Shadowbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Realm Protectors Book 2) (2 page)

“We’re here,” Sahara said, stopping the car. “Help me get him out of the trunk.”

Here,
he thought.
In the middle of nowhere. Not much of a here at all.

Harold nodded. There was a phantom pain in his body. But that’s all it was — just phantom. He wasn’t in any real pain, the burns and the scars and the newly jagged and healing cut on his left hand made him feel that way.

The air outside of the car chilled Harold’s skin even more. Sahara hadn’t bothered to park off to the side of the one lane road and if another car had eventually pulled up behind the Audi, the other car would have nowhere to go besides into the sea of gnarled black branches and towering trees. Something in Harold’s gut told him that they wouldn’t have to worry about that though. The woods were that of a graveyard and the only types of folks who might’ve strolled through there were ghosts.

Or pissed off Vampires.

He looked down the length of the road, and although it must’ve been close to six or seven in the morning with the sun slowly peeking out over head, he could only see about another two hundred feet before the darkness swallowed up the path.

Sahara popped open the trunk, started to drag Roman’s wrapped body out, grunting as she did so. The girl possessed super-human strength, but could hardly lift a dead Vampire. It didn’t make sense to Harold. So he went around the other side to help.

The earthy smells of dirt and wood and grass were replaced with something much worse. And Harold had to hide a gag. Roman was in the process of decomposing, fast. When Harold placed his right hand on the black sheet wrapped around the body, a warmth unlike anything other radiated from beneath it. Nothing dead could’ve been that warm, and he almost started to rip the sheet away like wrapping paper, before Sahara collapsed right there in the dirt.

Harold stood with the Vampire’s warm body in his hands, and he stood without struggle. Roman’s corpse wasn’t heavy, at least not as heavy as Sahara made it out to be. No, he sensed there was something more to the girl’s struggle than the weight of the body. It was the weight of the situation; the weight of her broken heart.

Harold set Roman back down in the trunk and squatted, leaning his back up against the taillights of the car.

Sahara’s face rested in her hands, the wild red hair frizzled in every direction, making her head look like it was on fire. She sobbed audibly, her body shaking with the sounds.

Harold didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know if he could speak at all. They’d driven so long without so much as a word that maybe his voice didn’t work any longer.

“I’m stupid,” Sahara said. And her voice, hearing it, the faded bullfrog voice, gave him strength to speak himself.

“No — no, you’re not. I am.”

He would’ve cried too had there been any moisture in his body.

“It’s okay, Storm,” she said, sniffling. “We’re gonna make it. I swear.”

He opened his mouth to say some more comforting and empty words before twigs snapped off the path, and then dead leaves rustled. Harold looked to Sahara before looking towards the source of the noise. Her eyes were watery, but focused.

Then Harold’s neck turned following her line of sight. A tall and muscular black man dressed in the same garb as Roman — leather jacket, faded black pants — stood at the tree line, one arm rested against the trunk of a blackened oak.

“Sahara,” the man said in a voice like thunder. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you around these parts. What gives us the honor of hosting you today?”

“I come bearing bad news, John.”

John’s eyes narrowed. He took a step forward, and Harold could’ve sworn that the very foundation of the world shook with the man’s steps. He did not look like a Vampire in the most common sense. He looked like a star athlete instead, or
might’ve
been a star athlete many years ago. Although his eyes were young-looking, wrinkles dusted his face and there were spots of gray in the close shaved hair of his head and in his beard.

“Can’t be as bad as the end of the world, can it?” the Vampire said. “I trust you’ve heard, being a Protector and all.” His gaze flicked to Harold, and he looked him up and down. “Who’s this one here?”

Harold gave him a nod and faint smile despite the fact that he didn’t like the way the Vampire looked at him.

“Did you bring me food, Sahara? A peace offering?”

“No — ” she began, but Harold cut her off.

“Back off, bloodsucker,” he said. “I’m not for dinner.”

John stopped abruptly. The smile wiped away from his face. Old Harold would’ve shrunk away, laughed off the joke maybe, but he was no longer the old Harold. If that Vampire got too close, he didn’t doubt he would’ve swung at the damn thing, or announced how he was a Protector and threatened him with a sword that was no longer part of him.

Sahara placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezed subtly.

“He’s my partner, John — a Protector, too.”

