Monsters, Book Two: Hour of the Dragon

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Another beat passed and Ares turned around with her to face another group of men – three of them, all wearing Monsters jackets. “Nate, take her for a sec so I can finish the fucker.”

  But Anna put her hand on his chest to stay him. “No wait, Ares.” Ares stopped and looked down at her. “He’s connected to Maze somehow,” she told him earnestly. She wasn’t sure what it was – maybe his white eye and the way it was growing more green the longer he was away from Victor, maybe the way he seemed so orderly and calm in contrast to Maze, but something struck her as off about Randall and his relationship with the chaos god. “I’m not even sure he was fully responsible for killing those women. And also,” she said, lowering her tone, “You might be able to use him to find Maze.”

  She looked back at Price. He wasn’t a small man, yet he hung limply in her sentinel’s obviously more than capable grip. She winced, wondering if her instinct about him was at all right. Randall Price was covered in blood, and probably for the first occasion in months at least some of it was his own.

  Chapter Thirty-eight – Decoy Dimension, Austin Texas

  Behind Ares, Nathan Connor addressed Annaleia, “Faith, that man can’t be allowed to hurt another human.”

  “No, she’s right,” Ares told him with a glance over his shoulder. Because she was. He absolutely hated to admit it; no one in that room wanted to destroy the butcher more than Ares.

  “Yeah she is,” agreed Rafael Valentine, or “Rafe.” He and his twin brother Dante had also accompanied Ares back through the portal. “Any lead we can get is a good one. This shit has to stop and we need to mount a better defense.”

  “In the form of an offense,” said his brother, Dante.

  Mace. Ares straightened as Cain’s voice sounded clearly in his head. Take Faith with you to the garage.

  Ares blinked. Of course the man had managed to break into his mind and clearly communicate despite the distance and the mess of wards Maze had placed over the location. It had taken Ares and the other three what felt like forever to finally traverse the labyrinth of false openings once and for all and get inside the fake safehouse.

  Ares turned to his clansmen questioningly. They nodded at him, indicating that they’d heard Cain too. But when Ares turned back around, Magnus was striding toward Ares, dragging Price beside him. “I need to heal her,” Magnus told him frankly, his eyes on Annaleia.

  Ares nodded, and Dante moved forward to take Price from Magnus. “I’ll watch him,” he told the sentinel, who readily released him.

  Magnus raised his hand but left it a few inches from Anna’s chest. With a distractingly enchanting smile for his beautiful ward, Magnus asked, “May I?”

  Ares watched Anna’s pupils dilate a little as she nodded. He felt a muscle tick in his jaw and knew his dragon was itching to give into a jealous fit, but the better part of him realized that was beyond ridiculous. He watched quietly as Magnus lowered his hand to Leia’s chest.

  “Wait!”

  Magnus and Ares both turned their heads.

  Rafael stepped forward, dropping his hand from where his fingers had been at his temple, where Ares had seen him place them a dozen times before. Rafe was the Monsters clan seer, among other things. His visions came very seldomly, once a year at most. But when they did they came without fail in the most fortuitous manner. For weeks after one of these types of visions, Rafe was sometimes jokingly referred to as “Nick” by his clan brothers – as in, “the nick of time.”

  “Did you just pull a Shawn Spencer from Psych move?” Annaleia asked softly, addressing Rafael.

  Rafe grinned at her unabashedly, and of course Annaleia couldn’t help but smile beautifully back. Damn, thought Ares. Fucking Gemini.

  “I thought I was the only one who liked that show so much,” Rafe lied.

  “Nice catch, Faith” said his brother, Dante. He was also smiling, and it was without a doubt a charming smile. The twins knew nothing if not how beguile their way into a woman’s good graces. “But we promise, Rafe was pulling that move long before Spencer ever did.”

  Rafael addressed Magnus, who had yet to remove his hand from Annaleia’s chest. “You can’t heal her, Magnus.” He shook his head, just once. “Not now. Not yet.”

