Guardian (Hidden Book 6)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  I headed toward the door, ducked inside, and my New Guardians followed me. The entry room, with its long wooden counter where guests would check in, was just as full of trash and debris as the outside. I stepped over it gingerly, pulling both of my Netherblades from my sheath, then re-zipping my coat and pulling the cowl up, covering my head, nose, and mouth, leaving only my eyes visible. I knew, after so much time doing this, that even as small in stature as I am, for whatever reason the cowl adds to the menace beings see when they look at me. And I wanted this one to be afraid.

  Perhaps I needed to feel tougher than I did at the moment. It was like stepping into a costume the moment my face was covered, and it centered me.

  His energy signature was strong here.

  I walked down the corridor, peering into the first room on my left. It was empty, its gaudy orange wallpaper still bright, and an elaborately ugly bed sat in the center of the room. I exchanged a look with Quinn, who just shook his head. The room across the hall, on my left, was wallpapered in red, with a shiny black bed. Mirrors shone from the ceiling. Many of them were cracked, I noted.

  The building smelled dank. Almost putrid. It smelled of filth and decay. We walked a few more steps, and I stopped short.

  “What?” Quinn whispered on my left.

  “There are others here,” I said in an almost imperceptible voice.

  Lesser gods.

  What in the Nether were they doing here? And then it hit me, that they were working with my sisters, with Mollis’s lost souls.

  I was walking into a situation where I would be facing the soul of a serial-killer and several powerful beings who were likely aiding him. I paused for a moment, considering it. I could go back and get Brennan. I could call Mollis or Tisiphone.

  No, I decided. If the lesser gods had chosen to side with monsters, I would show them what a monster truly was. And I knew my New Guardians could handle Mordell.

  I took a breath and walked forward. “Go after Mordell,” I said quietly. “Leave the others to me.”

  The door in front of us was closed, and I pulled my foot back and kicked it in and my team flooded into the room around me. Robert Mordell stood there, and he laughed. With him was the other soul from Japan I’d been seeking, Ayame Takahashi.

  And he was powerful. Too powerful. Not merely corporeal. Not merely undead. More.

  I had a moment to glance toward where I felt the other lesser immortals, and what I saw nearly made my heart stop. They were weak. Beaten. Bound. Two of the four, the goddesses of Autumn and Winter, had ragged slices down the center of their chests. Dead, but not truly. Lost to this realm, at the very least, because they would resurrect in the world of the gods, and they would be trapped there.

  And it hit me.

  “No,” I murmured, and in that instant, Mordell charged me as my New Guardians fought with Ayame. I met him, slashing up and out at him, and he knocked my hand away, struck out at me with a knife of his own. Not a Netherblade, luckily. I smacked his arm aside, stabbed up with my left hand while slashing across his throat with my left. I managed to cut him, but he shoved me back, and I hit the wall. Next to where I was, a gaudy bed was tucked into a wall alcove. The wallpaper in this room was black and white, images of nude women.

  “You have the world’s most horrible taste. Of all the places in the world, you chose this one?” I asked, leaping forward and stabbing at his stomach. I caught him, and he grunted and shoved me back again. I kicked, and it was almost like kicking a brick wall. The things he’d done to gain this power, this strength… I felt coldness settle over me, and my heart slowed, and I could breathe again as I went on automatic, as I let my body do what I was created to do.

  As I punished him.

  I moved, not thinking, not really feeling it when he slashed across my arm, my hand. I felt my blood dripping down my arm as I stabbed him in the chest and he screamed. He pushed me back, and I had a moment to peek at my team, who were holding their own against Ayame. I was relieved she was not as far along in his process of becoming undead as Mordell was.

  And if that was the case, who had taken the heart of the second goddess that had been sliced open?

  Because that was how this happened. Still-beating hearts were eaten by those wanting to achieve undeath.

  I never stopped to think about what would happen if one could devour the heart of a god.

