Torn Between Two Worlds (Guardians Series Book 1)

by Lexi Ostrow

  In truth, he had known something was wrong with him since the night before. He had felt pieces of his subconscious slipping away. More than once he had found himself pulled back into the book series he was from for a short period of time. Not in the way that happened when she came to visit him there. It was simply returning to the books. When she was there his life pushed forward, non prewritten events occurred and he truly felt real. When he returned on his own, by choice or not, all that happened was an endless circuit of fulfilling plots in the books as others read them. Not that he knew any of this prior to her, but the idea made him uncomfortable now that he knew.

  He'd assumed she'd been having a bad dream and that was why he couldn't stay. It happened, she didn't have the best control over the doorways that he and the evil she drew to her used to come through. Then this morning he had felt lighter. He couldn't see anything wrong with himself and hadn't been in any pain. So he'd kept quiet. Alcott had been shirking his duties for a few weeks and had assumed whoever the trench coat man was, was watching too and was annoyed. He assumed the guy was pissed and just making his time with her more difficult.

  For years now he had watched her. Watched her with a quickening in his gut and a hardening below it. He could never tell her that though. For one thing, he was the one who had put off her attempts when she had been a child. Then he hadn't looked twice at her. When she was sixteen he had begun too. Besides she'd been with Derrick so long now there wasn't a chance, she still looked at him as she had when she was young.

  When he had first heard something call out to him someone had appeared and told him the rules. The rules that included a sensual relationship between a Word Speaker and their Guardian that created a stronger bond. He'd been put off at their age difference and hadn't thought about it, but again, at sixteen the torture began. He had also been told that Ciara was different, that her power manifested itself when she was only fourteen and the normal age was twenty-one. He'd been told she would be a huge target because of it, every time she picked up a book. Had he been evil, it would have been safer for her, the good guys never tried to take out the Word Speakers he assumed. At first he had tried to convince her not to read at all. In the end he accepted he would just be busy protecting her. Helping her. Loving her.

  Normally watching her didn’t affect his ability to protect her. But this morning he had almost let an attack go unnoticed. She didn’t see his brother, Calel, step through the shimmering doorway. She didn’t see how his magic had almost slipped through Calel's body like it wasn't even there. Alcott had no idea how she missed it, but he was damned happy she had. Small miracles in life one should always be grateful for, his mother had always said, before Calel had sacrificed her for his own dark magic.

  “Who's going to help me through this now? I don't have a real brother, I don't have someone to cry to at night when the separation cuts through the silence in my now single girl apartment. It's supposed to be you, Alcott. Damn it, it's supposed to be you.”

  Tears were streaming down her face in steady streams now. Had he not been with her through many crying fits after her parents death, he might not have understood the garble of words she had spoken. But to see her cry after so many years of closing pain out, killed him.

  He had no response for her. He knew he was leaving as well. It all made sense. Things changed with time and this was merely one of them. As her reading habits had shifted with age so had the evil in the books, it became stronger. What was once just his brother's magic and some paltry serial killers, had changed into demon kings and fallen angels. Things that he was not equipped to protect her from and barely did. Things that would require an appropriate type of Guardian, someone immortal from an appropriate series, not a human witch. That, paired with his lack of sexual interaction with her to strengthen the bond. He'd known it would happen sooner or later. He had just been naïve and thought it would be later with each year that passed.

  His fists clenched at his sides as he forced himself to let go of her. His nails bit into this palms and he had no intention of healing them. He wanted these scars. He wanted to remember how he'd messed up and done the right thing by his Word Speaker all at the same time. His voice was clipped, curt even, as he tried to act like nothing was wrong, to make her stronger. “Come on now. We never really thought I'd be your only Guardian. Whoever comes next will most definitely be better able to protect you. That's why they would be coming through to you, because I am no longer enough.” He sounded like a dick even in his own ears.

  He didn't want her in his world when their connection was severed, so he gently pushed her with his mind to returning. He'd always had a bit of compulsion, but felt dirty using it. He needed to now or she would never leave and who knew if she could get stuck there. All it really took was him picturing her out, the same way she brought herself in.

  Glaring at him she simply wiped the tears from her eyes and climbed back into the front seat. She muttered curses at him the whole way, he didn't mind, it would most likely be the last things she ever said to him and he wanted to hear them all.

  In his head he said all the goodbye's he needed to. In his head in he told her he has loved her for awhile, but that the guy she was looking for wasn't him. In his head he swore he would figure out a way to get back to her, to protect her.

  * * *

  In reality what happened was Ciara got up to her apartment alone, simply assuming Alcott was lagging because he knew she was mad. The book she had been reading the night before lay creased open on the couch and when she opened the door to her bedroom a man with an alarmingly cocky smile.

  He looked at her and said, “Hello, sweetheart, I'm Stryder. Apparently, I'm your new Guardian.”

  Chapter 2:

  She stared at him. She absolutely just stood in her doorway staring at him. She didn't look him up and down, she didn't scream like she had with Alcott. She simply stared at the form on her bed and then dropped her car keys and bag on the floor turned and raced out of her apartment.

