Hell and Back: The Protector Guild Book 4

by Holborn, Gray

  He’d saved us though. My nails bit into the soft flesh of my palm as I thought about what that meant. I understood why he might save his brother, Max too if he knew about her power. But why the hell didn’t he finish off the rest of us?

  I glanced back at Darius, my lip curling in disgust. I could tell he was trying to come off like didn’t give a fuck about Max, but I saw the way he looked at her neck, like the asshole was constantly battling his growing temptation to sink his teeth in. She wasn’t his. She would never be his, if it was the last thing I did.

  “Our best option is to just leave him here. This one,” he nudged Max gently with his foot, “needs rest. We need to get her out of here.”

  Declan lunged, a low growl emerging from her chest as she moved towards Darius. Her eyes were filled with an emerald fire, and I caught her shirt before she reached him, knowing full well that if she did, she’d be dead. She’d been looking for an excuse—any excuse—to end him, and she was too close to the edge right now to think clearly. I didn’t think his brother would sit by and simply watch as she ended his life. And it wouldn’t be the first time her hatred of vamps caused a problem for all of us. She was always a short fuse where they were concerned.

  We needed to regroup. We needed to figure out what the fuck we were going to do now. Nothing made sense anymore. And if I lost Dec after losing everyone else, I’d shatter into so many pieces that there’d be no going back. Right now, she was the last tether holding me together. There was only so much grief and disappointment a person could be expected to survive.

  She fell back against my chest and I closed my arms around her, pinning hers against her body like a temporary straightjacket. Dec was the only person I knew whose temper ran just as hot as mine.

  “We aren’t leaving him behind,” she ground out as the sound of her teeth smashing together filled the room. “So if you want to stay alive,” she said this like she was hoping that deep down, he didn’t, “help us save him.”

  A loud exhale from behind me served as an instant reminder that we weren’t alone. It wasn’t just me and Declan against a vampire we’d broken out. A very dangerous vampire we’d broken out at that. But it was me and Declan against two very strong, very volatile vampires.

  The room shrank as I catalogued the exit. If we needed to get out of here, would we be able to do it? I was fast, especially in my wolf form, but carrying Max and Eli meant that we wouldn’t stand a chance. Not really.

  And Darius’s brother was the reason we were alive right now in the first place. While I didn’t understand why the fuck he’d saved us, he had. So I had to hope that he wasn’t going to change his mind about wanting us alive ten minutes later.

  I turned around slowly, studying Darius’s brother. I think he’d said his name was Claude. He looked like Darius, obviously, but much less...feral, maybe? Both had strange, mismatched eyeballs that heightened their already unsettling, mysterious expressions. Claude, though, looked a lot less like he’d spent the last long good while locked up in a lab, having tests run on him day in and day out. Darius on the other hand was un-fucking-predictable. Together they looked like the sort of monsters you’d find terrorizing people in a horror film. Trusting them wasn’t exactly an ideal solution.

  “We need to leave,” he said, his glare like ice. “I don’t know how many more will be headed this way, and I won’t be responsible for killing any more of my own. So if you want to stick around, I hope you’re prepared to save yourselves.”

  “We’re not leaving without Eli,” Declan said again, her head held up like she was speaking to a peer and not a dangerous beast from the depths of hell. She could be so thoughtless sometimes.

  “She’s right, we’re not,” I said, mirroring her steely posture. Apparently I was thoughtless too.

  Claude shook his head before propping it up with his hand, like he was dealing with a pack of children and on his last strand of patience. “Whatever, I don’t care. Carry both your dead out of here then, but you need to leave all the same. I’ll take you to the gate and we’ll be done with this.”

  Go to hell now? With half of our party unconscious? Was he fucking out of his mind?

  “We’re not going until she’s awake and can defend herself,” Darius said, his voice dripping with a lazy boredom as he studied the bloody battlefield with a weirdly calm excitement. Part of him seemed almost amused, like he found the whole experience exciting.

  Then again, if I’d spent the last few years locked up in a tiny room as a lab rat, I might feel the same.

