The Guardians - Between the Worlds (Book 2)

Leonor smiles behind Ray while he’s doing the math, which doesn’t really occur how he wants.

“What do you find so amusing?” he asks.

“Oh, nothing.”

“Bases J and K don’t exist anymore. They have been torn apart, and their Guardians are now in Bases M and N. This happened with Base P, which is now in Base R.”

“And?”

“Well, until now we have our responses only from Bases A, C, D, G, and L. Do you think this is enough?”

“I say we wait a little longer, for I don’t want dead Guardians on my side. A lot have died. I need people who obey and follow me. I don’t want bloodshed if it’s not necessary. But if it is…”

“And what do you plan? What if Base R will make us a hard time? That’s what you said.”

“I have a plan to keep Base R still”, smiles Leonor.

“I’m listening.”

“I will tell you all about it on the road. Take ten Guardians and let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“To Base R. I assure you that after we will leave that place they won’t bother us for a long time. Then we will have the time to convince the rest of the Bases to join us, and when they will see they are outnumbered, they won’t have another choice but to surrender or to die.”

Ray follows Leonor, insecure about her plan of attack. They gather a couple of Guardians and get the cars ready for the road to Base R.

Lily wakes up late, rested, in a way she had never woken up before. It seems like the silence before the storm, but she doesn’t want to ruin this moment. She turns on the other side where she sees Dean in a deep sleeping. She smiles. The blanket is half on the floor, leaving Dean’s chest uncovered. The sun is coming inside the room through the window, in a way it never came inside the Guardian’s room who had never seen the natural light until the revolt. She likes this, and she wishes that nothing ever changes the way they are living now. She tries not to think about what she is, to what she will need to do, to the prophecies from the World of the Sun’s Children, and she focuses on Dean’s sleeping next to her. She had waited too long for this moment, and now she was truly enjoying it.

“I can feel your eyes staring at me, you know?” he mumbles.

“Oh, you were awake”, she notices.

He laughs and puts his arms around her neck, pulling her head close to his chest.

“And what if I stare? It’s a normal thing to do. I’m in the bed with the leader of this Base. Not everyone had the privilege to wake up in the morning and see this view.”

Dean laughs, caressing her on the head.

“Well, besides Tamara… Irene… and God knows who…”

“Let’s not exaggerate. Tamara was more like an interest to help us go where we needed, and Irene, well, she was…”

“A distraction?” asks Lily making a face.

“Let’s say something about benefits, nothing serious.”

“Of course. A man has his needs”, she says ironically.

“Oh, shut up!”

“You’re right. I’m the one talking? I almost slept with my brother. Oh, God, what a shame!”

Dean stands up, looking at her seriously.

“The past is the past, and we both felt this connection between us from the very start, only the circumstances were such a mess…”

“So we pushed each other away…”

“To finally end up with other people…”

“So we can finally end up together.”

They completed perfectly, with every word, with every touch and gesture, as if they were destined to be together. Dean touches her naked shoulders and kisses them gently, while she’s playing with his hair, which was, once again, perfect, even in the morning.

“I want it to stay like this forever”, Lily says approaching her lips to his.

“It will be”, he replies touching them and biting her upper lip.

She jumps out of bed, covered in the bedsheets, and she pulls on her Dean’s shirt. She runs out on the corridor and goes straight to the bathroom from the hallway, but Dean doesn’t take long to follow her. He finds her ready to close the door of one of the shower cabins made by him, but he walks inside and closes it.

Lily laughs loud, and she jumps into his arms, and he leaves the water pour over them. Soon, the shirt she’s wearing ends up on the other side of the door, and so do his pants, which he had put on in a rush. Her laughs are completed by others, which they can hear a couple of cabins away. She recognizes the laugh, but she is too caught up in the moment of pleasure to say something. Her hands are holding Dean’s, and he touches her gently from the bottom to the top, with his big palms, under the hot pouring water.

When Dean straights the hand under the door to recover their clothes, someone throws them over the door.

“I figured that you weren’t going to leave them there”, says Brook from the other side.

When they put them on and open the door, they see Brook and Leo laughing loud. Brook has wet hair, and she’s standing climbed next to the sink, with her legs crossed over Leo’s body.

