The Black God (#2, Damian Eternal Series) (7 page)

“It was your guys that grabbed her!”

“Look, Brandon, I’ve got a tiny rogue
element in my organization I’m looking to crush,” Jonny said with
tried patience. “My guess is Ashley crossed the wrong damn vamp
last night, and this is the result. It’s stupid as shit to be out
doing what she’s doing. If she got in over her head, it’s not my
fucking problem.”

There was a long moment of silence. He could
almost see Brandon thinking.

“Where is she? I can prove they aren’t
mine,” Jonny added.

“Monterey wharf.”

Jonny took a quick picture of the location
of his mid-California vamps and texted it to the number Brandon was
calling from. “Those are mine,” he said. As he said the words, he
studied the photo. He had no one between San Francisco and Los
Angeles – but there was an old ops center used long before his
reign in the Monterey area. The rogue vamps would know about it.
Were they stupid enough to make it their headquarters or simply
using it to stash Ashley?

“You can manipulate that shit,” Brandon said
finally.

“Good bye, Brandon.” Jonny hung up and
handed the cell back to Charles. “Send a scout to the old
warehouses my predecessor used to use in the Monterey area. I have
a feeling some of our rogues are there. Tell them to watch only. I
want to know who’s there and how many. And …” He debated. “… I
don’t understand exactly what Stu and Tasha need for the talisman
to work. Send Tasha with the recon team to determine if there’s
something there she can use.”

Charles nodded. “May I ask what that was
about?”

“No,” Jonny snapped.

Charles didn’t push and moved back to the
ops center to issue orders for a scout to do some reconnaissance.
Jonny remained in the hallway, thoughts on Ashley once more. It
truly was the stupidest thing ever for her to start taking out
vamps without the White God’s knowledge or support. What possessed
her to take such risks? She had to know if he didn’t put a stop to
what she was doing, someone else – probably Xander – would.

His phone vibrated and he glanced down.
Brandon had texted him an address in Monterey and nothing else.
Jonny shoved the phone into his pocket.

He owed the siblings nothing. Any
involvement with them was tantamount to challenging Xander, and
Jonny wasn’t in any position to do something so crazy.

Hours later, he was still telling himself
this when he strolled onto the Monterey wharf packed with tourists
and the evening dinner crowd. The air smelled of clam chowder and
the ocean. The occasional bark of a harbor seal broke up the
chatter of humanity.

He sensed the gathered vamps long before
reaching the wharf and treaded carefully. Whatever they were doing
here, they hadn’t thought to put up wards around the area. They
wouldn’t sense him until he was in their midst.

Jonny paused in front of a boarded up
restaurant, one of the largest buildings on the wharf. He counted …
seventeen vamp signatures inside. It was a larger number than he
was accustomed to finding gathered in one spot though nowhere near
the several hundred that had defected. Still, they weren’t recruits
either, which meant one of them was going to know where the others
were.

He followed a sign pointing to a spot from
which to view the bay and stopped behind the building. No one
else was present. The tour boats were docked and dark, and a pallet
filled with harbor seals swayed from the movement of waves and
animals. He was able to sense Ashley, too. She read as a Natural,
and he began to suspect Brandon was able to do more than move in
stealth mode. He had covered Ashley’s signature the night before.
Without him present, Ashley was exposed.

Jonny hung back by the railing, gaze on the
two-story restaurant. The upper level had been an open air club,
and some table and chairs remained. Instinct told him to step aside
and allow Charles to handle the vamps. However, something else
urged him to act on his own. He wanted to think it was a sense of
duty and not emotion, but he wasn’t certain. Having learned to be
patient and cautious under pressure, he had the urge to be reckless
for once, to barge into the vamp hideout and wipe everyone out
before releasing Ashley back to her brother.

Jonny debated another second then strode
towards a door hidden under a stairwell beneath the upper deck of
the abandoned building. He eased it open and slid inside, senses
alert. The interior was dark and dusty.

