Darkest Before Dawn (A Guardian's Diary Book 1)

by Amelia Hutchins

  “And what if I only want your name?” he asked softly.

  “Emma, you want us to head back?” Greta asked as they walked out from the building and joined us.

  I shook my head. “Well, I guess you have it now.”

  “Emma.” He tested my name on his tongue and for some reason; it rolled through my vagina and bounced off my rib cage before hitting my nipples and turning them hard. I may have been a virgin still, but my body belonged to a slut! Moisture pooled between my thighs, and the only thing he’d done, was say my name. “I guess I’ll have to think of something else you can owe me,” he smiled and walked off, leaving all the girls drooling in his wake.

  “He has got some friggin’ nerve!” I snapped.

  “Look at that ass!” Greta said.

  “Um, if I have to choose between going back to the shelter, and him, I’m choosing him.” Jillian whipped her hair back, which was her signature move for flirting—it had been since first grade.

  “Momma wants some!” Kaylah chimed in.

  I tore my eyes from them, back at him just in time for him to look back and wink at me. “Get in the hummer,” I growled.

  “I’d give him a hummer,” Jillian laughed.

  I shook my head; yup, it was official. I had a land, it was called Hussy, and I was its queen.

  Chapter 5

  I spent the next day handing out care packages to the families that lived deep in the woods. I’d brought the ATV, since most lived in places cars and my bike wouldn’t reach. I was at my last stop for the day, and the sun had already begun to set for the night. I rounded the bend and turned off the ATV, but even from the distance I had parked away from my destination, I could tell that something seemed off.

  If I’d been smarter, I would have run. Really, my brain was playing that annoying eighties song asking: should I stay or should I go now. Yup, I was a dork that way. I had theme music for every kind of situation. If the Jaws music started playing, I was seriously out of here.

  I rounded the corner of the cabin, and stopped cold. Blood! Danger! I was torn, because I knew this family. I’d gone to school with Karen, and she’d just had a baby. I could hear whimpered cries from inside, but the amount of blood that was dried and caked on the porch told me someone had died…gruesomely.

  I strained my reserve and my spine, which was bent and twisted and wanted to run away, and pulled out one of my knives. I crept slowly up to the door, and listened. The whimpering noises were faint and other than that, the house was silent. I turned and peeked my head inside, only to gag as the smell of death hung putrid in the stale air.

  There were a few things you got used to in this new world. The smell of death however, wasn’t one of them. Seeing children left parentless with no one to defend them was another and if I was right, Sarah was alive. Or there was a cougar in here hunting me. The second option seemed dismal as the house’s set-up was pretty open which left no place for a cougar to hide.

  I braced myself for what I knew I would find, and walked inside. There in the corner was Joseph, dead. He was torn to shreds, as if a wild animal had done it. I walked over to the blinds and pulled them, and blinked back tears at the destruction I found. They’d fought hard, but in the end, whatever had attacked had won.

  From the gnawing marks, and the way their bodies were mutilated, I was willing to guess it had been an animal, and not humans. Karen was in the doorway to the only bedroom in the cabin. Her body lay torn and ripped into pieces as Joseph’s was. I fought the tears, and won. I scanned the room, looking for the smallest of Danvers. But I couldn’t see little Sarah anywhere.

  I stepped over the grisly remains and looked around the room. The whimpering had stopped, but it was more than possible that the baby was among the remains. She was a tiny little thing. I sent a silent prayer and turned to leave when I heard the faint whimper again.

  I swung back around and looked through the room. I walked over the window and tossed it open for more light. There were several items for the baby, which meant Joseph had gone on a run before they were attacked. I searched around, but still couldn’t find any sign of her. I walked to the bed and pulled off the bedding, but she wasn’t there. I stepped around the bed and as my foot slid on something white and oozing, I felt the loose floorboard.

  They wouldn’t have put a baby in a floor, right? If I’d been Karen, I’d have put her anywhere I thought she’d survive…I stepped back, and leaned down to remove the board. There in the small space was Sarah, her big blue baby eyes looking up even as she squinted from the light.

