Valen (Guardians of Hades Romance Series Book 2)

by Felicity Heaton

  The way he had looked in the moment before he had disappeared flashed across her eyes. So much darkness. So much fury.

  She leaped back when he suddenly bellowed and clutched his head, bending forwards as he yelled at the floor.

  The dance floor broke into pandemonium, people pushing for the exit while others scrambled back towards the tables, heading for friends or their belongings.

  “Valen?” she whispered, her hands shaking as she reached for him, her instincts blaring a warning at her that she refused to heed.

  He wasn’t going to hurt her.

  She hoped.

  The man with the broken nose spoke as he pulled himself onto his feet, muttering it beneath his breath but the music ended abruptly just as he said it, the DJ deciding it was time to join everyone else in trying to get away from the fight.

  “Woman that hot is wasted on you. I just wanted to see if she would trade up.”

  Eva wanted to hit him herself for that one.

  Valen beat her to it.

  With a feral growl, he launched himself at the man, tackling him back to the ground. The entire room froze as they went at it, exchanging punches as they rolled around, kicking at each other. She didn’t like the man’s odds. Valen landed twice as many blows as they brawled, and the man was clumsy in his attacks, obviously untrained.

  She needed to do something or he was going to end up dead.

  She grabbed Valen’s arm when he went to swing another punch at his foe.

  He froze and slowly turned his head towards her, his golden eyes turning darker than black as he looked at her hand where it gripped his arm, stopping him from hitting the man.

  Eva realised her mistake around a second before he shoved to his feet, grabbed the man by his throat and threw him across the room as if he weighed nothing.

  She had defended the man.

  “It isn’t what you—”

  Valen shoved her aside and she grunted as she hit the black bar, pain shooting outwards from her back. She bent forwards and gritted her teeth, eyes watering as she struggled to shut down the pain and push it out of her body. The sound of glass smashing, the cries of women, and pained groans and muffled grunts of a fight surrounded her, blending in her ears into one cacophony.

  She had been in bar fights before.

  Eva lifted her head and looked around her.

  But none of them had been like this.

  None of the fighters had been like him.

  Valen didn’t even flinch as several men attacked him, striking him with broken glass bottles and chair legs, trying to beat him down. He fought back against them all, never surrendering even an inch of ground to them, taking each blow he couldn’t block and still managing to land some of his own.

  Another man flew across the room to land at her feet, his face a bloodied mess as he wheezed.

  She looked from him to Valen, her eyes going wide again as he slammed his fist into a table one opponent shoved at him and the thick wood shattered as though it was made of flimsy tinder.

  A man came around behind him and Valen spun on his heel, and she gasped as she saw the state of him.

  Lacerations covered his chest, long rips in his black t-shirt exposing them to her eyes, and a thick gash darted up the right side of his neck and over his jaw, the cut deep and bleeding heavily.

  The fear that had been gripping her disappeared, blasted away by the sight of him.

  She had to stop him before he got himself killed.

  Eva shoved away from the bar.

  And collapsed to her knees, shock rocking her as five tall men appeared around Valen and a sixth just poofed out of nowhere a few metres away, this one bringing a woman with him.

  What the ever living fuck?

  She stared, slack jawed, as the five men worked to contain Valen, unable to compute what she had just witnessed, even when it backed up what had dawned on her when her memories of last night had completed themselves.

  People could teleport.

  Valen snarled and growled like a wild thing, fighting the men as they tried to overpower him, and an urge rushed through her, commanding her to rise onto her feet and help him. These men all out-muscled and outweighed her, but she was damned if she was going to stand by and let them treat him so roughly when he was hurt.

  She shoved onto her feet.

  Someone grabbed her arm and held her back, their grip fierce and unrelenting.

  “Do not interfere.” A man. She looked up at him and found kind dark eyes watching her and a rough yet handsome face warmed by a smile that seemed out of place in the current situation. Unruly dark waves caressed his forehead and curled against his neck, brushing sun-kissed skin. “Valen just needs to calm down.”

  They knew him then?

  “Dial it back, Brother,” the one with long blond hair said and held his hands out in front of him, palms facing Valen as Valen turned on him with a snarl.

  A white-haired man eased around behind Valen, and one with overlong black hair that was similar to Valen’s in style but hung over the left side of his face and had been shaved neatly around the sides, not hacked, moved in from the other side. They were flanking him. His eyes darted between them all, shifting to whoever had moved last, but kept returning to the one nearest to her.

  A tall man with a physique that matched Valen’s, wild short black hair, and sideburns that reached low on his cheeks and came down at an angle, tapering to a point that accented his sculpted cheekbones. A long black coat hugged his slender frame, flaring from his waist to almost brush the heels of his polished black shoes.

  Valen’s eyes narrowed on him and his right hand went to the thin black braid around his left wrist.

  All six men tensed.

  “I would not do that, little brother.” The tall black-haired man’s smooth voice held a note of warning, a thinly veiled threat that things would get bloody if Valen disobeyed him.

  Valen pulled on the band.

