The Black God (#2, Damian Eternal Series) (4 page)

“Dammit. I wish I hadn’t lost it.”

“Daylight. After classes we’ll go find it,”
Brandon promised her. “Was I right? Four vamps, three humans?”

“Yep. Right again,” she replied.

He smiled, pleased. “My Natural gift is
getting stronger.”

“And freakier,” she added. “Being around
Xander is bad enough. You having mind manipulation skills isn’t
quite right.”

“Yeah, it kinda sucks sometimes,” he said
with a frown. “Especially on the dating front.”

“At least you have dates!”

“If you weren’t obsessed with vamps, you
would, too. But I’m glad you prefer vamps to guys. I don’t know
what Xander or I would do if you ever brought home a serious
date.”

She’d imagined every scenario possible if
that were to happen, and the results were always the same: her date
got eaten by the resident vamp living with her cousin or had his
mind erased by Brandon. Not that she was interested in guys really
anyway. Not since Jonny. She hadn’t been able to consider dating
after how he’d twisted her up inside and nearly destroyed her
life.

Turnabout is fair
play,
she told herself content to know
she’d beaten up a few of his vamps. The cool ocean breeze rolled
off the bay and swept past her, cooling her down after her
exercise. She breathed it in deeply and started to
relax.

“Got another phone,” she said and dug it out
of her pocket to pass it off to Brandon.

“Awesome.” He accepted it. “Not a burner.
Even better. Might be able to get some real information off this
one.”

“Just tell me where to go to beat up vamps,”
she replied.

“I’m going with you soon,” he said.

“You can’t fight like I can.”

“I can crush minds.”

“You
think
you can crush minds,” she
reminded him. “You’ve never tried it.”

“I already bought a mask.”

She smiled and then giggled. “Because that’s
what makes a superhero successful!”

“I seem to remember a certain sister
claiming that to be the case.”

Ashley laughed. “Okay. True. It does make
you feel like an Avenger.”

“You can be Black Widow and I’ll be …” he
paused, considering.

“The Hulk?”

He eyed her. “No. Thor.”

“Omigod. You are so not Thor! At least I’m
small and quick like Black Widow.”

“And I’m what? Big and green and angry like
Hulk?”

“I was thinking smart like Bruce Banner!”
She laughed. Brandon was tall and lean with dark hair and the same
gray-blue eyes she had.

“Whatever. I’m Thor,” he said firmly. He
looked down at his hand, where he’d written part of his daily to do
list, along with the bus stop times. “C’mon. We’re going to miss
the bus.” He took off at a trot towards the nearest bus stop.

Ashley followed, anxious to get back to the
apartment they shared near the University. Fighting made her
ravenous. Xander and Jessi had refused to let them live off campus
unless they were together. Brandon had the ability to shield them
from discovery by immortals and vamps with his mind skills, a feat
deemed necessary given the involvement of Xander in their lives.
His gift worked best in close quarters.

They boarded the bus and traveled back to
the apartment building, where a huge steak and solid night of sleep
awaited her.

The mewling of a cat greeted them as they
entered the apartment.

“Hey, Cat,” she called cheerfully and leaned
down to scoop up the animal whose eyes glowed red like a vamp’s.
“Oh, Brandon, we can’t forget to get more, uh, kitty food from
Xander.”

“Yeah.” Brandon’s tone was distracted as he
plopped down on his favorite spot on the couch and opened his
laptop.

“We’re not going to ask your daddy where he
gets your food, are we?” she purred to the cat and took it into the
kitchen. Ashley set it down and withdrew its food from the fridge.
The vamp-cat’s blood was disguised as a bottle of wine, and she
poured the thick maroon liquid into the cat’s bowl.

Four years ago, before Xander entered their
lives, she never would’ve seen herself here, pouring blood into a
dish for a vampire kitty. Their lives had changed dramatically.
Even so, she couldn’t think of a better life to have. Her brother
was her best friend, and their cousin Jessi was finally happy after
years of sacrificing so much to raise them after the death of their
parents.

