Hell and Back: The Protector Guild Book 4

by Holborn, Gray

  It was like hell was a lifeless Earth, with all of its landscapes condensed down and shoved together in close proximity. A terrifying sort of Disneyland.

  Darius stopped as soon as we reached the edge of the tree line and I went colliding back into him as he pulled my hand.

  I opened my mouth to ask him why he’d paused when he lifted a thin finger to his lips.

  My eyes traced over him and I noticed that his shirt was now coated wet with blood, whether because Eli had obtained new injuries or because the first ones were deeper than we’d realized, I wasn’t sure. Either way, my stomach clenched with fear.

  I sucked in a slow, steady breath, reminding myself that Darius was still standing—still alive. And that meant that Eli was too. I closed my eyes for a moment, desperately trying to get my pulse to calm down so that I could focus and listen to whatever was around us. It was quiet, strangely so. And while I had no logical or rational reason to give, I was certain that Eli was close by.

  I glanced back at Darius, ready to tell him just that. That we needed to push forward and keep going. But I swallowed my words when I saw him. His body was tensed, his eyes narrowed as he studied the perimeter. He looked every bit the lethal predator that he was. And something told me that while I didn’t see any monsters near us, they were there. As Declan’s story had proven, hell was anything but the lifeless, empty terrain it seemed. The beings here were just far better at lingering in the shadows, out of sight.

  Atlas and Declan weren’t behind us, so either they hadn’t caught up to us in our pursuit or something happened to them. My hands clenched, fingernails digging into the flesh of my palms as I sent a silent prayer that it was the former. We could only handle one catastrophe at a time.

  “Come out, come out,” a playful, devious voice rang out, the echo haunting as it bounced around the abandoned buildings. “I promise I won’t hurt you too badly just yet. I like my games to last. But if you make me chase you around for much longer, I’ll make your death draw out in the most exquisite sort of agony. That can be a fun game too.”

  The voice broke into a childish giggle that had the hair on the back of my neck standing to attention. The flesh along my arms pebbled as the echoes ran through me.

  Darius positioned me so that I was behind him and grabbed the blade fastened at his hip. I had a feeling he’d stolen it, along with all of the supplies he brought into hell, from his brother. Claude’s wrath was neither here nor there right now.

  Mirroring him, I pulled out my dagger and nodded, signaling that I was ready to move. I wasn’t sure what sort of monster this creature was, but there was something in the way that it spoke that hinted at a deep appreciation for evoking pain. The voice was the stuff of nightmares and horror films, and as much as I wanted to run and help Eli, to protect him from whatever was happening to him, I was equally terrified of encountering the creature too soon, unprepared. I didn’t want to get him killed—we had one chance at this.

  “I want you to stay here,” Darius said, his voice low and filled with an authority I hadn’t heard before. He almost sounded like Atlas, like the leader of a team, not like the aloof vampire who seemed to thrive on chaos. “I’m not sure what we’re dealing with here, or if she’s alone.”

  But whether he’d realized it or not, I wasn’t very fond of following Atlas’s directions, and the same was true for his.

  I arched an eyebrow at him and took a step forward so that I was no longer hidden behind his lean bulk. “I don’t think so. We either go at it together or we go at it separately. Your choice, but I won’t stand here and wait for that thing to kill Eli—or you—one slice at a time. I’m not some delicate flower, despite what everyone seems to think.”

  He squared his shoulders and I could tell that he was preparing to argue, when the clash of bodies rang out around us in a series of grunts and bangs.

  My teeth clenched as I heard a loud groan, followed by the girl’s taunting laughter. When I looked up at Darius, there was a new deep, red line that looked like it was carved by a sharp blade, running from his brow to his jaw.

  His eyes flashed with anger as he nodded at me. “Together then. Let’s go draw some blood, little protector. I need a meal anyway.”

