The Black God (#2, Damian Eternal Series) (11 page)

“My influence has limits, believe it or not.
He knows his actions have consequences. I don’t know that you’ve
figured that out yet,” Xander said.

“I’m not stupid. I know that.”

“Do you?”

There was no right answer. It was common
sense her actions had consequences yet she suspected he was talking
about something more than she understood. Jonny had changed in the
past few years. Their short interaction was enough for her to
realize this. She didn’t know what made a person change so quickly,
but she suspected it was a result of the consequences Xander
referred to.

“How did you know?” she asked with a sigh.
“I didn’t feel you in my head.”

“Bite marks.”

She touched her neck self-consciously. She
had barely been able to see the marks in daylight and covered them
with makeup before going for Thursday night dinner with the
family.

“There are only two vamps who can catch you.
Me and him, and I didn’t do it,” Xander added with some amusement.
“He scare you?”

“Yeah,” she admitted. “I didn’t expect him
to.”

“But you’re not satisfied.”

“No.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes.
Ashley didn’t expect Xander to react so calmly to the news and was
grateful for it.

“Get your fix of bad boys now. I’m
considering shipping you off to Damian’s Texas ranch for a few
years when this is over,” Xander added.

She hid a smile, hearing his moody
territoriality. He was part of the reason she and Jonny hadn’t gone
to the Guardians already. Xander didn’t want his family used as
pawns by anyone. He ran interference with Damian for that purpose.
The result: she and Brandon had a pretty normal college experience
instead of being absorbed into the Guardian network.

If he were contemplating going back on his
position, it was out of his concern.

“I didn’t think you’d be like this about
it,” she said.

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Ashley.
There are some actions that can’t be undone. I’d rather you never
know what that means, but you’re pushing in this direction.”

She peered up at him once more. Xander had
the ability to see pieces of the future within a very narrow lane.
“You think something bad will happen?”

“I know it. When you fuck with a god, you
don’t walk away without scars.”

“Do you have scars?”

“From multiple gods,” he said with a rare
smile. “But I can handle the pain.”

She swallowed hard. It was the bluntest he’d
ever been with her. While it dampened her eagerness to take on
Jonny, it didn’t kill the urge completely.

It made her think she wasn’t fully aware of
what Jonny had become. She still saw the young man she’d known in
her mind’s eye when she thought of him.

“He won’t kill or vamp you,” Xander added.
“He knows I’d find a way to destroy him if he does. Fucking with
him isn’t going to be a gentle lesson.”

Recalling how hard he’d bitten her the
second time, she began to think it was well worth the effort not to
get caught again, to focus on attacking his vamps without facing
him in person.

Though it made for dissatisfying
vengeance.

“I’ll be careful,” she murmured.

“Be smart. You’ll last longer.”

He didn’t sound optimistic about her chances
to face Jonny. Ashley’s heart pounded hard, and she assessed all
Xander had told her. It was hard for her to imagine what he meant
about lines that shouldn’t be crossed. As long as she didn’t do
anything that she didn’t feel was right, she wasn’t going to have a
problem with regret or scars.

“C’mon. Let’s check in on Jessi and the
boys,” Xander said, turning.

They started walking back towards the boxy
white mansion perched at the edge of the beach. Deep in thought,
Ashley didn’t dare reopen the discussion. She had too much to think
about. The troubling idea she was endangering Brandon was foremost
in her thoughts.

Jonny had found him despite his ability to
hide. What were the chances the Black God could do it again?

She didn’t break out of her solemn silence
until they reached their apartment later that evening. Brandon was
in a cheerful mood. She usually was, too, after the weekly dinners
with Jessi and Xander.

Tossing her purse on the couch, Ashley
paused to watch Brandon. He moved with habitual purpose, depositing
his keys here, tossing his jacket there, flipping on his laptop
before disappearing down the hallway to change into sweatpants and
t-shirt. When he reappeared, she waited for him to take up his
place on the couch before the computer.

