Marek: Guardians of Hades Series Book 4

by Heaton, Felicity

  “Plus six hundred and fifty-six.” His lips pursed as his eyebrows dipped low. “Bordering on fifty-seven.”

  Caterina’s eyes widened. “Déu!”

  He slid her a look. “I’m not that old. Three of my brothers are older.”

  Since when had eight hundred and fifty-six-going-on-seven not been old?

  She felt like little more than a child at pushing thirty.

  “I don’t want to know.” She waved him away when he looked as if he might tell her how old his brothers were.

  “Were those your two questions?” He cast her another glance as they reached the main tourist route and he guided her right, towards the square at the other end where the elegant government buildings stood.

  “No.” She navigated her way around the groups of tourists blocking the narrow, cobbled pedestrian street, all of them snapping pictures of the sandstone covered walkway that formed a bridge between two buildings on either side of the Carrer del Bisbe.

  The warrior took the other side, not bothering to ease around the crowd. He moved straight towards it and several of the tourists took one look at him and pulled their friends or family members aside to give him room to pass.

  She wished she commanded that sort of respect.

  It probably came with age.

  Or possibly the fact he was six-foot-four of pure muscle squeezed into tight fatigues and a dark linen shirt that hugged his well-defined chest and arms.

  “Fine. More questions, but first answer one for me.” He joined her again on the other side of the crowd and she wanted to curse him when he picked up the pace again.

  She hated crowds, but at least they had been slowing him down.

  “What do you want to know?” She refused to chase after him as she took hold of the front of her black tank top and moved it back and forth, fanning herself as the stifling heat started getting to her.

  Or maybe it was the warrior cranking up her temperature to an unbearable degree.

  She watched as the distance between them grew as he hit the downward slope towards the square.

  He looked to his left, where she would have been if she had been practically jogging to keep up with him, a frown crinkled his brow and he peered back along the street.

  Caterina kept her pace reasonable, a level she could manage without becoming out of breath and sweating in a very unladylike fashion.

  “I was walking too fast.” Irritation flashed in his eyes and he smiled tightly. “I am sorry. I’m not used to walking, let alone having female company.”

  Another piece of information she filed away.

  “If you want me to answer questions, I need to be able to speak.” She reached him and he fell into step beside her for a change, his gaze on his boots and hers until he had her pace mastered.

  He lifted his head, brushed a rogue wave from his forehead and tucked his hands into his pockets.

  When he didn’t speak, she said, “You wanted to know something?”

  His eyes met hers. “What is your name?”

  She stopped and held her hand out to him. “Caterina. I won’t burden you with all my names, because it would probably take all night, but you can call me Caterina.”

  “Marek.” He slipped his hand into hers, and the second they touched, lightning arced up her arm and heat bloomed in its wake, spreading through her as his large hand engulfed hers.

  His grip was strong, but gentle. Firm, but light. As if he was afraid of hurting her, but he needed to feel the connection between them. She lowered her gaze to their joined hands and stared at them, marvelling at how something as simple as holding his hand could affect her so deeply, had her falling all over again, deeply aware of how attracted to him she was.

  Her gaze drifted over his wrist and the thin, braided black band that encircled it, up the corded muscles of his forearm, to the rolled-up sleeve of his dark shirt. She let her eyes roam over his biceps, his broad shoulders, up to his neck.

  There was a small red line where her sword had made contact before he had stopped it, barely a nick but it made her gut squirm and her eyes got stuck on it, even though she wanted to look at the rough, masculine perfection of his face and see how he was looking at her.

  She wanted to know if that fire was in his eyes again, that hunger that echoed inside her too.

  “Marek?” she whispered, a little breathless.

  “Hmm?” He sounded as lost as she felt.

  “I’m sorry I cut you.”

  His head turned, bringing the line of his jaw into view and then his bottom lip. He brought his free hand up, swept his thumb across the small cut, and brought it to his lips. Her heart pounded as she tracked it with her gaze, as she watched his lips part and his tongue swipe at the pad of his thumb.

  “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” His soft chuckle heated her further. “You’re the first person to surprise me like that in a long time… although maybe not a long time. Twice in a night. Must be losing my touch.”

  Who else had been able to attack him before he could defend himself tonight? The business he’d had to deal with before he had come to meet her? She wanted to ask, but held her tongue, because his irises had changed again, the colours growing muted as they verged on black.

  And instinct told her that wasn’t a good sign.

  She slipped her hand free of his and started walking again, missing the heat of his touch as she thought about all the things she wanted to ask him.

  “Why do you hunt vampires?” Marek fell into step beside her again and ushered her down another side street, towards a less touristy area of the quarter.

  She studied the sculpture of a tower that looked as if it had been made with enormous chicken wire as they passed through another square, mulling over how to answer that question without mentioning her brother. She had the feeling Marek liked killing vampires, and that he wouldn’t distinguish a good one from the rest.

  And her brother was good.

