The Black God (#2, Damian Eternal Series) (28 page)

Bianca placed her hands on Ashley, one over
her heart and one on her forehead. She closed her eyes. The air
around her began to glow blue, the color of her healing magic. It
was soothing and gentle, and Jonny felt some of his worry start to
dissipate under her influence.

“Yeah,” Bianca said finally. “But it’s going
to take some time, Jonny. I need to get her inside.”

Jonny hesitated, not wanting to give up
Ashley, especially not to the White God.

“I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t absolutely
necessary,” Bianca said and touched his hand. “Trust me, Jonny.
Okay?”

He studied his sister and nodded finally.
“Take care of her, B.”

“Anything for my little brother.”

Every once in a while, it was nice to
remember how close they’d been since the death of their father
several years before. The ache of loneliness was always stronger
when he saw his sister and recalled all the reasons why they didn’t
see each other more frequently.

Jonny rose and stepped back, knowing the
Guardians were leery of him being anywhere near one of their
own.

Bianca motioned to her blond haired,
blue-eyed husband, who moved forward to lift Ashley.

Jonny watched for another long moment before
turning away.

Ashley was safe. Despite Valon’s attempt to
kill her, she was going to pull through.

As he Traveled back to Miami, rare fury
filled Jonny. He wasn’t immediately certain what angered him more:
the fact he’d put her in danger or the idea Valon had fucked her up
on purpose. He’d dangled her from the ceiling like a piece of meat
and left her intact rather than handing her over for his vamps to
drain. Calling off the ambush was another clue that Valon was
sending a message.

Jonny had exposed a vulnerability he hadn’t
wanted to acknowledge, and Valon pounced.

“Ikir,
” Charles said the moment Jonny materialized.

Jonny drew a breath to keep from exploding
at his battered second. Charles had been patched up by their vamp
Healer and was limping but still on his feet.

“What is it?” Jonny asked with rare
impatience.

Charles held out a familiar talisman, and
Jonny picked it up. “This is how they know where to ambush us,” he
said, surprised. “They had one, too.”

“Not anymore,” Charles said. “I grabbed that
from one of their Trackers.”

“Let’s hope they don’t have another one,”
Jonny said, considering it. “How many did we lose tonight?”

“Ten from my location. None from the other
teams. Over a hundred of his vamps were there waiting for us.”

Jonny handed back the talisman. “Then we
have four more teams ready to go out again. Send out a Tracker. Any
hit he gets, dispatch a team. Keep up the pressure as long as we
can maintain it. I’m done with this shit. The second anyone spots
Valon, I want to be notified.” He started away, needing an outlet
for his anger.

“Ikir,
” Charles called. “How is the Natural?”

“She’ll survive, but she’s not coming back
here.”

“Very well,
ikir.
”

“Send me the first location the Tracker
finds,” he added. “I’m going to start dealing with these assholes
myself.”

Charles didn’t respond. Jonny knew his
second didn’t agree, but this time, he was quiet, sensing Jonny’s
anger.

Jonny resisted the urge to return to the
Guardians’ compound in Texas and stand over his sister while she
worked on Ashley. Instead, he paced on the beach, his mind on Valon
and the confrontation he knew was coming. Their cat and mouse game
was costing him too much. It was time to take the fight directly to
Valon and end it once and for all.

His toe hit something more solid than sand,
and he knelt. The strange knife Valon had given Ashley was half
buried in white sand. He picked it up. Without the knowledge of
thousands of years of history to guide him, he had no way of
figuring out what the weapon was, or why it was allegedly capable
of disabling him. Faint, cool magic tickled his fingertips. It
didn’t feel strong enough to take on a god, but neither had the
locational talisman the Others used.

He tucked it into his pocket, not about to
let something so simple be the reason Valon defeated him.

“Time for our
one-on-one,
cabron,
” he whispered to the night.

“Am I a prisoner?” Ashley asked, arms
crossed as she stood in the kitchen doorway of the White God’s
sprawling ranch house located on the compound containing his
headquarters. She was weak and tired but healed. She recalled
nothing about what happened from the time she began getting her ass
kicked until she woke up in a quiet guest bedroom in a place she
didn’t want to be the next day.

