Guardian (Hidden Book 6)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  Rayna led the way to a round table on a slightly raised dais, and slid into the accompanying dark purple leather bench seat. I slid in beside her, Brennan beside me, and Ronan on the other side of his sister, rounding out our group. Drink orders were placed, and I ended up with some concoction I had no intention of drinking. I held the fluted glass between my hands, because at least it gave my hands something to do.

  “How’s Shanti doing?” Brennan asked Ronan, his voice raised above the music.

  Ronan gave a proud nod. “Deadly. She’s only grown faster and more effective in the time since she’s come to join us. Thank you again for the training you gave her,” he said, and Rayna murmured a “here, here” and raised her flute of champagne to Brennan, taking a sip.

  “She took to it really easily. It’s all her,” Brennan said.

  “Don’t play it down, man,” Ronan said. “She’s irreplaceable. She goes after thee rogue vamps… she’s unstoppable. She finds them every time. There’s no hiding from her. She’s following in our demon lady’s footsteps.”

  “How so?” I asked him, and he gave me a quick grin, his light gray eyes lighting up a bit.

  “Our enemies speak her name with fear. It’s beautiful.”

  I smiled. “Good.”

  “She’s also relentlessly loyal, which I appreciate more than I can ever say,” Rayna said. “She, and, by extension, her man. They are as close to me as Ronan is. I am lucky to have them with me.”

  I studied the vampire queen. She owned every bit of her royal title. Her warm, light brown complexion was set off by those same light gray eyes her brother had, and her dark hair fell in thick waves down over her shoulders. She wore a form-fitting black dress, heels that made my feet hurt just looking at them.

  “So Brennan, are we dancing?” Rayna asked, after studying me for a moment. There was no denying she was gorgeous. There were rumors, of course, that like me, she was not only interested in men. That was not something I would be investigating further. Not with one of Mollis’s allies.

  And not when the man sitting beside me currently had my life twisted in knots.

  “I stink at dancing,” he warned her as he slid out of the booth.

  “Don’t worry. They’ll all be looking at me anyway,” she said with a sultry smile, and he shook his head, glancing back at me before following her out onto the dance floor.

  Ronan sat back down beside me with a low grunt. “You don’t want to dance, do you?”

  “Oh, gods no,” I said, and he laughed.

  “I’ll drink to that,” he said, holding his beer bottle up. I clinked it with my glass, and we each took a sip of our drinks.

  Ugh, alcohol. I never had gained a taste for it. I set my drink back down.

  “So how’s life been treating you?” Ronan asked me.

  “Not too badly. I am working, so I am happy.”

  “Yeah? What’s so great about working?” he asked me.

  “It is all I know. I feel odd when I am not put to work.”

  He nodded slowly, seeming to be thinking. “Can I ask you something?” he finally said,

  “I suppose so.”

  “You’re a god, right?”

  I grimaced. “I am a lesser god. Lesser immortal.”

  “What’s the difference between you and any other god? What makes you lesser?”

  I thought for a moment. “My kind… we were created to serve the higher gods. We were created with specific jobs and roles in mind. My kind, the spirit daemons—“

  “Like that Strife bitch?” he asked, undoubtedly remembering the way Strife had destroyed so much of the city before we were able to take her down.

  “Yes. Like her. Gods of the seasons. Earthly gods, beings of that type. We have one role. It was what we were created for, and without that role, we are lost. Adrift,” I said. He was listening intently.

  “Does that bother you?” he finally asked.

  I watched Brennan and Rayna dance for a while. They looked stunning together, and despite Rayna’s assurances, there were more than a few women looking at Brennan as he moved with Rayna to the music.

  I had the urge to pull my dagger. That would be wrong, I reminded myself. “It does not bother me. I would not trade places with them for anything.”

  “No? Why not? It seems like they have more options than you do. They got to choose their lives, right?”

