Bound Guardian Angel (2 page)

As long as he could
find
Brak.
Because while he’d rescued his father, he still had no idea where
to find his brother. All he knew was that Brak had been there, in
his cell. There had been no mistaking Brak’s wraithlike essence
inside his body, calming him, healing him, doing what Brak had been
born to do. Doing what Mother had given him the power to do before
they’d even been born.

A shiver of guilt rippled through him as
thoughts of his mother touched his mind. His father and Brak were
still alive, and he had found his salvation, but his mother was
still dead, and it was his fault. All his fault.

He hung his head and trudged up a flight of
stone steps as the guards guided him to his freedom. A freedom
coated with fresh guilt over what had happened so long ago. Guilt
over the death and sorrow he’d brought to his family.

He scoffed silently to himself. He wasn’t
free. He was still imprisoned by what he’d done, and he always
would be. Not even Brak could soothe this torment. If anything,
knowing Brak and his father were alive worsened his anguish,
because now he had to face the past. He could no longer hide from
it. The moment he saw them again, the truth of his actions would
detonate inside his mind. God help him and anyone near when that
happened, because he had no idea how bad the mental rupture and
resulting fallout would be.

Outside, Trace took his first breath of
non-stagnant air in over two weeks. God, it smelled good. Fresh.
Not like stale sweat and bodily waste.

The guards shoved him into the back of a
conversion van outfitted with bars and uncomfortable metal benches
on both sides. One of the guards hooked his chains to the floor.
Then the doors slammed shut. A few seconds later, the van jerked
forward and bounced over what felt like a pothole before pulling
out onto smooth pavement.

It was a short drive to the processing and
pickup location, which didn’t give him much time to dwell on what
would happen when he saw his father and brother again. Besides, at
the moment, the one thing dominating his thoughts was how he needed
Micah to dominate him. Once Micah had beaten his power into
submission, there would be more room inside his head to sort out
his family issues.

Less than five minutes later, the van
slowed, turned off the road, and then came to a stop. The doors
opened, he was unhooked, and then guided into a small, white-brick
building that looked more like a weigh station than a military
outpost for King Bain. Then again, maintaining a low profile was
crucial for vampires to remain hidden among humans. A sign
declaring the building as an outpost for King Bain would raise
eyebrows.

Inside, the guards removed his shackles and
secured him inside yet another cell. At least this one had a chair,
a small bed that folded away from the wall, and an actual toilet.
Five-star accommodations compared to where he’d spent the last
fifteen days.

The cell door clanked shut behind him, and
all four guards seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief as
they headed away.

“Finally,” one said with an air of
satisfaction.

“Yeah, man. I’m glad to be rid of that one,”
said another. “He gave me the willies.”

“What a freak,” said another.

Freak.

The word struck something deep inside
Trace’s soul, and he flinched as if he’d been snapped with a wet
towel.

The guards’ laughter rang out, taunting him,
hitting him like a fist.

A painful image launched unbidden from deep
within his memory. Flashes of smoke and fire flickered between
images of being hit, kicked, punched, and shoved face-first into
the dirt.

“No . . . stop.” His
strangled voice locked inside his throat as he staggered backward,
throwing his arms out in front of him as if he could push the
memories away. His heel hitched against the toe of his other boot,
and he fell, landing hard on his ass. Driving his heels into the
floor, he pushed away from the cell door until he hit the wall.

Freak!

The insult from his childhood snapped inside
his head as flashes of fists and boots swung toward him.

“No . . . please. Don’t.” He
grimaced and shielded his head with his arms, cowering, tucking his
head between his knees and curling into a ball inside the cell.

Look at the little freak! He’s
scared.
Laughter rang through his mind.

He winced and tried to block out the memories of his
childhood nemesis, Mason, and his pack of followers as they teased
and taunted him. He’d only been twelve years old at the time, his
hair as long as Brak’s, hanging in dirty strands around his face.
Back then, dirt had been a way of life for a young boy who played
in the woods and helped his mother dig up roots and herbs for her
tinctures. But constantly being covered in dirt hadn’t made him
popular with the other kids in the small town.

