Warders, Volume One

by Mary Calmes

  “Everything’s fine, Malic: the girl is safe, the demon is dead, the detectives are appeased, and the family thinks you’re a hero. Now shut up and let me heal you!”

  But the bone knitting and everything else hurt so goddamn bad, and it was like jumping off something high: there was nowhere to go but down.

  Leith tried to take my hand, but I pulled free, annoyed. I didn’t need him to comfort me like a child.

  “Stubborn asshole,” my friend Marcus Roth, Marot, said as he charged across the room and dropped to his knees beside the bed I was laid out on. Dark sepia eyes locked on mine, and he grabbed my hand and held tight. It looked cool, his dark-brown fingers wrapped around my pale ones. When we patrolled together, people always stared at the picture we made: the tall, dark, African-American man and his blond-haired, blue-eyed… friend? Lover? No one had the balls to ask since he was big and so was I, both of us looking dangerous and combative. He, at least, was handsome. “Malic!”

  I lifted my eyes back to his, realizing I’d closed them. The warmth of his hand was welcome.

  “We’re gonna do this now ’cause your lips are blue and you’re turning a very unattractive shade of gray.”

  My groan of protest was loud. “I just needed to know everyone was okay.”

  “Fine, now don’t be such a prick and hold Leith’s hand. You know he’s fighting with his hearth, so give him a break.”

  “Fuck you, Marcus,” Leith growled.

  It was the last thing I heard before Jael yelled at everyone to shut the hell up and he leaned over and put his hands on me.

  It felt like he poured lava into my chest.

  I wanted to die.

  III

  “HE’S HERE again.”

  I looked up from the laptop on my desk where I was trying to make my brain click around the spreadsheet that my accountant, Frank Sullivan, Jackson’s hearth, had sent me. “What?” I asked the woman standing in the doorway.

  “I’m sorry, what word didn’t you understand?”

  I groaned loudly. It was too late in the day—technically night—for her to be this snarky.

  “Mal?”

  Claudia Duran, the woman I trusted more than any other in the world, my manager, my right hand, was standing there, hands on hips, looking at me and scowling. “I don’t know what we’re talking about.”

  She tilted her head like women do when they know you’re a dumb-ass but you’re too stubborn to ask for help. “Would you like me to help you read the––”

  “No,” I barked at her. “I can figure it out. I’ve looked at a spreadsheet before, I’m just––who’s here?”

  “The”—she waved her hand dismissively—“boy.”

  “What boy?”

  “The boy, the boy,” she said, exasperated with me, “and Christ, it must be nice to be you, huh? Just take off whenever you frickin’ feel like it?”

  I had been healing. Muscle, bone, skin, all of it knitting back together had taken me seven days on my back. A normal man would have been dead. A normal man would not have lived through the first demon attack; the second was not even an option. As it was, Marcus and Leith had taken turns visiting me, bringing me supplies, as well as Ryan and his hearth, Julian Nash. I had to admit that Ryan cooked like a dream and Julian reading to me had been, well, really nice. The man had a deep, sultry voice that had been more soothing than I cared to admit. No one had read to me since both my parents died in a car accident when I was ten. I’d forgotten how much I liked it. Not that I told him or thanked him. I’d done a lot of grunting. Ryan had just smiled at me as he sat at my bedside.

  “You can go,” I had snapped at him, tipping my head at Julian. “You can leave him; I’ll keep him.”

  I’d gotten an indulgent look. Ryan was keeping his hearth— that was plain to see. Watching Ryan Dean stare at the man he gave his heart to had actually made me wonder what I was maybe, possibly, missing. The way Ryan had to touch him, brush against him, the way Julian pushed Ryan’s mane of hair back from his face to see his lover’s eyes…. It was nice to see men touch each other gently, tenderly, and not just with heat and need and power.

  “Hello.”

  I looked up at her, realized I had kept her waiting. “I’m the boss and I own this place, so, yeah, it’s nice to be me, you giant pain in my ass.”

