Bound by Revenge (Guardian Series) (31 page)

The door flew open in a blink and Deanna stood silently facing her brother Marius. His clothes were covered in Morgan’s blood. But she couldn’t spot any wounds on his body.

“Is she still alive?” Deanna asked, and tried to peer around her brother into Morgan’s suite.

“She made it. She’s too strong for that fucker to take her down.” He said. He actually seemed proud of Morgan. “She’s not looking as pretty as she did before, though.”

A quick slap on the back of his head stopped him from continuing.

“Open the door and let her in.” The delicate voice was one that Deanna knew well. And she couldn’t be happier to find her here.

“Sure, of course, come in.” Marius hated it when Chrissy told him what to do in front of other people. But he loved her too much to tell her that.

Marius and Chrissy had been married for almost ten years now. Deanna considered Chrissy as much a part of the family as her brothers ever were. In fact, she got along a lot better with the girl than she ever had with either of the boys. Marrying Chrissy was the best thing that Marius could have ever done.

“I’ve been here taking care of Morgan, since they got back.” Chrissy addressed Deanna. “She’s doing great. The wound wasn’t nearly as bad as any of them thought. I think she was more in shock than anything else.” Chrissy grabbed Deanna’s hand and escorted her into the room.

“Where’s dad?” Marius asked. He noticed for the first time that Deanna had come alone and not with Leus, as they had all expected.

“The guardians took him. They came past me with a knife against his throat. I had to let them go. I was so scared something was gonna happen to him so I didn’t try to stop ‘em. We both would have ended up dead if I tried to take them all on by myself.” Deanna hated how she sounded when she lied. It was almost as though she held her nose pinched. Even though she knew she did it, she couldn’t stop herself from holding her breath whenever she lied. She had no idea how she ever got away with it but her brothers still hadn’t caught on to that little quirk of hers.

Marius’ body tensed and a low rumble came from his chest. Chrissy was by his side, stroking his hair, which succeeded in calming him down a bit. “It’ll be fine. Don’t get all worked up about it. We’ll get him back. They’re too ethical to hurt him just to piss us off.” Chrissy whispered soothingly in his ear.

Deanna couldn’t muster another lie so she just nodded at her brother and hoped that he wouldn’t rush into another attack. Her father didn’t want to be found and if Marius went in with guns blazing it would likely end up getting them both killed. And she was short one brother already. She didn’t even want to think about losing the other.

“How touching.” Morgan’s insincerity splintered the group.

She walked up to Deanna and grabbed her with one hand circling the back of her neck. “You should have just killed them all, my little princess.” With her other hand, Morgan ran the back of her fingers across Deanna’s face. “They’ll do us more harm now that they know so much about us.”

Deanna pulled her face away from the touch and slid behind Marius to break Morgan’s grip. “I’m not going to risk my father’s life. The only reason we’re doing this at all is because our mother died. How could you expect me to lose my dad?”

Demons were a heartless group. She thanked the creators everyday for the human blood inside her that kept her from that terrible fate.

“They don’t know if I’m alive.” Morgan spoke, under her breath. “We can’t go rushing in after them. That’ll blow the best thing we have going for us. We need to leave them with this success. Let them think they won the fight.” She paced around, tugging at the front of her shirt, trying to keep it from sticking to her wound.

“Why the hell would we do that? You don’t know what they’re going to do to my father.” Deanna appreciated her brother’s thought. Just knowing that he really cared as much about their father as she did gave her a whole new respect for him. All the more reason to keep him alive.

“Morgan’s right,” Deanna added and jumped at the opportunity to please Morgan and keep her off her back for a little bit while also impressing the importance of her own agenda. “We shouldn’t storm in. They won’t do anything to him. We’ll be able to get in better if we wait a while.”

“Great, then what do we do in the mean time?” He looked at Morgan for his answer.

“Arratta.” She called out, summoning him in from the back room. “Tell them the plan.”

Morgan walked back across the room, over to the large bed, and crawled inside under the comforter. She snuggled up inside the cocoon of blankets and it appeared as if she fell asleep immediately when her head hit the pillow.

“We rebuild and retrain.” They were the words of a general. Not a grandfather. “We work on our army and only go in when we’re sure that we’ll win. We’re not going to take another defeat like this.”

The words terrified Deanna. Her mind swam with images of her father and of Tom. She couldn’t just let this war go on. But right now, there was nothing she could do. She just needed to bide her time and hope that they could stay hidden for long enough for her father to reach out to her and tell her what she should do.

And if she didn’t hear from him soon, she would go out and find him. There had to be a way to make peace before things got any worse. 

Chapter Twenty-three

Tom was grateful to be free. There was no worse feeling in the world than being completely helpless and putting the people you care about in danger. But now that he was a guardian there was something that he wanted do for someone and he knew he couldn’t do it alone.

Everyone had retired to their rooms only a couple of hours earlier. It had been a hectic, exhausting day for everyone. But Tom had a very limited amount of time to make a real difference and Alex was going to be the one to help him.

