Bound by Revenge (Guardian Series) (28 page)

“How could you do this to him?” Sam’s voice was commanding and it echoed through the room, since everything else was completely silent. She didn’t even recognize the words as her own. She felt separated completely from the events she was watching.

“He was trying to kill me. He wasn’t going to stop.” Morgan snarled as her sorrow turned to fury.

“You’ll pay. I’ll make you pay.” Sam was on top of Morgan as soon as she opened her mouth to speak. Her hands circled around Morgan’s neck, tightening and squeezing, shaking her back and forth.

She just wished she had seen this in her vision. If she had just keep watching, paid attention longer, struggled to keep her mind in the vision a little while more, then maybe she would have been able to do something to stop this from happening. Even her psychic ability wasn’t enough to protect the one’s she loved.

But Vance wasn’t dead yet. She wasn’t going to give up on him. She just needed to get him out of here and back to somewhere safe.

First, things first. Morgan had to die.

She let go of Morgan’s neck, with just one hand. The other stayed firmly in place, blocking the air from entering Morgan’s lungs.

She grabbed the knife she had chosen blindly earlier and, with a smooth controlled descent, Sam brought the dagger down, piercing Morgan’s chest with the blade.

The cold steel blade slid into Morgan’s skin like a hot knife. It stopped only when the tip hit the floor underneath her.

Sam had been so focused on Morgan that she didn’t notice Arratta coming up quickly behind her enemy. He didn’t attack Sam or any of the other guardians. All fighting had stopped, completely.

Instead, he grabbed Morgan under her arms and pulled her back, out from underneath Sam and back quickly towards the far side of the room.

Sam’s knees crashed onto the floor at the sudden absence of Morgan’s body but she didn’t care. All that mattered was Vance. She needed to get them out.

“Release Marius. We need to go.” Arratta directed his grandson as he dragged the limp body across the floor.

“I’m on it, old man.” Leus was untying his son a moment later. He released the pissed off leanthan and brought him back into the fight.

Marius was hurt. Not badly, but he had no love for the guardians, especially Alex. That bastard had hogtied him like it was nothing. It was quite a blow to his ego.

He locked eyes with Alex. Ready for round two.

“Marius. You need to grab Morgan’s legs. We’re leaving.” He dipped his head down and motioned towards Morgan’s feet.

“Leus will cover us so we can get out without interference.”

Marius, respectable as always to his grandfather, did as he was told. He grabbed hold of Morgan’s ankles and followed him out through the back, instead of going after his revenge.

Leus watched them leave with his peripheral vision as he stared forward at the guardians. It was hard for him to fathom being left alone to face such deadly adversaries. But at least he knew that this way his son was going to get out.

There were leanthans down at the street, ready to help get them out if they needed to retreat. Not one of them had thought that Morgan would have ended up being the one down. Sometimes it’s the cocky one that pays.

The guardians had gotten the boy back. With that Leus had lost any leverage that he had hoped for. Having the boy was going to be their saving grace. The easiest way to beat an opponent who was tougher than you was always to get them to forfeit the game. Stand down on their own free will. That wasn’t gonna happen today. These guys weren’t giving up now.

So he decided one thing, he was going to make it as painful as possible for them to kill him. He knew they’d do it; there was no way he could survive against a room full of skilled guardians, even with their toughest member down. Morgan had at least done him that one solid before she’d been beaten.

“You took my little brother. You tortured him. And you were going to kill him.” Alex spoke each sentence slowly, as if he were reading off a list. “Now you have the nerve to stand here and face us.”

Alex’s body was relaxed and he carefully glided towards Leus. The adrenaline from the fight was wearing off. It gave him more control over his actions.

“I’m every bit as strong as you, guardian. And I have right on my side.” Leus was furious that it had come down to this. He had failed his Arriana and these guardians and their human pets would get away with what they’d done.

“Right. Are you kidding me? You kidnapped and tortured a human. There is not one thing that’s right about that.” Alex said dumbfounded. “What sort of ass-backward brainwashing had been done to you that you could actually believe that bullshit?”

“He was safe. We weren’t going to hurt him. We just needed to get to you. We wanted to destroy you so you couldn’t keep protecting the humans that hurt us.”

“Fuck you, you weren’t gonna hurt him. Look at his hand.” Alex grabbed Tom’s wrist and lifted up the mangled hand to display the evidence for the imagined courtroom.

Leus was shocked by what he saw. At first. But the reality sank in as soon as he considered why the boy had been harmed. Leus had been taken again. He knew better than to trust a demon. They always lied. They’d do anything they had to in order to get their way. They had all been idiots to think that this would be any different.

“I had nothing to do with that. I just want to protect my people.” Leus’ eyes flamed. He was pissed off, not at the guardians, but suddenly at the demons and his grandfather who brought them in.

“You spineless bastard. You can’t even man up and admit to what you’ve done. I’m really sick of you. Normally, I’m a lover, not a fighter. But I have to admit. This is gonna be fun.”

