The Demon's Game (The Guardian Series Book 4)

by Rain Oxford

“You have to talk to me.” I remembered as I said it that Ron spent the first four years of his life without saying a word aloud. “I love you, Ron. I need you to be okay.” I crawled into bed, covered us both with the covers, and held him close. He was still shaking when it dawned on me ten minutes later that I was slow. “I’m an idiot,” I told him. He wasn’t trying to drink the damn blood in the bathtub; he was trying to drink the water. He bit me twice, but both times were when my skin was wet. He was dehydrated.

  I got out of bed and started for the door, but he let out a panicked sound like a choked scream. I went back and took his face in my hands. “It’s okay, I’m just getting you some water. I’ll be right back.” He said nothing in response so I moved to leave again. This time there was no scream or grunt; instead, the lamp beside my bed exploded into bits of plastic and glass.

  “Don’t go,” he said quietly.

  I picked him up, brought him to the kitchen, and set him in a chair before getting a bottle of water out of the fridge. I loosened the cap and handed it to him, but he just stared at it until I took the cap of and put it to his lips. He drank greedily then and I let him drink two more bottles before taking him back to the room. Then I covered us back up and held him close. We fell asleep to the sound of the rain on the window.

  * * *

  My dreams were full of blood and cold and darkness. The cold was lonely and depressing. I felt lost and nothing was familiar. There were people I recognized, but it was like I couldn’t place them. There were two locations in my dream and one was the school. I woke from Ron’s fear.

  He was shaking again, but it was with tears instead of cold. I pulled him closer. “You’re alright now.”

  “I’m not alright. I don’t know what happened last night.”

  “You snuck out while I was in the shower. You left me a letter telling me not to follow you.”

  He smacked me on the chest, trying to push himself away from me. I didn’t let him. “And you listened to me?! You’re an idiot! There is no reason ever for me to tell you not to follow me! I don’t remember writing a letter.” The fight left him and he slumped against me. “I don’t know what happened last night.”

  “I found you this morning at the school, covered in blood.”

  “It was the darkness. That’s why I can’t get warm. It’s doing it again, Hail. It’s too strong for us.”

  “It just took us by surprise. This will never happen again. We’ll be safe.”

  “This is the second time, and we couldn’t stop it. It’s playing with us; it could take over at any time.”

  “We should tell Dad.”

  He sat up. “We can’t tell Dad. He’ll try to take the balance into himself. Dad and Mordon aren’t like us, Hail; they’re still learning what they can do together. Mom will try to make Vretial take it himself, and he can’t control it.”

  “We don’t have a lot of choices. We either learn how to control it or we ask Mom and Dad for help.” I reached down and took his hand. He opened his still-clinched fist to reveal a necklace. It was a cat pendant on a gold chain with a silver back and black jewels on the front. “Do you know who it belongs to?” I asked. He shook his head.

  There was a knocking on our door. “Time to get ready for school,” Mordon said through the door. We looked at each other and agreed without words that we would hide this from Mordon, because we couldn’t let Mordon believe we were a threat to Dad.

  We were very good at acting normal for breakfast and luckily, Mordon didn’t rat us out. He could smell that we were hiding something, but couldn’t have known what. Finally, we piled into the Charger with Xul and waited in silence for Drake to join us. It was an awkward silence so I took Ron’s hand.

  The morning was uneventful and Ron gave me cookies for lunch. Drake, Taper, Tatum, Luca, and Logan joined us as I had expected. Taper obviously had something to report by the way his eyes kept darting to Drake, but we weren’t going to drive our friend off. Ron gave each of them a cookie and then gave me the tray.

  “I’m gonna get a milk,” Drake said before he got up and left.

  “Can you help him feel better?” Ron asked.

  Luca nodded and opened his mouth to say something.

  “I found something,” Taper interrupted. “I was following one of the cops and he was kidnapped. I followed them to the warehouse.”

  “What warehouse?” I asked.

  He opened his mouth, but his eyes darted to Ron and he snapped his mouth shut. He looked down. “You know… the warehouse.”