  I shrugged, continuing to watch Brennan and Rayna. “In some cases they did. Others had their roles assigned to them, but they made the roles in their own images, if that makes sense.”

  He nodded again.

  “Why do you ask?” I asked him, tearing my gaze away from Brennan, aware that my body was heating as I watched him.

  “Trying to understand our allies. Can I be honest about something?”

  “Of course,” I said, meeting this eyes.

  “You all freak me the fuck out.”

  I laughed then, and after a moment, he joined me. “You do realize many of us say the same thing about your family, yes?” I said, and he smiled at me, more relaxed than he’d been when we’d first sat down.

  “Oh, sure. But I can’t blame them for that.”

  “Well, I cannot blame you for being uncertain about us. Really, any of us has the power to destroy whatever we want, whenever we want.”

  He sobered. “And what keeps you from doing so?”

  I took a breath. “In my case, I love this world. I do not understand it. I do not feel conformable here necessarily. But I recognize the beauty here and for better or worse it is my home now. As far as the rest of them… Mollis.”

  He snorted. “She’s it, huh?”

  “She is the only threat any of my kind need. They will continue to push her. They will look for weaknesses. And they will fail.”

  “You have a lot of faith,” he said.

  I gave him a small smile. Remembered my nickname, “the Zealot” among my kind for my devotion to Hades, and, now, his daughter. “I have every reason to,” I said.

  “Well you don’t seem like a fool, so I’m gonna trust you on this,” Ronan said. “You sure you don’t want to dance?”

  I shook my head, watched Brennan and Rayna come back to the table.

  “Come on,” Rayna said, and it took me a moment to realize she was talking to me.

  “Oh. No. I do not dance.”

  She appraised me. “What a shame,” she murmured. “I don’t bite, you know. Unless you want me to,” she added with a smile.

  I smiled and shook my head. “I don’t think you need me to dance with. Take a look around.”

  “Mhmm. I know. But I think I’d really enjoy you,” she said, and the flirting tone in her voice was unmistakable, even to me. I am not as clueless as I once was, but I am not precisely experienced, either.

  “Maybe another time,” I said, and she smiled at me.

  “I wonder if you taste as good as you smell?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “Come now, Queen Rayna. Is that all you are interested in? Blood?”

  She smiled again. “I never said I was asking about blood.”

  I could not help it. I laughed, surprised by her forwardness. “You got me that time,” I said, and she winked at me. I was well aware of Brennan watching me, his hand on my knee under the table.

  “I have the feeling someone else has laid a claim on you already anyway. Poor me. I won’t be getting lucky with either one of you,” she said with a pout. “Unless both of you want to play?” she asked hopefully. Brennan had been in the process of taking a gulp of his beer, and he choked a little in mid-swallow.

  “Guess that’s a no,” she said, eyes twinkling mischievously.

  “You want to dance?” Brennan asked me, and I started shaking my head. He was already standing, pulling my hand, and I shook my head more vigorously. He lowered his face closer to mine, looked into my eyes.

  “You wanted to learn to be more human, right? How to live here without feeling like you’re lost?”

&
nbsp; I gave a small nod.

  “Making a fool of yourself on the dance floor is a very human experience. Let’s go.” He pulled again, and, against my better judgement, I let him guide me toward the dance floor, with its throngs of undulating bodies, the lights flashing overhead, the music thumping loudly.

  “I have no idea how to do this,” I shouted at him over the music.

  “Just move your ass, Tink,” he said. He started moving, bobbing a little, and he pulled me toward him, resting a hand at my lower back, at the base of my spine, drawing me close enough to his body that our thighs bumped when we moved.

  I must have been glowing, I was blushing so hard.

  After a few awkward seconds, I forgot about figuring out how to move my body without feeling like a fool. All that mattered was that hand at my lower back, strong thighs and hips pressing against my own, the scent of him surrounding me. I placed my hands on his biceps, and we moved together. The words in the song were lost to me, and, when I finally chanced looking up into Brennan’s face, it was as if everything else around us faded into nothingness. His gaze was hooded, his eyes on me, and that hand at my back drew me closer until all I knew was his firm body pressed to mine, every move he made making one part or another of my body ache in ways I had only ever felt fleetingly before.

