The Black God (#2, Damian Eternal Series)

by Lizzy Ford

  The world around them melted into a kaleidoscopic swirl of colors and shapes before reforming into different shapes and colors. Ashley’s stomach dropped and for a moment, she feared she’d seize up from Traveling with someone else. Waiting to see what her body did, she blinked away the momentary sense of disorientation and righted her senses.

  They were near the University in an alley close to her apartment building. She’d been hoping he was bluffing about knowing where she lived.

  “You aren’t going to have one,” Jonny told her. “You can let go now.”

  Warmth reached her cheeks as she realized how hard she was squeezing his hand. Ashley released Jonny and started away.

  “Remember, Ash. Fuck with my vamps, I fuck with you,” he warned her as she stepped away.

  Furious her plan for vengeance was ruined by her own body’s weakness, she flipped him off without turning and strode out of the alley.

  The next afternoon, Ashley slammed over and over into the punching bag in the boxing gym down the street from where she lived. It was quiet on a Sunday with only the hardcore fighters in the ring or working various bags.

  Exhausted from her night as well as the episode, she nonetheless pounded into the bag, unable to shake her anger and embarrassment at how poorly she’d done the day before. Not only had she been captured vamps, but Jonny – the man she despised most in the world – had rescued her. She’d then failed to seek her revenge because of her weak body.

  She deserved the bloodied knuckles beneath her hand wraps and the bruises forming from her merciless attack on the bag. She deserved to hurt or maybe … the physical pain alleviated the humiliation of her night.

  She drove herself until she became too dizzy to stand and wrapped her arms around the bag, chest heaving. Ashley let the bag support her weight for a long moment, always leery of any warning signs another seizure was eminent.

  “You got some moves,” one of the regulars said from the bag nearest her.

  Ashley opened her eyes and pushed away. “Thanks.”

  “Where did learn to fight like that?”

  “Um, stepdad mostly,” she said with some awkwardness.

  “He a champ?”

  She snorted and offered the familiar fighter a smile. “Not really. It’s a hobby I guess.” She retrieved her towel from the ground and started away. “See you tomorrow.”

  He lifted a gloved hand.

  Ashley left the boxing gym and stepped into the warm fall evening softened by a cool ocean breeze. She tossed her towel over her shoulder and began walking slowly, more because she was a little unsteady than because she had nowhere to be. She had at least one assignment due the upcoming week and needed some good sleep after her weekend. But it was hard when she wanted nothing more than to scream every five seconds. Her enemy hadn’t just saved her life but managed to remind her she had never meant anything to him to start off with.

  Revenge wasn’t quite as satisfying when the other person didn’t care. Ashley wasn’t certain what to do about this fact, or the knowledge she’d spent four years waiting for the moment she could see the regret in his eyes. Jonny would never feel it. Her vengeance would never be complete. She would never be whole again or reclaim the trust in the world she’d lost when he’d betrayed her.

  And Jonny would go on being the Black God, oblivious to what she felt. In all her plotting, she’d never truly considered he was indifferent to her and always had been. Vengeance seemed futile in this light.

  “This is killing me,” she murmured and wiped sweat from her forehead. She walked home and into her apartment, where Brandon sat on the couch as usual.

  “What took you so long?” he asked, glancing up from the laptop.

  “Just needed more time to punch stuff,” she replied.

  “At least you were at the gym and not in some warehouse.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She paused on her way to her bedroom and planted her hands on her hips.

  “I told you beating up vamps wouldn’t turn out well.”

  “I’m not quitting, just because Jonny knows where we live!”

  “Seriously?” Her brother sat back from his computer. “He let us go as a favor to Xander. There won’t be a next time if we keep taking out his vamps.”

  “We have to keep doing it. I have to.” Her throat was tight. Fatigued from her weekend, her emotions were closer to snapping than usual.

  “Why does this mean so much to you?” Brandon asked, puzzled. “Why can’t you become a UFC fighter or something?”

