Storm and Fury

by Armentrout, Jennifer L.

  He definitely wasn’t a spirit, and I’d seen enough of the two in my eighteen years to know the difference. The man below in his gold-colored shirt hadn’t crossed over yet.

  Spirits were the deceased who had seen the light—and there was almost always a light—had gone to it and then had come back for some reason or another. Usually they had a message or just wanted to check in on their loved ones.

  Kneeling on the ledge of the Great Hall, I grasped the rough edge of the roof with one hand and placed my other on the curved shoulder of the stone gargoyle beside me. Heat radiated from the shell, warming my palm. I squinted behind my sunglasses and leaned as far as I could without falling face-first off the roof. The Great Hall was almost as tall as the wall and at least two stories higher than Thierry’s house.

  Watching the ghost pace back and forth, obviously confused, I wondered where in the world he’d come from. The community wasn’t exactly easily reachable, nestled in the hills of the mountain and accessed only by back roads—winding, curvy back roads.

  Probably a car accident.

  Many a tired, unsuspecting traveler had fallen victim to those treacherous roads, with their sharp curves and steep, sudden embankments.

  The poor dude had probably lost control and woken up dead before wandering here, like a lot of ghosts did. Last week it was a hiker who’d gotten lost on the mountain and fallen to her death. Two weeks ago it was an overdose—an older man who’d died on one of those back roads, too out of it to realize he was dying and too far away from help even if he had. Last month there’d been a girl, and hers had been the worst death I’d seen in a long time. She’d wandered away from her family during a camping trip and crossed paths with a kind of evil that was all too human.

  The weight of that memory, of the girl’s screams for her mother, settled heavily in my chest. Moving her on hadn’t been easy, and there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t remember her cries.

  Shaking off those memories, I focused on the newest ghostie down below. Car accidents were unexpected and often traumatic, but nothing like murder victims or those who died angry deaths. He wouldn’t be hard to move on.

  I hadn’t seen any spirits lately, because I hadn’t been outside the community in over a year. The few times I had managed to sneak off, I hadn’t made it far enough to run across one.

  Restlessness crawled over my skin and dug deep. The feeling of being trapped bit and chewed its way to the surface. How long did they plan to keep me here? Forever? Desperation sprang to life and guilt quickly followed.

  Thierry and Matthew were still upset with me, and I hated that they were angry, that they didn’t understand why I couldn’t just sit back any longer.

  My stomach churned as I turned my gaze to the statue beside me. I was close enough to make out all the details. The smooth layer of stone and the two fierce, thick horns that could puncture the toughest metal. The deadly claws that could tear through cement were currently relaxed. The face, even as frightening as it could be with its flat nose and wide mouth parted by vicious fangs, was at peace. Resting. Asleep.

  Misha hadn’t let me out of his sight since the night of the Ravers. I was surprised he hadn’t tried to camp out on my bedroom floor the last two nights.

  I’m not trapped.

  This was my home and not my prison. Everything that I needed could be found here. I knew exactly how many homes lined the idyllic streets and parks. Besides Thierry’s house, there were one hundred and thirty-six single-family homes and several dozen duplexes and townhomes for those unmated. The walled community was a small city, complete with its own hospital, shopping center, theater, gym and various restaurants and clubs designed to serve every whim or need. Those who were not trained as warriors worked within the community. Everyone had a purpose here.

  Except for me.

  Mostly everyone here had accepted my mother and me into their clan when we arrived. Thierry protected us—well, protected me. Not my mother. He’d cared for her. He’d welcomed her and treated her like a queen and me like her princess, but he hadn’t been able to protect her.

  Protecting her was never a part of the equation.

  However, at the end of the day, I wasn’t a Warden, and I...I was running out of time to get out there, to really see the world beyond the mountains of West Virginia and Maryland.

  I was eighteen, and no Warden law surpassed the legality that I was, in fact, an adult and could do as I pleased, but leaving wasn’t simple.

