Darkness & Lies: A Brotherhood Novel (#1) (19 page)

He didn’t exist.

He should have died centuries
ago,
and yet he walked the earth like a zombie, only his body wasn’t dead.

Just his soul.

“Do you really want me to tell you?” She nodded her head excitedly. “Really? Because after I do, there is no going back. If you breathe a word of this to anyon
e…” H
e le
f
t the last part to her imagination. 

“I swear I won’t say a
nything,” she said with a child
–like
glint
in her eyes. “I’d cross my heart, but som
e
one tied my hands.” She looked pointedly at
him.

He shrugged.
“Fine, but
just remember, you asked for this.” Closing his eyes, Erias reached deep inside to connect with his powers. When Cheyenne let out a gasp, he opened his
eyes.

One minute the room had been a total mess. The product of her destruction when she
had launched her e
s
cape.
Now…now
it was spotless. It was as if nothing had
happened.

The table was sitting upright, completely unmarred. It held no visible trace that it had ever been shattered at all. The
picture was
straight. Its
hole
completely repaired. The lamp was resting on the nightstand again, not
a crack in sight. And the bed…
it was completely put back together. The mattress was properly stacked, the bed perfectly made. The only thing that told her this hadn’t been some sort of delusion was the fact that she was still securely tied to the headboard in the center of the room with a fine sheen of sweat still coating her brow from her harrowing
attempts.

“Um, I think you forgot something,” she said, ti
p
ping her head to the metal and bindings.

“Oh
,
yeah, almost forgot.”

She smiled briefly before a sudden dizziness ove
r
came her. Pinching her eyes shut, she groaned.
“I think I need to sit down.”
 

He laughed. “Sweetheart, you already are. Open your eyes.”

Cheyenne gasped. Somehow, she was back on the bed. Propped up with a few pillows, her back was to the headboard once
again,
and she was tucked under the sheets. How in the world….

Erias kicked off his boots and peeled of his shirt
,
then took the spot next to her. “Hungry?” Before she could respond, he had his hand held out in front of him and a s
e
cond later, her dinner plate
filled
his
palm.

“What are you?” she found herself asking again.

“That is the
million-dollar question
isn’t it?” Cu
t
ting off a piece of steak, he sighed in resigna
tion. “Some people call us g
ods. I like to think of myself as a guardian
,
with a little extra something. If you know what I mean.” He winked at her as he lifted the fork to her
mouth.

“Guardian of what?” Cheyenne asked, opening to accept the bite.

Cutting off a bite of his own, he ate silently as he mulled over his response. In the end, how could he tell her the truth without freaking her out? He
realized he couldn’t.

Scooping up a pile of potatoes, he made sure her mouth was full before he told her the truth of his existence. “I’
m a guardian to the g
ates of Hell.”

Chapter 15

“Crap.” Erias tossed the tray away and tried to wrench Cheyenne into his arms. Her face was quickly tur
n
ing blue as she choked on her food. He cursed himself for packing her mouth so full before he threw his revelation down on her.

He should have known
better,
but it seemed inn
o
cent enough at the time. Besides, he’d been looking fo
r
ward to seeing the look on her face when he told
her.

Just not this look. Bulging eyes and blue skin didn’t become her. 

He tried again to tug her to
him,
so he could beat her senseless and save her life
,
but the restraints held her too
tight.

CRAP! Lookin
g into her
panic-stricken 
blood
shot e
yes his heart plummeted with the
knowledge that she was going to die right here before his
eyes.

Just as Helena had.
He hadn’t been able to save his wife, and now Cheyenne was going to die because of him too.

No. That had been different
, he told himself next
. What had happened to Helena and his son was beyond him. There was nothing he could have done for them.

However,
saving Cheyenne was totally within his
power.

Cheyenne
saw
the determined glint in his eyes as her own welled with terrified tears.

“Look at me,” Erias commanded, planting himself in her line of sight. “You’re going to be okay. Do you b
e
lieve me?”

She nodded.

She didn’t want to die. There was
still
so much she wanted to do with her life. So much she wanted to
exper
i
ence.

She’d had dreams and goals that she wanted to
a
c
complish, but
even as she thought it,
her head became light and airy
and
her life flashed before her eyes. Her past, a collage of wonderful memories skimming through her head in a
blur, the
first time she had fallen from her bike and skinned her knee. The
first time she had kissed a boy
–Bobby Jenner. Her first dance, when she got her license, her first concert, her first heartbreak, everything. All the good, all the bad, it was all
there,
and she longed to reach out and touch it. To appreciate
it, but
the hardest part of all was what hadn’t happened
yet.

