A Guardian: Book 1 of the Rescued Series Read online

  A

  Guardian

  The Rescued Series

  Book 1

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  Description

  Angels and demons. Fallen and devine. It all sounds like fantasy, hokum , or even malarky, right? Well, welcome to my world. It’s a blast.

  I was raised by a good ‘ol mom and dad, in a home with a basement and a fenced-in yard. Hiding my secret ability was easy when I figured I was just crazy and the rest of the world didn’t get it.

  Then, everything changed just like that when the guy I thought only lived as a figment of my subconscious actually speaks to me and tells me he is my guardian angel.

  He can’t touch me or talk to me when I’m awake, but true to his word, he guards me when I need it the most.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  “Come on, stop it!” I shoved Joey in the shoulder for the third time that night. His constant advances were officially ticking me off, and that wasn’t a safe thing for him to do. I could have a bit of a temper.

  Joey sat back against the black pleather couch with a huff. He crossed his thick arms over his leather jacket, and his dark brown eyes narrowed at me. “Erin, we’ve been dating for two years. It’s not a big deal. We’re not in high school anymore.”

  It was a big deal to me. Sex should be a big deal to anybody. Joey didn’t get it. To him, I was his girlfriend and that basically meant he had the rights to my body. Even when he didn’t immediately get the hint, though, he never went too far.

  He was my friend before my boyfriend, and I think he respected that we were close, but not that close. I can’t deny that I fell for the bad boy in school. Joey Pierce was the bulky loner-type, always dressed in leather and smelled like fire. He didn’t smoke, but the smell was still there. Burning ash.

  I looked back at Joey and tilted my head at him, letting my unruly black hair fall beside my face. “It is a big deal, Joey. I love you, but I’m just not ready. Okay?” I tried to give him my puppy-dog eyes and pouty lip, but for all I knew, it could’ve looked more like a pissed off cat wanting attention.

  Joey groaned and threw his head back but his big eyes fell on me again and a half smile lifted one side of his face. “Okay. That’s fine. Let’s just watch a movie and have a snack, alright?” He leaned in and kissed me swiftly on the cheek, but I grabbed his face and turned his head to me. I pressed my lips to his gently and smiled back at him.

  I wanted him to know that I cared for him, but I just couldn’t take that next step. Something always stopped me. “Thank you,” I said to him.

  “Kiss me like that anytime, Erin, and I’ll be your slave.” He winked at me before running into the basement kitchen to make popcorn in the microwave I had just bought at the neighbor’s garage sale. I chuckled at his retreating back, as he had to duck under the low ceiling that dropped between the living room and tiny kitchen.

  The basement I lived in wasn’t glamorous, but for an eighteen-year old, it was just nice to have my own space. Of course, my parents were only a staircase away. I wouldn’t know how to live in a world without good-ol’ mom and dad still looking out for me. I didn’t even know how to live in the world without feeling like an outsider as it was. My existence had always felt a little off.

  Joey returned with a steaming bag of popcorn and handed me the remote so I could find us a movie, likely action if Joey had a say. I turned on the latest Jason Bourne, knowing I’d be asleep before any action started. Even still, just sitting on the couch with my boyfriend, snuggled up in an oversized jean quilt, and trying to watch a simple movie, I could feel the vibrations in the earth.

  I could tell that the Morson’s next door were fighting again, even though they were a manicured lawn, brick fence, and entire house away. The negativity from their home almost every weekend always reached me. It was a feeling I couldn’t explain, but something that affected me all hours of the day.

  I wiggled farther into Joey’s side, hoping his body would ground me. He was always good at blocking out the emotions that the earth signaled to me. See, the thing about my boyfriend was that he didn’t have an aura. O r at least that’s the word I gave the fuzzy lines of color I saw around people.

  Auras were something I was used to. Every person I’d met in my lifetime had one, except for him. When a person was sad, their aura would fade into a grayish color, dimmer than usual, and the brightest auras were always the happiest. The radiant yellows were the ones I most enjoyed seeing, and I could always feel the happiness more fully than the negative emotions.

  Like I said, Joey never had an aura, though. I noticed that about him on the day we met in the eighth grade. It was something I had never seen before, and I was more than intrigued.

  Joey found me sitting alone at lunch and he immediately became something I wanted to learn more about. After getting to know him, though, I never gained any answers. Even as I pressed myself under his arm and rested my head on his hard chest, I got no hints as to what he felt in that moment. He didn’t have a lot of up and down outward emotions, but what guy showed that anyways?

  Still, Joey’s warm embrace and steady heartbeat helped me shut out the world, and I fell asleep beside him as the gunshots rang out before us on my small television.

  Sleep, though, was another thing altogether. Sleep was where I saw him.

  I only knew him as Dream Guy . He always showed up when I slept, but I could never talk to him, and he never spoke to me either. I could only look at him while he watched me with his piercing green eyes.

  His gaze always felt so protective and knowing. I felt like he somehow knew me better than I knew myself, even though we’d never officially met one another.