The painful memory sped up, playing out like
a fast-forwarded movie as he saw Mason and his friends circle him,
shouting, laughing, throwing dirt and pebbles at him. A pebble hit
him in the cheek, and Trace flinched, slapping his palm over the
side of his face.

Tears squeezed out around his eyelashes. He
was that young boy again. The discarded little boy all the other
children made fun of, bullied, and ignored.

“No.” He ducked and covered his head with
his arms again as Mason began slapping him in his memory.

It felt so real, as if he were really being
hit, really being kicked.

The memory surged forward, and Trace was on
his back, blood gushing from his nose from where Mason had hit him.
The others—including Beth, the little strawberry blonde he’d had a
crush on—stood around him, laughing. Laughing and pointing. Calling
him names.
Lumpish toad. Flogging cully. Freak. Sissy.
Crybaby.
The insults echoed in his ears, repeating over and
over like he was in a cave where sound carried on forever.

Then Mason knelt and grabbed a rock from
Trace’s collection. Trace never left home without the small leather
pouch his father had made for him. He kept all the rocks he’d
collected inside it. He even took the pouch to school. He loved
those rocks, collected from his family’s nomadic travels. But his
favorite was the one he’d found on the shore of the gurgling brook
near his home. The one in Mason’s hand now. It was white quartz
flecked with black obsidian.

Trace rolled and shot forward, on his hands
and knees, and reached for the rock. “Give it back!”

Mason jerked it away as he darted toward the
pond, laughing.

Pressure mounted inside Trace’s body. His
muscles tightened. His right hand twitched. Pain lanced his skull,
making him wince even as his senses honed to razor sharpness. He
could hear the ants skittering across the ground, taste his own
humiliation, smell the contempt of his persecutors, and feel the
invisible droplets of humidity in the air as they landed on his
skin. If not for the tears clouding his vision, the grains of earth
at his feet would have seemed like boulders.

Must leave. Must get away.

Something bad was about to happen. He didn’t
know how he knew, but he did.

“Give it back, Mason!” He unfolded himself
and crouched, scurrying to gather the rest of his beloved rocks, so
sparkly and beautiful. They were all he had that belonged solely to
him. Collected by his own two hands.

As he tried shoving them into the leather
pouch, his right hand shook so violently that half the small rocks
dropped back onto the ground.

“Where are you going,
Tracy
?” One of
Mason’s friends shoved him from behind.

He flew face-first into the dirt, scuffing
his cheek on a patch of gravel. The scent of his own blood lit
inside his nostrils like metallic vapors.

“Let me go.” His voice whispered out of
him.

“What?”

“S-stop. I need my mother.” Mother would
know what was happening to him. She could stop this terrifying
strangeness.

His whole body trembled, the pressure
building, tightening his insides like he was being wound up like a
top, spun tighter and tighter.

“Look at the freak!” Mason roared with
laughter, pointing at him.
“He needs his mommy!”
He kicked
dirt and rocks toward him. “Scrawny little piggy with your silly
rocks! Why do you even collect these stupid things?” He eyed the
white and black stone in his hand.

“Just give it back!” Trace tried to sit up
but couldn’t. Whatever was going on inside his body wouldn’t let
him.

The howls and whoops of the others echoed in
his ears, suddenly sounding far away, like he was in a cave.

He clawed, trying to find purchase on
anything that would give him leverage to push himself up.

Mason turned the lump of quartz over and
over in his hands, sneering. “I think I’ll keep this,” he said with
pompous propriety.

Rage rocketed through Trace’s muscles. No!
That was
his
rock.
His
prize. He would
protect
it. Mason would
never
take what belonged to him!

Righteous fury ballooned within Trace’s
soul.

“Better yet . . .” Mason
glanced over his shoulder toward the pond. He laughed, and the
sound was like acid to Trace’s ears.

