Death Before Dawn

by Amelia Hutchins

  “The worst possible thing ever,” he grinned. “Lailah is blissfully mated to Adriel, the Guardian of Death who is based outside Rome.” He chuckled at me, and I punched him in the arm and rolled my eyes.

  “Anyway, your mother knew I was getting close to what she was up to, so she faked her own death. I attended the funeral, figuring that Trina’s narcissistic ways would make her attend her own funeral. She didn’t show, not even to check on you. I stood beside you, watching this fierce little thing fight through her emotions. I felt your anger, the betrayal, but more, I felt that you knew she wasn’t dead. You only cried once, and you pushed the emotions down and boxed them away. You felt her, but you were uncertain how or why you knew she was alive. I stood inches away from you while you stood proudly beside your father. You brushed up against me, and I feared my touch would kill you. It was the first time I’d ever been afraid since I’d become immortal. Yet you just turned, looked into my eyes, and smiled with this life inside of you that drew me in. It’s when I knew you were my mate and that the teachings had to be flawed if you existed now. I had to leave you for a while, to discover what ploy your mother was making, but you were never truly alone. When you went through puberty, I began to be able to catch glimpses of your life through your eyes; more details would happen in dreams. It’s how I first watched you with Jaeden. I tried to separate it so that I wasn’t trespassing, but if I was sleeping when you were together, it became my nightmares, which weren’t dreams at all.”

  “I’m not sure how to process that, since I’ve felt alone for a long time. Now I find out that you were always there? Since I was born?” I questioned.

  “Longer, if you consider the time I spent watching your mother while you were in her womb,” he said offhandedly as he stood and dusted off his jeans, extending his hand for me. I accepted it, smelling the storm in the evening air. “A storm approaches.”

  “I can smell it.” I dusted myself as well, and felt like I was grieving the loss of the beauty and fresh air as we started towards the house. I’d made it a few yards before he picked me up. “I can walk, my feet work.”

  “They’re already sore from running through the woods. You weigh next to nothing; it’s not a hardship to carry your slight weight.”

  “Wow, you really know the way to a woman’s heart,” I grumbled.

  “I could drop you on your ass,” he laughed, and I turned to look up at him, my laughter dying in my throat. His eyes were smiling, right along with his mouth, and he was fucking beautiful. I hadn’t seen him like this; this carefree smiling version of him disarmed me. I stared at him, as if seeing him for the first time. “Girl, you keep looking at me like that and…” Thunder exploded in the sky, shaking the ground and cutting him off.

  “How many women have you been with?” I asked, sallying forth into foreign territory. His inability to touch anyone else had piqued my curiosity.

  “Many; I started out as a human, remember?” He looked up at the sky, as if he was judging how long it would take for the storm to reach us. “Unlike you, I knew what I was supposed to become. Don’t worry, I promise you that I am very skilled in the bedroom.”

  “So what was it like?” I asked.

  “Fucking?” He smirked as he carried me through the woods. I hadn’t noticed just how far I’d run until I was being carried back.

  “No, knowing you’d be unable to touch another person,” I clarified.

  “When I first found out what I was going to be, I didn’t believe it,” he chuckled, even though we were about to get drenched from the fast-moving storm. “I just spent a lot of time in beds, not fully understanding what I would become. When I’d given up on the idea that I would actually be a Death Guardian, it happened. I wasn’t given warning, I just changed,” he said, lost in thought.

  Something passed over his face before he concealed it, and I wondered if he’d hurt someone he’d cared about when he’d discovered his touch was poison. I leaned up and kissed him before I’d even thought about it. He released me, letting my feet touch the ground as he deepened the kiss, his hands wrapped around my waist, holding me in place. The sky let loose, and rain pelted us as we ignored it. He lifted me up, kissing me as we made our way towards the house. His hands tugged at my shirt and I considered letting him do it, but the thought of doing it without first speaking with Jaeden stopped me. I pulled away from his kiss and shook my head.

