Marek: Guardians of Hades Series Book 4

by Heaton, Felicity

  He would just pull a Valen or an Ares and make it up as he went.

  The look on Valen’s face said he knew what Marek was thinking, and that he wouldn’t be alone if he did decide to go with the flow for once.

  “The wraith will be on his guard now. He won’t easily be drawn out, Marek.” Keras’s deep voice was smooth, one of reason.

  Marek had always admired the level head his brother had on his shoulders.

  Now he hated it.

  “So Caterina will be in even more danger if we just send her in there.” Marek paced away from her, unable to keep still any longer. “I can’t do it. The wraith will know she helped me. Even if by some miracle he doesn’t, how are we going to convince him that I took her captive? How exactly is her escape going to look real?”

  “Valid points.” Valen looked from him to Keras. “Got a counter point?”

  A soft voice croaked behind Marek.

  “I’ll do it.”

  Chapter 25

  Caterina was aware that she had passed out at some point. She rested on her side, the sound of male voices filling her ears as she drifted, thoughts spinning into a blur. What had Keras seen?

  Enough to clear her name apparently.

  She remembered that much from before she had passed out.

  The talking grew louder.

  More like arguing.

  She tuned into them, until the spinning in her head slowed enough that she could make out what they were talking about.

  Her.

  She listened harder.

  Something about using her to infiltrate the enemy just as the enemy had wanted her to infiltrate the brothers.

  Keras was for it. Valen was against it.

  And Marek?

  Vehemently against it.

  “So Caterina will be in even more danger if we just send her in there,” Marek snarled, warming her heart and chasing the chill of having her mind read from her skin. “I can’t do it. The wraith will know she helped me. Even if by some miracle he doesn’t, how are we going to convince him that I took her captive? How exactly is her escape going to look real?”

  “Valid points.” Valen paused. “Got a counter point?”

  Caterina thought about everything she had done, about Guillem and what was happening to her. She didn’t have much hope left, and her body was unreliable, and there was a high chance Marek was right and the wraith he spoke of would kill her, but if she could help Marek, she would do it.

  “I’ll do it,” she croaked and pushed herself up.

  The room wobbled into a dark blur and she squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, Marek was beside her, holding her shoulders and helping her sit up.

  “No.” He brushed his thumbs over her skin, his touch offering comfort that she stole and savoured.

  She looked at him, catching the horror and fury in his dark eyes. Fury he turned on Keras.

  “She isn’t doing it.”

  “I’m doing it.” She lifted her hand and placed it over his right one where it gripped her arm. “I can do it.”

  “You’ll need to make it look convincing,” Valen said, earning a glare from Marek that held disappointment. Because Valen was switching sides? His violet-haired brother shrugged it off. “I’m just saying. It’s going to take a public fight to convince the enemy that she was a prisoner not a guest, and it’s the only way of making her escape look real.”

  “I said no.” Marek frowned at all of them when Keras continued as if he hadn’t spoken.

  “It cannot be one of us then. The enemy would know we are pulling our punches.”

  “I can handle myself. Although, I do feel a little weird and weak,” she put in, tired of them not including her when she was the one who would be heading into enemy territory.

  She frowned. When had the wraith and Lisabeta become their enemy? The answer to that question stoked the fire in her blood into an inferno, and made her restless to get going.

  When they had pulled her into this and threatened her brother.

  “What makes you think you can handle fighting a god?” Valen arched an eyebrow at her.

  “I hunt vampires. It’s how I met Marek.” She looked up at Marek.

  He went remarkably still as both of his brothers looked at him.

  She cursed. His vampire hunting was meant to be a secret.

  “It is not as if I did not see it… among other things we will be discussing in private before the day is over.” Keras slid a look at her and she glared at him.

  Because he had seen in her memories the time Marek had spent with her in this cell, and now he knew Marek’s secret, one he had guarded and entrusted to her.

  Marek looked less than pleased at the prospect of having to talk to Keras about what his brother had seen.

  “I still think it’s a shit idea to have one of us fighting her.” Valen sounded a lot like he was trying to shift the focus away from Marek and his troubled past in an attempt to make Keras forget about it.

  At least, Caterina thought it had been an attempt at helping Marek.

  She couldn’t be sure.

  Because all it did was anger Marek.

  “No one is touching Caterina,” Marek snarled, the vicious sound startling her. She looked at him and a shadow crossed his features, blackening them as his eyes turned onyx. “No one lays a damned finger on her.”

  Valen jerked his chin towards her. “You’re laying fingers on her right now.”

  The joke was lost on his brother.

  Marek shot to his feet, seized Valen by his throat and slammed his back into the wall beside the door, every muscle in his arm straining and bulging as he tightened his grip. While Valen was slimmer than Marek, his muscles less pronounced, Caterina wasn’t confident Marek would win in a fight.

  Something about Valen left her feeling he was the sort of man who fought dirty.

  Valen just smiled.

