Monsters, Book One: The Good, The Bad, The Cursed

by Heather Killough-Walden

  “Bear my warning, Malek Taal,” she said seriously, despite the return of her voice to the normal intonations of a twelve-year-old. She captured his attention as if she’d tied him down and propped his eyeballs open with toothpicks. He couldn’t look away, and his ears were pricked. A warning from the Prophet was life-altering.

  “If a Taal’s Kiss reveals that she is not his Kindred, he must relent. The woman must be released completely unharmed. This, above all, is essential. If she is not…” Again, she trailed off, but Malek was settled with blue eyes that suddenly became stormy, like a highly troubled sea. “I see separation. Loss. And most importantly, war. The empire you have built will crumble. This will be the fate of the Taal.”

  Malek let her words echo through his mind as he leaned back and ran a hand through his hair. But then the little girl Prophet cocked her head to one side and asked, “Would you like a hint?”

  Malek blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “About you and your Kindred, my lord.” She grinned a broad, white smile.

  Malek’s jaw clenched. He was about to face the Unseelie King and attempt to glue a tenuous crack in the relationship of the Taal and the rest of the dark fae. His blood was burning in his veins with a new and driving need that grew worse every day, and his men were already succumbing. There was more the Prophet could tell him that would help in this situation, and she hadn’t been planning on sharing?

  “Of course I was going to share,” she told him, her expression as happy-go-lucky as ever. There was not an ounce of fear on her face, nor regret. “I just hate it when you leave.” She shrugged, looked down, and said, “You will find the answers you seek in the form of a warrior, Lord Malek. A force against wrong, strong to the end.”

  Malek stared at her with wide eyes. A warrior who fought against wrong? The Unseelie fae were not exactly right. The Taal, in particular.

  A peal of childish laughter drew him from his ruinous thoughts.

  “I never said it would be easy.” She had somehow conjured a cup of tea while he was ruminating, and now she sipped at it innocently. “But I know you. You wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  She was right. He enjoyed a challenged – though the current situation with his men was potentially calamitous. Still, as it always did when he was faced with a contest, his mind began to work meticulously. The word warrior made him think of wardens. But there were so many of them. Where would he even begin among them?

  The wardens who’d met with the sovereigns… that was a place to start. They’d been chosen specifically because they were among the best, high ranking, and nearly infallible. Two of the five had been women.

  Malek Taal looked up and refocused his attention on his companion when the twelve-year-old’s visage became a wincing, decidedly worried face. He cocked his head to the side, interested, if puzzled at the sudden change.

  She shook her head and gritted her little teeth. “Malek… you sometimes scare me, you know,” she said in reprimand.

  He raised a brow, a little perturbed.

  She continued, gesturing with her chin as she reached distractedly for her cup. “Yeah,” she confirmed, chewing on her cheek with uncharacteristic disquiet. “You’re fearsome when you smile like that.”

  Chapter Three

  Jacob Crow shoved the sleeves of his thermal shirt up on his forearms as he came out of the hallway and glanced around the main room of the silo bunker his clan was currently using as their safe house. He was heading toward the fridge on the other side of the room when David Sharpe came through the door that led from the kitchen to the garage.

  Jake saw the file in David’s hand and stopped short. Dave gave him a sidelong look, continued to the recessed main sitting area, and tossed the file onto the coffee table.

  “You sure about this?” Dave asked as he crashed onto the sofa and kicked his booted legs up onto the table. He draped his arms over the back of the couch. “Last chance to back out and play fair like a gentleman.”

  Jake gave him a heartless smirk and grabbed two beers from the fridge, tossing him one.

  “Yeah, I didn’t think so,” said Dave. He put the heel of his boot on the file and quickly slid it across the table as he twisted the top off his beer.

  Jake sat down opposite him, legs wide, elbows on his knees, open beer dangling lazily from between his fingers. He eyed the file warily for a moment. Inside held everything he wanted to know about Angela Clemens, a warden from the Vega clan.