He knocked lightly on the door to Alex’s master suite. He knew his brother was awake because he could hear the sound of the eleven o’clock news.

Alex opened the door, wondering who else would still be awake.

“Tom, what’s up?” He opened the door widely and stepped back.

Tom walked past him and waited for Alex to close the door again. “I need a favor.” Tom said, keeping his voice as quiet as he could. The last thing he wanted was for Leus to be passing by. If Leus heard what he was about to tell his brother, they were gonna have more problems than they could handle.

“OK. Shoot.” Alex sat on the edge of the bed and crossed his ankle over his knee.

“I need you to come with me to Morgan’s place.” Tom looked down at the floor while he waited to avoid what he could sense was a harsh stare from his brother.

“What are you suicidal?” Alex barked out before he surprised Tom with an uncontrollable burst of laughter. “You miss the place already?”

“No. But I have something that I need to clean up there.” He looked away again. He was embarrassed by his unnerving need to save the girl who kidnapped him. It wasn’t the most natural impulse.

“What’s going on, really?” Alex asked. Tom wasn’t usually very timid. There was something that he was leaving out. Something major.

“OK. But you need to keep quiet about this.” Tom jogged back over to the door, opened it wide enough to stick his head out and look both ways down the hallway before closing the door and returning to Alex’s side.

“No problem, bro. What do you got?” Alex was leaning forward anxious to hear what his brother had to say.

“You have to promise to help me first.” Tom waited, refusing to go on until he had the assurance.

“Yes. Yes. Just tell me.”

Tom flopped down on the bed face first.

“Deanna killed her brother, Aron, for me. He was torturing me. And I’m pretty sure he would have killed me if she didn’t come in and stop him. I got the body down into the basement, but I need to get it out of there before someone finds it and realizes that she did it.”

Alex had to concentrate to decipher Tom’s confession, since Tom’s voice was muffled against the comforter.

Alex took a big gasp of air and let it out slowly. “What makes you think they’d figure out she had something to do with it?”

“If there’s any way around going to Morgan’s compound, we should take it. It wasn’t that easy getting you away from them the first time. And losing one family member this week was one too many.” Alex slapped Tom once on the back.

“She told Morgan that he got pissed off and left. When they find the body, everyone’ll know that she lied for me. And I’m not there to protect her.” Tom rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling.

“Shit, Tom. This is crazy.”

“I know. But you promised. And we need to go now.”

No one noticed the two of them leave Alex’s house. Everyone was locked up in their own rooms, trying hard to unwind. Morgan’s place was only about fifteen minutes across town. Tom’s right leg bounced up and down quickly the whole ride.

“You sure about this?” Alex asked once he pulled the car over a block from where Tom told him they were headed.

“I have to do this. Wouldn’t you, if you were in my place?” Tom asked.

Alex cleared his throat to give himself a second to think about it. “I guess I would.” He finally answered before pulling a couple of knives out of his glove box and handed one to Tom. He stepped out of the car and tucked the other one into his belt.

“I hope you have a plan.” Alex walked briskly towards the fenced off property with Tom dangerously close to giving his shoe a flat tire.

“Course I do.” Tom said. “Just jump the fence and head in.”

“Great plan.” Alex mumbled, but couldn’t come up with a better option himself.

Tom scrambled up the fence with no effort at all. “You coming?” He looked over at Alex with wide eyes that taunted him to keep up.

“You couldn’t keep me away if you tried.” Alex bounded over the fence just as quick. “Which building we headed to?”

“The guest house. That one over there.” Tom pointed to the miniature version of the main house off to the side.
“Great.” Alex said before taking off at a full speed run towards the house. Tom kept pace easily and the two were standing next to an open window before anyone had noticed they were around.

“Hop in little bro.” Alex bent down on one knee and linked his hands together to form a step.

“Fuck you.” Tom laughed and grabbed onto the window sill and pulled himself up with his arms.

Tom jumped up and looked around the room before calling Alex in too. The bedroom was empty and they couldn’t hear anyone in the guest house at all.

“Everything’s in place here. I’m guessing this isn’t where they kept you.” Alex snorted.

“No. I never got this far back. I only saw the living room and the basement.” Tom pushed the door open and headed down the hall towards the living room.

Right there, in the center of the room where Tom had just been held hostage, he saw the slumped over body of his father.

Tom turned away, heartbroken over the sight. To his surprise, Alex pulled him in for a hug. Something as out of character for Alex as donning a pink tutu would be. But Tom appreciated the comfort and accepted it while he fought to regain his bearings.

“Change of plans.” Alex said. “We need to take dad home with us so we can give him the burial he deserves.”

“How are we going to explain the missing body? Morgan will know we were here.” Tom asked. More than ever, he wanted to go up to the main building and make Morgan pay.

“Simple.” Alex said. “We just need to take out one of the demons she has patrolling the place. We take that body, stage it just outside alone with Aron’s body, and blow the place up. They’ll think that the two killed each other and destroyed the house in the process. They’ll just assume that Bradley’s body was destroyed in the explosion.”