  There was something seriously wrong with him.

  He frightened her more than Keras did when he smiled like that, as if he was enjoying what was happening to him.

  She re-evaluated her opinion of him when Marek suddenly jerked and shuddered, and sparks leaped from around Valen’s hand where it touched his wrist. He didn’t just frighten her.

  Valen positively terrified her.

  He could somehow channel electricity.

  Marek released him and staggered backwards, shaking his head at the same time.

  “Calm your tits.” Valen shoved away from the wall and shook his hand at his side, until the sparks leaping between his fingers had all disappeared. “None of us will touch her. We can have Eva do it. The enemy knows she’s on our side now and she’s human so it would appear authentic.”

  “I still don’t like the sound of this,” Marek grumbled and rubbed his arm.

  “It appears it is happening whether you like it or not.” Keras adjusted the ring on his thumb, a silver one that resembled a wedding band. “We will discuss it later, once you and Caterina have had time to rest. When was the last time you slept?”

  Marek shrugged. “Does passing out count?”

  Her gut squirmed as an image of him doing just that flashed across her mind. Watching him go down in that street outside the bar had utterly destroyed her. She had somehow forced herself to remain where she had been, resisting the need to go to him and check on him, aware that if she revealed her feelings for him that the wraith would hurt her too.

  Every time Lisabeta had brought her to Marek and she had seen the state of him, the fear that they would hurt her had compounded, and the guilt had grown stronger.

  She wasn’t aware that Keras and Valen had left, and she was alone with Marek, until he came and crouched before her, drawing her out of the past.

  Plunging her back into the present.

  Helping Marek and making amends wasn’t the only reason she wanted to become a double agent, as Valen had called it.

  Now that the daemon fever had lost its grip on her and she was thinking more clearl
y, she knew that the wraith had her brother and that was why Marek’s brother hadn’t been able to find him.

  Guillem had been leverage before, and now he would be leverage again. The wraith would use him to lure her out and force her to do as he wanted.

  But she wouldn’t.

  Not anymore.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Marek husked, his voice going low as he reached up and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear.

  “I do.” She stared deep into eyes that held warmth, and something she dared to hope was real, because it echoed inside her too, even when she knew it was hopeless.

  There wasn’t any way to save herself. She could see that now. But she could still save her brother—and she could save Marek.

  Because she cared about him.

  More than cared.

  She had fallen in love with him, and he would never know, because whatever happened next, he could never truly love her, not now that she was a daemon.

  But she was still going to do this for him.

  “I’m sorry about everything.” He stared at his fingers as he brushed them down her cheek. “All of this happened to you because of me… and I’m sorry. It would have been better if you had never met me.”

  She didn’t understand how he could think that.

  Or believe that he really meant it.

  If she’d had her way, things would have been different, but she couldn’t bring herself to wish they had never met.

  She was glad that she had met him that night. That for a brief, beautiful moment her crappy life had been wonderful. She had met a man who could understand her, who had been more than attracted to her, and who she had fallen in love with.

  “I’m not sorry,” she whispered, her voice lacking the strength and conviction she felt in her heart.

  She shuffled to the edge of the cot and he moved backwards to give her room, his eyes darting between hers as he frowned.

  “I’m not sorry we met.”

  She lifted both of her hands and framed his face, relished the warmth of his golden skin beneath her palms and how he looked at her with all the love in the world in his eyes, tinged with confusion and a lot of pain.

  “I’m only sorry that things didn’t turn out the way I wanted.”

  She tried to smile but it wobbled on her lips as she looked into his eyes, as she tried not to think about tomorrow or what was to come, or what would happen if she somehow survived.

  Because there was no hope.

  She had thought life was cruel to her, but she had been mistaken. Her parents’ deaths, her brother’s turning, a decade spent desperately trying to save him, it had only been the warm-up act.

  It had only been the build-up to this.

  Life hadn’t been her main enemy.

  Love was.

  Love was crueller, filled her with despair and pain, and yet she couldn’t stop it from pouring through her whenever she looked at Marek.

  Couldn’t stop it any more than she could stop her own heart from beating.

  Even when it was hopeless.

  Marek cupped her cheeks in his palms, his gaze searing her, filled with the conflict and hurt running rampant inside her, revealing that he didn’t know what to do either.

  He opened his mouth, his brow furrowed, and he shook his head and pulled her into a hug that was so tight she wanted to cry.

  She cursed the world instead.

  She cursed it with all the venom she could muster.

  Because the one thing she wanted was right here in her arms, but he would never be hers.

  The world spun into a cold darkness.

  Chapter 26

  When the darkness faded, Caterina pulled away from Marek and looked around her, curious as to where he had taken her.

  A colossal black building that resembled a temple from ancient Greece towered before her, thick towering fluted columns lining the façade to support the triangular pediment. There were two rows of them at the front, but only a single row along the sides, forming a walkway that ran around the temple.