  “You’re good at this, Eunomia,” he said, lowering his mouth to my ear.

  I let out a breathy laugh. “I am barely doing anything at all.”

  “See how easy it is when you loosen up a little?”

  I did not answer. I could not. The idea of stringing more than two words together felt like an impossible task, and it was enough just to move with him and let myself forget, just for a moment, why whatever it was I was feeling for him was a terrible idea.

  The song ended, and I prepared to head back to the table, but the DJ played something slow and dark next, and Brennan held me closer, one hand rubbing up my spine while the other rested at my lower back, holding me close to him. I had no choice but to put my hands on his shoulders, though I could not make myself look up at him.

  “Is this so bad?” he asked me in that low voice that did ridiculous things to my pulse.

  “I suppose it could be worse,” I managed.

  “There’s that ringing endorsement I was hoping for,” he said, and I knew he was smiling by the way his voice sounded. He pulled me even closer, and I rested my head against his chest, and heard him sigh in what might have been contentment. “Is this your first slow dance?”

  “Mmhmm,” I said, closing my eyes for just a moment, wishing everyone else would just disappear.

  “Good,” he said. “Nice to know I can be your first something.” The song ended, and he let me go, reluctantly. I stepped back, my face burning, and I looked up at him in embarrassment.

  “Thanks, Eunomia,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said back, and then I turned back to our table, hoping my suddenly wobbly legs would get me there.

  The rest of the evening passed in a blur of noise and too many bright lights. When the club closed at three, we walked out together.

  “I’m starving,” Ronan said as we headed toward Brennan’s car.

  “Don’t look at me, man,” Brennan said, holding my door open for me.

  “No, jackass. For actual food. I need to eat before I go to sleep for the day.”

  “There is nothing open now,” I said.

  “Denny’s,” Ronan and Brennan said together, and Rayna rolled her eyes. Seeing my confusion, she explained.

  “It is a chain that serves breakfast twenty-four hours a day. We will likely find many others who were out late there as well.”

  “Okay with you if we go?” Brennan asked me, and I shrugged.

  We piled into the car again and took the freeway to one of the nearer suburbs. I glanced at the clock on the dashboard.

  “Are we going to make it back in time for you to get in before sunrise?” I asked Rayna, turning a little in my seat so I could look at her.

  “Trust me, Ronan eats fast,” she said. “It’ll be fine.”

  I nodded. Soon, we were pulling into a mostly-empty parking lot, then walking into a place that seemed too brightly-lit after the time we’d spent in the club. A tired-looking waitress brought us coffee, and we ordered. Rayna hadn’t been wrong. There were two other groups of people there, rowdy and reeking of alcohol.

  “We are not inebriated enough to fit in here,” I said, and Rayna laughed.

  “The fumes coming off them are almost enough to make me feel drunk,” she said, and I nodded.

  “Last time I was drunk was 1911,” Ronan said.

  “Oh, here we go,” Rayna said with a groan.

  “There was this place not too far from our house. Whorehouse, bar, gambling. It was perfect for a dude like me,” he said.

  “Was this before you turned?” I asked, and he nodded.

  “Rayna was pissed because I wouldn’t let her come with me. It wasn’t the type of place women hung out, and I wanted to have fun and not babysit my big sister.”

  “As if I have ever needed babysitting, you ass,” Rayna said, digging into the pancakes the waitress had just set in front of her. The rest of us started on our meals as well. French toast and strawberries for me. I was hungrier than I’d realized.

  “If you say so,” Ronan said. “Anyway. I had some fun with a lady upstairs, and then I went downstairs and started gambling. And the drinks were flowing, and I was winning, and my favorite lady from upstairs was sitting on my lap…” He grinned. “It was fun,” he said with a shrug.