  Ares watched as the sentinel’s expression went stark with understanding, then dire with concern. He looked back down at his charge, lowered his hand from her chest, and stepped back.

  Ares glanced at Rafe, who nodded at the sentinel gratefully. He didn’t want to even think about what Rafe meant by what he’d just said. But the fact that it came from a vision, combined with the fact that Ares didn’t want to think about it, meant Ares already knew damn well what he meant.

  Ares turned to Magnus. “Can you travel through a portal?” The rather sad truth was, he honestly had no clue about most of what sentinels could do. He’d had little occasion to call his own sentinel, Cassius. And Cassius irritated him anyway. He was just too pretty. He was really fucking tough, and far too pretty. It got under Ares’ skin. Unfortunately, it looked like Annaleia’s sentinel was even prettier. That got under his skin too.

  Magnus smiled, almost as if he knew exactly what Ares was thinking. “I can go anywhere she goes,” the sentinel told him with a nod at the woman Ares held in his arms. “And I will,” he added solemnly. Ares didn’t miss the warning.

  “Oh my God you two, now is not the time for a pissing match,” Annaleia said, but while her voice was full of fire, it lacked its usual strength. Ares experienced an immediate switch in focus, all of his attention shifting to her. His eyes took in everything – the bruise on her cheek, the busted lip, her pale coloring. He noticed the way she labored against pain every time she drew in breath and knew she had bruised ribs at the very least. He glanced down at the obvious bullet wound. She’d lost some blood.

  If the bloody face of one of the men on the ground and the bloody ear of the other were any indication, before they’d been shot, Anna had put up one hell of a fight – and paid the consequences. And yet between the lot of them, she was the one with the voice of reason.

  “Leia, hang in there baby,” he said as his chest ached a little and he nodded at Nathan. The blond Aurum vampire raised his right arm, palm-out to summon a portal. It wasn’t easy doing so in a place this warded, but Nate had recently fed – as in fed on gold blood. His powers were spiking right now and at their strongest. It was why he’d accompanied Ares in the first place and was probably the only reason they’d made it here at all.

  It had taken them so long to try to back-track their way to the fake safehouse due to Victor’s wards, Ares had been forced to end his transport, dropping the four of them off in the middle of a random desert. It was Nate who then opened a second portal, allowing them to finally make it back here.

  When Nate’s portal opened now, it was once more shot through with purple lightning, the agitated strength of the spell as it worked against the wards patently clear.

  The five men didn’t need to say anything. One after another, they stepped into the portal, one of them carrying a serial killer, another carrying what was to him the most precious cargo in the world.

  Chapter Thirty-nine – Austin Texas

  Jarrod Sterling swiped his arm across his forehead, brushing a wayward lock of black hair out of his eyes. In the brief respite afforded him by the felling of his most recent opponent, this one a much-hated Apex, Jarrod scanned the strange area, taking quick stock.

  It was the most bizarre dimension Jarrod had ever had the dizzying misfortune to step into. But given that it was an encapsulated pocket of space and time developed by and for the chaos god himself, that wasn’t surprising. It was just uncomfortable.

  The area itself was more or less designed as a room, albeit a very large and empty room with no discernible walls and columns running through it. It appeared a little like a much larger version of the Parthenon or the Temple of Hephaestus in that respect. If anyone had taken a photograph of the enormous room with a camera set at a fast shut
ter speed, the room would have appeared utterly normal, if not overwhelmingly large.

  However, it wasn’t in its construction that the room was strange; it was in the highly unsettling effect of its colors, and in the way that it moved.

  The ceiling was composed of fog. That was the only way he could have described it. And that’s essentially what it was, because it was out of this “fog” that the monstrosities attacking him and the others had appeared and continued to do so. The room’s columns were simple enough, an off-white of plain marble. But he could swear they were moving. He would pass one, count on its being there for a specific tactic or on it not being there when he was backing up, only to find that it had shifted over several feet. Most unsettling of all however was the floor.

