Guardian (Hidden Book 6)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  “All right. Follow me, quietly. And stay back.” I could feel the energy signature of Bates Downing. It would be one more off of Mollis’s list.

  I pulled my dagger from my boot, and Mary and I crept quietly toward the trailer. Once we were just outside of it, close enough to be sure that he was the only one inside, I took her arm and we rematerialized into the trailer.

  “Finally,” he muttered upon seeing me, and then his gaze found Mary behind me. “And you brought me a present. How’d you know? I missed you, sweetling,” he said to Mary, and she stayed silent.

  This… yes. I could not deny it any longer. This was twice now one of them had been expecting someone. Someone who looked like me. It could mean only one thing: I was not the last of the Guardians. At least one of my sisters still lived somehow, and she was involved in these lost souls. Not alone. None of my kind are powerful enough to break into the prisons in the Nether and start removing souls. But involved just the same.

  “Sorry it took so long,” I said, deciding to play along.

  “You were supposed to bring me someone else, though,” he said. “Happy as I am that you found my toy, she’s not gonna help me live again.”

  “I wanted to get her to you first,” I said, hoping Mary knew I was playing along.

  “Very thoughtful. Did you do something to your hair? It was longer before.”

  “I’m trying to remember how many I’ve brought you so far,” I said. “Do you remember?” Something nagged me. Memory, the ghost of something that felt too familiar about this.

  He grinned. “This was to be lucky number three.”

  My stomach sank. “Right. Come with me, and we’ll go get you someone.”

  I took Downing’s hand, and he trustingly put his hand in mine.

  And in one swift, smooth movement, I stabbed him in the side with my Netherblade, the thin dagger sliding easily between two of his ribs, and he screamed and thrashed and weakened as my blade sucked the vitality from him.

  “How did you get free? Who freed you?” I asked, and he just screamed and tried to break free of my grip. I drew my dagger out, twisted his arm roughly behind his back, and stabbed him again, this time in the side of his neck.

  “Who freed you?” I asked again, my voice cold and expressionless.

  “I don’t know, you dumb bitch,” he screamed in agony. “She didn’t give me a fucking name. You’re the only one I’ve seen and I thought you knew what you were doing,” he ended on a whimper.

  I wound the thin black chain, which I’d worn as a necklace that night, around his wrists behind his back and pulled the blade from his neck. I flipped it in my hand so I held it by the tip of the blade and presented it to Mary.

  “Did you want a turn? I think he owes you some pain.”

  She grimly took the knife, and he tried to scurry away when she advanced on him. I held his arm.

  She looked into his eyes and stabbed him, hard, in the stomach, and then again in a place no man, ghost or not, ever wants to be stabbed. After one final stab to his shoulder, she handed me the blade, weeping openly.

  “Thank you,” she said hoarsely.

  “I will be right back. Stay here,” I told her, and she nodded, settling into a corner of the room, face in her hands.

  I focused, and in the next moment, Downing and I were standing inside the soulprison in the Nether. Megaera was on duty, and I handed him over to her.

  “Is Mollis around?” I asked, and she shook her head.

  “She and her mate are still in their home in Detroit. It has been a quiet night overall, so my sister and I are catching up on punishing some of our souls. Mollis will be glad to have this one back.”

  “Indeed. I will leave her a message and let her know I have dropped this one off.”

  “I can tell her when she gets here,” Megaera said, pulling Downing back toward the pens.

  I watched her go, then pulled my phone out of my pocket. I’d expected to get Mollis’s voicemail, but she picked up on the first ring.

  “You got one!” she practically shouted into my ear.

  I winced, holding the phone away a bit, and laughed. “You can feel it?”

  “Yes! Thank you, E!”

  “You are very welcome, demon girl. I handed him off to your aunt.”

  “Great. I’ll deal with him when I get there in a bit.”

  “Mollis—“ I began.

