Dark Before Dawn (The Protector Guild Book 7), page 37
Declan snorted, her brow arched. “It’s entirely possible we would have held her back though.” Her anxious hands ran through her long hair, snagging on tangles as she absentmindedly combed through it. “Fuck, I hate feeling useless.”
I froze. That was it, wasn’t it? If any of us had any chance of getting Atlas out, it was Max. And Darius was the strongest after her.
Wade too, though his powers were better suited to things other than a rescue mission.
We were the fucking B-team, and we’d been benched.
“It was too easy—when we discussed this earlier.” Ro stopped his pacing long enough to rest his forehead against the wall, eyes pinched tight together, the shadow of defeat dipping the rigid lines of his shoulders a few inches from where they’d been. “We should’ve known she’d do this. I should’ve known. If she really thought Atas was that close to death, there was no chance she’d wait until we could assemble a cavalry to get him.”
I nodded, my stomach aching. “Especially if she thought we might stop her.”
Declan sighed. “Or hold her back.”
Ro stiffened, lifted himself back in his—as Max liked to call it—mission-mode posture. “We need to reach out to Bishop and,” his eyes cut to mine briefly with apology, “and Levi. They might be able to help us get a team together. Headquarters is only a couple of hours away from here.”
“And we can make some of that time up since it’s the middle of the night,” Wade added, the dazed expression he’d worn when I’d woken him up abandoned at the threshold of his room. “Less cars on the road. Declan has a lead foot.”
“Be ready to leave in sixty seconds,” I called over my shoulder, as I went back to my room to hunt down every weapon I had to my name.
I knew that I was going to have to suck down my pride and talk to Levi. What I hadn’t prepared for, was that he, along with Charlie, Bishop, and a few of the others I hadn’t yet met, would already be up and gathered together in the main building—huddled over the bar of the restaurant.
Their serious, hushed voices dropped as one when they saw us standing in the doorway.
“What happened?” I generally wasn’t great at reading the room, but even I could tell that the number one thing fueling the atmosphere, before we’d even arrived, was tension. The kind so thick you could taste it in the air.
Charlie glanced from Bishop to the others, all of them locked in a silent conversation that loudly reestablished what we were to them—outsiders.
Just when I expected her to shut us out completely, to send us back to our cabin with a stubborn chastisement, she let out a heavy breath instead and turned to me.
“Something big is happening. At Guild Headquarters—but we’re getting conflicting information. Evelyn sent word that there was a greenlight for an all-team, top priority mission in Seattle a little over an hour ago.” My stomach turned at my mother’s name, but I didn’t interrupt her—because Max was at Headquarters. My stomach sank. “Several of them realized pretty early that there was a security breach and were heading back to check on things. We’re not really sure what’s going on, but we’ve never seen a Guild pattern like this—this many teams, a series of ambush descriptions in Seattle that aren’t mapping onto our own surveillance. And Evelyn, she’s usually got pretty high clearance for this stuff but—” Charlie shook her head, “she has no idea what’s going on. She—and most of the others—are locked out of the system. The alert has never been raised this high—a full evacuation—not even after the ambush on Guild grounds a few months ago.”
“Max,” I said, not bothering to hide the small smile tugging at my lips.
Levi, who I’d been doing a really great job of ignoring up until this moment, furrowed his brows and took a few steps towards me. “What about her?” His gaze cut over all of us crowded in the doorway. “Where is the little firecracker, anyway? Haven’t gotten to say hi yet.”
My hands balled into fists at the weird endearment, and then clenched even tighter when I caught the knowing smile in his eyes. Dick.
“She took off with Darius.” Declan stepped around me and walked further into the room, which was probably for the best since I was notoriously not great at keeping my cool around my family. Especially not when I felt like the one being deliberately kept in the dark. “We think she’s most likely going to break Atlas out.”
“Well,” Levi snorted. I couldn’t tell whether he seemed impressed or annoyed. “I’d call her and tell her to turn around, because shit is clearly going down there right now.”
