, “I thought you were mad. But as I listened to you and peered into your aura, I could see you were telling the truth. And I knew all we had to do was bide our time – be patient. Our patience has been well worth it. Our son, our precious Emmanuel, will soon be a God upon this earth.”

“He is no God,” Mordecai growled out. “Max is the only Goddess to walk this earth.”

“Ah, yes. Yourdaughter,” Autumn spat the word out as if it tasted sour in her mouth. “Your foul-mouthed, disrespectful, ingrate of a child. Clearly she wasn’t raised well.” Autumn grinned at him, delighting in his pain, “Oh, that’s right. She wasn’t raised at all, was she? Grew up selling her body on the streets like some filthy gutter rat.”

Red literally clouded his vision and he felt his element rush up and out of his body in a frigid blast of insidious black and gold energy. Garrett’s powers likewise burst forth, violet and white, to collide with his. The elements of Life and Death met in the middle of the room – a perfect balance for each other – and rebounded back to their masters. The shock wave lifted Mordecai off his feet and then everything went black.

THREE

He found her in the hammock at the back of the house. The rainbow-striped piece of fabric slung between the two thick trees had become a favourite spot of theirs. He knew Max loved swinging in the cool breeze, with nothing to see but the stretch of golden sand and the endless blue of the ocean in the distance. He knew she could hear waves crashing against the sand as well as the retreat of the salty water into the depths of the vast sea. The air was always fresh, so with the sights, the sounds, and the smells of nature so close, Max was a happy little custodian. As for himself, his motives weren’t quite as altruistic and zen as Max’s. He loved how the stretchy fabric forced Max to sink against him so he could feel her shorter length pressed against his larger frame from head to toe.

Making his way over to the hammock with the hope he could convince Max some ‘snuggle’ time would be perfect just about now, he found himself stopping and staring. Despite his less than stellar hidden agenda, he was struck by the way the sunlight set her hair afire. Those thick strands of dark, rich hair that looked almost black when wet, were actually a very deep red and the natural light streaming from the sky made the hidden crimson depths come alive with flame.

Casting his eyes over her features, he ate up her beauty hungrily. He had once thought her eyes strange and otherworldly. And although the liquid pools of turquoise were indeed otherworldly and also odd given they swirled with pure power, they were now one of his favourite things to look at. He loved the way they darkened when she was angry – which was fairly regularly given her short fuse. And he adored the way they lightened in her mirth – again, a common occurrence given her wicked sense of humour. But what he liked most was the way her eyes turned into opalescent jewels of pure lust when she moved above him in the dead of night.

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