by Tina Folsom
Table of Contents
Title Page
Book Description
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About the Author
Copyright
Guardian Undone
Stealth Guardians #4
Tina Folsom
Book Description
Stealth Guardian warrior Logan Frazer is loyal to his race, but when he’s ordered to eliminate a psychic so she won’t fall into the hands of the demons and help them destroy mankind, he goes rogue and saves her instead.
Winter Collins doesn’t know that she’s a psychic and that the terrible nightmares she experiences are actually visions, until demons come knocking at her door. Fortunately, a brave immortal warrior saves her, and an instant, electric connection forms between the beautiful psychic and the man convinced she’s more valuable alive than dead.
On the run for their lives, Logan and Winter must not only evade the demons, but the Stealth Guardians bent on eliminating her. A desperate race against time begins as Logan draws on all his resources—including his connection to the vampires and witches of Scanguards—to save the woman he’s falling in love with.
* * * * *
Guardian Undone (Stealth Guardians #4)
Copyright © 2017 by Tina Folsom
* * * * *
1
Zoltan slammed his fist onto the armrest of his throne and rose to his feet.
“Imbeciles!” he yelled.
Only a dozen demons were assembled in the throne room, messengers who brought news from up top—the human world. Months, hell, two years, had gone by since they’d brought him any decent intelligence on the Stealth Guardians, the protectors of humankind, who so far had thwarted every single one of Zoltan’s attempts to expand his power and reach his goal of world domination.
Frustration charged through every cell of his body, bringing his green demon blood to a boil. With it, he could sense something else approaching: a migraine-like attack that would cripple him for minutes, if not longer. These painful episodes had started long before he’d become the leader of the demons, the Great One. He’d always managed to keep them hidden from his underlings. Still, he’d had some close calls, and if his subjects ever found out that he wasn’t the picture of strength and power he portrayed, well, he wouldn’t be the Great One for long.
He descended from his throne, eager to leave the vast cavern where flames shot through crevices in the rocks, throwing eerie shadows onto the jagged walls and uneven ceiling. Without a word, he motioned to his right-hand man, Vintoq, to release the assembly, and headed for one of the four exits.
A voice stopped him. “Oh Great One, you haven’t heard my report yet.”
Zoltan spun around and glared at the demon who’d dared to speak. His eyes fell on a stout blond man. He appeared nervous, but when Zoltan charged toward him, he didn’t shrink back.
“Oh Great One,” Vintoq interrupted. “Why don’t I handle this for you?”
Anger already boiling over, Zoltan now directed his glower at his second-in-command. Had it been another time—or had Vintoq been more discreet—he would have acquiesced, but he couldn’t allow his subjects to get the impression that Vintoq could make him do anything he hadn’t thought of himself.
“I’m fully capable of listening to another useless report,” he snapped, dismissing Vintoq’s suggestion with an angry swipe of his hand. “And if his report is as disappointing as all the others’, then I’m also fully capable of taking his head off.”
Vintoq immediately bowed in deference.
“Good.” Zoltan turned back to the blond demon. “Make it quick. My patience wears thin.” And the painful attack was impatiently waiting in the wings.
Bowing, the demon said, “Oh Great One, I bring good news. I have discovered a psychic.”
“A psychic?”
Zoltan wasn’t the only one who echoed the word in disbelief. A rumbling of low voices traveled through the throne room, amplified by the rock walls.
“There hasn’t been a confirmed report of a real psychic in twenty years! True psychics are rarer than a needle in a haystack.” Or a demon with a brain.
Zoltan grunted in displeasure. “You’re wasting my time!” He reached for his dagger, drawing it from its sheath.
“I have proof!” the demon quickly added and pulled a folded sheet of paper from his coat pocket.
Zoltan snatched it and unfolded it. He stared at the drawing, then waved it in the air. “What is this supposed to be?”
“She draws the things she sees in her visions. That”—the demon pointed to the piece of paper—“is one of the things she saw: a Stealth Guardian portal.”
Zoltan looked back at the drawing and focused his eyes on the hastily scribbled lines and blotches. This psychic was no artist, but she was able to convey the essential idea. Zoltan recognized the distinctive dagger that the Stealth Guardians carried and noticed that it was engraved in a door that looked like it was part of a stone wall. Could it really be a portal? Could this person truly be a psychic?
“Are there more drawings like this one?”
The demon nodded. “Many more. Different ones of portals, buildings, weapons. But I didn’t want to arouse her suspicion, so I only took one that I thought she might not miss.”
Zoltan raised an eyebrow. One of his underlings had a brain and knew how to use it? Definitely a novelty. But he stopped short of praising his subject. It was too early for that.
“What’s your name?”
“Colton.”
Zoltan nodded at the demon, then addressed the assembled messengers. “Colton will pick three of you to follow his lead and check out this psychic to make sure she’s real. If she is, we have to bring her to our side. She’s valuable beyond all else. A true psychic can provide us with information and insight on the Stealth Guardians that will enable us to destroy them. This is our key to winning the war.”