  “E, I’m sorry. I can’t talk now.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nether is fighting me again. I need to focus. I’m sorry. Love ya, E.” And with that, she hung up, and I was left staring at my phone.

  “Love you too, Mollis,” I said quietly.

  I had to get this mess under control. It was only getting worse.

  I stuffed my phone back into my pocket. Now to get Mary back to Ireland with the rest of them, then make one more jump back to Detroit.

  I would be lucky to still be standing when it was finished. But it would be worth it, I thought. Every soul would help, at least a little bit.

  When I rematerialized back in the trailer, I called out for Mary. She was not where I’d left her, in the main living area. I walked through the trailer, and there was no sign of her. I stood and sensed, trying to pick up her energy signature. It was faint, like the lingering scent of perfume when someone’s left a room. She was gone.

  I walked outside, dread curling in my stomach, and walked around the trailer, still trying to pick up on something. There was nothing.

  I went back inside, and after another survey of the house, I ended up leaning against the kitchen counter, looking into the empty living room.

  It was only when I turned that I saw the small piece of torn paper, as if it was ripped hurriedly out of a notebook, lying near the kitchen sink.

  “You took one of mine, so I’m taking one of yours, zealot. Come and get her, if you can find me. I’ll take good care of her in the meantime.”

  I took a deep breath, cursing my stupidity. I should have taken Mary with me. Even if I’d had to turn her over to the Furies, it would be better than what she was likely dealing with now.

  I crumpled the paper in my hand, shoved it in my coat pocket.

  “Don’t come. It’s a trap.” I heard in my mind. “Don’t come don’t come don’t come.”

  I had no way to ask where she was. No way to ask how many held her.

  Thousands of years old, and I am still capable of making moronic mistakes.

  “I will find you,” I promised the empty trailer. With a sigh, I rematerialized back into the loft. The multiple jumps had tired me a bit, in addition to the fatigue and stress over losing Mary. And so much worse. One of my sisters, a Guardian, was alive. Alive, and working against Mollis. I did not understand what the point was. Why? And why did I feel like there was something here I was missing?

  I was lost in thought and heading for the stairs to my room when Brennan’s voice came from the dark living room. “Where’d you go, Tink?”

  I closed my eyes. I’d missed him completely. The loft was dark, the sky barely beginning to lighten in the east. And I was most definitely not in the mood to deal with the turmoil he caused within me.

  “Did the vampires get home? It’s nearly dawn.”

  “Yeah. I dropped them off after your little disappearing act.” He stood up and came toward me, clicking on the lights in the kitchen as he did, which was where I was standing. He took me in in a quick glance.

  “Bloody and pissed off,” he murmured. “What happened?”

  “I found one of Mollis’s lost souls,” I said quietly. “I am sorry I left like that. I had to leave before I lost track of it again.”

  He nodded. “This is which one?”

  “Bates Downing. American,” I said, and he nodded.

  “He bled? Or are you hurt?”

  I glanced down. I’d zipped my coat over my white shirt, but the leather of my jacket and my jeans, boots were spattered with blood. “It is not mine.”

  “How doe
s a soul bleed?” he asked.

  “Brennan, I am tired. Can we do this another time?”

  I should have known that trying not to talk about it would make him even more intent on doing so. “There’s something you’re not telling me, Eunomia.”

  “There are plenty of things I don’t tell you,” I said.

  “How does a soul bleed?” he pressed.

  “This is the third one now that has. They are on their way to developing corporeal forms…” I trailed off, remembering why this felt so familiar. We had only seen this once before, during what the humans called the Black Death in the fourteenth century in human time. Too many dead, too quickly. My sisters and I had been overburdened, and it took us longer to get to some of the dead. By the time we had, some of them had been in a similar state as the souls I’d just been collecting. Not alive, just not dead anymore. Not a ghost. We’d dubbed them Undead. The most powerful ones, three of them that were fully capable of dealing with the physical world, had finally been captured and the Furies had finally learned their secret, how they’d managed it: eating the still-beating heart of a human. Three hearts, and they had a fully-capable form. Strong. Endlessly hungry. Violent.

