King of the Damned: A League of Guardians Novel Read online

  “Traitor cat,” Rowan whispered. “How did you get in here?”

  The tabby didn’t answer of course, and long moments passed as Rowan stood there, naked as the day she was born, staring at a man who wasn’t really a man. Not on this planet anyway. However, he was more perfect in form and in spirit than anyone she’d ever met before.

  And she knew nothing about him.

  Rowan bent over him and studied the wings that had been etched into his flesh. They were hauntingly beautiful and painful to look at. Who had done that to him? And why?

  He murmured something under his breath and turned—Rowan’s heart nearly beat right out of her chest, and she covered her breasts, a reflex action of course, but it didn’t matter. Azaiel was still out cold.

  His face was younger in repose, and she saw the young, adorable boy he must have been . . . however many thousands of years ago. Or longer. It was in that moment that Rowan knew she was going to learn everything she could about Azaiel. Priest hadn’t given anything up—he’d said it was the Seraphim’s story to tell, and maybe it was time for her to ask.

  She brushed back a lock of hair from his forehead and pulled the coverlet from the bottom of her bed over his still form. The urge to kiss him, to touch his mouth was so strong that she actually bent forward. She was inches away when reality hit, and she stepped back suddenly.

  A shudder wracked her body, and she hugged herself, not liking the loss of control or the wild notions filling her head. She was in the middle of a freaking war, for God’s sake. Her ass was on the line, and here she was mooning over Azaiel as if he mattered or something.

  Nothing should matter except Mallick. She needed to live and breathe the bastard because if she wasn’t careful, her future would never happen.

  With one final glance at the hard candy in her bed, Rowan turned away. It was probably a good thing that the Seraphim was asleep.

  She’d have to find another way to assuage the ache because she sure as hell knew it wasn’t going anywhere.

  Outside it was lighter, and most everyone at Chez Cauldron was getting some shut-eye. Rowan moved the curtains to the side and gazed down into the yard. A light was on in Terre’s RV, but Vicki’s was in darkness. She saw Leroy walking a path he’d beaten into the grass and held her breath as the animal glanced her way. Eventually the donkey returned to his endless pacing, and she exhaled slowly.

  She’d organized several teams of human soldiers to patrol Salem during the day, and they’d be heading out soon. Most of these were from families—generations of demon hunters. She saw a few of them gathered in groups near the mess of tents that were set up near the Cauldron’s gift shop. The McDaniels. The Blackstones. The Lawrences.

  Lord knows what anyone from town thought if they drove by, though she supposed the protective spells they’d cast around the property went a long way to keeping most folk from coming anywhere near the bed-and-breakfast.

  Rowan let the curtain fall back into place. Fatigue still haunted her bones, but she was restless as well and knew that with Azaiel in her bed she’d never get to sleep. She slipped into sweatpants and a clean T-shirt. Azaiel hadn’t moved, and she hoped that he’d be out until nightfall. She needed time and space to purge her mind of the sinful, distracting thoughts that starred none other than the Seraphim.

  Because, undeniably, the man was a plus ten and then some.

  On quiet toes, she left Azaiel in slumber, there amongst all the pink and white, and headed back down the stairs.

  Chapter 26

  Priest held the ancient tome in his hands and felt its power. It was full-bodied, like an aged wine, and heavy with the weight of it. His fingers gripped the worn-leather binding, and he closed his eyes—visualized the many threads of power that lived within the text, each an intricate blend of genetics and magick.

  There was something insanely addictive about such power, and he was careful to keep it at bay. He would observe but could never touch. He knew how corrupting this kind of power was and for the first time understood the depth of the James witches’ gifts. They were undeniably a cut above all others.

  Hundreds of years earlier, when the first James witch had called forth Mallick . . . that had been a gift to the demon. He understood why Mallick didn’t want to let them go. Why he fed upon their power and harnessed it for himself. It was unlike any other organic form of power out there. Each generation of these women passed on their gifts to their daughters, and each generation was more powerful than the one before.

