His eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring with each second that passed. Maybe I secretly had a death wish. It wouldn’t be the most surprising thing I’d learned about myself this year.
I could feel each breath as he exhaled, his chest pressing into mine. If he didn’t look like he wanted to kill me if I so much as breathed the wrong way, my stomach would be flipping for a completely different reason right now. Atlas was equal parts beautiful and lethal, and my brain seemed to get those two radically different things confused far too frequently. If I survived this encounter and, you know, hell, I was totally going to work on that.
“Your parents. Who were they?” His fingers dug into my shoulders like he wanted to shake the answers out of me.
The only problem was, I didn’t have those answers.
“Are you not listening to me? Tell your wolf to sit the fuck down and pay attention. I. Don’t. Know,” I spat out, angry now. I was over this power trip. I narrowed my eyes, glaring right back at him, and then I kneed him in the groin so that he’d back away. He bent over at the waist with a heavy groan. Good. “Cyrus doesn’t know either. I’m just a normal fucking orphan; why do you suddenly have a weird vendetta against me? And what the hell does this have to do with any of the handful of things that actually matter right now? Because the top priority is saving your brother, in case that’s slipped your mind.”
This sudden rage fit didn’t make any sense. Atlas had always been suspicious of me, always hated me to a degree, though I didn’t understand why. If he wanted to shed all that weight, all those long weeks of repressed anger, fine. I could play that game too.
I took in a heavy breath as frustration washed over me. “How about instead, you answer some questions. Why the fuck have you always been such an asshole to me? Why did you show up before I even knew who you were and attack me? If anyone has reason to be suspicious, it’s me. But I’ve never once treated you like you were a speck of dirt beneath my shoe.”
He was still bent double, but he grabbed my wrist, only this time the pressure was much more gentle.
“This is a scar,” he said, confusion and pain seeping through his expression as he studied me. “Protectors don’t scar.”
I pulled my arm away from him, looking down at the small star-shaped mark on the inside of my wrist. I shrugged, holding it to my chest before he did something truly ridiculous, like try to chop it off. Not to go all Nicolas-Cage-Moonstruck on him, but this was my hand, not his.
“I’ve had it since I was born. And protectors do scar. You have one too.”
I nodded at his arm, where I knew a deep ridge carved along his vein sat etched beneath his shirt sleeve.
“That’s different,” he said, staring up at me, his brows bent down in the middle. “That’s from my attack. We don’t heal all the way when we’re bit by a demon.” He paused, shaking his head slowly as his eyes studied me with less anger now. “Except for you.”
He was alluding to the time I was attacked by the vampire outside of the club. When he found me in the back alley, I was bleeding from a super heavy fang laceration. But then, out of nowhere, it healed without a trace. If he and Eli hadn’t seen it for themselves, I would’ve been convinced the fanghole hadn’t really bitten me.
I opened my mouth to argue again, to push his buttons the way he’d pushed mine, to launch accusation after accusation at him. But I didn’t have words to throw this time. He was right. I healed—completely—from a vamp attack. Not even Cyrus—the strongest protector I knew—had done that.
Why?
If I was being honest with myself, it was a clusterfuck that haunted me many nights when I woke up reliving that attack. The questions would circle in my mind for hours at a time. But then, each morning when the sun rose, I pushed the confusion away. There was too much to worry about, to learn; these questions didn’t matter as much. Besides, Cy didn’t seem to focus on it. In fact, he told me not to worry about it—so, for the most part, I didn't. It was one of the few times in the past two months that I actually listened to him.
Clearly Atlas did worry about it though. And maybe I was kidding myself by trying to ignore the oddities in my experiences with the hell realm.
Atlas was standing up tall, his height far eclipsing mine, now that the wave of agony had subsided somewhat. Apparently a dick hit only knocked a werewolf off balance for a few seconds. Good to know.
