by Mary Calmes
He was ready to give me hell. I saw it in the set of his shoulders and the furrowed brows. When he looked up suddenly and realized I was there, staring back at him, the way his face lit up was really something to see. He had no right to look at me like that; I was annoyed and thrilled at the very same time.
“You’re just grateful ’cause I saved your ass from gettin’ beat,” I yelled down the street to him.
He shook his head.
“You’d wanna fuck any guy that saved you.”
“Nice.” He threw up his hands. “Why don’t you just take out ad space that I’m a whore!”
“No,” I yelled back, “you’re just beholden to me.”
“I’m not,” he corrected me, his voice carrying to where I was, the street empty but for the occasional cars. Thursday night was dead, not like the hustle of the weekend with its crowded sidewalks.
“You are!”
He flipped me off.
I liked him a lot.
And then he turned his head. Someone must have called out to him from the alley he was passing, and he was yanked suddenly off his feet sideways into darkness. I bolted down the street, went flying around the corner, and came to a skidding halt in front of the two men standing there.
“Such heroism,” the guy on the left hissed at me.
My eyes searched all around them, but there was no sign of Dylan anywhere.
“Looking for this kitten?”
The voice came from the left, and when I turned, a woman with black hair and green eyes stepped from the shadows. She pointed behind her on the ground, and there, propped up against a dumpster, was Dylan.
“Let him go,” I told them.
“As soon as he gets up, he can go,” the woman assured me. “What makes you think we give a shit about the human… warder?”
“Shit,” I growled under my breath, taking a step back.
I felt a rush of wind, and then there were hands on my shoulders, almost claws, holding me still. When I tried to move, whatever held me tightened its grip. I couldn’t tilt my head back to look; I was afraid to take my eyes off the people, the things, in front of me. The pressure was like a vise, and I sucked in my breath.
“Here’s the thing,” the voice said, close to my ear, breath curling around me, hot and wet. “Killing warders is easier when they’re all alone.”
Shit again.
“You know how to break a sentinel’s spirit?”
I kept quiet.
“You kill their warders.”
I swallowed down my fear and took a quick breath. “I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Oh I think you do, warder of Jael, servant of the Labarum. I think you do.”
What was I supposed to do? Just stand there and trade snappy banter with him? It? I rolled my shoulder, left the blazer with whatever had been holding me when it flexed its talons, and ran. I got halfway down the alley before I felt something rip at my back. Hurling myself to the ground, something flew over me and crashed into a dumpster. I got my feet under me and ran sideways, the scream from somewhere terrifying me even as I ducked under a fire escape. A creature, I wasn’t sure what, hit the metal, and when I looked up all I saw was what appeared to be a giant bug. It was a cross between a cockroach and a wasp, and it had hit the metal hard enough to bend it. The buzzing, hissing noise it made had my stomach rolling as I dived to the right.
Caught fast in claws, I struggled hard even when I was hurled down onto the concrete. My back took the brunt of the impact, and I hoped it wasn’t broken even as I had no air to breathe. There was a man, a demon, crouched over me, and with one slash of his talons, my shirt and the T-shirt underneath fell away.
“I love skin,” he told me before his hand came toward my chest.
I grabbed his hand with both of mine, and his wail of pain startled me.
He tore his arm from my grip, and we both saw the burn on his withered flesh.
“Vienna!” he screamed.
I heard wings, saw the woman above me, and then a smell hit me hard, like molding oranges and mothballs and dirt. I couldn’t help retching.
“Get off him!”
The voice thundered through the alley, filled the space, and had the demon above me recoiling, pushing back.
I rolled sideways and felt a knife in my right shoulder, buried deep and hard. I stumbled forward, onto my feet somehow, and hit the side of the building. My hand was there to brace me, hold me up, my fingers splayed on the brick.
I wasn’t usually the one hunted; I was normally the one who did the hunting, which was why I wasn’t armed. And I was a little slower as I was fresh from healing a lot of damage. It was my only excuse.
