Warders, Volume One Read online

  He smirked at me, but he got up and grabbed the garbage can. I was able to sit up, my back up against the headboard, and hold the small garbage can between my knees.

  “Where the fuck am I going, warder?”

  I gave him the address as he threw the quilt off Dylan. I saw that he had shed his denim jacket and hoodie, and only his long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans remained. He looked warm, and I had an urge to reach for him and hold him tight, happy to let his body heat my cold one.

  “You change your mind?”

  “No.” My voice dropped lower. “Why? Did my smell change?”

  “Little bit, yeah.”

  Kyries and their damned noses. Who needed a bloodhound?

  I sighed deeply. “Don’t forget his sneakers.”

  He muttered under his breath as he grabbed Dylan’s shoes from where they were shoved under his bed. He tucked the rucksack under his arm, picked up Dylan in his arms, and just as the smaller man started to open his eyes, the room wavered, began to warp and shift, the shape stretching and pulling. My stomach lurched, and I tried really hard not to lose it, but in the end it was inevitable. I emptied the contents of my stomach, retching hard.

  Warders moved through wormholes, but even the strongest of us could only do it once, maybe twice in one day. I had never been able to pull it off more than once. Ryan, and now Leith, could go twice. Your body told you if it was possible. You were silent for a moment and when you concentrated, your body either felt hot or cold. Cold meant that you were stuck wherever you were. If you were like Jael, a sentinel, it didn’t matter how tired you got. Sentinels could use displacement to travel because they moved with their minds, just like kyries and most demons. Displacement sort of melted one place into another, and that melting sent out a wave of power that, if you got caught up in it, made you feel like you were being turned inside out. It was like food poisoning except it didn’t last all day. Once whoever was traveling came back, it went away. Waiting through it, however, was horrible. After I threw up, I realized I had to pee. It felt like the night would never end.

  A long time later, there was a knock on the bathroom door.

  “You all right in there, warder?”

  He couldn’t just use my fucking name? “Fine,” I growled back as I hung on for dear life to the side of the sink.

  I had crawled off the bed, dragging the stupid metal wastebasket with me. After flushing the contents down the toilet, I managed to put the garbage can in the shower to rinse it out. And that was all I could do. I had to sit on the floor and gather my strength for a few minutes. Moving again, I crawled to the sink, which is hard to do in a sheet, and got first to my knees and then slowly, awkwardly, finally, to my feet. I splashed cold water on my face and used the hotel toothbrush and toothpaste to brush my teeth, rinsing away the taste of vomit. I felt better after that for a second before I slid back down to the floor.

  “Can you walk?” he asked through the door.

  “Can you?”

  “Barely.”

  “Get in bed; I’ll be there when I can.”

  “Sounds hot, I wish I had the energy to fuck you.”

  Fuck me? Nobody fucked me. “I do the fucking,” I yelled back, correcting him.

  “Whatever, just hurry the hell up, I’m freezing.”

  His body temperature was dropping. I had asked a lot of him. He had purified water to drain poison out of me, which took a lot of strength, and then I had asked him to move Dylan. It had been selfish, but I had no alternative. Dylan needed to have a monster-free life, and I was going to make sure he got it.

  I wanted to walk back into the room, but I ended up crawling. Once I made it to the bed, I collapsed beside Raphael, who was facedown and not moving. He was naked, and I noted the dark bronze color of his skin. He was strong and muscular, with a carved physique that came from using his body as a weapon on a daily basis. I had no doubt he was a formidable fighter even if I had never seen him in battle.

  “Can you move?”

  “A little,” he sighed. “Why? What do you have in mind?”

  “If you can let me hold you then I can wrap the blanket around the both of us.”

  He lifted up, slid over, and slipped his leg over my thigh, draping it between my two, before he put his head down on my shoulder, pressing his face into the side of my neck. Like we had been lovers for years, we notched into position with the easy slide of skin over skin, warmth jumping between us immediately. I pulled the thick down comforter up and tucked it around the both of us.

