But after the fight? I wasn’t sure how to make sense of her at all anymore. Was it better to keep her close so that we could keep an eye on her, make sure she didn’t harm anyone? Or was it better to get as far away from her as soon as we used her dream link to find Wade? Part of me knew that if I’d seen anyone else do what she did, we’d be hightailing them back to the lab for research and, eventually, a trip to the morgue. The thought of turning her over though made me feel itchy all over, which was a problem for a different day.
None of us had mentioned the fact that Max had literally created fire with her mind less than an hour ago. For some reason, voicing it out loud heightened the urgency behind the need for action. I half wanted to forget it happened altogether. I could tell from Declan’s distance from Max that she was unsettled, maybe even a little bit afraid of the girl now.
And when I glanced in Darius’s direction, he shook his head almost imperceptibly. I wasn’t sure how I could read him so well in that moment, but I was certain he didn’t want us to impart too much information about Max to his brother.
Also interesting. Also confusing. She not only had a hellhound fighting in her corner, but a vampire who was even more unpredictable than all of the creatures I’d ever encountered. Combined.
“The hellhound was also kept in the lab in Guild Headquarters,” I said, careful to be as honest as possible so that Claude didn’t pick up on any hitch in my breathing or heartbeat. Vampires had powerful senses as they were, but something about Claude felt even stronger than the typical vamp we encountered on our missions. There was a feral lethality in his eyes. He watched every movement we made, not missing a single muscle tense. It was eerie as fuck.
“The girl, Max,” Declan continued, voice calm and even, “visited him there often and eventually broke him out. I suppose he feels loyalty to her. As for the lack of bites, it’s possible she simply fainted from the heightened emotions of being bombarded by a bunch of creatures bent on killing us all. She’s young. New.”
I knew that labeling Max a poor, defenseless woman like that grated on Declan’s nerves. She’d spent years proving herself as a valuable soldier, and taking away a fellow female protector’s agency and strength like that didn’t come naturally. Especially since in our world, women were protected, revered even. Their strength matched our own.
Claude arched a single brow, clearly not buying our story or at the very least not ready to believe that was all there was to it. “My bar associates tell me she’s being visited by an incubus. You’ll want to rouse her soon or you’ll be carting around another dying husk. My brother seems fond of this blood bag, so I advise you not to let that happen. He can be,” he rolled his neck slowly, as if lost in thought or a distant memory, before grunting, “volatile when provoked.”
“Back at the hotel, you mentioned that Ralph—er, the hellhound—brought you to us,” I said, ignoring his brother’s annoying fascination with Max. I didn’t have the energy to dissect that any further tonight. “Why did he go to you and how did he bring you to us?”
A large grin split his face, amusement making him resemble his brother so much more than his usual scowl did. “They really don’t teach you lot much in that school of yours, do they? Hellhounds have the power to shift from one place to another. This one isn’t fully attached to his powers yet, he’s weaker than most.” He studied Ralph with narrowed eyes and a look that either read as respect or fear, though I couldn’t tell which. “But when it’s life or death for the owner of his bond, he’s capable of tapping into the power.”
“What?” Declan asked, staring at Ralph with an expression of horror. She’d slowly been warming up to him over the weeks, but I could see that progress dissolving in her eyes, making way for a renewed fear. Dec didn’t do well with the unknown. She liked things to be predictable, black and white.
“They can teleport,” Darius clarified with a shrug, hardly focusing on the conversation at all. “Did I forget to mention that? Oops.”
My teeth raged against each other, my jaw tense but unable to move and translate my frustration into words. This explained how he was always able to get to her so easily, especially in the moments she needed him most. I wondered how he was able to sense when she was in danger. More than anything, I couldn’t help but think back to that night. How that tall, smug man had scooped Wade up like an unmoving bride and disappeared in a flash, presumably carrying him to a dungeon in hell, if Max’s dreams were anything to go by. And now, to find that the hound had the same power—my curiosity, distrust, and anger were competing in equal parts.
“Why did the hound go for you?” Declan asked, making up for my own temporary inability to speak. We were great at balancing each other out sometimes, between my temper and her unwillingness to trust, it could take a while for us to get the information we needed.
Mirroring his brother, Claude shrugged, bored with the conversation now that the answer to his question proved less exciting than he’d likely hoped. “I’m a useful creature to know. The hound is smart. And clearly, it turns out he has good judgment. I was able to get to you while you were all still alive.” He arched a single brow, taking a step closer to me, an odd gleam in his eyes. For the first time in years, I felt like I was the mouse and not the cat. “Tell me wolf, what’s it like to become the very thing you’ve spent your entire life learning to despise?”
My stomach squeezed in on itself, a low, warning growl emerging in my chest. My wolf wanted out. It wanted to rip this creature limb from limb and then take on his brother with the same brutal force, until the living room was an entirely new battle scene, much more personal than the last. For once, my wolf and I were on the same page.
“Where can we take them to rest?” I choked out, each word stilted.
I walked over to Max, picking her up again before Darius could beat me to it. I still wasn’t convinced that he wouldn’t kill her if left to his own devices. And part of me, deep down in a place I didn’t want to acknowledge, needed to know that she was okay, needed to feel her breathing against my chest, feel her weight in my own arms.
