Dark Before Dawn (The Protector Guild Book 7), page 22
Werewolf bites were survivable for protectors. In fact, most bites caused little issue, healing with the help of the medical staff—vampire bites were the particularly iffy issue. And a small number of bites resulted in the protector turning into a werewolf like Atlas and Sarah, though I was starting to suspect those numbers were a lot higher than we’d been led to believe.
But Seamus was older than most protectors who found themselves up against a werewolf, and the bite location was deep into his abdomen.
So, not good.
It was sadistically ironic that Eli was the one who wasn’t here. He was the best at field medicine.
Dec and I did our best with bandaging Seamus up, but we didn’t have the supplies we needed, or a way to get them. A human hospital didn’t have the things we needed, and while Cy had kept the cabin filled with protector first-aid basics, he wasn’t equipped with the most up-to-date protocols for werewolf bites. Probably because the expectation of encountering one way out here was low as fuck.
“We can’t just go barging into The Guild with him like this. That would be a sentence worse than death.” I was reminding her as much as myself. For an hour, I’d been battling with just saying fuck it and taking him anyway. If he was going to die regardless, he’d stand a better chance there. And maybe his position, his tenure there would help?
I shoved the thought away—Tarren and the council weren’t known for forgiveness or consideration. There was no nuance with Guild politics.
“Maybe we can find a way to get in touch with Arnell, we have phones now.” Ro was sitting on the couch, passively watching Dec’s errant pacing. Every few minutes, I’d catch him cutting his eyes to the door, like he was waiting for Max to show up at any moment.
Honestly, we all were. I felt her absence acutely. I wasn’t sure how my brother and Eli had survived the wait for her return last time while maintaining their sanity. Two days and I was already willing to say fuck it, introduce myself to Darius’s brother, dip into hell, and find her myself.
I’d tried finding her in my sleep, but either she was on a different sleep schedule than I was or I wasn’t able to reach her through the realms without her having access to her succubus powers.
“That’s not a bad idea.” Declan paused, brows raised in question as her eyes met mine. “Maybe we can get them to smuggle us some supplies?”
Ro tensed, and I had a feeling he was second-guessing his suggestion. I knew from Max that he and Arnell had something going on, and I didn’t blame him for worrying about putting him in more danger than he already was.
“Tell me again, about the mist.” Darius burst into the door, ignoring the fact that we were in the middle of a conversation.
“There was a girl, when I showed up, after Dec and Seamus took out the last wolf, she collapsed to the ground and started leaking shadows.” I ran through the list monotonously. He’d asked me dozens of times since it had happened, it wasn’t like I had any new information.
“There’s something off about her body.” Darius leaned against the door frame, his expression hard and focused. “She smelled dead when I got here.”
Dec scoffed. “That’s because she was.”
“I mean very dead.”
“Can you be very dead? Isn’t there just dead and not?” I asked.
He shook his head, frustration clouding his expression. “I mean dead for a while. Like more than recently dead.”
“So, you think she was, what, a zombie?” Ro asked. “Are there zombies in hell? Is that a thing?”
Darius shook his head, then ran a hand through his hair, scattering dirt particles all over the white-blond strands. “The wolves smelled off too. Might be part of the reason Seamus isn’t healing. Maybe there was something different about them.”
They hadn’t seemed different at first glance, but the world had been turned upside down so many times that encountering unusual wolves—or even a new species—wouldn’t be the most surprising thing to happen this week.
I narrowed my eyes, studying the blackened ridges of his nails. “Did you dig them up?”
“To sniff them?” Ro’s nose curled in disgust.
We buried the wolves a mile or two out after getting Seamus settled in the house. Darius hadn’t mentioned them smelling off then.
He shrugged. “Something about the girl was rubbing me the wrong way, I needed to be sure. Hard to say if it’s just the decomposition process or not—I don’t exactly make it a habit to go sniffing carcasses days after killing them—but there’s something off about the wolves. I can’t place it.”
