Zealot (Hidden: Soulhunter Book 3)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  “If I learn anything else, I will make sure to tell you,” I told him, and he nodded.

  “One of these days, Tink. You, me, and a place in the middle of nowhere, where nobody will expect us to save the world, for at least a little while.”

  I smiled, but all I wanted to do was cry. “One of these days, Cub.”

  “Okay. Shit. I really do have to get going now,” he said, glancing at the clock. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too. Good luck.”

  He walked over to me and quickly captured my lips, kissed me in a way that felt like goodbye. “You, too,” he murmured. And then he kissed me again. I watched him head for the bathroom, and, after another moment, I closed my eyes and focused on rematerializing, hoping that it was not the last time I would see him.

  Chapter Nine

  When I returned to Paris, which was the most recent city my New Guardians were focusing on trying to clean up, I was met with the sounds of chants. It was loud, and angry, and must have been somewhere nearby. I could also feel the presence of my New Guardians in the vicinity. I started walking west. I was not too far from the Paris city government building, and, as I got closer, the chants grew louder. I spotted my team and started walking toward them.

  All six of them stood off to the side, watching the scene in front of them. Quinn’s arms were crossed over his chest, a tight, angry look on his face. The rest of the New Guardians stood on either side of him, watching the scene with expressions that ranged from horror to anger to sadness. Quinn gave me a tight nod as I stopped beside him, and I looked out over the crowd.

  What had, at first, seemed like one large crowd was actually two, and each side seemed to be trying to out-shout the other one. I studied the signs they carried, and shook my head.

  “I’m guessing they don’t say good shit,” he said.

  “The ones on that side of the street,” I said, nodding to the group farthest from us, “are mostly carrying signs that say ‘God is dead” or “Bombs not Gods.”

  “Jesus Fuckin’ Christ,” he muttered.

  “The other ones are anti-war types. They want peace. They want a solution to the undead, but they do not believe in trying to destroy immortals.”

  “What’s got their panties in a bunch? Paris isn’t even the worst of it,” Quinn asked.

  I took a deep breath. “It is not just Paris.”

  “What?” Claire asked.

  I told her what I’d seen on the television in Detroit, as well as what Brennan had told me. They stood in silence for several minutes afterward, watching the scene before us.

  “So those references to bombs, then?” Erin asked.

  “It is one of the things they are discussing. Several of the immortals, with the help of some of the more powerful witches we know, are setting protective wards and shields around the homes of as many of us as they can,” I said quietly.

  My team went silent for a while again, each mulling it over as the crowd continued to shout and chant.

  “I can’t even fuckin’ blame them,” Quinn said angrily. “One of the gods did this shit, and we can’t… we can’t fix it,” he finished in frustration.

  “I know.” I took another breath, and then filled them in on my talk with Triton. As I expected, Quinn mostly seemed to agree with Brennan, while the rest seemed to see the benefit in having the sea gods with us.

  “Don’t trust him, boss,” Quinn warned.

  “Of course not,” I said, meeting his eyes. “But I am willing to be polite and business-like, at least until we have this figured out, one way or the other.”

  “Well, I mean, there is no ‘one way or the other’ about it, right?” Quinn said, raising his eyebrows. “We will end the fuckers. Chin up, boss.” Then his face broke out into a grin. “Which reminds me. We have a surprise for you.”

  “Is this like the time you took me to see those male strippers, because I really—”

  “No! Not like that. Better!”

  “Female strippers this time, then?” I asked him, and he laughed. Despite everything, I found myself smiling at the deep, honest sound of it.

  “Maybe next time,” he said, shaking his head. He let out another small laugh and held out his hand. “Come on.”

  I glanced at my other New Guardians, who all seemed almost beside themselves, barely able to hide their grins. “All right. But we really do need to get back to work.”

  “And we will. This’ll only take a moment.”