“Can you cook?” asked the athletic blond man
at the stove.

She snorted. “No.” Dusty was at the top of
the food chain, someone she’d met because of Xander’s importance
but never spent time with.

“Then I guess not,” was his cool, surly
response. “No one else in this fucking house can make a decent
paella. Gotta do it myself.”

Ashley gazed at him quizzically.

“You hungry?” he asked.

She nodded and sat at the breakfast bar.
“You’re Jonny’s sister’s husband, right?”

“I am. I’m also Damian’s ops officer. I
recruit, train and manage the Guardians in the Western Hemisphere.”
Dusty scooped out paella and poured it into a bowl with rice. He
set it on the counter in front of her before returning to the
stove.

Ashley said nothing, suspecting she knew why
he was the one talking to her this morning. She stirred the paella
to help it cool.

“I hear you’ve developed your skill pretty
well,” he added when she was quiet.

“Yeah.”

“You interested in joining up?”

“Not really.”

“Let me rephrase. How hard will you fight
being conscripted?” he asked and sat down two seats from her at the
breakfast bar.

She gave him a sidelong glance, suspecting
the lean man knew more about her than he was letting on. “Pretty
hard,” she admitted. “I like being a college student and doing my
own thing.”

“That shit’s not an option.”

“Why not?”

“Because you fucked with Jonny. Whether or
not you wanted to pick a side, you’re stuck choosing now.”

She took a bite of food. “This is good,” she
said after swallowing. “I hate Jonny and he …” She drifted off. He
didn’t hate her but neither was he really interested beyond the
physical relief she provided.

“He saved your life. Brought you here to
Bianca.”

“I’m sure he had a reason,” she said.

“It’s the first time he’s ever asked us for
anything.”

Ashley’s heartbeat quickened. She didn’t
have the energy for the emotions starting to boil. “Oh, god,” she
said and dropped the spoon. “Brandon!”

“We’re helping on that front,” Dusty
said.

“You know where he is?”

“No but we’re going to work with Jonny to
find him.” He met her gaze. “Like I said. He’s never willingly
asked us for anything before. There’s something more going on than
you being mauled by vamps if he’s willing to approach us for help,
I think.”

“What is it with you people and
interrogating me over the dinner table?” she retorted without heat.
“Xander always does this.”

Dusty gave a faint smile and returned to
eating. “So that’s a yes.”

“I was with Jonny to find Brandon, and
Valon, the ring leader of a the rogue vamps, decided to kick my ass
because I was killing too many of his vamps. That’s it.”

“Good.”

She waited for him to say more. Dusty was
silent. Xander had tried this on her, too, peaked her interest then
dropped something, knowing she’d ask.

“Fine. Why is that good?” she asked.

“Because you don’t belong with him.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “That’s not for
anyone but me to decide.”

“Funny. He said the same thing when Damian
came knocking at his door last week.”

“He’s right. For once.” She tapped her spoon
against the side of the bowl. If it were true she had to pick
sides, she wasn’t going to do it now, before she knew Brandon’s
fate. The coordinates she’d memorized flashed through her thoughts,
and she debated whether or not there was any use in going to them
now that Valon had almost succeeded in killing her and knew she
wasn’t going to hurt Jonny.

“If you want to find your brother, I’ll give
you a team to do it,” Dusty said. “Unlimited support and
funds.”

She stared at him. “Just like that. You’ll
give me whatever I want?”

“Yep. I have a feeling Jonny needs help but
isn’t going to ask for it.”

“What’s the catch?”

“After you find him, you work for me.”

Ashley thought only for a moment. It was a
similar offer to what Jonny had given her without the blood sucking
or sleeping around. She was beginning to think Xander was right to
be suspicious of the Guardians. But to have her own team, to be in
control of how and where she searched for her brother, was too much
to pass up. Brandon was suffering as it was, and she didn’t want to
know what Valon did to him after she pissed him off at the
factory.

