by Rain Oxford
Crimson Christmas
Rain Oxford
Crimson Christmas © 2015 Rain Oxford
All Rights Reserved
Edited by Crystal Potts
Contents
Author’s Note
Prolgue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Epilogue
Author’s Note
This book is intended as a crossover between the “Elemental” series and “The Guardian” series. It takes place after Furious Flames (Elemental book 3) and The Demon’s Game (The Guardian book 4). This book contains numerous spoilers for “Elemental” 1 and 2 as well as “The Guardian” 1 through 3. In case you have not read the previous books and would still like to read this novella first, I have included enough information to make it viable.
As always, thanks for reading. Enjoy!
Prolgue
“I wish I could be with you and Jack,” Becky said as she adjusted the laptop’s camera. Skype was great in theory, but it required a high speed internet connection and she didn’t have one.
When Monique laughed, it sounded garbled through the speakers of the old laptop. “You just enjoy your cruise. You’re not missing anything but snow and bad music.”
“There’s plenty of bad music to be had here.” Becky felt a bitter sweet ache as her older sister moved out of the way of the camera. In the background, she saw a huge, decorated Christmas tree, a mountain of presents, and a two-year-old playing with colorful blocks in his playpen.
Becky went to the same paranormal university as Monique, but was never as successful. She didn’t think she was as pretty, smart, or powerful as her older sister. Whereas she was tentatively dating a hyena shifter who was afraid of women, Monique married her childhood sweetheart. The worst part of her envy was that she didn’t want a child; she just didn’t want her sister to have one when she couldn’t. Despite that, Becky did really love her sister and Jack. Jack’s father, on the other hand, needed to be taught a lesson on how women should be treated.
“I’m going … get a … I’ll be right …” The video cut out, working barely enough for Becky to understand why her sister stood up and walked away.
Becky waited impatiently for a moment before picking up her phone off the table next to her. At least there was one advantage to not being very powerful; her magic didn’t interfere with cell phones. She played Tetris and only looked up when Jack made a strange sound. He was standing in his playpen, staring very hard at one of the presents.
Becky closed her game and opened an ebook. Jack babbled something odd, causing Becky to look up again. Now there was a little girl, about twelve with long, exaggeratedly blond hair and thick makeup. She picked Jack up and brought him over to one of the presents, which was a decorated box with the lid lying next to it.
The girl then stepped into the box. She somehow fit inside completely, although there was no way the box was big enough for a baby let them both. Then, as if pulled by a string, the lid lifted off of the floor and resealed the box… which suddenly bowed in on itself. With each passing second, the box was crumpling in on itself until it vanished altogether with a small flash of light.
Becky was shaking and in shock as Monique returned a moment later with a sandwich and a drink. “Was that a joke?” she asked.
“Huh?” Monique adjusted the camera. “I didn’t hear … It’s brea … Hang on.” At that point, she realized it was too quiet, so she turned to check on Jack. Seeing he was gone, she looked around the floor. “Jack?”
“Monique!” Becky yelled.
Her sister either didn’t hear her or was ignoring her. Monique ran out of the room, yelling for her baby. The call dropped.
Chapter 1
December 22, Tuesday
Christmas had always been a dismal affair for Dylan Yatunus until one day, when he found a book on his lawn and his entire life changed. He soon discovered that the book was the power source of Earth’s magic, and the Guardian of it, Ronez, had recently been killed. Ronez’s twin brother, Kiro Yatunus, found Dylan and introduced himself as Edward to appear human.
Because he wasn’t human.
In fact, Ronez, Dylan’s father, wasn’t either. Dylan was half sago, and it was his duty to take over the book and the responsibility to protect Earth. He went with Edward to Duran, Edward’s home world, to be trained in the necessary magic. To their mutual surprise, Dylan wasn’t exactly a normal alien wizard; he had Iadnah powers.
The Iadnah were twelve ancient gods, each of which ruled a particular world. Tiamat, the goddess of Earth, met Dylan as soon as he arrived on Duran. Since she introduced herself as Divina, a harmless witch who Edward had known for many years, Dylan didn’t know who she was at first. By the time he realized what she was, he had already fallen in love with her. Fortunately for him, the feeling was mutual; they married and ended up with two amazing boys.
They adopted Samhail, a very well-behaved child who had visions of the future. His biological father was the Guardian of Dios and his mother was a human. Dile, which were the people of Dios, were unbelievably strong. Hail inherited this trait. He was also fiercely protective of his younger brother.
Their biological son, Ronez, was named after Dylan’s father. Ron was a hellion with the face of an angel. When he was four, Ron absorbed the dark force of the universe, or the balance, in order to save the universe from falling apart. What that meant exactly, Dylan still wasn’t sure. All he knew was that when the balance took control of Ron and the child’s eyes turned white, he wanted to get out of the way, or Ron would kill him.