  “You work fast, Sharpe,” he said, glancing up. They’d only finished the Vicium Mehemii job a few days ago, and it had been exceedingly difficult to crack. Eventually they’d pinned the mark down in Manhattan masquerading as one Victor Maze, the CEO and president of a large, powerful corporation called Maze Industries. Sharpe had been occupied nearly twenty-four seven with research Jake had asked him to look into for that job because it was priority one. Anything handed down directly from all twenty-six of the sovereigns like that took precedence over everything else, period.

  Yet, just a few days after the job was done, here was Dave with a complete work-up of Angela Clemens. It almost pissed Jake off. It made him feel jealous for some reason. As if David had encroached on his territory by simply doing what Jake asked of him.

  Dave grinned like he knew what Jake was thinking. “Time flies when you’re having fun. I had a very interesting subject.”

  Jake’s gaze narrowed to warning slits, but his lips curled.

  David laughed. “It still took a bit longer than I’d have preferred, though. A lot of this shit was really locked up tight.” He took his feet off the table and leaned forward, holding Jake’s gaze. “Your girl is something special.”

  Jake put his beer down and picked up the file. He hesitated in opening it, though.

  Dave laughed again, leaning back against the couch. “Getting cold feet, I see.” He took a long pull from his beer, then said, “I’ll give you a rundown if you want.”

  Jake watched him silently.

  Dave took it as a green light. “In there, you’ll find one Angela Clemens, formerly Angela Ortega. Angel, as she’s known to family and friends, is thirty-five years old, five-foot-five, all muscle, with dark brown hair and big, beautiful dark brown eyes.” He smiled a sharp smile at Jake, revealing a peek of fang just for fun.

  Jake just looked at him.

  Dave gleefully took that as a sign that he was getting under Jake’s skin, and actually he was right. “She’s an orphan. Her parents died due to injuries sustained in a car accident when she was seventeen. She spent seven months in foster care, then left town.”

  She’s an orphan. Jake’s chest felt strange. It seemed every day, he found another reason to be impressed with Angel’s strength.

  “She loves classic muscle cars, ice hockey, and –”

  “Moonlit walks on the beach?” Jake quipped, his patience growing short. Suddenly it thoroughly irritated him that David knew so much about Angel. Fuck. He really was jealous.

  Dave laughed. “Fine. She’s been a warden in the Vega clan for fifteen years and is currently second-in-command and lead trainer. She’s trained in tracking, hand-to-hand, and long-range with a variety of weapons, but her specialty is marksmanship. She’s Vega’s sharp shooter, but prefers handguns to rifles.”

  Jake asked, “Is there anything she can’t do?”

  “I’m pretty sure she can’t cook,” Dave shot back with a smile. “She’s a TV and film buff, the kind who manages to memorize every line after seeing something once. The Empire Strikes Back is her favorite, FYI. And she always eats while she’s watching the screen, but she never cooks a damn thing. She pretty much survives on take-out, delivery, and fortified protein bars. I’d say two-thirds the last one.”

  Jake shook his head, but smiled as Dave continued.

  “Her only living relative is her brother, who’s a year younger. He, his wife, and their three kids live in the Twin Cities. He’s a CPA. They’re estranged from Angel, and he has absolutely no clue what s
he does for a living. They haven’t talked in more than a decade.”

  “Minnesota?”

  “Yep. She was born there.”

  It had actually been a while since he’d met someone from his home state. He wondered at the coincidence of that.

  “She’s had seven broken bones and two surgeries. She’s got two dental implants and is currently missing a back tooth, scheduled for her next implant.”

  None of this was surprising, much less alarming to Jake. It was standard wear and tear for a warden, and he hadn’t failed to notice the bruise across Angel’s cheek during the initial meetings with the sovereigns. He wouldn’t soon forget it, in fact. Fortunately for the man who’d given it to her, he was already dead.