“Eww. Don’t drip,” she told Cat as flecks of
blood landed on the kitchen tile.

Although, at times, she wondered what life
would have been like if she and Brandon hadn’t had their realities
smashed and replaced by a world she never imagined possible.

She padded down the hallway to her room and
closed the door. Ashley tossed the weapons in her cargo pants onto
the bed and turned to face the mirror on the back of her door.

Someone was behind her.

She whipped around, heart in her throat,
only to find no one present. She lowered her guard. Her senses said
no one was there, and she turned around again.

The form was back, a small slender man with
green eyes standing behind her.

She turned again, only to find him gone.

“I’m going crazy,” she muttered.

“No, you’re not,” came the soft
response.

Ashley turned to the mirror and saw him
again. He was smiling, and the air around him seemed to blur and
shift. She reached for her weapon, refusing to take her eyes off
him.

“I’m a friend,” the green-eyed stranger
said. “I’m the Original Watcher.”

“I have no idea what that means,” she
snapped. “What’re you doing in my room?”

“I came to deliver a message.”

She frowned, glaring at him.

“When the time is right, you will remember
me and what I’m about to tell you.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” she
asked.

Who the hell am I talking
to?
Ashley blinked and gazed at herself in
the mirror. She stood in the middle of her room, babbling to
herself aloud. Her knife was in her hand, and her frame tense, as
if she’d been ready to fight someone.

But there was no one present.

“Weird,” she said and searched her room
quickly to ensure her instincts weren’t trying to warn her of
something she couldn’t directly see. She set down her knife and
shivered. Something wasn’t quite right. She felt as if she were
missing something.

“Hey, you cooking tonight?” Brandon called
from the hallway.

Ashley shook off her unease and racked it up
to the night of fighting vamps. “Yeah. Coming!” With one last look
around, she left her bedroom for the kitchen.

“I forwarded the reports on the most
isolated Guardians’ station we could find.”

Jonny glanced up from his phone, where he’d
been skimming through said report. His base in southern Oregon
perched on the ocean and was surrounded by trees. He sat on the
veranda off the top floor in the cool fall sun. “Reading it.”

Even Damian’s most un-secured location was
still a nightmare. No station, however remote, was truly ever
defenseless. Some were located in crowded neighborhoods, some in
more isolated areas, but all had the ability to raise the alarm and
alert the White God within seconds if attacked. The target Charles
had found was located in a tiny city in southern Idaho.

“We confirmed the trunk runs to this one,”
Charles added, referring to the White God’s secret internet network
linking all the stations.

“Four Guardians, two shifts. The house is
never empty and located in a neighborhood,” Jonny said and lowered
his phone. His gaze went to the ocean. “Also warded, I
imagine.”

“Yeah.” The older, more experienced vamp was
studying him. “I see one way in. What do you see?”

Charles had been instrumental in Jonny’s
learning of guerrilla strategy and war tactics as well as strategic
planning. He often took on the role of teacher, and Jonny debated a
moment, assessing the situation as he had been taught. “No direct
attack. No sneaking in with one Guardian always on duty and the
wards up,” he surmised. “We need a distraction to draw them out and
a reason for the wards to be tripped that’ll cover our
activities.”

Charles was waiting.

“We set the house next door on fire, maybe
under the guise of a party.”

“That will work,” Charles confirmed. “With
the addition it should probably be a fire a few houses down that
spreads in their direction. Otherwise, the wards might trip before
the place has to be evacuated.”

Jonny nodded. “It’s Friday. Let’s do it.
Three vamps and you enough?”

“It is.”

“I’ll send Hector and the other team out to
hunt the rogues.” Jonny rose and started back into the house.

“One small issue.”

“What?”

“The talisman. It was taken from the four
attacked at the warehouse last night.”

“Rogues?”

“Vigilante.”

Jonny faced him, surprised. “Some stupid
Natural stole it? How could anyone know what it was?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think this is something Damian is
behind?”

Charles hesitated, pensive. “No. The
Guardians kill without hesitation when a human is in danger, and
the vamps had three humans with them for dinner. This vigilante
didn’t kill.”