  I nodded, and put my hand in Quinn’s, and a moment later, we were rematerializing. When we reappeared, it was in what looked like an old, vacant church. I was about to ask Quinn what the surprise was, when I felt them.

  Six of them.

  New Guardians.

  I could barely breathe as the details of their lives and deaths came to me. Five men, one woman, ranging in age from a teenager to late seventies at the time of death. I stared at them as the details of their lives and deaths hit me.

  Unlike my current New Guardians, who had all died by violent means, murdered, with vengeance in their hearts, these New Guardians had all faded away from a plethora of illnesses. They had lived lives of service and generosity, had fought for the things they believed in… and had watched as all of it had fallen away, stolen from them by the ravages of diseases they could not fight.

  It hurt, seeing their lives and deaths. I was so accustomed to battle, to violence, to vengeance, that these Guardians standing before me threw me off balance. Even now, I could see the love and gentleness radiating from each of them.

  I did not understand how or why they had come to me, how or why it had been decided, at this moment, that these particular souls had become New Guardians, but I sent a silent prayer of thanks to Nyx that they were here.

  I studied them, and they watched me nervously. They stood, basically lined up in front of me as if awaiting inspection.

  “How?” I whispered, overcome by the shock and relief of having them there.

  There were thirteen Guardians again. This had to be a good thing. For the first time since I had spoken to Nyx, I felt the tiniest spark of hope.

  “They found us,” Claire said.

  “We could feel ‘em following us all night while we hunted. We didn’t want to scare ‘em away, so we agreed to play it cool and let them come to us when they were ready,” Quinn explained.

  “Even though we were freaking out,” Erin put in, her face split in a wide grin.

  I continued to study the new arrivals. “How did you find them?” I asked the one who seemed to be the leader of the group.

  “It wasn’t easy. Really, we were looking for you,” she said.

  “Drawn to you, more like,” one of the other women in the group said. Jen. Her name was Jen, and she’d died a little over two weeks ago, after fighting harder than any person should ever have to, trying to hold onto a life that she was powerless to keep.

  Sometimes, I hated seeing all the details of my Guardians’ deaths.

  “You’re American,” I said with some surprise. Almost all of my original new Guardians were from Europe, except for one.

  She nodded. “We all are.”

  I studied them each in turn. “All recently dead… in the last year?” I asked, not really needing an answer. They all nodded.

  “Well, that’s different,” I murmured. More differences to wonder about. The others had spent years, sometimes decades, roaming the earth as lost souls, waiting, apparently, to be needed. Waiting for their time to come. I still could not fathom how they were able to stand it, to be among the living and be invisible to all, to be utterly alone, to know you’d been left behind when others had been taken to their final judgment. My New Guardians were strong in many ways, but that may have been the thing I admired about them the most: they had not been broken by an experience that, quite likely, would have broken me completely. And these new recruits showed the same strength, even if they’d come to it in a different way.

  “We felt you.” The first one I’d a
ddressed, Margaret, was inspecting me with her head at an angle, as if she was trying to figure out some puzzle that remained just out of reach. She stood straight, tall. Her head was bald, a symbol of the cancer that had eventually taken her. She’d had nearly seventy human years before entering this part of her existence, making her the oldest of all of my New Guardians.

  Second only to me, I thought wryly. She watched me with keen blue eyes, as if she could see through to my very soul, if only I had one. She was thin, and it would be all too easy to think her weak, unless you noticed the determination in her eyes and posture. “I don’t understand it, and at the time, I didn’t know that’s what I was feeling, but we all felt it, pulling us toward you.” I nodded.

  “All of you are from North America,” I said. “United States and Canada.” I paused. “You have seen the chaos there as well.”

  “Those ugly-ass things? Yeah, we’ve seen them. And we can kill them, too,” she said with a short nod.

  I smiled. “Those may be the most beautiful words I have ever heard, Guardian,” I said, and she laughed. “Assuming, of course, that you are joining us?”