  I launched myself at Mordell again, a flurry of stabs. He shoved me back in rage, grabbed my arm and pulled it back, hard, and I felt my shoulder dislocate.

  I refused to scream, even as the agony washed over me. He backed up, laughing.

  And that was his mistake.

  I just watched him, pulled my dangling arm with my good hand, and popped my shoulder back into place.

  “Fuck,” he growled, lunging at me again, and this time he did so in earnest, not toying with me, not prolonging things the way he’d always done with his victims. He fought me like a man possessed, desperate, fearful, angry. My body wept blood. Cuts crossed my sides, my arms, my throat. I was weakening, but I was winning.

  I glanced to the side to see Quinn victoriously wrapping the chain around Ayame’s wrists.

  And in that moment, everything changed.

  Two of my sisters, Delo and Anthousa, appeared behind my team, and each stabbed one New Guardian, then another.

  My team was down, lying beside their prey, in agony as Anthousa stabbed them, over and over and over again. I quickly stabbed my knife into Mordell’s throat, wrapped my own chain around his wrists, keeping him in agony and out of the fight.

  I had one dagger left, and two deranged sisters coming at me. I was weak, bleeding, and furious for my team, who lay there weak and gasping in pain, taken out of the fight by the agony of having my sisters’ Netherblades used so ruthlessly upon them.

  “Oh, little sister. Your game ends now,” Delo said. “You have lived like a good soldier, but your time is done.”

  “You can’t kill me,” I said, my voice stronger than I felt.

  Anthousa smiled. “No. But we can use you.”

  “Like them?” I asked, nodding toward the captive lesser gods, and Delo smiled. It was all the confirmation I needed. “You are vile.”

  “We are survivors. And your pretender Queen will not be allowed to hold what she never should have had.”

  “You are kidding me, surely? And how are you alive? She killed you. Others watched her do so.”

  Anthousa laughed. “After seeing her use that damned blade against our other sisters, we smartened up. It is very easy to make it look like you fell to dust. All we did was relocate before she cut through us. It hurt, to let her injure us. But we lived. And here we are.”

  “But not all of you,” I said, feeling a cold smile in on my lips. “I took care of two of you already.”

  Delo’s face became a mask of rage. “And that is where it ends. And believe me, zealot, you will suffer.”

  And they advanced on me. I was a flurry of movement, taken by the rage I hardly even knew I was feeling, determined to save those they held there. Determined to save myself. Angered I had been so stupid, that I’d walked into what was now clearly a trap.

  It was not long before, despite the way they attacked me, Anthousa fell and became dust. Whether it was an act or for real, I could not be sure, but Delo’s enraged scream convinced me I had actually succeeded in ending her life in the human realm. She would live, but in the realm of the immortals, the realm we here in this realm only gained access to upon the failure of our bodies in this world.

  We fought, Delo and I, and we both bled. I fought her like a woman possessed, keeping a hand on her so she could not rematerialize as I started to feel the tide turn. I was doing well. She fell, breathing hard, and I decided it was my chance to get the injured out. I shed my jacket and grabbed two of the lesser gods, preparing to fly them out and get them out of the room at least, away from Delo.

  I had just risen into the air when there was a weight on my back, on my wing, fro
m behind, and I felt the bones in my wing snap as Mordell attacked me. Delos still lay there, but she’d freed Mordell from my chain as she tried to regain her feet. I dropped the lesser gods, and a scream escaped my lips. I saw Mordell grin, and the wicked knife he carried slashed, not at my body, but at my already broken wing, and I watched in agony and horror as the leathery appendage fell to the floor beside me.

  I screeched, and lunged, both hands around the handle of my dagger, and I stabbed him through the eye as he struck out with his own blade. I felt the cut across my shoulder, but he fell just the same, gurgling, the handle of my dagger sticking out of his face. I advanced on my sister. I was seeing spots in front of me. Everything felt like slow motion, and I was dizzy. She still lay there, gasping, her breath raspy, and I picked my other dagger, the one Mordell had pulled from his body after she’d freed him, and I brought it down to her stomach and she screamed in agony.

