Hidden (Her Immortal Guardians Book 1)

by Bella Edwards

  “If only you fully explored them, Gabe."

  Gabe looked around. Caleb joined him in leaning against the tree, mirroring his stance but not looking at him. He’d made the right decision, coming here tonight to watch her. Caleb drained the remains of a large bottle of strong-smelling alcohol, then threw the bottle, which travelled with unnatural speed into the trees behind them.

  “Oops,” said Caleb. “I hope that doesn’t hit anyone.”

  Gabe's expression hardened. “I think you should leave here. People aren't safe when you are among them."

  “Now why would I want to leave when the delectable Lorelei is here?” Caleb smirked.

  The hair on Gabe's neck prickled and he opened his mouth to retort.

  “Oh, come on, why else would you be here? Human interaction isn’t your thing, so that leaves one reason.” A slow smile edged across Caleb's face.

  Gabe stepped away from the tree and turned to him. “You can't do anything without crossing me first."

  Caleb's eyes wandered to the couple sitting on the bench. “Perhaps. But there is so much more to amuse me here. Don’t you find humans fascinating? But so fragile...”

  Gabe’s arm shot forward to grab Caleb by the neck. Caleb caught Gabe’s arm mid-air, laughing at him. "When did you get so aggressive?"

  “Go."

  Caleb released Gabe’s arm. “You can’t tell me to leave my property, Gabe."

  Gabe's hands dropped to his sides as he stepped backwards. “This is your house?”

  “One of a few – my newest. You know you really have been wasting your time here. You could have taken so much by now.” He paused as the couple from the bench passed. “So many, in fact.” Caleb raised an eyebrow, amused by his success in reducing Gabe to silence. “How about you? Still in hotel rooms? I see your dress sense hasn’t improved either.”

  Gabe's outfit of worn jeans and a dark coloured t-shirt hardly compared to Caleb’s expensive suit with a purple silk shirt unbuttoned far enough to see his smooth chest.

  “You know that I prefer to stay hidden from you.” Gabe crossed his arms. “And just because you found Lorelei doesn’t mean you’ve won.”

  Caleb snorted. “This isn’t about winning, Gabe. It’s about claiming what should be mine. There’s a position that needs filling, and I believe I’m the best man for the job.”

  “And it’s my job to ensure you don’t fill that position.”

  Caleb sighed. “Why don’t you work with me? We could be powerful together.”

  “I worked with you once before and you lied to me. Lied to everybody. Count yourself lucky that those you betrayed are dead.” He stepped forward in challenge. “Apart from me, and I won’t forget that betrayal, Caleb.”

  “I suppose I can see why that would give you trust issues.” His eyes glinted in the dark and features remained unmoved. “Don’t you think it’s strange that we don’t have the ability to kill each other? That could solve a problem or two.”

  “You know that’s impossible.”

  He sighed. “And not much of a punishment. Do you think they have fun watching our cat and mouse game?”

  “This isn’t a game.”

  “So serious!” Caleb clapped Gabe on the shoulder and Gabe recoiled, pushing Caleb’s hand from him. “Whose side do you think Lucas would be on?”

  Gabe’s anger grew. “I hope one day you face him for what you did.”

  “If he’s still alive.” Caleb straightened his jacket sleeves. Didn’t he care that his actions hurt so many?

  “Your arrogance will be your undoing.”

  “And your misguided benevolence to humans will be yours. Hide in your hotel rooms. Skulk in the shadows. But you can’t do that forever. Sooner or later a human will pull you into the world you hide from.” He tipped his head. “Maybe Lorelei?”

  “I will hide this girl from you again. If you touch her tonight, you will regret your actions.” Turning his back on Caleb, Gabe strode towards the party. He refused to be distracted by Caleb again—something could threaten Lorelei while he argued with him.

  He needed to get Lorelei away from the place. Now Gabe knew it was Caleb’s party, not a random teenage get together, and things were suddenly a lot more sinister. Tonight was the first time he hadn't sensed Caleb's presence before he saw him. How had Caleb hidden? Something was changing.