“Maybe we should stop trying to fight
vamps,” she started.

“What?”

“I mean, what if Jonny warning us is
something we should take seriously?”

He sat back and gazed at her quizzically.
“He didn’t scare you off, did he?”

“No.”

“Did Xander?”

“Not really,” she replied vaguely. “But you
can’t fight and I can’t be everywhere.”

“Hel-lo. Of the two of us, I can disappear,”
he reminded her. “You’re the more vulnerable one.”

“What would you do if they trapped you?”

“What would you do if you were about to have
an episode and were being chased by vamps?”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t have them that
often!”

“It only takes once for Jonny to catch you,”
Brandon said and turned to face his laptop screen. “I think we
should keep on fighting them.”

“Even with Jonny’s warning and knowing where
we live?”

“I told Jessi we wanted to move. She said
Xander pays the bills so to do whatever,” Brandon replied. “We can
find a new place this weekend.”

Ashley blew out a breath. Her brother wasn’t
cooperating with her plan to help save his life. He had a point
about her purely physical gift, but so did she about his purely
mental ability.

“Fine,” she said finally.

“You’re not chickening out are you?”

“No. Just worried about messing up your life
if I get in trouble.”

“I’m good,” Brandon said, eyes on the
screen. “And I’ve got some targets for you.”

She glanced at him. “You do? How? I thought
Jonny took the phone.”

“I figured out something,” he replied
vaguely. “Look.” He pointed to a small map with red and blue
beacons. “Vamps are blue. There are a few active pockets in San
Diego.”

She observed the targets. Some were moving,
others still. “What’s red?”

“Jonny’s vamps.” Brandon enlarged the subset
of San Diego with the blue vamps. “I figure we can go after the
rogue vamps instead of his. We both win.”

“We
both win,” she repeated. “Why do you want him to
win?”

“I want him not to corner you again. This
way you can fight vamps and Jonny won’t get pissed.”

She studied the map. “How do you know whose
vamps are whose?”

“I’m a hacker.”

“That doesn’t explain it. Brandon, are you
…” She drifted off. Her brother wasn’t working with Jonny, was he?
How would Jonny have had time to set up something like that? Why
wouldn’t Brandon have told her? It wasn’t like him to keep secrets
from her. “Never mind. I don’t care whose vamps they are. I’ll go
get ready.”

“I’ll send you some locations to hit.”

She nodded and retreated to her room. Ashley
changed quickly and armed herself with her batons and knives. She
tucked the mask into her bra and slung on her backpack before
returning to the living room. Brandon had texted her several
downtown locations, and she stopped behind the couch to calculate
how to reach them before tucking the phone away.

“Got it. I’ll text when I’m there,” she said
and strode out of the apartment.

Busy with his laptop, Brandon grunted in
response.

Twenty minutes later, Ashley hopped off the
bus and walked along a quiet sidewalk running near the baseball
park. Most storefronts were dark for the night, and she paused in
front of the building whose address Brandon had sent her. The
locale was boarded up, so she continued past the front and down a
side alley running beside it. The door on the ground level on this
side was also boarded up.

Stepping back, she scoured the side of the
building for a window to give her access. Most were boarded, but
one – four stories up – was not. She tugged out her mask and
stashed her backpack. She checked her phone before tucking it
away.

Five vamps,
Brandon had texted.
Monitoring your vitals. Bring back cells.

She smiled and tucked the phone into her
backpack. Brandon’s ability to sense minds was getting stronger and
stronger. A year before, he hadn’t been able to sense who was in
the adjacent apartment let alone across town.

She assessed her way up the side of the
building. Tonight was a night of pure athletic ability, no
questions asked. Rested after her four days off, energized after a
good dinner, she was ready to test her luck against five vamps.

With a deep breath, she used speed and
strength to scale the side of the wall, vaulting from the nearby
dumpster to reach the lowest window, then twisting, pulling,
leaping and contorting to reach the sturdier boards on the
neighboring window. Ashley played the deadly game, maneuvering in
midair, scaling the building with the agility and fearlessness of a
spider on the ceiling.