  Rayna seemed to have sobered, and she pushed some of the pancake around on her plate.

  “Why do I feel like there is more to the story?” I asked, and Ronan flashed a smile at me.

  “It was fun. And then there was a brawl, and even that was fun at first.”

  “Men,” Rayna muttered.

  “One of the guys brawling… no matter how hard I hit him, he kept getting up. And he hit hard, man. Fast. Soon it was just me and him. Everyone else cleared out, because he was unstoppable and they were smarter than I was. And less prideful, I guess.”

  “Maybe less drunk, too,” Rayna said, though there was affection in her voice.

  “Maybe,” he agreed. “He beat me to the edge of death, and then he ended my mortal life. And when I woke up, nothing was the same.”

  “He was your sire?” I asked, and he nodded.

  “He found out about Rayna, and he turned her too. He wanted her for himself,” Ronan said, the anger in his voice still hot after all the years that had passed.

  Brennan and I sat, listening. He met my eyes for a moment.

  “He had us do things. You know how it is with vampires and their sires,” Rayna said, and I nodded. Sires have a great amount of influence over the vampires they turn. It is why Ronan was the only choice when it was time for Shanti’s mate, Zero, to be turned. “He claimed me as his own. I had no choice at first but to comply.”

  “Where was this? I asked. “You are not originally from here.” There was still an underlying accent in their voices, barely there, but it added a richness to their speech and I had wondered about it the first time I had met Rayna.

  “Egypt,” she said. “We have been everywhere. We settled here about fifty years ago and it felt like we were home, finally.”

  “So I’m guessing you took out your sire to be able to get free,” Brennan said.

  “She did,” Ronan said, pointing to his sister beside him. “She started working on herself mentally to be able to resist his influence. It wasn’t easy. We were with him for over thirty years by the time she’d finally managed to break his hold on her and end him. We ran, because the rest of his children were after us. Those that caught up with us didn’t live very long,” Ronan finished with a shrug. “I knew then that my sister was gonna be something. If she was strong enough to do that, to do what everyone thought could not be done, she could do anything.”

  “We are teaching Zero th
e same skills I used to free myself so that he is not bound to Ronan as I was bound to our sire. We do not want slaves. We want loyalty,” Rayna said, and I looked at her in surprise, my respect for the vampire queen rising with every word she said.

  “That’s amazing,” Brennan said. He raised his coffee cup to Rayna. “I’m glad you’re on our side.”

  “Absolutely,” I murmured, and we all clinked our coffee cups. I was just about to dig into the rest of my breakfast when I heard it.

  “Eunomia. Eunomia. Eunomia!”

  Mary’s voice. She’d found the soul she was hunting. Or she was in trouble. Either way, it was time for me to go to her.

  “I have to go,” I said, standing up.

  “Huh?” Brennan asked around a mouthful of food.

  “I am sorry,” I said, standing up. “I need to take care of this and it cannot wait. I will see you back at the loft.”

  Before he could argue, I was already somewhere in the Florida panhandle.

  Chapter Twelve

  I stood outside of what I understood to be a trailer park, rows of single and double-wide trailers arrayed in orderly rows behind the chain link fence before me. Mary was crouched near some shrubs, and she smothered a small cry of surprise when I appeared.

  “Sorry to have startled you,” I said in a low voice, and she waved it off.

  “He’s in there,” she whispered. “That fifth trailer to the left. The one with the big deck porch,” she said, and I nodded, spying the building she was speaking of. “It doesn’t look like anyone lives in it. He keeps looking out the window as if he’s expecting someone.”

  Now I really was glad I’d decided to stick my dagger into my boot rather than leave it at home the way a normal person would on a night out.

  “All right. Excellent job, Mary,” I said. “Wait here for me.”

  “I want to see him suffer,” she said, her eyes hard, and I could only imagine the memories she was reliving, having seen her tormentor again.