Hell and Back: The Protector Guild Book 4

by Holborn, Gray

  A shadow figure—hiding in the recesses of a dungeon, tossing me about like it could manipulate the very air around me, like in its presence, I was made of nothing but air myself.

  Eli—under an impossibly high pile of vampires, their bodies like quicksand pulling him under, out of my reach—out of everyone’s reach.

  The thoughts disappeared as soon as I latched onto them, leaving me alone on the winding path of my own mind as I scrambled for purchase.

  Was I losing my grip on reality?

  I pushed myself into a seated position and I could almost feel the blood rushing through my veins as my body adjusted to the movement. Sounds were so much more intense, my ears suddenly tuned in to each raspy breath I sucked in.

  It was too much, too overwhelming. I wanted to go back to sleep—to sink into the cloud bed and forget about all of the creatures that went bump in the night. Waking life was overrated.

  “Where am I?” I whispered, my throat dry and charred, though I wasn’t sure from what. I pressed my tongue against my teeth, trying to remember the last time I’d eaten. Why did my mouth taste like barbecue?

  I ran a frantic finger against my teeth, terrified for a moment that I’d find fangs protruding from my gums.

  No.

  That wasn’t right. Protectors couldn’t be turned. Could they? I wasn’t sure anymore. Nothing about the supernatural world was as I expected it would be.

  “Oh, good. You’re awake.”

  My neck snapped away from the heavy curtains as my eyes tried to chase the quiet, almost musical voice. There was something otherworldly about it.

  A girl stood in a doorway, a large pitcher and glass of water balanced effortlessly on a lavish tray. Something about her seemed so timeless, like she’d been standing in that position, holding that vintage silver set for longer than I’d been alive.

  She moved towards me in long, languid movements. Her eyes were so black and smooth that they almost looked like they were made of velvet. I found myself strangely wanting to reach out and touch them. Her skin was impossibly clear and blemish free. So much so that I was half convinced she was made of marble, not flesh and bone. Every inch of her long limbs were lithe and graceful as she stood framed in the door.

  “Where am I?” I asked again, this time with an audience.

  “You’re somewhere safe,” she said, her head tilted as she studied me, making her look almost like a cat. Only more lethal. A panther maybe. “At least for right now, anyway. I can’t promise that you’ll be safe here forever. Claude can be quite fickle.”

  There wasn’t a threat in the way that she said it, rather it was like she was simply relaying a fact or an observation to an uninterested third-party.

  Her lips curled into a soft grin, both mysterious and beautiful. “There’s something very unusual about you, you know? Familiar, almost. Have we met? I can usually place a face, an energy signature.” Her eyes narrowed slightly as she studied me. “But I can’t quite get a read on you.”

  She seemed to oscillate between sophisticated and childlike, the transitions so smooth that the strange temperament was almost normal, the seams impossible to identify.

  I studied her intently, grabbing the glass as she handed it to me. Part of me was afraid to take a sip of something offered by a stranger. But then if she wanted to attack me, she could’ve slit my throat while I was asleep.

  I touched a few fingertips to my throat, irrationally concerned that someone had slit my throat while I was asleep. Maybe I was dead. Protectors didn’t exactly have any sort of religion, despite the fact that we devoted our lives to staving off creatures from hell.

  But maybe this was where we went to spend our afterlife. To a house with a strange girl and an impossibly cozy bed set.

  “Who are you?” I asked, my own voice not nearly as serene or teasing as hers.

  She landed on the edge of my bed with a playful bounce, her eyes dancing with amusement now, like we were old friends prepping for a slumber party. “I’m Khalida. Most of my friends call me Khali though. You’re welcome to as well. I’m a friend of Darius’s,” she said, arching a coy, perfectly-plucked brow as she studied me, “if that makes you feel any more relaxed?”

  It didn’t.

  Darius wasn’t the type to have friends. And if he did, it could only mean that they were as detached from reality and as dangerous as he was. I resisted the urge to inch away from her, but I scanned the room slowly, trying to catalogue different objects I could use to defend myself if I needed to.