“Great, just our luck that Seamus would get munched on by a fucking zombie wolf.” I almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of our rotten luck.
Darius narrowed his eyes, considering. “No, not like they’ve been dead for long, not off in the way the girl was off. Just off. Something familiar, but not. I can’t explain it.”
Dec opened the door to Cy’s room, where we were keeping Seamus now, peeked in for a second, then closed it again. She’d been checking up on him incessantly, hoping for any sign of improvement. “No changes. Any ideas on the girl?”
Darius was quiet, lost in his thoughts for a moment, until I was convinced he wasn’t even going to respond at all. “Not an idea, but the description of the shadow cloud sounds similar to a Drude. Legend says that they can travel in shadow form.”
“So is it one of those then?” I asked, weirdly hopeful. One new creature we could handle. Maybe. But if a dozen were coming out of the woodwork, we’d be screwed. Even more screwed than we were. It was hard to create a playbook for the impending war when the players kept changing.
He shook his head, picking up on the pacing Dec had finally abandoned. “Not exactly, but maybe of the same kind of magic.” He paused for a moment, one arm propping the other so that his chin rested in one hand. “When I was young, I heard tales from elders about shades.”
“Shades?” Dec dropped onto the worn couch next to Ro, the bags under her eyes heavy and dark. She pulled a knitted blanket around her and breathed in deep, her shoulders relaxing a bit.
The house smelled like Max. I wasn’t sure whether that made her absence better or worse—we could feel her all around us. It seemed unforgivably cruel that we didn’t have her here—wrong to be living in her space without her in it too.
“Kind of like human legends of skin-walkers. I don’t know much about them, they were always assumed to be a legend—stories told to terrify children, not that we needed much help being terrified in hell. They reanimate the dead, though only for a short time. The more powerful the body, the longer they can use it.” He took a deep breath, a dark look crossing his expression. “I don’t like this. First druden in the realm, now this.”
“What does it mean?” Ro absentmindedly shoved his fingers through the woven holes of a stray corner of the blanket.
“It means that more than just the hell realm as I knew it has been disturbed.”
Seamus moaned in pain, puncturing the tension in the room and reshaping it into a different kind of fear.
Darius nodded to the room. “He’s not going to make it like that much longer. I give him three or four days—” Seamus coughed from the other room, the rattle in his chest audible even a room away, “maybe less.”
I knew he was right, could feel it in my gut that Seamus wasn’t long for this world if we didn’t help him.
“Maybe Greta?” Ro shrugged. Greta was one of the nurses in The Guild. “Max seems to trust her, and she always knew that Max was something… more, didn’t she? But she never told anyone. Helped her visit Ralph too, when he was down in the labs.”
“That’s the girl who gave Max the card key into the cells, right? Max mentioned her once or twice.” Darius’s features softened a bit.
Greta was one of the oldest working members of The Guild—hearing her referred to as a girl made my lips twitch into a small smile.
“Still no idea how to reach her—it’s not like we have her number on speed dial.” Dec leaned back into the couch, her body molding to it like clay. “And we can’t exactly call The Guild and ask them to put her through either. It would put her at risk too.”
Something jostled in my memory, capturing my breath in my lungs.
“Wade? You good?” Ro asked. The poor kid was so rattled and hypervigilant, that he noticed every small change in our demeanors, like he was constantly waiting for one of us to announce that our connection to Max was flaring, a clear compass to where she was.
Number.
In all of the chaos, I’d completely forgotten.
I ran to the coat rack and dug through my pockets until my fingers brushed along the edge of a scrap piece of paper. “Dani.”
Dec shoved the blanket off of her lap and stood, eyes narrowing. “What about Dani?”
“When I made the first run for food, I ran into Dani—”
“And you’re just saying something now?”
I shrugged, not wanting to get into the panic attack thing. Dec had enough to worry about. “Things have been a little chaotic, it honestly completely slipped my mind.”