  “Christ,” he groaned. “You smell good.”

  I grunted. “So you dumped him and he was okay?”

  “He was sleeping when I left.”

  “Good. Thank you.”

  “He’s gonna be mad as hell when he wakes up,” he grumbled, nuzzling in tighter.

  I had no doubt. “Did you kill the harpy?” I asked quickly. Now that Dylan was gone I was able to focus on other things.

  “No, and she’s gonna be really pissed when she resurrects in a few hours. I know you saw her in pieces, but I would have to burn her alive to kill her. Chopping her up into pieces only slows her down.”

  “I don’t know anything about the demons I fight; I’m not the brains of the operation, that’s more Leith and Marcus.”

  “Just kill the bad guy, that’s all warding really is.”

  “So you killed all the others?”

  “I killed the duatin and the woral, but Vienna got away.”

  “The guy talking was the––”

  “Woral,” he said, shivering.

  I wrapped my arms around him and tucked his head under my chin. “I’m not trying to––”

  “You think I care if you lie here naked next to me?” he asked gruffly. “I don’t give a shit. I’ve had plenty of men in my bed over the years.”

  “Women too?”

  “Yes.”

  “How ’bout those bug things?” I teased him, which wasn’t like me at all. I might have been a little more out of it than I thought.

  The silence made me smile.

  “You did not just say that,” he growled at me.

  I coughed so I wouldn’t laugh. I was definitely in a strange mood.

  “Listen,” he said after several long minutes, stirring me from the almost sleep I had fallen into. “When you get up and you’re rested… would you give me some blood?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I need blood.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t heal like you do, and the fight and purifying the water and then taking care of your boy… I’m drained.”

  “And my blood will help?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you weren’t a vampire,” I teased him.

  “I’m not.”

  “But you wanna bite me.”

  “Very much,” he said, lifting his head to look down at me, eyes flashing dangerously in the low light of the room.

  I smiled, letting out a deep breath.

  “I would love to sink my teeth into your throat. Like I said––you smell fuckin’ great.”

  “You saved my life,” I said, my voice husky and soft, “thank you.”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “I wanna help you, but….” I trailed off.

  “Trust me, I won’t take enough to hurt you.”

  I studied his face. I owed him my life.

  “Why would I want to kill you, warder? I just saved you.”

  His argument seemed logical.

  “Please.”

  I exhaled deeply. “Okay, but do it now. That way I can just rest and not have that to look forward to when I wake up.”

  “Are you certain?” he asked even as he bent and opened his mouth on my throat, licking the salt from my skin. “You have to be sure.”

  I pressed my neck into those lengthened canines of his. “I’m sure. I owe you this.”

  “Tell me I can, give me the words,” he said, his voice thick as he sucked in his breath.


  “You can, I pay my debts.”

  He sucked hard, then licked again and sighed deeply.

  “Will it hurt?”

  “Only for a moment.”

  “Okay.”

  “Willingly, you give me your blood.” He shivered hard. “Warder… Malic… I think perhaps I will take you with me to the pit. You’re extraordinary.”

  Stupid was what I was, and I got that a second later when his teeth skewered into my skin. Maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t the best idea I ever had.

  It hurt for a second, he hadn’t lied, but the pinprick was followed immediately by a rush of heat that swept through my body. I heard him swallowing as I felt my body get heavy, sinking down, down, into the bed. I was so tired. One of his hands slipped over my heart, the other was on my chin, holding me still. I took a last breath and fell through the floor.

  There was only black.

  V

  WAKING UP to a glowering Ryan Dean was a mixed bag. The man was very easy on the eyes, and seeing him in nothing but jeans, leaning over me, hand on my forehead, the other on my heart, was nice. Close up or far away, he really was a treat to look at. On the other hand, he annoyed the crap out of me. And just as I suspected, the minute he opened his mouth he was an annoying dick.