What happened next played out in slow
motion, stretching through time, even though it only took seconds.
Mason fisted the piece of quartz, cocked his arm, and threw the
rock as hard as he could toward the center of the pond.

Trace’s heart froze. His gaze zoomed in on
his prized treasure as it hurtled toward the overcast sky then
down, down, down . . .

The moment it broke the water’s surface,
Trace’s right arm shot out almost of its own free will, his fingers
splayed.

“NOOOO!”

All the coiled energy inside him blasted
from his hand.

The earth tremored as a low boom sounded.
The trees shuddered. An instant later, each of the children
catapulted away from him as if they’d been snapped back by a
puppeteer’s string.

Seconds ticked by in the aftermath, but all
Trace could do was stare at his hand, his heart racing, his blood
roaring in his ears. How had he done that? What sorcery had he
inherited from his mother to have such power? Was this the darkness
she’d spoken of and warned him about so many times? He’d felt its
presence before and often toyed with making small objects move,
even though he’d been told not to. But he’d never felt such a
powerful force rise inside him with such intensity.

It terrified him.

Six pairs of eyes turned toward him in
horrified awe.

They were no longer laughing, too frightened
to do anything but gawk.

They were right. He
was
a freak.

“Demon!” Mason’s eyes were wide with fear.
He scurried to his feet. “You’re a demon!” His legs cranked so fast
as he tried to flee that his feet went out from under him. He fell,
caught himself on his arms, pushed off the ground, and sprinted
away as the others did the same, crying and screaming in
terror.

Inside his cell, Trace’s eyes flew open as
the memory came to an abrupt end. He was curled in a fetal position
on the floor, his body a shivering heap, his arms hugging his torso
as if that could stop the teeth-chattering chills drawing his
muscles into tight, spasming masses simply by holding himself.

He’d survived two weeks in King Bain’s
dungeon without going mutant, yet after five minutes of flashing
back to the first time he’d lost control of his power—and the
ultimate price his mother had paid for his lack of discipline—he
was one breath away from tipping the scales. His vision was sharp
enough to see the feathery, microscopic cracks in the ceiling, his
hearing keen enough to hear the scratch of a pen on paper out at
the desk he’d passed on his way back to his cell. Shit was going
critical, and with his voice locking up inside his throat, he could
do nothing but wince and curl more tightly into himself, praying
Micah would get there soon and bring him back from the brink before
he lost control altogether and lost his soul to the beast.

Chapter 2

Cordray stepped out of the bar. There went thirty
minutes of her life she would never get back. All that mind
sweeping, and all she had to show for it was a snippet of thought
about an underground fight club named Grudge Match. That and a bad
taste in her mouth from watered-down beer.

She checked the time on her black MTM
Special Ops Predator watch. Maybe the nine-hundred-dollar watch was
a bit overkill, because, really, when was she ever going to chase a
bounty six hundred feet underwater? But the watch was boss-ass
matte black, durable, cool as shit, and each was individually
numbered and shipped in its own watertight tactical case. So top
that, Rolex. Anyone who thought she was being a diva over her
choice of timepiece could suck it. She liked what she liked, and
while she wouldn’t be wearing her Predator to any cocktail parties,
it made her feel extra badass in the field when she was tracking a
bounty, a suspicious dreck, or a wayward vampire who’d jumped to
the wrong side of Bain’s law.

Tonight, she was on the hunt for information
that would help her unravel the truth behind Bishop’s operation.
Someone had to bring that maniacal asshole down and put a stop to
his war-provoking lab experiments on vampires. And since Premier
Royce seemed too preoccupied with staring at his own reflection,
masturbating to the sound of his own voice, or whatever else he did
to turn a blind eye to the destruction a member of his own race was
causing, it looked like stopping Bishop was up to her. After all,
there was only so much her half-brother, King Bain, could do
without risking all-out war.

In the last several months, she and the
members of AKM had uncovered a shit storm of dreck activity, and it
all pointed back to Bishop. Including this bit of intel about
Grudge Match.