Marked (Eternal Guardians #1)

  ***

  Nick sensed the air change just as he had two days before. He lifted his mouth from the breast he’d been laving and went completely still.

  “Jesus, don’t stop now,” Dana groaned beneath him as she arched her back to offer more. “Not yet.”

  “Shh.” He planted a hand on the crisp sheets of her bed and tuned his hearing toward the disturbance he’d felt.

  Her eyes narrowed in concentration as if she were listening as closely as he was. Of course she couldn’t, but it didn’t make her try any less.

  “I don’t feel anything,” she whispered moments later. Her breath fanned across his cheek, remnants of the vodka and cranberry juice she’d inhaled to celebrate the end of her shift at XScream wafting toward his nose. Outside, a car whooshed by on the rain-slicked streets, the only sound drifting up to the second-floor apartment she kept above the Wash-n-Go Laundromat on Third Street in downtown Silver Hills.

  He knew why she kept the apartment and didn’t live with the others, but it bothered him. Their kind should stick together. Especially now. Especially when he sensed there was a change coming. His scars had been tingling for days now.

  “Nick?”

  Her voice held an edge of impatience, a hint of unease and a whole lot of lust. It took less than two seconds to make up his mind.

  He pushed off her and snapped his jeans. “I gotta go.”

  Her brow knit in disbelief just before her famous temper reared its ugly head. She sat up, not caring in the least she was naked as the day she was born. Dana Sampson was built like a siren and knew it. “No way. Not again. I swear to every one of the fucking gods if you walk out this time, it’s the last.”

  He tugged his black T-shirt back over his head. “Don’t be so damn dramatic, Dana. It’s unbecoming.”

  “Unbecoming?” she scoffed. “Unbecoming is leading me on like this. Especially after the night I had. Karl was a complete ass at the club. I nearly laid him out flat when he groped me behind the bar for the tenth time and you know I can’t get caught doing that shit again. I need a release as bad as you do. But no, you gotta get me all heated up and leave. Is this a game to you?” She bolted off the bed and shoved a finger in his chest. “If you go, I’m not letting you back in.”

  He sensed she was serious and that she was holding ground she felt sacred in Danaland. He also knew he could bend her will with just one push if he really wanted. But whatever want he’d had had fizzled as soon as he’d felt the change. He shrugged and reached for his leather jacket from the purple velvet chair she’d gotten from some hippie shop in Eugene. “You gotta do what you gotta do, babe.”

  She crossed her arms over her very natural, very well-endowed chest and glared hard in his direction. “I mean it this time, Nick. You’re not the savior of the goddamn world. When are you going to figure out no one gives a fuck what you do? Those kids—all of them—you can’t save them.”

  There was just enough truth in that statement to draw his jaw together hard. He turned his back on her and shrugged into his coat.

  “The sooner you tell them all to cut and run, the safer they’ll all be. Why the hell won’t you do that? It’s like you’re just waiting for something apocalyptic to happen. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were inviting it so you could swoop in and save the day like your brother.”

  He whirled back at her so fast she didn’t have time to brace herself. He caught her by the throat and pressed his fingers into her skin hard enough to get her attention. She gasped, her hands flying to his to try to get him to let go. In her wide eyes he saw surprise, then disbelief, then the edge of bone-melting fear.

  And though it sickened him, her reaction fed the hatred he normally kept locked deep in the recesses of his soul. That part of him that was linked to the darkest evil. That part he fought every day of his unending life.

  “You do not know of what you speak.”

  She rose on her tiptoes, her mouth opened to draw air into her shrinking windpipe. In her wide cobalt eyes he saw the reflection of what he was at that moment: a black stain, the scarred remnants of what passed for a man, the thing of nightmares. And he still didn’t let go.

  His lip curled in a snarl as he watched her grapple for control. Somewhere inside he registered he should feel something for her, for the twisted relationship they had, but he couldn’t muster anything more than disgust.

  He was just about to release her when a tingling ran over each of the scars on his back. And he knew.

  She would die.

  Not tonight. Not by his hand.

  But soon.

  He eased his grip. She dropped to the floor and sucked in a large breath. With steady hands she massaged her tender throat. He’d probably left marks, but that was nothing new for Dana.

  “You bastard,” she choked out.

  No argument there. He didn’t have enough emotion to muster a response, so he zipped his jacket instead and regarded her with steely eyes. “Go to the colony, Dana.”

  “Why?” she snapped, angry waves radiating off her naked flesh as if from a coal-burning furnace. “So you can put on a repeat performance? No thanks.”

  “No, so you can live. Something’s coming.”

  He didn’t know what, exactly, but the only other time his messed-up skin had buzzed like this, his half brother had been sworn into the Argonauts. Ever since then there’d been small bursts of electricity, a hum occasionally when the hunters were out, but nothing as big as what he’d felt the last few days. He knew now, of course, that the change had started back then, with Demetrius’s induction, just as he knew it was now growing, rising like a swell of water on the open ocean, waiting to crash in a tidal wave over everything his people knew.

  And how fucked was it that he was the only one that could see it coming?

  He turned for the door, more intent than ever to figure out what the hell had just come through the portal again, and why only two days after the last crossing.

  “Wait.”

  He halted but didn’t turn.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” she asked in a small voice.

  He looked over his shoulder and watched as she pulled up the sheet to cover her naked flesh. The twin Fury tattoos on her breasts flashed as she moved. The third one, he knew, hovered at the small of her back. Modesty wasn’t something she worried herself with, which meant she was right and truly scared.

  Finally.

  “Get to the colony and stay there,” he said sternly. “I promise you’ll be safe. I won’t bother you there.”

  “Nick.” Regret rushed over her features as she reached a hand out.

  Yeah. Their sicko relationship was right and truly fucked. She liked it rough and he liked to give it to her, but what had just happened had crossed the line. And the fact she didn’t see that flipped a trigger in his brain that screamed, Get the hell out now Fast.

  He was out the apartment’s front door before she even took a step his direction, and headed for the back stairs that ran down to the alley at the rear of her old building. His hearing was still in tune with what was happening around him, searching for what he’d sensed inside, which is why he heard her sniffle one floor up and from behind supposedly soundproof walls.

  And shit, like he needed to hear that tonight.

  He slung a leg over his Harley, parked near the Dumpster, and snapped on his helmet, not because he was worried about cracking his skull open but because it was the law. A hell-on-wheels, no-helmet biker attracted cops. And cops attracted trouble.

  The bike roared to life beneath his fingers. As he tore out of the alley and onto the four A.M. deserted streets of Silver Hills, the raw power of the machine beneath him rumbled through his body.

  As did the tingles. All over his skin. Stronger this time. Vibrating electric energy against his clothing so much that he was sure he had to be glowing beneath his denim and leather.

  The portal had opened again. And this time what came through was no match for the darkness inside him.
It was a thousand times worse.

  Chapter Ten