“She uh,” Ro cleared his throat, “didn’t exactly drive. She most likely teleported.”
Bishop’s eyes narrowed on him. “How long ago?”
“I’m guessing around the time you got word that shit hit the fan so to speak,” I said.
Levi’s lips quirked into a grin. “You think she’s the one responsible for this?” He scratched his jaw, holding my eyes as his grin dipped into a frown. “Hm. Impressive.”
“We need a team, if you can spare one.” Ro directed his ask directly to Bishop, and I got the feeling that the two of them had developed a good working rapport in the months I’d been gone.
Bonus for us, because that heightened our chances that Bishop would say yes to him.
He crossed his arms. “No.”
Charlie set a hand softly on his bicep. “Bishop—”
He shook his head. “We’re not risking anyone for an impulsive girl we barely know—not when shit is,” his dark eyes cut to me, “as you say, hitting the fan. We have no idea what we’d be sending our people into, and we’re not risking any of them until we have more information and more time to assess. Not an option.”
“But we don’t have time to assess,” I said, my words clipped as I tried to reign in my anger, “she’s in trouble now.”
Every second was precious—there wasn’t a chance we were going to just sit here and wait for them to have a meeting and talk in circles about the best options. Max could be fucked this very second.
The thought nearly sent me to my knees.
Levi’s stare was leveled at me, had been since the moment I walked in. He shrugged. “I’ll go.”
Ro nodded his thanks when I was stunned silent. “We’ll need a vehicle. Can you spare us a car or two? We don’t need anything else from you—we just need to get to her. Now.”
“I’ll go too.” Charlie was rummaging behind the bar counter, her head only emerging above it when she had two sets of keys dangling from her fingers.
Bishop snorted.
When he realized that she wasn’t kidding, his expression darkened. “Absolutely not.”
Charlie shot a dark glare at him, the two locked in some silent battle of wills until she arched one of her brows in challenge.
Even through my frustration, I could admire her tenacity. She reminded me a lot of Max, in so many ways.
“I mean this with all of the admiration for you in the world, but you’re basically human. You’re not nearly strong—or trained—enough to take on a single protector,” Bishop said, his words soft, tender almost. “The entire Guild? We have no idea what you’d be marching into.” He shook his head, every muscle in his body lined with tension. “I’m not losing you.”
“Bishop,” she rested a hand on his cheek and he pressed into it, “this is what the Defiance is here for—” he grunted at her use of the name, which only made her smile, “to help people when they need it. Right now? Max needs it.”
He wrapped his hand around hers, squeezing it against him, his eyes boring into hers.
I cleared my throat and averted my eyes. It felt like I was trespassing on their intimacy.
With a deep breath, Bishop grabbed the keys from his wife and turned around to face us once more, the stiffness in his expression paved into resignation. “I’m going. Charlie will stay here and run point on communication.” He tossed Levi one of the sets of keys, then nodded to the door. “Let’s go.”
For a moment, Charlie looked ready to argue, but when Bishop’s eyes cut to her stomach, she swallowed whatever resistance she’d been ready to spew and nodded.
Before they reached the door, Levi stopped, brows furrowed as he pulled a vibrating phone from his pocket. “Hang on.”
“Can’t you take the call on the road?” I muttered, running my hand through my hair as I glanced at the others. “Literally every second counts here.”
But he ignored me, walking away—further into the bar and farther away from the cars—the phone pressed to his ear.
I bounced on my feet, the adrenaline coursing through my body with nowhere to go, unable to hear anything but the occasional grunts and contextless one-word responses that Levi spit into the phone.
Levi froze, pressed a finger into the ear that didn’t have a phone against it.
Something was wrong. Was he talking to mo—Evelyn? Did something else happen?
Fuck, Max needed to be okay. I needed her here. Now.
Jesus fucking christ, I wanted to be on that road yesterday.