“I wanted to ask how you were, but there’s no need now”, laughs Brook.

“I’m better now”, Lily answers looking at Dean.

“I’m happy to hear this”, says Brook.

“Me too”, continues Leo.

He shakes hands with Dean, and they all head to their rooms, leaving positive vibes behind them.

Tamara has been sitting put on the last few days, and she was now walking in the main hall, with Irene following her, who kept complaining about Dean’s attitude regarding her.

“I knew that he didn’t have feelings for me, for he had told me that we won’t be serious, but just like that, he stopped seeing me or looking at me since he heard that there was a small chance for Lily to come back? Damn! What should I do now? Haven’t seen him in a while.”

She kept talking, making Tamara angry, who wasn’t exactly sure why she kept confessing to her.

“Oh, just shut the hell up! Move on! He is not coming back to you because he was never yours! Can’t you see the chemistry between them? How good they fit? Do you want me to tell you why you haven’t seen him? Because he was with Lily since she got back! Are you happy now? Now, go and look for another guy to satisfy your needs, for he is never coming back to you. He has always loved her. You were that blind?”

Irene stops to process the words that were coming endlessly from Tamara’s mouth when she feels she can’t breathe.

“But I thought…”

“Irene, please. I understand that you come with certain advantages, but Dean is the type of guy who doesn’t look only at the outside, but he looks for some good in people’s hearts, and you, my dear, don’t exactly express goodness through your pores. You have moments when you spit poison as well. Now, for instance. I understand that you feel betrayed, but stop complaining so much and don’t hate Lily, because she is not the kind of person you should hate.”

“I split my room with her back in the days and I told her about Dean, how he was like, and she asked questions, and I told her how I felt, that I liked him, but it’s like she did it on purpose!”

“I assure you that nothing was on purpose.”

“How do you know?”

“I simply open my eyes and look around. If you saw it, maybe you wouldn’t have hated her.”

Irene makes a disgusting sound, and then she turns her back on Tamara and leaves.

“Finally”, grumbles Tamara.

She understands Irene on one side, but also Lily and Dean on the other. She had seen something since the first day when she witnessed the moment the two of them met. The way their eyes met, how he touched her when he checked her chip, their synchronized breathing, and not only that moment, but every moment they met around her, she could have sworn those were some of the movies from the Human’s World, when there were fireworks and sparks in their eyes, even if around them was total silence.

Yes, Dean looked too damn good, and she would have been so happy to know that he was going to be hers one day, but she was at peace now with the situation, because she was old enough to realize that Dean would have never chosen someone else instead of Lily. If someone told her to describe her most beautiful moment lived in that Base, she wouldn’t have described a moment from her own life, but one she had witnessed. She was a witness to the explosion of feelings and tensions just after the big explosions from the Base when Lily had jumped into Dean’s arms. Yes, that was the most beautiful moment Tamara had seen since she was in that Base, for it was the first act of courage made simply with the power of honest feelings. And she had tears on her cheeks back then, but she hadn’t told anyone.

Somehow, inside her soul, she had taken the wisest decisions, and those were to be on feeling’s side and the children who were willing to do something right for the rest of the Guardians, a thing that had brought her to tears in the end.

Her thinking is interrupted when she sees Isaac leaning on the wall, holding a book in his hand. He looks like he’s studying, like a conscious student, but when she approaches she notices that he’s holding the book upside-down, looking through it. His mind is long gone, and it’s not a surprise that he gets scared and lets the book fall when Tamara touches him.

“Hey.”

“Oh! Damn! I haven’t got scared like this since…”

But he suddenly stops talking. What he does next is something like swallowing his words.

“Maybe you wanted to say something related to Lily.”

“You got me”, he smiles. “I think that it’s awkward for everyone who knows.”

“Oh, you mean for all the Base?” laughs Tamara.

Isaac leaves the book on the ground and stands on his feet. He is as tall as she is, and he starts examining her carefully. He had never had the chance to speak alone with her, and now he felt the need to tell her some things.

“I hated you, you know.”

“I know. There was a time when the whole Base hated me.”

