Dark before dawn the pro.., p.31
Dark Before Dawn (The Protector Guild Book 7), page 31
She shrugged, a trace of laughter in her voice. “I’ve stopped keeping track. Some people stay, some leave, and—” she paused for a beat, her shoulders tensed, “and some die. But we’re preparing as many as we can.”
“For what?”
Darius and Wade were uncharacteristically quiet on either side of me. I could tell that they respected Charlie. Bishop too, no matter what history there was between him and Darius.
“For whatever is coming. A war, most likely, though we don’t yet have an army large enough to fight it.” She stopped walking, turned around, and studied me for a long moment, her dark eyes peeling back layers, though I wasn’t clear what she was hunting for in that gaze.
How much had Wade and the others told them? How much could we trust them with? How much were we keeping from each other?
She nodded once, satisfied with her search. “Look, I can’t predict the future and I don’t know what that something that’s coming is, but the line of protectors who’ve kept this place as a sanctuary for years have lived by very few guiding principles.” She counted each one with a finger. “To help people who need it, to keep the balance whenever possible, to interfere only when injustices demand it. And those are still our goals—will remain our goals—in broad strokes. But it’s clear that something big is coming, something unprecedented. And it’s coming for all of us. There are more demons, more humans being attacked, unpredictable surges of power. The world is changing at an unsustainable pace, and when humans finally learn the truth, we’ll all be in danger. We’re going to do whatever it takes to save and protect as many people as we can. Ideally, we can shape the new world to the principles The Guild should have abided by all along.”
“There’s more than one battle on the horizon.” Bishop’s voice was soft and low, but rang with a heavy clarity. “And the divisions fashioning them are complex and unpredictable. We’re shaping an army, making sure that our people—demons, protectors, humans—have a place in the future, whatever that future might look like.”
“While we don’t know the details, Max, I don’t want to lie to you. We did hear about what happened at Guild Headquarters.” Charlie resumed her walking, leaving us no choice but to follow. “We know that you are more than you seem. That you and your team are likely at the center of this change, though they’ve been particularly tight-lipped about things when our council has broached the subject. We just haven’t fully decided if you’re a weapon to be fashioned for or against us. Until you give us a reason otherwise, we’ll assume the former. We’ll fight for you, alongside you. But make no mistake—if the latter becomes the case, we will take you all out. There’s too much to protect here.”
Wade squeezed my hand, calming the rush of panic flooding my body and preventing any kind of verbal response.
Because while I desperately wanted to claim that I was of course a tool for the greater good, I knew that deep down I had no idea what I was capable of.
No idea what would happen when Lucifer had his three requests, when the hell realm collapsed or reformed. Something told me that if any of his enemies—or even The Guild—got a hold of me, found a way to use my connection to the shadow magic against me, the world would be monumentally screwed.
No fucking pressure or anything.
And as kind as Charlie was, her threat was clear. I got the sense that she and the others here wouldn’t hesitate with carrying it out if things came to that.
A gentle bristle of leaves preceded a soft thud.
And then a small, surprising scream released from Darius as he jumped two feet into the air.
“Infernal beast,” he yelled, shoving a small white ball of cotton off his shoulder where it had landed.
Wade and Bishop both broke into deep, barking laughs, the tension dissolving like ice in a desert, while Charlie politely tried and failed to conceal her amusement.
“Max, meet Shadow.” Wade pointed to the small kitten weaving between Darius’s stiff legs. He looked like he’d stepped on a landmine, too terrified to so much as breathe for fear of setting it off. “She’s kind of adopted Darius.”
“More like adopted the practice of stalking and tormenting me. I swear to the gods that this isn’t a normal cat. It’s a demon in disguise.”
Wade snorted. “So are we, jackass.”
I bent down to pet the cat, pleased when it rubbed its face into my palm with a deep, vibrating purr.
“You’re right, Darius,” I picked her up, my heart melting as she burrowed into my chest. “She’s absolutely vicious.”
21
DECLAN
“Alright,” Levi said, letting the wide-eyed teenager go back to his fathers, who were huddled together in the corner of the room looking scared but confused. “They won’t remember anything. At least not anything to do with the portal.”
I nodded, hardening myself against the pain I knew the family would be feeling in a few hours when they realized their daughter was gone and not coming back.
Levi was Eli’s half-brother. The two hated each other—or at least Eli hated Levi, I wasn’t exactly sure where Levi stood with their relationship. He was a pretty closed book on everything. And finding him amongst the smattering of familiar faces at The Lodge had been almost as big of a shock as finding Bishop alive and well.
Levi’s place here made sense though. He’d always been such a nebulous figure, not entirely wrapped up in The Guild the way that the rest of us were, always operating on the outskirts.
More surprising still was the realization that Levi wasn’t just a protector.
Of course, after three months, I still had no fucking clue what the hell he was. He clearly had no inclinations to share with the class. He’d given us zero information about who the fuck his father was.
Or what his father was, more like. He wasn’t in the picture, but he’d clearly gifted his spawn with powers that reached beyond the protector spectrum.
