MADNESS: Book One of The Shadow-Keepers Series

by Jas T. Ward

  Reno closed his eyes as Evan and the other woman started laughing at him. “What? Reno? You got a case of limp dick? Oh that’s great!”

  He felt embarrassment and rage start to bubble in his blood as he gave Evan a glare and didn’t even dare to look at the women as he made for the club exit.

  “No, no, no. Come on, let’s try again! Please. Don’t make a horny dark side beg!”

  “Shut up. Please.” he mumbled.

  If Reno had been lucky, which was pretty much fated he never was, Evan would have stayed with his flavor of the night and left him alone. But no, Evan was giving him Hell the whole retreat. They made it to the back parking area and his fellow Breaker still wasn’t letting up.

  “Dude? Seriously? That was a prime do-me-now female and you didn’t tap it? What are you? Gay?”

  Reno spun around to point a finger in Evan’s face, his own face darkening with frustration and anger, mostly at himself. “No. I am not gay. I just uh... Leave me alone okay.”

  Evan blinked at Reno and reached out to grab his arm. “Seriously? I have never heard of an impotent Breaker? Does Bounce know you don’t work down there?”

  For a second, one brief second, Reno thought Evan was being sincere and opened his mouth to dispute and explain, but then Evan was back to laughing and he yanked his arm away in anger.

  Turning to leave as he felt his dark side stir to make things worse, he ran right into a big dude’s chest. As in side of a house, big slab of meat guy who probably ate kittens, puppies and unborn children with his Wheaties every morning big.

  “Watch where you’re going there, little man.” Then the man literally shoved him away like he was nothing with a laugh and a follow-up shove from his just as big buddy.

  That did it.

  It probably shouldn’t have. Reno was used to being smaller than the rest and he usually took the joking and insults with an easy, goofy smile. Evan must have realized Reno’s tolerance was tapped and grabbed his shoulder from behind.

  “Reno. Those are Wires. You really don’t want to do anything stupid. I was kidding. Come on, let’s go back inside.”

  Wires were the top of the food chain in Breakers. The biggest and the baddest who were trained to be the Enforcers of Bounce’s rules and restrictions; it was Wires that were the junkyard dogs that were sent after rogue Breakers or Relays if they became a liability to the Grid.

  “Let me out. Come on. Enough is enough. I ain’t getting laid, I might as well make someone pay for it.”

  Reno usually handled that too with little problem most of the time. He usually ignored his violent split side to keep it buried in fear of showing a flaw and losing it. And then risk losing everything.

  But weeks of controlling both it and his need for release in a purging way had come to a head. Or based on earlier, the lack of a second one with Lucy.

  Reno turned and grabbed the big Wire by the shoulder and spun him around with a strange feral smile on his lips. “You didn’t give me a chance to say excuse me.”

  The Wire stood every bit a foot taller than Reno and seemed about that much wider. His hair as cut in a crew cut and he was wearing camouflage which was amusing considering it was a night club; maybe it was because the women loved that whole military look.

  His friend completed the almost matching set of combat Ken dolls, standing a few inches shorter than GI Blow. Both raised their brows in astonishment and looked at him as if they thought he was either joking or speaking another language.

  “What?”

  He smiled and stepped up close to GI Blow to bare his fangs. “Excuse me. For that and for some other stuff we’ll probably going to regret pretty fast.”

  Suddenly Reno’s vision flipped to red as Sundown flashed to drive, within a split second before his fist came up fast, and gave GI Blow a vicious upper-cut sending the big man to stagger back.

  Reno lunged with a dark-filled laugh and had actually landed a few blows before GI Blow Two was hauling him off and pinning his arms behind his back.

  Evan took off running back into the club and Reno saw the one guy who he had thought was becoming a friend abandoning him.

  Oh well, not the first time or the last time Reno fought alone. As GI Blow’s fist met his jaw with a bone shattering blow, Reno’s head snapped to the left only to snap to the right as it was punched a second time by the opposite fist.