“And everyone likes you now. You’re Dean’s right hand, and the Guardians appreciate you for letting him do what he knew best with this place.”

“Are you talking nice of Dean or is it just my impression?”

Isaac laughs.

“He’s my brother in law”, he jokes.

“Oh, let’s not overreact!” Tamara bursts into laughter.

“Of course I’m joking. But what can I do? I can’t hate him, for he saved me before. And I think this is the time when I should thank you as well. Lily has told me about your influence in the bad situations I’ve been.”

“You have nothing to thank me for. The truth is that I created myself problems and I didn’t interfere in time. I stood there and watched, hoping that Zoltan will promote me someday. But I opened my eyes when Leonor came because I knew then I was only a tool for Zoltan. That wretch… thank God he’s dead because if he wasn’t I would have killed him myself! He used me like a rag!”

Tamara realizes that she was way too far from the topic so she calms down quickly.

“Sorry.”

“That’s fine. We are allowed to express our feelings now, and you have a great contribution to this. Anyway, I want to thank you for this as well. You deserve it because you had to make a choice and you chose what was best.”

When he’s thinking of choices, Isaac seems to fall into deep thinking. He shakes his head and lifts up the book from the floor. He puts it back on the shelf, and then he sighs. Tamara takes a book from the library. She had arranged them in there, so she knew exactly what she was handing him.

“Read this. You will understand perfectly the feelings you’re going through now.”

When she walks away, Isaac reads the title of the book she had given to him: “Blood bonds.”

“Very smooth”, he laughs.

Even though he doesn’t put it back, but he takes it with him to his room, where he plans on studying it when the nightmares won’t let him sleep. He meets Addison on his way, who seemed to become friends with Alice overnight, for he had seen them together all day long.

“Hey, Isaac”, says Alice smiling at him while she passes by.

“Hey, blonde dude! Wait for a second!” says Addison and turns to him.

“What is it?” he asks bored.

“Are you in the mood for a walk?”

“With you?”

“Hmm, let’s see. Do you see anyone else around?”

Isaac looks around as if he was looking for someone else’s presence.

“It was an irony!” says Addison.

“Fine. I don’t have anything better to do anyway”, he says. “Just a moment to leave this in my room.”

He opens the door and throws the book inside, and he finds himself taken by the arm by Addison. Alice grabs him from the other, and Isaac starts feeling again like he felt in the first day of the training when all the girls were around him, and they were united from all over the huge Base. The only problem was that he didn’t care about anyone or anything back then, and he liked their company. Now, he was feeling a little tense, strained and weird, after the experience he had with Lily.

“Relax! We are not your sisters!” jokes Addison.

Isaac doesn’t taste the joke though, and he throws her an ugly look.

“Enough. Stop making jokes like these!” Alice interferes.

“You won’t let me have fun at all!” Addison protests.

The two girls take Isaac in a room which proves to be Gloria’s, where other young guys were gathered and laughing. There were some bottles with alcohol scattered on the floor, and Isaac knows that this is the night when he was going to forget about Lily, and become again the Isaac he once was when he had chosen the weapon.

Some strange shouts and a weird alarm make Lily and Dean jump out of bed. Dean puts some clothes on him on his way to the balcony that shows the view in front of the Base. Lily runs after him closely. When Dean hits the metallic edge with his hands, the shock he has makes him lose his balance for a second. He feels like the blood stopped pumping in his body, for he has the darkest thoughts, which are coming to reality soon.

“Who are they?” asks Lily from behind him.

“No one would come to Base R unannounced. The only one who can know something is Leonor. Is she is in one of those cars, there’s a war about to start”, he says.

He runs before Lily on the stairs, and he arrives in a heartbeat at the ground floor, where he angrily opens the doors and pulls a sword on his way out. The guards mobilize around him soon, and Artemis runs behind them.

Dean and the guards block the way of the mysterious cars, at a considerable distance from the Base, and Lily approaches them soon, breathing heavily. She hadn’t seen Dean running and using his gift for a while.

When Leonor appears among the Guardians who were accompanying her, Dean feels a lump in his throat. Lily stretches her fists, but Brook appears out of nowhere next to her and grabs her hand.

“Leave me alone”, she says.