  I closed my eyes in relief as pressure left my chest as I expelled the breath that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Hi, Sweetling Sarah, you’ve had a tough day, haven’t you?” I cooed softly. I’d often heard her mother calling her Sweetling, so I figured I’d try to comfort her with it. Babies liked familiar things…right? I wasn’t baby friendly, what the hell was I supposed to do now?

  I put my hand down to check her breathing, but as I did, she wrapped her tiny little hand around my finger. I carefully pulled her out, and held her against me. Wow, she reeked. “Poor thing, how long have you been in there?” I waited, right up until I realized I was expecting this little being to talk back. I looked around the room until I found a sheet, and walked to the bed. “Don’t move,” I told the tiny, mewling infant, as if she was going to get off the bed and run away.

  I collected a few things and placed them in my pack, like formula, and diapers. I didn’t see any bottles, well, correction. I saw one that hadn’t been gnawed at. Obviously the bigger animals that had killed the family had come and gone, and then little ones arrived after and had decided to tear everything else apart. Poor little Sarah fell asleep. She must have been fussing all day and conked out from exhaustion. I brought out the knife again and quickly shredded the sheet as I made a makeshift baby sling. I arranged her so I could easily get to the AR-15 if I had to.

  Mmm, I’d seen women wearing them in the front, but if I was attacked, she’d be in front of the vest…the back it is! I reached down and secured the tiny being in the cloth and then brought her up as I tied the sling around my chest. She wasn’t crying, but that was probably because she was relieved I wasn’t some long toothed animal.

  I grabbed the pack and walked to the front door as I mentally assessed the room again. Teeth marks; check. The bloody paw marks looked canine, and that pissed me off since they’d just tried to eat me yesterday. I looked to the corner and smiled. I could tell that some of the prints were old, and some were new. Which meant, the wolves had come back to snack on the corpses after the kill.

  I knew Joseph had been trapping animals for fresh meat, and I also knew he’d worked at the fish and tackle shop, which doubled as a hunting shop as well. I found the unused traps in the closet and made fast work of setting them around the bigger pieces of the bodies. Wolves by nature were smart animals, cautious if they could smell humans. Obviously these ones were hungry enough to ignore their instincts.

  I walked out of the cabin, and stopped cold. My heart dropped to my feet, and my breath froze in my throat. I stepped back towards the house, but it was filled with traps. In front of me were about ten or more men, all looking at me strangely. I had my mask still in place, so I guess that only made sense. I mean, I had a skull face, and had a ripped up sheet wrapped around me; even I’d pause to do a double take.

  “And what ye be doing in there?” the leader asked. He wore no shirt but he had it hanging from his pants, and his torso was covered in tribal tattoos. His hair was black, and his eyes, even from this distance, popped with a deep emerald shade. The men behind him all held guns, which of course were pointed at me.

  I took a step closer, and another one. Please, Sarah, not a peep!

  I remained silent, as I worked my way closer in the direction of the path. If I could just make it to the path, I coul
d run to the ATV. I was fast, but I wasn’t fast enough to dodge bullets, and I couldn’t turn and run because I had a sleeping infant on my back attached to me, and my pack weighed heavily on my arm stuffed with all of the supplies I had taken for her.

  “I wouldna do that,” the hulking leader said in what sounded like a Scottish brogue, as he sniffed the air. At about the same exact time his eyes landed on me, a painful scream ripped from inside the house. I turned in horror as a male came limping out, white and pale as he collapsed to the ground with a bear trap clamped wickedly around his foot and ankle.

  “Liam!” The taller of the men shouted.

  He was bleeding profusely. He’d passed out from the shock and pain. I had a choice to make, since I knew how to save him.

  “What the fuck did ye do?” the leader asked angrily as he stepped closer.