  My stomach lurched at the comment, not because I was disgusted by the idea of him feasting on the creature’s blood, but because I wasn’t. My blood rushed with the thought of killing the beast responsible for injuring the boys. And I not only wanted Darius to kill her, I wanted to watch as he tore her limb from limb.

  No. I wanted to help him do it.

  He arched a single brow, like he was expecting me to challenge him, but all he got was my hardened resolve. He’d get no fight from me on this, my bloodlust was growing with each second we waited.

  A greedy grin lifted his lips as he studied me. I felt like an onion, being peeled back layer by layer, terrified of him seeing whatever darkness was lingering at my core. He tightened his fingers around my wrist, just above my pulse point. For a second, I thought he was going to draw me towards him, do something we’d both regret.

  Then, in a flash, he was on the move, my hand in his, both of us stalking our way out from the trees. We crept silently from building to building as he listened and tracked the beast’s movements.

  I held my breath, straining my ears to try and pick up whatever it was that Darius was hearing. As I watched him, another thin slice appeared on his right forearm. Whatever the hell this creature was, she was toying with Eli right now. This was nothing but a dark and twisted game. My stomach turned as I noticed that the slice stretched and morphed until an entire swath of skin was missing.

  “What the hell is this thing?” I mouthed to Darius out of fear that whatever it was had good enough hearing to catch my words as they traveled through the wind.

  His lips turned down as he stared at his arm, his eyes hard as ice. Something changed in his demeanor, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. He took a steadying breath in and gripped his blade. This wasn’t the Darius that I was used to seeing. He was no longer the creepy, taunting vampire kept behind glass in The Guild’s research basement. Instead, he was the fierce monster who’d torn his brother’s living room apart in a battle no protector would have stood a chance at surviving.

  One moment he was there next to me and the next he was disappearing in a flash behind the corner of the building we’d been ducking behind.

  “Shit,” I mumbled, wincing as the word formed off my tongue. Shit, shit, shit. I chased after Darius, though I knew I didn’t stand a chance at catching up with him. Vampire speed far outweighed that of protectors. And my tracking skills were mediocre at best. The most I could hope for was to provide backup by the time I got to him—that, or find the creature first myself.

  About twenty feet away, I saw a door to a decrepit building close. It looked like an abandoned warehouse, large and square, with far more attention to utility than aesthetics. Still, the way that vines crept along the sides, and the fact that half of the windows seemed to be busted, suggested that whatever purpose this place was built for, it was no longer being used. What happened to this place? Why did hell feel like a damn dystopian novel, with most of the population long gone?

  Hoping that Darius or Eli entered the building instead of whatever creepy creature we were hunting, I inhaled a calming breath and followed, cursing the fanghole for ditching me less than two minutes after we’d agreed on going after this thing together.

  I don’t know why I was so surprised that a fucking vampire went back on his word. They weren’t used to working in teams, not like we were. And I had a feeling it had been years and years since Darius worked with anyone or trusted someone else to have his back.

  Hell, even his own brother wanted him dead.

  The place was dark and cluttered with debris along the grounds, papers and broken glass lining the path. I could only see a few feet in front of me, so I kept one hand along the wall as I walked further inside at a painfully slow pace. I slowed my b
reathing down and tried desperately not to rustle any of the shit littering the floor. If the monster was in here, I didn’t want to send an announcement of my presence. Far better for me to catch it off guard rather than be the one caught.

  A high pitched peal of laughter echoed around the walls.

  I jumped, shivers traveling down my skin, like every atom in my body was telling me to run away, that I was not prepared for whatever creature I might find here. It was like every instinct I had knew that this was dangerous, that something about the childish laughter was unnatural.

  “Tasty, tasty,” the girlish voice trilled. “Time for another bite.”

  There was a brief pause that felt cloying and claustrophobic, like a vice was squeezing around my chest, waiting with a heavy anticipation.

  “Best not to fight it, dinner is served,” the voice said, its echo ringing around the empty building like a strangely macabre chorus.