  A heavy lamp on the side table. The glass pitcher on the tray. I slid my hand along my thigh, hoping that I’d fallen asleep with my knife holster as I so often did these days, but all that I felt was my skin. Where were my pants? It seemed strange to enter into the afterlife with a t-shirt and no pants.

  Declan and Atlas walked into the room, relief mirrored on each of their expressions as they took me in. Their arrival saved me from responding to the strange girl watching my every move, which was a small reprieve. A moment to catch my bearings anyway.

  “Where are we?” I asked them, since I wasn’t getting particularly clear responses out of the girl—Khalida, did she say?

  “Claude’s,” Atlas answered, eyes cold and posture stiff. There was something closed off about him, even more so than usual. I had a fleeting suspicion that he was disappointed that I’d bothered waking up at all.

  I gripped the blankets roughly in my hands as we stared off.

  Claude?

  I inhaled sharply, pieces sewing themselves together in my mind.

  Darius’s brother. The bar. Villette. The attack. The moments wove together into a pattern that started to connect, to make sense. I almost cried from the relief of it.

  I stood up sharply, accidentally knocking the pitcher from Khalida’s tray, splashing water down my legs and all over the carpet.

  At least there wasn’t ice.

  “The attack.” I spun around the room, like I expected vampires to be lying in wait behind me. I took a steady breath in, giving the adrenaline a moment to dissolve a bit. “Is everyone okay? There were so many. How did we survive that? Did we—did we survive that? Or are we dead?”

  I ran my hands along my body, expecting to find cuts and bites and broken bones.

  Nothing. I seemed completely fine. And, looking at them, they appeared okay too. Declan definitely hid some pain—I could tell in the tightness around her eyes, and the stiffness of her stance, like she was trying to move in very controlled stretches. But aside from a few bumps and bruises, they both looked as good as ever.

  They shared a look that I couldn’t read before turning back towards me. Silence stretched, like they were both floundering for a way to respond to me.

  “You guys are okay, right?” I asked again, taking a step toward them.

  Declan flinched and took a step back, like she was afraid I would hit her.

  It was so starkly different from how she’d acted around me the last time we were in a room together, that I couldn’t decide between being hurt or confused. Maybe I was a bit of both. It seemed like every time I took a step forward with one of them, it was only to go two steps back. Their moods were constantly giving me whiplash.

  “You really don’t remember?” Declan’s question came out soft, but with a layer of accusation, like she thought I was pulling something over her.

  I shook my head. “Remember what?”

  “The fight?” The words left her lips, cold and clipped, with a hint of anger evident in her eyes.

  “I remember being overrun—” I wrinkled my brow trying to force the memories back up to the surface, “and then I remember watching Eli get bombarded by vamps on every side—”

  “That’s it?” she asked, unfolding her arms from in front of her chest. She loosened slightly, relaxed, until I saw a glimmer of the expression she held that night, before the attack.

  “That’s it.” I echoed. “Everything after is just a void. How did we all make it out alive?”

>   “Claude and Ralph showed up,” Atlas said, tone monotonous, as he studied me like I was one of the monsters The Guild kept in their basement—coldly, critically, and with what seemed like a dose of fear or anger. “They got there in time. Helped us take down the rest of the vamps. Brought us back here to heal up and catch our breaths.”

  “Almost in time, anyway,” Declan muttered as she crossed her arms over her chest again, making her transitions between open and guarded easier to recognize. Small mercies, I guess.

  My mind flooded with the image of Eli trying to take on as many vampires as he could, the way he desperately fought to keep them away from me—he’d wanted me to run, to leave him there. It was clear as day in his eyes. He was positive he would die there in that battle. I glanced between Atlas and Declan, suddenly acutely aware of the fact that he wasn’t there with them.

  “Where’s Eli?” I held my breath, as my eyes darted from one to the other, desperate for an answer, but terrified of what that answer might be. There was anger written across their features, but not overwhelming grief. Which meant there was hope, even if it wasn’t much to go by. “And Darius?”