Panic gripped me in its vise, my breaths little more than uneven, broken gasps at air. My body started to shake as I tried to focus, tried not to kill my fucking half-brother for taking goddamn forever to finish his phone call.
But I couldn’t stop trembling. What if it was about her? What if she was hurt? What if she was dea—
I felt like I was ready to combust, like if I didn’t see Max in two seconds, I was going to burn the fucking world down.
Heat flared through me.
“Eli,” Declan’s voice was sharp as her hand wrapped around my forearm. “What the fuck?”
“I’m just antsy,” I muttered, pulling my arm from her. “I’ll be fine in a second.”
“No dude,” Wade pointed at my waist, “look.”
An unbidden, irrational fear that he was pointing at my dick—that it was like, I don’t know, missing or something—clogged my throat with another wave of panic.
I patted at it with my free hand, the one Declan wasn’t holding hostage at my side, just as my eyes dipped down. Relief poured through me at the familiar—ahem, large—bulge in my black pants.
It was fine. The dick was there.
But a bright light blinked into focus in the side of my vision, and I jumped—a sharp scream pulling from my throat without my permission.
My left hand, hanging a few short inches from my dick, was on fire.
I ripped my arm from Declan and started shaking my wrist, like the flicker of fire was water and could disperse with a little effort.
Did not work. For the record, fire was not water.
Bishop came up behind me and shoved me outside as the flames crawled hungrier and higher up my hand, my wrist, my forearm.
“Eli,” Declan followed us, and ran in front of me, her eyes latching to mine. “Breathe. Calm down. This is—” she shook her head, face reflecting the same shock that I was no doubt feeling underneath the pulsing panic that tended to take over when you were, you know—on fucking fire. “I think you’re conjuring hellfire. Like Max’s hellfire. You just have to control it. Breathe. Calm down. Focus.”
“Calm down?” My voice was higher than I recognized it ever being. “Hellfire?”
The flames flared, burning into the ground with a sizzle and the smell of char.
Fuck I hoped that was just grass and not, like, my skin or something.
Bishop swore and sent Wade and Ro in for a fire extinguisher. I held my arm as far from my body as I could, blinking as sweat dripped into my eyes.
She nodded, eyes cooling, expression flattening into the typical strong, Declan stability we always needed to set shit straight. “Breathe with me, okay? In and out. Do what Max does—visualize it pulling back inside of you, the more you try to dispel it, to push it out, the more it will spread.”
“Gotta say,” I stammered, voice still high and unfamiliar, “pulling fire into me, not exactly aligned with a single instinct that I have right now.”
She bit back a small grin and nodded. “Understood. Do it anyway. Just remember, Max’s fire has never hurt you. Think of it as an extension of her. It’s just Max. Not fire.”
Just Max, not fire.
I closed my eyes, pinching them tight enough to dispel the glow of the flames from my sight.
The soft pressure of a fire extinguisher sounded around us, and I was vaguely aware of Bishop yelling something.
Heat trailed along my arms, and I knew the fire was growing, spreading.
I did my best to ignore their panicking.
Max, not fire.
I inhaled, counting to five, then exhaled, slow and deep.
Max, not fire.
Her smile flashed through my mind, the quiet strength she seemed to wield even when she wasn’t trying; I remembered the awe I felt, every time I saw her produce hellfire, the ease with which it seemed to move with her, a part of her—an extra limb.
I imagined her face, her body—watched as she relaxed, and pulled the fire back into her, the flames rescinding into her skin and dispersing through her like vapor.
Max, not fire.
“Eli—Eli, open your eyes,” Declan whispered in the air between us. “You did it.”
Not entirely believing her, I opened one, flexing my once-flaming hand in front of it. It was just a hand. Wiggling my fingers, I opened my other eye, then looked at Dec—both of us smiling.
“I’m not on fire.” I chuckled, never so happy to see skin on my hand in my life.
“Yeah,” Wade said, “we can see that.” His brows furrowed as he stared at my hands. “But how were you ever on fire at all?”