  As far as she knew, he had never bitten anyone since his turning. At first because she had begged him to refrain, and later because his fangs never seemed to work whenever the urge to feed became too strong to resist. That dysfunction had been a blessing in her eyes when he had first revealed it to her, something to grant her more time to find a cure for him. Now, there was a secret part of her that wished he could feed, because he was wasting away before her eyes.

  “Personal reasons, to do with my family. I don’t like to talk about it.” She hoped he would let her leave it at that. She glanced across at him to gauge how he had taken it, and caught him frowning at the pavement ahead of them, his expression pensive and dark eyes narrowed. “Why do you hunt vampires?”

  “Personal reasons.” His tone gained a cold edge as his frown deepened and she regretted asking when his eyes blackened and she knew it wasn’t the streetlights stealing the colours from them.

  They walked in silence for what felt like forever as she struggled to find a way to voice the question she needed answering the most. Fear held her tongue more than once. Not fear that he would piece together that her personal reasons regarding her family were because one of them was a vampire, but because she feared what his answer would be.

  When they reached a main artery, a busy multi-lane avenue with a tree-lined pedestrian walkway running along the centre of it, she mustered enough courage and steeled her heart.

  “Marek?” she murmured, fear stealing strength from her voice. When he looked at her, she pressed on, not daring to hesitate because she knew she would lose her nerve. “I’ve done a lot of research in the time I’ve been hunting vampires, but there’s something I’ve never been able to discover.”

  “What’s that?” His step slowed and she slowed with him, could almost sense his curiosity as he studied her as she diligently kept her profile to him, her eyes on the next crossing on the avenue.

  “Can a human who has been turned into a vampire be turned back into a human?”

  She swallowed hard as she waited, heart rushing
, nerves rising.

  Marek tipped his head back and gazed at the trees. The silence between them stretched, tugging at her fears, giving them a stronger hold over her, and she was desperate for him to speak by the time he finally did.

  “Maybe.”

  That wasn’t much of an answer. Relief bloomed because it wasn’t a definite no, but fear remained because it wasn’t a definite yes.

  “You’ve never met a vampire who had been turned and ended up becoming human again?”

  His dark eyes slid down to meet hers and the coldness in them sent a shiver through her. “I’ve never met a vampire I haven’t killed. Not in the last few hundred years anyway.”

  She frowned at him as something hit her. “That sounds an awful lot like a vendetta to me.”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Call it whatever you want. The vermin deserve to die. I won’t rest until every last one of them has been wiped from this realm.”

  Another shudder wracked her and she wanted to take a step back from him, wanted to turn and leave right that moment, because she could see in his eyes that he meant what he had said.

  He wanted to kill every vampire he came across, because he despised them. Something had happened to him, something that had triggered a terrible need to hunt vampires, powerful enough that it demanded the death of every vampire in existence.

  Or in this realm.

  Her eyebrows knitted hard as she thought about that.

  Strange choice of words.

  He started walking again.

  “This realm?” she asked as she looked at his back.

  It tensed as he ground to a halt.

  “Caterina,” he murmured, voice low, the sound of her name spoken by him sending a devastating rush of heat through her that had her almost missing what he said next. “Some things about me and this world you’re better off not knowing.”

  “No. It’s too late for that sort of talk.” She stormed towards him, refusing to let him get his way. “I never asked to be part of this secret world, but I’m part of it now, and the more I know about it, the better my chances of survival… So, I’m sorry. I need you to explain.”

  He looked across at her and she thought he would refuse to answer, but then the hardness in his eyes softened and he sighed as he lifted his hand and brushed a strand of her hair from her face, his touch light.

  Almost tender.

  “Fine,” he husked. “But I’m only going to tell you this because you are right and there is a chance being armed with this information might increase your chances of survival.”

  And he wanted her to survive.

  It was right there in his eyes as those mesmerising flecks of gold and emerald emerged.

  As he swept his knuckles across her cheek in a soft caress.

  “There are three realms. This one—”

  She cut him off as her eyes widened. “Heaven and Hell. Déu. They’re real.”

  He shook his head.

  “They’re not real?”

  His expression grew guarded. “Maybe. I don’t know. Realms overlap.”

  “Just how many realms are there? You said there were three.” Were there more? Were Heaven and Hell real?

  He shrugged. “I only have access to the realms of my world, but I know others exist. Valen, one of my brothers, is always proving that in Rome and Esher has trouble with the native gods in Japan.”

  Her head felt as if it was going to explode. Just how many realms was he talking about? And he was talking about gods as if they were real. Either he was delusional, or he was telling the truth.

  She studied him. He had been honest with her so far, hadn’t hidden anything because he wanted her to like him again. Which made her suspect that every crazy-sounding thing leaving his lips was, in fact, real.

  “So which realms are the ones you were talking about.”

  That guarded edge to his expression returned and he looked closely at her, as if expecting her to faint or swear, or react negatively to what he was going to say.

  “Olympus and the Underworld.”

  Caterina opted for swearing.