  The room, scattered with demon entrails, was starting to smell like death. The cloying, metallic stench of blood was fused to the inside of my nostrils to the point where I was wondering if it would be a permanent fixture in my memory. It was impossible to ignore now that the adrenaline was leaving my system a bit. I needed to rest. Badly. I couldn’t protect us from much more than another protector, let alone a powerful supernatural beast, in my current state.

  I glanced at Declan, seeing my own injuries mirrored in her. Her spine was still straight, her expression still focused. But I knew her well enough to see the slight downward dip of her lips, the way she favored one leg, even if only slightly. She’d drop dead before revealing her weaknesses in front of a pair of vampires.

  “So then if you don’t want me to take you to hell, what the hell do you want then?” Claude asked, as he searched the faces of the vamps on the floor, lifting up limbs here, decapitated heads there. With each face that came into view, his body sagged into relief. He glanced at his brother, frustration evident in every feature, like he was dealing with an irrational child instead of an equal. Truthfully, that was probably a fair assessment, from what I knew of the guy.

  I watched him study the carcasses with a ball of anxiety building in my gut. He’d come in late to the battle. What would happen if it turned out we’d killed one of his friends? Would he still help us or would that be the final straw that would ultimately lead him to snap and kill us all?

  “I didn’t say we don’t want your help. I said we’re not going until she’s conscious and can defend herself. Plus, you know,” Darius waved his hand in the air vaguely in Eli’s direction, “they’ll all want to wait until he dies or something too.”

  I dug my fingers into Declan’s arm, less to keep her back this time and more to keep from jumping at him myself. There was only so much I could convincingly turn my cheek to.

  “Well, you can’t stay here,” Claude said, pausing when he got to the dead vampires surrounding Max and Eli. “What the hell happened here?”

  Darius glanced at the charred bodies and winced slightly before shrugging. “The dying boy is good with pyrotechnics. He’s a shit fighter, so that’s the only reason he stayed alive as long as he did. Where do you suggest we wait?”

  He was protecting Max. Or, at the very least, protecting the truth, though I didn’t understand why.

  Claude glanced up, for the first time looking uncomfortable. His nostrils flared, jaw drawing down in dread. He swept a hand through his hair chaotically, his eyes searching the place with a sort of frantic desperation. “You’ll have to stay somewhere you won’t attract attention.”

  “Any ideas, brother dearest? This is, after all, your city,” Darius sing-songed, his tone unusually light and carefree for such dire circumstances.

  “I know of a place that’ll do for a few days.” Claude closed his eyes, like he was dreading his own solution already.

  “And where’s that?” Declan bit out, not at all interested in being cordial.

  * * *

  That ended up being a large ass house built a few miles outside of Seattle. It also ended up being Claude’s, if his friendliness with the lock and key was anything to go by. That, and he seemed quite familiar with the pretty, young woman who welcomed us all in, friendly concern and disgust plastered in equal measures across her face.

  I didn’t blame her. We were collectively a mess. I walked in carrying Eli, trying desperately to keep track
of his faint heartbeat, my breath hitching each time it took me a second longer than anticipated to find it. Darius had Max clutched to his chest like a baby, the large hellhound nipping playfully at his feet while Declan monitored the two vampires with an unfriendly focus. I could tell it took every ounce of control she had not to stab them in the heart. Every last one of us was caked in blood and gore like we were extras from a zombie film.

  We’d made quick work of the hotel room, piling the bodies into the van Claude ordered as fast as we possibly could. The carpet was beyond saving, as was most of the furniture, but Claude promised to get that taken care of. Or rather, he promised his people would take care of the rest of the mess and the hotel owner, whatever that meant. Hopefully he had plans beyond just draining the poor receptionist, because I didn’t have the energy to take him on if that was his approach for making the supernatural gore fest disappear.

  I didn’t know the guy at all, but he oozed strength and power out of every pore. The way people looked at him when we were in the bar was filled with an unusual mixture of fear and envy—like they wanted what he had but were afraid to have it at the same time.