  The man disappeared into a swirl of black smoke and reappeared behind Valen, his left hand landing on Valen’s shoulder and his right hand catching Valen’s to stop him from snapping the band.

  “You need to sleep it off,” the man said.

  Valen’s face twisted in disgust.

  He collapsed.

  The man caught him and gently lowered him to the floor. The same floor that felt as if it was pitching and rolling now, unstable beneath her trembling legs. She struggled for air, sucked down breath after breath that did nothing to stop her head from spinning.

  What the fuck was happening?

  Who the hell were these people?

  Who the hell was Valen?

  His words rang in her twirling mind.

  The stuff of dreams and nightmares.

  Her legs gave out. The man’s hand on her arm stopped her from hitting the floor. He pulled her back onto her feet and shifted his grip to hold her upright.

  The black-haired man looked from Valen to her, the concern that had been filling his green eyes disappearing in a heartbeat, turning them as cold and hard as emeralds.

  “How long can you hold them, Keras?” the white-haired one said to him and something dawned on her.

  The other people weren’t moving.

  She stared at everyone else in the bar, cold crawling over her skin beneath her clothes, fear that trickled into her blood and turned it to icy sludge.

  Everything was frozen in place.

  Not just the people as they stood like statues, some running for the exit while others reached for objects they could use as weapons.

  Those objects too.

  A broken bottle hung suspended in the air just behind the white-haired one, levitating there.

  God, she was losing her mind.

  The one the man had called Keras pinched the bridge of his nose and frowned. “I do not know. Long enough, I hope.”

  Long enough for what?

  “Get to work,” Keras barked and they all burst into action, moving between the frozen people and pres
sing two fingers to each of their temples.

  Even her guard left her.

  Eva eyed Valen where he lay on the floor in the middle of the room, blood trickling from his wounds, torn between going to him and running like hell.

  She didn’t want to leave him with these men, but if they were his brothers, they would take care of him. There had been concern in Keras’s eyes when he had been looking at Valen. She had to believe that he wasn’t going to hurt him.

  She had to because if she stayed here, she was ninety-nine percent certain she was going to pass out just like Valen had, but without any assistance from his magical, god-only-knew-what, brother.

  Eva sidestepped.

  Keras’s green eyes snapped to her.

  Damn.

  He stalked towards her, his long black coat flaring around his ankles in a way that looked unnatural. Eerie.

  She backed away and hit the bar. Trapped.

  “Do you have any idea how difficult it will be to remedy this?” he snapped and something flashed in his green eyes, something that reminded her of how Valen had looked before he had turned into a raging, savage and dangerous beast bent on destroying everything and everyone in the bar.

  No.

  The darkness in Keras went far beyond what she had seen in Valen’s eyes.

  “Tone,” someone muttered.

  It might have been the brunet who had appeared with the woman.

  Keras scowled in his direction anyway.

  When he looked back at her, the darkness in his eyes was gone, and it struck her that he was as stupidly handsome as Benares. Probably just as dangerous too. What gene pool had they crawled out of?

  She looked past him to Valen and her heart kicked up a notch, beating harder against her ribs. Blood had pooled in the cuts on his face, and formed a line across his cheek from the left corner of his mouth, but even with all the bruises and blood, and the scar, he was still more handsome to her than Keras or Benares.

  He made her heart pound.

  Keras cleared his throat and her gaze zipped back to him.

  “What happened?” he said, his tone softer now, and she was sure the one who had muttered before about his tone praised him for it.

  “I told him to have a drink and unwind… I didn’t know—”

  “Fuck,” someone cut her off.

  “Fuck indeed,” another replied.

  The built-like-a-body-builder brunet with the woman grimaced. “We’re in trouble now.”

  “He did make a mess.” She felt small when they all turned to glare at her and shrank back against the bar.

  “It is not the mess.” This time it was the one who had held her arm.

  He seemed far nicer than the others, that smile still in place, warming his rough features. He had the build of the other brunet, but he wasn’t wearing a coat like that man and the others. A pale linen shirt hugged his broad chest, hanging loose over a pair of dark linen trousers, and his toes poked out of the end of his sandals.

  “We are not allowed to drink alcohol.” Keras. He looked as if he meant it too, which caused a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach. “He knew better.”

  “He always knows better… never stops him though, does it?” The white-haired one again, and the look he threw at Valen made her want to scream at him that she had made him do it.

  Valen had told her how many times that he couldn’t drink it? She had practically forced it down his throat.

  The look on all of their faces said they had made up their mind though. They thought Valen had done it on purpose. He had. But not to get any of them or himself into trouble. He had done it for information.

  The blond man who looked the youngest of the group at barely thirty and the one with black hair styled similar to Valen’s picked him up off the floor, holding him between them.

  Keras turned his back on her and looked at the other three men. “Make it quick.”

  “What are you going to do?” Eva lunged forwards, afraid they were going to hurt Valen.

  She ran straight into Keras’s arm and grunted as it slammed hard against her chest, knocking the wind from her. He turned glacial green eyes on her.