“What did she want? Did she follow you—say anything about Max?” Ro asked.
“She said she wasn’t with The Guild, not really. That she knew some people who might be able to help us if we ran into trouble.” I nodded to Darius. “Even said the fanghole could come if we trusted him. And she didn’t seem concerned that I was clearly not just a protector, or that Atlas was a wolf.”
Dec narrowed her eyes. “She’s never mentioned anything like this to me before.”
I shrugged. I wasn’t as close with Dani as Dec was, but she'd always been the lone wolf sort. It didn’t surprise me that she’d keep something likely to get her locked in a cell close to the chest. “Maybe she wasn’t sure you’d be amenable. We spent most of our time being the lapdogs of the field division. It’s only recently that—” I shrugged, “well, you know, things changed. We see the world differently now. Maybe she couldn’t trust us until she was absolutely certain we wouldn’t betray her.”
She sank back down into the couch, nodding, her eyes focused on the floor. “Yeah. Good point.”
Rowan squeezed Dec’s shoulder before turning to me. There was a tenderness there that made my skin itch.
Sometimes it felt like I'd spent so much time locked alone that I didn't know how to be with my friends in the way that I used to. Like the shape I used to fill was just an ill-fitting costume now.
I licked my lips and offered the only words of comfort I could find. “It’s possible she—or whoever that number leads to—will have access to medical care. Maybe they can help Seamus."
“You can’t seriously be suggesting that we leave this place?” Darius’s face was unreadable, his posture still and straight in a way only a vampire could pull off. “What if Max comes back and we’re all gone?”
Another low, agonized moan sounded from the other room.
My fingers dug into my palms. Short of harming my team, I’d do just about anything to help Seamus. I didn’t want to lay his ashes outside with his brother. Not if there was even a shadow of a possibility we could help him. “We can leave a note—and the number. When she gets back, we can meet up with her.”
Darius turned to the door, ran a hand through his hair, considering. Every muscle in his body seemed coiled with indecision. “I don’t like it. We’re better off cutting our losses with him.”
I took a deep breath and counted down from five.
Attacking him right now would not be good.
For us or for Eli.
“Plus there’s a solid possibility that shade—or whatever the hell it was—will come back here. It knows where we are. We’re basically sitting ducks if we just stay here,” Declan said.
Darius was still as he considered her. “That doesn’t mean that our only two options are stay here or call this Dani girl. We can find another place to wait for Max, to plan our next move.”
“If we’re just moving to another location, that doesn’t help Seamus.” I took another deep breath, trying to calm the anger flaring in my gut.
“Like I said,” he shot me a dark look, “cut our losses.”
Why the fuck was he being so cagey about this? Did he truly just not give a fuck about anyone other than Max?
I took a deep breath, but there was no expelling this flare of rage.
I lunged for him, shoving him against the wall, my forearm pressed into his throat as I reached for a blade. “You selfish fucking fuck.”
I felt Declan’s fingers at my arm, trying to peel me away, but I was stronger than she was. “Wade.”
The fanghole cocked a brow, a malicious grin spreading on his face. “Suffocation won’t kill me, incubus. This is just foreplay.”
“Enough.” The single word cut through the tension. “I say we call.” Rowan’s stare was hard and determined as it met mine. “Max would want us to do whatever we could to help him. We can’t just sit here and let him die if there’s a possibility of saving him. Max and Eli shouldn’t come home to another pile of ashes to spread.”
I felt the fight leave Darius’s body at Rowan’s words. I released him from my grip and took a few steps back, feeling the same effect on my own.
Rowan handed me a phone. “Call.”
Rowan’s forehead pressed against the frosted glass of the window as he watched the trees zip by at lightning speed. “How far from town did she say it was?”
“About a thirty-minute drive,” Dec said from the back.