  Back inside the house, he pushed his way through the groups of people. The house held more people than before he’d gone outside. He scrutinised faces and touched arms as he made his way back to where he last saw Lorelei standing. She was gone.

  The crowd of people made seeing or hearing her out of the question. He wanted to cover his ears, to block out the noise of the voices and music. He closed his eyes against the hubbub, willing himself to feel Lorelei's presence. His mind searched the house. It was impossible to cut through the crowded thoughts and feelings in the room, but he detected she was still there. Searching the house with his mind, he sensed unusual energy.

  Gabe’s eyes snapped open. He could discern a presence in the house, diluted by the essences of those around him. Not only Caleb's presence.

  Not everybody in the house was human.

  Looking more carefully at those around him he tried to spot them. Mingled amongst the crowd were half-human creatures, their demonic presence undetectable by those around them—and almost by him. The glamours they used to hide their forms from the humans worked on him too—Gabe could only see behind facades if he concentrated. He usually didn't need to look, the supernatural apparent as soon as he heard or saw them.

  Something was changing amongst the demons who already lived here.

  Closest to him, a male creature engaged in conversation with a human girl, her eyes bright as she spoke with him. Even though Gabe could see the man wasn’t human, there was no trace of this apparent to the girl. To her, he was tall, slender and pale with short black hair. The girl flirted coyly, giggling and smoothing her clothes.

  The man turned to look at Gabe with a mocking expression. Smiling widely, he revealed a mouth of bright white teeth sharpened into points. As he met Gabe's eyes, the man’s changed colour from brown to deep crimson and back again. Gabe's eyes flicked to the girl. Cleary she couldn't see this, her behaviour didn't change at all. Was this a new breed of demon? The demon winked at him and turned back to the girl, leaning in to whisper something in her ear.

  Gabe hesitated. She wasn’t his problem, none of the other humans was. His one purpose—keep Lorelei from Caleb's grasp. If anything befell those around him, it would be Caleb’s problem to solve when the authorities became involved. All that mattered now was finding Lorelei and getting her out. Before something else found her first.

  Chapter Six

  Lorelei pushed her way through people as she searched for Scarlet, fed up with the constant intrusion from various male partygoers and unable to believe her friend would leave her alone for so long especially as she was doing her a favour by attending. Where was her drink?

  Self-conscious and alone in the room, Lorelei avoided everyone's gazes. She refused to meet the eyes of the men approaching her, and if she looked at them, they veered past her. She wondered how badly out of place she looked. One of the men who accosted her held a vacantness in his eyes that freaked her out.

  The familiar feeling of something watching her also hung in the room, but she couldn't see anyone she knew.

  Lorelei nudged her way into the entrance hall, scanning the crowd. A flash of red hair in the corner of her eye caused her to spin round and look up at the groups of people sitting along the spiralled marble staircase. A red-haired figure rounded the corner at the very top.

  Lorelei hesitated. “Scarlet!”

  One or two people turned to look at her then away, whispering and giggling.

  “Scarlet!” Lorelei made her way up the stairs, tripping over disgruntled guests on the way by.

  No light shone at the top of the stairs, and a hallway ran either way into the shadows. A few me
tres to her right a door was ajar, a dull glow spreading from the room into the corridor.

  “Are you waiting for the bathroom?” asked a voice from behind her.

  Lorelei turned around. The girl who spoke to her could have been beautiful, but instead, her eyes were empty, her pale skin stretched across her high cheekbones. The only life was painted on by heavy make-up.

  “No, I’m looking for a friend, have you seen a girl with scarlet red hair?”

  The girl looked at Lorelei as if she was speaking a foreign language then shrugged. “Plenty of colourful people here.” She walked past Lorelei, towards the room with the light.

  Lorelei sighed, trying to decide what her next move should be. Why did Scarlet disappear almost every time? Sometimes she felt more like her chaperone than a friend.

