Valen (Guardians of Hades Romance Series Book 2)

by Felicity Heaton

  He emerged from the portal, blush lips stretched in a warm smile that reached his green eyes, making them shimmer as brightly as the flashes of light that danced across the smoke at his back.

  Marek had said that they couldn’t teleport.

  This wasn’t good.

  Valen was expecting to feel the wards trigger, and return in time to follow her as Jin took her to the villa via the roads.

  Instead, Benares had come for her through what looked like a portal.

  If he took her, there was a chance Valen wouldn’t be able to find her. She had only given him a vague location of the villa, because she had feared if she told him the exact one, he would go off half-cocked looking for a fight to avoid Benares taking her.

  Benares advanced and she backed off, but there was nowhere to go. He stood between her and the door, preening his sun-kissed hair, a smug air about him.

  As if he had already won and Valen turning to his side was a sure thing now.

  He didn’t stop when he was close to her. He kept pressing forwards, driving her back, and she gasped as her bottom and shoulders hit the wall between the window and the fireplace.

  His smile widened and he slowly lifted his right hand towards her face. She flinched as he stroked her cheek, the light touch repulsing her and making her stomach squirm, even as it warmed her and drove all thought of running from her mind.

  “That’s good,” he murmured and she stared up into his eyes, thoughts blurring together and slipping out of focus. “My angel.”

  Not his. Never his.

  He lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers, and the haze in her head grew thicker, swamped all of her thoughts and replaced them with new ones, with a desire to step into his arms and give herself to him.

  He smiled against her mouth when she did just that, her body moving without a command from her, her arms rising to loop around his neck. He bent at the knee and scooped her up into his arms, one beneath her knees and one against her back, his mouth still fixed on hers. She sagged against him, leaning heavily against his chest, his black shirt soft against her bare arms.

  When he finally released her lips, she stared up at him, only able to focus on him, everything else around him a blur that meant nothing to her.

  “My angel,” he whispered and a frown flickered on his sandy eyebrows before it melted away, but the sharp spike of anger that had entered his glowing eyes remained.

  Jealousy.

  A vision of the monster he was inside overlaid onto him, ringing his eyes with black laced with blue lightning and dark lips that concealed vicious fangs, and she pushed against his shoulders.

  He clucked his tongue and held her closer, kissed her again and drove her thoughts away, leaving her fighting to remember what she had been afraid of just a second ago.

  When he pulled back and turned with her, carrying her towards the portal, he was just a man, handsome and charming.

  A man who wanted her.

  She sighed and settled her head against his chest, aching for him too.

  A warm breeze laced with the scent of metal and wood flowed over her as purple and black mist danced around them, and then light pierced the veil and she found herself in a familiar room.

  His office.

  The haze that had been filling her mind dissipated with the portal, clearing slowly as the warmth flowed from her body and thoughts began to return.

  She was in his office.

  She looked up at Benares.

  In his arms.

  She scowled and shoved at his chest, and twisted free of his grip, landing on the grey marble floor at his feet in a crouch. She rose to her full height and glared at him.

  “What is the meaning of this?” She was surprised her fear didn’t show in her voice, but it gave her the confidence to continue. She took a hard step towards him but he stood his ground. “I had a few more hours.”

  “Your work is done.” Benares neatened his appearance, preening his blond locks and smoothing his hands over the point where his black shirt met his dark silver trousers, tucking it back in. “I do hate portal jumping.”

  “A necessary precaution.” A male voice she didn’t recognise filled the room and she pivoted to face the owner of it. “Would you rather I allowed you to drive so he could stop you before you reached here? Failure is not an option this time. Do you understand, Benares?”

  Benares nodded, and looked as if he wanted to kill the man for daring to issue orders to him.

  Eva stared at the newcomer.

  He stood off to the left of the huge ebony desk, near the bank of three windows that intersected the black wall, wrapped in a fitted black coat that was buttoned from his neck to his waist, and flared from there to reach his ankles, revealing a hint of black trousers and knee-high riding boots.

  The man stared at her, his pale skin a contrast against his wild black hair, and those eerie purple eyes.

  Had to be a trick of the light.

  She wished she could believe that, could fool herself into thinking he was just a man, and not another monster.

  He smiled at her, thin-lipped and cruel, and a cold shiver ran down her spine, chilling her blood.

  “What happened in Tokyo?”

  It took a moment for that question to register, but when it did she barely contained her reaction, schooling her features at the last second so he didn’t see her shock.

  Wraith.

  This was the man who had tried to kill Esher, the one who might have killed Calindria too.

  She had to delay him until Valen arrived, because she knew how much the thought of saving Calindria’s soul meant to him. Valen wanted to give her peace, and this man was the key to making that happen.

  Eva tipped her chin up and kept her cool. “They thwarted your plan, that’s what happened. Esher is fine.”

  His smile turned colder, his purple eyes brighter.