“Damian has rogues, too.”
If the situation weren’t so dangerous, Jonny might have been
amused. “So some crazy Natural has been going around beating up my
vamps and now stole something from me.” He shook his head. “I don’t
have time for stupid shit like this, Charles! How does some
pinche idiota
get a hold
of something like this?” Of Cuban heritage, he often resorted to
cursing in his native Spanish when he was upset.

“It’s unclear what his intentions are. I
don’t see a lot of thought in his pattern of attacks. This is the
second attack on our guys after six straight in a row on the
rogues. His movement is restricted to the downtown San Diego area,
within a window between sunset and midnight, and only Thursday
through Sundays. We can set a trap for him pretty easily and get
the talisman back.”

“With what people?” Jonny demanded,
irritated. “I’m down half already, and those remaining are tasked
four times over. Our new recruits keep getting hijacked by the
rogues because we don’t have the manpower to guard them. I feel
like we’ve lost and just don’t know it yet.”

“We haven’t lost,” Charles said quietly.
“You’re the Black God. In the end, you are destined to win. The
rogues are prolonging their own sentences by opposing you. This is
a stage of growth, one that’s painful but one we’ll get through and
be all the better for when it’s over.”

Charles’ calm helped Jonny restore his. He
had gotten good at handling the constant stress of his job, though
every once in a while, he lost his cool. “Yeah. I guess.” Jonny
sighed. “You handle the Guardian mission, and we’ll send Hector and
Tasha out as planned. I’m free. I’ll head to downtown San Diego
tonight and see if my gifts give me any more insight into what’s
going on. Maybe I can trap the vigilante and vamp him since he
seems to be able to handle any vamp he finds.”

“He’s definitely gifted to fight.”

“It’d be useful against Valon’s vamps, and I
need that talisman.” Jonny strode into the house and to his bedroom
to change. His dinner from the nights before – the redhead – was
kept occupied in her own room until nightfall. She was brainwashed
by his magic, incapable of knowing her danger or even what he
really was. She thought they’d been lovers for years and he went to
work during the day.

In a week, when she was completely drained,
she’d be removed from his home by one of his vamps and either
returned to her hometown or thrown into the ocean. He didn’t ask
where the bodies of his evening meals went; he just wanted them
gone. There was a part of him that still wasn’t fully settled with
waking up next to a dead body come daylight, even if he had no
problem bedding and biting them at night.

He’d wanted to be the first to sign up for
his catch-and-release program. Charles, however, convinced him he
needed the show of power that came with being the only one in the
organization allowed to kill.

He dressed in clothing more suitable for a
college student than a god and tucked his phone into the back
pocket of black jeans.

Charles awaited him obediently outside his
room. Jonny glanced at him as he emerged into the hallway and
headed towards the stairs to the ground floor. He had grown
accustomed to being waited on hand and foot by the loyal vamps. It
no longer surprised him to find someone in the hallway at all times
of the day and night, ready to jump if he told them to.

“I have three. Toby, Elijah and Liam,”
Charles reported. “They’re assembling now. Any instructions on what
to do if the Guardians return before the mission is complete?”

“Kill the Guardians, avoid killing humans.
And make sure no one ever figures out what we’re really doing
there. Make it look like some random vamp attack.”

Charles nodded. “Damian will likely come
calling.”

“I can handle him. I want reports before and
after.”

“Of course.”

Jonny checked his watch. It was close to
five. “Go.”

“Leonard and Stu will be in the ops center
in case you need anything.”

Jonny nodded before
summoning his magic and Traveling to Seaport Village in San Diego.
The street sellers lining the boardwalk were starting to pack up as
the shadows lengthened. The evening crowd began to clog the
boardwalk. He strolled down the wide sidewalks, observing those
around him with absent interest before turning his gaze to the bay.
His heightened senses would pick up a Natural, Guardian or vamp a
mile before he saw them. He was reading none of them around, just
normal humans strolling along with loved ones, completely unaware
of who he was. Of
what
he was.