Hell and Back
The Protector Guild Book 4
Gray Holborn
Copyright © 2021 by Gray Holborn
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Edits: CopybyKath
Cover: DamoroDesigns
Contents
1. Max
2. Atlas
3. Max
4. Max
5. Max
6. Wade
7. Max
8. Max
9. Max
10. Max
11. Declan
12. Max
13. Max
14. Max
15. Eli
16. Darius
17. Max
Thank You For Reading
Saving the Protector
About Gray:
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1
Max
Waking up in an incubus’s bed was always going to be a disorienting experience. There was just no getting around it.
“You’re back,” Wade said, swinging around so that he faced me, his angular face sharper than I remembered it. “I wasn’t sure if you’d ever be back.”
There was hope in his voice, but I could also pick out some lingering disappointment.
“Of course I’m back,” I replied, confused by the wall that seemed to build itself up between us, right in front of my eyes.
He glanced down, his dark brows furrowing over his impossibly pretty blue eyes, framed by the world’s thickest lashes. Sometimes they didn’t even seem real. “After last time, I just didn’t think—”
The words died out between us as my thoughts filled with the last time I was here with him, in this room. That particular encounter had gotten quite steamy in all the best ways, and I could still remember the feel of his calloused hands as they desperately searched every inch of my body, could still feel the way his tongue felt as it slid against my skin—warm and wet and intoxicating as hell. It was my first real kiss. The first one that mattered anyway. My first real experience with someone I actually cared about. And man, did Wade ruin me for all future guys.
Staring at him now, his brown skin smooth and blemish-free, like he was a photoshopped model, his lips soft and biteable, I had to stop from closing the distance between us immediately. And those eyes. Wade had the sort of eyes that I could just lose myself in for hours at a time and never get bored with looking at them. So many shades of blue swirled into one. His dark hair and the five-o-clock shadow now dusting the bottom half of his face made them pop even more.
But it was more than just how beautiful his eyes were that drew me to them like a moth to flame. It was the way they looked at me—so filled with hunger and focus, and like our eyes were each designed for the sole purpose of locking on each other’s. He looked more rugged here, wherever exactly ‘here’ was. We still didn’t really know. But there was an edge about him now that didn’t exist before; he was more dangerous than he was in his other life. Even now, even in his vulnerability.
About two months ago an ambush occurred at Guild Headquarters. Wade left the safety of his home, while he was supposed to be resting up from an earlier injury, to save me. Only, in the process of saving me, his neck was snapped and he was brought to this place. For weeks I dreamt of him in this room, thrashing about in pain, until he eventually woke up. But there was no clear explanation of how he was surviving this, how he was alive again.
Before he died, the protector world thought he was nothing more than a human-protector hybrid, abandoned by a father who was disappointed with producing someone with diluted supernatural blood. Now, he was this powerful, confusing, trapped incubus. If I was smart, I would fear him. Good thing I was perfectly okay with my precarious lack of wisdom, at least in this case anyway.
Back in this room, filled with a damp, dark, isolating sort of vibe, everything about Wade stood out. I sucked in a sharp breath, but the mildewy odor was eclipsed by the warm, masculine scent of him. He didn’t belong here. Not in this room that resembled a medieval dungeon. Not alone. Not without me, the rest of the guys, and Declan.
I had to physically dig my fingers into the side of his bed, though it was more concrete slab than a place built for rest, just to keep from latching my lips onto his and kissing him until we forgot about the fact that we weren’t together—not really anyway.
And judging by the fact that I was back in this room, in his arms, I had a feeling that back where my body was, I must be asleep.
That was the frustrating thing about having my dreams occupied by an incubus—it was impossible to focus on the things that I needed to focus on. Every single atom in my body wanted desperately to be explored by Wade. My issues in the real world just seemed to melt away, nonexistent on this plane.
And while the desire coursing through my body was all kinds of tingly fun, I needed to focus if we were going to save Wade from whoever it was that was keeping him captive.
“How long has it been since I was last here?” I asked, everything hazy and unclear. My thoughts drifted back to my most recent memory, but everything was so murky, so blurred together, that the scenes flitted through my mind at the speed of light, not one of them sticking long enough for me to grasp. Just as my dream world seemed to slip away when I was awake, it seemed my real world was doing the same while I slept.
“It’s been a while,” he said, lips turning down slightly as he broke eye contact again. “Time doesn’t really make sense here, not anymore. I keep losing track of the hours. But if I had to guess, I’d say it’s been a few days—even if it’s somehow felt like weeks.”
“And still no one’s been here?” I asked, sitting up now to look around. No sign of food, no sound surrounding us—nothing. “How can that be? How are you surviving?”
All I could do was hold onto these moments with desperation and hope that, eventually, they’d lead us to him before something—
I shook my head, not willing to finish the thought. We’d get to him. We’d get him out in time. We were protectors. It was our job to protect—and right now, Wade needed us.