  “Are you stupid or are you new?”

  I groaned and closed my eyes.

  “Open your eyes!” Marcus roared at me.

  I opened them slowly because they were really heavy as Marcus climbed onto the bed from wherever he’d come from and crawled across to reach me. Once there, he dropped over me, his head on my heart.

  “I’m obviously breathing, asshole.”

  The pinch to my hip hurt like being branded. He had the five-second pinch that my grandmother used to have. It was a twist of skin and then he let go, and you thought for a minute that it wasn’t going to hurt and then came the burn.

  “Fuck,” I growled at him, rubbing it fast. “Marcus, you shit.”

  He leaned up, hovering over me, and I saw the pain in his eyes. The others would be worried and annoyed, he was worried and hurt. Because he was the best friend I had, and it went both ways. We didn’t spend as much time as we wanted together—his hearth, Joseph Locke, was the reason for that, as we were like oil and water—but….

  “Hey, that’s funny,” I said, thinking of something.

  Cognac-colored eyes settled on my blue ones.

  “All Jael’s warders are gay. That’s funny, right?”

  “Jael isn’t gay.”

  “I didn’t say Jael was, I said his warders are.”

  Marcus just stared at me.

  “What’d I do that you’re lookin’ at me like that?”

  “You almost died,” Ryan said after several minutes of silence where Marcus just kept staring. “What in heaven’s name would make you submit to a kyrie? You know better’n that.”

  I did? “Is it bad?” I was guessing it was bad. From the look he was giving me, I was guessing it was very bad. “Why don’t you have a shirt on?” I noticed then that Marcus didn’t, either. “What the hell?”

  “We’ve all been taking turns lying in bed with you for the last three hours,” Ryan barked at me. “All of us except Jackson. Your heart remembered to beat because hearing ours reminded you that it was supposed to. The skin on skin was needed so your body remembered that it was supposed to warm itself––shit, Malic, you know this.”

  I did.

  “If you have a fuckin’ death wish, it would be better if you just let us know so we would stop trying to fuckin’ save you!”

  I reached up, pulled the pillow out from under the back of my head, and covered my face with it. Maybe I could pay him to go away.

  “Malic––” Ryan began.

  “No.” Jael’s voice filled the space. “Malic, look at me.”

  I lifted the pillow so I could see my sentinel.

  “Leave us,” he said softly.

  Marcus got off the bed and Ryan stalked out of the room. I noticed as he was leaving that there was blood on his jeans.

  “What happened?” I asked Jael, tucking the pillow back behind my head.

  He took a seat on the edge of the bed, squinting, staring down at me and studying my face.

  “I don’t have a death wish,” I defended myself. “I had no idea that––”

  “If you had a hearth, you would allow no other man to put his fangs in you.”

  It was a weird thing for him to say. “If I had a hearth, I doubt he would have fangs.”

  He nodded slowly. “The point being that you are made loyal to one man at a time, Malic Sunden, and if there were one man in your heart, no other could claim it or trick you or almost kill you.”

  “I––he, Raphael, he asked me to let him drink, and since he had just saved my life and he was lookin’ a little shot I figured that donating a pint or so would be a good thing. I figured it would help him out and––”

  “Blood demons and kyries are separated only by what side of the plane they appeared on!” he yelled at me. “There is a balance with everything and so for every blood demon that springs from the pit there is a matching kyrie that rises in limbo. They both drink blood, Malic, one from a desire to kill and the other from the desire to enslave. A kyrie is not good. A kyrie is inherently evil just like a blood demon. They are not to be trusted, and they are not your friends.”

  I never doubted Jael, he was my sentinel, but really… did he know all the facts in this instance? “He saved me. He could have let them rip me apart but he saved me instead. And he took a friend home for me. He helped me.”

  “Are you sure he took your friend home?”