She saw herself, standing in front of a
full-length mirror
with a crown of colorful flowers in her long flowing hair. A white dress made of the finest silk skimming her body and pooling on the floor where her bare toes peeked
out.

What broke her heart most was when the little girl with the dark curly hair came running into the room and latched onto her leg
,
squeezing with all
of
her might.

Reaching down to run her fingers through her hair, she stopped short when the girl looked up at her with bri
l
liant blue eyes filled with love and adoration.

And in that
moment,
s
he knew, this was her daug
h
ter.
The daughter she would never get to meet.

A second later the child was whisked up into a strong pair of arms. Dressed in a black tuxedo with a black
bow tie
and crisp white shirt, Erias beamed a smile down at her as he crushed the little girl to his
chest.

And he was beautiful. With everything she had in
her; Cheyenne
wanted to reach out and touch him. To kiss him. To hold him as close to her as he was to their
daug
h
ter.

In that
moment,
she
knew
this wasn’t some predi
c
tion of a future
loss.
This was a hallucination brought on by lack of oxygen to the brain. The man might have been de
v
astatingly
handsome,
but he was the vilest creature she had ever had the misfortune of interacting
with,
and he was g
o
ing to be the death of her, right here and now. S
he would never,
ever
have a child with him. Ever. There just wasn’t enough money in the
world.

Suddenly,
a flood of air rushed into her lungs. Cheyenne frantically sucked it in, greedily gasping for ev
e
ry drop of oxygen she could get. Her chest burned and her throat was
dry,
but she was alive and that was the best fee
l
ing she could have asked
for.

Warmth surrounded her, closed in from every dire
c
tion making her ne
ver want to move from that
spot. Peeling her eyes open, she found herself looking right into Erias’s relief filled electric blue eyes and felt a surge of emotion that she couldn’t explain.

Wrapped in his arms, he cradled her in his lap and held her tightly to his chest
,
much as he had done with the little girl in her dream. Petting her hair back, he looked at her as if she were something precious. Something to be treasured.
And she
realized
it wasn’t the first time she had felt that way around
him.

The intensity of the moment
made Cheyenne step back and take notice. No one had ever truly looked at her that way. Kris had come close but there was always som
e
thing lacking that she could never quite put her finger on. Maybe that was why she was never willing to take that e
x
tra step.

She had always listened to that nagging feel
ing in the pit of her stomach, t
he one that told her to wait, that it would be a mistake to take things to another level.
Now,
lying in Erias’s arms, feeling his frantic heartbeat begi
n
ning to slow under her fingertips, that voice was oddly a
b
sent. There wasn’t a single thing telling her to back off. To wait another
day.

In fact, the only voice she heard
belonged to her mother.
She could still remember sitting at her bedside holding one hand while her father sat opposite her holding the other. As the Leukemia ate away at the last moments of her
life,
her mother had turned her warm brown eyes on her told her the words she would live her life
by.

“My sweet child, the light of my life, you are the reason my days have seen so much sunshine. Don’t
live
your life in fear of the unknown as I have. Promise me that when the time comes you will grab onto life with both hands and never let it go.”

It brought tears to her eyes to this very
day, but
she could hear those
words as clear as the day they
had been
spoken,
and they were ringing so loud in her ears that it was impossible to ignore
them.

Staring
deep
into his
eyes now,
Cheyenne could see the longing, the desperation and most importantly, the em
o
tion shining
there.
He may have been a hard ass, but he felt something for
her.

And she felt something for him.

No longer able to deny it
, and lacking the will
to hide it anymore, Cheyenne inched her hand up his chest to wrap around his neck. Gently, she pulled him down to her
,
judging whether he felt the same way all the while. She had never done anything like this
before, being
forward with a man. It wasn’t that she was
afraid. She
just didn’t feel that inn
ate pull to anyone else like this
inexplicable one she did
when she was
with
Erias.

From their very first
encounter,
their relationship had been
volatile. S
was only now realizing that it wasn’t
hatred
that caused them to constantly butt heads, but the intense passion flowing between them coupled with her own fears—and probably his, too—of
commitment. O
pu
t
ting your heart out there and hoping the person you gave it to would care for and protect it with unfailing
love.

And she realized now that she might actually love him. It was crazy, but somewhere along the line he had managed to make her feel something that no one else had ever made her feel…love.