  “You can’t just be hot and then cold, Emma,” he growled. I knew he was frustrated, because I was, too. I wanted him, and it scared the shit out of me.

  “I just can’t do this with you!” I shouted over the rain. It hadn’t come out right. He made my brain turn off with his addictive kisses, and then I ended up saying things horribly wrong.

  “Why? Because Jaeden’s so fucking faithful to you, is that it? He’s a fucking monster! Do you know how he’s spent his time? He hasn’t even fucking started looking for you! He’s spent this entire time feeding and fucking,” he growled. “If it was me and you’d been taken from me, I’d never stop looking. I’d tear this world apart to find you!”

  “You’re lying!” I shouted back, and he smiled coldly as he grabbed me roughly. I felt the world spin around us and I held on to him as if he would somehow anchor me. One minute we were in the woods, and then towns and cities passed by as we stopped, only to be propelled forward again swiftly.

  When he finally stopped moving, I gasped. We were standing in the same place where he’d taken me from. He’d stopped teleporting us, or whatever the hell it was that he did when he moved so fast, but what I saw made my world spin much faster than he ever could. The streets seemed to be bathed in blood. The cages that had once been full of victims held nothing but corpses. As if they’d opened them only to bring their victims out to slaughter them before returning the lifeless bodies back to their prisons. Shamus was leaning over a girl who couldn’t be more than twelve or so, and he was still feeding from the corpse even though she’d long ago expired from blood loss.

  My stomach rolled and nausea swirled viciously inside of it. I turned, finding Lachlan and his men camped close by, trying to ignore the macabre debauchery of the vampires.

  “Emma?” Lachlan called out, as if we had startled them, but Lachlan didn’t move. No one did.

  I looked at the ground, watching a river of blood as it flowed in pools and down the sides of the road. As if the rain had followed us here, and was cleansing the earth from the bloodbath. Only, it hadn’t followed us here. There was no rain; it was blood from the bodies that littered the sidewalk.

  “Emma,” Jaeden’s voice pulled me from the horror show, and I looked at him.

  He was drenched in blood. His shirt was covered in both dried and freshly spilled blood. A woman screamed from the tent he’d just left, and crawled out with her throat exposed, naked. She had a deep gash in it, and even I could see she was bleeding to death slowly.

  I stepped back as he took his first step towards me. I shook my head. This wasn’t right. Azrael had taken me from this place days ago, and Jaeden hadn’t even tried to find me? He was supposed to love me! Why hadn’t he come? Why hadn’t he even tried?

  The woman stretched her hand towards me, and I gagged as her blood flowed to meet with the other blood that pooled beside the tent he’d been in. How many other bodies were inside that tent?

  “I told you she’d be back,” Astrid snapped. “Oh look, she brought fresh meat,” she chimed in as she noticed Azrael in his armor behind me.

  A loud slurping noise pulled my eyes back to a feral Shamus, who smiled around his mouthful of teenager. Lachlan said my name again, and I shook my head; it was all wrong. Lachlan was my friend and he hadn’t tried to find me, either. More people started coming out of tents, all covered in blood. I stepped back.

  “Emma, come to me, now,” Jaeden ordered with his hand reaching to me, but it was covered in blood. Ju
st like the rest of him.

  “You didn’t come,” I whispered. “You didn’t even try?”

  “Emma…” he called softly, but I turned away from him, burying my face against Azrael’s armor.

  “Take me home,” I cried, wrapping my arms around him, letting his warmth seep into my frozen soul. They hadn’t even tried to look for me.

  I’d been missing for days, and while I hadn’t expected them to save me, I had expected my friends to at least look for me. They could have made some effort. I would have if it had been one of them. I was in my current predicament because I had risked myself to free them.

  The world faded away, and with it, the pain of what I’d been forced to face. No one had looked for me, because feeding and murdering those people had been more important to them than I was. Jaeden hadn’t even bothered to try.