  She sighed. “Because I want to make a difference. And Jonny …” She drifted off, thoughts on the previous night.

  “Jonny what?” Brandon’s features turned concerned. “Did he hurt you?”

  “Hello, Brandon. I can take him. Only Xander is a better fighter than me.”

  “But you saw him.”

  “Yeah.” She paused again and then shook her head. “I hate him.”

  “But he didn’t hurt you.”

  Aside from the vampire bites? She touched her neck absently. She hadn’t told Brandon the entire truth about what happened or about her episode. “No. Just my pride,” she said.

  “Maybe you aren’t cut out for revenge.”

  She glared at him.

  “Just sayin’.”

  “He almost got us all killed!”

  “That shit happened years ago. Maybe you should just let it go.”

  Her mouth dropped open. Her brother was serious. “You know what happened Brandon! How can you say such a thing?”

  “I don’t know everything that happened,” he said pointedly. “Like what went on between you two after you ditched your family and ran away with a vampire.”

  Ashley could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t make matters worse. She’d wanted to believe the worst about Jonny and after he dumped her, she’d told Brandon only the bad stuff. She hadn’t mentioned how sweet Jonny was when they were one-on-one, when he wasn’t plotting to lure their cousin into a trap or working with the Others to try and destroy the world. She should hate Jonny more than she did, but when she recalled how he’d protected her, held her, spoken to her …

  Everything became jumbled.

  “What I know is bad enough for him to be unredeemable in my eyes,” Brandon added. “But if you want to piss him off, aren’t you better off doing it under the protection of the Guardians? I mean, they fight vamps for a living. You’d fit right in.”

  Ashley continued to her room without answering. They spent the summers at the Texas ranch where the headquarters of the White God – and the Guardians’ – was located. Her training had started there, and they were both aware they had a place with the Guardians if they wanted it.

  But … she didn’t want it. Not yet. They fought vamps as part of their job. She did it out of revenge. Ashley dropped onto her bed with a sigh. She wanted to finish college, get revenge and then …

  She really didn’t know.

  Ashley struggled to sit, tired. She went to the bathroom to clean up her bloodied fists and take a quick shower. She and Brandon alternated cooking dinner, and a cheeseburger was sitting out for her on the counter when she left her room. Wolfing it down, she plopped onto the couch beside him and glanced at his computer screen.

  “What’re you doing?” she asked.

  “Hacking shit.”

  “What shit?”

  “Someone hired me.”

  “To hack stuff? Is that legal?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you sure?” she prodded.

  “Yeah.”

  She rolled her eyes. When he was in the zone, he wasn’t going to say much more. She stared blankly at the television for several minutes, unable to keep her thoughts from returning to Jonny, to how handsome she’d forgotten he was and how different – colder – he’d seemed.

  How he’d helped her and claimed to have a mutiny on his hands.

  I never really knew him either, she thought, troubled.

  “Y
ou can change it,” Brandon said.

  Ashley blinked away her thoughts and took the remote from him. She wasn’t in the mood for television or her project or anything else. She wanted to return to the gym and beat herself senseless until she stopped thinking about Jonny.

  Chapter Seven

  “How’s he doing?” Jonny asked, looking over the shoulder of the tense hacker vamp.

  “Good,” came Stuart’s preoccupied response. “I figured out he’s been using the cell phones they find to locate other local vamp activity for the vigilante.”

  “I didn’t think it was possible with throwaways.”

  “If everyone were using throwaways, it wouldn’t be. But only the foot soldiers use disposables. Per your orders, everyone programs their boss’s number into the contacts as soon as they get the phones. He’s using that data to track our vamps.”

  Jonny growled under his breath. “Smart,” he admitted reluctantly.

  “Can we vamp him? He can help me with the Guardian roster challenge,” Tasha asked.

  “No. Not an option,” Jonny replied. “Can we do the same thing with the rogue vamps?”

