I wasn’t there with them—this wasn’t real. Instead, I was joyfully draining my friends of their life force, too focused on my own goddamn horniness to remember what I was, what I’d become.
I was a monster.
“No!” I screamed, dark edges clouding my vision, until the bedroom flew away and I was back in my prison.
Exactly as I should be.
Alone.
7
Max
I sprang from my pillow, eyes wide and breaths heavy as I looked around. What the hell had happened? It felt like Wade had completely ejected me, not only from the dream, but from sleep altogether.
Panting, I glanced around and reached frantically along the side table, desperately trying to find the lamp.
My fingers latched on the switch and the room was bathed in a soft, luminous glow. Judging from my clear reflection in the window, it was deep into the night which meant I’d slept for a few hours at least.
“You okay?”
I whipped my head around and saw Atlas sitting at the desk a few feet from me—in the exact spot that Wade had been in my dream.
I nodded my head viciously as I tried to catch my breath.
“We should have taken proper precautions before you went under,” he said, and even though he was partially cast in shadow, I could see that his face was stern. “Did he drain you too much?”
It dawned on me what he meant by proper precautions. After I’d mentioned that Wade might be in danger, we’d spent hours waiting for me to fall asleep. I even resorted to taking a few nighttime pills to help hurry along the process. Neither of us had given any thought to the idea of what might happen once I was finally with Wade. We were both too desperate to make sure that he was still alive.
Judging by the tightness of Atlas’s jaw, he’d heard every sound just as he had when I was in the car on the way to Seattle. I looked down and saw his hands gripping the arms of his chair, his knuckles nearly white.
“I missed most of it,” he said in response, like he could feel the anxiety radiating from me. “I went to get a bite to eat. When I came back and you were—I tried to wake you. It didn’t work. He didn’t drain you too much did he?”
He leaned forward slightly and studied me, like he’d be able to tell either way.
I glanced down at myself, patting down my sides and legs awkwardly, like that might inform me as to whether or not my energy was depleted. I felt fine though.
“Don’t worry, you surly shit, it was mostly me anyway. Not Wade,” Eli said from behind me, his voice gruff with sleep.
Atlas’s jaw clenched for a moment and I could tell he wanted to chew him out for the comment. “That’s what happens in an incubus dream apparently, every morsel of desire is amplified out of control,” he responded, words clipped.
But then, at the same time, like a bus out of nowhere, we were both hit with the same realization.
I spun around in bed and glanced at Eli, his dark hair mussed and unruly, a shit-eating grin on his face.
“You’re awake,” I said, as Atlas jumped out of his chair and circled the bed to check on him from the opposite side.
“Look my dude, you’re not really my type,” he said, brushing Atlas’s hands away as he tried to pull his neck into the light. “I’m fine sharing my bed with the lady, but not really with you.”
I fell asleep next to Eli out of hope that it would help facilitate a dream-walk to him with Wade. Was he awake now because of that experience? Had Wade pushed him back into consciousness as he had me, or was it something else?
“How do you feel?” Atlas asked, taking the hint and backing up a few feet, though I could see the tension in his body pulling him forward. “You’ve been out for days.”
Eli scratched at the scruff lining his jaw, brows bent in confusion. “I have? What for?”
I cleared my throat and slid out of the covers. It felt too intimate now, being so close to Eli after what had happened. Was Atlas right? Were mine and Eli’s actions merely the result of Wade’s powers?
I could feel my cheeks heating up and sent a silent prayer that the light wasn’t bright enough to reveal my embarrassment.
“You were attacked,” Atlas said, his words slow and even like he was worried he’d startle Eli. “By vampires.”
“Plural?” he shook his head and grabbed for the glass of water on my side of the bed, downing half of it in one gulp. Atlas or Declan must’ve brought it for me while I was out. I tried not to stumble on the idea of Atlas doing something thoughtful for me.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Atlas asked.
Eli’s dark eyes latched onto mine and danced with mirth. I knew instantly what last memory he was focused on and dropped my eyes.
“In the fight, he means,” I added quickly.
“Getting toppled by a bunch of vamps and then,” he looked up at me with awe and shock, his face drawn and lips parted. “And then you—”
Atlas cleared his throat and grabbed Eli’s arm, pulling his attention from me with a soft tug. They shared a long moment of silence before Atlas glanced at me, his eyes stern and unreadable as always. “You were bitten. Several times. Max, why don’t you go hit the other light and we can check his wounds.”
“Weird,” Eli said, something off about his tone. “I feel totally fine. Better than normal in a lot of ways, if I’m being honest.”
Happy for something to do, I jumped from the bed and rummaged along the wall until I found the main source of light.
When I turned around, both of them were looking at me and I suddenly felt hyper self-conscious that I was dressed only in someone’s baggy shirt—I hadn’t even bothered to ask whose it was.
After we determined that Eli was okay, I was so going to take a long, luxurious shower, and then beg Declan to help me locate my backpack. Which, hopefully, one of them had grabbed before we departed from the hotel suite. If not, I was going to be wildly underdressed for hell.