“Be patient. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Her standing here is the proof that we have failed in our mission!” shouts Lily. “Let’s kill her now and end this madness!”

“Dean is in charge now, and he hasn’t said anything yet.”

Leonor moves forward to Dean, who stares in her eyes. He touches the sword he was holding at his waist, and Leonor’s Guardians prepare to attack when she orders them to stand down.

“There’s no need for violence”, she says calmly.

“Why are you here?” Dean asks trying to keep calm.

“To negotiate.”

“What is to negotiate?”

“Living together. Is it possible to talk somewhere privately?”

“What’s wrong with this place?” asks Dean insecure.

“A true leader would invite me in his office. If you have one, of course. We will leave our weapons at the entrance, and only Ray and I will come inside”, she says pointing to the man who was accompanying her. “Is this good enough for you?”

Dean nods and waves at the Guardians to put down the guns.

“Dean, what the hell are you doing?” asks Lily frightened. It’s her! Leonor! What are you waiting for? Put them down!”

“She is here to negotiate, and I don’t want to be an executioner, Lily. I will listen to what she has to say.”

Dean walks away, without listening or talking to Lily anymore, who needs a few moments to come around. What was Dean doing? She would have wanted to kill Leonor at that moment, but she didn’t want him to think that she was using him to satisfy her lust for revenge. She grinds her teeth, stretches her fists, while Dean heads to his office with his two guests. She rushes to follow them, but Leonor cuts her off.

“Is it possible to speak only with this Base’s leader?”

He waves at Lily that everything is going to be fine, and walks into the office with Leonor and Ray. Lily remains still, stressed, shocked and, in the meantime, Isaac appears with Addison and Alice, but also the rest of the Guardians who had heard the alarm and the news. They were now put up to speed with Leonor’s arrival, but they needed some time to process the news, for the alcohol has taken them over.

“Oh, what the hell? You’ve found a great moment to get drunk!” Brook rebukes Alice.

“I thought that we can do whatever the hell we want in this free Base!” Alice snaps at her, under Addison’s pleased look.

Brook wants to answer back, maybe even more, but Tamara interferes when she appears woken up and rumpled, trying to understand what was happening. Artemis is waiting impatiently too for her son to come out of that office, but this thing doesn’t happen for the next half an hour. They can see Dean’s silhouette moving around the room, and the others sitting relaxed on the chairs.

The tension is too much for Lily, who gets nervous and starts walking in front of the door, making everyone whisper. Brook rushes to make some room through the crowd to pull her away, but Isaac’s faster and grabs her hand, pushing her against the wall, away from the suspicious Guardians.

“Isaac, what are you doing? I want to be there when they open that damned door, for if he gives the order, I will be the one who kills Leonor!”

“Lily, it’s time to calm down. You’re making the others suspicious. They started asking questions and seeing that you have no idea what’s happening in there, you can make them lose their trust in Dean!”

Lily wants to tell him some things, but she notices the other’s looks on her, especially Addison’s, who attacks her with a despiteful look, followed by Alice’s, who lifts her eyebrow when she looks at her. Lily puts her eyes on the ground, let go of Isaac’s hand, and she feels the smell of alcohol. She wants to tell him so much now, but she realizes that she’s not supposed to interfere in his life anymore, just like he doesn’t interfere with hers. She shakes her head, and she heads again to the office’s door, which finally opens making a lot of rumors around.

He walks out with his facial expressions changed, and behind him are Leonor and Ray, who seem satisfied. Lily can’t understand a thing, and when Artemis grabs her son’s hand and he strongly hitches, she understands that something had gone terribly wrong.

Dean is heading on the way out, making room through the curious crowd of Guardians. Lily runs after him, but he stops in front of the door before she can catch him from behind.

“Guardians, from this moment Tamara will be the leader of this Base. You will listen to her from now on, for I’m going with Leonor and Ray. We will establish some rules together, and Tamara will better listen to them because, at a closer look on some details, our safety is in great danger, and I don’t want to lose lives in vain. Leonor explained the situation to me, and all the Bases accepted her rules. I will accompany them to the New Unity, which will be established by them and the other leaders. I want you to know that I’m doing this on my own will, and I hope that you will respect my decision. I will send through Leonor the next messages about how the collaboration between the Bases will continue. Until further notice, Tamara, please lead this Base by the terms that I just told you.”

