Bound by Revenge (Guardian Series) (24 page)

Bradley wouldn’t risk bringing anyone else here with him. It would be too dangerous. Too hard to control the environment. Too risky for the boy. He couldn’t risk them killing Tom in a panic.

So he would walk in alone. Into a trap.

Morgan’s whole body tingled in anticipation. The promise of a good fight always did that to her. Probably why she liked to cause them whenever she could.

“Give me Tom!” Bradley commanded her, holding a long sword out in front of him, the point touching Morgan’s throat lightly as she inhaled.

“Did you really think that it would be that easy, guardian?” Morgan scoffed as she pulled her favorite dagger out of her belt and knocked the sword to the side. “Did you think I’d have him sitting here ready for you to grab him and run?”

Morgan motioned to the wooden chair with her dainty fingers. Bradley glanced down at it and noticed the blood that covered the left arm.

He let out an agonized scream and he lunged at Morgan with his sword. She flashed away with plenty of time to spare and rematerialized directly behind Bradley. As he stood back up, he felt the tingling cold of the dagger that Morgan held straight out in front of her pierce cleanly through his body.

The blade sunk deep into his back. Morgan held the hilt steady as she whispered into his ear.

“What a fool to rush into your enemies arms. And now you have nothing to show for it.” She kissed his cheek and watched his face twist up in pain.

“Is he dead?” Bradley gasped. He needed to know the truth before he died.

In an uncharacteristic flash of pity, Morgan gave him what he wanted. “No.” Using all her strength, she pulled the blade up and sliced Bradley’s beating heart in two before letting him fall lifeless to the ground. 

Chapter Seventeen

They all rode across town in Abby’s Lexus. Five o’clock traffic rolled by on the street. Everyone headed home after their days of paper pushing and customer service ended, to give them precious little time to spend with their own families.

It was distracting at first, as they tried to keep watch past all the obstructions. But after the first few cars flew by, the sound of the engines began to lull the group into a peaceful state of wait. By six, still no one had arrived.

“Are we sure this is the place?” Alex asked. The building was run down. Not the business enterprise that one would have expected and there certainly weren’t any armed men or tanks pulling up.

“Looks can be deceiving. Remember that.” Vance shot a look across the street as he drummed his fingers on his leg. “They could already be inside.
Or
they could have another entrance.”

Sick of sitting still, Sam jumped out of the back seat. “I’m not just going to sit here and wait. I’m gonna look around. Find a way inside.”

“I’m with Sam.” Abby followed her out of the car. The two girls ran across the road, dodging the cars.

“Fucking girls.” Vance grumbled under his breath as he opened his own door. “Pop the trunk.”

Vance and Alex grabbed the two black duffel bags from inside the trunk. Then ran across the street to catch up to the others.

“You really going in unarmed?” Vance snipped in Sam’s ear when he got close enough to reach her.

Sam had been so preoccupied with her own thoughts that she had almost made a damning mistake. She was too proud to acknowledge her fuck up, but too smart to continue on without her weapons.

So Sam reached out to the bag under Vance’s arm, unzipped it just enough to reach her hand inside, and selected the first two weapons her hands could grip. A set of knives. Sharp and easy to maneuver.

Without another word, she continued down the sidewalk, then down the dark alley that separated the warehouse from the building beside it. Abby was right on her heels. She didn’t stop to grab any weapons for herself.

“Up there.” Abby pointed to the metal ladder about ten feet above her head. The fire escape was old. The metal was red with rust and what little black paint remained was flaking off.

She looked around the alley and jogged over to the other side. She rolled the small green dumpster over and positioned it against the wall. She was the first to leap on top.

Abby hung off the bottom rung for about thirty seconds before the hinge finally gave way and extended the ladder to the ground.

“We’ve got our way in.” The stoic expression stayed plastered on Abby’s face as she climbed up to the first landing and smashed the window in with her fist.

“Nobody’s gonna hurt my baby brother.” She hissed as she pulled off the shards of glass that remained on the window frame.

The beeping was soft at first, gradually getting louder until Arratta’s head pounded from the racket. And a flashing red light blinked. It started on the computer before it replicated itself on the small square box over the office door and all of the other doors throughout the building. Arratta walked over to the desk to pull up the visuals from the security cameras that were strategically placed around the warehouse. As if on schedule, the group of guardians ducked into the building through a broken window on the third floor.

They’d still have quite a bit of work to do to break through all the locks, but they were on their way. It was time to prepare the team and to make sure everyone was in place to destroy the guardians.

Arratta pressed the button on the bottom of his phone. A shrill buzz rang over the rest of the phones in the building. One by one, Arratta’s board members piled into the office and stood in front of their leader to await his directions. Leus was the last to stroll into the room. He pushed past all the others and stopped right by Arratta’s side.

“The guardians are here. They’ve just broken through a window on the vacant side of the building. Soon they’ll be hitting our barriers. But I guarantee they won’t be deterred by some steel and locks. We need to assemble.” Arratta’s commanding voice carried effortlessly over the crowd, even with the sirens reverberating off the concrete walls.

