The Sentinels of Eden, Books 1-4

Chapter 13

‘Don’t you dare apologise to him, Jake! He came out of nowhere! Seriously, Bane, what were you thinking?’

The shaken driver staggered towards us, sweat dripping from his hair and every muscle tense. ‘I don’t know. I had to … I don’t know!’

He sounded confused and very angry. Maybe he’d hit his head?

Like some kind of raving animal he pinned me with his gaze and I froze. His voice became manic, hysterical, soaked in violence, with a depth to it that cut into my chest.

‘I don’t understand what’s happening to me! I don’t understand why I can’t leave. I don’t understand why I just can’t leave you alone! I can’t stand you! I can’t stand to be around you!’. As he ranted he kept stumbling towards me, his expression terrifying.

Held motionless by his outspoken hatred, I couldn’t even make myself step away. ‘Why? Why me? What have I EVER done to you? Why do you hate me so much?’ I yelled back, my own voice quivering with righteous pent-up anger for all his years of unsolicited abuse.

‘Because I hate who I am when I’m around you!’ he screamed, his voice splintering.

Silent seconds passed.

Mere inches from my face, he froze, looking even more baffled than I was. His pale grey eyes were locked on mine, tortured and intense. He smelled like strong alcohol.

‘Stay away from me then,’ I whispered. He was seriously frightening me now. It looked like every muscle in his body was seizing up as he took a deep breath in and reached for my left wrist. Blood dripped from a gory looking wound on my forearm that I hadn’t even noticed. Had Jake’s Staffy bitten me? Wincing from the suddenly noticed pain, I flinched away, but he grabbed me firmly.

‘I can’t, Lainie,’ he snapped. He placed both his hands right on to the gash and I felt a flash of intense heat, as if my arm had just caught fire. Still he held on too tightly for me to pull away. It went beyond pain, like an electric shock that rearranged each one of my molecules. A split second before I could scream, the burning eased to a tingling warmth. He exhaled and all the tension drained out his body with his breath.

‘Holey. Frickin. Swiss cheese!’ exclaimed Jake, who had carried the dead dog to the footpath and was coming back to see if we were okay.

Looking down, I saw the smooth skin of my arm beneath a leftover smear of blood. The wound itself had vanished. Not a trace of a cut or even a graze. As my legs gave way, both boys grabbed me and lowered me to the ground just as Noah blew in like a cyclone.

‘Lainie, are you all right?’ he cried, shoving the others out of the way and kneeling down in front of me. His face was ashen and he was breathing hard.

‘Apparently so. Why is everyone asking about me? Jake’s the one who just lost his dog because of this maniac!’

‘Thank God Bane arrived when he did! A split second later and you would have been dog meat!’

‘What? What do you mean?’

‘Did you seriously not notice the savage beast about to take you down like a bloody orphaned lamb? You were looking at me and I was trying to warn you but you just waved back at me like an i***t!’ The obvious worry in his eyes softened the harshness of his words. ‘Jake, do you never lock your gate?’ he panted, still breathless from his sprint up the hill.

Jake had been staring at my arm but looked at Noah with a guilty expression. ‘Of course I do, but somehow he always still gets out. I mean, got out. I am so sorry, Lainie.’

‘Wait,’ said Bane. ‘Are you absolutely sure the dog was attacking her? I didn’t just hit it for no reason?’ His face was white and clammy and he looked like he was about to faint. It made no sense. Did he think he’d hit the dog for no reason?

‘Yeah, mate, I know you saw it attack. What I don’t understand is how you predicted it from so far away,’ Noah said.

‘We haven’t told you the freaky bit yet,’ Jake muttered, pointing at my arm.

‘Okay. No. Time out,’ I said, shaking them all away from me. ‘I can’t … I’m sorry. I just need to go home now. Bane, sit down before you fall down. I can’t talk to you just yet. I don’t know what you just did or whether I should be thanking you, apologising to you or suing you.’

He slumped down to the kerb, holding his head in his hands. ‘Just stay the hell away from me,’ he snarled.

Jake looked like he wanted to argue but Noah silenced him with a look and then held his hand out to me.

‘Come on, I’ll take you home.’ He hauled me to my feet. ‘You can tell me what’s so freaky about your arm later. We’ll leave these two to deal with the dog.’ He winced at the blue sedan that was cuddling a rubbish bin. ‘And the car. At least no one else is involved.’

The familiar feel of his arms steadied my trembling limbs as he guided me back to his ute.

As soon as we were on the road out of town I started gasping and swallowing down tears. At the end of such an exhausting and confusing week, including all the drama of graduation, my emotions were about as manageable as a broken shopping trolley.

‘He healed me, Noah,’ I sobbed, scratching frantically at my wrist, trying to feel for some evidence of the injury. ‘I mean, healed. Like in the movies. He laid his hands on my arm and the wound just disappeared.’

Noah grabbed my hand to stop me scratching, but didn’t say anything. I kept staring at where the wound had been, almost wishing it would reappear.

‘I don’t understand what’s going on. How did he do that? And why? He’d just finished telling me how much he hates me and then he pulls some freakin’ superpower on me in the middle of the street!’

Noah still didn’t reply, and continued to drive one-handed, his other still gripping mine as if he was worried about what I might do if he let it go. Perhaps he thought I was having some sort of an episode. Which I guess I was.

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

It took a few moments for him to answer. ‘I believe you,’ he said finally, although his jaw was tight. ‘I saw you with a massive bundle of aggressive dog hanging off your arm. I just don’t know what to say. I would like to give you answers but all I have is a crazy theory that I would never believe if I hadn’t seen it for myself.’