  She blew a long piece of hair off her forehead, and we both laughed. She didn’t buy my bluster at all, never had, which was why when I did my thing—walked through the place and slammed doors so hard the walls vibrated—she was usually right behind me giving me hell. And then I’d have to poke my head out of my office and yell out the apology to my staff. They were all scared shitless of me except her. She kept me human.

  “Shit,” I said, grinning at her, “what boy?”

  “I dunno, Mal, some guy––looks like he just graduated from high school, he’s been haunting the front door for, like, two weeks, and Dante’s like, fuck no, you ain’t gettin’ in no matter how great that fake ID is, but he totally slipped past Pete tonight and now he’s at the bar.”

  I squinted at her. “Throw him out.”

  Her face scrunched up. “Yeah, but Mal, he’s, like, the cutest thing I ever saw… he’s got those big brown puppy-dog eyes and curly brown hair and… how can you be such a heartless bastard?”

  I was at a complete loss. “What’re you talking about?”

  “Mal.” She started talking with her hands, all animated and restless, dark eyes firing, the candy-apple-red lipstick glaring with the light behind her. “He just wants to see you. Just fuckin’ see him already.”

  “Already?”

  “Honey, he’s been here every single damn night for two weeks. He stands by the door, in the cold, in that denim piece of crap coat he’s got, in those ripped jeans that leave nothing to the imagination, and he waits… for you… and I think somewhere along the line he stopped eating.”

  I squinted at her.

  “Sometimes he doesn’t show because he has to work early and other times he hangs out until around ten because he has to work the graveyard shift at––”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Because he told me,” she said, annoyed, enunciating the words for me. “Like I said, he’s been out there haunting the front door for a while.”

  “You were screwing with me.” I squinted at her. “You knew who you were talking about the whole time.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed, “and so do you.”

  Of course I knew. “And?” I asked her, shutting off my laptop, closing it up before I stood.

  “And.” She widened her eyes like I was the most irritating man on the planet. “What are you going to do about Dylan?”

  “What do you want me to––”

  “Malic Sunden!”

  “Oh for crissakes,” I grumbled, striding toward her.

  “Poor little thing. He saw you leave with that guy last night and he was so sad.”

  I needed the release and I could tell that Mario… something… I either didn’t get his last name or had forgotten it already, who knew? What I did know was that the man was not my hearth, but since I would have traded my soul to get laid, it hardly mattered. So I had gone home with the guy who had come with his buddies to my fine establishment. He had ditched the other members of the bridal party because he needed my dick up his ass.

  “Come home with me,” he had offered, leaning over to press a kiss to the side of my neck. “You can fuck me for hours.”

  Pushy bottom was what he was, but true to his word, I had fucked his brains out. And then slunk away the second he fell asleep, seeing in the fading light the streaks of white in his dark hair, his drawn, pinched face, and the lines around his mouth. I had taken maybe five years off him that would heal in a couple of days. He would think he had the flu; he would stay home because he felt like shit and looked like shit, and then, by the weekend, he would feel better again, he would look like himself and would return to his quest for the perfect top. I would be
nothing but a memory.

  “Claud––”

  “I saw him, Mal; I watched his little face crumple all up when you put that guy in your car.”

  “Did you just say ‘little face’?” I stopped from brushing by her to peer down into her pretty topaz eyes. “Are you kidding me with this?”

  “Oh, c’mon, Mal,” she said, hand on my chest. “He’s adorable and so sweet… why not take the kid home and make a meal of him.”

  “You have lost your mind,” I assured her, drawing out the word lost in case she missed it. “He’s a baby. You know they imprint on the first adult they see.”

  She chuckled deeply before she suddenly caught her breath.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She pressed her heavily coated lips together and took hold of the lapel of my suit jacket. “I just… you… thank you for opening up the 401(k) plans for all of us, Mal. I got my packet in the mail yesterday, and you’re going to match up to ten percent of what I put in.”