  She debated whether to explore the upstairs of the house further since she’d searched in every public room downstairs. Snooping around the private areas of the home in the dark didn't seem like a good idea. No sound came from any of the surrounding rooms, the party confined downstairs. Lorelei turned to go back down.

  A muffled scream came from the direction she'd searched, and Lorelei stopped. Conversations continued around her, oblivious. An uneasy feeling prickled across her neck. What if Scarlet is the girl who walked up the stairs before her?

  Lorelei crept towards the lit doorway, heart hammering in her chest, as she strained to hear, but the only sound came from the music and chatter from the party behind her. Maybe she should turn around and pay attention to her sixth sense telling her to get the hell out of there. For a few moments, she hesitated, digging her nails into her palms before pushing open the door.

  A small lamp on a table illuminated barely anything but the large bed in the centre of the room. She stepped into the room onto a plush carpet, focusing her eyes.

  Lorelei's foot bumped an object lying on the floor. The girl she'd spoken to at the top of the stairs lay motionless by her feet. Lorelei prayed to herself that the girl had only passed out.

  “Are you okay?” She knelt, feeling guilty for her relief it wasn't Scarlet.

  The girl's head was twisted at an unnatural angle, and as Lorelei leaned forward to check for a pulse, she touched something wet on her neck. Lorelei recoiled as blood spilt from a large gash in the girl's throat. Trying not to vomit, Lorelei put her hand over her mouth and stood, backing towards the door.

  A click nearby alerted her to a second doorway in the room. Someone crossed the room towards her with inhuman speed and before Lorelei could comprehend what was happening, a man was standing in front of her, centimetres away, as if he hit an invisible barrier.

  "You!" he gasped.

  This wasn't a man who towered over her, an intricate pattern of black veins traced beneath his translucent skin. Beneath his shaggy black hair, eyes shone blood red. Smiling, he revealed serrated teeth. An image from her dreams flashed across Lorelei's mind—she'd dreamt of people like this, but how could they exist?

  His breath stank of blood and Lorelei held her breath against the urge to vomit as she waited for him to get hold of her. The man held his hands centimetres from her cheek, and as she tensed expectantly, he pulled back his hand and rubbed it on his leg.

  "Fascinating..." Taking a step back, his sinister eyes regarding her curiously.

  Instinctively she turned towards the doorway, readying herself to run. As she took a step, the man appeared between her and the door. Lorelei's shoulders dropped—he faced her less than a second ago, how could he physically manage that?

  The man slammed the door shut, and she spun around backing into the room, escape through the doorway wasn't an option.

  As she did, her foot bumped against the leg of the girl on the floor. Blood pooled around the girl's head, and Lorelei put her hand to her mouth, bile rising in her throat.

  “What happened to her?"

  “You arrived before I had a chance to clear up,” The man spoke unemotionally and as if English was a foreign language.

  “Call an ambulance! What if she's still alive?”

  The man turned and looked down at the girl, giving a small shrug. “I’m afraid it’s a bit late for that now.”

  Lorelei fought against the fear threatening to paralyse her.

  “I wonder,” he growled, stepping towards her. "What would your blood taste like? Would I be able to taste what you hold inside?"

  In less than a second, he held her neck by hands as hard and cold as marble, squeezing. Lorelei closed her eyes against the horror of his face close to hers again, the icy breath on her cheek. His grip on her neck tightened and she struggled for breath. The man jerked her towards the bed.

  “I can’t breathe,” she choked.

  Letting go of her throat, he caught hold of both of her hands twisting them behind her. The man pushed her back onto the bed and leaned over her.

  “Keep still. Or I'll snap your neck as I snapped hers."

  As he exhaled heavily into her face, the scent of blood on his breath was replaced by a buzzing sensation that suffocated her senses, dulling her ability to respond to the terror of the situation she was in. Magic? She attempted to kick him away, but her legs wouldn't move.

  “No!” she cried out, twisting her body to move away from his grip but his body weighed onto her like a cold concrete block.

  He moved his lips across hers, the stench of blood on his breath sickening as he brushed his mouth gently across her cheek, mumbling something to himself in a language she couldn't understand. His lips moved towards her throat, and she struggled against his leaden form, falling into nothingness.