Dani’s directions were pretty vague and we’d only spoken for a few minutes. She didn’t give us much information about where we were going or why. Just an address, a brief description of the place, and told us to ask for someone named Charlie when we arrived—that she’d let them know we were coming, whoever “them” was.
She called it The Lodge—a name as nondescript as her information. And when I pressed for more, she simply told me to trust her, that they were taking in protectors and demons alike who needed a place to stay safe. To come together.
We debated for an hour about whether that was enough to go on, but when Dani texted that they had one or two medics stationed there, any arguing came to a halt.
It was entirely possible we were heading into enemy territory—that we’d be put on the defensive as soon as we got there, but we’d take the risk. Seamus didn’t have another option.
My fingers curled tight around the steering wheel, the leather groaning its discomfort.
We’d been driving for hours, but had barely spoken.
Rowan left Max the address, hidden in a hollowed-out book he said she’d definitely check when she returned. I didn’t press him on it—he knew her habits and the protocols they’d developed with Cy better than I did.
And on the off chance that the place was ransacked by more demons, we didn’t want them tracking us down to this… Lodge place—so we couldn’t exactly leave a note explaining everything in case they found it.
Seamus whimpered from the backseat and my focus cut to the rearview to check on him. He was sitting behind Ro, his clammy skin pressed to the window as Declan put her fingers against his neck, checking his pulse.
Her worried eyes met mine and my lips flattened into a line.
Thirty minutes. We’d get him there soon. They’d help him. They had to help him.
My gaze cut to Darius. He’d been surprisingly quiet during the trip. I’d half expected him to be like an obnoxious child on a road trip, but he sat behind me, eyes on the window, unblinking. There was a blankness in his expression, like he was there, but not, at the same time. The only sign of his early anger was in the stiff lines of his shoulders, the tight line of his mouth.
A siren blared behind us and, as one, we all straightened—Dec and Darius meeting my eyes from the back, and Ro shifting to stare at me.
This time, we were driving a very definitely stolen car.
While not ideal, it was necessary—no rental place would give us a loaner without ID, and we couldn’t risk making the trek on foot with Seamus as bad as he was.
Darius stole one for us and promised that, once we got Seamus safe, he’d deposit it somewhere an hour or two away and call in a tip.
Not a perfect solution, but it would theoretically wind up with the owner being reunited eventually.
It was a sporty, expensive car—a choice the fanghole justified by explaining that only a douche would purchase it in the first place, so they deserved to be robbed. But it was also a tight fit with five full-grown adults, and we wouldn’t be able to explain away Seamus’s condition if we were pulled over.
“Pull to the side,” Ro said, jaw tight. “It’s not like we can start a car chase with the cops. The whole point is to keep attention away from us.”
I took a deep breath, considering, then pulled to the side.
No one breathed as the car pulled closer, then passed us.
As one, we exhaled. The car continued down the road, went through a red light a few hundred feet ahead, and then turned off the siren.
Declan shook her head. “All of that just to avoid sitting at a red light. Fucking asshole.”
Ro snorted—the noise caught between relief and laughter.
Declan chuckled, the sound high and soft and light.
I couldn’t help but join in.
The car felt lighter.
Except for Seamus, who was still unconscious.
And Darius. He’d just gone back to staring out the window, lost in thought, either oblivious to our moment of reprieve, or indifferent to it.
“What’s with you?”
He met my eyes in the rearview, but whatever emotion was swirling in there was unreadable to me. “I don’t know what you mean, incubus.”
His voice was drawn, bored even, but I didn’t miss the slight hint of warning there.
Declan’s eyes cut to him, her brows bent in focus before she met my gaze in the mirror, confusion clear as day on her face.
She shifted to the vampire, nudging him with her shoulder, though they were already so crammed back there it hardly mattered. “Darius, if this place turns into a trap, we’ll leave. Immediately. You have my word. But we have to try for Seamus. And I really don’t think Dani will intentionally lead us towards danger. She caught us running that day at the ambush—with you. And she let us go.”
