Damian's Immortal (War of Gods 3) (2 page)

She sprawled on the rug near the fireplace.
The manor house had been built several hundred years ago, and every
room but hers was a reflection of her father’s wealth. Her room was
plain and basic. She’d hung one picture above the blazing hearth.
The rest of the walls were bare, the curtains drawn even during
daylight, and the heavy wooden furniture solid and worn. After a
childhood filled with foster homes, she feared getting too
comfortable, even in the home of the man who adopted her twelve
years ago, when she was ten. She’d stayed after she turned
eighteen, because he was the only one who understood her strange
gift.

She opened her hand to reveal its contents,
a marble. Absently, she turned it into a frog then a flower then a
piece of wood. She tossed it into the fire, marveling at the tiny
explosion of pink and green flames.

“
Yully,” her father
called.

“
Come in, Papa,” she said,
rolling to face the door.

Her father entered. His features were stoic,
his beautiful purple eyes the color of spring flowers. While he
didn’t look anything other than pleasant, she felt his tension in
the shimmering air around him.

“
How’s my darling?” he
asked with his usual indifference.

“
I’m fine, Papa. Are you
all right?”

“
I will be soon, I hope. I
need to talk to you about something.”

“
Is it what’s been
bothering you the past two days?” she asked.

“
You felt it.” He let a
rare smile cross his face. “Yes, of course you did. Your powers are
incredible.”

“
It’s about the … uh,
thing you told me about, isn’t it?” she said, sitting
up.

“
Yes, it is. You remember
what I’ve taught you all these years?”

“
Some sort of immortal
creatures called Guardians are trying to destroy humanity. We are
going to fight them,” she recited. “And we’ll start by taking out
one of their leaders.”

“
For the sake of
humanity,” he said. He sat beside her. “I always told you, my
daughter, that you were destined for greatness.”

“
I know, Papa. I don’t
understand all of it, though.”
And
sometimes, all this weird talk frightens me.
This thought she kept to herself.

“
You will,” he assured
her. “Don’t be afraid, my daughter. I’ve trained you the best I
could. Your powers will soon know no depths, and you’ll be able to
unite the realms. Instead of being the reject, you’ll become a
princess.”

When she was younger, she’d loved it when he
told her this. At her age, the words sounded strange. She didn’t
believe she’d turn into a princess any more than she believed she
wanted anything to do with killing anyone.

“
First, I need his
secrets, then we’ll kill him,” her father said.

“
Will he have many
secrets?” she asked, perplexed. “And why do we need
them?”

“
In time, my dear. I need
you to run to Doolin with me in half an hour. The Guardian has
arrived. We will set up our plan to capture him.”

“
What? He has?” She
started to fidget. “But I thought … I thought he wouldn’t come for
a while.”

“
It’s been a while,” her
adoptive father said with a small laugh. “It’s been ten years since
I first told you this.”

“
I know … I guess …
I
hoped
…”

“
Your dear old father was
crazy?” he asked with a glint in his eyes that made her cringe.
“Don’t worry, my love. You will soon see for yourself, and you will
understand everything. Get ready to go.” He rose and gave her a
kiss on the forehead and then left her in the safety of her
room.

I trained you the best I
could.
Bitterness crept through her as she
dwelled on his words. He’d never tried to raise her as a true
daughter.
Train
had been the perfect word. He’d drilled her in how to use and
control her gift. She’d learned self-defense by the age of eleven
and how to shoot a gun when she was twelve. He’d said it was for a
good cause-- to save humanity-- but she’d long since thought there
was something strange about his wild stories of Guardians and Gods.
If not for her unusual power, and his cold magic, she would’ve
considered him crazy.

“
Are you ready, my
daughter?” he called through the thick wooden door. “We’ll be
driving in the rain. Oh, and bring your things. We may stay there a
night or two.”

“
Just a minute, Papa,” she
answered. Yully rose and crossed to her wardrobe. She pulled out
waterproof ankle boots and her thick, lamb’s wool-lined coat then
quickly gathered her toiletries and packed an overnight
bag.

Her father awaited her in the foyer. He had
no bag and no coat, and she scanned the foyer.

“
Forgive me, daughter, but
I can’t go with you,” he said and glanced at his watch. “You go on
ahead. I’ll drive out tomorrow.”

“
Father, I’d rather--
”

“
No,” he said sharply.
“You’ll go now.”

She flinched, but he didn’t hit her this
time. The strange note was in his voice again. Instead of speaking,
she kissed him on the cheek and hurried out the door, where her car
had already been pulled in front of the manor. She darted through
the cold rain into the warm car and tossed her things in back. Her
father stood in the doorway of the house, framed against the light
of the foyer.

Shivering, she couldn’t help thinking
something was very wrong. She drove the winding roads from her
father’s manor through County Clare and south towards the Cliffs of
Moher to Doolin, one of her favorite day trips. The sun set too
early on the autumn day, and she finished the trip to Doolin in
darkness. She went to the main strip, where the pubs were not yet
busy in the early evening.

“
Your father called,
Yully! I saved your seat!” the bartender called as she entered.
“Nice seein’ ya in town again.”

“
Thanks, Sean,” she
replied with a wave. She shook off the rain in the doorway and
crossed to the small booth near the bar that she and her father
usually shared.

“
Ye want the usual?” Sean
asked. A burly redhead who towered over her, his face was flushed
from the heat of the warm pub. She’d always felt comfortable around
him. He was one of the only people who didn’t shy away from her or
treat her like she was a leper. Once, she thought she’d seen the
same shimmer of power around him that she saw around her
father.

“
Yes, thanks, Sean.” She
peeled off the thick coat and draped it over one bench before
seating herself facing the door, as her father had taught her. Sean
brought her a bowl of thick beef stew, soda bread, and a
Coke.