He walked silently in the direction of the
grouped vamps, veering off course only to confront the solitary
guard they’d left near the back entrance of the building. It took a
thought and a touch for him to paralyze then kill the creature. He
had learned many ways to kill over the years with Charles’ help.
His power, when concentrated and channeled in a single direction,
managed to short out someone from the inside out. He was able to
sever the spinal cord or boil someone’s blood just as easily
without being more than a foot or two from someone. He could also
hold them mesmerized, incapable of movement or independent thought,
and physically beat them to death or stab them or whatever else he
wanted to do. His favorite method, though, was to tear out their
throats. Messy, simple and always sent a message that even vamps
understood.

Tonight, he chose instant death where he’d
usually want the messiest death possible to leave as a warning to
others.

He lowered the dead vamp to the ground. He
could wipe out the wharf and everyone on it, too, but he had
learned a thing or two about how discretion kept him off Damian’s
radar. Right now, he needed every moment of quiet he could get.

The plethora of skills available to a god
were still emerging, and channeling all his focus took effort. He
paused before the door leading to where the other vamps were
gathered. They had infrared sight in the dark, unlike his full on
ability to see everything in gray scale around him. His eyes went
to the sources of electricity he could sense within the walls.

Jonny crossed to a point where the subtle
thrum was loudest and rested his hand against the wall. He pushed
his magic towards the wiring of the building. A surge of power
electrified the air around him before the circuits fried and
shorted out.

Grumbling and cursing originated from the
room full of vamps. He stepped away, wanting to draw out as many as
he could before outright unleashing his magic and attacking.

Two left the room. Invisible to the
creatures he was charged with controlling, he waited until the door
closed behind them before lifting both hands to cripple them.
Seconds later, both crumbled, dead, to the ground.

Three down, fourteen to
go.
If they were somewhere more isolated,
he wouldn’t have a problem rolling out his power and letting it
crush the traitors. Jonny approached the door to the restaurant
floor and opened it. Ashley was against the far wall.

The vamps didn’t notice his entrance. He
approached the one nearest and killed him with a touch then moved
to the second closest. He had made it through five before one of
those falling smashed into something glass as he collapsed.

The others fell silent. Jonny held his
breath and wove through them, towards Ashley, while the vamps
searched the area nearest the door for signs of an intruder.

She was hooded and tied, and his stomach
rumbled when he smelled human blood on her. He rested a hand on her
arm, assessing her body. She was bruised and cut in a few places,
but there was no major damage to her. He couldn’t be entirely
certain without biting her, which gave him more access to someone’s
body, but he assessed she’d be able to fight. He was counting on
it. What was better, as a Natural warrior, she shouldn’t need light
to fight either. She’d be driven by instinct rather than sight.

Jonny said nothing as he quickly untied her.
He doubted she’d bother thanking him. He pulled the hood off her
next then pressed a knife into the palm of one of her hands. She
was breathing steadily and seemed alert. He didn’t have time to
evaluate her completely. The vamps were headed his way.

“You need to leave. Fast,” he whispered. He
then stood, moving away.

There was a pause before he heard her stand
behind him. His attention returned forward.

A flashlight blinded him briefly. Jonny’s
arm shot up to block the sudden light. More than one gasp of
surprise came from the startled vamps.

“How …” one vamp started and then
stopped.

“One chance,” Jonny said. “You all have one
chance to beg for mercy.”

No one moved, least of all Ashley. He didn’t
need to see her to know she was probably more shocked than
anyone.

“Kill him,” one of the vamps said.

“Wrong answer,” Jonny growled in a low
voice. His magic worked best when he was patient and calculating.
It was going to be difficult to remain calm when he was about to be
attacked by half a dozen vamps.

The first two attacked from his left. Before
he had the chance to react, Ashley was there. She moved too quickly
for even him to track, and he found himself watching a heartbeat
too long. He missed blocking the first punch from the vamp that
launched at him next. The creature’s fist smashed into his cheek,
and Jonny was driven back a step. He lashed out without thinking.
Black fire smashed into his attacker and sent the vamp crashing
through the pane of glass of the front window. Jonny witnessed the
shocked expressions of the evening crowd briefly before his
attention returned to the hostile vamps.