When she reached the window that wasn’t
boarded up, she paused in her movement to rest briefly, uncertain
what awaited her. She launched upwards with her legs and pulled
with her arms, landing lightly on her toes on the windowsill.

The window slid open. The room beyond was
dark, and she drew a baton before dropping silently to the floor.
Her instincts took over. A chair here, a box there …she moved with
disciplined quiet through the storage room to the door located on
the opposite side of the window. Placing her ear against it, she
listened for the sound of the predators she expected to find
without hearing anyone.

Buildings were harder to navigate quickly
than the open bay of a warehouse. With her senses engaged, she
explored the floor she was on before determining there was no one
on it. She moved to the upper floors and explored each before
finally shifting to the floor beneath the first.

Movement was on this floor. The vamps were
divided, two on this floor and possibly three on the floor below.
Disappointed she wouldn’t get to test herself against all five at
once, Ashley crept up on the two vamps nearest her.

One didn’t have time to react. She cracked
the baton onto the back of his head. He dropped silently. The
second whirled but was soon unconscious as well. She knelt to
search them and collected their two phones, tucking them into a
pocket at the small of her back.

Exhilarated by her quick wins, she went to
the floor below. One vamp was present, and she knocked him out and
stole his phone, too, before confronting the other two on the
ground floor.

When she was done, Ashley returned to the
window she’d used to enter the building and worked her way down the
wall fast. She dropped beside her backpack and stripped off the
mask before depositing the three cells she’d collected into it.

Done.
She texted Brandon.
Where
next?

He sent her a screenshot of his map and the
blue and red dots nearest her. She slung on her backpack and left
the alley, studying it.

The next nearest vamps designated as blue
were a block away.

Jonny’s nearest vamps were four blocks
away.

She stared at the dots pensively for a
moment, running Xander’s warning through her mind several times
over. Five days after her first confrontation with Jonny, she was
still angry and embarrassed by her performance. The low hanging
fruit was the blue vamps, but some part of her wanted to prove to
Jonny she wasn’t as weak as she’d seemed when she all but collapsed
in his arms.

Her mind made up, she walked past the next
blue dot and continued four blocks farther into the downtown area,
away from the stadium, and towards the part of town that became a
seedy residential area. The location of Jonny’s vamps wasn’t a
warehouse or place of business but a single story house in need of
repair with iron bars on its windows. It looked much like the
others around it, and she scanned the area visually before striking
off down the block towards the location.

Her phone vibrated.
Where are you going?
Read
Brandon’s message.

Her brother was tracking her. She responded
quickly before replacing the phone in her pocket. The cell vibrated
once more and she ignored it.

The house was dark, aside from the kitchen.
Ashley hid her backpack and pulled on her mask before approaching.
She peered in the window to spot three, perhaps four, vamps. One
was in the kitchen, the others moving between it and a room down
the hallway.

I’m not afraid of you,
Jonny,
she told him silently.

Waiting for the vamp in the kitchen to turn
away, she slid in through the back door and raised both batons,
smashing them over his head before he saw her. She hauled his body
back into the kitchen so none of the others were able to spot him
then moved down the hallway. Her heart raced, and her tense form
was on edge. She did a self-check for any signs of a looming
episode and was satisfied she had none.

Three voices came from one of the rooms. She
paused outside it to listen, using her senses to case the rest of
the house. There was at least one more in the next room down.
Ashley counted to three and then vaulted into the nearest room.

Surprise rendered the vamps too shocked to
move, and she had taken one down before the other two rose from
their seats at a card table to attack her. One lunged, and she
danced away, smacking him in the throat with a baton before facing
the other. The vamp from the room next door appeared in the
doorway. He was on the phone, and Ashley slung a baton at him to
knock it free. The last thing she needed was him alerting
someone.