The Four Horsemen_Guardians

by LJ Swallow

  Weird. I close my eyes and focus. Not a demon but something unusual I can’t walk away from without investigating.

  "Ewan! Row 10!” I call then hurry after the figure, hand inside my jacket ready to pull my knife.

  I round the corner at the end of the short passage and abruptly stop. The air shimmers in front of me, as if I’m looking at something underwater, and stretches from floor to ceiling. There’s no unusual scent or sound, just fresh paint and Ewan’s footsteps following.

  A sudden, intense dread grasps me, and every cell in my body screams at me to run. Before I can back away to find Ewan, the shimmering air moves forward, deathly cold where it hits me in the face.

  I reel backwards, my head hits the smooth concrete floor, and I black out.

  I'm lying, limbs stretched out in a star shape, chained. My skin burns in agony, and I lift my head to stare down at my naked chest.

  I have no skin.

  I'm bloodied and raw, and the fear intensifies the torture. I scream out, the tormented sound joining the wailing and shouting surrounding me, hundreds of voices crying in the same pain and fear.

  Manacles hold my wrists and ankles, and as I pull, the metal rubs my raw skin and more pain careens through my body. Darkness surrounds me and I can't move my head or see where I am. Breathing against the pain, I manage to tip my head and my nose almost touches metal bars one side of me. I tip my head up again. Bars above me, just centimetres from my face.

  How can anybody experience injury and agony like this and stay conscious? Each time I sink towards oblivion I ache for, a noise jolts me awake—screeching as if I'm plugged into headphones. Even unconsciousness is denied to me.

  I pant out breaths, praying this is a dream and close my eyes again.

  The cage shakes, and I snap my eyes open. Someone or something looks down at me; the figure obscured by the bright, white light surrounding it.

  The figure speaks in a whisper hardly audible above the screaming around me. "I have a proposition for you."

  EWAN

  Fuck.

  Don't let him be dead.

  I stare down at Joss's prone body, then spin 360 degrees attempting to find his assailant.

  Nothing.

  Nobody.

  "Joss?" I crouch down and take his arm, searching for a pulse. His pulse beats at a normal pace, but he's ice cold, and I snatch my fingers away as his skin drags heat from inside me.

  I could cope with the situation if it wasn't for the frozen terror on his face, his eyes wide and the expression running waves of chills through me.

  What the hell happened to him? I passed a guy leaving, but he wasn’t anything remarkable. He said hello and I searched his face for hints of anything out of the ordinary but didn’t see any.

  Was I wrong?

  "Joss?" He remains prone, and I stand again. Focusing all my senses, I attempt to pick up anything other than the fresh-paint smell or the distant echo from other storage boxes opening and closing.

  Nothing.

  I push hair from my face and stare down. Do I leave him? Find Heath? He's alive, but for how long?

  Crouching again, I place my hands on his shoulders and shake, the cool biting at my hands through the material. Joss's head snaps back as his chest arches upwards, and he lets out a huge breath. His eyes focus, but not before he pushes me hard in the chest and I sprawl backwards onto my arse.

  "Get the fuck off me!" he screams.

  "Fuck, man. Are you okay?"

  Joss scrambles to his feet and looks down at his chest, patting, before studying his wrists.

  "Joss. You're hyperventilating. Slow breaths, dude, or you'll pass out."

  He blinks at me, but the fear I saw earlier remains. "Did you see anything? A demon?" He stares ahead and backs toward me.

  "No. I haven't seen anything apart from a guy. What happened to you?"

  Joss slides his hands down his legs as he bends over, heaving more breaths. "I don't know."

  "You were attacked, and knocked out? Did you see who by?"

  "No," he says to the floor. "There was something weird in the air, and it hit me. I don’t know. What the fuck happened?”

  "I heard you yell my name a minute ago and followed you. I found you on the floor. Are you hurt?"

  He examines his clothes again, then drags off his coat. He yanks at his shirt and pulls it over his head. Wild-eyed, he moves his fingers along his naked chest and twists to examine his side. He turns his back. "Can you see anything? Please don't tell me there's one of those runes on me."