  It was Vantablack, or rather the chaos-god-magically-created equivalent to the blacker-than-black man-made substance. Vantablack was a material that absorbed nearly all light, essentially rendering three-dimensional figures into two-dimensional shapes. And that’s what the floor beneath Jarrod’s feet was doing. To his perception, it wasn’t so much a floor as it was an endless drop into the vast cosmos of space.

  More than a few times in the last few minutes, Jarrod had experienced the stomach-rising sensation that he was falling, even though he could still feel the solidness of the floor pressing against the soles of his shoes. It was disorienting, which was obviously the point.

  And he hated it.

  After Antares Mace absconded with Annaleia Faith on Sixth, Jarrod and Cain had… talked. Okay, Jarrod had talked. At least at first. He was pretty sure he didn’t have a choice. But then he’d actually listened, because as luck would have it, Cain for some reason felt it was important that Jarrod be filled in on what was transpiring.

  Thank the gods.

  It was during that discussion that he learned of Randall Price’s designs on Annaleia – and of the grotesque serial killings. Jarrod became emotionally torn. On the one hand, if Anna was with the dragon, she was probably a lot safer from Price. On the other hand, if she was with the dragon, she was with the dragon.

  And she also wasn’t with Jarrod.

  In the end, Jarrod offered his assistance. He would help however he possibly could. He wanted to keep Annaleia safe, obviously. But he also couldn’t help wondering whether his vision had anything to do with those killings. Cain was surprisingly not surprised that Jarrod wanted to help. And the Nightmare Warlock wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  Didn’t Cain know about Jarrod’s reputation? Wasn’t the whole world convinced that Sterling was nothing but a rake, a thief, and a single supernatural being with the power of three and therefore far too dangerous to be trusted?

  Because if he did, he sure didn’t show it. Instead, the Monsters clan head patted Jarrod on the back – hard – and immediately got to work with the others on formulating a plan.

  Jarrod remained involved in all of it, again not only to help Anna, but because of that vision. It had been so very strange – as strange as the damn room he was currently fighting in. It was the only vision he’d ever had in which he could not see the victim’s face. He just couldn’t. He could hear people in distress, and he could feel a pain in his chest as if he were desperately hurting, aching. Everything about it was so real.

  He simply could not tell who it was that was lying on the floor, dying. That part was a blur.

  Jarrod smirked looking back on it now as he sidestepped an enormous tentacle meant to smash him against the blacker-than-black floor. He didn’t fail to recognize the irony of that vision… considering the obscuring spell he’d placed on Annaleia Faith and her memory of Antares Mace. Jarrod supposed it was even providence. He deserved to not be able to see that face. He was man enough to admit it.

  It didn’t look as though he would be capable of garnering the ability to resurrect from Annaleia this time around, and perhaps never again if Mace had his way. And in the absence of that, Jarrod wasn’t sure what the hell he was going to do when time ran out and the vision came to fruition. He only prayed that by staying with the wardens, and Cain in particular, he would find himself with some sort of an advantage when it did. By surrounding himself with so much power and so many different mortals and non-mortals, he hoped that he’d be enough in the thick of it that an alternative option would eventually arise. It was frankly his only hope.

  Jarrod was getting to his feet after jumping and rolling over yet another Dweller arm when something hit him from behind, spreading a crackling heat across his back. He stumbled forward and struggled to stay standing when he found the support beam he was going to brace himself against was no longer where it should have been.

  He managed to find his footing anyway, and when he did he had to duck and spin to keep from getting hit with another bolt of whatever it was that had hit him. He came around and stood to face off against his attacker, only to find he was facing off with – himself.

  The second Jarrod Sterling smiled broadly at him and waved.

  “Oh bloody fantastic,” he muttered. He wanted to roll his eyes, that was how over it he felt about this fight. It had been short minutes and already the goddamn floor was making him feel queasy, and now he had to go head to head with a fucking Terror. Lovely, he thought. This day just keeps getting better.