  “I don’t know what else I’d be doing with my time. Clearly, I was meant for this. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s better than being alone and invisible, or, worse, weak and unable to do a damn thing about it,” she said, and the rest of them nodded in agreement.

  “Excellent. Let’s get everyone caught up then, shall we?”

  We sat in the church, on the few remaining pews, and, some of us, on the dusty, dry floor, and I filled the new members of my team, those who had finally completed us, on what exactly it is that we were facing. For a moment, I considered keeping Nyx’s ultimatum to myself, but I knew that these were the only beings in existence who could actually change anything.

  “I have something more,” I said quietly once we went over the current disaster areas in terms of the undead, the human unrest, the possibility of government-sanctioned attacks on us… the new members of the team already looked more than a bit overwhelmed, but they needed to be told.

  “Boss?” Quinn asked, raising his eyebrows.

  “Do you know who Nyx is?” I asked, and, as I expected, each of them shook their head. I rested my elbows on my knees and looked out the tall arched window into the night sky. “She is the creator of all existence. She created the stars, the planets, the Earth, and all the life that inhabits it. She created me and you and all of the other immortals. She is a God among gods,” I said. My Guardians were silent, each watching me closely. “She is the grandmother of my Queen, our Queen, Mollis Eth-Hades. Mollis was faced with many, many immortal enemies once it became known who she was. She upset the balance, permanently. The one thing Nyx worships is balance, and, to keep the balance, and, I believe, to protect her granddaughter and this world, she closed the gateway between this realm and our original home realms, the Aether and the Nether. As a result, those of us here were stranded in this realm, and, exhausted by her work, Nyx fell into what was to be an eternal sleep.”

  “But something changed?” Margaret asked.

  I nodded. “The undead have tipped the balance. Destroyed it. And we have been unable to get them in check, no matter how tirelessly we fight them. Nyx is… displeased,” I finished.

  “So, is she gonna get off her godly ass and help us, then?” Quinn demanded. I shushed him and looked around, practically expecting Nyx to be standing there, glowering at us.

  “What?” he asked, and the others started moving, ever-so-slightly, away from him.

  I glared at Quinn. “Do not anger her further, please.”

  “What? It was a fair question. If this bothers her so much, she can come and help us. We could use all the help we can get.”

  “It does not work that way. Nyx cannot do that.”

  “She’s the Creator, right? She can do whatever the hell she wants.”

  I shook my head. “She can create, and she can destroy in the name of creation. She cannot act beyond that. It is not in her nature. That is why she created all of us.”

  Quinn sighed. “Of course she can’t.”

  “She is unhappy, as I said,” I continued. “She came back, with the intention of ending this world and starting over new.”

  “What?” several of my New Guardians exclaimed. Some of them stood. Claire started praying (to whom, I have no idea), and Erin put her head between her knees.

  “I talked her into giving us some time,” I said, raising my voice to be heard above the chaos.

  “How much time?”

  “Until the full moon,” I answered in a small voice.

  “We have two weeks… two weeks! To accomplish something we’ve been failing miserably at for almost a year. And if we fail again, the world ends. Are you fucking kidding me with this?” Quinn asked. It was not his usual loud, robust attitude. He sounded broken, defeated. Hopeless.

  He sounded the way I felt.

  “It is not hopeless. I have to believe that,” I said, meeting his eyes, but speaking to all of them. “The fact that we have new Guardians among us, the fact that our number is now thirteen again… I have to believe that is significant. A sign. At the very least, our number has nearly doubled. We are far better off than we were before.”

  “When the fuck’d you become an optimist?” Quinn asked. His arms were crossed over his chest, his shoulders tense. I had come to know Quinn very well since he’d come into my life. He was my second-in-command, the one who took this role just as seriously as I did, who gave absolutely everything to it. All of my Guardians were dedicated, but Quinn seemed to have embraced his duty with the same zealotry I had been accused of for my entire existence.