  Chapter 20

  When the earth finally stopped spinning, I realized we were back at Azrael’s home. Unsteadily, I stepped away from Azrael and spun around to face him. He smiled coldly, and all I wanted to do was smack the smugness off his face. I raised my hand as tears started to slide down my cheeks, and slapped him.

  “You knew!” I slapped him again, and he grabbed my arms and pulled me close. A sob ripped from my chest and I shook with anger, pain, and the worst of all, denial.

  “If I had told you what they were up to, you’d have called me a liar. I had to show you. You have to understand what they truly are,” he murmured against my hair.

  “I hate you!” I sobbed, trembling and shaking as pain and anger pulsed through me. He picked me up and carried me through the door, kicking it closed behind him, and moved with me to the couch, where he held me until I couldn’t cry anymore. I was a mess, and when I turned towards him and tried to kiss him, he stopped me. He stood up, dropping me on the couch.

  “I’m not your fallback, Emma. I’m not your second fucking choice. You hurt; you want to get back at him. I get it, but no matter how much I want you, I’m not your fucking rebound. When I take you, it will be because you’ve accepted what we are, not because your ego or your heart is hurting. I’m willing to wait for you to come to terms with it, to get over the pain he’s put you through. I can wait, even if it takes you centuries to figure shit out. You need someone to hold you, fine; I’ll do it. I’m not the guy you can slip and fall on my dick, then hate me because you regret what we did in the morning. Go to bed. You need to sleep; you look like hell.”

  He left the room, and I tilted my head. Yeah, I obviously had a sign on my back that said ‘kick me’. I leaned back and screamed. I hated this place; I hated him for being right. I hated Jaeden for being what he was. He killed that woman, I was sure of it. Hell, he may have killed most of them! I was an idiot. I hated myself most of all for being weak. I was stronger than this!

  I just wanted to find Grayson and go home, to go back to thinking I was human before I’d stepped into this mess of immortals. I wanted the world back to normal, and if what Azrael said was true, I wished he had done his damn job. I wished he’d had enough information in time and just finished my mother, so that my father would still be alive and Grayson would be home, safe.

  I missed Addy and the day-to-day shit the Ark took to run. I missed my world, the one I’d lived in before I’d met Jaeden.

  I closed my eyes as I was picked up and carried into the bedroom. He loomed over me, and shook his head, as if he was trying to figure something out.

  “I’m sorry for taking you there like that. Like I said, it wasn’t something that I could just tell you. You wouldn’t have believed me and all that would have happened is you would have hated me.” His voice was gentle and laced with remorse. “He’s healing; blood is the only way he can do it. He’s a fucking parasite. It doesn’t change what I said in the other room; if you need me to do something…” He scratched his neck and frowned. “Like hold you, I will. I’ll be whatever you need me to be. Just not a second choice or the one you use to get over him. I don’t want to be something you regret. I’ve waited too long for you to have you regret anything with me.”

  I nodded. “Will you stay with me? Just until I fall asleep…or whatever,” I whispered as I wiped away the tears. “I just don’t want to be alone right now.”

  “Scoot over,” he ordered softly, removing his shirt to reveal his chiseled chest and washboard abs. I crawled further onto the bed and turned towards the heat his body offered as he lay next to me. “You’re a bed hog, Emma,” he grunted, as he pushed me onto my side and pulled me against himself.

  “Do you miss it?” I whispered.

  “Do I miss what?” he asked.

  “Touching people,” I murmured as I snuggled closer into his arms. “Like this.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever held anyone else quite like this.” His hand rubbed lightly, soothingly along my arm. “When I first found out about what I would be, I didn’t really think about how much it would bother me. After my full powers came in, I think I missed the simple things the most. Things like having to worry about my proximity to other people and fearing that the most casual of touches would kill them, or not being able to comfort a soldier as he died on the battlefield; if I touched them, they would die in more pain than they already were in. Eventually I formed armor, a solid manifestation of what most Sentinels project. I’ve tweaked and modified it over the years to what it is now. It prevents innocents from dying, but it also prevents me from ever feeling human flesh. Until you.” I could feel his breath across my ear, and the tone of his voice was gentle and reassuring in the darkness.