  “Fine is not a word I would associate with that god.” He sighed and flicked a piece of lint off the breast of his black coat with the air of a man trying to let something roll off his back and not bother him, when it was annoying the hell out of him. “Never mind. It would have been my head on the butcher’s block if I had succeeded. She would have been a little annoyed with me… the god is to be her pet after all.”

  Esher was meant to be someone’s pet?

  “Whose?” she said without thinking, and he laughed coldly as he looked from her to Benares.

  “Deal with her before she gets you into trouble, Incubus. She seems to have forgotten her place as a member of our side. Are your skills so lacking that you cannot even hold sway over a weak mortal? I have never understood why she favours you so much.”

  Before she could ask another question, Benares had his hand over her mouth, his arm across her chest pinning her back against his, and the wraith was gone.

  Damn it.

  She had the feeling that the ‘she’ the wraith had spoken of wasn’t her, but this woman who was meant to make Esher her pet.

  Or another woman entirely.

  How many people were in their organisation?

  “Insufferable bastard,” Benares muttered and huffed as he released her and stepped back.

  She turned to face him, a thousand questions flooding her mind, but fear stole her voice.

  Benares towered over her, taller than before, white embers sparking in his green eyes and his pupils narrowed into thin slits. He glared down at her, the black around his eyes spreading and cracking, bright blue shining through the fissures.

  “No one lectures me on how to handle my females.” He shot his hand out and captured the nape of her neck, dragged her against him and had his mouth on hers before she could react.

  Fire blazed through her, burning away all the questions, all of her fears, replacing them with a fierce need to be closer to him, to do whatever he wanted. He kissed her deeper, making the inferno burn hotter, and she clawed at his black shirt and writhed in his arms, restless with a need for more.

  He b
roke away from her lips and breathed against them.

  “You are mine now, Angel… and I will make sure of it.”

  He feathered his lips across hers, teasing her as he whispered.

  “I will take you from that god.”

  Cold swept over her skin, extinguishing the fire, and everything that had seemed so urgent a moment ago was inconsequential as she stared up into Benares’s eyes.

  Eyes that glowed with a dark and terrible need.

  Hers widened.

  He was going to kill Valen.

  CHAPTER 32

  It hadn’t been difficult to find the villa based on the information Eva had given to him, or at least it shouldn’t have been. Feeling the wards on his apartment trigger and returning to find her gone, and no trace of the scent of daemon in the area, had sent him off the deep end a little, and screwed with his senses.

  The need to take her back, to protect her and keep her safe, and to destroy whoever stood in his path, was strong, commanding him against his will to shake the earth and the sky, unleashing his fury on this world.

  It had taken him twenty minutes of going in circles, draining his strength by frantically stepping from one spot to the next across the valley, before he had finally calmed enough that he could focus and use his senses again.

  The moment they had cleared, he had caught the coppery stench of daemons in the air, and had known exactly where to go.

  He lingered in the shadows against the perimeter wall, tracking the daemons patrolling the other side of it and waiting for a break in them so he could pass through unnoticed.

  Lightning flickered around his hands, and he scrubbed it away. He needed to be covert, and that wasn’t helping. He was lighting up the whole godsdamned area.

  He tensed as his senses spiked and looked off to his left, away from the gate, into the darkness down the wooded slope.

  Keras had arrived as promised. His older brother had frighteningly sharp senses, able to pinpoint any one of them no matter what distance separated them.

  He just hoped his brother kept back until he needed him.

  This was his show.

  He supposed he had better make it look good.

  After all, he was meant to be here to take Eva back, and that was the perfect excuse to dispatch any wretched daemon foolish enough to cross his path.

  No need to engage all of them though. The ones in the house would suffice.

  In a single leap, he cleared the stone wall and moved through the shadows at speed, crossing the grass and following the tree-lined drive of the house. It glowed in the distance at the peak of the hill, all elegant and flashy, a fucking palace compared to his apartment.

  He hoped to the gods Eva wasn’t impressed by such material things.

  He doubled that hope with a prayer when he passed the black Lamborghini parked next to a yellow Ferrari on the gravel in front of the yellow-ochre mansion.

  A shriek pierced the night.

  Eva.

  All attempts to be covert shattered and lightning forked from his hands, cracking and snapping as it struck the ground around him.

  He was coming.

  Two daemon males at the grand entrance of the villa peered around the perfectly trimmed topiary, stared at him with disbelief written across both of their faces, and then sprang into action.

  The bastards opened fire.

  Not what he had expected given that Benares wanted him here.

  Bullets sprayed everywhere, ploughing up the gravel and the grass beyond it, and shouts came from all directions as an alarm sounded.

  Valen snarled and stepped, appeared on the roof of the porch above the two daemons and let loose. The lamps that hung from the underside of the roof shattered and the males screamed as electricity arced from them and hit them in the back. Smoke curled from their black fatigues and he called more power forth, funnelling it all into them. They fell to the ground, convulsing violently.

  He grinned.

  A bullet ripped into his right thigh.

  His grin faded as he looked down at the dark wet patch spreading across his black combat trousers and then up at the male who had dared to shoot him.