“
You fall again?” he
asked, gaze on her bruised cheekbone.

“
Yeah.” She looked away.
He said nothing else and moved away.

Yully ate slowly, enjoying the stew enough
to start a second bowl. Some of the locals she knew from her
frequent visits seated themselves before Sean at the bar. One
glanced her way, his gaze lingering. Self-conscious of the effect
her gift had on people, she moved deeper into the booth. Normally,
she’d leave before it got too crowded; her father preferred she
avoided people altogether. With nothing but her troubled thoughts,
the cold rain, and a lonely room in the bed and breakfast down the
road, she didn’t feel like leaving just yet.

Instead, she started a third bowl of the
soup and watched the pub fill with people.

“
Enjoy,” Sean said,
reappearing from the kitchen doors behind her to place a bowl of
warm toffee pudding on the table.

“
Oh, Sean,” she said with
a smile. “I’ve already had three bowls of stew!”

“
It’s from the gentleman
o’er there,” he said and indicated a booth near the door with the
tilt of his head.

“
Could I take it to go?”
she asked.

He hesitated, and her senses tingled in
warning. Sean smiled finally and whisked it away. Yully watched
him, alerted by the same sense of uneasiness she felt around her
father lately. She wasn’t sure why he’d care if she ate or took her
dessert home.

Unless there was something wrong with it.
She looked down at her stew, her father’s warnings coming back to
her thoughts. He’d claimed someone would try to kill her, and the
man they sought was here. She’d long since thought her father was
paranoid, if not crazy. Sean poisoning her made no sense.

It’s from the gentleman o’er there.

She searched the busy pub with her gaze.
There were a lot of tourists in town, probably for the autumn
equinox, which drew people from around the world every year. She
wasn’t sure who Sean was trying to indicate had sent her the
dessert.

“
Here you go,” he said and
placed the small brown paper bag on the table before her. “Have a
good night, Ms. Yully.”

“
Oh, here,” she said and
reached for her purse.

“
No worries. The gentleman
paid for your dinner.”

“
Which gentleman?” she
asked. “I’d like to thank him.”

“
Right over there.” He
pointed to a small table across the pub, and she wondered how she’d
missed the men at the table.

“
Thanks.”

Sean returned to the bar. Two men sat at the
table, one with blond hair and the other like something out of a
movie. Cocoa skin, soulful dark eyes, exotic features, and
brilliant tattoos over his exposed, muscular arms. His hair was
long and black, braided down his back. While it was hard to tell
his height when he was seated, he looked to be Sean’s size, well
over six feet tall. He sat like he owned the pub, leaning back in
the chair in a display of relaxed power. His smiles to his
companion were easy and his gaze wary.

He shimmered, like her father did.

Yully’s stomach turned. This had to be the
man her father warned her about! She made a show of resting her
coat across the table, as if to say she wasn’t leaving, and crossed
to the small hall that contained the restrooms. Instead of ducking
into the ladies’ room, she pushed through the back entrance, which
emptied out into a dark, rainy alley. Shivering, she pulled out her
phone to call her father as she made her way towards the
street.

“
Papa, I think he’s here,”
she whispered when he answered. “I don’t know what to
do.”

“
Are you
armed?”

“
No, Papa.”

“
You’re supposed to carry
at least a knife every time you leave the house. In any case, I’m
on my way, darling,” he said with disapproval. “You know how to
defend yourself, and you can turn even a man into a rock with your
magic. You have nothing to fear. Go to the bed and breakfast and
wait for me.”

“
Yes, Papa.”

He hung up. She shoved the phone and her
hands in her pockets to keep them warm as she picked her way
through the littered alley.

Chapter Two

Jule had watched the Magician for a good
half hour. He wasn’t sure what he expected-- maybe a cold, hard
Medusa-- but the young woman Sean indicated was nothing like that.
Her hair was fiery red and curly, her frame tall and slender.
Almond-shaped green eyes were large and expressive while her skin
was touched with honey. She’d barely met Sean’s gaze and her smile
was hesitant.

She looked too sweet to be someone about to
destroy the fabric between the immortal and mortal worlds, even if
he did sense some sort of dark secret in her gaze. She radiated
power that even humans could feel. Despite the pub’s standing room
only capacity, the table next to her booth was empty. He’d watched
Sean subtly steer people away from it.

His own unease grew. The Watcher wanted her
dead, and yet, Watchers couldn’t always be trusted to tell their
true intentions. He understood it was in their best interest to
protect humanity. Why, then, was he starting to feel as if he’d
been set up? The Magician looked like a sweet, innocent Natural,
one of the humans with extraordinary gifts who could be brought
into the Guardians’ organization.

How he wished he had his power! He’d be able
to read her mind and confirm she was indeed intent on destroying
the gateway between the realms. Instead, he had to do this the way
humans did.

The Magician piled her coat on top of her
table with shaking hands and walked toward the hallway where the
restrooms were. Sean was supposed to serve her dessert laced with a
sedative, so they could drug her and take her back to the station
for questioning. He had a feeling she wasn’t sticking around and
wondered what had alerted her. Sean caught his eye and tossed his
head towards the restrooms. Jule rose and maneuvered through the
crowd and down the small hall. He emerged into the alley in time to
see her replace a phone in her pocket. He moved silently down the
alley and had almost reached her when she froze.

“
Don’t make me do it,” she
said in a soft voice.

“
Make you do what?” he
asked and stopped just out of arms’ reach.

“
Kill you. I have a sort
of … magic power that will turn you to stone.”

“
Sweetheart, there’s not
an evil bone in your body,” he said, amused. “I don’t need magic
powers to see that.”

“
You’re here to kill me.
Why should I not defend myself?”