  Alcott just had to be in the car.

  He was just still angry with her for entering his world from her backseat. He would still be there to say goodbye and help the new Guardian learn everything. She stopped halfway down the stairs as fear struck her. Would he have been told the rules the way Alcott had been before he even got to her? Would Alcott just be gone?

  A gasp escaped at the thought and she took the remaining stairs two at a time and crossed the parking lot.

  Finally standing in front of her car she fell into a crying fit for the second time since this hell had started.

  He was gone.

  Alcott wasn't sitting in the backseat. He wasn't anywhere in the car. He wasn't standing anywhere on the path from the car to her apartment. He was gone.

  Her knees buckled out from under her and she crashed into the concrete in front of the car, not even feeling the pain that raced a path up her leg from the impact. Tears continued their assault down her face and sobs wracked her body. She could barely feel the cold December ground beneath her butt or feel the wind whip across the tears on her cheeks and the stinging trail they left behind was also lost in her numbness. All she could feel was her heart shattering and flying in a million different directions. The only family she had left was gone.

  It had been just her and Alcott since the car accident. Her parents were only children and her grandparents were long gone from the world. All of the years she had spent dreaming of a time when he would be real to everyone, gone in the blink of an eye. She'd had so many plans for them; things to see, people to introduce him too and getting to see her own kids have a larger family than she ever had.

  It was all just gone.

  A vibration finally pulled her out of her own head. Sniffling she ran her hands over her eyes and cleared her throat. It was Derrick. Smiling a little simply because he was something familiar, she worked a moment to steady her voice before answering the call. “Hey Derrick.” She never let him in where Alcott was concerned, he would have t
hought she had lost her mind. Her secret would've broke them and it was just another reason she was glad they had chosen to end things as friends. She would need the support system far more than she needed someone to share in a secret she’d been guarding for so long.

  “Ciara? You sound funny, are you alright?”

  Damn it. He really was perceptive to her after so many years; even if she hadn’t really shown any emotion since the car accident.

  “Yes I'm fine now. I just got a little intimated with the responses to my story submission in Burke's seminar is all. Nothing to worry about. Does this mean that you'll be home a little earlier?” Her voice lifted at the end, hoping and praying he would say yes. She needed him now more than ever, the secret had never stopped her from seeking his solace before and it wouldn’t now. He was the only rock she had left. Alcott had been both a brother and support system to her, Derrick had as well, but in other areas. She'd been praying for a few days now that it wouldn't change simply because the title on their relationship had. It had only been about three weeks since the big decision to go their separate ways and it really didn't feel like anything had ended just yet. She just hoped he would be her rock at least this one last time.

  “Yes it sure is exactly what that means. Goodbye shitty mall job, hello, Italy. I'll be home after I check on something at the bank and you can vent away about Burke. I'll even grab some ice cream so we can pretend I'm the one who made you eat it. I love you.”

  She couldn't help but laugh. He knew what she needed, the ice cream, and was even being sweet enough to listen to her vent. Shit, she had better think about what exactly she was venting about. The I love you slipped out for him and her heart twisted a little, a small amount of sadness from their situation mixing with her hurt for her missing Guardian. “Sounds perfect!” A fake cough pulled her attention from the phone to the car.

  * * *

  Stryder had been standing behind the girl watching her cry for at least the last half an hour. He couldn't understand why the few people that had passed by her just turned and looked busy, as if they hadn't seen her. Surely people in this world had a little more compassion for the girl. No, not the girl- Ciara Miller.

  Ciara, the girl who would either be his savior, or his destruction. He'd been minding his own business, well no that wasn't exactly right since being a demon he never minded his own business, but he hadn't been making trouble for anyone. He'd been enjoying a beer with his brothers in New Orleans, which as he had recently learned, was nothing more than a scene in some damn book, when a man had shown up. Nothing spectacular about the man, just a man in jeans and a trench coat. It was what the guy told him that was spectacular.

  The man had all but thrown his life into a toilet and pushed the plunger flushing it all down in a swirl. Supposedly he was nothing more than a book character. He'd explained that there were people able to grant characters life, ones that needed protection. Of course he didn't believe it at first, but it was kind of hard to argue with a man who could recite more of your past than you could, so Stryder hadn't questioned it after that.

  Stryder had been given a choice. He could choose to be some girl's Guardian or the man would kill him and that would upset the balance because she needed protection. Stryder didn't like his lot in life, but he wasn't going to throw the towel in and leave everything to his brothers either. So he'd told the man to keep talking and his smile was genuine when the guy mentioned the sexual link he'd experience. Stryder was never one to turn down sex, he had a theory, the more sex you had the more apt you were to find your mate.

  The decision really wasn't his to make and sex with some all powerful being sounded pretty damn good to him. That was, till the guy kept talking.

