“Um, you should at least buy me a drink before you try to steal home base, right?” I squeaked, and throaty masculine laughter hummed against my ear. I expelled the breath I’d been holding, relaxed into his hold, and wondered why I wasn’t losing my shit at being felt up in the middle of a forest by a total stranger.
I was doing exactly that. I was standing in a forest, being fondled by a guy that I knew nothing about. I was allowing it to happen, but what was worse was I responded to his touch! The slightest pressure was creating a reaction from my body. Not just any response either, a fucking hurricane of sensations that I wasn’t sure I liked. Yet, I felt safe. I shouldn’t. I knew nothing about him. He could be the one who slaughtered the people back in the town, yet here I was, alone with him.
“Soon, Emma, very soon,” he whispered against my ear. He kissed my neck softly, and I felt the earth moving around me. My world spun, time stopped, and even the butterfly that was inches away from me stopped flying mid-air.
Then time started back up again. I dropped to my knees as my shaking legs refused to support me any longer, and remained there until I finally heard someone else coming.
“Emma, where are ye, lass?” Lachlan called; his heavy feet hit the ground with a reassuring thump as he jumped over one of the many downed trees. “Shite, Emma, I been…Emma?” he asked, coming to me and picking up my gear as he made it to where I was on my knees in the small clearing. “Are ye alright?” he demanded as he kneeled on the grass with me.
“I don’t know,” I replied in a hushed tone, my legs still useless beneath me. I looked around, trying to see through the trees whether or not he was still close to us, but my body had returned to normal; he’d left the vicinity. “I think he’s like me, a Sentinel,” I continued. Lachlan cussed, and looked me over for wounds. “He didn’t do anything.” Okay, he totally did things. He’d made me feel vulnerable, and yet the way he touched me had made everything feminine inside of me stand up and take detailed notes about him, not that I could see him. What the hell was wrong with me?
He’d cut my fucking hair!
“Who, Emma?” he asked, watching my face. “Emma,” his tone grew hard. “How long?”
“How long what?” I asked.
“How long has this mon been following ye, lass?” he demanded.
“Since we left Newport, I think. I don’t know,” I admitted. “I didn’t know what it was at first; I mean, I thought it was anxiety at leaving home, leaving Addy behind. Then, a few weeks ago, I noticed it again, and it continued to worsen. My heart races, and my body…it gets heated, weird, like it senses him. It’s hard to put into words what I feel when he’s close. Look, don’t tell anyone. He doesn’t want to hurt me; if he did, he’s had more than enough chances to do so. He’s like me, Lachlan. I know he is. I can feel it. He can use his powers and I need him to teach me. I need to know how to use them to be useful.”
“Ye are useful, lass,” he laughed and hugged me tightly. “I’ll be holding yer secret, but do nae expect me tae like it, okay? If he gets tae close, ye will tell me.”
I relaxed a bit and nodded against his shoulder. My eyes shifted to my pack that was zipped up, and I remembered that I’d seen his shadow bend over to place something inside of it. I swallowed, doubting it was a stick of dynamite or a bomb.
We hiked back to the group slowly, noting that they’d remained in the town, as planned, to scavenge anything useful.
“We’ll camp closer to the creek, get some fresh water, and bathe before moving on in the morning,” Jaeden remarked once he was closer to me, as his eyes vacillated between myself and Lachlan. I ignored it, considering his dinner was busy swishing her hips as she made her way to him. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was sexy in the ways a man looked for in a woman. Plus, unlike some of the others, she bathed.
“I could use some fresh water,” I said, pushing past the group, who stared at me as though they expected me to start collecting and burning the dead. I would have liked to have helped, and Lord knew these people deserved it, but I didn’t have time to do it properly. I also wanted to get away from the carnage before I had another breakdown like I did in the forest.
“Bury the children,” Shamus ordered without emotion, his eyes on me as he spoke. “The creek is less than a mile from here. We can at least bury the small ones.”