  “If we had a phone, yeah,” answered Stuart.

  “The talisman is starting to learn to link the locations of our vamps but it’s not as quick as I’d like it to be,” Tasha said. “A phone might be enough to give us the location of the rogues.”

  “Someone who can write algorithms better than I can would help,” Stu said hopefully. “If you could vamp someone like that …”

  “We’re working on it.” Tasha shot him a look. “But this is a good development so far.”

  I love good news. It was rare when Jonny heard it. “Charles.”

  His loyal second stepped forward from his position watching near the door.

  “Send someone back to the restaurant and warehouse in Monterey. See if there’s a phone someone missed we can exploit,” Jonny ordered. “We can track them this way while we continue to recruit the Natural Trackers we want to vamp.”

  “You think it smart to trust a vigilante?” Charles asked, frowning at the display of their vamp locations on Stu’s computer screen.

  “No,” Jonny replied. “But I can’t touch them.”

  Charles glanced at him. The vamp had enough experience with Jonny to guess who the only people on the planet were considered off limits, and Jonny didn’t volunteer any information.

  “If you see the vigilante attacking our vamps, I want to know immediately,” Jonny added, thoughts on Ashley.

  “You think they’d be that stupid knowing you can find them?”

  “Yeah. I do.” He’d scared her but he didn’t think one warning was going to be enough to discourage her, especially when she knew his hands were generally tied because of Xander. “I need to know the second someone spots her.”

  “Her,” Charles repeated.

  Jonny gave him a warning look. Charles took the hint and didn’t pursue, instead issuing Jonny’s orders to his underlings.

  Jonny left the command center for his room. He’d been unable to forget the way Ashley tasted or how she felt in his arms. Or the fire in her eyes that was more of a turn on than he expected. He normally preferred his dinner not to fight him, but with her, he relished the challenge. If he were vulnerable to her skills, he’d be more concerned. She moved like no one he’d ever seen. Any injuries she managed to inflict upon him would heal instantly, but he almost anticipated watching her marking him up the next time she attacked his vamps.

  Because there would be a next time. He imagined she’d take a couple days to recover, perhaps with pressure from Brandon, who Jonny was determined to keep beneath his thumb. He’d paid another visit to her sibling and offered a trade off: Brandon helped him find rogue vamps in exchange for Jonny not fucking with either of them.

  But Ashley had been too angry, too emotional to back down, and Jonny didn’t think the deal was going to last very long.

  “Jonny,” Charles trotted after him. “We have another problem.”

  The words were becoming his mantra. “Lay it on me,” he replied without turning.

  “The rogue vamps are growing bolder. They massacred everyone at a church mass today, perhaps in revenge for you taking out their Monterey crew.”

  Jonny listened and trotted up the stairs to the second floor, mind working quickly. “Damian’s going to get involved,” he said at last.

  “Unless we go to him first.”

  “I don’t want his help!”

  “We may not have a choice. If they keep drawing attention to themselves, Damian’s coming after you. And we don’t have the vamps we need for a war right now.”

  Jonny clamped his jaw closed. Charles was right. “What would you have me do? Set up another meeting with Damian, the Grey God, Originals and Xander?” He absolutely loathed the idea of publically admitting he couldn’t handle his domain.

  “No meeting. Just show up at Damian’s. He’ll respect your privacy if you ask him to.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I spent enough time with his people to know.”

  Jonny paused mid-hallway and faced Charles. “I forget that sometimes.” Charles had been traded to Damian to help the White God hunt Others as well as part of the hostage exchange the two made for Damian to release a Guardian to help train Jonny.

  “The last thing you want is them coming after you,” Charles advised.

  Jonny considered. He hated the idea the more he thought about it. Damian would never admit he couldn’t handle his own people, and the White and Grey Gods looked down on him already because he was relatively new compared to the ten-thousand-year-old immortals. They treated him like he was a kid. He had spent enough time working with them to fight Others to know what to expect and now, he wanted them out of his life and domain.