  “What did you see at this warehouse?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he answered too quickly.

  “He’s afraid of me. He must have seen me at the warehouse last night and is afraid of ratting me out,” Ron said. “Whatever the darkness made me do, it obviously wasn’t good. We have to know, so I’m going to leave the room. Get it out of him. Beat it out of him if you have to. Make him more afraid of you than me.” He stood. “I’m going early to history. I want to talk to Mrs. Sharp about a paper we have to do.”

  He left quickly and Taper looked even more awkward. His sister was obviously clueless by the confused frown on her face. “Taper, what did you see at the warehouse?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  I growled. “Nobody will hurt you for telling me. If you know where the missing people are, you need to tell me.”

  “Answer his questions,” Drake said, startling me. He returned a lot quieter than he had left and sat in Ron’s vacant seat.

  “Demons… they kidnapped the cop and brought him to a warehouse,” Taper said suddenly with rushed words as if he couldn’t keep them in. “There are a bunch of demons hiding out there. Ron was there, too. He spoke with a demon woman, real quiet and close like they knew each other. Ron gave the demons something they were happy about. I couldn’t see or hear enough to know what.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Tatum asked her brother.

  “That doesn’t matter right now,” I said. “We need to meet up tonight and find this place. We need to save everyone, including the cop.” Most likely, the “demon woman” Taper spoke of was Divina. If that were the case, she would already know about Ron’s condition. Still, it hadn’t escaped my notice that it was taking her too long. Mom should have been home by now.

  “Absolutely not! Ron is going to kill me for telling you.”

  “Listen, whatever you saw Ron do, he is not a bad guy. My brother is good and more than that, he would never betray me.”

  “There’s something wrong here. The sub from the first day Mr. Cardigan went missing is here. I don’t like her, Hail. Her magic makes my skin crawl.”

  “Is it the darkness?”

  “I don’t know. I want to come back.”

  “Taper told me what he saw. Come back now.” I didn’t hear back from him and every second that passed was like a fist squeezing my heart tighter. Finally, Ron entered the cafeteria, spotted me instantly, and sighed with relief.

  “Whatever the demons are doing, they keep gaining ground,” I said to our friends. “With every minute we waste, they seem to be getting deeper and deeper into the school. If they’re confident enough to kidnap a cop, we have to stop them now. Where is the warehouse?”

  “Right outside town.”

  “Show me,” I said as Ron sat.

  “At four-thirty?” Taper asked.

  “Now,” my brother demanded. “They could be killing their prisoners as we speak. I’m done wasting time. We’re all skipping and you’ll show us where the warehouse is.”

  “I can go too?” Drake asked excitedly.

  “You need to recover.”

  “I’m fine! I’m not sick anymore, but everyone keeps treating me like I am! Everyone acts like I’m about to die!” He gave me a desperate look as if pleading for me to understand. “I’m not weak,” he said.

  I nodded. “He needs to come with us. Even if we have to spend the entire time protecting him, I think he needs to be a part of this.”

&nbs
p; “If you think so, we’ll let him come with us,” Ron said to me. “Alright, you can come, but you have to be careful and if you feel sick, you need to tell us. Ron put his hand on Drake’s shoulder and to anyone else it would have looked like a simple friendly gesture. I knew that he was actually healing Drake in tiny doses at a time.

  “How do we get there? We don’t have a car,” Luca asked.

  “We could fly,” Tater suggested. Everyone, including her brother, looked at her.

  “How?” Ron asked.

  “I don’t know. Or we could steal a car.”

  “Oh my god, woman, you’re nuts,” Logan said.

  Taper glared at the fae. “Don’t talk to my sister like that! Only I’m allowed to call her nuts!”

  Taper was ready to throw a punch at Logan and it was obvious that Logan would retaliate. I moved between them and Ron, just in case. It didn’t matter to me if they fought as long as they didn’t accidentally hurt my brother.

  “Hey, I have a car,” Ron said, instantly defusing the tension with confusion. Part of that confusion was mine.