  “It’s not a big––”

  “It is,” she said flatly. “It’s a huge deal, Mal, and way more than generous. Everybody, your entire devoted staff, we all got them and we all appreciate it.”

  “I just don’t want you guys to think you’re missing out if you work for me.”

  “No, dear, we’re not missing out on anything. None of us think that.”

  I reached out and grabbed her, yanking her into my arms and holding her tight. Instantly she wrapped herself around me. I was always surprised at how fast women could mold their bodies to mine, and the deep purr of contentment that accompanied it.

  “Just because I’m an ass does not mean that I don’t intend to take care of you guys.” They all had great health insurance that included dental and vision, and now they had 401(k) as well. “This is me.”

  “I know,” she said, trembling, burying her face in my shoulder. “For a self-professed dick, you’re an awfully nice guy.”

  I growled, shoved her off me, and swatted her hands away when she tried to hug me again before starting down the hall.

  “I wish.”

  I stopped and looked back at her. “You wish what?”

  “That people could see you the way I do.”

  I grunted.

  “All they see is six feet four inches of scary-ass Swede, but that’s not really you.”

  The hell it isn’t, I thought as I walked away from her.

  At the end of the hall, I opened the door and was instantly assaulted by driving techno music. There were men and women dancing at my club where you could drink, dance, and watch some of the most beautiful women in the city strip. I liked it; it was upscale, clean, drug-free, gangster-free, urban-yuppie goodness. No one messed with my club because no one wanted to tangle with me. As I made my way to the bar, I saw my angel standing at the end. Claudia was right, he looked like crap.

  Pushing through the press of bodies, I made my way to him. You would have thought I was the Second Coming or something. Who got looked at like that?

  “Hey,” I greeted him, pushing up to the bar, wedging in between him and the guy beside him. “You can’t be in here.”

  He reached out for the lapel of my suit jacket, fingering the material. “You look nice.”

  What I looked was normal. I always did.

  I was tall, so that was why people saw me at all. But my eyes were set deep, the color too bright for my somber face, my nose had been broken many times, my eyebrows sat too close above my eyes, and I looked like I was tired most of the time. I kept my white-blond hair cut short because it was coarse and stuck up otherwise, and the stubble that ran over my jaw and upper lip was, for whatever reason, darker than my hair. The pieces of me, either pulled apart or lumped all together, did not add up to beauty. The boy in front of me did not have that problem.

  Even with strippers in the room, he was still the most heavenly creature there. His enormous eyes, all innocent and pleading, the lush kissable lips and skin… God, his skin… he was just delectable. I needed to run.

  “Go home,” I snarled at him, turning away.

  The whimper froze me.

  Fuck.

  “Malic,” he said, slipping in front of me, hands on my chest, fisting the dress shirt I was wearing under the jacket. “Is it ’cause I’m poor and you think I want your money?”

  “What?”

  “I’m a starving college student,” he said, stepping in closer, his head tilted back to look up at me, licking his lips. “Is that why you won’t take me out?”

  “Whaddya want?” I asked flatly, my eyes locked on his mouth. He really was the sweetest thing I had ever seen.

  “Well, what I’d like is for you to take me to dinner and then ask to take me home with you,” he said, his eyes all over my face.

  “You need money?” I asked him instead.

  It was strange, but beyond all his surface pretty was a warmth that just flowed off him. Just looking at him was soothing. He felt like home, and I had no idea why.

  “Malic?”

  I bristled with my need, the want in me. I hated it. “Just tell me what the fuck you want.”

  He shook his head. “I told you what I want; I need to go out with you.”

  I searched his face.

  “For crissakes, Malic, I work for a living, I don’t need money, and yeah, I’m a little short right now ’cause I just paid tuition, but I have enough to eat and––”

  “Tell me what I can do for you.”