He narrowed his eyes, gripping Eli in his arms with far less care than he had lifted Max and nodded towards his brother. “Yes, lead the way, brother dearest. One needs rest to wake up, the other needs space to die. And then, in the blink of an eye we’ll be on to the next stop in our adventure and out of your precious hair. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that.”
“He’s your twin, so you do realize you basically just called yourself pretty?” Declan muttered under her breath, face pinched slightly as she moved away from the wall, resigned to follow wherever Claude was taking us.
“I’m known for my brutal honesty.” Darius winked and chomped his teeth together in a gesture that was probably meant to be flirty, but really just drove home the fact that he was a fucking man-sized leech.
Declan turned a pale shade of green I hadn’t seen since the day she tried eating her aunt’s infamous chicken surprise casserole.
His mirror let out a harsh, humorless laugh that turned my blood cold, and walked out of the room with nothing more than a silent invitation to follow.
If hell wasn’t the death of us, the fang twins would be.
3
Max
I stood in a familiar room, the walls decorated in gradient shades of purple and gray. I dug my feet into a familiar black shag rug as I squeezed Wade’s hand, grateful for the feeling of his fingers woven through mine.
The grin on his face was contagious, his smiling blue eyes suddenly a swirl of the indigo waves that I was growing more and more fond of. I was beginning to realize that they changed color whenever he used his incubus magic. It was similar to Atlas’s eyes and the ways the color morphed as his wolf surfaced. Still, even though the shade was new, it somehow felt like it had been a part of him for as long as I’d known him, like the incubus within was always there, desperate to be let out. And it made sense, truthfully. The incubus was always there, lurking for the chance to
express itself.
If I liked Wade, I had to like all parts of him, even though I didn’t fully understand how all of this was going to work just yet.
“You did it,” he whispered, his face filling with wonder as he took in the room we were standing in, eyes glazed with excitement like a child in a candy shop.
Our dream-walk was exciting for me, of course it was. But how exciting must it have been for Wade? Wade, who’d been locked in isolation, buried in a medieval prison with nothing but fear, loneliness, and a never-ending trove of unanswered questions.
My stomach ached when I thought about him in that room, alone with the realization that everything he knew about his past, about his future—all of it was wrong.
“No, you did it. I’m merely mooching off of your ridiculously cool new powers,” I clarified, joy rising inside me as I realized what this meant for him. For the first time in a long time, Wade had freedom. He had a way to spend his time, at least until I found a way to rescue him anyway.
Maybe freedom was the wrong word. Maybe what he really had was an escape. A place to go, a way to get out, when he couldn’t take being trapped in hell for another moment alone. Hopefully we’d get to him before the situation grew too dire.
Suddenly, a large force rammed me around the middle, squeezing and squeezing until I was certain that I’d explode or die from lack of oxygen.
I craned my neck, expecting to be confronted with an attacker or for the dream world to at the very least evict me. I didn’t belong here after all, not in the way that Wade did. I was nothing more than a trespasser, a leech on his mind and power.
My fear morphed into a wildly large grin as my face lined with my attacker’s.
I was confronted with smooth, light brown skin and deep gray eyes that were somehow both easy and impossible to read, depending on how guarded she was in the moment.
Izzy.
As soon as she released me just slightly, I wrapped my arms around her, squeezing tightly. We’d only been separated for a few days, but I was still ridiculously happy to see her. If I couldn’t have a meeting with my brother, to calm his fears and visit with him, then Izzy was the next best thing.
It was weird, really, to think about how her mere presence instantly relaxed me. I’d only known her for a few months, but it felt like it’d been a lifetime. She just had this remarkable, badass energy that instantly sucked you in and refused to let go. Sometimes when you fit with a person, you just instantly knew. It was like that with Izzy.
“Izzy,” I grunted, when her thick grasp became too much to handle. That answered the age-old question then, I supposed. That dreamers really could feel pain. Or maybe dreaming wasn’t the best way to describe whatever this was that we were doing. It was simply magic.
How could incubi be evil when they had the power to move time and space and bring me together with my best friend? There was nothing evil about that.
When she pulled back, her eyes were rimmed with red as they glanced at Wade and back at me.
Seeing her that way, suddenly terrified and anxious, like a small lost child, had anxiety gripping at my chest with a fierce, angry tightness.
“Does this mean you’re dead?” she murmured, her voice breaking softly at the question in her voice, like she didn’t want me to really answer it. “Please tell me I’m not having one of those goodbye dreams my auntie always told me about. I think she meant it as a hopeful experience—to get to say goodbye to your loved ones. But if you’re really dead and you’re here to say goodbye to me, I’m going to throat punch you until you come back.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, looking back at Wade as if he might know what she was rattling on about. “I’m not dead.”
She straightened her posture slightly, her fingers playing with the hem of her silver shirt as she always did when she was trying to make sense of something. “But Wade,” she glanced at him again, brows lifting in apology, “I mean, no offense Wade. Maybe you don’t realize it yet, I’m not sure how the whole ghost thing works, but you’re dead.” She turned her focus back on me. “You’re here with him. Does that mean that you’re dead too? Since you’re visiting me too?