  And Rowan was different. She was stronger, more special. Priest knew it was because of the dark fae blood that ran through her veins. It’s what set her apart and held her above all others.

  He’d studied the pages in the grimoire, found the spell she’d need to invoke, and knew that the chances of Mallick’s defeat were slim to none. And yet there was something about her spirit that gave him hope. It wasn’t a tangible thing. There wasn’t any reason. It just was.

  Priest’s fingers loosened on the binding, and he opened his eyes. There was a hard resolve in them, a slight tightening around the mouth. He’d come to respect these witches and their strange friends over the last few days. He knew of their love and devotion to Rowan—and to Cara’s memory.

  So he clung to hope and the thought that maybe the young witch had what it took to defeat the bastard, Mallick. Because if not . . . if given no choice, Priest would do whatever he had to, to make sure Mallick did not claim Rowan as his.

  A throat cleared behind him, and Priest opened his eyes. He was in Cara’s room with Marie-Noelle, the gargoyle, and Kellen. Judging by the shuttered expression that crept into Kellen’s eyes, as well as the not-very-subtle shift in energy, he knew that Rowan had joined them.

  “Is that it?”

  He turned and nodded. She looked tired. Dark smudges bruised the flesh beneath her eyes, and she was much too pale. With her wet hair thrown up in a careless ponytail and her face free of makeup, she looked almost fragile. He saw why the Seraphim fancied the witch. It was a delicate balance, her beauty and strength.

  Priest exhaled and held the book out to her.

  Rowan took a step forward, then hesitated, her blue eyes darkening as she glanced toward her mother and the gargoyle. The two women stared at each other, and the silence in the room grew thick with words unsaid.

  “I think I’ll get some coffee,” Marie-Noelle said haltingly. “Mikhail?” She quickly crossed to Kellen and hugged him fiercely. “Thank you for retrieving the grimoire. I don’t . . .” She stepped back and struggled to finish her sentence. “If you hadn’t, I don’t . . .”

  “It’s all good, Mom. Get some coffee and we’ll talk later, all right?”

  Marie-Noelle nodded, shot a glance toward her still-silent daughter, and left. Mikhail’s features were fierce with heavy, furled brows, distended fangs, and flared nostrils. He paused on his way out.

  “What?”

  The gargoyle leaned toward Rowan, his gravelly voice low and subdued. “Forgiveness lightens the soul, little one. You make her suffer with your eyes, your silence, and yet in the end, the one who will suffer the most is you.”

  Rowan returned the gargoyle’s gaze with a direct stare. She was silent—no sarcastic reply fell from her lips—and after a few moments Mikhail shook his head and left.

  “You need to go easy on them, Ro.”

  She turned to Kellen and blinked, rapidly, as her focus sharpened. Her brother stood near the bed, his left arm in a sling, handsome face a mottled mess, with numerous cuts and bruises, and when he shifted his weight the grimace that stole over his features was enough to tell her he was in a lot of pain.

  Grimoire forgotten, she rushed to his side, her hands reaching out for him, but he hissed, and she held still. “Everything hurts, Ro. That hug from Mom nearly did me in.” A rakish grin cut across his swollen mouth. “I’m sure I look like hell.” A hoarse laugh escaped. “Literally like hell, and that’s not a fucking pun.”

  “Jesus, Kellen. What the he
ll happened to you down there?”

  He winced and shifted again, then slid onto the edge of the bed. “What didn’t happen?” He ran his free hand through the tangled hair on top of his head and hissed as he settled onto the mattress. “That place is . . .” His eyes met Priest’s.

  “I know.” The Knight Templar nodded.

  Rowan’s chest tightened, and her hand reached for him—her brother, this man she’d lost. She wanted him to hug her, to pull her close to his chest and tell her that everything was going to be all right.

  “Kellen,” she whispered, voice heavy with emotion.

  She wanted his forgiveness.

  Her brother’s blue eyes—so much like her own—stared up at her, and there was an understanding in their depths she’d not seen before.