  I nodded and shifted to get a little more comfortable.

  “Emma, I’m not a fucking saint,” he groaned in a deep rumble that sent shivers racing down my spine. “Keep moving that ass and we’ll both regret shit come morning.”

  “Noted,” I quipped softly. His arms wrapped around me and his lips touched my neck.

  “I’m an asshole for showing you that. I regretted it the moment we entered that camp. I haven’t had to care about people’s feelings for a very long time.”

  “I wanted to kill them,” I admitted into the dark room. “All of them, and I knew he was healing; he was really bad off when you took me. I could see the huge chunks they’d taken out of his body; but earlier, the feelings I had, it was like I had never seen what those assholes had done to him. I had this sick urge to kill them all, and Lachlan wasn’t even a part of it. His pack doesn’t feed from humans.”

  “It wasn’t because of what he’d done. It was because of what he is. It doesn’t make you a bad person for wanting to avenge those who had been needlessly slaughtered. Your job is to preserve life, mine is to take it. You felt the need to save them even though they were dead. I felt the need to help the vampires in the slaughter. It’s who we are. It takes a lot of control to not indulge in needless bloodshed. I’ve had centuries to learn control. You, on the other hand, have not. There is so much you still need to learn about our race.”

  “The people you collected, why did you save them?” I asked.

  “Because our job isn’t just to save them, it’s to help them continue to thrive. Humans tend to take each other out more than other creatures do. We’ve helped them rebuild before; the black plague was one such instance. At the time, it struck down most of the world’s population.”

  “Most of the population?” I questioned.

  “Records of it weren’t well-kept, so most humans don’t know exactly how many died. They estimate it was close to a third of the world’s population that died of it over a ten-year period. The numbers were higher than the historians estimated and it went on longer than they thought, not to mention, the plague kept cropping back up. We control history, therefore whatever spin we want to put on the situation, the humans will believe it. Those who were hidden from the plague rebuilt, but they didn’t do it alone. Of course, back then information was easier to co
ntrol. They didn’t have cell phones or media. They got word from those who survived in other locations…which was us, sending false hope.”

  “False hope is mean,” I commented.

  “False hope is better than no hope. Humans need hope to survive tragic events. The plague struck down people in staggering numbers. By the time we were able to intervene and get in front of it, not as many had survived as historians thought. We have been with the humans since the beginning of time, though, so those who were with us bred more humans, and their children and so forth. When the world is in trouble, we repair and redirect it, little phoenix. This is just a snippet of what you would have learned as a child had your mother taught you as was her responsibility.”

  “I’m kinda glad she ditched me. If she hadn’t, I may have been someone else. I’m glad my father raised me and Grayson. It made us who we are. He taught us to help those who couldn’t help themselves,” I replied, feeling unsure if I wanted to know more of what he had to teach me. I wasn’t sure I was ready to know it.

  “She wasn’t always as she is now. She was once a respected Sentinel, one who would move mountains to help this world. Your mother is very old, but somewhere along the way, she changed. She became greedy for power, wealth, and then she decided she wanted to control the world as she thinks Sentinels should. It wasn’t what we were created for. We’re watchers; when humans are in trouble, we intervene and help. They’re God’s favored children. We were created to protect them. Sometimes even from themselves. They’re still a young race, and youth tends to be resilient.”

  “Why save them? Why not let them just work it out on their own?” I asked.

  “Because they’re unable to thrive through a virus such as the one your mother helped release on them,” he murmured against my ear. “Too many were lost and the monstrous few are systematically enslaving or snuffing out those that remain.”