by Lizzy Ford
She nodded and fled to her room. Despite his cold words, he’d left a present for her on the nightstand near her bed. Sometimes he did this after he’d hit her or screamed at her worse than usual. She dropped her things by the wardrobe and crossed to it, softening. Her father was hard to read and often unapproachable, but he cared for her in his own special way.
In the box was a small, simple necklace of a bronze chain and faded bronze coin. She gasped, recognizing it as the one he wore often, the heirloom passed down through his ancestors. It was better than any jewels he could buy her, because it meant something to him! Allowing a smile to escape, Yully pulled the necklace free.
He cared enough to give her his most prized possession, and he’d protected her last night against someone who meant to kill her. Maybe her fear of her father was wrong.
She placed the medallion around her neck and admired it in the mirror, vowing not to think of the man whose presence plagued her.
Her resolve lasted until her father left for dinner with their wealthy neighbors. She fingered the coin around her neck as she lay before the fire. The sense that Jule was in the house hadn’t left her. If anything, the nagging feeling was growing stronger.
Glancing at the clock on her nightstand, she waited until certain her father had left then rose. The stone floors were drafty, so she put on slippers and padded into the bright hallway of her wing of the manor. Yully concentrated on the small itch in her mind that told her Jule was near. It gave her no real direction as to where to go. She walked the length of the wing and felt the feeling fade a little. Back toward the middle of the house she went and down into the foyer. She roamed the bottom floor until she reached the door off one of the kitchens.
He was down in the wine cellar. The spark in her thoughts told her so. She opened the wine cellar and shivered at the cool breeze but forced herself to descend. If he wasn’t there, she could convince herself this was all some sort of nightmare.
No one was in the wine cellar, and she sighed with relief. Turning to go, she noted the outline of a door beneath the stairs. She’d been in the large storage room once while playing hide and seek long ago.
Yully cracked the door open, suspecting the man named Jule was there even before she flipped on the lights. Warm light flooded the cold room, and her breath caught. She stared at him, not sure what to say or think about finding a man chained to her basement wall.
Jule sat with his back against the far wall, his lip bloodied, one eye black, and his hands chained above his head to the pipes running from the floor to the ceiling. He raised his head as she took a step into the room and met her gaze. She wasn’t sure she’d seen a man as big as he was anywhere but on the TV. He looked like a professional wrestler with his muscular physique, tattoos, and long braid. The thin pipes didn’t look strong enough to hold him.
“I bet you don’t know what that means,” he said, glancing at her necklace. His voice jarred her as it had in the alley. It was low and gravelly with an edge of huskiness.
“You’re really here,” she replied, distraught. “Who did this to you?”
“You know who, sweetheart,” he replied in his soft growl.
“Don’t call me that!”
“Don’t know your name.”
“It’s none of your business.”
He leaned his head against the wall. She took in his wounds again, unable to fathom why her father would chain him to the wall in their wine cellar. What could this man possibly know that her father needed? And how did she stomach the thought of her father doing such a thing to someone? Troubled, she toyed with the necklace around her throat.
“What does this mean?” she asked.
“It’s the House your father belongs to. An ancient bloodline of immortals, one of the oldest,” he replied.
“Immortals,” she repeated.
“His kind don’t age. Ever notice that?”
“Yes.” It was one of the many oddities about her father that she’d accepted over the years. While their servants aged, her father never did. He looked the same as when he’d come for her at the orphanage.
“I wear one, too,” Jule continued.
“I don’t see it,” she said, gaze dropping to his chest.
“I’m chained. You can dig it out.”
She looked him over again, certain he could escape any time he wanted.
“You’re safe with me,” he said at her hesitation.
She felt the truth in his words, perhaps because their souls had touched when they first met the day before. Hesitating only a moment more, Yully moved towards him and knelt. Her hand brushed one of his forearms, held in place over his head by the handcuffs.
“Your skin’s like ice,” she said, suddenly realizing how cold it was in the storage room. He wore only jeans and a dark T-shirt that stretched across his chest in all the right places and clung to bulging biceps.
“Cold won’t kill me,” he said, unconcerned.
“An Irish winter will,” she returned.
She saw the silver chain around his neck and delicately tugged the round emblem free. It was a silver coin, warmed by his skin, with a circle of cuneiform symbols surrounding a star with two arrows. Her own necklace had the same symbols surrounding five stars.
“You’re an immortal,” she said and dropped the necklace. Her eyes went to his dark, steady gaze. “You’re a Guardian?”
“Yes.”
She sat back with a frown. He’d just admitted to being what her father warned her about! Her father said Guardians were her enemies, creatures who preyed on humans, and that she must use her powers to kill them. The man before her looked pretty human himself, with beautiful brown eyes and a body unlike any she’d seen before. She’d sensed more danger from her father than from the man before her.
His intent gaze was steady, and she wondered if he could read her mind like her father did. The air between them shimmered with his body heat and her magic, and he didn’t flinch away like normal people did. This man seemed to accept her freakish powers, until he spoke again.
“I feel your magic. What are you?” he asked.