  “It’s okay, Rowan. I know.” He held out his free hand, and she grasped it tight within her own. His pupils widened, and for the first time she was aware of an answering surge of energy. A bolt of power she’d never felt before.

  Carefully he disengaged his hand and glanced toward Priest. “I’ve never seen anything like him before. It was incredible.”

  “Who?” Rowan looked from Priest to Kellen.

  “The Seraphim,” Priest answered.

  “Azaiel?” She arched a brow at her brother.

  Kellen nodded. “I’d just lifted the grimoire from its case and the walls . . .” He closed his eyes and rubbed the skin at his temple. “The walls liquefied. I can’t explain it any other way. They melted into nothing but smoke or mist. And then the smoke solidified into these things . . . these massive eight-foot-tall monsters with arms like sledgehammers. Their faces were rotting with maggots and flesh that . . . I’ve never seen anything like them before, and the smell . . .” Kellen’s eyes flew open. “I would have died down there. Several times . . . if not for Azaiel.”

  Rowan didn’t know what to say. She knew her brother prided himself on being strong and smart and fierce. So to admit that someone he didn’t care all that much for had saved his life told her that whatever the heck had gone down in District One must have been pretty bad.

  “He was relentless, and I owe him my life.” Respect echoed in her brother’s words, and a lump formed in the back of her throat. She had to work hard to clear it.

  “How did you . . . what happened?”

  Kellen exhaled. “What didn’t happen. We were outnumbered and outgunned, but somehow we made it out of the treasury, and that’s when the real fun started. The place was alive, crawling with spiders the size of cars and these beast things, these hellhounds.” He shook his head, his eyes glazing with the memory. “I thought my ass was toast. By the time we made it back to the portal I was dizzy from blood loss, and Azaiel, he tossed my butt inside and went back into that mess.”

  “What?” Rowan glanced toward Priest. “Why would he do that?”

  Kellen frowned. “There was a woman who helped us, Toniella.”

  “The betrayer,” Priest murmured.

  Kellen nodded. “She was in trouble, and he went back for her—which kinda surprised me because I got the impression he didn’t much care for her.”

  “That would be an understatement,” Priest acknowledged.

  Rowan felt something unfamiliar clutch at her heart. Who the hell was this woman?

  “I honestly thought he was done. Before the portal sucked me the hell out of there, I saw him and Toniella pinned against a wall by a pack of hellhounds and those fucking maggot shitheads. I have no idea how he made it out of there.”

  Rowan’s chest beat hard as she stared at her brother. “What about that . . . woman?”

  Kellen shrugged. “Azaiel didn’t say much other than she’s alive, but then he also said that nothing ever dies down there.” Her brother smiled then, a tremulous smile. “The grimoire is incredible, Ro. As soon as I touched it I knew it belonged to us. To me. I heard it whisper.” He shook his head and glanced toward Priest. “I don’t know how else to explain it.”

  “What did it whisper?” Priest asked quietly.

  Kellen paused, and when his eyes settled on Rowan goose bumps erupted across her flesh. “I heard it say . . . retribution.”

  Rowan turned, but Priest was already there, the grimoire held out. His dark eyes were intent and for a second she hesitated and she wasn’t even sure why. “It’s yours, Rowan. Your legacy . . . your power.” He glanced behind her to Kellen. “Your retribution.”

  She froze, eyes glued to the old, worn, tobacco-colored leather. A large seal embossed into the cover, once golden, was now tarnished to more of a copper color. It was their family symbol—the letter ‘J’ interwoven with an oak tree.

  Priest placed it in her hands, and for a moment everything faded to black. There was nothing. No sound. No color. No Priest or Kellen.

  There was only the book in her hands. Its weight and texture.

  Rowan had no idea how much time passed, but eventually she realized she was curled up in the chair beside her grandmother’s bed—the old, ratty, pink, red, and blue blanket from the bottom of her grandmother’s bed across her lap.

  And she was alone.