John’s grimace vanished, and for a second Harold thought the man might’ve looked a bit anxious, uncomfortable. His large hand rubbed the back of his neck and the fiery stare broke from Harold’s eyes to the dirt road. “Geez, man, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t know. You just — you just don’t look like much of a Protector. No offense.”

Harold stifled a chuckle. The fact that he could make a Vampire uncomfortable by saying a few words amazed him.

“You look more like a Demon,” John said. “More like something from Hell.”

“Wrong place, wrong time,” Harold said.

“Enough chit-chat,” Sahara interrupted. “Roman’s dead.”

And just like that John’s eyes went slack, his hands fell to his side, and his big, lumbering frame nearly toppled over before he caught himself on the hood of the Audi with a metallic clunk.

“D-dead?” he said.

“It was the Shadow Eaters, John. They’re back.”

But Harold couldn’t let Sahara lie. It wasn’t the Shadow Eaters; it was him, and the old Harold would’ve been perfectly fine with having someone else take the blame.
 

“No, Sahara, it’s alright,” he said, waving a hand and turning to John. “Roman died sacrificing his life for me.”

The Vampire stood up straighter, looked to Sahara, who had come around the other side of the car, dried tears in her eyes, and placed a hand on the Vampire’s tree trunk-sized forearm.

“Is this true, Sahara?” John demanded.

The two stared at each other until Sahara’s gaze fell to her feet.

“Yeah, it’s true,” Harold said, and stood a little taller as he said it.
 

He’d own up to the things that had happened to him, to the things he’d done. Besides, it wasn’t his fault that Roman took it upon himself to sacrifice his life for Harold’s. It still didn’t make much sense, but it happened. Sure he felt guilty and he hated himself ever since waking back up in the terminal, thinking he’d gotten into Heaven, and he didn’t doubt he’d hate himself for a long time to come. But like his mom always used to say: There’s no use in crying over spilt milk. And things happen for a reason. So there must’ve been a pretty damn good reason why Harold was still alive and the Vampire wasn’t.

“What makes you so special?” John said, advancing on Harold.

Harold didn’t shrink away; he stood his ground.

The rage shook John’s voice. “Roman was my brother, and you killed him?”

“John — no,” Sahara said, but it was too late. A brick-sized fist sliced through the air. Knuckles connected with the left side of Harold’s gaunt and toasted face. The dark forest grew darker. Something split open on his cheek. A bursted blister? Or a just the thin skin? He didn’t know. The metal of the car buckled under his back. An elbow ripped the sideview mirror down with him as he bounced off of the packed dirt road.

Sahara’s scream sounded distant. So did her voice as she yelled for John to stop.

“My brother — ” the Vampire spoke between punches.

Harold saw the fists rain down on him like a violent storm. And it hurt. So bad. His ribs popped with each forceful plow. Head thumped against the metal.

“Where’s your blade, huh?” the Vampire spat. “Draw your fucking blade, man. Go on, do it! You’re in Vampire country now.”

“John, enough!” Sahara shouted.

“Shut up!” he yelled back at her.

The little jabs picked up speed, more force, then the Vampire locked both hands together, brought them high above his head. And all Harold could see was the large figure’s dark outline, but he could sense the fear, the danger. Without a key in his flesh, he was doomed to die, and there was no doubt that the Vampire could kill him with his fists alone.

“You’re going to kill him!” Sahara shouted.

Metal screeched as her blade emerged, though John hadn’t taken notice.

“You can’t kill him! You kill him then you kill everyone,” she said, voice fading more and more.

A faint howl echoed inside of Harold.

I am the Alpha. I am the Alpha. I am the Alpha.

Though he thought it to be just in his head. Phantom voices that matched the phantom pains.

Harold raised his arms up.

“Anyone can die if you hit them hard enough,” John said.

The Vampire brought down both fists with enough force to shatter concrete.

Harold caught his hands, gripped with unbelievable force, then twisted, popping the bones and the knuckles until they felt loose and rubbery underneath his skin. “C-can’t kill me,” Harold said. “I am the Alpha.”

John shrieked. His body fell down like a broken Slinky.
 

Harold still clutched the man’s hands, still twisted, meant to rip the large arms straight from their sockets. But Sahara, finally seeing a perfect time to intervene — much easier stopping Harold, a friend, than trying to subdue a three hundred pound Vampire — set her Deathblade on Harold’s shoulder.