When it came to Brandon, there was never a
choice.

“I have conditions,” she said
reluctantly.

“What?”

“You don’t object to me working with Jonny
to find Brandon. He has a way of tracking the vamps and Valon.
Second, Brandon gets to make his own choice about whether or not to
join up. Third, no questions asked. I get to go wherever I want
with my team,” she said.

“Deal.”

Ashley blinked, expecting him to negotiate.
Were they that determined to gain her support? Or was this their
way of outflanking Xander, which seemed to be a goal of White and
Black Gods?

“Okay,” she said. Secretly, she wondered how
she was going to see Jonny again and not want to wrap herself in
his arms. The thought of him made her lower belly warm and her
pulse race. “Okay.”

“When do you want to start?”

“Today,” she said instantly.

“You up for it?”

“Does it matter?”

“You’re the boss.”

Ashley almost smiled. They were giving her
the means to pursue Brandon without strings attached for now. It
was too easy which meant, something horrible was probably in store
with her. She pushed aside the sense of doom, urgent to locate her
brother. Whatever happened tomorrow, she’d deal with it when it
came.

“I have to find Jonny first,” she murmured.
“He’s going to know where to hunt the rogue vamps.”

“I’ve got your team picked out.”

Uneasiness went through her. There was
nothing to fear from the Guardians in a physical sense, but she
also wasn’t quite willing to trust them fully. Their intentions
were likely to be something other than they claimed them to be.
Xander had warned her and Brandon many times against trusting
anyone fully, especially when it came to something that affected
their close knit family.

“Okay,” she said once more. “I need some
clothes and stuff.”

“Taken care of. They’re in your
dresser.”

She waited for him to notice how her hands
trembled or the dark circles under her eyes and change his mind.
Ashley finished eating quickly and retreated to the guestroom where
she’d woken up. She looked around and imagined herself living
there, on the compound.

For reasons she didn’t yet want to face, the
idea was depressing. A key component was missing, even if she knew
a relationship with Jonny wasn’t possible. He wanted nothing to do
with her if he’d turned her over to the Guardians.

At the very least, he was going to help her
find her brother. This much was non-negotiable.

Then why did she feel torn once again, more
interested in seeing Jonny again than leading her own team of
Guardians?

She picked up the cell phone waiting for her
on a nightstand and typed in the coordinates to see where Valon had
wanted her to go. The result was a patch of green in the middle of
the pacific northwest, far from any neighboring town or city with
no direct roads she could see. Had she not memorized them
correctly? Or was this where he intended to trap her?

She sat down, more tired than she wanted to
let on. She wasn’t about to let Brandon suffer a second longer than
necessary, no matter which devil she had to make a deal with.
Ashley changed quickly before picking up the phone to send a text.
Jonny had kept her and Brandon’s phones. She suspected he’d get her
message if she sent it to both phones.

I’m going after
Brandon.
She tapped the send button and
tucked the phone away. “I hate you, Jonny,” she murmured,
conflicted once again. “Why do you threaten to crush my heart and
then go out and save my life?”

She can’t handle fighting vamps!!!

Jonny reread the message from his sister. He
didn’t know what Bianca was talking about, but he was relieved to
know if Ashley was causing someone issues, she was at least alive.
The White God wasn’t likely to let her out of his sight now that he
had her on his compound even if Ashley’s last text seemed to imply
she was going vamp hunting.

For once, Jonny breathed deeply after ceding
one small battle to the White God. He hadn’t yet been able to
suppress the fear he experienced holding her near lifeless body in
his arms despite the long day spent planning with Charles and
Tasha. Ashley in danger wasn’t something he could handle when he
was looking at a confrontation with Valon.

“Ikir
!” The cry came from down the hallway. “Come
quickly!”

Jonny rose from his position kneeling for
some light meditation. His stomach was empty and twisting, his
normal sense of calm not quite coating his anxiousness about
confronting Valon. Too much was at risk for him not to be worried,
for him not to wish he had a little more time to strategize.