Damian's Immortal (War of Gods 3) (4 page)

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 hat. 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.