  Atlas’s eyes narrowed slightly, nostrils flaring, as if he was annoyed with me all over again for being concerned about a vampire—for uttering his name in the same breath as Eli’s.

  My chest tightened and my skin felt itchy under his scrutiny. I wasn’t sure why I cared whether or not Darius survived, but I’d be lying to myself if I pretended that I didn’t. I was trained to kill vampires and I’d watched that particular vampire kill one of our own. But still…

  An ethical problem for another day.

  “Your friend Eli has been bitten quite a few times, quite severely,” Khalida said as she studied the three of us like we were her favorite new pastime, or like she was watching a new episode of her favorite show unfold.

  She’d been so quiet since Atlas and Declan’s arrival that I’d almost entirely forgotten about her. But now, having her acute focus on me was making my skin feel tight.

  I turned away, intent on ignoring her, until I focused on the words that left her lips. My neck pinched, head spinning back in her direction as I processed them properly.

  Bitten. Multiple times.

  My stomach dipped, and I choked on a breath, everything I knew about vampire bites and protectors pouring through my mind in a heavy rush—how much damage they did, how frequently they resulted in death. None of those numbers and percentages took into account multiple wounds. Had anyone survived multiple bites before? From multiple vampires?

  The image of Eli falling under a wave of fanged creatures, the conviction in his eyes that he was about to die. It was the last thing I remembered. Had I passed out? Did I get knocked out just when he needed me most? Had I let the members of Six down again? First with Wade and now...

  “Is he—” I choked back my tears, unable to finish the thought, let alone the sentence as my vision blurred slightly.

  Declan’s face softened momentarily as she nodded out the door, signaling for me to follow her. “He’s alive, but it’s not looking great. You can come see him if you’d like.”

  I didn’t even focus on the house we were in, on any of the decor, on the path we were taking. Whether we were in a mansion or a dungeon, I couldn’t be certain. All that I could think about was Eli under a blanket of vampires.

  Would he survive this? Could he survive this?

  He had to.

  When Atlas opened a large, wooden door, the creak echoing down the hallway, I ran inside. With a quick leap across the room, I dropped down next to Eli on the bed. His neck was a mess, blood soaking through the bandaging and refusing to coagulate. His skin was damp, covered in a thick sweaty sheen. Even without feeling for a pulse, I could tell from the erratic breaths lifting his chest that he was in bad shape.

  I’d heard about vampire bites—listened to long, winding explanations in my classes back on campus of how they could destroy the body. Hell, I’d even recovered from one with remarkable speed myself. But I’d never seen someone go through the process. And to see it playing out with someone I knew, someone I cared about—

  When I placed my palm on his forehead, I could feel him shiver slightly at my touch. His breathing was rattled and rough, like his lungs couldn’t quite fill in the way that he needed them to.

  A fierce wave of icy panic swept through my body and I suddenly wished with a desperation that I didn’t fully understand that Greta was here.

  She was the one who’d nursed me back to health after I was attacked by a vampire outside of Guild Headquarters. There was a sort of stubborn intelligence about her that had a way of making everything feel okay. If anyone could help him, could save him, it was her.

  Another one. I couldn’t lose him, not when we were so close to getting Wade back. This felt too much like trading a life for a life. But the thing was, I needed them both.

  Eli was confusing and flirtatious and muddled my brain and my hormones more than anyone I’d ever met, but he’d weaseled his way in. I cared about him, even when I hated him.

  “Is there anything we can do? Any sort of treatment to help his chances?” I asked as the tears pooling in my eyes muddled the three figures standing outside the door until they were completely indistinguishable from each other.

  Until there was a fourth.

  The newest figure pushed into the room, like a confident, avenging angel, until he was towering above me.

  The panic calmed slightly, though I didn’t understand why, didn’t see why he of all people would have that effect on me.

  “Move aside little protector,” his voice whispered, the manic energy I was so accustomed to from Darius flattening into something softer, something almost tender.

