Passion Ignited (7 page)

“That is true,” Gregory said again, laughing.
“I’ll be back with breakfast.”

“Thanks, man.” Raider sat down at the table as
he disappeared through the doorway. Faster than the old man should
be able to move, he was back with plates full of food. He set them
down on the table and disappeared into the kitchen again, only to
bring a glass of orange juice and some silverware.

Raider dove right in, happy that he’d be able
to dull the ache that had formed in his stomach. He couldn’t
remember the last time he’d been so hungry. Gregory sat down with
another plate of food, sitting across from him at the table. This
had become something of a tradition. Many times the two of them
would eat meals alone together, talking about anything and
everything. And up until recently, Ferox had frequently joined them
as well, loving the stories the old man had to tell.

Around a mouthful of food, Raider asked, “Any
news of your nephew?”

“Yes. He graduated early, so he’ll be joining
us shortly. He’s a smart young man; I think he’ll do well
here.”

“When do you expect him?”

“I spoke with my sister just this morning. She
said that Chester was making his final arrangements, and that he
would fly out next week.”

“Well doesn’t that seem like perfect timing
for someone’s birthday? Twenty-nine again?”

The butler laughed. “As always.”

Gregory was about to turn seventy-seven. Ferox
held a surprise birthday bash for him every year in appreciation
for all the hard work he had done for the Guardians all these
years. After all, he’d been working for them ever since he’d been a
teenager, taking over his father’s duties when he’d gotten too old
to continue. And his father before him had as well. It was a shame
that Gregory had never married. He’d never seemed interested in
doing so. Luckily his sister had married and had borne children.
Her oldest son, Chester, had been extremely interested in the
wages. He’d been told everything about the Guardians on his last
visit out, and had taken it relatively well. They’d wiped his
memory before he left just in case he decided to blab it to the
world. Damn good thing they could wipe him again if he freaked this
time around.

Raider ate the rest of the food on his plate.
“Well, I guess I should get down to the deck.”

“Very good, sir.”

He stood and nodded at Gregory before heading
down to the basement.

Raider sat in the deck, watching the security
cameras as the warriors headed out for patrols and long
afterward.

Today had gone by so slowly that Raider
himself had wanted to go out and fight. Even the newbies had been
adamant about going out tonight, insisting that they hadn’t worked
out their fighting energy the night before. He had been all for
going with them, but Ethan had stepped in, offering to go with the
others so that Raider could stay behind and field distress
calls.

Damn it.

He’d wanted to get closer to Nitro, figure out
what made her tick. After a short time had gone by, he pulled up
the GPS program for their cells. With a few quick clicks he was
zoomed in enough that he could see where everyone was. Ethan,
Garrick, and the twins were all together, and it looked like Thrash
and Blaze were making rounds a few blocks away. Raider kept the
program running as he pulled up the Guardians’ internal site. Of
course no one was logged in, because everyone was out fighting, and
Demetrius was gods knew where, probably scoping out more warriors
for their cause. The bastard never stopped working—

The GPS program signaled an alarm as one of
the cells went off grid. Raider pulled the program up onto the big
screen and looked at the two sets of warriors who were still lit up
on the screen. Typing commands into the computer, he zoomed in
closely on two of the dots. Thrash and Blaze were accounted for.
Zooming out, he scrolled up to where the others were and zoomed
back in. Mousing over the dots showing their locations, he could
see who was still online. Garrick, check. Ethan, check. Ash,
check.

No Nitro.

He typed more commands into the system.
Zooming in even more and rendering the resolution so he could see
as clearly as possible in the darkness. He just
had
to pick
up on something. The cell had to come back on grid. Grabbing the
phone, he punched in Nitro’s speed dial, but he knew there would be
no answer. If it didn’t show on the GPS, it was likely that the
phone was no longer functioning. When that got him nowhere, he
dialed Ethan. His nephew didn’t answer, and it went to voicemail
after a few rings. He hung up and tried Garrick. The bastard didn’t
answer either. With a sick feeling, Raider dialed Ash’s phone. Just
as the phone went straight to voicemail, his GPS location fell
offline.

Chapter Six

“Welcome back to the land of the
living.”

Bob rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he
crawled out of the box he’d slept in. There hadn’t been room for
all three of them to sleep in it, but Kyle and his grandfather had
given up the box for the night. They’d likely slept under the stars
just so he could get a good night’s rest. “What time is
it?”

“Eight,” Kyle’s grandpa, Eugene,
replied.

His eyebrows popped up. “How long was I
out?”

“All day. I’ve never seen someone sleep that
long. At least you look a little better.”

He wished he felt better, but the pain he’d
woken up with was just as bad as when Eugene and Kyle had found
him.

“Your temperature is pretty low; we had to
pool everyone’s blankets today to cover you up.” Eugene reached
over and touched Bob’s arm. “Still cold. How you
feeling?”

A small smile curved his lips as he looked
over at the old man with his stark white hair and beard. “Fine.
Still sore, though.”

Eugene nodded in understanding. “We’ll get you
warmed up soon, son. It takes some getting used to living out here.
Remember anything new?”

“I don’t know. I dreamt, but…none of what I
saw made sense. People spoke in a language I didn’t even realize I
knew.”

“Do you remember any of it?”

He made eye contact with the old man and spoke
quickly in the dialect from his dreams.

Eugene continued to stare at him, his eyebrows
narrowing. “I’ve never heard that one before, and I’ve had to learn
quite a few. What did you say?”

“That I can speak that language as easily as I
can English.”

Eugene rubbed his forehead. “Can’t say I’ve
heard it.”

Bob looked around the narrow alleyway. Small
families, old couples, and everyone in between littered the small
alley community, but there was one face he didn’t see in the crowd.
“Where’s Kyle?”