Right. That was a good question. If I hadn’t been so focused on the whole self-combustion thing, I would’ve probably had the wherewithal to ask it myself.
“You were clearly channeling Max.” Declan shrugged. “I just have no idea how you were able to do it. Or why now.”
Wade took a step closer and shoved my t-shirt sleeve up, revealing the barely-visible design winding around my arm. “Guessing it has something to do with this.”
Bond marks.
I jerked him off me and shoved my shirt sleeve back down.
Bishop’s eyes cut between us, question and confusion clear as day.
Get in line, my guy—this was new to me too.
“Well,” Levi walked over, tucking his phone back into his pocket. His gaze cut from me to the crisped ground at my feet. “Looks like you and your girlfriend have a lot in common. Apparently, she burnt shit down tonight too.”
“The labs?” I asked, scuffing my feet over the ruined ash, like swishing the char around might make it disappear.
Levi grunted. “Headquarters.”
“Yeah, but which part?” Wade asked.
“All of it.”
All there was for us to do was wait at this point. According to Levi-via-Evelyn, Max was nowhere to be found when Guild teams finally showed up to the campus.
And apparently Max wasn’t the only one missing from the scene. Every demon kept in the labs, and dozens of team members were unaccounted for. In the wind so to speak.
All that she’d left in her wake were piles of ash and debris.
“At least she can control her power.” Levi stared down at the visible reminder of my little pyro mishap. “Mom said she kept the fire contained well enough to prevent what would certainly have been a widespread wildfire.”
My focus caught on a single tree that had burned down during my panic.
I, clearly, did not.
Thank the gods that one was isolated from the rest of the forest.
“If she has that kind of control, she definitely meant to burn down The Guild then,” Bishop said, his expression blank.
Declan snorted. “Well, yeah. Do you blame her?”
He shrugged. He’d been incredibly silent since Levi’s revelation, lost in the mind-trap of his thoughts clearly going a mile a minute, though he shared none of them with us.
Levi scratched the back of his head, an unreadable expression on his face. “It will certainly escalate things now.”
“Do you think they’ll retaliate?” Charlie asked. Her lips had been pressed into a tight, worried line for nearly an hour now—anxiety clear as day, though she did her best to try and hide it.
“For destroying their largest foothold in the States?” Levi shot her a look that screamed Are you fucking serious? even if he didn’t put words to the sentiment.
Charlie rolled her eyes and let out a breath that was half grunt, half sigh.
Bishop massaged his temples. “We don’t have the numbers—the power—to fight them if they do.”
Declan ran her fingers over the patch of ground that used to be grass and was now ash, clearly still fucking confounded by what I’d done. Get in line. I kept staring at my hands every two seconds, just to make sure I hadn’t turned into a raging matchstick again.
She looked up at me. “Where do you think she is now?”
Ro, who’d been particularly silent since Levi’s call, smiled. He nodded down the path. “Here.”
Just on the horizon, I could just make out a blob—and when I squinted, that blob dissected into multiple figures, all of them making their way up the winding hill that would bring them through the main entrance, straight to us.
As one, we took off, sprinting to meet them.
My heart full on stopped in my chest when I saw her face, clear and bright, like I was a fucking lovesick teenager.
Probably because I was.
I crashed into her, grabbing her into a hug so tight that it would probably do damage to a human, and breathed in the familiar scent of her hair. It was buried under a healthy layer of smoke.
“Atlas.” Wade pulled his brother to him in an awkward side hug, crushing Sarah between them. “You’re okay.”
Judging from the dark haze in his eyes, the way his mouth didn’t even lift into a grin at seeing us, I’d say he was probably anything but okay.
A long way from it.
But he was alive. And he was here.
Darius found Charlie and Bishop, ignoring Dec’s attempts to berate him for leaving without us.
“There are more of us,” he said, “about two miles down the road. We didn’t want to bring them to your living room, so to speak, without the okay from you first.”