  “You said her last name was Ortega,” Jake said, going back. That was something interesting. He met Dave’s eyes.

  Dave ran a hand through his hair and said, “I’ll get to it, I promise.” Then he returned to the file summary, giving Jake all of the pertinent information up front. The rest, such as food and drink favorites, sleeping patterns, and shit like that would still be in the folder.

  “Typical warden pharmaceutical line-up,” said Dave. “Benchmark chronic pain meds and occasional muscle relaxers or sedatives. She takes vitamins, along with prescriptions for thyroid and supplements for anemia. In-house PC and surgeon, of course.”

  The warden-specific surgeon and PC were also orthodox for wardens. Many of them were not human, and what happened to them was certainly far from human, so it all had to be kept under wraps. The pain meds were part of the warden Bible, and in fact he usually smelled narcotics in a warden’s system. Wardens had learned a long time ago that between pain and narcotics, the thing that distracted you from the job more was pain. It made you angry, and when you were angry, you became aggressive. Itchy trigger fingers, unnecessary and reckless movements, rash decisions that put people at risk – these were the yardstick measurements of a warden who’d neglected to deal with their pain. Even the CIA, NSA and FBI had learned long ago that torture only made a prisoner insubordinate; the real way to get information from someone was to make them comfortable. Really comfortable. It worked almost every time.

  But what got Jake’s attention a little here were the thyroid and anemia. “What happened with her thyroid?”

  “Cancer at seventeen. It was removed entirely. A specialist went in surgically behind the ear, so there’s no scar.”

  Jake processed that, cataloguing it with everything else. “And the anemia – you said she takes something, but you didn’t say what. What type of anemia?”

  “That’s unclear,” he replied, sighing. “Her medical records become painfully hazy there, an obvious well-done cover-up. Something happened to her around a decade and a half ago, just before she joined Vega. I’m sorry to say I don’t have enough intel on it. All I could make out was that she was anemic. I’m fairly certain Vega’s clan warden is personally responsible for getting rid of the information, probably to keep his warden safe. But I would guess it’s a normocytic iron deficiency.”

  “You mean from blood loss.” Jake hazarded.

  Dave gave a nod. “It would make sense. She’s a warden, it’s a damn dangerous job, and the anemia comes and goes. She handles it though. She’s an exceptional warden, ridiculously gifted, never misses a detail. A bi-product of this is that she’s always up to the minute on her meds.” He paused and ruminated, pursing his lips as he slowly twisted the bottle between his hands. “But I think it’s partly that she feels the need to be on top of everything, and at all times.”

  Jake’s lips curled into a smile. “A control freak,” he provided softly, musing. He understood the type well. Normally they were people who’d felt terribly out of control during some formative portion of their lives, and were subconsciously attempting to make up for it in the years since.

  “Yeah.” Dave sighed, shaking his now empty bottle before getting up to get another.

  David Sharpe was a rare type of being known as a Withered. He could be likened to a zombie, minus the gross decomposition and lack of intelligence. For years, Dave was the only one Jake knew existed. Earlier that month however, another had appeared, a teenager who’d made a surprising and impressive transformation after first dying in an explosion.

  In the days since, approximately a dozen more had popped up on the radar. Like a spreading wildfire, they were in effect quickly forming their own new supernatural faction, and at their head was the rather dubious, more than a little infamous “undead” warlock, Darryl Maelstrom.

  The Withered came from all walks of life, or rather afterlife, but one thing they seemed to have in common was a love of alcohol. They could go through it like water, and it never seemed to effect them. They were capable of drinking anyone under the table, even werewolves.

  Chapter Four

  But now Dave moved back to the couch and sat down leaning forward. He waited to open the second beer, and Jake looked up to see his grave expression.

  Jake didn’t like that expression. It meant bad news. Every time. He started to open the file.

  “This part’s not in there, bro.”

  Jake froze again. His gums twinged. It was something that happened when he was irritated and his fangs reminded him they were right there, ready to back up his knee jerk reactions. He pinned David with green-gray ice. “Okay?” he asked tightly.