  “Tink,” Brennan said, stepping closer to me.

  We’d never figured out how they’d known to do it. We had never heard of or seen such a thing. That was what both Boyd O’Connor and Bates Downing had been waiting for. They’d expected my sister, who looked almost exactly like me, to bring them a human to help them on their way to full undeath.

  “I need to sleep. Good night,” I said, shrugging him off.

  “Damn it, Eunomia,” he said. “You can’t do that to me.”

  “Do what?”

  “Shut down and walk away.”

  I sighed. “I am not. All right?”

  “It sure looks like you are,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest, those overly-perceptive eyes locked on mine.

  “I do not think I could do that if I tried,” I said softly. “I do not want to talk about this right now. I need to think.”

  He did not answer. He was irritated.

  “This is reminding me a little too much of why I don’t handle relationships like this well,” he finally said,

  “I am so sorry I will not just simper and do whatever you want me to do, cub,” I said, heading up the stairs. “And for the record, this is reminding me that you are much too young and immature for me.”

  With that, I slipped into my room, closing the door quietly behind me. I went to the tiny bathroom attached to my room, stripped off my clothing, then stood under the almost too-hot shower and scrubbed blood that should not have been there off of me.

  And I thought.

  If I remembered those undead during the Black Death, it was likely my sister did as well. And if we did… I was convinced there had to be another piece of the puzzle. Something we were not seeing. Something more powerful had broken those souls out of Tartarus. Something had targeted the worst humanity had to offer, and ensured those souls were the ones freed.

  Someone was working with my sister to being those souls to undeath.

  I had to find these souls before they did. This would be a mess. The death toll just one of the undead could cause with its incessant hunger was terrifying. With over twenty of them still out there, it would be a nightmare.

  I needed to tell Mollis about this. She needed to know.

  I got out of the shower and pulled on clean jeans, one of my old concert t-shirts, and my boots. I sat on my bed, pulled out my laptop, and started an email to Mollis, laying out what I knew about what was happening, and my suspicions that someone bigger was behind it, because someone had to help the souls escape.

  I thought for a moment, then continued typing.

  “Demon girl: tell no one, please. If we alert them now to the fact that we are on to them, they may get careful, and it will be that much harder to find them. Or they will get reckless, and people will get hurt. Please trust me to do my job. This is what I was made for. And trust that this needs to stay quiet. I am leaving with Hephaestus for Europe. I need to find these souls, fast. Stay safe, E.”

  I hit “send,” then closed the laptop and picked up my phone, hitting Hephaestus’ number.

  “You are so lucky I wasn’t having sex with my wife just now,” he growled into the phone.

  “Yes, I will count my blessings. Time to go. We need to move.”

  “What, now?”

  “Now. Right now.”

  I heard him swear under his breath. “Fine. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.” With that, he hung up. I tossed a few things into my bag, thinking. I would need to gather Quinn and the others from Ireland, which meant getting away from Hephaestus for a few minutes. It would not be too difficult. He was easily distracted.

  This latest realization about what the souls were doing had me second-guessing my wisdom in keeping Quinn and the others to myself. If they betrayed me…

  Well, that was easy. If they betrayed me, I would hurt them, badly. And then Mollis would hurt them, badly.

  I zipped my bag, pulled my (cleaned) coat back on over my dagger harness, and zipped up. By the time I was heading down the stairs, Hephaestus was standing in the still-dark kitchen, holding a bag of his own.

  “Have I ever told ya I’m not a morning person?” he growled at me.

  “Have I ever told you I really do not care?” I answered with a smile, and he released a snort of a laugh.

  “Okay, you miniature pain in the ass. Where are we going?”