  Chapter 8

  Caterina was still having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that Mount Olympus and the Underworld apparently existed. Not only those two realms. As they had continued their walk, Marek had mentioned how the Roman pantheon of gods didn’t get along with his brother Valen, and that his older brother who lived in Tokyo had a hard time convincing the local gods, tengu and oni that he didn’t mean any affront by living on their land.

  She had fallen silent after that, lost in thought as she tried to compute everything Marek had told her and make herself believe it. She was almost certain that he was telling her the truth about the worlds he walked in, it was just difficult to wrap her head around the idea that the shadowy world of vampires she had finally grown used to extended far beyond what she had thought possible.

  Yesterday, vampires had been the biggest of her worries. Now, she knew about daemons, and apparently demigods and gods were real too, among other things. The history books were coming to life around her and she couldn’t stop thinking about how many creatures of myth might be out there, as real as she was.

  Marek paused at a crossing and checked the road before continuing onwards.

  “Where do you fit into it all?” She tried to keep her focus on the quiet streets around them, and not only for vampires. This area of her city wasn’t the best one, and although she could handle herself, it still paid to be cautious, especially so late at night.

  Discomfort settled across his features. “That is probably a conversation for another night. We’re close now. We should move with stealth.”

  He was changing the subject because he didn’t want to tell her. Because she would find it as shocking as realising multiple realms she had thought were a myth actually existed?

  Or more shocking?

  The thought that she might find it more shocking made her want to press him for an answer, but he suddenly snatched her arm and pulled her behind a building. He pressed his hand to her stomach, pinning her back against the wall to his left, and leaned right to peer around the corner.

  Caterina kept still, focusing on her breathing to keep it level and quiet as she listened. If frightening her was his way of stopping her from pressing him for answers, she was going to kill him.

  Voices sounded, distant and male. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but their accent was local.

  Marek looked at her and pressed the index finger of his free hand to his lips.

  She nodded and waited, becoming increasingly aware of his hand on her stomach, how the heat of it seeped through her tank and stirred a wicked sort of fire in her veins. He leaned away again and she eased forwards, wanting to see what he was looking at. His hand pressed more heavily against her stomach, keeping her from moving, and he looked at her.

  Looked down at his hand on her stomach.

  Swallowed as he splayed his fingers, shifting the black material of her tank.

  The flecks of gold in his eyes brightened.

  He snatched his hand away from her and busied himself with checking his waistband.

  And cursing like a sailor for some reason.

  He twisted towards her and had her caged against the wall before she could blink, his hands pressing against it on either side of her head as his body hemmed her in.

  He lowered his mouth to her ear and his warm breath sent a shiver through her as it caressed her skin. “Wait here.”

  He disappeared and she jumped, the suddenness of it startling her as she went from the delicious heat of his body to the cold touch of black tendrils of smoke. She swiped at them and moved to her left, placing some distance between her and the disturbing ribbons. They seemed to reach for her, and she hoped to God it was because she had moved, creating a shift in the air, and not because they were actually reaching for her.

  Marek suddenly reappeared, right in the spot where he had been.

  He frowne
d at the empty wall and then across at her as he whispered, “I told you not to move.”

  “No,” she hissed low so the men didn’t hear her. “You told me to wait here. I am here. I am not there because of those.”

  She waved her right index finger up and down, gesturing to the creepy black smoke that drifted around him, the tendrils of it curling around his arms and caressing his neck like a lover.

  He looked as if he wanted to laugh. “It’s harmless.”

  He brushed his right hand through one section of the smoke and held it out to her.

  “See.”

  What she saw was the fact it seemed to writhe like a living thing in his palm, twining around his outstretched thumb as if it didn’t want to leave him.

  He sighed. “It’s just the lingering effect of the teleport.”

  She shook her head, not interested in getting closer to it and not believing him. There was something sinister about that smoke. Something that set her on edge.

  He shrugged, twirled the sheathed curved knife he held in his left hand and jammed it in the back of his combat trousers.

  “That’s what you went somewhere for?” She jerked her chin to the knife. “I have one you could have borrowed.”

  When she flashed the blade she kept in the inside of her jacket, he was the one who shook his head.

  “Only this blade. I swore that a long time ago.” He moved before she could ask who he had sworn it to and why. The more she knew about him, the more questions she had, and the deeper she fell into a dark rabbit hole.

  Only unlike Alice, she wasn’t falling into any Wonderland.

  It was more of a world filled with nightmares.

  Vampires. Daemons. Gods and goddesses. And who knew how many other wild and terrifying things lived in it.

  She hung back as Marek stalked forwards, striding with purpose towards where the men had been and were now gone.

  How wild and terrifying was he?

  On a scale of one to ten, she could probably handle him turning out to be somewhere in the six to seven bracket. He clearly wasn’t a daemon, judging by how harshly he spoke of them, and he obviously wasn’t a vampire. Maybe he was just a daemon hunter. Or a form of immortal warrior.