“I have to go.” She flushed and stood. Accustomed to being shunned by people, she’d almost felt normal around the stranger who seemed unaffected by her magic. With regret, she realized her father was right: no one could accept someone like her. She strode to the door.
“I may freeze to death tonight,” he warned. “You may not have another chance to ask me what you want to know.”
“What makes you think I want to know anything from you?”
“The fact that you didn’t close the door and walk away the moment you saw me.” His voice was quiet and confident, and she felt like a visitor in his throne room rather than a woman talking to a stranger chained to her basement wall.
“Did my father hit you?” she whispered.
“You know the answer.”
She chewed her lip. “He said you want to kill me. Do you?”
“Yes, I did,” he replied. “But I don’t now.”
She glanced at him. His gaze was intent, and she suspected he’d just now reached that decision.
“He’ll kill me when he has the chance,” Jule said. “I think you know that.”
“My father wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“Are you certain? A man willing to beat his daughter won’t give a shit about killing a stranger.”
She left before he could upset her more. Running up the stairs to the main floor, she wanted nothing more than to return to the safety of her room. She hesitated at the head of the stairs, tormented by the knowledge her father was incapable of mercy towards his daughter, let alone a stranger. If the man didn’t freeze down there, he’d die at the hands of her father and his strange delusion that this man wanted her dead.
Jule was nothing like the men her father warned her about. She’d felt safe with him, a sense she found only alone in her room. She knew better than to relax around her father, whose hand was likely to fly at the drop of a ha
t. But this man, an enemy who had-- up until now-- wanted to kill her, left her feeling a little less alone.
She touched her cheek. She couldn’t dismiss the sight of his darkened eye or bloodied lip. Her father beat them both. Yully trotted up to her wing and pulled a spare blanket out of the main linen closet. She returned with it to the wine cellar and pushed the door open.
Jule sat where she left him. She wasn’t sure why she’d hoped he was gone, except that his absence would alleviate her guilty conscious.
“You can’t tell my father I brought you this,” she told him. “He’ll hurt us both.” She laid it across him then straightened it to cover his body.
“It’s our little secret,” he said.
She met his gaze again, caught in the dark eyes that seemed both warm and wary. He remained relaxed, his large body radiating heat in the cold room. The intensity of his gaze made her warm on the inside. She backed away from him to the door.
“Good night,” she said.
“Good night.”
Dear god, let him survive the night! Torn, she closed the door on him once again. She promised herself to find a way to check on him in the morning without her father finding out. As she crept up the stairs of the wine cellar to the kitchen, she couldn’t help feeling troubled at leaving the man in the basement. She started down the hall.
“Daughter, where are you coming from?”
Yully stopped in place.
“I thought you were gone, Father,” she said.
“I came back for my coat.”
She turned. His eyes glowed eerily in the dark kitchen. His overcoat was slung over one arm, and he wore a wool suit over a dark turtleneck. His gaze went to the wine cellar door, which she’d left cracked.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said, stepping towards her.
Yully recognized the fire in the back of his gaze and retreated. She couldn’t think of a lie fast enough. He set his coat down on the counter, and her hands began to tremble.
“I’m sorry, Papa, I was just curious. I heard something in the basement and wanted to see what it was.”
“You heard something all the way up in your room.”
“Yes, Papa.”
“And now you’re lying to me about it. What did you find in the basement?”
“Nothing, Papa,” she said in a hushed tone.
“You didn’t find a man chained to the wall?”
She gasped, surprised he’d admit to what he’d done.
“I spend my life protecting you. I ask only for your loyalty, daughter. That man wanted to kill you. You heard him say it in the alley,” he said.
“Father, couldn’t you just call the police?” Her question was met with a blow she didn’t see coming. She braced herself.
“You’re a freak of nature. They’d haul you away from me, put you up in some sort of Bedlam,” he snapped. “Then where would you be?”
“I’m sorry, Papa. I won’t do it again.” She prayed he accepted her apology. He was quiet for a long moment.
“I’ll make certain of that in the morning.” His voice had calmed, and he started past her. She released the breath she held, the danger averted. “Did he say anything to you?”
She thought of how she’d felt safe with Jule during their brief encounter. “No, Papa.”
Her father turned at her hesitation, his gaze blazing. Yully saw the next blow coming, then the next and the next. She’d long since learned to take his beatings without screaming, but she sobbed nonetheless as the blows fell.
Jule pulled his hands free from the handcuffs and tugged the blanket up. He’d been afraid of scaring the beautiful redhead away if she saw he was free. The scent of her lotion still hung in the room, and he breathed the amber-vanilla deeply. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d found any woman so intriguing. She wasn’t the threat the Watcher made her out to be. She was unguarded and troubled, a combination that appealed to the Guardian in him.
She was worried about him, and he was touched by the idea she took pity on him when she herself was in more danger than he was. The sight of her bruised cheek made his blood boil. The Others had no mercy for mortals, and Jule couldn’t imagine what it was like to be raised by one.
The Other had left him no food after beating the crap out of him with his otherworldly power. Jule wrapped himself in the blanket and stretched out on the floor, hungry and chilled.