Ignoring their stares and Eli’s cocky grin, I walked back to the bed, trying to be as composed as possible while I made sure that the shirt was pulled as far down my thighs as it would go.
With careful fingers, I pulled back the blood-soaked bandages on Eli’s neck, terrified of what I’d find when I did.
His wounds had been weeping since he was brought here. I wasn’t sure what would happen if the bites didn’t coagulate.
“Impossible,” Atlas said as he gently moved my hand aside so that he could get a better look. He tore a piece of his shirt off from the bottom and grabbed the glass of water from Eli so that he could wet it. Then, with slow, careful strokes, he wiped away the dried blood on Eli’s neck, his eyes focused and assessing.
Eli closed his eyes tight, like he was expecting the worst or, at the very least, for the cleansing to be painful. But after a moment he opened one curious eye and then the other.
“The wound,” I said, unable to believe my eyes.
“How bad is it, love?” Eli asked, his voice dramatic and drawn out. “Am I hideous? Tell me. I can handle the truth.” He shook his head swiftly before adding, “wait, no don’t tell me. I lied. I can’t handle the truth.”
“How is this possible?” Atlas asked, his voice filled with awe as he rubbed his finger along the spot on Eli’s neck that once held a mess of bites and now held…nothing. “You’re completely healed. Every bite—”
Eli rolled his eyes. “Well, maybe don’t hide that much of the truth from me. I can handle a little bit of reality.”
“Eli, you’re completely healed,” I said, laughter spilling from my lips. “There’s not a single mark on you.”
Atlas’s brows were bent in focus. “I haven’t seen anything like this. Well, not since—”
“You,” Eli finished for him. He shoved Atlas’s hands away so that he could feel his own smooth skin. “Oh thank god. That would’ve been a hard thing to live with. Still, too bad I didn’t get to keep a little bit of a battle wound. Chicks dig scars, you know?”
He turned to me and winked.
“We should go wake up Declan,” I said and hopped back off the bed to go do that very thing. Now was not the time to get distracted by Eli...being Eli.
“Have her bring you to the entry hall receiving area. Eli will go rinse up and then we can start planning our next steps,” Atlas said as he stood up and stretched his limbs. How long had he been watching us sleep? He probably needed some rest himself—especially considering the fact that we would be venturing into hell soon, if all went well. “Have her show you where you can find your—er,” he glanced at me, before immediately averting his eyes and clearing his throat, “clothes.”
I ran from the room, too ecstatic with Eli’s recovery to be embarrassed by anything else and shook Declan awake. She was just as shocked and excited as I was and her eyes quickly lost that hazy look they had when roused from sleep suddenly. Pointing me in the direction of my clothes and a roomy bathroom, she ran to check on him while I took a few minutes to shower.
Someone had cleaned me up a bit while I was unconscious—unlike Eli, I didn’t have any wounds, so no dressings to deal with. But I also hadn’t been covered in blood and gore when I’d woken up, despite the fact that I’d been in an intense vamp battle.
I closed my eyes as the water cascaded over me, hoping that it was Declan who’d seen to the washing up and wardrobe change.
Then again, the thought of her seeing me naked and vulnerable like that brought just as much heat to my body as when I thought about one of the guys doing it.
Instantly, my focus went to that look in her eyes when I’d woken her up, the way all of her attention seemed to beam into me, making it difficult to breathe—to the fullness of her lips as she transitioned from that strange space between being asleep and awake…
Hopefully Khalida then. As strange as she was, I didn’t have any confusing thoughts about her seeing me naked.
I wasn’t sure what the hell was wrong with me. But I was getting extremely tired of my hormones ruining everything. And how would I face Eli alone again? Did he regret what happened? I should’ve stopped to think in the moment. It was so good to see him alive and talking, that when he kissed me I didn’t even question it.
It just felt...natural. Right.
I thought back to the way it felt to kiss him, to the feel of his hands all over me, to the way it made me feel knowing Wade was watching us. I never thought someone simply watching me in that vulnerable position could amplify my experience of it so much.
My stomach started to flip at the memory of it, so I turned the water to cold, in a desperate attempt to focus on something other than the spot between my legs for a second. I’d need to sort through all of my feelings eventually. It wasn’t normal to want two boys at once, was it?
I knew that protectors were a bit more open about polyamory than humans seemed to be, but I never thought I would develop feelings for more than one person—it just seemed so complicated, like adding so much more work to an already difficult thing.
And how would they feel about it? Eli had always been so hot and cold with me, so I couldn’t even guess where his head was half the time.
I shook my head, spilling water around me like a chaotic fountain. Now was not the time. We had to focus on saving Wade and getting back to Guild Headquarters in one piece. That was what mattered. It was the only thing that mattered.
A large bark pulled my attention back to the moment, so I rinsed off and threw on a pair of black leggings and a black tshirt, tying it at my hip.
Ralph was sitting outside the door when I opened it, butt popped in the air in the universal dog language for ‘play.’
“Don’t have time right now, but, how about you take me back to my room and then we can go meet everyone else,” I said as I ran my fingers through his shaggy fur.