  “Germany,” I said, taking his hand in mine.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Hephaestus and I appeared in a train station in Beelitz, Germany. Train stations and airports tended to be good places to reappear, because usually no one was focused on anything other than getting to their gate, and, if they were not, nowadays they were usually staring at a phone or other device.

  “Okay. Fill me in here. Who’re we lookin’ for?” Hephaestus asked me.

  “Friedrich Munch,” I said, leading him out of the train station. “Mass murderer. Killed seventeen teenage boys in an attempt to regain his lost youth.”

  “Sickening.”

  “Agreed. But of our two souls here in Germany, he’s the less evil of the two. We are also here to hunt the soul of one Peter Stumpfe. In his time, in the late sixteenth century, he was known as the werewolf of Brandenburg. He claimed the devil made him do it, and he was tried with cannibalism and murdering sixteen women and two infants.”

  “And was he a werewolf?” Hephaestus asked

  “He was. There was a werewolf clan here at the time, but he was a loner.”

  “And what makes him so much worse than the other one?” Hephaestus asked.

  “Stumpfe was a sadist who enjoyed playing with his food before he ate it,” I answered, and he nodded. “If you need to get an idea of how monstrous he was, those two infants he killed? He ate their hearts. One of them was his own son.”

  “Those are the ones I most would like to kill,” Hephaestus growled, and I nodded in agreement.

  “This was where he ran after he was executed. I had to chase him down. This is as good a place to begin as any, considering how long he has been free,” I said. “There is a small inn down this road, I think.”

  “E, when was the last time you were here?” Hephaestus asked with a laugh.

  “Not that long. It is still here, I am sure,” I told him with a glare, and he laughed.

  ‘If you say so. Are we walking or traveling the sensible way?”

  “We will walk. It is the best way for me to sense for energy signatures. Is that all right?”

  “It’s your party,” he said.

  I furrowed my brow. “I would not call it a party.”

  “It’s a figure of speech, E.”

  “I do not like those.”

  “I noticed,” Hephaestus said, and I shook my head. We walked on, and I noted with some amusement that, as I’d predicted, his eye was caught b
y every distraction presented to us. Car models we did not usually see in Detroit, the man playing some one-man-band contraption on one of the street corners. He was in his element.

  “You should take your family on travels more often,” I said to him. “You love this.”

  He shrugged. “I will someday. When things settle down.”

  “That could be never, my friend,” I told him, and he nodded.

  “Eventually,” he said with a shrug. “So… what’s the deal between you and the shifter?”

  I stumbled a little and swore under my breath in irritation as he laughed. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said.

  “There is nothing going on. He is my friend, and Mollis has us working together on this mess.”

  “Sure. Yeah. That’s all,” he said, and I could tell from his tone of voice that he did not believe a word of it.

  “He is too young for me. He has no understanding of our world, and he wants someone who will be a meek, delicate little flower,” I said, waving away my irritation, able to be more open with Hephaestus than I allowed myself to be with most beings. “He wants to know every detail of my life, and gets irritated when I will not tell him every single thought in my head.”

  “We both know he doesn’t want someone who’s meek,” Hephaestus said.

  “Well, he thinks he does, except when he thinks he does not,” I answered. “I can be honest with you. I like him quite a bit. He is the single most beautiful male I have ever laid eyes on, and I have thought so since the first time I saw him. But he has had a whole mess in terms of relationships before me. And I am not particularly adept at putting in the time long-term with anyone. The relationships I have had the past two years have all been short and I was able to walk away before they became ridiculous.”

  Hephaestus scratched his chin, thinking. “From experience here, E, things don’t really get good until they start getting ridiculous, until you start arguing about shit you’d never imagined yourself arguing over, and then you just look at one another and laugh. Until you’ve been through late nights and tears and anger and every other emotion, and you know one another inside and out. That’s when the relationship shit gets good.”

  I shook my head. “I will have to take your word for it.”