After this long monologue, Dean turns his back at the crowd and, with a cold look, he leaves without looking back. Neither Artemis’s shouts, nor the Guardian’s complaints can’t make him look back, and he simply slams the door behind him, walking to the Leonor’s cars.

Lily remains still, in the agitation that has created around her, and she couldn’t believe what was happening in front of her. She rushes to catch him from behind, and she opens the doors in her run, calling his name. But Dean doesn’t even turn around to see her face, so she makes one of her jumps and grabs his hand.

Ray and Leonor stop and look at him calmly, and he is forced to turn around. They make some steps further, so people won’t take as a mistake what Dean is about to say.

“Lily, please let me go.”

His face looks different, changed, cold, and so does his look, through which Lily can’t pass or break, and where she doesn’t find any trace of warmth. She can’t hear his thoughts either like she couldn’t hear them when he was inside the office, and that makes her so angry.

“What are you doing? How can you just walk away and leave your people like this?”

“Because Leonor is right. All the Bases are with her now, and what she wants to do is the right thing.”

“What does she want to do?”

“To create the New Unity, to make new rules, to unite all the Guardians.”

“And you believe her? Dean, come on! Tell me that you have a plan, that you’re not going to walk away like this. Am I right?” whispers Lily so only he can hear it.

But Dean hitches his arm from hers, and he answers with a serious look.

“Lily, no one forces me to do this. I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do. We won’t fight them because I am right on this one. If they wanted war, they would have entered in here and attacked us. They took us by surprise. Can’t you really see that we are the real monsters, for we are the ones who want to put down the Guardians who don’t share the same opinion with us?”

“Do you hear yourself?!” shouts Lily desperate. “How can you just leave? What about the promises you made? What about what we lived? About what you told me? Ha? The things we lived meant nothing to you?”

“I’ve changed my mind, and if you can’t accept my decision, then we have a problem because I won’t change my opinion.”

Lily looks at him desperately, feeling so betrayed. She feels her tears in her throat, but she fights to keep them inside so she won’t start crying in front of him.

“We can continue this conversation forever, but the conclusion will be always the same. I believe in what they want to do, and you should believe it too. I will go with them now. I’m sick of your childish behavior. We need to make good decisions for everyone, not only for ourselves!”

“Don’t you dare leave! After all that you’ve promised me, you’re just going to walk away from me? I don’t believe you! Something’s up! You won’t laugh at me like this, at my feelings or opinions!”

Dean looks at her with cold eyes, throwing her one last despiteful look, and he takes a step back.

“Watch me”, he says and turns his back to her.

Lily feels the tears on her face, and then she feels a huge anger, and she can’t control herself anymore. Even if there are not a lot of people around, there are enough to see her acting like a mad person when she runs to attack Leonor. She hits two of her guards, and she pulls out the sword from her waist, and when she’s ready to hit her she feels she is pulled and thrown aside. She falls on the sand, and Dean’s the one who lifts up her sword, for he was the one who had pushed her so powerful. He was the one who had saved Leonor.

“You… I really thought that was something to see in your words, but now I see that you’re the one who is broken!” she shouts.

She gets up and attacks him this time, but she is stopped in time by Isaac, Brook gets between them, and Artemis stares shocked at her son.

“Let me go! He is a wretch! Did you hear me? This is what you are! I can’t believe you’re doing this!”

“You will see in time!”

“Dean!” shouts Artemis.

“I hate you! Wretch! I can’t believe that you were able to act so good! All this time…”

“It was nothing all this time, on the contrary, I really listened to your bullshit, but now is time for you to stop. I’m doing this for all of you, for the good of the Guardians, because you will see that I’m right.”

Lily hitches again from Isaac’s arms, who’s, fortunately, holding her too tight for her to escape.

“You’ve…” but she stops talking.

She doesn’t say anything because she realizes how embarrassing she looks.

“This isn’t real”, she whispers.

But he hears her and doesn’t leave the things like this.