  Dave twisted off the top of the beer, but held Jake’s gaze. “She’s Santiago’s personal recruit. And the one he’s most proud of.”

  Jake’s strong jaw clenched. Gabriel Santiago was head of the Vega clan. He was good at what he did, one of the best, which meant he was well trained in dealing with troublesome vampires. Jake was man enough to admit that what was even worse was that Santiago was attractive. He was one of those men capable of making a daily choice on whether or not they would be sleeping alone that night.

  Worst of all was that Santiago was a reputable man. He was one of the good guys, a former soldier like Jake. And Angela Clemens was working right under him.

  In short, Gabriel Santiago was worrisome competition.

  “To the trained eye, it’s obvious Gabe has designs on her,” said Dave. “He’s shrewd. He’s careful and he’s patient. A little meticulous scheduling, and the two are partners on all the longest jobs.”

  Jake felt his body stiffen. “Does she know how he feels?”

  “Honestly I’m not sure,” Dave said, sighing. “Like I said, he’s careful. It took me a while to find the pattern, and that’s rare. He covers his tracks, too. Angel isn’t the only one Gabriel schedules on these jobs with him.”

  Jake swallowed the news and returned his attention to the manila folder he had yet to open. He could see paperclips over the sides, probably fastening things like photographs or newspaper clippings. He could feel Dave holding back, though. There was something else, something big, in this file that Dave knew Jake probably didn’t want to know.

  Like maybe about the last name “Clemens.”

  “How did she become a warden?” Jake asked, giving voice to the question like a death knoll.

  Dave said, “Remember I said some things were hidden really well? This is one of those things. But I managed to get to it anyway.”

  Jake waited.

  “I know you tried to read her mind at the first meeting and failed, so you’re already aware that she was hosting magic cast by someone with enough experience to block vampire probes,” said Dave.

  That was true. The very first thing Jake had tried to do when he’d laid eyes on Angel at that first meeting with the sovereigns was enter her mind. Immediately, he’d come up against a well-placed wall. While it was common practice for wardens to block their minds with magic pretty much all the time, this wall was stronger. It was like the difference between a rock wall placed atop the ground and one that sunk several feet into it just in case. It was extra careful, and it took an impressive amount of inherent magic to cast it.

  “What you don’t know,” Dave con
tinued, “is that Angel is the one who cast the spell.”

  Jake blinked. Angel was a mage? And not only a mage, but a damn powerful one?

  But from the shit-eating grin on David’s face, it was clear he wasn’t finished. “What’s more, she’s not only a practiced mage… she’s a healer.”

  Jake felt well and truly stunned. He could hear his blood moving through his veins, hear his heart hammering. There was a buzzing in his ears. It had been a long time since he’d experienced that.

  Slowly, he looked down at the closed folder. Then he mechanically took a long pull from his beer. “I’ll be damned,” he whispered after he swallowed.

  Healers were exceptionally rare. That he knew of, literally only a handful existed or had been discovered by the sovereigns, and hell, most of them were sovereigns. And Angel was one. He was suddenly very grateful for the protection she’d been wearing to mask her true nature in front of him. If he’d been able to smell that magic in her blood….

  “Crap,” he muttered, shaking his head. He didn’t even want to think about what might have happened.

  But Jake tensed up again. Other than the fact that being a healer made her even more invaluable to her clan, this wasn’t exactly devastatingly bad news. It was good news, if anything. Which meant David hadn’t given him the bad news yet.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me. Spit it out, Sharpe,” said Jake tersely.

  David pursed his lips, obviously not wanting to move forward. Finally, he sucked in a breath and said, “Fine. Here’s where you start to regret having her vetted.” He looked defeated. “Angela Clemens is licensed to ride a motorcycle but she doesn’t ride. There’s no bike in sight and she won’t even look at them.”

  Jake was instantly torn between intense intrigue and intense concern.