  I was almost out. I wrapped my chain around Mordell’s wrists one more time.

  I fell down onto my sister, and I laughed, madness, pain, fear setting in. My other wing, the one I had left, had been bashed at some point during the struggle, and hung limply.

  I could feel the blackness coming to me.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and hit the number of someone I knew could easily find us, because we were so near water.

  “Lake Tama, Tokyo. Help. Love hotel,” I managed, and the phone fell from my hand. My sister had stopped moving beneath me, and I followed her into unconsciousness.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Slowly, as if I was moving through quicksand, I eventually pulled myself out of the darkness. Out of the cold, toward warmth. Out of the anger and hurt and fear toward something better.

  I dipped in and out of consciousness, every once in a while catching bits and pieces of conversation, cool hands on my forehead. My Queen, murmuring how sorry she was, pushing my hair back off of my face. I wanted to ask her what she was apologizing for, but consciousness floated away from me, overtaken by the pain.

  The most constant presence was the warm one that never seemed far away, talking to me in a low voice, talking about nothing, but talking just the same. I knew I would not die. I knew I would live, but I have never been so tired, and so, I let myself be pulled under until I was strong enough to open my eyes.

  And when I did, I knew immediately that I was in my room at the loft, lying on my stomach, and that Brennan was stretched out beside me on the narrow bed.

  I tried to move, and he jerked awake.

  “Hey! Hey. You’re awake,” he said, and, close as he was to me, I could feel his heart pounding.

  “I am,” I croaked. My mouth felt like sandpaper, and I felt dizzy from the wave of pain that tore through my body. “Hurts,” I said, and Brennan gently got up, trying not to jostle me as the mattress shifted beneath him.

  “Gaia and Meaghan put together this tea for the pain. They said you should drink the whole thing once you were conscious,” he said.

  He was pouring some liquid from a thermos.

  “My wings have never hurt this badly,” I said, still hoarse. “I think it’ll be a while before we fly again, cub.”

  He was silent, and when I looked up at him, he was still as a statue. His eyes glistened with unshed tears, and I looked at him for a moment in confusion.

  And then it came back to me.

  Pain.

  My wing falling to the floor.

  My other wing crushed and useless.

  I tried to see my back, to reassure myself that it was a nightmare. And I saw nothing. I closed my eyes, tried to breathe.

  “Eunomia,” Brennan’s voice said, and I lowered my face to my pillow. A feeling came up in me, like my chest was being crushed, like I’d forgotten how to breathe, and a sob escaped me, and I forced my face deeper into my pillow in shame.

  I have never cried. Not in my entire existence. Not really. I have felt tears come to my eyes in commiseration with those I care for. For myself? No.

  And here I was, sobs wracking my body as Brennan knelt beside the bed and ran his fingers soothingly through my hair. I tried to stop. I tried, and the harder I tried, the harder it became.

  “Let it out,” he said softly. “It’s just you and me here, and I sure the hell am not going to think less of you.” The emotion in his voice, the knowledge that he knew how much it had meant to me, that I had lost something I would never get back… it was as if a floodgate opened, and then I did. I cried and it felt as if something inside of me was broken.

  By the time I had no more tears to shed, I felt exhausted all over again. Everything hurt. Brennan gently helped me sit up, and I bit my tongue, hard, to keep from crying out from the pain in my back. He wordlessly handed me the cup with the tea from Gaia in it, and held me up, sitting beside me as I drank it.

  “This is h-horrid,” I said numbly as I downed the tea.

  “It smells pretty bad, too,” he said.

  “What did they do to me? To my wings?”

  He was quiet for a moment. “One of them was cut off in Tokyo. Do you remember that?”

  “I know. I remember. And the other one was broken. But now…” I glanced back, able to see my back. I was wearing a tank top someone had modified, so it was cut below my shoulder blades, which was where my wings had been. Now, there was a huge bandage there.