The only confirmation I had that he was something a little more than I’d believed was his ability to blur the memories of humans, but his secrecy led me to question whether there was more he was hiding.
Still, I couldn’t complain, as frustrating as he was. His ability made him a hell of an asset on these missions.
Vampires could lightly compel humans, so when they were being careful, humans rarely remembered those encounters. Sloppy vampire attacks were the reason for all the conspiracy message boards that humans liked to frequent in the dark hours of night, when the existence of monsters seemed all the more possible.
With werewolf attacks, intervention was rarely needed. Those humans almost never survived. And when they did, they often made sense of the encounters, revisioning the experience as if it were with an irregularly-sized wolf instead, or a bear.
Lust demons were far more rare and almost impossible for humans to detect, to trace back to the source. Humans just felt consumed with ecstasy, and then, slowly, they died.
But now that there were large-scale attacks constantly, and new kinds of demons emerging from the woodwork, it was becoming increasingly important to cover the supernatural community’s tracks, for as long as we could.
It was a mission we would inevitably fail, and soon—but we were buying as much time as possible.
Our mission had been a quick one, but turned out more complicated than we’d expected. We thought the family had been attacked by a vampire—there were a few reports of blood-drained victims in the area and animal attacks. A lot of the demons newer to this realm were less interested in erasing their footprints—they didn’t have lives here yet worth protecting.
But when we intercepted a more recent call reporting a girl disappearing, it seemed that a vampire hadn’t attacked the family at all.
Instead, a portal had been ripped open, their eldest daughter pulled through to who knew where. It explained some of the heightened attacks in the area, but it was shocking all the same. By the time we’d arrived, the portal seemed to either have closed or moved somewhere else, unreachable.
When we walked in, the family had been staring at a spot in their backyard, the son holding his hand up and waving it through the air like he expected his fingers to catch onto something. He’d been the one who’d watched her fall through, who’d called the emergency line.
Convincing a human that they’d been attacked by a rabid wolf instead of a werewolf was a lot easier to do than explaining away their sister’s disappearance into thin air before their very eyes.
“They can’t stay here.” I scanned the yard through their window, trying to notice a shimmer or suggestion of a seam. Was it really gone or was it just dormant for the time being? I considered tracking down Claude, but I knew he wouldn’t be able to do much. Last we’d heard from him, the barriers between the realms had been wearing thin in places, tearing in unexpected locations that set the whole world off balance. “Portals are too unstable, we have no way of knowing if it will open up here again when we leave. Or if it’s even really gone.”
Levi cracked his neck as he tilted his head from side to side, looking as exhausted and drained as I felt. “We burn the place down.” He shrugged, surveying the land, the huddled family. “With any luck, they’ll assume their daughter was lost to the fire and try to move on with their lives—somewhere else.”
I took a step back, like he’d struck me. “You can’t seriously be suggesting that we take everything from them now? They might never see their daughter again as it is. To take even more from them seems so—well, heartless.”
“They won’t see their daughter again, Declan. She’s gone. The best we can hope for is that she met a quick, painless death the moment she stepped through. Humans aren’t built to survive that kind of magic. Even supernatural creatures die from that kind of power, especially when it’s an unprotected entry point like this one.”
I knew he was right. We’d heard reports of demons appearing in random locations, torn apart from the shadow magic of unstable portals.
“I know it seems harsh.” His lips flattened into a tight line. “But it’s the cleanest option we have. They can’t stay here. We don’t want them coming back. They can go start a life somewhere else. It’s hard, but they’re lucky.”
“How the fuck is any of this lucky?”
He shrugged, and I noticed that he seemed to be actively trying not to look back at the family, like their trauma and pain were contagious. Maybe he was right. “The portal could have taken them all. It didn’t. They still have each other. That seems pretty lucky to me, all things considered.”
I took a deep, heavy breath as I swallowed down the fight building in my throat. I knew he was right, pragmatically speaking. The world was practically imploding. It had literally torn open in their backyard. But that didn’t make any of this easier, any less cruel. “How many more do you think there are?”
Unguarded portals? Human deaths? Families affected by the imbalances in our world? I wasn’t sure what question I was even asking him.
“Honestly?” He shook his head. “I have no idea. More than we can assist with or even find, that much is certain.”
I ground my molars together, searching for a problem I could actually solve—and I found myself looking everywhere in the small room but at the family in the corner.
“Any news from your mom?” I asked him, nodding to Ro and the others that it was time to go.
“Atlas?” He studied me for a moment, considering. “He’s not doing well.”
My teeth clenched and I nodded, knowing that I wasn’t going to get much more out of him. Levi and Eli’s mom was still at Headquarters, doing everything she could to slowly feed us information.
Guilt churned low in my belly, knowing that we’d eventually have to tell Eli that the half of his family he tried to pretend didn’t exist was working closely with us…and that his father was a werewolf.
Still, even with that sorry state on the horizon, I’d give just about anything to have him and Max back.
Living without them, trying to create a semblance of a life at Lake Cadaver, with the Defiance, felt like I was leading a shadow life. Things just felt empty, wrong, without them with us.