  I thought about that, thought about the bored way I had been answered at the time, Raphael’s interest in me over Dylan. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  He scowled at me. “Rindahl went to you because his hearth wanted to invite you to dinner and found the kyrie there with you.”

  Any warder could find any other of the warders in his clutch, or group, by standing still, thinking of them, and concentrating. If a warder had not traveled through their wormhole that day, had not been whipped through the tunnel, that vortex of wind, then they could go to wherever their fellow warder was. It looked cool, simply appearing in a new place, but it took a lot of concentrated effort. Ryan must have really wanted to find me if he had done it. I wondered why. We were not close, far from it. Why had he come looking for me simply at Julian’s request? Unless….

  “You’re having Ryan watch out for me, check up on me.”

  “Not just him.”

  “So I need babysitting now?”

  “Obviously.”

  “That’s not fair. I’m a good warder.”

  “You are, there’s no argument,” he agreed. “You above all the others balance when you do and do not use your abilities.”

  “Well, then.”

  “You fight well, you carry yourself well, but your regard for your own safety… that piece is missing, and so until I see that self-discipline in you, until then we all watch you.”

  I shook my head.

  “You have no say.”

  But I opened my mouth to give him hell.

  His raised hand shut me up. “When Rindahl arrived and found the kyrie draining your blood, he got him off you and called for Marot and Jaka.”

  It explained why Marcus was there, but where was Jackson Tybalt, Jaka? And it was funny how Jael instinctively used their warder names. He just thought Marot, Rindahl, and Jaka, and I thought Marcus, Ryan and Jackson. Funny.

  “Jaka went to get us all dinner, but when he returns… you remember that his parents were victims of a blood demon.”

  Great. So now I had given my friend a new nightmare. “I’m sorry.”

  “He was incensed. Rindahl had to hold him down while Marot got the kyrie off you.”

  “You know,” I said, thinking of something, tired and irritable and thus not having my usual stop-block in my head, “why do we have to have the whole warder na
me and regular name? Why can’t we just get rid of the warder names and just use the ones we were born with? I mean I say Jackson, and you say Jaka, ’cause you’re the sentinel. I think Ryan, and you think Rindahl. That’s stupid, right?”

  He squinted at me. “As you know, some warders, like Ryan and Jackson and Marcus, lead very public lives. As we have to interact with people while still being discreet, other names, warder names, are necessary. You and Leith own your own businesses and so are relatively unknown. The use of warder names for you is not vital and so you use your warder names for all facets of your lives. But Malic and Leith are not the names either of you was born with.”

  I knew that. I was born Alexander Sunden; Jael made me Malic. And Leith was born Edward Haas. Jael gave him the name Leith. But when I became a warder, I became a different person, and as my parents were gone, so was Alexander. Leith was the same. Even though the others didn’t have families either––except for the clutch and their hearths–– they still held onto their former lives. As Jael said, being in the public eye in one form or another, they needed their regular names. I was glad I could just be Malic and not have to worry about answering to two separate names.

  “Are you done trying to divert me?”

  “I wasn’t trying to… I was just thinking about it.”

  He nodded.

  “How did Ryan get all the blood on him?”

  “When he first got to the hotel room and pulled the kyrie off you… the kyrie took half your throat with him.”

  But my throat was where I left it when I fell asleep.

  He sighed deeply, beyond exasperated. “I healed you. Again.”

  I noticed then how bad he looked. “Shit, Jael, I really am––”

  “You didn’t know, I understand”—he cut me off with a raised hand—“but, Malic, you need to realize now that the kyrie has a taste of your blood.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The kyrie drank from you and you lived, and now he will crave it, crave your blood, until he dies. Now he is in thrall to you.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  He nodded slowly. “There is a temptation in that because a kyrie can go places and retrieve items, relics, things from the abyss and other planes that you cannot. If you ask him to search for something or someone, find a treasure for you, then he must, but then you must pay in blood.”