  “One wing was gone, and the other one was badly crushed. There was a bone left from the one that got cut off, and you just kept bleeding. Asclepias did surgery… he removed what was left of both of them completely and stitched you up, did some pretty massive healing. You were a mess, Tink,” he said, and his voice was rough, full of emotion.

  I rested my hand on his thigh.

  “I owe him my thanks.”

  “There’s plenty of time. You need more rest,” he said, taking my hand in his. We were silent for several long moments. “You can grow new ones, right? If you change again, you can make them appear. Right?”

  I shook my head. “I cannot change something that is not there. I cannot make something appear out of nothing. The skies are lost to me now,” I said, biting my lip from having another ridiculous crying jag.

  “I’m sorry. I hoped—“

  “I know. Thank you,” I said, and he gently squeezed my hand. “I am tired.”

  “Sleep, Tink. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

  I nodded, and he gently lowered me back into the bed, on my stomach so I would not put any weight on my injuries.

  I was about to drift away when my eyes shot open.

  “My New Guardians! They were hurt—“

  “It’s okay. It’s okay,” Brennan said soothingly. “When Triton brought me with him, your Guardians were still there. They seemed to be recovering — they were messed up pretty badly — but they refused to leave your side. Triton called Molly, and she kicked the shit out of your sister and then took her back to the Netherwoods. Triton and I sat with you, and your Guardians told me what happened.”

  “Did Triton see them?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “He thought I was nuts, I think.”

  I did not answer for a few moments, turning it all over in my head. “So Mollis knows about them now,” I finally said.

  “Yeah. Molly went back to find them after we had you back here and Asclepias was sure you weren’t going anywhere,” he said, his voice becoming rough, as if he was holding back some kind of emotion. “I don’t know what she did with them. She hasn’t said anything to me about it.”

  “That probably is not a good sign,” I said.

  “Probably not,” he agreed. “We’ll deal with it when you’re better. Okay?”

  I nodded. And then I slept, letting my pain and exhaustion pull me under once again.

  The next time I woke, it was to feel someone changing the bandages across my back. I turned my head slightly to see Brennan there again.

  “Shouldn’t Asclepias be doing that?”

  “I got a little territorial, I guess,” he sa
id, gently applying new gauze.

  “Territorial?”

  “Last time he was here, he pulled one of the bandages off and you jerked like it hurt you… and I went all psycho panther. My grandma got between us.”

  I shook my head, and he laughed. “So now no one else is allowed in here, except Molly.”

  “You are insane,” I said.

  “Sometimes,” he agreed.

  “How long have I been asleep? How long ago did it all happen?”

  He finished applying a new gauze pad, and he taped it down with white tape. “You’ve been in and out of consciousness for five days.”

  “Is that all? It felt longer,” I said. And I started sitting up. He moved to help me, and I held my hand up, stalling any help from him. I was stiff, and sore, but Asclepias’s skill and my own healing abilities had worked.

  “You’re such a badass,” he said, and even though I was looking down, I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Please tell me you were not the one who washed me,” I said.

  “No. That was Molly. She wouldn’t let anyone else do it.”

  Well. That was all right. We had seen one another through everything else. I could stand my Queen and friend doing that for me, at least.

  “I want to dress. It is time to get up.”

  “I’ll help.”

  “Over my dead body, cub,” I said, standing up all the way.

  “I don’t want to even think about your dead body, Tink,” he said, coming up to me and taking my chin not exactly gently in his hand. “You scared the ever-loving fuck out of me, you know that? When Triton came to get me and bring me to you, and I saw you the way you looked… damn.”

  I raised my hand and put it over his. “And you think it would not have happened had you been with me?”

  “Damn right,” he said, lowering his hand to my lower back and gently pulling me toward him.

  “It would have been so much worse, Brennan,” I said. “So much worse. I was not distracted. I was not fearing too much for anyone else. If you had been there, I would not have focused. I would not have been able to finish them off. It would have been a loss. Do you understand what I am saying?”