  "No. Nothing. You're fine. What the hell happened?"

  Joss puts his shirt back on, pale face reappearing through the hole. "I had a vision, Ewan. A fucking terrifying one this time." Joss squeezes his eyes closed and shakes his head. "I was somewhere. Trapped.”

  My mouth dries. "Somewhere dark?”

  "Yeah.” He opens his eyes. "I know we have visions sometimes, but I saw something, Ewan. I saw through the darkness.”

  I chew on a knuckle. I want to ask Joss what he saw, but a hundred times more don’t want to know. I don’t want to share whatever put the terrified look on Joss’s face, in case he triggers a memory hidden my mind’s dark recesses.

  "Whatever happened, we need to get the fuck out.” I grab Joss’s arm, but he continues to stare into a space close by. "We can tell the others what happened.”

  The last thing we need is more freaky shit, but at least he’s unhurt.

  "I can’t describe what or where, and I don't want to think or talk about it," he says in a hoarse voice.

  But Joss won't have a choice, and even though I nod in agreement, he knows. I won't ask questions now, but the others need to know.

  "C’mon, let’s find the others and see if Seth has his info.”

  I’m no empath, but I know when someone’s not in a good place. I walk out with a quiet Joss, followed by my fear whatever he saw might change him.

  13

  VEE

  We return to the house with Seth’s odd collection from his storage unit, including the gun and passports. Since he discovered them, Seth’s returned to his mute behaviour, and the dark look that came over him remains.

  At least we found the hard drive.

  The moment we're home, Ewan pulls out his laptop while Seth sits with his shoebox on the table in front of him, and our afternoon trip is followed by an early evening working through the information held on Seth's hard drive. Xander's lifted mood drops again when we don’t find anything useful as quickly as he’d like.

  I don't know where Joss is. Ewan told me he's sleeping; I'm surprised Xander allows him to. Or I would be if I hadn't noticed the whispered exchange between Ewan and Xander once we arrived home. Something more happened to Joss than they’re telling me.

  "Mate, if anything on that hard drive fucks up my laptop you're gonna be sorry." Ewan narrows his eye at Seth, who gestures for Ewan to turn the laptop around.

  "Nothing will happen, unless you have the wrong password. I'll open the files."

  I smile to myself as Ewan hunches over nervously, as if he gave Seth his baby to hold. A fleeting image of Ewan and a baby crosses my mind; a scene I could never imagine happening.

  "You want me to run through the info I have? Or did you want to look yourself?" he asks.

  "Tell me what's on here." Ewan spins his baby back round and jabs a finger at the screen. "Uh. Why is there a file with my name?" His brow tugs deep. "Files with each of our names."

  "I said we had some information on you. I can show you what, but please don't delete it."

  Ewan sniffs. "It won't be true anyway. I told you reality isn’t what you think."

  "I'm beginning to see that," he mutters. "Could I have a pen, please?"

  I slide a notepad across to him, and he writes a series of neat letters and numbers. "Here're the passcode for all the files. What's inside is self-explanatory. We researched each department and the board, and all our findings are there. We couldn't join the dots, but if you k
now some of these names and who they're connected to, it could help?"

  "Why couldn't you join the dots?" asks Xander.

  "Because someone covered their tracks. Each time we hacked into the system, the information began overwriting by something else unrelated. We couldn't keep up or download quick enough."

  "Whatever you did find was worth murdering you for," mutters Ewan. "Why?"

  "I don't know. There are secret projects, but we can't identify what. At first we thought it could be illegal drug trials, but now we think they're bankrolling something the board are trying to hide."

  "Like what?" asks Xander.

  "We never found out." He pushes the notepad across the table to Ewan. "Look, I'm not going to lie to or hide anything from you; this is all I have. Now you have everything, can I leave?"

  Both Seth and I know the answer before anybody speaks. "That's not a good idea," says Heath.

  "I feel like a prisoner with twenty-four-hour guards," he complains. "I just want out of the whole situation."

  "Do you honestly think that's possible?" I place my hand over Seth's. "We'll help each other."