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to infuse my expression with anger again but the only thing I had to grasp at was a diluted mixture of anger and fear. Anger at my parents for leaving me without answers. Fear of whatever weird blood I had running through my veins. All I ever wanted was to find a community I belonged to. I thought that joining The Guild would be that opportunity. But I was on the outside there as well. “I swear, Atlas. I don’t know.”
When I looked up at him again, my own torment must’ve been visible, because his features softened. It was gradual—Atlas never fully relaxed or showed obvious compassion—but it was there. He reached a hand out, like he wanted to comfort me, but he took a step back instead.
“The hellhound,” he continued instead, staring at the ceiling instead of at me, “did you know that it can teleport? Do you know why it’s glomped onto you like you’re its master?”
Shock flooded my system as I shook my head. “He can teleport? Like the dude who took Wade? Can all hellhounds?”
“You really didn’t know?” Atlas asked as his head snapped down so that his eyes could study mine again. His brows bent in the middle like he was trying to gauge whether or not to believe me. To trust me. It didn’t seem like he landed on a decision yet either way.
“If I knew, I wouldn’t have gone through all that trouble breaking him from the damn research lab would I—” I paused, taking a step closer to Atlas as the mystery gripped me. “Wait, if he could teleport, why didn’t he just do that when they were about to kill him? Do you think the research team knew? That they prevented him from accessing that power somehow?”
Atlas shrugged, staring at me in silence. “Claude seems to think that his powers aren’t fully developed, that he can only teleport now when you’re in danger. I don’t fully understand it, or know how true that is.”
He parted his lips like he wanted to ask me something else or throw another accusation at me, but he didn’t. He took a step back and turned away before roughly running both of his hands through his hair and arching his back. Something was clearly tormenting him, crawling beneath his skin, but he also clearly had no intention of letting me in on the mystery of his anguish.
“Why do you suddenly not trust me?” I asked as I took a step forward and set my hand tentatively on his bicep to turn him back around towards me. Touching him was thoughtless, especially when his wolf was so close to the surface. I knew that. I was just clearly reckless. And focusing on the feel of his lean muscle underneath my fingers took me one notch over and made me completely detached from reality. “Why now, why like this? We’re in a vampire’s house and suddenly I’m the one you don’t trust?”
I could feel his arm shaking beneath my fingers, so I wasn’t surprised when he spun around with a force that pushed me a few feet back until my body collided with the wall again.
The loss of control, the impact of hitting my shoulder blades against the wood woke up my memory, as if jostling the final few missing puzzle pieces back into view.
“Oh my god,” I said, the words a cautious whisper.
“I’m sorry,” he said, as he shook his hair out of his eyes, “I shouldn’t have done that. It’s just, when the wolf is this close, it’s better if you’re not.”
“No,” I said. I ran forward and grabbed both of his shoulders this time, ignoring his warning altogether. I shook him until he focused on me, terror gripping my stomach. “I’ve just remembered.”
His eyes bobbed down, studying the space between us, as he swallowed slowly. “Remembered what?”
He didn’t like it when I touched him, his discomfort was evident enough. If it
had been any other scenario, I would’ve pulled back. But this was too important. “Wade.”
His brother’s name seemed to refocus his attention—gone was the man who was oscillating between angry intensity and something else I couldn’t quite define. Now he was Atlas, the guy I’d seen teach a band of students how to kill monsters with an impressive balance of power and precision. “What about Wade?”
“When I woke up,” I said, the words getting garbled in my throat from the tension in my chest. “There was a man—a creature of some sort. I couldn’t see any features, and I shouldn’t assume gender.” I shook my head, trying to grasp onto the memory with all of my attention, to focus. “It pushed me out of the dream. It’s why I woke up when I did.”
“Do you,” Atlas’s dark eyes were wild with emotion, the gold fading in and out as he tried to regain control, “do you think he’s hurt?”
“That’s what I’m saying, Atlas. I don’t know.”