  Apparently, the bad things in the books, like his demon buddies and even his family, were also made aware of a Word Speaker when a character was granted release. The guy didn't say how, just that they did. Stryder would bet his left nut the jerk told them himself and just wasn't sharing that info. Some of the evil would simply try to kill the girl, others to manipulate her. And it was all up to good old Stryder to stop anything from actually succeeding. He personally felt attacking an innocent girl was a chicken shit move, even told the guy in the trench that much.

  The protection was a trade off for being given life outside their fictional world. That a Word Speaker would shift between them until they found the right one, the one they fit best with. Then, at twenty-seven, that character would be free to live, until this man called them to fight in a prophesied war.

  War got his attention. He didn't want to be a pawn again. Once more the man reminded him it wasn't an option. He was protecting Ciara or he was going to die. Well at least mind blowing sex and enough violence to keep his Horseman, War, happy, were ok conditions for protection. He couldn't deny his curiousness at being released. Maybe she could do it more than once and he and his family could kiss the hell hole goodbye. The only real glitch was he didn't want to be tied to the chick, he wanted to come and go as he pleased.

  He agreed and then, good old buddy the man was, he dropped one more bomb on him. Ciara was the most powerful of her kind in a long time and she would not be happy to see him.

  Judging by his greeting, she certainly wasn't happy to see him. In fact, she seemed disgusted, if not angry at him. Curious about her, he’d followed her when she left the apartment. He had looked down at her while she sat on the sidewalk crying her eyes out, but hadn't said anything. He didn’t really know what to say to her, but he sure as hell had looked. He had looked and felt himself possessively stating “mine” which was what demons did when they finally found their mate. There weren't a lot of female demons and males were extremely territorial. Fucking hell.

  Sure he had been searching for his mate for centuries. He wasn’t some idiot who wanted to be alone in his immortality. But a human? Shouldn't he have been better suited to be mated to his own kind, even if he was eventually going to become a traitor? And if he was a book character how was he mated to someone that wasn't an author’s invention? His head spun again at all the craziness of his life.

  Ciara Miller was stunning, breathtaking, and he was pretty certain he would think that even if she wasn’t who he had been looking for since Fasheem found his own mate. She was short, especially to his six-foot-three inch height. He pegged her to be about five-foot-four which was fine with him. She'd fit perfectly against him. Her hair was a shiny ebony that fell to her waist and her eyes, he'd only seen them for a moment, but he would swear they were as blue as sapphires. Her body was nothing to ignore either. She was an athlete, or had an athlete’s build at the very least. Ciara had the perfect amount of muscle and generous curves. He wished she was a bit bigger, he figured her for a size two and demons could be rough in bed. Bed. His cock jumped at the thought.

  He listened silently while she was on the phone. He had heard the person on the other end say “I love you” and he had almost reached down and thrown her phone into the dumpster behind her car. There was no mention of her being involved with someone. Well didn’t that just ruin the sexual part of the relationship, not to mention the fact that she was his mate, he was pretty damn sure of that.

  Practically growling, he had walked in front of her and reached down. In a swift movement he yanked her off the ground just as she was putting the phone in her pocket. “You are coming inside. Now.” He started to tug her back to the apartment, not giving two shits that it would look like she had a possessed arm if anyone saw her. But she had pulled free and was walking up the steps herself. He could still hear her fucking sniffling.

  At the top of the stairs she paused and he picked her up, pressing her breasts against his chest. Her hands beat at him and she cursed him, but he didn't put her down. His erection pressed against his zipper the more she struggled, the more she pressed her body against his and set his blood boiling with need.

  He flung her through the still open apartment door and she landed with a thud on her couch. He was getting ready to tear into h
er for gods only knew what, when she turned to him.

  “You will get out right now. You will take your demon ass back into that book and you will stay there until I call you!”

  The words were barely out of her mouth when he felt himself essentially pop somewhere. It wasn't disorienting, but he knew that he'd moved without actually moving himself.

  Looking around he took in his surroundings. Low wattage lighting, loud music, shouting and his brothers; Fasheem, Demarcus and Jameson. They were staring at him like he had grown his horns, no demons did not have horns unless they were enraged. His eyes scanned the bar looking for the shimmering thing he'd walked through to get to her and didn't see it. Realizing something went horribly wrong, he hoped that the guy wouldn't be back to punish him for leaving her unprotected. Then he would be forced to fight some supernatural being who just might be stronger than him and his brothers combined. “Oh shit.”

  Chapter 3

  He was sitting in his study when he felt it. Something vibrated within him. It was like words in his head. Jonathan shook his head and smacked himself on the side of his head a few times, but couldn't get the sensation to stop. It felt like someone was watching him, studying him.

  In a split second he had powered down the computer and grabbed his gun. You didn't get to be a commander in The Initiative, an attack force against demons, by being slow; unobservant or weak. “Whatever sick freak is in here with me, you damn well know who I work for. So back off.” He whirled his body to face the other direction, moving the gun first. “And I mean NOW!” His voice echoed off the barren room walls and he wondered if any of the guards would have heard him and come running.