“It’s real, and you are free to hate me. Childish things aren’t welcomed among the serious stuff, and this is what you were all this time, a child who had leaned on what she wanted too much, instead of thinking of what is best for the rest of us. You’ll see that you’ll understand that I’m right about this.”

He leaves for good this time, getting in the car with Leonor and Ray. The Guardians are waiting for an order from Tamara, who can’t control her reactions yet.

“Tamara! Do something! They’re leaving! Can’t you see something’s wrong?” shouts Brook.

“Lower your weapons…” says Tamara lost.

The Guardians do as she says, looking strange at each other.

“You’re listening to them?!” yells Artemis desperately.

“What else should I do? He is the leader. He gave me an order.”

“He was. And now you are”, says Brook approaching her.

“I still plan on listening to him. Dean is smart. If he told me to take the lead, it’s clear that he didn’t want feelings to interfere with his next decisions. No offense, Lily.”

“I don’t give a damn about anything! I hate him and I can’t see his pretended face ever again! She shouts hitching from Isaac’s arms, who leaves he now free to head to the Base.

Brook calls her name, but Lily’s moving too fast. She pushes the rest of the Guardians left there, and she sneaks around them, ashamed by her reactions, but most by the fact that Dean had humiliated her publicly, and he had called her a naïve child. She felt her feelings were walked on, and her heart was broken, for this is what Dean had done to her.

She couldn’t accept what had just happened, but she had clearly seen the cold in his eyes. He had meant it. If he hadn’t meant it, she would have seen it in his eyes. She couldn’t understand why, but he had betrayed her in every possible way. She had found a refuge in him and told him so much, she thought he was the bandage for her wounds, for her mother’s loss. His arms were the place where she went where everything collapsed on her when she found out that she had a brother, when she felt she was breaking apart, hoping that the broken pieces from her hear will be put back again with his help. She had trusted him too much and felt too good with him, believing in his words. It had been true how long it had lasted, but she realized now that he was looking at her like a child. But why he bothered to show his feelings for her? But now that she was thinking about it, he had never told her that he loved her.

She enters her room, slamming the door, and she throws on the bed. But she jumps like burned and hits the wall when she feels his smell on the bedsheets. She looks around and realizes that he had given her this room, and she notices that it’s arranged for a child, red and blue, not for a woman. It was made by him, a thing that made her go crazy.

She rushes and pushed the thing down from the table, breaking all in her way, smashing things on the walls, tearing apart clothes and other stuff, until she has nothing left to destroy. The room was now a mess, just like her miserable soul which she was feeling so dirty. She leans on the wall with a hit, falling on the broken stuff, crying out loud, when Brook and Isaac burst into her room. They remain astonished how she could destroy the whole room in such a short time, but they realize that Lily’s powers were more advantageous, but only not on these circumstances.

“Lily…” Brook comes closer.

She pushes her away and wants to run out of the room. She trips and falls, hitting with her head on the floor, so Isaac takes her in his arms.

“It’s okay, I’m here”, he says lifting her up.

Lily can’t help anymore and starts crying again, holding Isaac tight.

“It’s not okay! He’s gone! He broke my damn heart! This is what he did! I found refuge in him, I freaking venerated him, I looked at him like I was looking at a god, and now he’s gone and he walked on my principles! He humiliated me in front of the Guardians! I was an idiot! Why did I find refuge in him…”

“Lily, something has to be in the middle of this”, says Brook.

“I’m telling you what it is! It’s a damn mask he has worn! Just like he did with Tamara, with Irene, and now with me! But I will show him! Nothing stays this way! No one mocks me, insults me, humiliates me in public, and leaves things like this!”

“Lily, just calm down!” says Brook.

“We will sort things out”, Isaac says.

She continues talking among the hiccups, grumbling about every sentence:

“He broke my heart… This is what he did.”

Isaac and Brook are witnessing Lily’s falling, for they had never seen her like that. But it was too much for her because she just wanted to seem strong. Losing her mother, finding out that Isaac was her brother, Dean’s choice, traveling between the worlds, discovering the secrets, the responsibilities, all of these were too much for a creature like Lily, and now all the pain was coming out in tears and anger. Yes, anger, but also hatred besides this, for how could a betrayed soul like hers should feel?