  In this dream, I found myself standing beside a large, flowing willow tree, with weeping branches that could hide almost anything inside of their embrace. I always ended up there, in that beautiful meadow, with the most perfect weather. I could feel the warm breeze tangle into my long wavy hair, brushing the ends across my arms. There wasn’t another view in sight beyond the tree and the green grass at my feet.

  Whether there was a world beyond where I stood didn’t matter much to me. I always knew when I was dreaming, so I didn’t feel the need to rationalize why I was in that place.

  I looked around me for the usual green eyes, and I found Dream Guy sitting at the base of the tree with his arms folded. The willow branches nearly reached the top of his head as they swayed. His tan face was stern, and the small tick in his normally calm, dusted jaw made me feel uneasy.

  His outfit never changed from the black Nirvana t-shirt, fitted tight on his strong arms, and the dark, faded blue jeans. I wore the thing I slept in each time, and in this case it was my jean shorts, a tight spaghetti-strap top, and my bare feet with slowly peeling pink toenail polish. I didn’t know why the relaxed, almost emo man was the guy of my dreams, but he was always there.

  “What’s wrong with you, Dream Guy?” I asked him, knowing very well that he wouldn’t hear me. I mean, he was a manifestation of my subconscious, so I guess he could hear me in some way if I could hear myself.

  He just sat, stoic and seemingly irritated. I decided to sit in the grass and just enjoy the breeze. I couldn’t have a conversation with the man, nor could I touch him or hear him when he opened his mouth. It always felt like we were there together and fully aware of the other, but somehow unable to exist on the same plane.

  I knew I was a unique person, considering how I saw auras and could feel a person’s emotions, but this strange encounter had always eluded my understanding .

  Dream guy turned his head toward me, and his green eyes landed on mine. He seemed troubled and I wanted to soothe his problems, but without knowing what bothered him, all I could do was watch him right back.

  I first started seeing him in my dreams during my sophomore year of high school. Joey and I weren’t dating then, and I liked to pretend that Dream Guy was my way of finally having a secret boyfriend. There was another girl in school, a grade older than me, that always bragged about a new guy every week. I was jealous at the time, before I realized it wasn’t true, and she found the stock photos of male models on google to show off as her “college boyfriends”.

  I wasn’t so desperate to tell the world about my Dream Guy, and make up some scandalous story. I liked that only I could see him, as frustrating as it was. Back then, I only saw him occasionally, but over time it became almost every night.

  Still, some nights were dreamless. But when I did have a dream, it was always of him and our willow tree.

  “This is a great conversation, Dream Guy, though it feels a little one-sided.” I smiled at him and the corners of his lips lifted slightly. “Can you hear me at all?” I asked, wanting to actually communicate with him.

  He just stared though, and leaned his head back against the bark of the tree. He opened his mouth and his lips moved, but no sound came out. I really wished I could read lips, but I sucked terribly at it. Super inconvenient.

  “Erin, wake up.” Joey’s voice echoed in my mind and my body vibrated.

  I shrugged at Dream Guy and stood. “Guess I gotta go. It was nice talking to you.” A dry and humorless laugh escaped me at my nonsense s
entences. “Sheesh, tough crowd.”

  My eyelids fluttered open to see Joey’s dark eyes peering down at me. “Huh?” I asked him, feeling a fog around me as I left one world to join another.

  Joey kissed my cheek and stood from the couch. Our movie was paused at the final credits and the moon outside shone through the basement window. I had to have been asleep for at least two hours. It felt much shorter in the dream. Too short.

  “Good night,” he said. “I’ll see you on Saturday, ‘kay?” Joey turned and left for the stairs that led up to my parents’ kitchen on the left, and out the side door to the driveway on the right.

  “Good night,” I mumbled back at him, trying to come out of the dreamy haze.

  I fell back on the couch and forced myself to sleep, but no dreams, and no silent men came to stare at me.

  Chapter 2

  “Please tell me you don’t look that tired because Joey kept you up all night.” My mom’s raised eyebrow and squinted blue eyes screamed disapproval at me.

  “Good morning to you, too.” I smiled at her across the round kitchen table as I took my usual seat facing the back window. I could tell that it’d be a hot day. It felt like it was always hot in Albuquerque, so it was an easy guess.

  I grabbed a warm pancake from the ceramic plate at the center of the table and took a large bite of the fluffy goodness. “Joey wasn’t here late,” I mumbled through my bite of food. “I just couldn’t sleep.” Even though I really wanted to.

  I tried multiple times to get back to my dream world, but my mind wouldn’t slow down. The earth felt calm for once, and no unpleasant auras kept me up. Just my own wandering mind. Every day, I seemed to feel a little more lost in the world, and I desperately wanted to find my place.

  My mom tilted her head with her new short, blonde bob haircut and her speckling of freckles shone in the sunlight behind her. “Are you having those bad feelings again? You were always so good at picking up on vibrations. I told your dad you’d have issues with all of that empathy some day.”

  I shook my head. “Nope, I’ve been good in that area.” I hadn’t told my parents about how I could see auras and feel emotions. They picked up on some of it when I was younger, but I realized I’d start to sound crazy unless I hid that side of me a little better. “I think I’m just excited about summer. I want to have some adventures now that school is over.” Lying wasn’t all that hard anymore.