  I blinked back my tears a few times, drying my eyes against the soft white cotton of my shirt. “I’m not leaving him,” I said, gripping Eli’s hand in mine—my grip soft enough not to rouse him, but firm enough to make it cumbersome for someone to try and remove me.

  Darius rolled his eyes as he pulled his shirt sleeve up to reveal a surprisingly strong, veiny forearm. Something about a creature as powerful as he was rolling its eyes felt so acutely strange in that moment.

  His eyes never left mine as he pressed his lips down to the soft flesh of his wrist, his teeth extending down until they pierced his smooth, porcelain skin.

  Even through my fear, I could feel my stomach flip uncomfortably under his scrutiny—a reaction he seemed to pick up on if the soft smile lifting his lips revealed anything.

  My lip curled in disgust with myself. The man next to me was a vampire. I’d seen him sink those very fangs into one of my people, right in front of me. Watched him snap a protector’s neck and then drain him dry. And before he was captured by The Guild, who knew how many lives he was responsible for ending.

  I had no right finding him alluring or intriguing or hot, as Izzy liked to remind me. Darius was not Atlas. He was not Wade. They all hid a monster beneath the surface. But unlike them, he’d killed before. Probably over and over, and probably without an ounce of regret.

  He brought his wrist to Eli’s lips until the blood soaked between them. Red seeped into the lines of Eli’s lips, darkening the chapped skin until his mouth was so bloody that he looked more like a vampire than Darius did in that moment.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Declan asked, her voice a mixture of curiosity and disgust. “Get the fuck away from him. Are you fucking mental?” She shook her head, her dark waves bouncing with each frustrated movement. “What the hell am I saying? You’re you. Of course you’re fucking mental.”

  “Darius,” Khalida warned, her eyes wide with concern, as she took a step into the room. She seemed to almost float over the carpet, her steps were so seamless, until she lifted a thin hand and touched his shoulder softly, “you shouldn’t. This is a bad idea.” Her dark eyes traced a line from his mouth to Eli’s. “Possibly one of your worst. And you’ve had many terrible ones over the years, so that�
��s not something I’d say lightly.”

  “She’s much less entertaining when she’s fawning over the others,” he responded, brushing her off, “maybe if I give this one a chance to survive, her fire will reignite.”

  His brow arched in challenge as he continued to stare at me, refusing to break eye contact. It was like he was expecting something from me, only I wasn’t sure what.

  “Enough,” Declan bit out, just as Atlas growled a low, throaty warning.

  It suddenly felt as if we were all acting in a play, only I was the only one trying to follow along without a script.

  Brushing past the moment, Darius wiped his wrist against Eli’s shirt, like he was nothing more than a living, breathing napkin. “If he doesn’t wake within a day or two, he never will. But you can rest now knowing that everything that could possibly be done has been tried.”

  “You just fed him your blood,” I said, disgust and confusion ringing in my voice.

  He winked at me. “I did indeed, you’re welcome. And I’m even bestowing this favor for free, so hopefully you’ll remember it and act accordingly in the future.”

  And with that, he stood up, stretching his limbs like a cat, his chaotic energy impossible to read.

  That didn’t sound like a free favor. That sounded like a very loaded favor that I didn’t have the tools to fully understand.

  “Dar—” Khalida started. There seemed to be real fear in her eyes, even though I didn’t know her well enough to read her yet.

  “Enough,” Darius answered, his voice sharp and revelatory of the demon that lingered beneath his skin. “This stays between us. You’ll tell my brother nothing, Khali. I don’t need him getting into my business just yet, not when we have bigger fish to tackle, or whatever the hell that absurd phrase is. Now,” he rolled his neck from side to side before walking towards the door, “I’m in desperate need of a meal and a very long rest. So unless anyone is volunteering a vein, I should be on my way. We’re going to have an intense few days ahead of us, so you’ll all do well to follow suit. In the meantime, I recommend everyone steer clear of my brother if you’re able. Best to start plotting out how you plan to navigate hell once we get there, since I’ve held up my side of the bargain. The rest is on you.”