The two men stood nose to nose. Locked in a battle of wills. They waited for someone to break rank and throw the first punch.

Leus wasn’t going to be the one to start this. He wanted to squeak every last minute out of his life. Provoking the devil wasn’t a great idea, especially without any back-up.

“Take him back with us.” Sam’s voice resonated over the men’s quarrel. “We need to get out of here now. Who knows how many others are around here. And we need to talk about his future once we’re safe.”

Sam stood to leave. She put Vance’s arm over her shoulder, balanced his weight on her hip and used all her strength to lift his up. Abby was quick to help. She followed Sam’s lead and supported his other side.

“Tell me how we get out of here safe?” She demanded, looking at Leus. She knew full well there would be others stationed around the building, ready to make sure no guardians walked out alive.

“We can go out through the side door. Once we get downstairs, we’ll need to pass by my daughter. But I think we’ll have a better chance of convincing her to let us go safely than we will with any of the others.” Leus answered after thinking through their options.

“Deanna will be able to shut down the video feed, too. That way they won’t be able to see where we go. Just bring me down there like I’m your hostage.”

Leus trusted Deanna more than anyone else in the world. She was all that he had left of his wife. His sons were nothing like her. They were more like the other soldiers. Angry and violent. Their demonic traits were more prevalent. But with Deanna he could see so much humanity inside.

“That’s no problem for me.” Alex growled, putting his hand out and accepting the knife he had given Abby. “If you try anything at all, you’re dead.”

“No shit.” This was all getting a little exhausting, Leus thought. He just needed a little time to think about all of this. To find out how much Arratta actually knew, if he was in on the betrayal or if he was just the demon’s pawn. Not that it mattered that much. Arratta should have known better than to ever trust the demon.

The fight had only lasted about ten minutes. Deanna was glued to her seat the whole time. The tension was killing her. But as much as she wanted to be in the fray, she knew she couldn’t trust herself out there. She had turned on her family once already. She couldn’t do it again. And if it came down to it, she knew she would.

Tom was the only innocent one in all of this. He was nothing like the rest of them in there. He didn’t even have the opportunity to defend himself, tied up and hidden in the back of the room.

There was no love lost when she saw the demons that guarded him were slaughtered and she was happy to see that the guardian’s spared Marius’ life. All the stuff she’d heard about them was true. They weren’t evil. She couldn’t have been more relieved when she saw the male guardian reach Tom and let him free.

Her happiness was short lived, though. The demeanor of everyone in the room changed quickly with the gunshot. She had missed the struggle between Morgan and the guardian. She was too focused on Tom.

After the shot, everyone moved so quickly and melded together. Before she could judge what was happening, she saw Arratta and Marius carrying Morgan away and her father facing the guardians alone.

She couldn’t breathe. For how long, she didn’t know. They were talking. For some reason, just talking. Then the knife came out and they started moving.

Morgan clicked on the side of the screen to change the view from the main training room to the hallway outside. She didn’t want to lose sight of the group. They had taken Leus hostage. She couldn’t believe that Tom would let them do that. But then, she’d never told him that Leus was her father. They didn’t really have a lot of time to go through everything in their background. They didn’t know anything about each other.

Still, there was no denying the bond that she felt with the human and she expected more from him.

The group moved quickly down the hall and down to the room where Morgan was sitting quietly. She had expected them to come through here. There weren’t any demons blocking this route and the leanthans were stationed at the other exit. She was the only one that stood in their way and she wouldn’t put her father at risk, or Tom for that matter.

The gold doorknob turned slowly. Deanna couldn’t breathe as the anxiety filled her chest were the air should have been able to flow freely.

To her astonishment, the first one in was Leus. He strolled in without any force. The knife was gone. No one was holding him, pushing him through. There were no guns were drawn. What the hell was going on?

Her body automatically took a fighting stance, just in case this was an elaborate trick.

“Stand down, Deanna.” Leus’ words were commanding but sweet. The voice of a parent who was in charge but loved his child unconditionally.

“Did they hurt you?” Deanna peeped, suddenly timid around her dad.

“No. But I need your help. You need to turn off the video so we can get out safely.”

She didn’t question him. With three quick motions, she had shut down the system. All recording shut down, even the live feed was gone.

“Now what.” She asked, ready to do whatever he asked.

“That’s it. You just have to tell the others that the guardians overpowered you and left with me as their prisoner. Say that they spared your life just so you could tell them they had me.”

“Is that what’s really happening?” Deanna was seriously confused. It didn’t look like he was their prisoner but, for the life of her, she couldn’t think of any other reason that he’d want to leave with them.

“Not exactly. They’re not going to hurt me.”

Deanna looked at her father again and studied his face to look for anything that told her he wasn’t being truthful. There was nothing there, just determination. From there, she shifted her gaze to the back of the group. To Tom.

He was beat up, that’s for sure. His face was covered in bruises that he hadn’t had the last time she’d seen him. So either Marius or the demons had had a little fun with him before the fight. He still didn’t look scared. It was an unbelievable feat considering what he’d seen today.