I would take on just about anything the world had to throw at us, but I wanted my team at my side. They were what made this fight worth fighting.
“How bad?” Ro asked, as he joined us, the others keeping a little bit of a distance. They trusted us, but it was clear that we were still outsiders.
I couldn’t even blame them. Joining the Defiance was a ballsy move, one that would be met with death if The Guild caught wind. They had no proof we wouldn’t go running back to our families with a list of names and locations.
The corner of Levi’s lips turned down.
I clenched my teeth. Bad bad then.
I gripped the hilt of my blade until my knuckles cracked from the pressure. “We need to get him out of there, take the labs down—do something. We can’t just leave them down there.”
Atlas. Sarah. Who knew who else was down there now with the council and Tarren on a massive power trip.
“Burn it all down is nice in theory.” Levi shrugged, a cruel grin on his lips. “But in practicality, we don’t have the capacity to take on the council. Not if our goal is survival.”
Fuck survival, I wanted fucking justice.
“I get that Atlas is your friend,” he continued, “but we can’t sacrifice everything we’ve built for one person. When we have the numbers, the strength to take on The Guild, we will. But you have to remember that not everyone there is an enemy—and it’s not going to be easy to parse those with us from those against us once The Guild’s truths are revealed.”
“Still not going to share what the long-term plans are?” I asked, grinding my teeth together to keep the anger from lining my voice. “I think we’ve proven you can trust us.”
Ro set his hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
He wanted Arnell and the others extricated safely too—we all had people we loved in the clutches of a council that wasn’t working for them.
“I don’t know, Declan. Going to tell me where my brother is? Or the girl he follows around like a lost puppy? Or how she wields fire and teleports? Or how you came to learn what you have about Guild histories? Or where exactly you and your team fit in this chaotic mess of things? Or—”
“Okay, okay, we get it.” Ro shot him a dark look. “We’re all keeping secrets.”
“Yes,” Levi nodded, “and you and your group have been allotted more than your fair share. We’ve trusted you enough to let you in, to provide you shelter and a purpose for now, but if you want in deeper, that’s on you to rectify.”
Fucking asshole.
I understood his frustration, but I was so fucking sick of secrets.
But honestly, as annoying as Levi could be, it was a surprise that the Defiance told us as much as they had. And they’d saved Seamus, so we owed them. But why keep secrets at all? We already knew where they were, we knew—fuck.
I glanced at Levi. “Your memory trick. That work on protectors and demons too? Or just humans, like with vamps?”
His lips flattened into a thin line again, jaw muscle pumping as he said nothing.
That was why they’d extended as much rope as they had. Levi could distort any memories on the surface if he wanted, if we betrayed them. Or they’d just kill us, whichever was easier, cleaner.
A shiver shook me to my core at that kind of power. Our histories, our memories—that was what made us who we were.
The Guild had already proven what could happen when history was distorted by malevolent pens.
We just had to hope that Levi—and any others like him—was as moral as the Defiance led us to believe.
After committing arson and getting the family to a safer locale, our trip home was uneventful. I tried to sleep through it, my mind concocting dreams of Max that alternated between the horrifying and the salacious.
But as we pulled onto the long winding road that led to the entrance, my heart stopped.
A familiar thrum pulsed through me, one I always associated with her.
Wait.
Could she—
I gripped Ro’s hand where it lay next to me on the seat, focused on the feeling deep in my chest, an awareness growing, a familiar pull.
Ro turned to me, brows lifted in concern. “What’s up, you okay? Bad dream?”
“I think,” I squeezed his hand, my smile so big that my cheeks strained with the pressure. “I think they’re back.”
We hardly waited for the car to stop rolling as it turned up the drive, ignoring Levi’s cursing as we bolted. I felt Ro at my back as l I followed the strange, surreal sense that brought us to the front door of our cabin.
With a deep breath, I turned the knob, hoping like hell I wasn’t just imagining things.
“Hey, you’re back.” Eli’s face lit up with a genuine, rare smile that instantly transformed him into a younger version of himself. He closed his arms around me, engulfing me in a hug so tight that it literally took my breath away.
I heard Ro calling for Max as he pushed in behind me, heard the collision of his hug when he found her, the heavy grunt as they both lost air from the squeeze.
“You’re okay?” My question came out strangled from the pressure of Eli’s hug, but I didn’t care.
He was here, he was back, and in one piece it seemed.
His response was just a grunt, as he gave me one big squeeze and finally pulled back a bit so that I could see him properly. “I’m okay. You?”
I nodded, sniffled, and looked down, embarrassed by the glaze of happy tears that blurred my vision.
“Oh Dec, such a softy.” I heard the grin in his voice as he ruffled the top of my head, mussing up my hair like I was a dog.
With a shove, he backed off.
And then I saw her.
Dark brown eyes met mine over Ro’s shoulder. Her smile was bright and white and filled with so much radiance that my heart literally stuttered at the sight of it.
I knew it would be a few minutes before Ro let his sister go—and she held onto him with equal ferocity—so I contented myself in the meantime with simply laying eyes on her.