“Leus, separate the teams. I want people staged at all the exits. We want to give them no choice where to go. We’ll be waiting for them in the training facility.”

Arratta took his seat again and watched the screen to closely follow the progress the guardians made.

Leus quickly separated the board members into four teams of two and give each group their directions. One team was staged inside the front entrance on the first floor, one at the stair well on the second floor, one blocking the third floor window the guardians had come in through and the last staged on the roof to watch and to block the last outlet. The only role these leanthans were to play in the fight was to corral the guardians into the training facility. Arratta knew that none of them stood a chance against one guardian never mind the whole team and he didn’t intend to lose any of them to a suicide mission. The only ones strong enough were his direct descendents: himself, Leus and Leus’s children.

Each group of leanthans headed off to take their places at their designated stations, leaving Arratta and Leus alone in the office.

“Are you ready?” Arratta asked. “This is what you wanted.”

“Hardly.” Leus’ words bit through the air. “I just wanted peace. This is their fault.”

“We don’t have time to analyze this, Leus. We need to get downstairs. Marius and Deanna should have Tom in place by now. And I’m sure that Morgan must be waiting for us.” Arratta was truly sad that it had come to this. He had only agreed to use the boy after Morgan assured him that she’d let him leave unharmed. None of his men wanted it to come down to something so backhanded.

Morgan paced in front of the window and looked down on the road. She knew the guardians were here. She could feel Vance’s presence and he wouldn’t have come alone. The leanthans were in place and Morgan had done her part by providing a group of demons to work alongside them. In addition, she kept a couple of her favorites with her to keep watch on the boy.

Deanna wouldn’t be too helpful in the fight. She wasn’t as strong as the boys and she seemed a bit too attached to the prisoner. So Morgan assigned her to the watch team downstairs. Keeping track of the guardians on the video feed and let the others know what to expect via intercom if anything went wrong.

She kept Marius by her side to hold onto Tom. Marius showed no sympathy to the prisoner. He actually expressed pleasure as Tom struggled against his tight restraints. He was a man after her own heart, too bad he was a lowly leanthan and not a demon.

Leus walked into the large open room first. He nodded a greeting to his son before walking past. Arratta followed right behind him. Both took their places by the main door that came off the stair well. This would be where the guardians would come out; they would have no other choice.

The dust filled room seemed like the most unlikely venue for a supernatural battle. The floorboards creaked under the guardians’ feet as they tried their best to float across the floor lightly.

“This can’t be the place.” Alex squinted his eyes and tried to see anything that would indicate someone had been there lately. “It looks abandoned.”

“Don’t be so naïve. That’s what they want you to think. An abandoned building wouldn’t be barricaded with steel doors and deadbolts.” Sam actually rolled her eyes at Alex’s dimwitted remark.

Sam led the group into the opening at the edge of the room. Past the wall, the room separated out into a hallway that lead off in both directions.

“We should split up and meet back up downstairs.” She said, thinking that Abby would continue to follow her.

Instead, she turned around to see Abby and Alex head off in the other direction and Vance standing so close behind her they were almost touching.

“You’re in my personal space.” She quipped. She hated the way her body longed for the man whose breath now warmed her cheek and neck as he looked down at her.

Vance growled deep in his throat. His molecules vibrated at the contact when she pushed him away fiercely, desperate to get her own space.

“I’m sorry.” The words were so simple, yet they choked out of his throat. How could he think that would ever be enough to make up for the pain he’d caused her?

“No. You can’t fix this. I trusted you and you crushed me.” She said, her chin quivering in a frantic attempt to hold herself together.

“Don’t do this, Sam. You know we really belong together. I love you.” Sam wavered, desperately wanting to believe his words.

“This isn’t the time for this. We need to get through tonight, like you said before. We can’t afford to get distracted. And right now, you’re really distracting.” Sam scraped the blade down his chest while desire poured through her.

“We can’t let them go down there alone.” She peeped. They were too new at this. They’d be dead in a second. All it would take was a single distraction. Without even the chance to fight back. Their best bet was to storm in as a team and work together.

“OK. But this isn’t over.” Vance pulled her to his lips in a fluid motion. He lingered on her mouth and savored her sweet taste before finally dropping her back down and moving past her to the steel door at the end of the hall.

“Somehow I’ll protect you from Morgan’s wrath and save the boy.” Vance braced himself.

He pulled a gun out of the black duffle and used it to smash off the heavy padlock on the steel door. The door pulled open easily once the obstruction was removed. It led into a hallway that belonged in a modern office building and not the rundown warehouse they had been standing in.

The stairwell to the left was opened up in invitation to the two and Sam walked over to it.

“Is she down there?” Sam asked Vance, knowing that if anyone could pinpoint Morgan it would be him. It killed her to think of the two of them together. That’s why Morgan had made a point to mention it on the phone. She knew any fragment of doubt that got into Sam’s mind could destroy her trust in Vance and become the guardians’ downfall. She didn’t count on Sam’s strong will and right now her will wanted her to be with Vance at any cost. And what Morgan had given her was another tool to use in the fight, the ability to locate her easily.