“He’s pulling a solo shift. I took one this
morning and he stayed here in case you woke up. When I came back he
headed out.”

“What does he do?”

“What we all do,” Eugene replied, gesturing to
everyone in the alley. “The only thing we can to survive. We
beg.”

****

“Now
that
was a fight. Maybe this trip
wasn’t a complete waste after all,” Ash said.

Raider met up with the Guardians and warriors
as they entered the mansion through the garage. The Jeep and the
Navigator spilled out all the warriors, everyone brandishing
wounds, but clearly too pumped about the fight to give a
crap.

“Yeah, and you boys showed up just in time,”
Nitro added. “But I know we could have taken them
anyway.”

Thrash and Blaze smiled, dried blood covering
their faces and clothes. Raider couldn’t tell if any of the blood
was theirs. There were all sorts of colors painted all over each of
them, which proved just how many different demons were out
tonight.

He shook his head, wishing that he’d been out
there with them instead of being stuck on deck detail. There hadn’t
been even one call requesting help, which he supposed was a good
thing. His heart rate hadn’t slowed since the time Nitro’s cell
went off grid, and he’d immediately placed a call to Blaze telling
him where the others were. After that call, he’d just sat, watching
the damned screen, hoping no more warriors’ locations were lost. He
knew the moment the two Guardians reached the others. There was
such little movement after they met up, that they were either
sitting around bullshitting or there was a fight going on. He’d
zoomed in as close as his program would allow, until it became too
blurry to see anything. Of course he couldn’t zoom in close enough
to see any actual detail, merely the street layout. There was
another godsdamned thing he needed to have upgraded. He’d started
keeping a list: the security system needed to be HD, they needed
more cameras pointing at the roof, and he needed to find a better
GPS system that he could zoom right in to exact detail.

Listening to the warriors go on and on about
the battle just made him wish he’d been out there in all the
action. For him, it had been a long night of waiting and worrying.
He hadn’t felt that type of fear in ages, and it was all because of
the sarcastic, bitchy little demon-atrix standing across the
foyer.

As a group, they all headed down to the
basement to get gauze and bandages for their wounds. The entire
way, Raider just listened to more and more of their
excitement.

“I can’t believe how far you threw that son of
a bitch,” Garrick said to Thrash.

“No shit,” Blaze agreed. “That bastard sailed
through that alley like he was a fucking drunk-ass
Superman.”

“Riley would have eaten that up. Wish he could
have been there.” Ethan stopped just outside the room where Riley
still lay unconscious, and his eyes grew sad as he stared through
the window.

Raider placed a hand on his shoulder and gave
it a squeeze. None had taken Riley’s condition harder than Ethan.
He, Raine, and Ferox had taken turns sitting with Riley almost
constantly, and Raider himself had sat with his adoptive nephew as
often as he dared without interrupting the others.

He nudged Ethan to go into the room. When he
sat down next to Riley’s bed, Raider grabbed some bandages from the
cupboards and started cleaning his nephew’s wounds.

“You enjoyed yourself tonight?” Raider
asked.

Ethan looked over his shoulder as he wiped
antiseptic cloths over his skin. “Yeah, it was definitely something
to see. It was like we just stumbled across them. We were shocked
as shit at first.” A small smile crept across his face. “But so
were the demons.”

“What happened to Nitro’s phone?”

Ethan’s eyebrows narrowed as he looked up at
his uncle. “I don’t kn—”

“I heard my name in here.”

Both men looked up at the door as Nitro
strolled in. She’d cleaned her wounds but left them unbandaged. Her
strut was as seductive as it was dangerous, her hips swaying with
every step she took.

“Who’s he?” she asked, gesturing at Riley.
“I’ve seen him down here. Alone, many times.”

“Riley,” Ethan answered. “My little
brother.”

She nodded once, looking over the young man
lying on a hospital bed. The monitor he was hooked up to showed a
steady, albeit weak, heartbeat. “He’s the one who was injured
during Ferox’s battle with his twin?”

“Yeah,” Raider replied. “Unfair as it is that
someone so young could end up that way.”

“War is unfair,” she said absently. Still, she
looked at Riley. “As is life.”

“And what would you know of life being
unfair?” Raider asked. For some reason his Instinct came to the
forefront, pissed off that she was giving another male attention.
Even if he was in a coma.

“And what would
you
?” she countered.
She shared a glare with him for what felt like ten minutes, but was
really only seconds before she turned and clipped from the
room.

“That one’s a firecracker,” Ethan said.
Although his tone sounded like he’d rather have said
“bitch.”

Raider stared, looking at where she’d just
exited the room, wanting to follow her. But really, the reasoning
behind it was of two different minds. A part of him wanted to
throttle her, the other begged him to kiss her.

****

Raider made his way back up to the main floor
of the Guardians’ mansion. He’d finished bandaging Ethan, and had
even sat with him as they gave Riley updates on what was going on
in the world. No one knew if the guy could hear a word any of them
said, but that didn’t stop them from talking to him as though he
were awake.

Opening the door that led to the foyer, he
shouldered his way through it and walked straight to his hallway.
Following it two doors down and to the right, he walked into his
darkened room. He didn’t even bother flipping on the lights; he
just pulled his black t-shirt over his head and threw it in the
hamper. Unbuckling his belt, he started pulling down his pants,
only to hear a gasp.

Willing the lights on, he whirled around to
find Nitro lying on his bed. She’d traded her fighting pants for a
tight black skirt. Her black boots traveled just above her knees,
showing the sexiest thighs he had ever seen. She was lying back,
propping herself up on her elbows; her eyes lingered up and down
the length of his body. Raider lifted his pants back up onto his
hips, but left them undone. No doubt he’d have a hell of a time
getting them done up when she was lying on his bed like
that.