“Maybe I’m just dreaming a normal dream,” she shook her head and sat down on her bed, not giving me a moment to respond as she sank into her thoughts. “But I feel more lucid than I normally do in my dreams. More in control of my body and my mind.” She waved her hands in the air like she was getting ready to dance a rather ungraceful ballet. “Which is why I thought it might be a death dream. A goodbye.”
Finally understanding, I walked over and sat next to her, my body weight sinking into the mattress as it normally would in my corporeal form. I sucked in a breath, grinning as I pulled out the familiar notes of Izzy’s favorite perfume—vanilla and spice. “I’m not dead, and this is not a normal dream. And, for what it’s worth, Wade’s not dead either.”
Her dark eyes narrowed as she tried to process her reality with the dream. And honestly, I fucking got it. The only thing that made me realize that my dreams with Wade were more than my typical dreams was the fact that I woke up with indentations of his fingers sunken into my hip.
I wasn’t about to mark my best friend’s perfect skin, so hopefully my explanation would do well enough. Maybe she’d settle for a sharp pinch if it became necessary.
“Can I tell you something? And when I do, can you promise not to tell anyone?”
“Not even Ro?” she asked, arching her perfectly-sculpted brow in challenge, a devious grin lifting her cheeks, even though her eyes still held some fear and sadness.
My smile responded to hers as I shoved her shoulder gently with mine. “Ro doesn’t count, but not anyone else.”
My stomach churned at the thought of keeping the truth from Cyrus. While I knew with absolute certainty that Ro wouldn’t turn Wade in once he found out the truth about what he was, I couldn’t say the same for Cy. I was ninety-percent sure he wouldn’t, but that ten percent was too much to risk. And it wasn’t my risk to take. I refused any possible future that resulted in Wade escaping from one prison, just to be locked up in another.
“Promise,” she said, eyeing Wade with curiosity, “of course I promise.”
“Wade’s not dead,” I said again, figuring that was as good a place as any to start. It wasn’t often that the dead came back to life, not even in our world. I looked around the room, holding back a grin. Her clothes were tossed all over the floor and the place looked like even more of a disaster than it usually did. Her dark bedding was bunched up in every direction, like she’d been tossing and turning through some truly horrific dreams. Or, who knows, maybe she had someone over for something more exciting than a shitty dream.
“I thought you said you saw him die that night—that his neck was snapped by a vampire right in front of you?” She leaned back on her elbows, settling in for the story, clearly enjoying it now that she realized I wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere no one would find me.
“I did.” I shrugged, mirroring her and leaning back against my elbows as I studied Wade. He was standing awkwardly in front of us, silent, still wearing nothing but black sweatpants. I tried not to focus on his bare chest for too long. I needed to focus if I wanted to get this story out without stumbling on my words. Incubus energy was a heady thing. “Turns out he’s not entirely human. Or, well, not entirely a protector I guess. But for some reason that doesn’t sound as much like a dramatic reveal. So instead, for entertainment’s sake, let’s stick with not entirely human.”
I turned back in time to see Izzy’s jaw drop as she sat back up, spine ramrod-straight. Her eyes narrowed as she studied him, like she was having trouble deciding whether or not to burst out laughing at some tepid joke or go on the defensive.
“Come again? If he’s not just protector, what the fuck is he then?” Her eyebrow was arched as she studied him with razor focus.
“Incubus,” Wade said, shoulders slumping forward slightly as he dropped eye contact. “Apparently
, anyway.”
“Well, fuck me sideways. That’s wild,” she said, standing up to study him more closely. “I guess that explains the whole dream thing then and how you could survive a broken neck. Cool parlor trick. I’m almost jealous. Also explains why I suddenly have an urge to lick you.” She crossed her shoulders in front of her chest, staring him down even as she spoke to me. “He hasn’t hurt you, has he?”
I shook my head, feeling slightly guilty that I couldn’t talk to her like I normally would. I’d tell Izzy about the sex dream eventually, but not until we were alone. I still had to sort out all of those complicated feelings as it was. Was I attracted to him because he was an incubus? Or because he was Wade?
As soon as the thought trespassed through my mind, I knew with absolute certainty that it was the latter. I’d felt a draw to Wade almost as soon as I’d met him. A draw that grew as I started to get to know him—all of his brainy, sweet quirks that were mixed with just the right amount of mischievous edge. That had nothing to do with being a creature who survived on sex.
“No, he hasn’t hurt me. I’m perfectly fine. He’s locked up and we’re going to free him.”
“You look good, Wade,” she said, voice friendly again now that she was sure he was harmless. That was all it took—my assurance—and Izzy was ready to toss out what The Guild had taught her about incubi and monsters since she was old enough to talk. She lifted a curious finger, poking into his pectoral as if half-convinced her flesh would pass through his. I watched with a grin as her fingertip turned into a whole palm caress. “Death and dreams suit you, I guess. Don’t get me wrong, you were always pretty. But now it’s just...exaggerated?”
Hell and Back: The Protector Guild Book 4 Page 4