  Sighing, I pulled my gaze from the resting gargoyle and focused on the road as cool June air lifted the few loose strands of my dark hair, tossing them around my head.

  I must look like Medusa.

  Squinting didn’t help me see any better, even with the fading sunlight dipping behind Green Mountain, but I saw the ghost stop and turn toward the road. A second later, he fragmented like smoke in the wind, and he didn’t piece back together.

  He’d be back, though, that I knew in my bones. They always came back.

  My gaze lifted to the road beyond and the thick crush of tall, ancient elms that crowded the paved road. All of it was a blur of colors—greens, whites and blues. Down below, I heard the doors open, and a heartbeat later, I saw the top of Thierry’s dark head as he stepped out onto the driveway.

  I really hoped Thierry didn’t look up.

  Granted, I wasn’t grounded or anything. Hell, Thierry had never grounded me. Mom, on the other hand, had been a different story. She’d grounded me about every other five seconds.

  Nibbling on my thumbnail, I watched Thierry stare at the empty hedge-lined road. Even from where I was perched, I could sense the tension rolling off him, filling the cool mountain air, flowing with the wind.

  A moment later, Matthew joined him. He came to stand beside Thierry, placing his hand on the man’s lower back.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Matthew said, and I tensed.

  Thierry shook his head. “I don’t like it.”

  “We don’t have to, but...they requested our help.” Matthew pressed his lips to Thierry’s temple. “It’ll be okay.”

  Thierry didn’t respond. They stood in silence then, as if they were waiting for something or someone.

  Minutes passed, and I heard them before I saw them. The crunching of tires on gravel warred with the distant call of birds. I knelt and peered around the slumbering Misha as a large, black SUV came down the road and rolled to a stop below.

  Curiosity bubbled to life as my eyes widened. The sound of car doors slamming shut was too hard to ignore. Rising just the slightest bit, I looked over the ledge and saw Matthew and Thierry walking forward to greet...

  Holy crap on a cracker the size of Texas, we had visitors, and I was completely unaware that we were going to have visitors. If our clan needed to meet with another, one of the Wardens left to carry out said meeting elsewhere. Rarely, if ever, was a meeting held here at the seat. Young Wardens from the Mid-Atlantic region were brought here only once a year, in September, to be trained by the elder Wardens until they reached maturity, and since it was only June, our visitors couldn’t be here with a young Warden.

  I squinted, but all I could make out was that there were three male Wardens in addition to Matthew and Thierry. One had longish brown hair, another had shorter brown hair cropped close to the skull and the other was a blond. No females were with them. That wasn’t at all surprising. Female Wardens rarely traveled outside of their home communities or the outposts, because they were often targeted by demons, just as the children were.

  Demons were astonishingly clever and logical. They knew that, if they took out those who could produce the next generation of Wardens, they could level a blow near impossible to recover from.

  And it was one of the reasons that, collectively, all the classes of demons outnumbered the Wardens by the millions.

  I was kind of like a female Warden, cage
d here for my safety, but for very, very different reasons.

  Thierry greeted each of the visitors, shaking their hands, and I wished I could see their faces. The group turned to walk into the Great Hall.

  What in the world was going on?

  Reaching over, I rapped my knuckles of the stone shell and was immediately rewarded with a low, rumbling growl of annoyance. I giggled. Misha loved his late-afternoon naps in the fading sun. It’s where he always went after training and classes.

  “Go to your room,” came the gruff reply from Misha. “Read a book. Watch a movie. Find a hobby.”

  I ignored what Misha said, taking a perverse amount of joy in annoying the utter living crap out of him whenever I could.

  “There are Wardens here,” I said, the words coming out in an excited rush.

  “There are always Wardens here, Trinity.”

  I stared at him, brow wrinkled. “These Wardens don’t live here.”

  The statue shifted, the stone becoming slightly less hard and turning from dark gray to a quicksilver as the wings unfurled behind me. Reddish brown hair appeared around the horns, the curls blowing in the wind.