  Beyond it, a low roofed walkway lined with columns connected it on either side to smaller temples that were set back from the main one.

  Beyond them?

  The blackest mountains she had ever seen speared a dull grey sky, fault lines in their cragged faces glowing gold and illuminating the smoky clouds that swirled across them.

  “Marek.” She seized his arm, her heart racing and lodging in her throat as cold realisation slid down her spine.

  This was the Underworld.

  He had brought her to the Underworld, a place where daemons weren’t allowed.

  Why?

  A thousand doubts filled her head, fear gripping her tightly as she let them come, didn’t have the strength to deny them while she was staring at the ominous black temple.

  The bright, colourful garden that surrounded it was so out of place, and did nothing to soften the terrifying image of the buildings. The whole place reeked of power, malevolence that seeped into her skin and made her want to teleport away.

  Only she didn’t know how to teleport. She had managed it once by pure chance, and a hundred attempts after that she still hadn’t managed it again.

  “I don’t like it here. Take me back.” She shook Marek’s arm, jerking him back and forth as he stared at the entrance of the temple.

  “I can’t take us back… I didn’t bring us here,” he murmured, voice distant, as if he wasn’t quite with her.

  “You can teleport. Just do it.” She squeezed his arm, digging her fingers into his biceps. “I said I would do what your brother wanted. I don’t need to be convinced.”

  “I’m not trying to convince you.” He turned a frown on her and shook his head. “And believe me… I would never bring you here, even if I could enter this realm. I was banished to Earth. I can’t teleport to this realm until that banishment is lifted.”

  “If you didn’t bring us here… who did?” Her hands started to shake as she considered everything he had said and drew a terrible conclusion.

  Ice skated down her spine, a sensation that someone was watching her. That feeling of malevolence grew until it was choking, had her shaking Marek again, on the verge of begging him to try to teleport.

  She stilled, frozen right to her marrow as awareness washed over her.

  They weren’t alone.

  She slowly inched her head to her left, towards the main temple as metal clanked against marble, the sound like a death knell in her ears.

  “Marek,” she whispered and stepped back, releasing him even as she wanted to edge closer to him instead.

  She didn’t dare, not when her eyes landed on a tall slender figure in the doorway of the temple, dwarfed by the height of it. Black shadows appeared around him, swirling with streaks of blue and deep red. Caterina wished with all of her heart that her flaky new powers hadn’t chosen this moment to reveal emotions to her.

  Because she had the dreadful feeling those were the colours of anger and hatred so deep nothing could alter it.

  The man strode into the light of one of the torches mounted on the columns at the front of the temple, and she swallowed hard.

  Warm light chased over the black armour that hugged the man’s lean frame and the spikes that rose from his short onyx hair. A heavy crimson cloak hung from his shoulders, swirling around his ankles with each step, drawing her eyes down to the pointed tips of his boots. They scraped on the marble with each step, and she couldn’t stop herself from imagining how he might use them in battle.

  Although, the claws that tipped his gauntlets were infinitely more terrifying.

  He tucked his arms behind his back, carrying himself with a regal poise as he tilted his head up and narrowed red eyes on her.

  The colours surrounding him turned as black as the temple behind him.

  And then suddenly winked out of existence.

  Caterina wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or worried by her newfound ability failing her again. She might h
ave been able to use it as an early warning system, turning it to her advantage.

  Although, she doubted she would have a chance to escape if this man made a move.

  It would be over in a blink of his crimson eyes.

  If it wasn’t for those eyes, she would say it was Keras who stood before her, dressed for war.

  She had the terrible feeling this man was a far cry from the one she had met in the cell, the one who had proposed she help them and had cleared her name with Marek.

  This man wanted her dead.

  It was right there in his eyes as he stared down his straight nose at her.

  “This is bad,” Marek whispered beside her.

  She risked edging closer to him.

  The man’s eyes narrowed, freezing her in place.

  “Who is that?” She really didn’t want to know the answer to that, because she already knew and she wanted to keep pretending that this wasn’t happening.

  “Father.” Marek stood his ground when the man’s eyes shifted to him. “The god-king Hades.”

  Oh. This was very bad.

  If Marek and his brothers hated daemons, then this god-king despised them with a vengeance.

  And he had summoned her.

  A daemon.

  It was all going to end here.

  She had thought she had given up all hope, but some foolish part of her must have been clinging to a tattered thread of it because now that she was facing death, she realised she had still believed she had a shot with Marek.

  And now whatever chance she might have had was going to die with her.

  Hades shifted his crimson eyes to her again and his nostrils flared as he drew down a deep breath, as his black eyebrows knitted hard and his lips compressed. Disgust shone in those scarlet eyes. Disgust and hatred.

  And violence.

  She instinctively brought her hands up to her chest, a vain attempt to shield the heart he could easily rip from her if he wanted it. She was no match for him. His power was palpable, thickening the air and pressing down on her.

  If he wanted her dead, she wouldn’t stand a chance against him.