  Seth pulls on his lip and doesn’t reply.

  Ewan clicks through the files and leans forward to study the screen. "Leave this with me. Let’s see what’s in here."

  For the rest of the afternoon, Ewan, Seth, and I remain in the kitchen scrolling through and comparing data. Ewan tells Xander to leave the room; his constant hovering annoying us. He disappears to see if he can find more information about who Taron worked with.

  Ewan runs through connections Seth's made between Nova Pharm and smaller companies, but there're no names the Horsemen have come across before. He spends hours combing through the information, checking names again and again, but the linked companies and people are new to him. Some have only existed a few months—months when they were distracted looking for me.

  Ewan makes a list to check off, but there’re dozens to work though and we won’t manage this in one night.

  "I don't understand why we've never come across these people before," says Ewan as he returns from Joss's study with more printed sheets.

  "We can't know everybody, Ewan. They work fast sometimes."

  "No, but we're fed information from the fae a lot, and we keep up to date that way."

  As the days pass, the true consequences of the screw-up between the fae and Horsemen grow. I've held conversations with the guys about what they can do to reforge their alliance, but not in Xander's earshot. They're at a loss what to do, and I'm acutely aware I'm part of the problem.

  If saving Portia's life a few weeks ago isn't enough to cement their relationship, I don't know what is. Heath suspects somebody is influencing her, but I can't see how anybody could manipulate Portia.

  Seth stays with Ewan, who barks questions at him occasionally, and I stay with them both to help comb through the information. My head aches with frustration, and Seth's dark-rimmed eyes and tired face tell me he's not faring well.

  Eventually, Xander returns with Heath. "Fuck this. Let’s work on the other issue. Ewan, did you find anything out about Taron while we were at Nova Pharm?"

  "Yeah, I have found more on Taron. I managed to hack into his bank accounts; he may’ve been a great assassin, but he's not good at covering his tracks. I've pieced things together and found most of his clients via their bank accounts, but this latest amount has come from an offshore account. A tax haven. There's no way I'll hack into that easily or quickly. The best I can do is hit the system with a virus to prevent anybody touching anything in the records until I do."

  Xander crosses his arms. "So what have you found?"

  "A contact number for his friend, Syv."

  "Oh?" Placing his palms on the table, Xander looks down at Ewan's scrawled notes. "Her address?"

  "No."

  "Then how do we find them?" asks Heath.

  "Easy," replies Xander. "We phone her."

  Heath takes the paper from Xander. "Oh yeah? The Horseman can randomly contact dubious supes and expect them to say yes to a meeting?"

  "Not us. Him." Xander points at Seth.

  Seth straightens. "Me? I’m the one with a target on my head!"

  "Obviously you don't tell her who you are," sneers Ewan. "Just say you have a job for her and want to meet.”

  "What? And she’ll agree to meet me? Just like that?”

  "Offer a crap load of cash, and she'll be there. Tell her it’s a big job that needs two people, and she’ll bring her mate, Abel. Then we’ll have both of them in one place."

  All four guys look at Seth who rubs his nose and pales. "But why me?"

  "Because we're asking you to," says Xander in a low voice. "Do you want us to help you or not?"

  "How? By calling their 'dial-an-assassin' number?" he asks snarkily.

  "Yeah. You leave your details, and they'll contact you."

  "How do you know all this?" he asks. "Have you used them?"

  Xander laughs harshly. "Do you really think we need to use other people to help us?"

  I want to step in and ask them to stop being so bloody rude to Seth, but I can also understand their urgency. Xander shoves the paper at Seth who clutches it as if he's been served a death notice.

  "Ewan, since you hacked into Taron’s life, can you find info about his other clients?" Xander asks. "If there’s any connection between them?"

  Ewan taps the table. "I can't figure out who they all are, but so far no. Most of his recent assignments were "solving" petty gang wars between shifters who wouldn't stick to their patch, or the occasional demon who needed to eliminate another. I think Seth needed taking out quickly because whoever did this knew he was with us."

  "That's bloody great!" exclaims Seth. "I told you I should leave. I'm not safe with you all."