  “Hey! It’s my big grown up!” My dad burst through the garage door attached to the small, overly decorated kitchen.

  He was working the night shift as an officer of the Albuquerque Police Department. We only saw one another in the mornings before my shift at the animal shelter, and after his final patrol.

  He stomped across the hardwood floor in his usual fashion with his blue police uniform. Being six foot three and over two fifty, his entrance always woke the house up. A regular person would find him intimidating, but I knew my dad’s tender heart, and the soft yellow aura that accompanied him. In my experience, yellow was always kindness and joy.

  “Good morning, Dad. You know, calling me your ‘big grown up’ only makes me feel like a six-year-old that just lost her first baby tooth.” I let him lift me off my chair into a gentle bear hug. “I need to go, so put me back down to earth, please.” I laughed against his chest and he squeezed me tighter before finally letting me go.

  He removed his hat to reveal an embarrassing case of squashed down, brown hat-hair. “Alright. I know you're a busy woman, my big grown up.” He tittered, like he was so proud of how absolutely hilarious he was. “Just gotta get my hugs in when I can.” He smiled down at me through the brown mustache on his upper lip. Total cop.

  “Wait,” he said. “Just be careful. I feel like violence is rising lately, and I want to make sure you keep an extra eye out.”

  I waved a hand at him, trying to erase his worries. “I’m pretty tough Dad, thanks to your insistence on jujitsu classes that I hated with a burning passion.”

  “That was years ago, and real life is a lot different than practice scenarios. Just stay safe.”

  I nodded. “Will do, sir. Eyes wide open for all the dangers.”

  He shook his head and smiled with squinted eyes. “Kids,” he mumbled under his breath and turned to my mom. He sauntered over to her on the other side of the table and gave her a big wet kiss, completely for my embarrassment. I gave a fake gag motion and left them laughing as I walked through the family room and out the door to work.

  It only took me fifteen minutes to walk to the animal shelter. It wasn’t too bad, unless the temperature was in the hundreds, which wasn’t too uncommon in the summer.

  “Hey, Mr. Archie!” I waved to my seventy year old boss as I passed his usual seat at the front desk of the shelter. He just gave me a short nod, which was nothing out of the ordinary. Actual words from Mr. Archie were few and far between.

  I hurried to the large room in the back of the building that held all of the dogs, and I couldn’t hold back my smile when I saw Bruno. “Hey buddy! Good morning.”

  Bruno was a big old St. Bernard with thick brown and white fur. We’d had him in the shelter for a month, but nobody was super interested in a dog his age. He came in here all matted and skinny, but I made it my mission to spoil him every chance I got.

  Bruno hopped up and down on his old legs and let out a small yowling sound. I opened the gate and wrapped my arms around the big fur ball. I couldn’t help the love I felt toward animals. I noticed a long time ago that they didn’t have auras like humans. My only guess was that they didn’t hide their emotions like people did, so the auras weren’t necessary.

  “What a good boy, Bruno! You’re getting so chunky, old man.” I rubbed behind his floppy ears and his pink tongue fell out the side of his mouth.

  A giggle erupted behind me and I spun around to see my closest friend, Penelope. Her skinny arms were folded across her double D chest, and her perfectly straight, golden hair was pulled high in a ponytail almost at the top of her head. For a woman as thin as her, she rocked the curves in a very jealousy-inducing way.

  “I dunno know why you don’t just adopt Bruno already. It’s clearly true love, Erin.” She raised a thin eyebrow at me and her perfectly pink lips spread into a wide grin across her porcelain face.

  I shrugged and continued to check on the rest of the dogs as Bruno followed behind me. “I was hoping a family with a big yard and some kids would take him. I live in my parents basement and our lawn is smaller than this whole room.” I waved my arms to emphasize the size of the dog holding room.

  Penelope began filling water bowls while I took care of the food. “Either way,” she said, “I think he’d prefer your little home over this place. I don’t see him going anywhere else anytime soon, hon.”

  She was right. Bruno wasn’t one of the favorites to the incoming families. I loved him, though, and I did hope for the best.

  “I’ll think about it.” I reached down and patted his fluffy head that reached higher than my hip.

  Penelope and I had been friends since she started working at the animal shelter with me, sometime near the beginning of my senior year of high school. She was a year older than me and I didn’t know a lot about her life, except that she was an only child like me and her dad was in the military. She was still the closest friend I had. A lot of people found me weird, but she never did.

  “You seem off today, Erin. Is everything alright?” Penelope nudged my shoulder and woke me from my daydreaming as I knelt to pet the yipping lab puppies that were only two weeks old. She also had a way of seeing right through me, which made her that much better of a friend.

  The puppy's sweet mom wagged her tail and turned her chocolate head towards me as she fed her babies. “I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.” I fed her the same almost-truth that I gave my mom. I felt like I could tell Penelope more, though.

  I closed the cage door that held the mother lab and her babies and turned back to Penelope. She had her hands on her hips and gave me a very telling “go on” look. I sighed and a blush stained my cheeks. “I kind of met a guy.”