Wasteland (23 page)

He faced me and crinkled his forehead. “It’s nice to see you have your humor about you. The nap and three meals must have helped.”

“Yes. I’m feeling better.” I glanced at him. “The burn worsens when I’m separated from her, though.”

“All the more reason to fully believe the prophecy to be true, is it not?”

But I’m evil.

“How can you doubt? You’ve loved Beka since the minute you saw her. I saw you in the bar that first night watching her.”

I nodded.

“Your body has craved her touch as hers has for you since that meeting.”

“She tells you such things?”

“We’ve been together for centuries, I know a little about her. I could tell. That was what frightened me so deeply. How could Light be attracted to darkness? But now I see it clearly, my
King.
”

Another growl.

“Growl all you want,
Demon
. I’ve watched her agonize over being separated from you for thirty-five years. It’s been agony witnessing her disappointment every time we thought we’d found you.”

“I did notice the darkness beneath her usually bright eyes.”

“Indeed. Many hours of sleep sacrificed thinking about you, tracking you.”

I sat on the dirt, back against the tree trunk. My knees ached as did the muscles in my back and neck. I needed several more meals to work through the knots in my human muscles from thirty-five years of punishment. I didn’t dare stay in my demonic form long to speed the healing.

“Why couldn’t Jessica just figure out where I was if she is so powerful?”

“Doesn’t work that way. When she sees someone, she sees the truth. The only knowledge she came to supernaturally was that of the prophecy. Beka to unite with an angel. Jessica saw you as the angel.”

I was hardly an angel.

“She looked into some of the demons we’d captured trying to find you, but they knew very little.” Russell sat up. “Okay, I think we’re getting close.”

Beka eased away from the man and offered her hand. He plopped something into her palm and walked away.

“Come on.” Russell stood. “We must hurry. Many demons in this town.”

“Where is Abraham?” I asked as I followed Russell to my Beka.

“Here,” he said from behind us. “Just checking the premises.”

Beka’s green eyes flared at me. “How are you?”

“Feeling better.”

She stepped toward me, hand outstretched. “We will be to Jessica by nightfall. Come, let’s go.”

I slid my hand into hers and reveled in the cool feelings she sent up my arm. It chased the burn away, yet left me pleasantly warmed. She tossed Russell the keys. Gentle hands guided me to the back door and cranked it open. She waved me in.

The small car shook as Russell and Abraham filed into the front seats. “No SUVs available, My Lady?”

“Be thankful we got this one. Drive.” She skimmed her knuckles down the side of my neck. “We’ll get you more food and some clothes at the first gas station we stop at.”

I patted my chest. I’d almost forgotten I was bareback and barefoot.

She gathered me close. “Rest until then.”

Her cool arm coiled around my neck and coaxed me to her soft body. Her fingers combed through my hair. The car jostled over bumps and turns of the city. Distant horns blared. The air carried a hint of exhaust and gasoline, but the scent of lilac dominated them all, calming me. The gentle sensation of her fingers caressing my scalp lulled me into a state of hypnosis.

“How can you want someone like me?”

“Your soul is pure, just tainted by an evil contract. I see your soul. Jessica sees your soul.”

I nestled closer to her neck. Her pulse thumped against my forehead. “You sound so sure.”

“I am.”

I didn’t share her confidence. “How did you know that before Jessica said I was to be your mate?”

“I can’t explain it. First saw you in the club, so stiff and tense, cringing every time someone touched you.” She let out a chuckle. “But you were so beautiful. So innocent looking.”

“Hardly.”

“My heart, soul and body had never reacted so intensely to a man before. Well, to be honest, it never had.”

“How can you care for someone who has killed your kind before?”

“You sound like Russell now.” She kissed my hair. “That was the contract. You wouldn’t have done that otherwise.”

Fatigue tugged my eyelids closed, but I wanted to stay awake, to feel her close to me. “Tell me more about you.”

“My family members were the Guardians in Bulgaria. We’d guarded the area for centuries. I was born to my parents already a Guardian. Usually we go through the transformation at puberty or shortly after, but from birth, I was magical.” She settled in the seat and let out a long sigh. “My dad—I can still remember him even though so many centuries have passed since I last saw him.”