  “Don’t move,” I said and watched as shock registered on his face. “I can help him, or he can bleed out—” the baby wailed and the entire forest froze. I waited to see their response, before I spoke over the screaming infant. “He’ll bleed out unless you allow me to help him. I was in nursing school, and also working at the hospital in Newport as a surgical technician. If I help him, you let me go, deal?”

  “What happened inside that house, lass?” He asked instead of answering me.

  “Animals ate Sarah’s family—she was hidden—and I need to get her to my people so I can examine her.”

  “Deal, save him,” he growled.

  I turned and slowly walked back up the steps, and then kneeled down to where the black haired male was just opening his eyes. “I won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt me.”

  He nodded; his face remained strained with pain. How he was managing to not scream was beyond me. The metal teeth of the trap were buried in his flesh at his ankle. I ripped off my sweatshirt sleeve to be able to stop the bleeding. It wasn’t until I tried to remove the trap that I felt a flash of panic.

  “I need help,” I said turning to eye the leader. I hated that I needed it, but without help, I couldn’t manage it. It was an old trap, rusty and one that had to be held open to release the animal, in this case, this man’s foot.

  The leader stepped forward, and for a brief moment, I wanted to dart into the forest to keep Sarah safe, and yes, myself too.

  “Easy, lass,” he said as he moved to kneel beside me. The wind was rustling through the leaves as the sun began to slowly dip into the sunset. It was also blowing the stench of death to us from the open window, and blowing it out the front door, too. “What the—”

  “The couple in there, or at least I think it was only one couple. Can’t be sure, Lach, they are in bloody pieces. Looks like rogue wolves tore them apart,” the pale man said in a similar brogue to the leaders, his teeth chattering from the pain.

  “That’s nae good,” Lach said as he manhandled the trap and held it open. I looked at his hands, and up at his face. He wasn’t straining in the least, and this trap was exerting at least a hundred pounds of pressure.

  “A little further,” I said as I continued to watch his face. He was lighter skinned than my mystery man was, and his eyes were a deep shade of emerald. His muscles, which should have been straining, were the same sleek, muscular build. He had a tribal tattoo that went down his left flank, and dipped lower into his pants.

  “You gonna eye-fuck me lass, or help my brother?” he asked and watched me as I did just as he’d said.

  “I wasn’t eye-fucking you,” I retorted haughtily.

  “Ye were and I dinnae mind ye ken,” he argued.

  “I was sizing you up, and weighing my options.” I pulled the mangled ankle out of the trap, noting a few things.

  One: The man with the mangled ankle was regaining color, and hadn’t made a sound of discomfort since regaining consciousness.

  Two: His brother either had experience with traps, or deep inner strength…or both.

  Three: Someone had either replaced my eyeballs with permanent beer goggles, and it was making all of the men around here look like Greek Gods.

  Four: Or, my ovaries were on overdrive, making me hallucinate.

  “I think he passed oot again, lass,” he said with an annoyed look on his face.

  “It’s probably for the better,” I mumbled as I took in the damage. I placed the material around the injured flesh, which had somehow managed to already stop bleeding. My fingers trailed up the bone to see if there was a break in it, but if there was, it wasn’t palpable. “Are you seeing this?” I asked as the wound started to scab at the edges. Impossible! It took hours for wounds to dry enough to scab.

  “Lass,” he said and I lifted my eyes to his from where I’d been fascinated by the rapid healing. I met his eyes, and then rough hands grabbed my arms, and I was pulled up.

  “She’s only a baby! If you do anything to her, I will kill you!” I growled.

  “Hold her still Declan, Ian, careful nae to harm the bairn,” he said softly. “Let’s have a look beneath the mask.”

  “No!” I shouted, but the men behind me laughed. It wasn’t until a familiar voice rose over the laughter that I felt my anxiety escalate.

  “And what do we have here?”

  “Jaeden,” Lachlan said, as he looked from the mystery man and back at me. “Thought we’d find ye close tae here, smelled the stench of death all the way from my mountains in Montana.”