  It made sense, seeing as he had a team to clean up after the mess back there. That meant he was working with some solid infrastructure, an organization of sorts. Obviously The Guild had similar tools available for our missions, but I’d never heard of vampires exercising that same hierarchy of skill and precision.

  As far as we’d always been told, they were just blood-hungry beasts with allegiances to no one. Clearly Claude had earned some allegiances of his own. That made him more dangerous in my eyes. And entering into his territory had every instinct in my body screaming in protest.

  Part of me wondered if he was one of the masterminds behind the group of werewolves and vampires that had been attacking protectors around the country, which in a lot of ways would make our lives easier. We could live with the enemy for a few days, learn his habits, and plot his destruction. If we could take down Darius in the process, so much the better. We might even learn something about whatever creature kidnapped Wade.

  Honestly, if I didn’t have Eli’s survival to focus on, it would be the perfect mission plan.

  “Khalida, these are going to be our guests for a few days,” Claude said, his lips turning up in disgust as he stared at our group. “Please ignore them as much as you are able, but tell no one who doesn’t need to be made aware of their existence. They won’t be trespassing long.”

  Khalida didn’t look much older than Max. She had long, straight black hair, and narrow eyes that were dark as night. There was a wisdom there that raised the hair on my arms, but also a sadness that I didn’t want to focus on. I couldn’t tell if she was a vampire or not, but I was certain she wasn’t human—her body too still, her eyes too filled with a sort of preternatural knowing. She nodded once to Claude in acknowledgment of his instructions, before looking back at us all with a vague disinterest.

  And then her face broke out in a wide grin that lit her up from the inside out. She was no longer simply pretty—she was stunningly ethereal.

  “Darius? It can’t be.”

  “You forgive too easily,” Claude said as he let out an annoyed groan; a groan which Khalida promptly ignored as she backhanded his stomach.

  She ran up to Darius and wrapped her arms around him, staining her porcelain skin red as flakes of dried blood landed on her arms and face. She didn’t seem to give a flying fuck. Strange girl.

  “Hey Khali,” he said, awkwardly sinking into her embrace but not moving his arms or hands from supporting Max’s small frame. “Long time no see, as they say. Although I’ve always found it a strange saying, grammatically anyway. Never could fully wrap my head around it.”

  “You’re alive,” she said, her voice deep and filled with an echo of disbelief, “I mean, of course you are. I would know if you weren’t. But I was half convinced you’d never show your face around these parts again.” Her face dropped slightly as she pulled away from him. “Around us.”

  He winked at her once before walking into a large, surprisingly warm living space, and deposited Max onto a giant gray couch with a surprisingly reverent care.

  She looked so small and defenseless as she slept in a house owned by a vampire. How could she have taken down so many of them on her own when she seemed so fragile? She was so small, not to mention ridiculously naive and trusting. Maybe that was all part of it though—a supremely convincing act that made it impossible to fully distrust her. It was like I had to constantly force myself not to fall for my strange desire to protect her.

  A hard look from Claude that held a clear order sent Khalida stomping away into another room, but not before she scratched behind the hellhound’s ears like he was an adorable Labrador and not a powerful beast from hell. What was it with these women not understanding how fucking terrifying and strong hellhounds were? There was a reason the protectors running the lab wanted him studied and destroyed—they were unpredictable and made vampires and werewolves seem like loveable play things in comparison.

  Hell, I’d watched this very creature rip apart a vampire with my own eyes the night that Wade died. Or the night Wade was taken and presumed dead, anyway.

  “Before everyone goes for a wash,” Claude said, studying his own stained white shirt with annoyance, “I’d like to know a few things.”

  Ignoring his brother’s wince, Darius plopped down on the couch next to Max, settling back against the cushion like he was waiting for a show to begin. Crusty flakes of blood littered the upholstery beneath him.