She combed her fingers through my hair and nuzzled her cheek on the top of my head.

“He and my brother were called to the north. I stayed back to watch over our city. Demons had infiltrated the area, killing innocents frequently. I begged to go with them, but they said no. I was the younger Guardian, despite being fully developed. So, I honored their request.”

She cleared her throat.

“Stayed with your mother?” I asked.

“No. Mother died nearly seventy years earlier doing battle with a legion of demons invading a nearby town. Anyway. My father and brother didn’t return for many moons so I defied their orders and rode my steed toward where they were headed.

“I found the camp, burned to the ground. The remains of their bodies near a fire pit. I recognized the shoes and belts they’d worn amidst the dust. Many humans littered the ground as well.”

I opened my eyes and tilted back. “Demons.”

Her blond locks shifted forward as she dipped her head, and her hand guided my face back to her neck. “My father had been the oldest of our kind, my brother next in line, but since both were killed, that left me. A young Guardian, a handful of centuries old, but the eldest of our kind. Abraham and Russell found me less than a century later and have been with me ever since.”

“We guard our Queen with our lives,” Russell said. “The house of David lives on in Beka.”

The name
House of David
sent me jolting upright.

“What is it?” Beka glanced out the windows.

“House of David?” I inched away from her.

“Yes. You know of it?”

Dread struck me like a sword to the chest. I knew something would happen to come between us. I knew I could never deserve a woman like Beka. I was demon to the core.

“What is it, David?”

“Nothing.” I shook my head. “I—well—I have heard of that name from Master. I remembered the name so vividly because it was mine.” Total lie.

“Yes. They had a long line of Guardians. I am the last, though, until I produce a child.” Her thumb grazed my cheek. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Just hungry again.” I faced forward, staring at the road approaching us as Russell sped on. My world fell into a blur.

I could never tell Beka that I, per contract, was the one who had murdered her father and brother that day in Constantinople.

CHAPTER 34

I sat in the backseat of the car, watching Beka through the gas station store windows, as she navigated the aisles. She disappeared behind an aisle, then popped up, holding a bag. She glanced in my direction.

Always guarding.

She would no longer share those feelings when she learned I killed her brother and father. The last of her line. I remember the day like it happened yesterday and not so long ago. My second assignment. To bring young Alexander Malka—a demon to be—to Master. I’d tracked the young kid to this camp and within minutes of my arrival, two Guardians showed up.

Master’s Seers had warned me about them. Even gave me their names. Now I understood why.

They fought gallantly, but when faced with a creature such as me, it didn’t matter how gallant. They perished at my hands. I studied my fingers, and a tremor of regret and anger rattled through them. The burn intensified, and my nails darkened. I picked up the acidic scent of fear emanating from my body.

Beka will reject me
.

I cranked on the handle and dashed out of the back seat. My knees creaked with stiffness from sitting. The thermal desert-air hit my bare skin, adding fuel to the invisible flame beneath the surface. I faced a single lane road that paralleled the gas station. Past that, only treetops. Probably another cliff. The sun hung in the bright sky, indicating late afternoon. Sweat popped from my forehead beneath the stifling heat.

One other car next to the pump beside ours sat empty. The woman and child who had occupied the vehicle were in the store. No houses or buildings within sight. Only trees on either side of the meager gas station and a deserted road behind me.

“We’re almost there, David,” Russell said over the top of our car. “Is it tough to fight the flame?”

“Getting tiresome.”

“Hold Beka close, she’ll ease the pain.”

I nodded. My heart cracked at the thought. She wouldn’t want to touch me ever again once she found out I nearly obliterated her bloodline.
How will she ever forgive that? How will she ever accept me?

“What is it, my King?” Russell said.

“I told you to quit calling me that.” I glanced around.

“No one is nearby.”

“It is not that. I am nobody’s King.” I tunneled my hand through my hair and stomped toward the road. Three cars zoomed past. The wake of wind flapped my hair back and sent sand and rock pinging off my skin.

“Not yet you aren’t, but you will be. We’re only an hour from Jessica.”