“Someone stopped by once or twice. Left some food,” his brows pinched in the middle as he studied his hands. They were rough with callouses, the fingers long and lean. “But I couldn’t see them properly, couldn’t get them to speak. There’s not even a door so I have no idea how they were here. Only that one moment I was alone, and then I had food and a bucket. And when I was finished, they disappeared. Even now, thinking back to it, it’s like the memory is sand and my mind is nothing but a hole-riddled bucket.” He shook his head, before pulling away slightly. Suddenly the small space between us felt impossibly large, like a vast ocean of tumultuous waves. “Max, I think the last time you were—I think that I was feeding off you somehow. I think I might be—”
“An incubus,” I finished for him, reaching forward to grip his hand in mine. “I know, Wade, it’s okay. Atlas, Dec, Eli—we’re all coming for you. We’ll get you out of here and we’ll figure everything out. The five of us together can find a way to get to the bottom of things. It’s not something to worry about right now. Just focus on staying alive.”
“I don’t think that’s something we can just figure out, Max,” he said, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled sharply. The smooth tranquility that I usually associated with Wade faded away, replaced by the anger that lingered with the demon under his skin. He pulled his hand away from mine and roughly rubbed it over his face. The sound of
his smooth skin rubbing against thick stubble on his jaw created an enticingly delicious scratching noise. Even when he was pissed off, I was drawn to him. Incubus magic was powerful shit. “I’ve become the very fucking creature I’m supposed to hunt. I don’t even know how this could have fucking happened. You shouldn’t come for me. None of you should come for me. Just leave me here.”
“Your brother is a werewolf,” I reminded him as I shook my head in frustration. He could have a moment of self-pity. It was a big deal—falling asleep one day and then waking up only to realize you were suddenly a creature that feeds on sex. But I’d only give him a moment. If he had any chance of surviving, I needed him to focus, to hope. “Tell me Wade, did you give up on him after that happened? Or did you find a way to keep his secret and protect him? The way that family is supposed to do”
His eyes landed on mine again, the blue deepening a touch as they seemed to do so often in this dreamworld of his. “That’s not the same.”
“Is it not?”
“I didn’t literally drag my team—everyone I cared about—to hell, just to try and save him.”
“If he’d been in hell, you would have,” I said, interrupting his frustration with my own.
“Maybe, but that’s because I’m reckless and I don’t think things through. And I would have gotten us all killed.” He pushed away from me and stood up, pacing up and down the room. It was quite ridiculous looking since the room was hardly any larger than a closet. “And if that’s what Atlas is seriously considering, he needs to wake the fuck up. Because honestly, I have to be in hell, there’s no other option. Something about this place is just—off. Wrong somehow, filled with a magic I don’t understand. Powerful magic. So I know for sure that I can’t be in the human realm.” He looked down at me, his jaw tight. “I don’t want you coming here, Max. You need to promise.”
“We’re not going to leave you here—”
“And Atlas,” he continued, picking up on my other point, “he never hurt anyone. Not once. I’ve already…” the words melted away until he stood still, head drooping low in shame. “Max, I’ve hurt you. Don’t you see that? How are you not furious right now? How could you still want anything to do with me? If my brother does find me, I hope he does the right thing and removes my head from my spine.”
I sat up in the bed, shoving away the blankets and standing on top of them until we were at eye level—almost. “Do I look dead to you, Wade? Because I’m going to be honest, I feel pretty damn great.”
As soon as the words left my lips, I realized that they were true. For the first time since Wade was killed and stolen from us, I felt more like me. For months I’d been exhausted, hardly able to catch a night of sleep without waking up more exhausted each day. And then, after my last visit here, I was left weak and drained, my body held together by fragile threads. Something changed, and recently, though I wasn’t sure what.
“I do, Wade. It might be unexplainable, and against everything we know, but I feel fine. Better than fine. I feel more—more like me than I’ve felt in a long time,” I said, my voice quiet as if speaking those words any louder would make them untrue. “You did pull from me last time, but I feel better now. And we can find ways to make sure that doesn’t happen again.” I took a step off the bed and enveloped him in a hug, trying desperately to squeeze some sense into him. Men were stubborn creatures. And I would know, since I’d been surrounded by them my entire life. “We can find a way to help you and get you sustenance without you using your powers to quite that extent again.” I pulled back, an enticing idea lingering in my mind as I stared at his plush bottom lip. “Maybe we could experiment with just a...taste this time.”
I tilted my face up, angling my lips to meet his, desperate for my skin to be pressed against his again, even if for only a moment, even if only in my dream state. When I was less than a hair’s breadth away, he shoved me back, pressing his back into the wall as if he was suddenly desperate to become one with it, desperate to get as far away from me as possible.