The demons nodded dutifully.
A memory of what had happened two decades earlier when he’d last had a psychic in his grasp was suddenly all too vivid again.
He’d brought her to their side. She’d succumbed. But then the Stealth Guardians had swooped in and killed her. Zoltan’s gut knotted, while his temples began to throb with the first waves of his migraine. “I’m warning you all. If she slips through your fingers, your blood will paint this cave green. I hope we understand each other.”
“Yes, oh Great One,” they said in unison, whether out of loyalty or fear, Zoltan didn’t care. As long as they obeyed him and executed his orders faithfully.
With a nod, Zoltan rushed past his subjects and hurried into the corridor leading to his private quarters, his temples throbbing from the horrible pain. This attack was worse than the previous ones. He’d tried everything to make them stop, even human medication, but nothing halted the attacks or lessened the pain. As if he was cursed. He could only hope he would make it to the privacy of his rooms before he collapsed.
2
Winter Collins handed the tarot deck to her client. The woman had introduced herself as Jessica when she’d breezed into the tiny one-room shop just as Winter had been preparing to close for the day. Since it had been a quiet day and she’d barely made any money, she’d decided to invite the woman in.
“Please shuffle the cards,” she instructed her now.
While Jessica followed her instructions, Winter noticed her glancing around the room. Most clients did the same, as if the décor might help them figure out whether she really could tell the future. She couldn’t. But she was an excellent judge of character and could read people. Not only that, she knew what they wanted to hear. So she’d made it her profession to read fortunes.
The crystals that adorned every surface in her little shop, the incense that burned and infused the air with a mystical scent, as well as the pictures of occult artefacts and supernatural symbols that hung on the walls were mere accessories. Just as her gypsy-inspired outfit was all pretense. Yet Winter didn’t feel bad about what she was doing. In today’s world, people needed hope. So what if she provided it by telling her clients that they would get the job they wanted, meet the love of their lives, and overcome their current troubles, no matter what those might be? She wasn’t hurting anybody. Besides, many of her clients came to her because they’d received a gag gift from a friend—particularly since she’d started offering gift cards online—and others because they had nobody to talk to. The same way people went to their family doctor to talk about their problems, they came to her for a glimmer of hope to brighten their dull lives.
“What now?” Jessica interrupted her thoughts.
“Cut the deck,” Winter demanded, speaking slowly and quietly. She’d learned that speaking in a low voice caused the clients to instinctively draw closer. It created an atmosphere of intimacy, as if big secrets were about to be revealed.
When Jessica placed the deck on the purple velvet cloth that covered the small round table between them, Winter took the deck and closed her eyes for a moment, humming a few notes. Then she laid ten cards out in a Celtic Cross pattern, placing them facedown on the table, while the bangles on her wrists jingled.
Just because she didn’t believe in tarot readings, didn’t mean she hadn’t learned the rudimentary rules of her craft. She was familiar with the meaning of all the cards in the deck, whether they displayed upright or upside down, not wanting to be tripped up by a client who might know enough to call her out as the fraud she was.
“What’s your question, Jessica?” Winter asked her customer.
“My question?” There was a look of confusion on Jessica’s face. This was her first reading.
“Yes, the reason you came here today.”
Because there was always a reason. Maybe the man she was in love with wasn’t making a declaration of love as quickly as she’d hoped, or perhaps she’d applied for a job and had still not heard back for an interview. Though, oddly enough, Winter couldn’t put her finger on what concern Jessica had. Normally she got an inkling of her clients’ desires pretty quickly. A lovelorn look, an anxious twitch; there were so many tells that gave away a person’s internal state.
“Uh, yeah, I, uh, wanted to know if my boyfriend is cheating on me,” she finally said.
“Hmm.” Winter nodded. She wouldn’t have guessed that this was what the woman was concerned about. Jessica didn’t appear to be worried about an unfaithful boyfriend. Winter did a mental shrug. Maybe she was just tired and therefore not attuned to the woman’s emotional state.
“Well, then, let’s see,” she said instead and turned over the first card of the Celtic Cross. It was the moon card, a card that suggested that unusual, supernatural events might occur. Though it was also a sign of lunacy. Not something she wanted to tell her client. So she started with a vague comment. “Unusual events brought you here.”
The woman’s eyes widened in surprise.
Winter suppressed a sigh of relief. Even a broken clock was right twice a day. She turned the second card over and followed her intuition in interpreting the High Priestess card, telling her client that she was strong and could weather any storm. She was on autopilot now. Once a client was hooked with a few correct assumptions, they would gobble up anything Winter offered.
By the time Winter had turned over the last card, she’d told Jessica that her boyfriend was true to her, but that she needed to be in charge of her own happiness and not let it be dependent upon another person. Always good advice, no matter the circumstances.