  “Memory alteration.” The way he said that, his voice dark and cold, devoid of any emotion, sent a shudder through her and had her easing back a step and looking for the nearest exit.

  She had seen enough strange things in the past twenty-four hours to believe these men were capable of such a thing.

  He stared down into her eyes and slowly shifted to face her, and the ice in her veins grew thicker.

  The frozen people in the club weren’t the only ones about to get their brains meddled with.

  She swallowed hard.

  He was going to mess with hers too.

  Eva blurted the first thing that came to her.

  “I have valuable information.”

  The body-builder stopped halfway through saying something to the petite brunette he had brought with him and looked across at Keras. “She the girl?”

  The girl?

  “It would seem so.” Keras ran a glance over her, and then looked back at Valen where he hung between the two men. “What have you gotten yourself into now?”

  “Will he… will he be okay?” Her voice was small, but it seemed loud in the silent room. Everyone stared at her, shock written across their faces this time. Even the kind brunet looked surprised.

  “As far as we know, you have tried to kill our brother several times,” Keras snapped, his eyes flashing dangerously as he closed in on her. “Why the hell do you care if he will be alright?”

  She didn’t have an answer to that.

  “I shouldn’t. Right?” She wasn’t sure why she was tossing that question out there, as if they could tell her at what point she had lost her mind and gone completely off the rails, undoing years of self-discipline and training, and tossing all of her instincts as an assassin aside. She looked back at Valen, her chest warming at the sight of him, even as fear for him flooded her veins. “But I do.”

  The six men all exchanged a look.

  “What are you going to do to him?” She bravely met Keras’s cold eyes.

  She wasn’t sure she could take him in a fight. Something about him warned her not to even try, but the rest of her was ignoring it and gearing up for one, her mind sharpening and instincts firing as she secretly assessed everyone in the room, trying to discern their weaknesses.

  “You should be more concerned about what we might do to you.”

  Her gun was in her hand in a flash and she had it aimed at him before he could react.

  When he did react, it was nothing more than a slight quirk of his right eyebrow.

  Not quite what she had expected.

  Someone chuckled.

  “She has fight. I like her,” the woman said and received a round of chastising looks from the men.

  The big brunet slung his arm around her shoulders and tugged her against him. “You would. She takes after you. Waving a gun in my brother’s face to protect one of us.”

  Eva was tempted to look at the woman and see whether she had done just that, but kept her eyes locked on Keras. His face remained impassive and her nerve started to crumble as he just stood there and stared at her, as if waiting for her to make her move.

  “You’re not going to hurt him.” She pulled the hammer back.

  Keras took her statement as a question.

  “Of course not. As annoying as he can be, he is our brother. Why in our father’s good and gracious name would we hurt him?” He shook his head and turned away from her.

  Eva frowned at the back of his head. Wait. She did have a gun, didn’t she? Yes, there it was in her hand, aimed at him, ready to fire. Why the hell wasn’t he reacting? Why was he acting as if she posed no threat to him at all?

  “You’re not going to hurt me either, Stronzo.” She squeezed the trigger.

  He disappeared.

  She gasped as a hand materialised out of thin air and knocked the gun up jus
t as it fired, sending the bullet blasting into the ceiling, and another hand grasped her throat, fingers pressing into it and sending pain radiating through her bones.

  Those fingers shifted, closing over her jaw, and Keras pulled her head down as his lips found her right ear.

  “See him,” he whispered into it, his voice a dark menacing snarl that sent a cold shiver down her spine as she looked at Valen. “He is the only reason you are still alive. Not the information you have in this head I could pick apart in seconds, or that pathetic weapon in your hand. Him.”

  “Why?” That question trembled on her lips.

  “Because something tells me alcohol is not the reason he just tried to destroy this bar.”

  The black-haired one holding Valen’s arm scowled at her, his blue eyes eerily bright in the low light.

  The blond one on the other side of Valen looked across at him. “Let’s take him home, Esher. Everything is good here.”

  They disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.

  Eva stood frozen to the spot, fear like acid in her veins, her hand shaking hard against the gun.

  Keras whispered into her ear, his words the most sinister and terrifying thing she had ever heard in all her years as an assassin.

  “You have a lot of explaining to do.”

  She read between the lines to the threat hidden within.

  If he didn’t like what she had to say, she was a dead woman.

  CHAPTER 10

  Green splashed across his vision. Black intersected it. Gold made it shine.

  Crimson stained it.

  Twin orbs of that dreadful scarlet hovered before him, trembling against the hazy backdrop of emerald, obsidian and sunshine.

  Light that had left this world.

  But wasn’t destined for the next.

  Cold stole through him, numbing his flesh, chilling his bones. It took everything from him at first, washing it all away, leaving nothing.

  Nothing.

  Crimson.

  It wavered before his eyes, out of focus, suspended above the dying light.

  A light that had left his world.

  Plunged it into darkness.

  Fire began in the hollow pit of his chest, born of the fragile emotions piecing themselves back together. Piecing him back together.