  He laughed harder as the next punch landed in his gut, which caused him to splatter GI Blow with blood from a split lip as the air whooshed out of Reno’s lungs.

  Evan found Bounce dancing and grabbed the god’s arm. “We got trouble. Reno.”

  Bounce looked at the two lovely females he was dancing with to give a look of regret followed with both of them giving him saddened pouts before he spun to follow Evan.

  “What happened?”

  Evan shrugged as they ran to the back of the club. “I was giving him Hell about being limp-dicked and he ran into some Wires. The idiot actually egged them into a fight. Threw the first blow. And he’s laughing like he’s crazy. Two Wires boss. He doesn’t stand a cha....”

  But Evan’s words and stride stopped cold along with Bounce doing the same at his side when they hit the scene of the battle royal in the parking lot.

  Reno spun and clipped one of the Wire’s with a shit-kicker and was then pouncing on the second one to take the staggering man to the ground by wrapping his legs around the Wire’s neck to toss him down. Straddling the man’s chest, Reno was rapid firing punches so fast even Bounce saw them as a blur.

  The first Wire grabbed Reno in a desperate ploy to get some distance and threw him, only for Reno to spin, plant boots on the wall meant for his head and launch right back in a flurry of fists and boots.

  And laughing. Loudly laughing as if he was having the greatest time ever.

  Evan went to jump into the fray and Bounce stopped him by splaying a hand on the Breaker’s chest. “No. Stay out of it. I need to see this.”

  Bounce was both amazed and concerned. The difference could be felt in the air of the space. Violence, rage and darkness as Reno took down two highly trained, larger Wires.

  Soon they were both down for the count in the dirt and Reno stood between them. The Breaker’s body heaved and seized as his muscles clenched onto bone and rolled as if seeking more combat. Reno’s fangs were bared as breath sawed out in growls and snarls, which was an animalistic sound as primal as a predator could issue.

  And his eyes? Always so brilliant and blue? Were ringed in red and full of hunger for what fed it. Violence. Pain. All the bad things that kept his bad side barely fed and always with a gnawing hunger.

  Sundown, in all of Reno’s split personality glory.

  Evan blew out a long whistle as Reno then just stalked off as if he wasn’t leaving two men bleeding on the ground or that he was beaten as well, the pain not even seeming an issue in the man’s aggressive retreating lope.

  “What the fuck was that?” Evan whispered as he gave a sideways glance to Bounce as he watched Reno go.

  Bounce narrowed his eyes and hissed out a stressed breath with his lips in a thin line. “Something I thought was gone.”

  Chapter Eight

  You Can’t Do That!

  He walked about as pissed as he could be and still be able to walk. His rage was so blinding he couldn’t even remember where his truck was parked.

  “We can’t do that!”

  “It’s what we do. It was great. I say we schedule that shit. Often. And you’re the one that let me out. Come on, that was fucking awesome!”

  He spun around like he could somehow talk to his split personality, like Sundown was right there on the sidewalk with them rather than in his head, puzzling all the people that walked around them.

  “No! You hear me? No. That cannot happen again! Do you want us bounced?!”

  Sundown went silent as he hung his head and started walking towards home with his bloody knuckles shoved in his jeans pocket.

  “This is bad.” Re
ally bad, as Reno scrambled to try to get his head clear so he could think. He knew that Sundown needed out and he knew that his dark side needed to be fed just like all his other needs. Piss, sleep, eat, slaughter and let his dark side out on occasion was a pretty short to-do list. He avoided the last one on it as much as possible because he was afraid it would turn out like it did tonight.

  Reno was a double-sided coin with a bit of insanity holding the two-sides together, with him on the heads-side in control, and Sundown on the tails-side for when it went bad. It was like Sundown was waiting for tails up like the beginning of a really weird football game.

  He had not been paying any attention where he was walking as he continued lecturing both of them in his head until he looked up to see he was in the Ridgemont area with the bay glistening in the night.