  Vibrant blue eyes with thin, vertical pupils met mine. Irritation shone in those eyes. Wardens had weird sleeping patterns. Some stayed up all night and slept in the mornings and late afternoons. Misha’s schedule was based on whatever I was doing. “Trinity...”

  Dipping under a wing, I took off as Misha rose from his perch, spinning around. “Dammit!” he shouted.

  I knew the roof like the back of my hand, not even needing to really see where I was going. I was already on the other side, hopping up on the ledge, when Misha took flight behind me.

  “Don’t let them see you!” he yelled as I jumped. “I swear to God, Trinity, I will lock you in your room!”

  No, he wouldn’t.

  Hitting the small alcove below, I skidded down the rounded roof. The moment my feet hit nothing but air, I twisted onto my stomach. Gripping the edge of the roof, I swung my body inward, through the window I left open when I first joined Misha on the roof.

  I landed in the empty, dimly lit hallway and spun around to close the window behind me and then I locked it just in case Misha tried to follow me through. After shoving my sunglasses into the back pocket of my jeans, I took off down the hall, passing several closed doors to guest rooms and apartments that were almost never in use before throwing open the door to the musty-smelling stairwell. I took the steps three and four at a time and reached the first level in ten seconds.

  From there, I slowed my steps and kept close to the wall, slipping past a kitchen that was used only when there were banquets and ceremonies. Activity was bustling for the upcoming Accolade, a massive ceremony held to celebrate Wardens becoming full warriors. It involved a lot of eating, a lot of drinking and whole lot of secret squirrel stuff that went down with the newly ordained Wardens.

  Beyond the kitchen, I found the room I was looking for, which was a staging area of sorts and filled to the brim with folding tables and stacked chairs. I was careful not to knock into any of them, which required me to walk extraordinarily slowly.

  And that took a lot of effort.

  I didn’t do slow.

  Voices grew louder as I neared the deep maroon curtains that separated the staging area from the Great Hall.

  Stopping in front of the curtains, I carefully curled my fingers around the edge of one and tugged it a few inches aside, revealing the wide, cylinder-shaped hall in all its glory as dust spit into the air.

  Good Lord, when was the last time anyone touched this curtain?

  My gaze immediately lifted to the ceiling even though I couldn’t see the paintings anymore, no matter how brightly lit the hall was. Angels adorned the ceiling, many of which were battle angels—the Alphas. Those were the angels that oversaw the Wardens and often communicated with them, sometimes even in person, though I’d never seen one in real life. Painted in their armor and wielding righteous swords, they were a fearsome sight to look upon.

  “How was the trip here?” Thierry was asking as he walked into my line of sight, and I refocused. The visitors stood on the raised dais, waiting. “I hope uneventful?”

  Matthew followed Thierry to the center, toward a seat that wasn’t supposed to be called a throne, according to Thierry, but that, with its oversize seat and a back carved out of granite and shaped into a shield, sure looked like a throne to me.

  But what did I know?

  “Yes,” answered the one standing the closest to the dais. I couldn’t see him quite clearly, but he was the one with the longish brown hair. “The drive was long but it was a beautiful one.”

  “It’s been many years since I’ve been to the nation’s capital,” Matthew said, hands clasped behind his back. “I imagine our community is vastly different than what you’re used to.”

  Wow.

  They were from Washington, DC? The DC clan was a large outpost and their clan leader had died recently, which was right around the time Thierry had begun to act more stressed than normal.

  My gaze shifted to the one who’d been speaking. He looked like he was in his late twenties and seemed too young to be a clan leader, but he was the one doing all the talking.

  “It is very different,” the male Warden answered with a chuckle. “I don’t think I’ve seen this much open space in years.”

  Thierry sat. “Well, we’re glad that you were able to make it here, Nicolai.”

  I mouthed his name, sort of liking it.

  “Thank you for receiving us,” Nicolai responded. “We were surprised that our request was accepted.”