  “Since when?” I asked. “We can’t hotwire the Charger.”

  “Why would we do that? Hotwiring would be stupid when we have a key.” My brother held up a fob-key.

  “How did you get that?”

  “Zeb gave it to me.”

  “Mr. Carter, the substitute teacher, gave that to you?” Luca asked with shock.

  Ron shrugged. “He’s not really a teacher; he’s here as our bodyguard. And he didn’t really give it to me so much as he put it in his pocket. But he belongs to Dad, so it’s okay. Dad will understand when we save the others.”

  “Why don’t we call your dad to save them? That way we won’t get in trouble,” Logan suggested.

  “My dad has enough work to do. He’s the best doctor at the hospital and he saves people during his free time. We should be able to do this without making more work for him. Now, we’ll wait for the bell to ring and---” He was cut off by the sound of the bell.

  Sneaking out of school was way too easy. Nobody cared that we went to the parking lot instead of the classrooms. Luca got in the driver’s seat and adjusted the seat, steering wheel, and mirrors. Taper sat in the passenger seat to tell him where to go. Ron sat in my lap in the back seat with Drake squished beside us, Tatum beside him, and Logan beside her. Once Luca pulled out onto the street, everyone fell silent in shock that we were actually getting away with this.

  Ron crossed his arms with a smirk and leaned back against me. My brother would be unstoppable now and talking him out of anything would be impossible.

  The drive was long as Luca was the slowest, most cautious driver I ever met. Of course, the only people I ever saw driving was the demon, our goddess mother, and our father in his Jaguar. On the way, Taper described several of the demons he saw to Logan. Logan drew them in his notebook and held them up for Taper to compare without letting the rest of us see them. Once they were satisfied with the likeness, the artist closed his sketchbook in his lap.

  We eventually made it out of town and followed a dirt road until we reached a warehouse. Although it had originally been painted to look like a big barn, the paint was peeling and there was a window or two busted out and boarded over. I actually thought it was purposefully neglected to look like it was abandoned.

  As soon as we pulled in, demons stepped out of the building. When one of them approached the car and knocked on the window, Logan opened the notebook and crawled over Ron and me to block Luca with it. Luca rolled down the window and the demon narrowed in on the picture. There was no sign of suspicion or hesitation before the demon nodded.

  “Go around back. Yeno wants to see you when you get in.”

  All of us in the back seat scooted to the right to let Logan sit behind the passenger seat as Luca pulled us around back. Logan tore the pages from his book and handed each of us one. “Cover your face when they look at you. Distinctive or familiar facial features can sometimes break the spell,” Logan said.

  I examined the picture he handed me. Although Logan had no colors to work with, his power was strong. The paper I held had a three-dimensional picture of a man I had never met. He looked real enough that I should have been able to feel skin when I reached out, but all I felt was paper. It was confusing because even though I knew it was an illusion, what my fingers felt and my eyes saw where so completely different.

  “Trade with me,” Ron whined. “Your guy looked better than mine.”

  “You don’t even need a disguise,” Taper groused.

  “Why wouldn’t I need a disguise?”

  “They let you walk right in last night.”

  Everyone turned to us, but Ron didn’t argue. While he may not have remembered what happened last night, he knew it was true. Whatever he did under control of the balance, it had something to do with the demons. That actually made sense since we knew the demons obeyed the balance.

  Ron pulled the cat pendant out of his pocket and held it out for Tatum. “What can you see from this?”

  She ran her fingers over it and gasped. “This is Alyssa’s. She… You took it from her. You were covered in blood.”

  “Where were we? Were we at the warehouse?”

  “No. The place is clean and dark at the same time. It’s cold.” She gasped with fear and let go of the cat. “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know. I have no idea what I did last night.”

  “Were you possessed or something?” Luca asked.

  “That would make sense,” Taper added.

  “Not to me. I don’t get it,” Drake said. “Luca, stop the car.” The driver instantly obeyed. “Nobody gets out until someone tells me what’s going on. I know we’re here to save the missing people. Taper, tell me who is in that building.”