  Outside, the early-morning sun had laid waste to the darkness, and beams of light shone in from the newly installed window. Someone had pinned up a cotton bedsheet to one side of the window—in lieu of the ruined curtains—and her eyes lingered there for a moment. It was a gingham pattern, pink, gray, and white, and looked ridiculous. She decided that at some point over the next few days she’d make an effort to get some suitable window dressings in place.

  Her gaze swept the room, this cluttered yet clean and well-worn room. It spoke volumes about her Nana’s character. Her love of the color red and of texture and bold patterns. The bookshelves were full of the classics, many of them well used, with a couple of first editions in the bunch.

  There was the Elvis head made of concrete that stared up at her from the corner near the fireplace. Rowan smiled. She and Kellen had found it behind Pinto’s Bakery in town when they were maybe ten. It was in the alley, obviously meant for the garbage, and who knows what the heck they’d been doing out back in the first place. The nose was chipped off, and one of the ears was missing, but their Nana loved Elvis almost as much as she loved Patsy Cline.

  They’d given it to her for Mother’s Day, and it had rested near her hearth ever since. A place of honor she’d told them. He was the king and should be on display.

  Her smile widened as she stared at the head. Elvis’s mouth was open as if he was belting out a song, and with his missing nose and ear, he really did look ridiculous.

  She leaned back into the chair and without pause opened the grimoire.

  The pages were made of leather, or some type of leather at the very least, and they were thinner than the binding. They were yellowed with age and delicate to the touch. Woven amongst the text were drawings and runes. The colors were still vibrant, which wasn’t something she’d expected after all this time.

  It hit her then as she gazed upon the words. They’d been written by another James witch—one who’d lived nearly two thousand years before Rowan’s birth. The grimoire had survived time and space and a trip to Hell. Now it was in Rowan’s hands.

  She blew out a long slow breath as she carefully turned the pages, not reading things so much as feeling the power that lay there. It infused her cells and had her heart beating like a jackhammer within minutes.

  The pages turned and moments passed. Long moments of studying intricate runes, eloquent passages that described many herbal remedies, potions, and charms. After a while the pages blurred, but she methodically made her way through them, turning them over and over. Eventually she stopped, and when her eyes focused and she could see clearly, Rowan gasped.

  It was the spell. The only spell she was truly interested in. She got hot and kicked her feet out so that the blanket fell to the floor as she bent over the page and started to read. There were illustrations along the side of the text. A circle. A woman. A demon—not the human
facade that so many of the bastards loved but one in its true form. An animal/human-looking monster with cloven feet, a dragon head, and a deadly, spiked tail that curled up behind it like a scorpion about to attack.

  She’d only seen Mallick on one occasion, and he’d looked like any other human man—an extremely handsome one at that. She wondered for the first time what his real facade looked like. Was he a creature like this one in the book? Or something else entirely?

  Rowan read the words out loud, and when she was done she read them over again. And again. And when she was done for the final time she carefully closed the book and held it loose within her grasp as she rocked in the chair.

  For several long moments Rowan stared into space, not really focused on anything. She was curiously calm. Accepting of the information she’d just ingested. Was it because she was exhausted?

  A soft knock sounded on the door, and Priest entered the room. He crossed to the window and drew the sheet across it, cutting out most of the light and plunging the room into muted darkness.

  “You need to sleep, Rowan.”

  “I know.”

  He tugged the grimoire from her grasp and set it carefully on the side table near the bed. His fingers lingered on it—she watched him caress the cover in a gentle, sweeping motion.

  “It’s not often I get the chance to see something this exquisite.” He smiled at her, a wistful smile of remembering. “Time moves on, and humans change and evolve, as do those who inhabit the otherworld. It’s not always for the best in my opinion. Everyone moves forward, always looking ahead and no one takes the time to appreciate the past.”

  She watched him in silence, not knowing what to say.

  “This is a work of art. A laborious rendering of your history—your family’s history and knowledge.” He paused. “It really is a thing of beauty.”

  She nodded, still silent.

  “It’s also a book of great power, and it found its way back to you.”

  But how long will I have it? How long will I be here?