“Thanks, Shamus,” I whispered barely above a breath, knowing he’d hear it.
“Don’t thank me; Cayla wouldn’t let me leave them like this,” he admitted.
No, his crazy woman-child, who was mentally unstable, would have trekked back here and done it herself. That was, if she didn’t bring one of the smaller babies with her as her newest doll, which she’d done once already. Cayla had been turned vampire with a hellish head wound. It made her crazy on most days, but once you got used to it and her ghostly friend Nery, who apparently only she and I could see, she was pretty cool.
I missed the shelter. The water there was warm if you got to it before the others. Out here? Ice cold creek water, which occasionally had dead bodies floating in it the closer we got to the small towns. I didn’t care; clean was clean. Once we’d reached the campsite, I made haste to the creek, because I knew that, within moments, the other girls would swarm the water, hoping to end up with one of the men for the night. Me, I just wanted sleep and the dreams of home and Grayson that came with it.
I pulled off my pack, looking around the area, where a small pool of rocks seemed to create a deeper pool than the other sections I’d explored. I unzipped the pack and dug through it. Inside the bag was a bar of chocolate and an iPod, which I knew hadn’t been there before. I pushed them back into the pack as I looked around furtively for the Sentinel, while pulling clean clothes out of the pack and setting them on the rock beside the creek. I slowly stripped off my dirty clothing and threw them at the water’s edge along with everything else I needed to get clean.
I slipped into the water and sat down enough that I was semi-hidden in it. I knew the moment Jaeden made his way through the brush and into the small clearing, his eyes watching me as he approached, then sat on the rock as he gave me his back. It was something he’d started doing after the first time he found me alone and unguarded while bathing. Since that day, he would join me, although silently.
“Long day,” he commented, and I frowned.
“Rough day,” I agreed.
“Emma,” he whispered as he turned towards me, and his eyes skimmed the water before rising back to my face.
“Jaeden.” I wondered if he was about to try it again. He did it every few days, attempted to mend the wedge between us. Ever since he’d left me on that lonely road near the Ark, he’d ruined me. It had taken weeks to get up off the ground, to get my motivation back, and right now I couldn’t handle his little overtures. At any given moment, he could be called away by those who controlled him, and it wasn’t something I wanted to deal with. I couldn’t. Lachlan was my rock; he was with me not because we’d been together, but because he wanted to be.
Jaeden made me feel shit I wasn’t sure I wanted to feel, rocked my world and a few other things, but he was also bound by the elders and had to go where they told him to. Like now, he’d sold me on this trip so I could look for my brother, but the more I listened, the more I realized that the true reason for the trip was so that he and Shamus could look for their maker and several of the elders who had been taken. I was actually just along for the ride, as were Lachlan and his men, who were looking for Lachlan’s father. I wondered how much Jaeden would deviate from his mission to find his maker in order to help me find my brother. I had a feeling that if push came to shove, I would be on my own unless Lachlan and his wolves decided to remain with me.
“You are stubborn,” he exhaled and rubbed his face as Valarie sauntered into the clearing, her eyes darting from me to him, and back to me. She didn’t like me, we both knew it, and so did he. S
he was his dinner; I was his first choice for dessert, and based on the way he was looking at me, he wanted to have dessert first.
“Am I?” I whispered softly as I waded away and grabbed the shampoo and conditioner, quickly using them as I washed up, and tried not to pay attention to his eyes that I knew were taking in my naked body. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen it before. Hell, he was the first and only man who’d ever touched it, but there was just too much between us, and I was dealing with too much mentally already.
“You are.” He stood up and stripped out of his shirt, uncaring that he had an audience.
“I’m not done,” I protested as I watched his magnificent body with a hunger I couldn’t wish away. I missed it, his touch, and the demanding kiss that always curled my toes.
“Duly noted, Valkyrie.” He kicked off his boots and undid his jeans as we women watched him. I watched her reaction to his body and wondered if I looked as lost as she did when I took in the contours of his male perfection.