‘Theory?’ I asked hopefully.

He thought for a few seconds. ‘Do you remember that day at soccer training when he bit me?’

‘Yeah, he’s totally barmy, and—’

‘No, Lainie.’ He cut me off before I could launch into my usual guess-what-else-Bane-did rant. ‘I don’t think he’s insane. I think he’s … compelled.’

I raised one eyebrow at him.

‘After a whole season of being one of our best team players, the one time you were there he went berko. The thing is, the player he tackled was in the process of kicking that ball directly towards you. I only noticed because I flinched, thinking you were about to get taken out by a ball in the face.’

Entirely possible. I had been entangled in a daydream about a tree and would have made a prime candidate for Funniest Home Videos.

‘Somehow, I think he can tell when you’re in danger and he’s compelled to do something about it. I don’t think he even realises what he’s doing.’

I chewed over that for a few seconds and then shook my head. ‘That’s ridiculous, Noah. He’s a psycho and he hates me. Did you forget that he pulled a knife on me?’

‘Well, what would have happened if he hadn’t?’

I shrugged.

‘You would have caught up with me outside,’ he said. ‘Maybe just in time for Jake to reverse into you in the car park.’

‘Oh!’ My heart was pounding and it took a while for me to untangle my thoughts. My mind kept circling around the dead dog, the soccer incident, the knife attack, and the intense look in Bane’s eyes when he’d grabbed my arm. I eased out of Noah’s grip and grabbed an orange instead, rolling it around like a stress ball. The idea of Bane as some sort of guardian angel was ludicrous but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Noah might just be on to something. There had to be some sort of explanation for his insane behaviour. Did all this have something to do with being a Cherub? Somehow I would have to find out what else Aunt Lily knew.

As Noah pulled up to the front gate I turned to him. ‘I don’t know if you’re right about Bane,’ I said, still fiddling with the orange, ‘but I do know who I rely on to look out for me. If it wasn’t for you I would never have made it through this week. And I really am sorry that I was such a pest about Claudia.’

He smiled, but the worry didn’t leave his eyes. ‘I get it, Lainie, I do. Things were a lot less complicated when we were younger, weren’t they?’ He looked almost nostalgic. ‘Get an early night maybe. Or did you still want to come to the after-party?’

I shook my head. ‘No, I don’t think I could handle that. You go ahead.’

‘What about tomorrow night? You’ll still come to that, right?’ Great big green puppy-dog eyes filled his face, melting my sombre mood. The next night was our formal graduation dance. Aunt Lily had followed through on her promise to buy me a new dress and I’d been looking forward to wearing it.

‘Of course. I wouldn’t miss it. And if you’re very nice to me, I might even help you find a new Claudia. Pick me up at seven?’ I asked, getting out of the car. He nodded, but didn’t laugh like I expected. ‘And, Noah?’

‘Hmm?’

It was there. Right on the tip of my tongue. Those words. I don’t want you to go away next year. But I was not that selfish, so instead I found safer ones. ‘Thanks for believing me.’

He gave me his most melting smile and I knew we were okay again as I shut the door and watched him drive away. Just before he turned onto the road, he glanced back at me, and for just a moment his eyes were full of worry.

‘We need to talk,’ I declared to Aunt Lily as I entered the kitchen. As reluctant as I was to tell her about what had happened with Bane, there were things I needed to understand.

She started peeling an apple for me. ‘What’s happened, Lainie?’

‘First tell me about my parents. Was your brother really human?’ I sat down and placed my palms flat against the table to steady myself. Bane had healed me. Something supernatural was undeniably going on. Most likely because I was a Cherub. There was simply no longer any point in denying that I was not, actually, a human being. As if the hideous ‘birds-and-bees’ talk hadn’t been bad enough, now I had to somehow ask her if I was even human enough to have a normal relationship. Was Lucas Gracewood really my father? Harry was just a few years older than my mother and I wasn’t stupid. They were both Cherubim and so was I. Or was my mother supposed to be with Harry but fell in love with a human instead? Was that why Harry had remained alone all these years?

Aunt Lily looked at me for a stretched out moment. Assessing how much to tell me. Eventually she nodded and handed me the apple. ‘My brother was human, just like I am. But when he met Annie, he became … something more, and everything changed for him. You’re destined for a particular partner, Lainie, and when you find him, neither of you will care about being compelled to stay in Nalong.’

I raised my eyebrows. I had expected her to say I was destined to be alone, that I was the last of my kind and had a divinely appointed job to do and wasn’t allowed to become involved with anyone who might jeopardise my task. Forbidden love was a tragedy that would have slotted seamlessly into my tragic life story.

Then the last part of what she’d said clicked into place and I felt the blood drain from my face.

‘Compelled?’ I spluttered. ‘Bane? … DESTINED?’

Because who else would it be? I had no idea how his ‘compulsion’ fit into the scheme of things—only that I was supposed to guard the way to Eden but was apparently not able to protect myself from even the most mundane of dangers.

‘Do you mean I’m destined to fall in love with him? That’s more insane than anything else you’ve come up with so far. You have no idea how much he hates me. What happened to the whole idea of free will? You just can’t play with people’s emotions like this!’ I was shouting and furious and ranting like an overexcited televangelist. My anger needed to go somewhere, and the apple was handy, so I threw it as hard as I could at the wall where it exploded into smooshy pulp.

Aunt Lily blinked. ‘Who’s Bane?’