  A guttural sound deep in the man's chest interrupted her dreamlike state as his face was pulled back away from hers. She gasped, her consciousness springing back to her like an elastic band.

  In the dim light, the man's form flew across the room, and a shorter male figure crossed to him in a blur. He leaned over the creature and pinned him to the ground with his foot. Lorelei blinked the stars from her eyes, relief flooding through her.

  The ‘thing’ wouldn't finish what it started.

  Holding her throat, she tried to focus on the other man with them, but his form was shadowed.

  The male creature lay on the floor and whimpered, pleading with the man standing over him, using the same strange language he spoke a few moments before. The man said nothing, standing back as he pulled a knife from his jacket, the metal glinting in the faint light. He raised his hand high over his head and stabbed it deftly into the creature's chest. It's high-pitched scream assailed Lorelei's ears, and she closed her eyes, hands around her head.

  When she opened them and looked around, there was no sign of the creature, and she was alone in the room with Caleb.

  Chapter Seven

  “Lorelei!” he enthused, holding out his arms in a welcoming gesture as he turned towards her.

  Lorelei shakily pushed herself into a sitting position. What was Caleb doing there? Hugging her arms around her chest, she peered at him from under her fringe.

  Caleb's dark hair curled around his face as he smiled broadly at her, in the same boyish way as the first time she met him.

  His eyes hardened when he noticed the girl on the floor at their feet, his smile replaced by a hard line.

  "They can't bloody control themselves!" Kicking the door shut behind him and knelt, feeling the girl's wrist for a pulse. "Sorry, one moment." He pulled a phone from his pocket.

  Lorelei watched as he casually dialled a number and walked back to put himself between Lorelei and the door. Shrugging apologetically, he waited for an answer to his call.

  Caleb yelled a stream of profanities down the phone, the unfortunate recipient on the other end of the phone told to come and clear up the mess—or else.

  He ended the call and tucked the phone back into his jacket. "I'm so sorry that you saw this. His behaviour isn't something I approve of."

  Lorelei looked back to the girl, tears building behind her eyes. How could Caleb refer to a
person as a mess that needed cleaning up?

  "Is she dead?"

  Caleb nodded. "She is, and I really do apologise, it wasn't my intention for anybody to die tonight. As you can see the person responsible has been punished."

  Caleb's sounded nonchalant, as if a business transaction had gone wrong, not a girl dead on the floor. But she could see Caleb's furrowed brow and the consternation in his eyes—apparently, this wasn't something he'd bargained for that evening, which made two of them. None of the events of the evening was something she'd bargained for either.

  Lorelei's ability to cope slipped, as if becoming someone else, someone watching all this happening to her. This wasn't her reality.

  Where the creature cowered, all that was visible was a pile of grey dust. Caleb may have interrupted whatever the thing was, but her heart still pounded. Last time they met, Caleb attacked her—now he'd come to her rescue. Despite his gallant act, she suspected she wasn't out of danger yet.

  "Who or what was he?" Lorelei asked, taking in deep breaths.

  "Someone who you should not have met. I said my friends could come and have some fun but said nothing about killing." He frowned again. "Don’t they consider what problems killing people leads to? I should have known being here would be too much for them."

  "Was he going to kill me too?"

  "I highly doubt it. I think he valued his life more than that. Stupid creature ruled by such primal instincts. If he'd bothered to think about it, he’d realised what would happen if he caused me problems." He paused. "Or touched you."

  Caleb considered the girl in front of him, watching her eyes flicking between him and the door behind, aware her arms around her shook. They'd been here before, and this time he needed to be more tactful. A heavy silence full of questions Lorelei wanted to ask hung in the air between them.

  Caleb tipped his head, turning on his lopsided smile. "I'm sorry. I forgot to ask if you were okay?"

  Lorelei looked at him blankly. In front of her was the smooth, flirtatious Caleb she'd met inside the bar. Not the disturbing Caleb who'd attacked her outside.