  The daemon’s handgun shook as he stood on the other side of the elegant stone balustrade that formed a border around the huge paved area in front of the house.

  Valen clucked his tongue and lifted his hand, causing the daemon to tense.

  When nothing happened, the male relaxed.

  Big mistake.

  Valen clicked his fingers.

  A thick white-purple bolt shot down from the sky and hit the daemon.

  He didn’t stop to watch the fireworks. He leaped down to the gravel, landing with a grunt and a grimace. No fucking way he could fight with a bullet lodged in his thigh. He growled from between clenched teeth and checked his surroundings, pinpointing all the daemons in the vicinity. There were more inside, but they weren’t moving, were obviously waiting for him. The ones outside were still at a distance, but they were heading towards him.

  He had time.

  He stuck his finger in the tear in his trousers and widened it a little, just enough for him to see the hole in his thigh. He curled his lip, hesitated for only a heartbeat, and then jammed his index finger into the wound. White-hot pain blazed outwards from it, chasing up and down his leg, turning his stomach.

  Had to be done.

  He swallowed hard, closed his eyes as the world pitched and rolled in time with his stomach, and kept on digging, pushing deeper.

  His finger hit something solid.

  Metal.

  It started as a low growl in his chest as he called on his power, focused it so it wrapped around the bullet and drew it to him, and came out as a roar as he yanked his hand away from his leg, tearing the damned thing free of his flesh.

  Heat spilled down his thigh and he breathed hard as he pressed a hand against it.

  Motherfucker.

  He fumbled in his side pocket with his other hand, found a wad of material he always kept there, his own version of an emergency medical kit, and quickly pressed it against the wound. Pain throbbed through his bones but it slowly abated, falling to a level he could manage.

  Valen undid his belt, whipped it free of the loops, and secured it around his thigh, using it to keep the wad of black cotton in place.

  He straightened and tested his leg, placing some weight on it. It burned with each step, but it was better than before.

  Satisfied that it wouldn’t slow him down, he turned as casually as he could towards the mansion and walked up the steps, forcing himself to move without a limp.

  Damned if he was going to show these bastards that he was hurting.

  He was a god.

  He prowled through the huge door and into the building.

  The brightness of the foyer stung his eyes, the light from the crystal and gold chandelier reflecting off the white marble floor, and he raised a hand to shield them as they adjusted to it. Movement on his senses had him tensing, preparing.

  Any second now.

  A hail of bullets rained down on him and he growled as he shoved both of his hands forwards. A web of lightning exploded from his hands, forming a net in front of him, and the bullets dropped from the air as they connected with it, their momentum and their metal feeding the barrier. He pushed his hands forwards again and the web spread, rushing towards the two daemon males that stood on the balcony at the top of the twin staircases that curved up the pale yellow walls, and the two bastards beneath it on the same level as him.

  The male in the lower left dodged behind the wall, and one at the top escaped into a room, but the other two weren’t so fortunate.

  The second daemon on the balcony screamed as the lightning wrapped around him, and the remaining one below kicked off to his right, but the web caught his leg and he shrieked as he went down.

  Valen closed his eyes and focused on the mansion and tracking Eva. She was here somewhere. Where? He had to find her.

  His internal ra
dar was still.

  Why couldn’t he sense her? She had to be here still. All he could sense were daemons.

  He growled through clenched teeth and focused harder, shutting out the two daemons as they ran, the third as he crumpled into a heap, and the fourth as he dragged himself away, along a corridor.

  Valen frowned.

  Drew down a deep breath and thought about Eva, about her scent.

  It was hard with the stench of daemons and the tang of his lightning filling the air.

  His frown flickered.

  Roses.

  And sin.

  Eva.

  He launched forwards, towards the corridor the injured daemon was taking, and bolted down it, despatching the daemon with a flick of his right wrist that sent five small arcs of lightning shooting towards him.

  The male bellowed and then silence reigned.

  Filled with the sound of Valen’s rapid breathing and racing heart as he checked each room that led off the pale green corridor.

  The sound of a struggle came from ahead.

  His eyes fixed on the wooden door there.

  He stepped and appeared in front of it, and kicked it open so hard it flew off the hinges and shot across the room.

  A male with hair that faded from black at his roots to crimson dodged it, ducking to his right as it flew over his left shoulder and slammed into the black wall behind the ebony desk that took up a large section of the room. A daemon. He turned glowing green-white eyes on Valen and sneered, his black lips peeling back off all-sharp teeth, and the blue lightning that forked from around his eyes shone brighter against its obsidian backdrop.

  Benares he presumed.

  Valen’s gaze sought Eva, which earned him a snarl from Benares. The bastard didn’t have to worry. Valen would get to him soon enough.

  Relief swept through him when he spotted Eva sitting on the floor beside the desk on the left side of the room, her blue eyes fixed on him, as round as full moons.

  Jin stood behind her, dressed like a slut as always, wearing a tiny dark crimson dress and thigh-high matching red boots, her blonde hair draped over her breasts. Her blue eyes locked on him for a second before they slid to Benares.