  “Darius,” I whispered, my voice hushed and strained. “Where are you?”

  A loud thump, and then a heavy crash.

  “Back off, you creepy shit,” a deep, familiar voice shouted, followed by a strained yell.

  Eli.

  No longer willing to take things slowly, I took off at a quick pace, running in the direction of his voice, desperate to get to him as soon as possible. With one hand along a wall, I ran down winding halls, losing track of how many different turns I took, how many different doorways I entered.

  And then I saw him.

  His face and arms were bloody as he leaned against the window, face bathed partially in whatever light was left outside. Each of his breaths seemed to come out in ragged gasps as his wild eyes searched around the room, like he wasn’t quite sure where the creature would crop up next in their twisted game of Whac-A-Mole.

  When he saw me, he jumped, like he thought I was the owner of the girlish laugh, but then his eyes grew wide and filled with worry. He shook his head as he started to walk towards me, but his movements were stilted and rough, like he was fighting against his own muscles.

  “Max,” he said, the word low and constrained, “run.”

  As I reached a hand out to him and moved to close the distance, his face distorted with fear.

  “My, my, tasty one. Earning your keep already. You’ve brought a friend.”

  Before I had a chance to turn around and confront the beast, something sharp scraped against my neck before a heavy object smacked into my skull. A low, piercing sound filled my ears and bright dots of light obscured my vision until, eventually, my body fell against a wall and slid to the ground.

  13

  Max

  My vision blurred but I blinked past it, desperately trying to ignore the pain in the back of my head. Did the monster walk around with a damn baseball bat like some sort of Harley Quinn knockoff? Because while that was generally quite a vibe, I was so not feeling it right now.

  “It’s a party,” the girl yelled, her voice filled with a childish glee as she crouched down and stared at me, her head tilted at an odd angle like she was trying to study me from upside down.

  She looked human in form, with long black hair and smooth pale skin, though both were covered in dirt and what looked suspiciously like paint. Black lines were drawn across her cheeks like she was auditioning as an extra in a football film.

  Her eyes were wide, but cast in shadow so I couldn’t get a read on their color. They didn’t appear to be yellow from where I was, so not a werewolf, but my vision was doing weird things at the moment. For a second, she reminded me of the young vampire I’d come across in The Guild labs, a strange mixture of terrifying innocence. The very thing nightmares were made of.

  Except where my reaction to the young vampire had been one of confusion, my body seemed intuitively certain that the girl standing before me was a threat—the sort I hadn’t come across before.

  I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I did—she was neither vampire nor werewolf, but something else altogether. I just wasn’t sure what. The only other creature I’d encountered was a succubus and I was overtly aware that whatever this girl was, she wasn’t that.

  There was no sex appeal, no unexplainable draw luring me in. If anything, every atom in my body seemed repulsed by her, like she was death embodied. Or maybe it was just because she reminded me of those creepy kids in a horror movie—the ones who instantly cued you into the fact that they were about to murder someone while humming along to a terrifying lullaby. This girl had that whole mood on lock.

  “I wonder, friend,” she said, studying me with rapt attention and excitement. “If you’ve had your dinner yet. Do you taste as good? I hope so, I hope so, I hope so!”

  She punctuated each phrase with a playful little hop that sent her hair bouncing wildly around her petite form, her voice growing louder and more daring with each repetition.

  Her face pulled into a grotesque smile that made her seem like a macabre caricature of a teenage girl. I could see from where I sat, my back pressed against the wall as Eli inched closer to me, that the lines between her teeth were filled with blood, and what looked like a flap of skin was hanging awkwardly over her lip.

  Bile rose up my esophagus as I noticed Eli’s jerky movements to my left. It was like he was fighting a weird paralysis or some invisible force that was holding him back. Every muscle seemed like it was working on overdrive but getting absolutely nowhere.

  What had she done to him? And how had she overpowered him when he was easily twice her size.