He let go, looked closely at the blade, noticed how worn and dilapidated it looked, like it’d have trouble cutting through wood, and no shot cutting through Man, Demon, or Vampire. She had been pumped full of the venom in Hell. Harold had saved her in the short term, but how much longer did she have before it consumed her like Charlie said it would consume him?

“Y-you can’t kill him,” Sahara said to the broken Vampire at her feet. “Because he is
Electus.
”

Despite all the pain written on the Vampire’s face, his eyes lit up and he smiled. “
Electus?”
he asked. “No — that can’t be.”

The Chosen One.

Something faint squealed inside of Harold’s mind, something like one of the Wolves tearing at a throat, tongues lapping at the flowing blood.
 

Faint, but real, so, so real.

C
HAPTER
3

The glowing eyes brought Harold’s thoughts back to earth. At least ten pairs of them poked out from the darkness beyond the trees.

Sahara helped him up, ran a hand over the rough, broken skin of his face. He winced as she did it. John had gotten a few clean hits in, the type of punches that would’ve won him the world heavyweight title. And Harold’s face was the clear loser — always had been. But how much worse could it have gotten, really? The lumps and blood were another addition to the mess. He didn’t care.

All he cared about were the eyes. Glowing yellow eyes, bobbing up and down, advancing on him. Sure, he’d disarmed one hulking Vampire— almost literally — but could he do it to ten or twenty more?

Hell, no.

Sahara’s blade retracted. She threw her hands up and despite all the pain radiating from Harold’s face, he threw his up too.

Three more Vampires emerged from the forest. Each one damn near perfect in their own way. A tall and slender blonde with skin as white as fresh snow; a man with a razor sharp jawline; and a girl, maybe about seventeen, but who knew how old in Vamp years, that looked all too familiar.
 

Then it struck Harold, how he knew that face. He hadn’t gotten a good look at her in the blood bank because her father, Roman, had ushered her out, fearing for what would happen with two Protectors enforcing Felix’s treaty. But the resemblance was almost uncanny. She had the same shade of dark eyes, same shape of nose — long and coming to a point sharper than her cheekbones.

She was Roman’s spawn, alright, and the way her attractive features melted off of her face when she saw the wrapped body in the trunk of the Audi hurt to look upon. He was not a father — might’ve been in a previous life — but he knew the love Roman had for Cinder was real, was strong.

She took a few shaky breaths, edging closer to the taillights, but Sahara put a hand on the girl’s shoulder before she could reach the body. Luckily, Cinder wasn’t as hostile as John had been. Even if she was, Harold didn’t think he could harm the girl because that’s all she was after all — a girl. He didn’t see her as a Vampire or a Bloodsucker or an enemy at all. Just a girl who had lost her father. And Harold knew what it was like to be without a father.

“I’m sorry,” Sahara said.

“Sorry?” Cinder answered, a hint of sarcasm in her tone. “Sorry isn’t going to bring my father back from the dead, is it?”

Sahara shook her head softly, avoiding eye contact.

Then Cinder turned to Harold. “Is it?”

“No, ma’am.”

“This was your father’s choice,” Sahara said.

“Oh shut up, whore. Why should I believe you? You’ve been making my father’s choices for years. For all I know you killed him just like you killed Nik.”

“Uh, no, that one is on me,” Harold said. He sounded confident, but one look at the Vampires’ burning stares told him he should’ve kept his mouth shut. “Geez, I was just doing my job.”

Sahara put a hand up, blinked slowly. “Nik violated the treaty. He worked for the Shadow Eaters, too. Death was never our plan, but he acted maliciously, and Harold had every right to defend himself. So before you start pointing fingers, chew on that. Besides, If I do recall correctly, you happened to be at the scene as well. Wouldn’t that make you an accomplice?”

“Shove that motherly bullshit right up your ass,” Cinder hissed.

A couple of them chuckled, and the group seemed to ease up after that. Maybe the tension was over, maybe Vampire and Realm Protector could live amongst each other after all. Then Cinder began to cry, shattering that idea. Three teardrops made their way down her cheeks. And she pushed through Sahara, towards the open trunk. The sheet rustled, and Cinder drew a sharp breath before falling to her knees, her elbows hitting the metal bumper with audible clunk.