It wasn’t until Valarie started to strip that I hurriedly finished up and excused myself, much to his disappointment. I wasn’t up to watching her ogle him, or feeding him.
“Emma…” he growled.
“Valarie is here, Jaeden. Bon appétit, you look hungry,” I murmured as I gave them my back and quickly dressed.
Once I was finished, I hurried through the camp and set up my hammock high in the trees. It gave me an advantage, allowing me to see miles from the camp which was nestled beneath it, but occasionally smoke would be bothersome, as the wolves cooked whatever they’d caught or scrounged to eat.
I placed my bag beside me and pulled out the iPod, slipping the earbuds into my ears, and smiling as soft music poured through them. Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On played, and although it was pretty random, it made me grin. I had loved music before the virus hit, and the rarity of music and finding anything with enough power available to play it with was near to impossible anymore. I closed my eyes, allowed myself a moment to finish the song before I took the ear buds out, set them on my chest, and went to sleep.
Chapter 2
Over the next two days, we covered at least twenty miles, which, considering we were traveling for the most part through the mountains, and on old country roads, wasn’t much. We occasionally came to a small town and cleared it of anything usable we could find. There were never enough supplies. Somehow, there were always signs that someone had been through it just before us, along with fresh bodies. As if we were following someone without knowing it.
We’d come across a little town today, one with a quaint barn at the edge of town that Shamus and Cayla had been obsessed with. Apparently, the guy had tried his hand at farming once and failed miserably. Shamus had been born sometime during the early ages and had done a lot of stuff, based on the endless stories he told. Most of it didn’t make any sense to me. He’d gone from silent and watching me, to trying to lure me into conversation with every mile we covered.
As Cayla climbed around, exploring the barn, Nery slowly materialized next to me and stood quietly for a few moments as we watched Shamus and Cayla explore. He shoved his hands in his barely substantial pockets and fidgeted, as if he was uncomfortable with what he wanted to say. After a few strained minutes, he softly muttered, “Things are changing for you soon, Guardian.” He looked at Jaeden in the distance and back to me with a resigned, sad look on his pale features. “Death is coming for you.”
I gave him a long, sideways look, and finally grinned.
“If you haven’t noticed, ghost boy, he’s been coming for me for a while and there’s sort of a rumor going around that I’m part of the immortal crew now, so I don’t think he’s after me this time.”
“He is death for all, Sentinels and Vampires alike. He will come for you soon, and when he does, you need to let him take you. If you truly care for those here, you’ll allow it to happen,” he said softly. He shook his head with a soft frown, as a chill raced up my spine. I had to take a deep breath before I could speak.
“Are you speaking literally or metaphorically?”
“Both, Guardian.” With a small, enigmatic smile, he turned from me and glided to the barn and Cayla, leaving me to wonder what the heck he’d meant.
I looked behind me to the farmhouse that was part of the same property as the barn. I took a few steps until I was inside of it. As my eyes adjusted to the dark interior, I took in the family pictures of those who had previously lived here. Framed photos of two children, a boy and a girl with wide cheeky grins, seemed to blanket the walls. As I padded slowly down the hall and into the living room, examining the pictures, I saw that the girl was always smiling, her eyes lit up from within. The boy, the older child, was always watching her in the pictures. As if he was afraid to take his eyes from his little sister; I knew that look. The one that said he took care of his little sister; it reminded me of the pictures of me. I’d hardly ever smiled, and when I had, it was at Grayson for doing something, sometimes just something mundane.
“Figured ye be aboot,” Lachlan said as he followed me into the room, the pockets of his green army pants filled to bursting with snacks. You’d think the guy had a sweet tooth, but apparently, wolves needed a shit ton of sugar because they burned some major calories shifting to wolf form. “We are heading oot, lass,” he added when I didn’t look away from the pictures. “They looked happy enough.” He ambled further into the room, his eyes taking in the pictures, along with the decomposing bodies that lay on the sofa, as if the father, mother, and children hugged each other one last time and passed.