  Heath ignores him and points at Ewan's notes. "Have you checked all the Nova Pharm board backgrounds? Are any connected to Taron and his mates? Any demon we know of?"

  "Yes. I have names, but there aren't any red flags that any are demons. Some are fae. It would be a lot easier if..." He trails off and cocks a brow at Xander. "Well, whatever, this will be harder to piece together on our own."

  "But the fact no demon names are coming up is a red flag. We know demons rank high in every organisation. The corpses showed obvious signs of demon interference," replies Xander.

  "This is driving me bloody nuts!" exclaims Heath. "Every step forward, something else is thrown our way. Why isn’t anything showing up yet?"

  "Calm down, this will all be connected somehow. We'll solve this." Ewan touches him on the shoulder. "Once we speak to Syv and Abel we’ll have some more clues.”

  "You reckon?” snorts Heath. "Even on the creatures that attacked Ewan? How are they connected?"

  "Don't worry about them," says Xander. "We can deal if we come across them again."

  "But they weren't normal enemies!" says Heath. "In case you didn't notice, they killed Ewan in seconds. What if I hadn't been there? What if I'm not with you next time?"

  "Heath. Chill."

  Heath's expression darkens, and I swear he's about to hit his brother. I know we're having problems dealing with all this, but I never expected Heath to snap.

  "I think we're all tired," I say in a soft voice. "I know you're superheroes, but you can't keep going forever, even fuelled by beer."

  "We're not superheroes, Vee," growls Heath. "We're not guaranteed to save the world like in the stupid human fantasies."

  "Heath. Dude. Calm down. Come on, let's take a walk." Ewan stands and attempts to take Heath's arm.

  Heath violently pulls his arm away. "She's right. We're tired. I'm going to sleep, let me know when you need me to get back on the stupid fucking merry-go-round."

  The door slams as Heath leaves, and heavy footsteps stomp upstairs. Xander focuses on a sheet of paper in front of him, and Ewan doesn't respond. I look to Seth who's studying, and rubbing, his injured arm. A small smile plays on his lips.

  14 />
  VEE

  I intend to talk to Heath, but when I reach the upstairs hallway, I spot Joss’s open bedroom door. He sits on his bed, staring out of the window with his back to me. I thought he was resting?

  I sense something’s wrong—I did the moment we met up outside the storage units because he barely said a word and struggled to hide panicked emotions. He spent time in conversation with Xander, and the guys left Joss with me and Seth as they checked out a different area in the facility. When I asked Joss why he didn’t go too, he pointed at Seth and smiled. But something in his eyes remained distant.

  Joss doesn’t move when I walk into his room. Only when I stand between him and the window does he look up. His face matches Seth’s for tiredness, exhaustion lines drawing his face. He regards me with dull eyes and forces a smile.

  "I thought you were resting?” I ask.

  "Nah, I just wanted a break from everything.”

  I sit on the bed beside him and take his hand. "You’re cold. Are you okay? Do you guys get sick?”

  "No. Must be the weather.”

  I place a hand on Joss’s head and move to cup his cheek too. Cold skin. "Tell me the truth, did something happen earlier?”

  He moves my hand and places it on my knees. "Nothing serious. I thought I saw someone or something when I was checking out the storage place, I passed out and Ewan found me.”

  I take his hand again. "Joss! Why didn’t someone say something?”

  "Because it’s nothing. We looked and there was nothing there. I must be tired, and my mind’s playing tricks.”

  Joss swallows and blinks rapidly.

  Hmm.

  "Don’t lie to me, please, Joss,” I say in a quiet voice.

  "I’m not. I genuinely thought I saw something weird in the air around, but Ewan didn’t. I was a bit dizzy, maybe overtiredness?”

  I can’t imagine a Horseman suffering a dizziness to affect him like this. "Fine.”

  "Vee...” Joss touches my face with cold fingers. "Sometimes I have weird dreams, and my mind plays tricks on me. We’ve been on the go for days, maybe there is a point of exhaustion we reach, and the dreams joined the daytime.”