Another member of Dylan’s family was Mordon. Dylan sensed Mordon’s presence before they even met, but it was three years later that they started working together. Mordon was his best friend, his adopted brother, a runaway prince, and a dragon. Well, half dragon. Sort of. Mordon was actually born of two sago and infused with the soul and blood of an ancient dragon that was a king to other dragons. Furthermore, if Dylan was away from Mordon for too long, the balance between his magic and the universe would be disrupted and Ron would be uncontrollably driven to kill him. On the brighter side of things, Dylan and Mordon could talk to each other in their minds, just like Ron and Hail could.
Dylan’s little family was quite settled on Duran, but he hated settling. They moved to Earth recently in order to give the boys some human culture. Aside from the threat of a war with demons, it went pretty well.
But now it was time for Christmas. It was Dylan’s first Christmas on Earth since he became its Guardian and he was determined to make it amazing for his boys. Of course, he probably ruined that by scaring them with fairytales of an evil Santa Claus.
“Daddy! My jeans won’t fit!” Hail screamed across the house.
“It’s because you’re fat!” Ron yelled. “You’re not getting food again until you fit into them!” Ron was the only one in the family that could cook well, and despite making many threats to cut his brother off, he always enabled Hail’s sweet tooth.
The master bedroom door burst open as Dylan tried to brush his teeth with one hand and button his shirt with the other. Hail stopped in the bathroom doorway with his jeans unbuttoned and about two inches too high on his calves. The boy wasn’t overweight; he just grew like a weed.
Hail was twelve and he could pass for fifteen easy. No matter how much junk food he ate, Hail only ever gained weight in muscle. His eyes were vibrant purple and his hair was a deep, glossy red even more gorgeous than his biological mother’s, but there was nothing soft or delicate about him. The kid was going to be huge when he was done growing.
“Your mother’s going to have to buy you more clothes today. I’m late for work.” For Dyla
n’s effort to take the toothbrush out of his mouth and not let go of his button, toothpaste splattered on his white business shirt.
Divina nudged Hail aside to enter the bathroom. She was dressed in one of Dylan’s dark blue button-up shirts and black boxers, neither of which concealed her perfectly-formed figure that models would kill for. Her long, blue-black hair was wild and loose, spilling all over her shoulders and curling slightly around her face. Dylan knew he needed to start locking the bedroom door or his older son would have a very miserable teenage-hood. She was the reason Dylan was late.
“I have to deal with stuff today,” she said. “Have Mordon do it.”
“He’s working today.” Mordon worked with the local police, who were all dragons. “Who’s watching the boys?”
“Stacy.”
Stacy was their next door neighbor and had a nine-year-old son of her own. Stacy’s husband was a doctor at the same hospital Dylan worked at. I can’t ask her to take Hail when she’s doing us a favor in watching our kids as well as her own. “I think the Christmas break at school was a bad idea. They should at least provide babysitting. He’ll take you when he gets back, honey,” Dylan said to Hail.
“I need clothes now!” he argued. The boy looked like he was about to cry. To anyone else, it would have seemed almost comedic because of Hail’s size, but Dylan still saw him as the eighteen-month-old he saved from an ancient demon.
Dylan pulled his walled out of his back pocket and tossed it to Hail. “One pair of jeans and that’s it.” Hail nodded, thanked him, and walked away with the wallet. Dylan finished brushing his teeth, got his shoes on, grabbed his keys, said goodbye to his family, and was halfway to his car before he remembered to retrieve his wallet.
Hail had barely taken enough for even the cheapest pair of jeans. Ron was going to have a fit if his brother bought anything below his standards. Hail preferred the comfort to style, especially since he would grow out of it in a month anyway.
Only when Dylan was entering the hospital did he realize the buttons on his shirt were wrong and he still sported dried toothpaste stains. Ms. Manning, the head nurse of the E.R. department, smiled brightly at him. “Enjoying the boys’ Christmas break?”
“Very much. They go back tomorrow, right?”
She laughed. Nurse Manning was a sweet, but strict woman in her mid-thirties of average height and a slim figure with shoulder-length white-blond hair and light hazel eyes. Dylan recently learned that her mother was fae. While she had no powers herself, she was aware of magic and had an idea of what Dylan did. “What are you doing for Christmas?” she asked.
“Hopefully I won’t be worrying about being attacked by demons again.”
“And is your wife going to be around?”
“She’d better be. We’re going to have the whole family together if it kills every one of them and there’s going to be so much holiday cheer it’ll be coming out of their ears. If they don’t like it, they can go spend Christmas with my mother.”
She grimaced as if in pain just from the thought.
“What about you?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Same old. I’ll spend it with my sisters and their happy little families.”
“You should ask Taylor to go with you as your date.”
She scoffed. “The sheriff? Please.”
Dylan knew she was interested, but it wasn’t his place to try to match them. He changed into his scrubs and got to work. Since November, the hospital had more cases of electrocutions and broken bones than it could handle. How many people have to electrocute themselves with Christmas lights and then fall off their roof because of it before others get the idea it’s dangerous?
* * *
There are many classic Christmas traditions. For Devon Sanders, Christmas was a time to spend with loved ones. Even after his childhood friend, a vampire named Astrid, killed his step-father and nearly killed his mother when they were kids, he never skipped spending Christmas with his mother, Maria. This year, however, Astrid was stuck in Dothra, his mysterious uncle was unreachable, his mother was going to Australia to vacation with a pack of wolf shifters, and he had to work.