“What are y—”
He shook his head, holding a palm up when I made like I was going to walk towards him again. “I can’t stop you from showing up here, Max.” He let out a heavy exhale, like the weight of the world was crushing him with each breath. “But I won’t put you in the same position as last time. If you visit me in your dreams, that’s all that we will do. Visit.”
The resolve was clear on his face, his jaw squared and tense, eyes that so often seemed like windows into his feelings were closed and cold.
Not wanting to push him, I nodded, sitting back on the edge of the bed. If we were going to keep our distance physically, this wasn’t the optimal meeting space. The room itself had nothing but a bed, the walls themselves so close and confined that there was little way to create space between us. It was like his little jail cell was just as eager for us to resume the events of our previous meeting as I was.
“Okay, we’ll just visit.” For now, anyway. I exhaled and glanced around the stone walls, the room filled with a hazy, dull gray light, though there was no light source anywhere I could see, natural or artificial.
I looked back at Wade, the strong determination on his face. He was bare-chested, wearing nothing but a pair of black sweatpants that sunk low on his waist, giving me an enticing view of each lean-muscled inch of his torso as it dipped into a V-shape that had my whole body rushing with heat.
He cleared his throat, drawing my attention back to his face, head tilted with a light chastisement. “I mean it, Max. Visitation only. We don’t know much about Incubi, they’re rare in our world. But one thing we do know is that they take even the barest sexual intrigue and amplify it to dangerous levels. Any attraction you have will be heightened and used against you. I’m no less of a predator than a vampire or a werewolf. You’ll do well to remember that.”
At the mention of the other creatures that went bump in the night, I thought of Atlas and Darius—two people who filled me with even more confusion and frustration than Wade did. I still wasn’t sure how to feel about either of them, about the danger they posed, how much they could be trusted.
How the hell had I gone from no friends outside of Ro and Cyrus to a collection of monsters I was expected to kill? Life as a protector was a wild ride, that much was for sure.
“How have you been spending your time?” I looked around again, like each time I did I expected to find myself face-to-face with something new and exciting. Something that might give me a clue as to where he was being kept. But just like every time I opened the fridge to check for a new snack that wasn’t there five minutes ago, the room remained the same, just as disappointing as before. Even if we could find our way into the hell realm, how the hell were we supposed to find him if this empty space was all we had to go on?
I mean, there wasn’t even a window for fuck’s sake, so I couldn’t even try to identify his surroundings.
He shrugged, the tension leaving his body slightly as he realized that I wouldn’t push him on his newly outlined rule.
But he didn’t need to worry. He’d made a boundary and I’d respect it. Even if the magic in his system was pulling at me like a heavy-duty magnet and making it alarmingly difficult for us both.
“Honestly, time just sort of feels wonky when you’re not here. Like I’m here but also not? I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. I keep losing hours—days even, maybe. Every time I try to remember what I’ve been doing, it’s like I hit a concrete wall in my mind. Like something—or someone—has blocked it off. Every once in a while, I’ll spend hours screaming for someone to come by. But then I always just sort of gave up. Hell, I would be happy for a fight, even some torture at this point. The lying in wait has been its own flavor of mind-melting misery.”
I frowned, watching his erratic breathing as he studied the walls confining him. He punched into the wall, the room reverberating with the echo of his knuckles cracking. The pain didn’t seem to faze him as he pressed his other hand into the smooth st
one, like he was searching for some sort of escape hatch.
How long had he done this? How many times had he shattered his bones trying to escape, left with nothing else to do other than wait for them to heal between each outburst.
I couldn’t even blame him for the Sisyphean endeavor. I got bored after twenty minutes of not being entertained. Wade had been alone in here for who knew how long. I wasn’t exactly sure how time worked in hell.
“Are you okay—” I shook my head at the ridiculous question, “of course you’re not okay. I hate when people ask that when the answer is so obviously ‘no’. I wish that there was something I could do. Something that could make this better.” I stood up and walked forward, ready to give him a hug, but stopped myself at the last moment. I wasn’t sure where that stood with respect to our new visitation rule. Touching an incubus was a slippery slope, as I was quickly learning.
A pained expression crossed his face as he took a step back. “Sorry. It’s just...until I get a handle on all of this, it’s probably better if we didn’t.” He motioned between us with his broken hand, before letting out a dull, humorless laugh. “Kind of its own version of torture, I guess, so maybe I shouldn’t complain too much about the boredom.”
I nodded and took a few steps back, feeling guilty suddenly for adding to his misery. The last thing I wanted to do was make this place even more awful for him. “Have you dream-walked with anyone else?”
His eyes widened, like he hadn’t even considered that a possibility. “No, just you. When you’re not here, I mostly just try and lose myself in some very…tempting daydreams.”
Hell and Back: The Protector Guild Book 4 Page 1