6
Wade
My fingernails scraped against the stone wall as I desperately tried to reach her. I felt my nails break off and bend in angles they weren’t accustomed to; saw blood pooling in my nail beds. I didn’t care.
She flew through the fucking wall like she was made of nothing more than air. Her eyes were wide and terrified as her arms reached towards me, desperate to latch on.
Letting her down in that moment, watching the wall swallow her up like a ghost or phantom, would stick with me until I died. Again.
“Where the fuck did you send her?” I didn’t even try to keep the venom from leaking out of my voice now that Max was gone. I didn’t care what this creepy fucker did to me.
He was still shrouded in black, whether cloth or moving shadow, I couldn’t really tell. His face was indistinguishable and he showed up in my little cave without so much as opening a door. What the hell was he? And what the hell did he want with me?
I couldn’t see his eyes, but I had an eerie confidence that they were pinned directly on mine; couldn’t see his mouth, but for some reason knew with absolute certainty that it was positioned in a cocky ass smile.
“Relax, boy,” he said, his voice smooth, low, and bored. “She’s not dead, if that’s what you’re so concerned about. Of the two of us, the one with the power to kill that girl in her sleep is you, not me. Hopefully now, she’ll be barred from breaking back in.”
The truth of his statement stabbed into me like a cold, lethal knife. I’d realized it after that first visit, when I’d felt stronger after she’d left than I had before she’d arrived. Pressing my lips against hers was like breathing air, like becoming new again. It was intoxicating and addictive, and it took every ounce of willpower I had left not to throw myself at her when she showed up again.
My stomach tightened and I found myself reluctantly thankful that this shadow creature showed up when he—it—did. Was I capable of killing her? Resisting Max was already difficult when I was nothing more than a protector. Her presence was like a goddamn beacon, a ray of light that spoke to me on a level nothing ever had before.
But now, now that I was something more complicated than just a protector, she was irresistible. Everything about her seemed sharper to me now. She was like a living contrast—soft and strong, intelligent and naive, adorable and sexy.
“What am I?” I hadn’t meant that to be the question I voiced and I cursed myself for uttering it in such a sadboy whimper.
“You know the answer to that question already,” the voice responded with a soft chuckle, smug and a bit annoyed, like I was a child in need of supervision.
And honestly, if I could ultimately be responsible for Max’s death, that was exactly what I was.
“An incubus,” I said, the word a curse on my tongue. “But I wasn’t until I was killed, until I was brought here. Why?”
There was a long, impossibly drawn-out moment in which I was half-convinced the shadow figure would leave me here; abandon me in this claustrophobic prison forever. Would Max be able to come back to me now that she’d been banished? Did I want her to? The best way to keep her safe from me was to make sure she stayed away.
That thought struck in the back of my mind and down my spine like a knife sawing through bone, rough and splintered.
“The details don’t matter right now, and the story does not interest me enough to get into it at the moment. Suffice to say that your mother was a succubus, not the human your piece of shit father likely thought her to be. She died bringing you into the world; a level of absurd ignorance I didn't think her capable of attaining.” He paused a beat, and walked—or, rather, glided—around the cell. It seemed so much larger with him in it, like he had the power to expand the walls beyond physics. I’d been here for weeks or months or however long it was, but it looked unrecognizable with him standing in front of me. “Ignorant or not, she gave her life for an important cause. And she was a loyal confidant while she served me. Least I could do was watch over her spawn while he transitioned.”
“How long are you going to keep me in here?” I tracked every single one of his movements, confusion propelling me as much as a reluctant intrigue. If he was watching over me out of some misguided loyalty of the past, perhaps he wouldn’t kill me.