He sat in his living room with Astrid’s book bag, trying to induce a vision to see her. It was the power that his uncle, Vincent and he both had, and Vincent taught him how to induce it with a particular ring. When this power first emerged, he had visions every time he went to sleep. Learning to use the ring helped, but he still had visions of Astrid. Then Professor Keigan Langril took her to Dothra. Since then, he had no visions of her or Langril’s daughter, Heather, and he no longer had visions in his sleep.
After many failed attempts of contacting her, he wasn’t terribly optimistic when he slipped the ring on. To his surprise, his consciousness narrowed until he saw a little girl on the floor in a living room. The festive tree was the only source of light. Her mother ran to her with a loud cry and turned her onto her back. The child had three long slashes in her shirt and blood welling from deep scratches in her skin. When her mother begged to know what happened, the child just pointed to the fireplace. In the wood floor before the fireplace were three long, deep scores.
Devon’s phone startled him back into reality. He checked the number, but it wasn’t in his contacts. He swiped his finger across the screen. “Hello?”
“Mr. Sanders? This is Hon Cofer. Do you remember me? It’s been a few years.”
“Of course I remember you.” Mr. Cofer was one of his first clients. He had been in his early twenties and in college. When he met Hon and Malla Cofer, they had just moved from some foreign country and spoke little English. “About nine or ten years ago, right? How’s the baby? And how did you get my number again?”
“Alyssa is not a baby anymore. You may change your number, but your friends don’t. I need your help again.”
“It’s not another citizenship thing, is it? Your daughter was born here, so they can’t---”
“No, no, it’s not that. It’s a bit more… Well, I have to confess something you might have trouble believing.”
Devon slipped the vision-inducing ring off his finger. “Try me.”
“I’m a shifter.”
After a moment of silence in which Devon wondered if anyone he ever knew was actually human, he asked, “You’re a shifter?”
“Yes. I shift into an animal. It’s not just on the full moon like in the movies.”
“What kind of shifter?”
“It’s sort of a black cat, but much larger than a house cat… and you’re not calling me a freak or saying I’m lying.”
“No, I believe you.”
“Oh, good, because my daughter was just attacked by something in the chimney and I need you to come help. And we live in a town of paranormals. That’s okay, right?” Instead of waiting for an answer, he gave Devon the address.
Devon was still stuck on the fact that he had a vision of a girl being attacked from something in a fireplace right before it happened. So far, his visions were vague and cryptic warnings at best. Once that processed, he paused on the part about there being a town of paranormals. He had to ask Hon to repeat the address. “I’ll get the earliest flight out in the morning.”
“Good. Thank you, I really appreciate your help. You don’t have any extra holiday fees or anything, right?”
“My price has gone up since my college days, but I’m not charging extra on holidays. I do, however, charge differently depending on the case.” He gave a rough estimate and told Hon that he could give a better one once he saw what he was dealing with.
He charged a flat fee per hour plus expenses for things such as legal contracts, surveillance, tracking computer data, and protection spells. Cases involving curses, magical undercover work, and retrieving enchanted items could get more expensive depending on exactly what it took. Anything having to do with the wizard council was off limits until he knew more about the new laws they were enacting in January.
“Is that okay with you?” he asked when Hon was silent for a
moment.
“Um, yes. But since there are other weird things happening to other people, is there a combine-time and share-cost thing between everyone you help?”
“If whatever is happening to you is the same thing happening to them, then that shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll fly over in the morning, see what’s what, and we’ll discuss it then. If I can’t help you, I have a few new connections that probably can.”
He hung up, booked a flight for six in the morning, and ordered a taxi to pick him up since he trusted his apartment manager to watch over his car more than the airport. He was packing a bag when Ghost, Vincent’s familiar, appeared on his bed.
The cat was extremely ugly in a ragged, mangy, lopsided-face way, complete with a disfiguring facial scar, but he did save the day on occasion. After learning what Ghost had been through, the cat’s peculiar aspects seemed more like battle scars to Devon.
He ignored Ghost and the cat glared at him disapprovingly. Ghost was only there to spy on Devon for Vincent, since the older wizard was worried Devon was going to work his curse-damaged heart too hard. He closed his bag and set it by the door. When he turned back to his bed, the cat was gone.
Of course, Devon had no desire to die of a heart attack at thirty-one, but he wasn’t going to sit in bed drinking tea and worrying about his blood pressure, either. He had a job to do. In his mind, the more people he helped and malevolent foes he outwitted, the closer he got to both healing his heart and saving Astrid.
Even if that meant making a deal with a demon.
* * *
At the end of a long day, Dylan was just about to change out of his scrubs when he was paged. Alyssa Cofer, a young girl he had helped before, was injured. It was difficult for her to get injured since she was from Skrev; a world of powerfully built shifters that were all huge compared to Earth’s creatures. Her parents, Hon and Malla, were waiting impatiently for Dylan’s arrival.