The shrieks turned my head, and I saw a man. At least he looked like a man. But the way he was fighting, moving so fast, too fast, let me know he was more than human. When he stopped suddenly, freezing in mid-strike, intent on beheading the insect-like creature I had seen earlier, I was amazed that his eyes were locked on mine. And then he smiled, and I registered the lengthened canines.
“Close your eyes, idiot.”
And he was right; the splash would hurt if I didn’t. It felt thick when it hit me. When I opened my eyes, I was covered in warm, viscous green slime. The man was in front of me, smirking, one eyebrow raised as he surveyed me. I trembled, falling back against the wall.
“Careful.” He caught me, making sure my back never made contact with the wall. “You don’t want that poison claw in any deeper.”
I could barely drag air into my lungs. I saw the giant bug sheared in two behind him, beyond that a rising cloud of steam, or at least what looked like it, and then pieces of what I thought was a mannequin until I focused.
I turned and bent in half, dry heaving, retching hard, bringing up only bile from my stomach. He had disemboweled and eviscerated everything that had been in the alley moments before. I felt my body shudder with spasms, the smells making me gag over and over.
“Christ,” he grumbled, giving me a hard slap on the back. “What kind of candy-ass warders does Jael Ezran have?”
I slid down the wall. “I just… I was hurt… still healing,” I said from my knees.
“Shit,” he growled at me.
I fought back a wave of nausea.
“Malic!”
I lifted my head and saw Dylan charge around the guy who had just saved my life. He was on his knees beside me seconds later, his hands all over me, and his eyes that I was crazy about were absolutely sick with fear.
“It’s okay, baby,” I soothed him.
“Oh God,” he said, pulling out his cell phone, flipping it open. “I gotta get help.”
“No,” the man breathed out, taking the phone, kneeling down beside me next to Dylan, hands on my arms. “I’ll take care of him.”
“We need to go to the hospital!”
“You don’t know anything,” he said, and when he pulled his right hand up to look at it, I saw that it was covered in thick, dark blood.
“He’s bleeding.” Dylan sucked in a breath, his hand on my chest, on my bare skin. It felt amazing. I registered the heat because I was freezing.
“Warders don’t go to hospitals, idiot, you know that!”
“Not my hearth,” I managed to get out.
“Oh shit,” the stranger breathed out, leaning back, staring at both of us.
I had a glimpse of his dark eyes, his chin, and then his boots. It was all there was as I fell forward.
I WAS warm. So warm. Opening my eyes, I immediately saw the man sitting on the edge of the bathtub beside me.
“Finally.”
“Shit,” I growled, shifting in the tub, feeling the electric currents of pain run through me just from even so slight a movement.
“Listen,” he sighed, putting a quick hand on my chest, holding me still. “I purified the water, and it’s pulling the poison out of your body. If you come out before it’s done, you’ll die—you know that.”
I looked up at him and studi
ed his face. “Who’re you?”
“Raphael Caliva. Raph,” he said.
“It takes a lot of energy to purify water,” I said, studying his face. I couldn’t do it; it was way above my pay grade. A sentinel could, but the power and then the drain of power was painful.
He grunted.
“Thank you for saving my life.”
He smiled, and again I saw the elongated canines. “Do you know what I am?” he asked me.
“Yeah, you’re a kyrie,” I answered him, looking around the room for Dylan and spotting him across the room leaning against the door, slouching forward, obviously asleep.
“He pretty much passed out maybe fifteen minutes ago,” he told me, obviously having followed my gaze.
I let out a painful breath.
“He’s okay… Malic, right?”
I returned my eyes to his. “Yeah.”
“He told me all about you, how you saved him from being raped, how you’re like the second fuckin’ coming.”
“Sorry, he’s young.”
“Yeah, he is.” His scowl got darker. “And so, what, warder? He’s not your hearth, but you’re gonna go ahead and fuck him anyway?”