“Your target is in this house, and you’re going to lay there?”
He ignored the irritated Watcher and shrugged deeper into his blanket.
“You have no intention of killing her, do you?”
“Nope,” Jule replied.
“If you don’t, you will set into motion a fate we cannot-- ”
“There is no such thing as a fate that cannot be changed, Watcher!” Jule snapped. “You know this. Why do you and the Others both want her?”
“The Others …” The Watcher drew a deep breath. “Your mission is to kill her. If you can’t do it, you get none of your powers back. And neither will any of the other Guardians. That was our deal. When she’s dead, only then will you and the Guardians all get your powers back.”
Jule was silent, realizing he had made that deal. He kicked himself mentally for not thinking before he made any sort of pact with the Watcher, even one that seemed so straightforward, until he met his target and realized she was an innocent caught in the crossfire.
“A powerful innocent,” the Watcher corrected him. “Without their powers your Guardians will be slaughtered by the Black God. What is her life in exchange for thousands of Guardians and the humans they’re protecting? It’s not worth it, any way you look at it.”
“If her death is so important, and I’ve already failed once to take her life, you’d call in someone else to do this job,” Jule reasoned. “You have infinite immortals at your disposal.”
“You’re right,” the Watcher said. “I’ll find someone else to do the job.”
The Watcher didn’t look happy. The creature winked out of existence, and Jule sat up. The otherworldly creature wanted to force his hand, and he didn’t understand why. He rose and paced, dwelling on the carnage that would surely ensue if the Guardians remained vulnerable for long. This woman was the key. Yet, he felt her death was not the answer.
Right about now, he’d give almost anything to talk to Sofia, the White God’s Oracle. She alone could provide insight into what he needed to do.
“Sofi says hi.” The Grey God’s voice was quiet, and Jule didn’t sense him appear. He chuckled, silently thanking Damian and his mate.
“I’m happy …” He paused as he turned, startled to see the Grey God without the scars that knotted his face the last time Jule saw him. The man gazing back at him was wiry and lean with angled features and swirling gold eyes.
“I got a new face,” the Grey God said.
“I see that. Lookin’ good, Darian,” Jule said. “How’s everything on your side of the world?”
“Interesting. Dusty found his mate and destroyed most of Florida.”
Jule laughed, not at all surprised by the news of his adopted brother, the human turned assassin with a low tolerance for bullshit.
“Damian doesn’t know I’m here,” Darian added. “But Sofi asked me to visit.”
“So you defied your brother for the little blonde Oracle?”
“She runs the place, Jule,” Darian replied. “Damian’s just figuring that out. Anyway, she wanted me to tell you to trust your instincts.”
Jule snorted. “She sounds like a Watcher.”
“You have no idea,” Darian agreed. While the Grey God appeared calm, his air was agitated and his gaze stormy. Jule sensed a great deal of turmoil behind his calm features and pitied the man. Darian had spent thousands of years enslaved to the Black God before the Oracle freed him, and Jule couldn’t imagine how deeply that experience must have scarred the Grey God’s soul. Darian’s power had grown; the air of the room shimmered, and light and dark alike warped in the
space around Darian.
“Good to see you, Darian,” Jule said, genuinely happy to see Damian’s brother alive. “The new Black God?”
“Nothing more than a kid. Sofi says his path is dark. I can’t help feeling bad for him,” Darian said, his gaze growing dark and distant. “I know what that life is like. I guess the alternative was worse.”
“We all have our paths,” Jule said. “Doesn’t mean they’re easy.”
“Yeah.”
“Tell everyone I said hello and I’m being held hostage by one of the Others.”
Darian’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“It’s for a good cause.”
“A woman?”
“Something like that.”
“Sofi said to tell you ‘I told you so.’”
“Give her a hug when you get back,” Jule said with a chuckle. Darian cocked his head to the side, as if hearing someone call his name.
“I gotta go,” he said. “I’ll see you in a couple of days. Things will get worse before they get better, but they should get better.”
The Grey God disappeared, and Jule dwelled on his parting words. The Darian he remembered had never been brooding or hesitant like this man. Sadly, he realized his old friend truly had died when he became enslaved by the Black God.
Trust your instincts.
Jule rubbed the back of his neck. His instincts told him the Magician was in danger-- and needed to stay alive. If what the Watcher said was remotely true, she was a powerful weapon in the hands of the Others, and he had limited otherworldly ability to protect her from them. Some of his innate defensive powers remained, or she would’ve turned him to stone or the Other would’ve vaporized him.
He touched his swollen lip. He hadn’t ever been without his healing powers. His thoughts darkened as he thought of leaving the Guardians defenseless to protect a woman he wasn’t sure he should.
One life. It should’ve been so simple. He closed his eyes, remembering a time when he’d made a similar choice. He’d chosen a human over the immortal realm and been banned for it. In fact, he’d chosen a woman over his life in the immortal realm. A woman who died during the Schism. The memories surrounding his exile were deeply buried, but he did recall how pissed the immortals had been with him and wondered why his one choice mattered so much.