  “As would we,” Declan said, crossing her arms and propping her side up against a wall. I didn’t think she was doing it to dirty up Claude’s walls to spite him, not in the way that Darius was anyway, but because she was in desperate need of some medical treatment and a long, restful sleep. She’d never admit to being badly injured in front of creatures she saw as the enemy though and I highly doubted she’d let herself rest so long as we were in enemy territory, which meant that her recovery would take longer than it should. It went against every one of her instincts to appear weak. “First and foremost, how the hell do we get to...hell?”

  She was awake and conscious enough to wince at her own unintended pun, a familiar expression that brought the first grin in hours to my face—the gesture almost felt foreign to my facial muscles.

  I laid Eli down on another couch, keeping a close eye on the slow, shallow breaths lifting his ribs. Each rise and fall of his chest felt impossibly erratic and unpredictable in a way that breathing shouldn’t be. I was torn between holding onto a naive hope that he’d awaken well and good in a day or so, and calling his father here to give him time with his son in case he didn’t.

  Jesus. Seamus was going to decapitate me himself if I didn’t bring Eli back alive. Didn’t even matter if he knew I was a werewolf or not. He would need no excuse. Eli was all he had and he’d made me discreetly promise over and over again that I’d watch out for him on our missions. Favoritism was deeply frowned upon in our line of work, but no one could begrudge a father for loving his son. And Seamus was like the father I’d always wanted. Disappointing him added an extra heavy layer of misery to the whole situation.

  “It’s not something I’m going to explain to you. I’ll take you to the gate as soon as you are able to go and, judging by the mess you’ve already created,” Claude glanced around at the blood soaking each of us, his nose curled in disgust, “the faster you can do so, the better. For all of us. Now, one of you needs to explain to me how a hellhound came to be glued to this girl? And I don’t see any bites on her, none of this blood appears to be hers, so why is she unconscious?”

  I hadn’t seen him take more than a passing, casual glance at Max, so his confidence that she wasn’t bitten threw me.

  I glanced over at Declan. Her eyes met mine and widened slightly. I could tell neither of us knew how to explain, even if we trusted Claude in the first place. It was always odd—how drawn supernatural creatu
res seemed to be to Max—us included. She’d had my entire team tripped up for months, none of us quite sure whether we wanted to do everything we could to protect her or stay as far away as we possibly could without arousing undue suspicion. She was equal parts tempting and terrifying. A terrible mix, as far as I was concerned.

  We couldn’t pretend she was altogether normal though, that her intrigue stemmed from nothing more than an unusual upbringing, or from being raised by one of the greats. Our instincts where she was concerned were correct—there was something strange, dangerous even, about her. The hellhound’s attachment wasn’t something we could argue with. He had a knack for showing up whenever she needed him most, like they were bonded in some ancient, powerful way that protectors had no answer for.

  At least not as far as I knew, anyway. But I was beginning to realize that The Guild either kept a lot more than they should from the field teams, or else the organization had a seriously alarming deficit of knowledge about the hell realm. If it was the former, I had no idea how to trust an organization that kept us all so entirely in the dark; and if it was the latter, we were right and surely fucked.

  And having a beast so often aligned with evil and hell showing up at her side during opportune moments was nothing if not ominous. It was easier to overlook this on occasion, since she’d gone and named the dog Ralph and treated him like he was nothing more than a loveable pet. I was half-convinced myself that he was on our side and didn’t mean any harm. Which was absolute madness. I knew better than that. Maybe the girls weren’t the only ones who handled the beast with puppy gloves.

  No creature associated with hell could be trusted. Not even me.

  Not even Wade.

  And most definitely not Max.

  I’d been concerned about her weird energy since the first second I’d laid eyes on her, before she even moved to Guild Headquarters. Something about my draw to her wasn’t right, wasn’t explainable in a way that I understood. She was like a beacon, pulling my wolf to that tiny shithole of a town that she called home. She healed too quickly from her vampire attack. And then, more recently, she started dreaming of Wade, a connection none of the rest of us were able to make, despite knowing him longer and sharing half of his DNA. Also weird and unexplainable.