  He squinted at me. “I did, you’re just not listening.”

  “Dyl––”

  “Malic.” His sigh was annoyed and I liked that, him being irritated at me. It was endearing. “I go to school during the day and I work the second shift, four to midnight, at Epic. I told you all that, remember?”

  “Sure, I––”

  “I go to the Art Institute; I’m getting my bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design. I mean, I just started, but I should be done in four years just like most people.”

  He was so normal. He was just a poor starving college student who had a job and went to school full time. “Where are your parents?” I drilled him, wanting to know everything about him down to the last detail.

  “They live in Atlanta. What about them?”

  “I dunno,” I said, shrugging, “do you see them, do they send you money––what?”

  “No, they don’t send me money. I have half a scholarship, and that’s why I work. They gave me the option, stay there and go to school and they’d pay for everything, or come out here and do it on my own.”

  It was nice to listen to him talk about his parents. He was smiling just a little.

  “They were really proud that I came out here to do it on my own, ya know? I mean, if I was gonna starve I’d break down and call my dad… maybe”—he grinned—“but I know he’d send a helluva lot more than I need and then both my folks would worry, and I just don’t wanna have that whole scene, ya know? I’ll see them at Christmas, and they can fuss over me then.”

  “They don’t care that you’re gay?”

  He gave me a strange look. “They’re my parents, why the hell do they care who I sleep with? What does that have to do with them and me?”

  “You do know that some parents go so far as to disown their children when they find out that they’re gay.”

  “No, I know, but that’s not how it is with us. They love me no matter what. My dad says as long as I don’t bring home a Democrat it’s all good.” He squinted at me. “What’re you?”

  “Never mind,” I grunted, “you got brothers, sisters?”

  “I have two of each, and a grandfather who is mean as spit who lives with us, them. You sort of remind me of him.”

  I reminded him of his grandfather? “You know what,” I said, leaning away from the bar. If he had put up a billboard he could not have reminded me any more obviously of our age difference. “You need to go.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Malic, I didn’t mean you reminded me of him ’cause he’s o
ld. You remind me of him ’cause you’re a jackass just like he is.”

  That was so much better. I pointed at the door.

  He grabbed my hand and pushed it down. “C’mon, it’s noisy in here, will you take me to eat and we can talk?”

  “No.”

  “Please, I wanna eat with you.”

  “You’re just hungry,” I muttered. “But you don’t have to eat with me,” I said, pulling my wallet from the breast pocket of my suit jacket. “I’ll give you some money to––”

  “Really?” He cut me off sharply, stepping back, eyes scrunched tight, hands balled into fists before he crossed his arms tight. “That’s what you think? You think I have to trade a fuck for food?”

  I was completely blindsided. I thought I was doing him a favor, and he looked like I hit him. “Dylan, wait a––”

  “Fuck you, Malic,” he shouted at me, which didn’t have nearly the same effect, as he had done it in the middle of a loud, busy club.

  But I heard him. His anger hit me like a sledgehammer before he pivoted around and charged toward the front. He was like a pinball bouncing off people on his way to the door.

  It was best that he went. I doubted that he’d be back. It was over before it started, and I was glad.

  Mostly glad.

  Sixty-forty glad.

  Shit.

  I scanned the room and saw Claudia at the bar. She was pointing at the door, looking at me like I was the biggest idiot on the planet. And I probably was.

  “Goddamnit,” I growled, starting after him. I didn’t want things to end like that between us. I wanted them over, but I didn’t want him to be mad.

  On the street, I looked both ways and saw him halfway down on the right. He was talking to himself, taking five steps forward and then two back. It was obvious that he was deciding on a course of action. Leave or return and fight with me. The way he turned sharply in the direction of the club made my stomach roll over. He was coming back to yell at me, I could tell, and honestly, if someone cared enough to fight with you, to try and make you see things their way, what other kind of proof do you need that they’re in it up to their eyeballs?