  So was I.

  “We don’t approve many requests,” Thierry replied. “But we thought it would be best to meet in person with you and your clan.”

  So he was the new clan leader. My gaze shifted to the other Wardens. The one with the shorter dark hair was standing near the blond, who was the closest to me, standing maybe a foot or two from where I stood behind the curtain. I couldn’t see the blond’s face yet, but goodness, he was tall, around six and a half feet, and the black thermal he wore stretched across broad shoulders. His shoulder-length hair was pulled back and secured at the nape of his neck.

  “As I’m sure you’re aware, the demon activity around several of the cities has been steadily decreasing over the last three months,” Nicolai said, drawing my attention back to the clan leader. “Before, we spotted maybe two or three Upper Level demons a week. We haven’t seen one in months.”

  That sounded like good news to me, especially since one might be sniffing around here.

  “Well, that doesn’t sound like a problem,” Thierry commented.

  “It doesn’t on the surface, but there’s also been an increase in Fiends and, even more disturbingly, lower level demons that couldn’t blend in with the populace if they tried,” Nicolai continued. “Zayne has come across four hordes of Raver demons this month alone. It’s odd to see so much activity from lower level demons without an Upper Level being behind it.”

  My gaze shifted to the blond. Zayne. That must be his name. He turned slightly, and every thought I had scattered like ashes in the wind as I got my first look at him. A tiny, still-functioning part of my brain knew how bad being that distracted by appearance was, but I was... I was stunned.

  Stunned straight into stupidity.

  I liked to think that I wasn’t someone who could be easily distracted by a gorgeous face, but he was... He was beautiful. And that was saying something, because I was constantly surrounded by gorgeous Wardens who rocked some great DNA when they appeared human.

  His skin was golden, like he spent a decent amount of time in the sun. He had a strong jaw that looked as if it were carved from stone, and those lips... How could they look so soft and so hard at the same time? And wasn’t that a weird thing to notice, but I so noticed, which pr
obably meant I was veering into creepy territory. High, angular cheekbones matched a straight, proud nose. I was too far away to see his eyes, but I assumed they were like all the other Wardens. The deepest, brightest blue possible.

  From where I was standing, this Warden looked like he was only a few years older than me, and he reminded me of the many painted angels that covered the ceiling of the Great Hall—paintings I could no longer see in detail.

  “Whoa,” I whispered, my eyes going so wide that I probably looked like a squeezed bug.

  He stiffened, and I held my breath, fearing he’d heard me. When he didn’t look to his left, to where I stood, my shoulders relaxed a little.

  “Something has the Upper Level demons afraid enough that they’ve all gone into hiding.” Nicolai was speaking again. “And that something is killing us—killing Wardens.”

  3

  I sucked in a sharp breath. Something was killing Wardens? With the exception of Upper Level demons and, well, me, Wardens were practically indestructible, bred to withstand the fiercest of battles.

  They weren’t easy to kill.

  “At first, we thought it was a demon—an Upper Level, taking out some of its own.” Zayne spoke up. “But while they do fight among themselves, they don’t kill like this, as if they have no fear of exposure. Then Wardens started turning up dead in the same way. What’s happening now is happening to demons and Wardens.”

  The Warden with shorter hair moved forward. “If I may speak?”

  “Dez, you know I don’t stand on formality,” Thierry replied.

  A faint smile appeared on Dez’s face. “I know that Zayne and I don’t have the decades of experience that you and Matthew have, but what we’re seeing is something altogether new. Some of our best warriors have died, Wardens who would not be easy to gain the upper hand on.”

  “Why is it impossible that this is the work of a highly skilled Upper Level demon?” Matthew asked. “Why do you all think this is something else?”

  “Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe a demon is orchestrating all of this,” added Nicolai, and I noticed that Zayne’s jaw clenched, as if he were forcing himself not to speak. “We don’t know yet, but this week we lost another Warden. We need reinforcements. That’s why we’re here.”