We walked in silence as we descended the stairs, the halls lit only with a dim glow. I tried to be as quiet as possible, though Ralph stomped around with as much grace as he usually did. Which is to say, not much.
I wasn’t sure if Darius and Claude were still asleep, but I was hoping that at the very least, the latter was. After our encounter earlier, I wanted to have as little do with the mysterious twin as I possibly could. Hopefully I’d get away with only seeing him in the morning as he directed us towards the hell gate, wherever that was.
The whole concept of a portal into hell made me feel like I was reliving my Buffy fantasies in the flesh. The problem though, was that now that those fantasies were becoming real, they were also becoming much more terrifying.
When I walked into the room, I saw Eli on the couch, one foot perched on the other leg’s knee, his arms spread around the back of the headrests. His eyes lit up when he saw me and Ralph and I ignored the answering flutter in my stomach.
Even now, even while just casually sitting and talking to Declan and Atlas, he had a sly teasing energy about him. It was the sort of look that reminded me that he had no problem getting girls to his bedroom. And I remembered one of our first encounters, when I walked into him pumping into a human girl we’d met earlier that day.
I took a deep breath, drilling it through my head that even if he didn’t regret what happened during the dream-walk, it still didn’t mean anything. Not to him. Eli was a bedpost notch type of guy. And he never so much as pretended to be otherwise.
“Good of you to join us. I see you used my brother’s shampoo,” a deep voice echoed around the room, stemming from nowhere and everywhere at once.
I jumped and turned around towards the fireplace where a soft, calm fire was glowing. Darius was leaning against the mantle, his nose scrunched up in distaste.
“I didn’t think— will he be upset?” Last thing I wanted to do was get even more on that asshole’s bad side. There was only so much stress a girl could take and, honestly, I needed to reserve my capacity for the whole jumping into hell thing.
Darius shrugged, pushed off the mantle, and started to walk towards me at a slow, lazy pace. “There isn’t much that doesn’t upset him. The word pessimism was basically designed to describe him. But don’t worry, little protector. I’ll keep you safe.”
“Where’ve you been all day?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him. After his mysterious visit with Eli earlier, I hadn’t seen him around the house.
“Miss me, did you? I had a rest, as I told you I would, and then I went out for a bit. Wanted to familiarize myself with the city again while I got a bite to eat. Who knows when I’ll get to see it again. And while it has its annoyances, it was home for a decent while.”
I cringed, hoping that by something to eat he didn’t mean someone.
“This doesn’t matter,” Declan said, though there wasn’t much animosity in her words. She was staring at Eli like he’d come back from the dead.
Probably because he had.
“I still don’t understand how this happened,” she said before bending into a crouch and staring into Eli’s eyes like she was convinced the answer would be hidden behind his typical shit-eating grin.
“Guess I’m just indestructible,” Eli said with a wink in my direction.
“That, or maybe Wade had something to do with it,” I offered, remembering the way he’d ejected me into consciousness. I wasn’t entirely sure why he’d done it, unless he was ashamed of what we were doing.
“What have you done,” a dark voice echoed behind me, sending chills down my arms.
I turned around and saw Claude, dressed head-to-toe in black, his eyes hard as stone as he stared at Darius.
With a gentle hand, Darius pulled me behind him before walking a few steps towards his brother. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Claude’s nostrils flared and his muscles were so tense that he looked ready to explode across the room and attack us all. “You know damn well what I’m talking about. That boy was as good as dead.”
Darius shrugged, his posture stiffening a bit.
I wasn’t used to him taking things seriously and apparently neith
er were the other three in the room. Eli, Declan, and Atlas all stood to attention and walked slowly towards me like they were afraid of setting the twins off if they moved too quickly.
“Miracles happen, nothing to harp on about,” Darius said as he slid a hand towards the knife sheathed at his belt.
And then, without another word, Claude lunged.
8
Max
The brothers met with a crash that rattled me down to my bones. The room shook and the sounds the two made felt more like a fight between lions, rather than a fight between men. If I thought watching Declan and Atlas spar was like watching masters at work, this was something else entirely.
And suddenly, I realized why protectors worked in teams, why it often required so many of us to take down one of them.
It was like watching a ruthless, brutal ballet. They met each other fist for fist, neither of them even bothering with the use of blades—despite the fact that Darius had one at the ready. And despite being twins and the fact that Claude had recently saved Darius from death, neither of them were holding back now.
Claude threw a punch with so much force and power into Darius’s jaw that I could have sworn I heard multiple bones shatter. It was deafening. And Darius, being the absolute absurd creature that he was, just grinned back, using the muscles on the one side of his face that still worked properly.
“What the hell are you doing?” I screamed as the reality of what they were doing swept over me. They were going to kill each other. My words were muffled and lost to the sounds of their destruction.
I ran towards them, unsure how best to get them to pause long enough for us all to figure out what the hell was going on, to talk things through. This wasn’t going to solve anything except maybe add an even higher body count to our mission. And right now, we couldn’t afford that.
A strong force grabbed me around my middle and pulled me roughly to the ground. My fingers dug into the thick carpet as I tried to reorient myself.
Hell and Back: The Protector Guild Book 4 Page 11