“It is just weird to hear of Kings and Queens in the twenty-first century, isn’t it?”

“Indeed. But, who are we to fight destiny,
my King
?”

I growled but a scream thwarted my attempt to intimidate Russell. We whirled.

“Look, mommy.” A little girl pointed to the sky. “Wings.”

Beka’s bright wings flapped, holding her fifteen feet above the gas station while Abraham rolled on the ground with two large figures.

“They found us?” Russell sprinted toward Abraham.

Beka darted in my direction, then veered right. A high-pitched squeak rang in my ears. A demon grabbed the little girl. The mom lay on her back unconscious next to the car. Beka drew a dagger from her pant leg.

I dashed to the car. Each step I neared, the more my demon took over.

“Let her go,” I yelled, stopping five feet from the monster.

The tiny girl kicked her legs against the demon’s body. “Lemme go. Lemme go.” Her young voice cracked. She looked at me. Her mouth opened, and a screech rolled off her tongue.

“She sees you for what you truly are, David.” The demon clutched the girl against his chest.

“Yet, you hide behind a human face,” I said.

He morphed into a demon. Elite Guard of course. “I have come to take you back.”

“No.”

A gust of wind signaled Beka landing beside me.

“You side with the Guardians?” he said.

“Yes.” I edged closer.

The monster snaked his fingers around the girl’s neck. “I will kill her.”

“That is the price I will pay for my freedom from the contract.”
Lie
.

Beka gasped.

“This child’s life. You would sacrifice it?”

I inched closer, hoping to get a better position with the lies I spewed. “Wouldn’t you,
Demon
? Have you not sacrificed hundreds of children and adults for the sake of your Master?”

He lifted his chin in Beka’s direction. “You think she’ll want you after she finds out you killed her --”

A woman screamed. The demon turned his head. The mother stabbed something into the beast’s calf. He howled. I leapt, and I slashed. The girl, and the hand that had been holding her, fell to the ground. The mother snatched her into her arms and rolled beneath her car.

I squeezed the demon’s neck.

“If you make it to the Merus and become human, you are fair game.” His smoky breath plowed into me. “You will die. Master already has this planned.

“Then I will die a human.” I raked my nails across his neck, and he melted into a pile of ash and tar.

I turned. Beka stood, wings out wide regarding me with narrowed eyes.

“What did he mean?” she asked.

I hurdled over the shaking mother and daughter, past Beka. My pulse hammered my eardrum. I wanted so much to take Beka into my arms and have her cool this fire for me, but I had better get used to the feeling, because she would surely reject me as her mate.

Master was behind this. No end to his wickedness. He knew he’d lost me to the Guardians. Turning them against me to ruin my chance to be with Beka—perfect revenge. Until he tracked me down and killed me.

“David?”

Russell and Abraham came to her side. “We should leave,” Russell said.

“Yes, Abraham, ready the car,” Beka said, still staring at me. “David, tell me. What did that demon mean?”

My focus bounced from Russell to Beka. “Maybe we should talk after we get to Jessica?” I could get rid of my demon half, live a human life without Beka. She wouldn’t want me for a mate any longer, but at least I’d be free from my demon.

“Tell me now.” She pressed on, her smooth forehead creased.

“He’s a demon. He spews lies. He—”

Beka gasped. “House of David.”

I grimaced and studied my feet. I willed my demon away, but he remained. I would need his strength to accept what I knew would come next.

Rejection.

“House of . . . .” Beka coughed. “It wasn’t because of Master you knew that name, was it?”

My chest tightened.
She knows.

“My true Guardian name, Rebeka David. Daughter to—”

“Samuel David and sister to Jonathon David,” I said, my voice scarcely above a whisper. Finally I faced Beka. “I—”

“How do you know those names?” Russell asked.

I didn’t divert my gaze from Beka, but I saw the realization creep in and darken her eyes. Muscles twitched in her forearm.

“Four hundred,” she said. “You’re four hundred years old. You said—” She coughed. “You said you’d killed Guardians before.”

I tried to morph down to human form but the demon inside refused to let his hold loose. “Beka, I’m—”