  This was Emma’s neighborhood and he found his feet were taking him down her street and then to the sidewalk in front of her house.

  The lights were shining in the windows upstairs, for the shop was on the main floor and closed for the night.

  Reno’s eyes drifted to those windows above and saw the shadow of Emma against the white drapes. Part of him wanted her to look down while the other part knew he must have looked a sight with busted lips, bloodied nose and other signs of a fight obvious on his face.

  It’s not like he could just walk up and knock on the door like they were friends. Even though Reno knew they were so much more, and Emma had not known it at all and probably never would.

  Reno waited in the dark of the street for what must have been an hour, long after the lights were switched off and the house grew still. He walked around the side of the house and saw a wooden trellis that ran up the side from ground to roof. Grasping it, he used it to climb up, being quiet amidst the ivy and flowers that called the trellis its home. Reaching the second floor, he stopped when his acute hearing heard soft music with the volume low.

  The window was cracked open to let in the cool night air off the bay and he closed his eyes as the scent of vanilla beckoned him to come inside like a waft of a drug to an addict. The gentle sound of sleeping breath like music he wanted to get lost in.

  Emma. His Witch.

  The forbidden love that his heart refused to let go of no matter how hard he tried to force it.

  Apparently his body was in support of that because with just a hint of her scent it came alive with desire, his earlier useless cock painfully hardening in an instant as he pressed against the wood clap wall of the house.

  Reno reached around to pull out his dagger, flipped it open with a thumb to insert it along the edge of the screen. Sliced through it silently to reach under so he could slide the window open wider to allow him to slip a leg in followed by the rest of him until he crouched inside the room under the pale light given off by the moon outside.

  This was nuts. Absolutely insane. He had just broken into the house of a woman he wasn’t supposed to see who didn’t even know who he was. That was very mixed up mumbo-jumbo, Reno thought, as he came to stand and look towards the bed.

  He saw her laying there under the linens and felt like his lungs were having a really hard time doing what they were supposed to do. Rubbing his sweaty palms on the front of his jeans, his breath went ragged as he slowly walked towards the bed. Her scent was stronger to his hyper senses and his nostrils flared to breathe her in, the ache of arousal painfully throbbing stiff behind his fly.

  Stopping next to the bed, he longed to reach out and touch the dark hair that cascaded over the pale of the pillow. But he didn’t dare risk it no matter how much he longed for it.

  Crouching to rest on his haunches, he stared at her beautiful face so soft in sleep with long dark lashes shadowing her cheeks.

  Tilting his head to imagine kissing those lips, knowing they were the softest thing in the world he had ever felt. Before he realized it, he was reaching out to trace a thumb along the curve of the bottom one with her warm breath caressing his palm.

  Emma softly murmured and he jerked his hand back fast as he stood to back step into the dark shadow on the side of the room, a moment before her eyes fluttered open.

  Emma didn’t know what woke her up as she brought her hand up to her lips. There was this warmth there that felt both strange yet familiar.

  Her eyes narrowed to look around the room and found nothing but the usual dark shadows, half lit and fuzzed grey. Sitting up to let the sheet fall to her waist, her hand reached for a dagger she kept next to her on the bedside table.

  “Hello?”

  Reno couldn’t breathe and his heart made the strangest drumbeat staccato in his chest when Emma sat up. Moon danced off her skin and her hair look liked black silk under its glow. His eyes longingly wandered down her shoulders to rest on her breasts with nipples taut and pearled under the thinness of her nightgown.

  If his throbbing erection wasn’t trying to steal all the blood from the rest of his body before, it was going to cause him to stroke out now.

  He pressed his back harder against the wall, with one palm pressed against it as the other hand rubbed his agonizing ache to get it to go away.

  Emma rose from her bed as Reno closed his eyes and clenched his teeth saying his own private silent mantra in his head for her not to see him. The stupid part of him wished she would; to take his hand and pull him into that bed to spend days and days re-learning her lush curves. With his tongue, with his hands, with his eyes exploring all of his Witch, inside and out.