  “No Damian,” he said. “I’ll ask Xander to run interference.”

  Charles said nothing. Jonny often suspected his advisor didn’t approve of his choice of occasional mentor, but Charles wasn’t about to speak out against the Original Vamp either.

  “I’ll go warn him now.” Jonny Traveled to the beach where he met Xander. The ocean soothed some of his angst, and he waited in the quiet night for the huge vamp to appear.

  “What?” Xander demanded.

  This sucks. Jonny hated to admit weakness, especially when he knew how far he’d come the past few years. He wasn’t the same scared teen who killed a god and assumed his place. He was the master of a broken domain without the knowledge of how to fix it.

  “My vamp problem is bigger than I let on,” he allowed.

  “Figured.” Xander drew abreast of him, his red eyes glowing in the night.

  “Half my vamps have gone rogue in protest of me being the Black God. They’ve started acting out, and it won’t take long for Damian to get involved.”

  Xander listened. Jonny looked at him briefly. If Xander had any idea what he was doing with Brandon and Ash, he’d have confronted him rather than waited for Jonny to summon him. This secret was safe, at least for now.

  “I need some space and time to hunt them down,” he finished.

  “Hmm. How are you handling the traitors?”

  “The way you taught me. No mercy,” Jonny said. “I’d rather have half as many who are loyal than risk the others betraying me again.”

  “Betrayal’s a bitch.”

  Jonny glanced at him. Uneasiness slid through him for reasons he couldn’t really identify, aside from the fact he’d heard those words from Ashley the day before. He wanted to think he hadn’t betrayed her, that he’d put space between them when he realized she was more than a means to an end. He’d done it out of concern for her best interest as well as his. At the end of the day, she was a good girl, and he was the leader of creatures that preyed on humans.

  “I knew you had potential.” Xander smiled. “In that case, I’ll talk to Damian. No guarantees. He won’t take the loss of human life lightly.”

  “Have him giv
e me a month.”

  “You think you can clean up the mess by then?”

  “I have a plan,” Jonny replied. “If I can’t handle it, I’ll go to Damian.”

  He wasn’t about to admit it had been four months and he was struggling to track the rogue vamps. But with Brandon’s help and their new talisman, in addition to the Trackers they planned to vamp, he had a shot at succeeding.

  “I owe you. Again,” Jonny said unhappily.

  “We’ve got an eternity to settle up.”

  Jonny didn’t want to think about how many favors he’d owe over a lifetime of being an immortal. He promised himself not to come to Xander again. He had already lost track of what he owed Xander. The vamp was dangerous, even if he did seem to want Jonny to succeed.

  And if Xander ever found out about Jonny’s interactions with Brandon and Ashley, he could imagine the vamp cutting him off completely if not siding with Damian and helping the White God destroy Jonny’s vamps. His situation was always precarious. The politics he’d learned to play as the Black God, the balance he struck between needing human blood to live and killing only when necessary in order to stay under the radar. He didn’t sweat lying to Xander, but he knew better than to turn a completely blind eye to the danger the large vamp posed if Jonny wasn’t careful and focused on the bigger picture.

  Jonny started to leave before recalling the question he asked every time they met. He had to give the appearance nothing had changed.

  “How’s the fam?” he asked.

  “None of your business,” replied Xander.

  Satisfied the vamp had no idea, Jonny nodded and Traveled back to his room.

  The ginger-haired girl from the rooftop Friday night awaited him in bed.

  “Hey,” she said and sat up with a smile. “How was work?”

  Jonny sat to take off his shoes. Most days, he appreciated the sense of normality his spellbound dinners provided. Today, however, he couldn’t help thinking it’d be nice for once to be able to talk to someone honestly about how concerned he was about his empire.

  “Great,” he replied. “Lots of busy work from the boss.”

  “You should tell him you need real work.”