“No, I’m not gonna fuck him,” I assured him. “What if I killed––he’s just a baby.”
He grunted. “Awful strong-minded possessive-ass baby, if you ask me. The way he talks about you… does he know you’re not gonna fuck him?”
“Yes, he knows.”
“I dunno about that.” The click in the back of his throat was judgmental at best. “Close your eyes, warder, so I can heal you.”
I wondered vaguely why there wasn’t blood in the water.
“Close your eyes,” he ordered a second time.
“So… kyries,” I began, “they’re like bounty hunters, right? What were you paid to hunt?”
“The harpy that attacked you, Vienna. There’s a witch that wants her dead.”
“So you were tracking across planes.”
He nodded, uninterested, apparently, in talking about himself. “From looking at you I’d say that you’ve taken quite a beating lately, warder. Your body is beat to shit.”
We both heard the startled groan at the same time, and when I turned to look, Dylan had fallen forward and in the process woken himself up. He was adorable, all sleepy-eyed and out of it, his gaze sweeping the room before it landed on me.
“Malic,” he gasped, voice cracking, breath hitching, as he scrambled across the room on all fours, getting to the bathtub as fast as he could. He nearly lurched forward and hit his head, but I was faster. Even though it hurt like hell to move even a little, when his forehead hit the back of my hand instead of marble, I smiled. The man was not coordinated at all.
His hands on the tub, he pushed up on his knees to stare at me. His eyes looked raw, like he’d been crying.
Reaching out, I put my hand on his cheek and watched as he leaned into my touch, turning his face to kiss my palm before he tipped his head back so my fingers slipped around his throat.
“You’re sure he’s not your hearth?”
I looked over at the kyrie. “Yes.”
He shrugged like he didn’t get me at all.
The whimper returned my attention back to Dylan.
“I wanna be that.”
I squinted at him. “You wanna be what?”
“Please, Malic,” he said, taking hold of my hand to hold it against the side of his face before moving my palm down under the collar of his cable-knit sweater.
“Dylan––”
He moved my hand to his collarbone. “Please, Malic, Raphael told me all about warders and their hearths. I wanna be that.”
I looked up at Raphael. “You son of a bitch, what happened to lying your ass off? Isn’t that the kyrie code? Lie?”
His smile was wicked. “Oh I like you; you’re a dick just like me.”
Pain shot up my spine, and the room went white for a second.
“You gotta move back, kid,” Raphael told him. “I gotta submerge him.”
“What?”
The room came back slowly, first colors and then soft, fuzzy shapes before it clicked over to sharp, clear focus. “Listen,” I told Dylan. “Go home, okay?”
There was a heartbeat when I thought that he was resigned and going to get up and leave before his brows knit together and I knew better. The dark scowl was really something to see.
“Fuck you, Malic,” he yelled at me. “I ain’t leaving. No way in hell am I leaving.”
“Go!”
He shook his head.
I looked to Raphael for help.
“Unless I can kill him, you’re shit outta luck,” he snapped at me. “Now close your eyes, warder, and let me heal you before you die.”
“He can’t die,” Dylan told him. “I need him.”
“Oh for crissakes,” he growled at Dylan before he took my hand from him and took it in both of his. “Close your goddamn eyes, warder.”
I did as I was told, squeezing his hand back for a second before I felt the pain crash over me again. I didn’t note the exact moment I passed out.
IV
MY EYES drifted open slowly, and I heard his deep exhale of breath.
“Christ,” he groaned, leaning back, sitting beside me on the strange bed, one arm on one side of me, bracing him up, the other on the edge of the mattress. “I forget how fragile warders really are. It’s a wonder any of you live.”
I stared up at him with only one question. “Why am I naked?”
“Because your clothes were covered in duatin blood,” he told me.
“Oh,” I said, nodding, “that’s what that flying thing was. I blanked it.”
“You want some water?”