  Reno’s eyes tracked her as she walked out of the room and it took every single cell of his freak self to peel himself off the wall and take silent steps to the window. Swinging his legs through and to the trellis, he heard her coming back as he dropped to the ground into the dark shadow of her house.

  Emma didn’t see the window before, but as she came back into the master bedroom, the gentle flapping of the screen grabbed her attention. She wrapped her fingers around her dagger in alarm as she walked over to the window and looked into the night.

  Nothing was there that she could see or sense as she closed the window and locked it tight. She stared into the darkness beyond the window to place her forehead on the cool of the glass, as she once again brought her fingers up to lips that still felt tingly and warmed from something... or someone.

  Someone her body seemed to know even if there was no one there.

  Chapter Nine

  Fruit Punch is Red

  Funny how fast time whizzed by when one kept busy. So that was exactly what Reno did. He patrolled and killed from the time dusk set to the time the sun was burning off the fog from the Bay.

  His days were spent zoning out in his bed, lying on his belly, with the drone of the television as he blinked in and out of sleeping then awake. His blue eyes unfocused on the tube except when it was some of the cartoons he really loved - Rugrats, Animaniacs or classic Looney Tunes.

  It was during one of those slightly awake moments when he wondered how Emma was doing. He had made a point of not patrolling anywhere near her house or even close to her neighborhood. It was too tempting. Too hard not to just walk over to knock on the door and say hi, how are you? I am in love with you and oh by the way, you don’t know me. Total stalker introduction.

  That would be bad.

  Reno rolled to his back to snag his phone off the bedside table and his brow came up to see he had a message. Who?

  Evan never contacted him unless they were going on patrol together and that wasn’t scheduled to happen for another week or so. Opening the message, he saw that there was a meeting of Breakers and Relay’s to set up new protocols. That sounded like so much ‘not’ fun until Reno realized Emma would be there.

  Dropping his hand with his fingers still curled around the phone, he blinked up at the ceiling as he thought about how to get out of the meeting. It was part of the rules, which meant it was mandatory, which also meant he had to go.

  “Well holy Snickers bar. This is just great.”

  Emma loved to bake so the thought of
a party for the Relays and Breakers had her cooking all day. Cookies and cakes, cupcakes and all the delicious treats from her mother’s cook book. Her sister Lily was there helping and they both laughed as they decorated the treats then carefully packed them to get ready to take over to the club.

  “Have you talked to Jess?”

  Emma stopped putting the warm cookies in the bag at Lily’s question and sighed. “No. And I don’t plan on talking to him. Why?”

  She cut her sister a look and saw Lily was keeping a lot of things she wanted to say held in. She knew how her sisters felt. After all, when her parents had died along with their older brother, they were all each other had. Both her sisters were married and had kids, happy in their lives. Whereas Emma, well, Emma was just stuck in a rut.

  A big ole not getting any sumthin sumthin rut of ice cream nights and the Hallmark channel.

  Lily turned to lean against the counter as she crossed her arms on her chest and scratched with a fingernail at a spot of flour on her arm. “We’re worried about you.” She smirked and let out a soft laugh. “Your last date didn’t go so well.” Lily tilted her head over to look at her older sister. “You really need to get over him. Why not just hook up with another Breaker? You’re a healer Relay. They’d line up to be with you if you would just put yourself out there.”

  Emma braced her arms on the counter and shook her head, not looking over at her sister knowing the look she would see there.

  “Wrong. I don’t want to date a Breaker. Ever again. Why? They aren’t the type of men that want long term. And all they do is break your heart. There’s a reason they call them Breakers. And it’s not just because they are the bad-asses of the Grid.”

  Lily was married to a Tech Relay who was human so she sighed almost dreamily. “But they are so hot. Like sex wrapped up in a big meaty, muscled got-to-have-them-sweating-in-your-bed, screaming your name, hawt package.”