“Thank you, thank you so much,” Jessica said and reached into her purse.
Winter collected the cards from the table and put them back into the stack, setting them neatly to one side, ready for the next day, while Jessica retrieved some cash.
“Is that the right amount?”
Winter glanced at the banknotes and nodded. “Thank you. Please come again.”
Once the door closed behind Jessica, Winter flipped the deadbolt and turned the sign in the door to the side that read Sorry, we’re closed. Then she pulled down the shade on the glass door and turned around.
She didn’t get any further. Blinding pain shot through her forehead, making her knees buckle. She reached for the closest thing to steady herself, the windowsill, and gripped it for support.
“Shit!” she cursed.
This wasn’t the first time this had happened to her. And somehow she knew it wasn’t going to be the last time either. And the pain wasn’t even the worst part. It was only a precursor of the terrible mental assault that would follow. It was much like a nightmare—a nightmare while awake.
She held onto the windowsill, squeezing her eyes shut, hoping against all odds that by closing her eyes she could block out the awful images that pounded down on her like relentless rain.
Poison-green was the first thing she saw. Two dots of a poison-green color that almost blinded her before the dots retreated and a face became visible. The face of a man. An angry man. A violent man. A man who wasn’t human. She knew that much, because no human had eyes like that. Poison-green eyes that seemed to spew pure evil. And those evil eyes were glaring at her.
As her field of vision widened, she was able to make out more. The terrifying man was tall with broad shoulders and a muscular torso clad in what looked like army fatigues. A guerilla fighter? She looked for an ammunition belt slung across the creature’s upper body, but there was none. No gun or rifle either. Instead, in his hand, he clasped a dagger. A dagger that was now veering toward her.
She tried to scream, but no sound issued from her throat, just a helpless gurgle. Fear paralyzed her. This was how she was going to die. She’d seen it before. Seen too many times how the knife plunged into her heart and robbed her of her life.
She braced herself for the inevitable, steeled herself for the pain, because death wasn’t painless, wasn’t instant like people wanted to believe. But the green-eyed man stopped in mid-motion. It took her brain almost a second to realize what was happening. A sword sliced through the creature’s neck, separating the head from the body.
While the head dropped to the ground, rolling somewhere out of sight, green liquid spurted from the wound. Blood? Green blood! She had no time to move, to get out of the way, and was doused in it immediately. Some of it splashed into her eyes, blurring her vision. She could make out a man behind the falling monster, but couldn’t truly see him through the horrible green blood.
Before she could thank her rescuer, she saw more poison-green dots appear in the distance. More green-eyed monsters?
Frantic, Winter stretched out her arm in their direction, pointing at them, while she tried unsuccessfully to form words, realizing only now that she was chained to a wall. The man who’d killed the creature whirled around toward the approaching green-eyed attackers. She wiped her eyes with her hand, managing to regain some of her vision.
They were in a cave with flames licking along the rock walls. All of a sudden, the smell of rotten eggs assaulted her. Grunts and
curses reached her ears. And more poison-green lights flashed. More monsters. Too many.
She cried out in desperation.
This was hell. There was no escape from this.
This was her end.
Winter collapsed. And just as quickly as the nightmare had begun, it stopped. She forced open her eyes and looked around. Touched her torso, her thighs, her face. No blood, no green stains on her clothing, no wounds. No monsters in her little shop.
She was alone. For now.
She managed to get up, shaky at first, but with every step she gained more of her strength. Breathing heavily, she walked to the other end of the shop, where a door with a sign saying Private led to her apartment. She opened it and walked through a small hallway into the large live-in kitchen.
On the counter next to the coffee machine stood a tray with several small, orange plastic bottles containing prescription drugs. She hated taking them, but when she went without them for too long, the daytime nightmares came more frequently. At least the pills dulled her senses and calmed her somewhat. Right now, she needed one, because she was shaking.
The things she was seeing had become more vivid in the last few months. More real, even though she knew none of it could be real. Monsters like that couldn’t exist. Poison-green eyes, green blood? Not even Hollywood could invent such ridiculous creatures, monsters that looked perfectly human apart from those two features. Yet whenever she saw them, whenever she saw the poison-green eyes, she was more terrified than she’d ever been in her life. Because she knew they were coming for her.
She felt them calling to her. Heard their voices in her head. And every time she heard them, she felt her blood turn to ice, because she felt the evil physically. Every cell in her body revolted. She knew she couldn’t succumb to them. Couldn’t give in to their calls. Or she would end up like her grandmother. She would spend the rest of her days in a mental hospital, clawing at the walls, claiming to hear voices in her head and see things that weren’t real.
Tears shot to Winter’s eyes, when she recalled the last few visits she’d had with her grandmother. The nurses had restrained her with leather straps bound to her bed for fear she would hurt herself or others. She’d had a crazed look on her face, and the things she’d said had made no sense. Two days later she was gone. Dead.