Ashley knocked out her two and confronted a
third.

Jonny killed one dead before it had the
chance to strike then snapped the neck of the second. He smashed
into the third with both fists and power, and the vamp dropped
dead.

Ashley was done and breathing hard.

Cries for help came from outside the
restaurant, and he saw the unmistakable blue uniform of police.

First things first. He couldn’t leave any
vamps alive.

“You have something against killing?” he
demanded and bent down to touch one of the vamps she’d knocked
unconscious.

“Yeah. I don’t do it!” Ashley snapped
back.

Jonny shook his head and went to the second.
He felt her eyes on him. There was a time when he hadn’t wanted to
kill and another when he’d killed – and felt guilty.

Both those times had passed. He didn’t feel
remorse when it came to death, not anymore and no matter how hard
she was glaring at him.

Finishing off the last of the vamps, Jonny
rose and snatched Ashley’s arm.

She yanked away, but he grabbed her again,
this time allowing his magic to leak into her. She was too fast to
stop, but he could slow her down, and he did just that, forcing her
muscles to relax the way he often did the women he drained for
dinner so they wouldn’t fight back either.

He Traveled with her out of the restaurant
and to the beach nearby.

She wrenched free the moment their shoes
touched the sand. “Get the hell away from me!” she hissed.

Jonny was about to read her the riot act for
taking on vamps when she whirled and glared up at him.

He’d always loved her blue-gray eyes that
bordered on silver at night. Her cheeks were flushed, her willowy
form balanced and crouched as if she were considering attacking a
god. Until this moment, he had remembered her only as the delicate,
almost too thin seventeen-year-old who tried to kill herself.

She’d grown into a woman in the past four
years. Her body was shapely, her hips flared and breasts large
enough to fill his hand. Training to fight rendered her toned, and
she’d lost what remained of the baby fat in her face to reveal high
cheekbones with natural hollows beneath them and a softly shaped
chin.

Ashley was stunning in a way few women were,
from the contrast of her dark hair and pale complexion to the
shapely musculature of her thighs and calves outlined by her snug
leggings.

What shocked him more? The unfamiliar fire
in her eyes or the fact she wasn’t the vulnerable girl he left?

“You have a lot of nerve!” She spoke before
he could recover from his surprise.

“For rescuing you?” he retorted. 

“For getting near me!”

“Because you’ll run and hide behind
Xander.”

“I won’t run and hide,” she snapped. “I’ve
been waiting for this day for years.” She stepped back and shifted
the knife he had given her from her left to her right hand.

He studied her, realization
dawning. “You’re going to fight
me
?”

She nodded.

“I thought you were crazy taking on vamps
but this is insanity,” he said, unable to help his amusement. “You
can’t kill me, Ash.”

“You destroyed my life and almost killed my
cousin. I want to repay you for that.”

He crossed his arms, not expecting Ashley to
be furious at him four years later. “I’m not a normal vamp. I won’t
play fair, either.”

“Figures.”

“All right then. Come on.” He dropped his
arms. “I’ll let you hit me once before I show you why no one messes
with a god.”

She eyed him.

He beckoned her towards him.

She struck in a blur of movement he couldn’t
track, even with his godly senses. But then something happened. She
froze in place for a split second, and he snatched her. Jonny
whirled her and wrapped one arm around her, hauling her against him
while his other hand went to her neck. She was animated once more,
jerking and ...

…
convulsing. Her breathing
was ragged and uneven, her movement out of control.

Jonny reacted instinctively. He gripped her
jaw and forced it to the right, exposing her neck, and sank his
fangs into her. Her emotions flooded him, as he expected them to
whenever he bit someone. He had learned to ignore the intimate
assault in an effort to stem his hunger. Normally, he used the
physical invasion of his teeth puncturing his victim to ease the
suffering of the life he was about to take. This time, he used his
level of access to assess what was wrong with Ashley.