  She began dancing in strange circles, laughing that bone-chilling laugh of hers. Her movements were both graceful and clumsy, like she was performing a strange balancing act on a tightrope. As erratic as her limbs were, she never once stumbled or tripped over any of the broken pieces of wood or piles of trash lining the floor.

  I reached my fingers out along the cement ground until I found Eli’s hand and squeezed it. The skin on my fingers felt strangely stiff, like the feeling I got from trying to hold too many shopping bags at once. Brushing it off, I tried to focus. I would get us out of here, I just needed to know what the hell I was dealing with. I glanced around the room, trying to find anything that might be useful. I had my blade clutched behind my back, but my bag was no longer hanging off my shoulders.

  As if she could read my thoughts, the girl shook the black bag in front of her, pulling out my clothes and weapons and scattering them around the room with a wide grin on her face.

  “New, new, new,” she whispered, her voice giddy and strange as she eyed all of my things, almost as if she’d never seen clothes or weapons before. She held each item before her eyes, studying them with the sort of attention you might expect from someone visiting a museum exhibition. “I can’t wait to play later. But for now, I think it’s time for a taste.”

  I was still dizzy and disoriented, but I gripped my dagger all the same, steeling myself to stand up and attack.

  Only I didn’t.

  Or, rather, I couldn’t.

  It was like my brain and my body were suddenly disconnected and despite how much my mind tried to tell my limbs to move, to fight, I couldn’t. My fingers were gripped around Eli’s, but each muscle suddenly felt like it was weighed down by bricks. I could barely untangle my hand from his let alone lead an ambush against this girl.

  “Wh-what—” the single word was a struggle to push past my lips.

  The girl turned back to me, dumped the rest of my things haphazardly on the floor before throwing the bag down on top of it all, and started to laugh like the entire thing was a hugely elaborate joke. And one that she’d orchestrated all on her own.

  There was pride, excitement. It was terrifying.

  She waved a small knife at me and I instantly realized that it wasn’t one of mine. The blade was rusted and coated with grime, which meant that it wasn’t one of Eli’s either. Protectors were notorious for treating weapons with the sort of care one would treat a child.

  My thoughts flashed back to the small prick at the back of my neck
before I was knocked to the ground. I tried to lift my hand to feel for a small cut, but it felt like my limb was weighed down by a boulder—completely useless.

  The creep walked forward, slowly, while hopping from one foot to the other, like she was deliberately trying to play into the horror-film vibes her appearance already strung together. She grabbed the arm that was holding my blade, my fingers frozen around the handle in a useless deathgrip.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” she clicked as she peeled each finger back with ease until the metal dropped to the floor with an echoing clatter. She picked up my dagger and dangled it blade-down in front of her face, swinging it back and forth like it was some sort of morbid pendulum, her eyes wide and filled with a strange mirth.

  This close, I could see that her eyes were dark, almost black, but there wasn’t anything to distinguish them from one supernatural creature or another.

  With a harsh belly laugh, she whipped my dagger across the room until it crashed and slid along the floor into a pile of garbage. I cringed. That blade was a birthday gift from Cyrus.

  I could feel my fingers slowly starting to regain movement, and I was able to unclench my jaw, but only slightly. At this rate, I might stand a chance at taking her down in a few moments.

  She didn’t look particularly strong, but that was the thing. Demons didn’t exactly scream professional wrestlers in terms of their appearances. She was lanky and looked underfed, but for all I knew, she possessed the strength to fling me across the floor just as easily as she did my blade.

  With a quick movement, she pulled my forearm towards her and drew her knife down in a jagged line until my blood spilled all over my legs and the ground.

  She brought her nose down until it was barely an inch above my skin and inhaled deeply, the sound strange and guttural. With a renewed fervor, she carved another slice down my skin and pulled a patch away with it.

  A scream I didn’t recognize as my own left my mouth as pain flared up my arm like I was being prodded over and over with a fire poker.