“Until you either die from the transition or I can be sure that you won’t become a nuisance. Letting a protector loose—even a partial protector—isn’t exactly well thought of in this world. If anyone gets wind of what you are, you will be eaten alive. Quite literally, perhaps.” I could almost feel him leering at me as goosebumps broke out along my arms and chest. “In the meantime, I’m greatly enjoying watching you come undone. It’s the fastest way for you to be reborn into something I can make use of. Maybe one day, you’ll become a great tool in this war. It will take a while though, to turn you against the people you think are your own. Until then, you are useless to me.”
A plate and glass of water appeared on my bed in a flash. When I turned back to the creature, he was gone.
Suddenly ravenous, I stuffed my mouth with the rock-hard bread as quickly as I could, making use of the glass of water to actually swallow it down. My teeth dug into what I hoped was just a regular steak and not something else. For all I knew, creatures in hell consumed demons...or worse, humans. We had no way of knowing either way, since the creatures we captured had been living amongst humans and protectors for a long while. And they were all surprisingly good at keeping their secrets from us, even through torture.
Still, in this case, the best I could do was close my eyes, chew, and engage in some good old fashioned wishful thinking. I’d need my strength if I had any hope of getting out of here.
Belly full and thirst reasonably quenched, I sat back against my bed and replayed the conversation with the shadow creature over and over.
I couldn’t get the image of Max being torn from my hands and flung from sight out of my mind. He said she was safe, that I was the real threat. And while I fully believed the latter, I didn’t trust the former. Demons weren’t exactly known for their honesty.
An unfamiliar ball of rage grew in my lower belly until, no longer able to control it, I threw the porcelain plate at my side against the farthest wall. The cup soon followed, though the satisfying shatter was drowned out by a loud, anguished scream.
It took me several seconds before I realized that the noise was coming from my own mouth.
My chest lifted in heavy, uneven puffs, as I walked around the small room, the skin of my feet tearing open each time I passed the shattered shards of glass. Suddenly all I could smell was my own stench; the stale air that I’d been living in felt heavy and putrid.
Since the moment my eyes opened, Max was the one thing I had to look forward to. Even when I realized what I was, that I could harm her, I still selfishly lived for the moments when she would show up in my bed, her eyes dancing with that unique mixture of strength and innocence.
And now the shadow figure had taken her from my grasp with a promise that she wouldn’t return. If she
couldn’t visit, how would I keep tabs on her? How would I know she was alive? Safe? Was she still planning on breaking her way into hell or had Atlas and the others finally abandoned that ridiculous plan? He would keep her safe at least, wouldn’t he?
Sometimes I was almost convinced that if a demon didn’t kill her, my brother would.
Suddenly desperate, I focused all of my energy on trying to reach her. It took several long minutes before my breathing evened out and my mind calmed. I needed a task. Something to fill my days.
I thought back to our time spent trying to trail through our friends’ dreams. The way her hand felt in mine. Warm and soft and confident.
The feel of her breaths as they whispered against my skin. The heat in her eyes as she tried not to give in to the incubus now living inside of me. Despite what she’d said, I was convinced that the reason we found ourselves in Izzy’s room eventually was because of Max.
I may have been the one with dream-walking powers, but Max was the light, the strength. Grasping desperately to that feeling, to that weird, magical energy that seemed to pull me to her, I focused on her and nothing else. For what felt like hours, I tried to reach her in the way that she helped me reach Izzy.
When it became too painful or too draining, I’d try Atlas instead. Imagine his familiar scowl and stiff posture, his constant battle between wanting to protect everyone and being terrified he was the reason they needed protection.
But always, within minutes, my focus swept back towards Max. My mind was a stubborn beast, never more so than since I awoke down here, alone in my misery and anxiety.
I did this over and over, until I exhausted myself with disappointment, head lolling back on the scraps of fabric I’d fashioned into a pillow. I gave in to the truth—the shadow creature had taken her from me. I told myself it was for her own good, that she would be safer where I couldn’t reach her. With steady breaths I begged for sleep to sweep me under. Or, better yet, death.
Hell and Back: The Protector Guild Book 4 Page 9