  “Lachlan, good to see you again, sort of hard not to smell death these days; seems to be about everywhere. And Montana, was it...really? Seems a little far from your homeland,” Jaeden snorted disbelievingly. For some reason, I wanted to test his name on my tongue as he had mine. “Now let poor Emma go. She doesn’t like to take off her mask,” he said as he winked one of his turquoise eyes at me.

  “Nae further than yours, Jaeden,” Lachlan growled. “She was in this house of death,” he said as his eyes landed on me and then my exposed arm where I’d ripped off the sleeve instead of undoing the makeshift baby sling to get the materials in my bag. “We followed the stench, which led us here. This was done by a rogue pack which seems tae be sticking around this area.”

  “We met a few of them yesterday in the hospital in Newport, didn’t we, sweet Emma?” he waited for me to nod, instead I just watched him. “Anyway, we dispatched them. More seem to be converging on this area. You have any info on why they would come here?”

  These two knew each other, yet their posture said it wasn’t by choice.

  “It’s why we came, but if ye think I’m going tae discuss pack business in front of a mortal, ye are dead wrong, leech.”

  Okay, there was a few things wrong with this conversation. One being mortal; we’re all mortals, right? Pack business? Was he in some kind of cult? Rogue pack, like a big bad pack of rabid wolves, or could it explain the drop dead beef cakes that seemed to be crowding in on my tiny little city? Leech? Did Jaeden suck…? And if he did, what exactly did he suck? I was so lost.

  “Hey, if you two are going to compare dick sizes, can I go? I’m unequipped to participate,” I said with a smile hidden beneath the protection of the mask. Both men looked down to the location in question, and I felt a blush rise from my stomach all the way to my cheeks.

  “So, Jaeden, what does the lass look like behind the mask? Hideously scarred?” Lachlan asked.

  Jaeden grinned as his eyes did that quick search of my eyes that felt as if he could see through the mask I wore and was looking into my very being. “No idea, but I couldn’t care less what she looks like.” He said as he sidled up next to me. “What is that smell?”

  “Probably the dead bodies?” I offered.

  “What the hell is on your back?”

  “A baby,” I said. “Can I go? She needs to be taken care of. She’s been alone for at least one day from the smell of those bodies. I still have to find some things for
her.”

  “I’ll come with you,” he said, and I had to push the urge to scream ‘hell no’ down from my throat where it sat, waiting to come out. “Lachlan, I trust you and your pack will be staying in the area?” Jaeden questioned casually.

  “Someone has tae guard the race, and since ye feast upon it, I guess that leaves me,” Lachlan said just as easily, while his men grunted in agreement.

  Feast upon it? Like a zombie? I narrowed my eyes on Jaeden, and of course they slid down his body. Today he wore camo pants and dark leather boots. He had on a long sleeved black shirt, thankfully. It made it easier to breath around him. He didn’t look like any zombie that I’d ever seen in the movies and then my mind drifted away wondering how much it would hurt if he took a nibble at me. I gave myself a sharp mental shake at that. Gross, Emma, just gross.

  “You don’t need to follow me,” I said to Jaeden who had inched closer towards me. He ignored me, but Lachlan smiled as I said it, as if he found it funny.

  “The lass says nae, leech,” he smiled as he said it.

  “The lass doesn’t have a choice in the matter, dog.”

  I looked from one male to the other. “Again with the name calling? Maybe you guys should go to couples therapy?” They raised their eyebrows, and I narrowed my eyes at their twin looks of surprise. “Just saying,” I smiled, but it was still hidden beneath the mask. “I’m leaving; this baby needs care.”

  No one stopped me, but Jaeden followed me until I reached the ATV. “It only seats one,” I said as I turned to look at him.

  “Liar, two can easily fit on it. Besides, you need help protecting the baby.”

  “Fine,” I replied as I adjusted the baby to my front and straddled the ATV and waited for him to climb on it. The moment he placed his arms around my waist, I shivered. “Problem?” he whispered against my ear. “I personally like it when women drive…”

  “Is that a sexual innuendo?” I asked, smiling even though I shouldn’t have been.