  “It is not optimism,” I told him. “I cannot sit here thinking about what will happen if we fail. We cannot fail this. It is that, or lose everything.” My voice caught, and I looked away. I would not cry in front of those I was supposed to be leading. “We cannot fail,” I repeated, thinking of Brennan and his blue eyes and warm, strong arms and the way I felt truly alive when I was with him. I thought of the way I had pushed him away, over and over again.

  Wasted time. I closed my eyes. I had wasted so much time, so many opportunities to let him know how I felt. And now, I had no more time to give him, not if I wanted even the smallest chance of saving us.

  “Excuse me,” I said. I did not wait for a response. I walked out of the front doors of the church and into the frigid night. I welcomed the bite of the cold breeze through my clothing. I looked up at the sky, remembering the night I’d truly fallen in love with the shifter. We had flown together over Tokyo, in a clear, dark sky, and I had never felt so close to anyone. It had felt as though our hearts had been one, as if we understood one another in a way no one else ever had.

  When had I let that slip away?

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and hit Brennan’s number. I waited as it rang, two, three, four times. My heart sped up when I heard his voice, only to sink when I realized that it was his voicemail.

  And yet, just hearing his voice was like a balm to my soul. His message ended, and I paused for a moment. “It is me. I just wanted to tell you that I love you. I miss you.” I paused again and looked around, toward the church, and then up at the dark sky. “We had some good news today. Six New Guardians found Quinn and the others. We are back to thirteen. That must be a good thing, I think.” I bit my lip. “I am bad at talking on these things. I love you. See you soon. Be careful,” I added, and then I pressed the end call symbol. I stood, looking at my phone, trying to will him to call me back. But of course, he wouldn’t. Like me, he was burning the candle at both ends, fighting to save a world that seemed more doomed to destruction every moment.

  And he didn’t even know how truly accurate that was. I felt another pang of guilt, added to so many others, for keeping that fact from him. I turned back to the church to see my New Guardians, both old and new, standing on the steps watching me. Waiting for me to do what I am supposed to do: lead them.
r />   I met Quinn’s eyes. “Guardians. Let’s hunt.”

  Chapter Ten

  We hunted for four days. Paris, London, and Tokyo had been where we’d focused our energy, as a team, and we had swept through each city destroying the undead and taking in any souls we could find before they could be turned. We did not rest. Each kill energized us, reminded us that this was what we were created for, and that it is the one thing we all knew how to do.

  It reminded us of our purpose, and that, when it comes down to it, we are damn good at what we do.

  On the fifth day, our hunt was interrupted by the sight of bombs dropping from the sky.

  We were in London, and it was just before sunrise. We’d finished taking in the last of the souls we’d collected on the East End. I was all too aware of the nearness of our flat, of my desire to chuck it all and go home. That thought alone was utterly ridiculous, and very much not me.

  At least, it hadn’t been, until Brennan had come into my life.

  I stood, looking in the direction of our flat, as if there was any point in doing such a thing, when we heard a whooshing, whistling sound overhead. Before I realized what it was, I saw the flash of its impact, and I knew, without even having to see, that its target had been our home.

  My Guardians all stared at me, and we immediately rematerialized. In the next moment, I found myself standing just outside of our building. A crowd had gathered, all of them staring up at the sky, where what appeared to be an invisible bubble seemed to have caught and contained the bomb that was supposed to destroy my husband and the rest of his family.

  I started running toward the building when Brennan came out, carrying Sean on his hip. He was on his phone, and Artemis was right behind him, on her phone as well. Though I could not decipher her words over the talking and exclamations of the crowd that had gathered, it was easy to see that she was enraged. Brennan, for his part, seemed much calmer, unless one knew what to look for. I took a step toward him at the same moment he glanced up toward me. Our eyes met, and he hung up his phone. I jogged the last few steps between us and threw myself into his arms.