  “Demons.”

  “Tell me everything you know about what we’re doing here.”

  Taper explained everything from the beginning as if he couldn’t shut his mouth for a second. It seemed to me the guy couldn’t keep a secret for longer than he could hold his breath. At least Drake was on our side. Just because he was telling Drake everything, didn’t mean he would tell the demons.

  “Is this really the right time?” Tatum asked when Taper was done.

  “I couldn’t… what are you?” he asked. Taper stared at Drake with fear, but I couldn’t imagine how anyone could fear someone so small and defenseless. Drake was harmless.

  “You haven’t figured it out yet? He’s fae,” Logan said.

  “What do you mean he’s fae?” I asked.

  “Drake can make anyone do anything he tells them to,” Ron explained.

  I gaped at my small friend. Drake looked so innocent in his dark purple wool hat and bright red jacket. The idea that he had so much power was disquieting. How was I supposed to protect those I cared about when they were all so much more powerful than me? Why am I even here? Nobody needs me.

  Ron smacked me in the arm. “I need you, stupid. How dare you think like that?”

  “I can’t help how I think.”

  “You damn well better start. End of discussion.” He glared at me and everyone else just looked confused. “Drake, do you think your power will work on demons?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know any demons.”

  “Mrs. Sharp is a demon.”

  “Oh… Then yes, it does.”

  “Fae magic is mostly defensive magic. The fae respect the earth and nature and we appreciate what we are given. That is why our kind is one of the strongest on Earth,” Logan said.

  Taper scoffed. “My people can make trees grow. In fact, every tribe except the water tribe comes to us for their shelter.”

  “Your people? You were born here! This world is made for our kind! You have no---”

  Luca took both Logan and Taper’s arms, cutting their argument off instantly. Their eyes closed and Taper slumped a little in his seat as if about to fall asleep. Once Luca was sure they were calm, he let them go.

>   “Thank you,” Ron said. “They’re so annoying.”

  “Where do we start?” I asked.

  “We’ll look for the missing people. We’ll use the disguises, but if anyone stops us, Drake can tell them to let us pass. If that doesn’t work, Luca, can you make them sleep?”

  “I can calm them into almost being asleep.”

  “Great. Luca and Drake are the first line of defense. If they get passed the two of you, Hail can punch them into pulp and I’ll vaporize their innards with my magic. Logan, be ready with some distractions and a way to hide us. Taper and Tatum, stay behind Hail.”

  “We’re not defenseless,” Tatum said.

  “I assure you, if we need any trees, we will absolutely rely on you.”

  Ron really didn’t intend to be rude. In fact, he seemed to honestly believe that people wanted to know their weaknesses. Unfortunately, Ron’s criteria were less than conventional, so most people had enormous flaws in his opinion… flaws he felt necessary to point out.

  “You know who we need?” Ron asked me.

  “Seimei and Ikiru.” I nodded. “That’s absolutely not an option. The last thing we need is them getting discovered by humans and exposing our family.”

  “This town is full of demons.”

  “Dad would kill us. We would be grounded for the rest of our immortal lives. I would much rather call Dad, Mom, Mordon, Xul, Vretial, Regivus… I would rather call anyone in the entire universe than the griffins or Hobble.”

  “Krayer could probably---”

  “No, Ron. We deal with this ourselves or we call our parents. We are not going to accidentally expose our family.”

  He stared at me hard, deciding if he could change my mind. Finally he sighed and I knew I won. “We’re on our own here, but we will work together. We all go in, and we all come out, got it?” Everyone nodded. “Let’s go.”

  “Luca, you can drive now,” Drake said.

  Shaken, Luca put the car back into drive and continued around the warehouse until we arrived at the back door. We got out of the car and Luca handed Ron the key. With the artwork disguises at the ready, we tried the door and found it unlocked. Inside was a hallway made of a wall on one side and boxes on the other. Ron held out his hand to produce a small sphere of soft light that hovered just a foot in front of us.