  He took a deep breath and tried with all his might to think of what he would do next in this situation and then do something completely different. It was the only way to defeat the doppelganger-like Terror in battle. But he was starting to feel something else in this battle too, something besides the queasiness and building anger. It was time pressing in on him.

  Jarrod had been with Lily Kane when this shit had all gone sideways. He’d helped reinforce the safehouse for Anna’s planned arrival, and Cain had assigned him among those who would remain at the house to protect her if there was trouble. Everyone was pretty sure there would be trouble, so Jarrod hadn’t been assigned alone. He was one of twelve mages at the safehouse, along with a dozen werewolves and a few of the actual kings and queens. Annaleia’s ability to resurrect was highly valued, and that lineup pretty much proved as much.

  But the time that had been set for Anna’s arrival came and went. And Annaleia was nowhere in sight. Sterling immediately knew something had gone very, very wrong. He and a few others, chosen beforehand for just such an eventuality, opened an instant portal working together. It took several of them casting as one to do so through the strength of the wards placed over the house.

  Inside the portal, they prepared to pop back out at the Monsters territory garage and then re-direct with a location spell on Cain. Which they did. But when they traversed the second transport and popped back out a second time, they found themselves stepping into a scene of utter madness.

  This one. His least favorite place in the world now.

  Jarrod had only been here a few minutes, but already he was sensing that he needed to keep going. Move on. Follow Cain like he’d been instructed. It was as if he were being summoned.

  He didn’t hear any voices in his head, nor did he hear anyone actually calling out to him amidst the turmoil of his battling companions and this twisted room. It was more like he’d been swimming in the sea and had accidentally swallowed a worm with a hook on it and digested it. And now the fisherman was pulling on the line. Something deep inside Jarrod felt a tug.

  He needed to get out of there while he could still trace the last transport spell cast from the room. Cain’s transport.

  Right after he and the others had arrived in the chaos god’s makeshift dimension, Jarrod had witnessed several of the Monsters clan, along with combat specialists and detector members of various other clans, stepping into yet another portal. Right away, he knew what they were doing. Their speed and urgency told him at once that Victor Maze was no longer here.

  They’d managed to do the impossible – they’d pinned the god of mayhem down by working together and detecting the source of his magic. But he’d remained one step ahead of them with some other plan,
and the bastard had transported away one last time. Cain and the others simply could not afford to lose his trail.

  He watched them heading out, the detectors moving into the swirling tunnel first, followed by the fighters and finally Cain. But before he stepped in, the Monsters clan leader actually turned and locked eyes with Jarrod from across the room.

  In all that disorder and confusion, the man had still known Jarrod was there, and if his expression said anything, he knew why. He knew Annaleia had never shown up at the safehouse. He knew she’d been taken. He knew that part of the plan had failed. He didn’t even seem surprised.

  Mace has gone after her, Cain said, speaking in Jarrod’s mind.

  Jarrod’s eyes widened, but even then he wasn’t sure he was really all that surprised that Cain could so easily enter his thoughts.

  You need to be right behind me, Sterling, Cain then told him. She needs you to be right behind me.

  And then Cain had stepped into the transport before it slammed shut behind him, sending the sound of thunder through the space like a bomb. Right after which, Jarrod had been sent flying into the nearest support column by the brutal attack of one of Maze’s chaos minions. Right away, Jarrod had been forced to switch tactics and engage or be slaughtered.

  The transport spell hardly ever gave off thunder any longer; magic users had learned to muffle the sound with other magic when they cast it. But here in this dimension, magic was haywire. He had to improvise wildly in order to stay on his feet. Mere minutes had passed since he’d stepped onto the space-black floor, yet it felt like a year-long run through the gauntlet.

  But short minutes or not, this had now officially gone on too long. He needed to get away from this fight, let the others handle it, and trace Cain’s location.