“So happy they sat here and died together, waiting for help that never came,” I whispered through the sudden pain in my heart. Every day it felt as if I failed Grayson, and every day he got further away. Lachlan had spent a long time in Grayson’s room, learning his scent. We’d been lucky and caught a few whiffs of it here and there, enough to let us know that we were on the right path. Both Lachlan and Cian had said it was strangely faint, which worried me. However, we were flying blind, so those little whiffs were the best hope we had right now.
“Ye can nae do this,” he said as he got closer to me, his green eyes zeroing in on mine. “They’re nae ye, Lass, and ye are nae them. Grayson is alive, ye ken? We just got tae find him, and we will. Aye?”
“We will, because losing him isn’t an option for me.” I gave one last lingering glance at the photos, then turned and left the house. I was losing hope. I was with the best chance I had at finding him, but what if our mother had brainwashed him? Or worse, he blamed me for not saving Dad? I didn’t even know if he wanted to be found, but I had no plans of ever giving up. He was the only family I had left, and Addy was barely holding her shit together. If we lost him, I wasn’t sure she’d be okay. Maybe eventually, but she’d lost everyone she cared about without even getting to say goodbye. Her parents had never called, and her brother had probably died with his unit across the damn ocean, or maybe on his way back.
I stepped outside the house and pulled out the small device Jaeden had given me, then hit call and listened as static turned into an excited Addy.
“You got him?” she chirped excitedly.
“No, not yet,” I replied, trying to hide the melancholy I felt at seeing the brother and sister curled with their parents, dead. “Holding down the fort?” I asked, knowing she’d distract me. It’s what she did, talked endlessly, and after she would finish with her mile-a-minute ramble, I’d hand the little phone off to Jaeden, and a little while later he’d return it fully charged. I didn’t ask how, I just accepted it and moved on.
“You’ve been gone so long,” she complained. “I have no one to bitch to, and the vampires? They are all up in everyone’s business, taking blood samples—which, let’s just say it, fucking weird, right? They’re asking for birthdates, weight; shit, one even tried to actually weigh me. Like brought me the scale,” she snickered.
“Like I was getting on that thing; it’s not that I’ve gained weight, I’m just I’m allergic to those things.”
“They’re taking blood samples?” I murmured. My eyes locked with Lachlan, who I knew was listening to the entire call no matter how much he tried to pretend he wasn’t. “Why?”
“I didn’t ask why, but they’ve been on a tear for a bit,” she admitted. “We got a few more in the shelter, Jaeden and Shamus apparently sent them here.”
“Awesome,” I groaned. “Any other things I should know about?”
“Cat and the baby are doing awesome, little thing’s off the breast-bottle, and Emma, remind me not to breastfeed. That shit looks painful. In fact, remind me to not get pregnant at all. Grab all the birth control you can get your mitts on, please.”
“Will do. Hey, Addy, I need to go. It looks like we’re heading out.” I watched Jaeden follow the others, who were crossing the street leading into town. “Love you; I’ll call back tomorrow and check in.”
“Emma, seriously, please be safe out there. I have the shelter under control,” she whispered and made a kissing noise.
“I’m always safe; besides, I’m running around with vampires and werewolves. I’ll be okay.”
I hung up and started towards Jaeden, my mind racing, wondering what the hell his vampires were up to at the shelter. Taking blood samples? Really?
“What the fuck, Jaeden,” I demanded. “Why are the vampires you left behind taking blood samples? Those are my people!”
“Calm down,” he said, his turquoise eyes skimming my face, and he smiled. “It’s not what you think it is.”
“Really? Because to me, it looks like someone is setting up a fucking menu with humans being the main course. My humans,” I snapped.
“Lachlan,” Jaeden’s voice was tense, and I turned and watched as Lachlan and he had some silent dispute before Lachlan nodded and walked away from us. Great…
Death Before Dawn (Gaurdian's Diary Book 1) Page 2