I nodded, tiring fast. Everything hurt.
He passed me a tall bar glass, and the room-temperature water in it was perhaps the best thing I had ever tasted in my life. After a minute I noticed him squinting at me.
“What?”
“Nothing, I was just wondering what an unarmed warder was doing out patrolling alone?”
“I wasn’t patrolling,” I said, glancing around the room. “Where’s Dylan?”
“Christ, both of you have totally one-track minds.”
“Where?”
“Right there, idiot.”
Turning my head, I saw Dylan Shaw. He was passed out beside me, covers tucked around his shoulders, only his head sticking out from under the down comforter.
“Poor baby,” I sighed.
“Oh, poor baby, my ass,” he snapped at me. “He asked me so many fuckin’ questions. I have never been interrogated like that in my life.”
“What’d you tell him?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know a helluva lot about warders, but what I do know, I told him.”
“Shit.” I groaned, trying to sit up.
“Careful,” he said, hand on my chest. “You lost a helluva lot of blood.”
I looked into his eyes. “You bathed me?”
“I stood you up in the shower.” He tipped his head to my left. “He bathed you.”
I looked back at the young man on the pillow beside mine.
“He is small but he is scary,” Raphael chuckled, “and a fuckin’ possessive-ass bastard.”
I returned my eyes to his.
“But he’s not your hearth?”
“He’s nothing, actually.”
“Does he know that?” He smiled at me. “’Cause he didn’t let me do anything to you at all. If it involved touching your skin, he was doing it.”
“Can you just take him home for me?”
“No.” He yawned, indicating Dylan with a tip of his chin. “He’s your problem.”
“You made him my problem with your whole policy of full disclosure.”
He chuckled. “Fuck you, warder. This is your clusterfuck, not mine.”
“Why’d you put him in bed with me?”
“He got in bed with you, I had no choice. Like I told you before, unless I kill
him, short of that, he’s doin’ whatever the fuck he wants. He’s not scared of me and he’s not scared of you. I just don’t get him at all.”
I groaned loudly; this was such a mess. “If I beg you can you take him home?”
“No. Hell, warder, if you don’t want him I’ll keep him.”
“He’s too young for you,” I almost yelled. “He’s too young for me. He’s too fuckin’ young for anyone but another college freshman. He needs to go home.”
“Guess who stopped bleeding?” He smiled, changing the subject.
“Whaddya want to take him home?”
His eyes narrowed as he looked down at me. “What will you give me?”
“Fuck you,” I growled at him, trying to sit up.
He wrapped his hand around my wrist, holding on. “Stop,” he said softly, smiling at me, “I’m just fucking with you.”
I settled back, staring up at him.
His dark eyes glinted in the light. His hair was buzzed short, like a military cut, and was just as black as his eyes. He had exotic features—long nose, full lips, dark brows, long lashes—not a handsome man, but very striking. If I saw him on the street, I would have moved out of his way. The teeth, those shiny, white, vampire teeth, didn’t help make him look any less threatening.
“If you really want me to take him home, I will.”
“Thank you.” I sighed out my relief.
“Yeah, but when he does wake up he’s gonna be pissed. And he looks all cute and sweet on the outside, but inside… he’s seriously fucked-up. I think he’s a little off. When he wakes up, he’ll come after you. That one doesn’t suffer from self-doubt; he knows who he is and he knows what he heard and saw.”
“I don’t care. If he comes to see me, I’ll just tell him he’s crazy,” I said with as much conviction as I could dredge up.
“You want me to take him now?”
“I don’t want him to wake up.”
“Well, you’ve got to get up and go to the bathroom, then, because the displacement wave will make you sick. You’re not strong enough not to feel it.”
“I can’t get up,” I told him. “Just bring me a garbage can and I’ll barf in that.”
“And who gets stuck cleaning that up?” he groused at me.
“Scary-ass kyrie and vomit is gonna be too much for you?”