The Black God (#2, Damian Eternal Series) (6 page)

“You come here every Friday and every Friday
I ask you if you want a drink.”

Her brow furrowed. Unless he was a vamp, he
wasn’t worth remembering. She turned to face the speaker. The blond
haired guy with dark eyes gave a toothy smile filled with perfectly
white, square teeth that glowed in his tan face. He was built like
a quarterback and handsome.

Realizing she was staring, she blinked. “I
don’t drink,” she said and lifted her water. “Just this.”

“Thank god! She finally speaks to me,” he
said with a wider smile.

“You really ask me every Friday?”

“The fact you haven’t notice doesn’t bode
well for me.”

She started to smile. “Sorry. I just come to
dance.”

“You must be used to guys asking you
out.”

“No,” she snorted. “Why would you think
that?” She sipped her water.

It was his turn to appear confused. “That’s
different. But okay. Since you’re giving me the time of day … I’m
Shane.”

“Ashley.”

“You, uh, wanna dance?”

“Nah. I’m done dancing for tonight.”

“Okay. No drinks, no dancing. How about a
walk?”

She hesitated.

“Public place so you know I’m not a
creeper,” he added.

If she could handle a vamp, she could handle
him if he tried anything. It wasn’t the potential for a physical
confrontation she feared but the knowledge she knew nothing about
the boy before her, like if he were secretly a god who would put
her family in danger.

Four years later, and
Jonny is still in my head.
She hated the
reminder.
This ends now.

“Yes,” she decided. “Let’s go for a
walk.”

He stretched back to reach the bar and
placed his drink on the counter then held out his hand for hers.
She returned it to him.

Ashley led him out of the teeming bar and
into the street, where the ocean breeze began cooling her at once.
“What year are you?” she asked and looked up at the stranger beside
her.

“Masters program. You?”

“Senior.”
Again,
she added
silently. School wasn’t her favorite thing. “Finally picked a
major,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t think I can do a Masters.
Undergrad is hard enough.”

“Just depends on what you want to do in
life.” His gaze was on their path. “You wanna see the new
fountain?”

“What new fountain?”

“They put in a new naval memorial at the end
of the strip.”

“I’m out of it,” she murmured. Brandon was
right. She’d been completely obsessed with vamps the past few
months, so much so, she’d barely noticed anything else like the new
memorial or Brandon’s new electronics until she stumbled over them.
“Sure. Let’s go see it.”

Shane pointed in the direction of the
memorial and they crossed the street. He was funny and easy to talk
to, and she found herself enjoying the walk more than she expected.
They neared the edge of the busy section and continued onward. Her
senses were alert to their surroundings.

The crowds had petered out by the time they
reached the area where the new memorial was supposed to be. Ashley
looked around without spotting it, though her instincts were
picking up on something else. People in the shadows followed them.
The only people who wanted anything to do with her were vamps out
for revenge, assuming they’d finally found her somehow. The
predators were known to stalk humans, but with Brandon to shield
her, she hadn’t thought they could find her.

Had she done something to tip them off?
She’d been chased by several and always led them the opposite
direction of where she lived. She had the urge to check all her
clothing for GPS markers, the kind Xander used to use on her and
Brandon when they first left the house.

“Maybe we should turn back,” she said,
slowing her step. She hadn’t thought to bring weapons to the club.
It was less than a block away from the apartment she shared with
Brandon.

“We’re almost there,” Shane promised. “It’s
around the corner.” He pointed to a nearby building.

She hesitated, not wanting him to become a
casualty if vamps jumped her, but didn’t stop. In truth, she was
having a good time talking to someone else for the first time in a
while. If nothing else, she could tell him to run while she held
off the vamps.

So she continued walking, a little less
relaxed. Shane appeared oblivious and continued talking cheerfully.
She allowed her senses to track the movements of those behind them
and went through a couple of mental exercises to help shift her
mood to fighting.

They went around the corner, and her step
slowed once more.

ore shadowy figures lining the quiet street
ahead of them but the memorial was noticeably absent.

“I don’t see it,” she said with more
irritation than she meant to show.

“I get lost sometimes,” Shane admitted.
“Maybe it’s the next corner.”

“Look, Shane, I think we need to go back,”
she said, trying to keep her voice upbeat and friendly. “We can
find it online.”

“This area looks familiar. I’m pretty sure
it’s right up there,” he said and continued walking.

Her internal alarms were blaring. Ashley
stopped, able to track the movements of no less than fifteen
stalkers. She’d never faced more than four vamps. While she was
confident she could face at least six, she doubted she could
fifteen.

“Shane,” she called, gaze going to the guy
several meters ahead of her. “We need to go back.”

Movement across the street caught her
attention, and she shifted her weight so it was more balanced,
preparing for a confrontation.

“Now, Shane.”

“I don’t think so.” Something in his voice
made her face his direction. His smile was gone, his eyes hard.

Here I was worried about
him …
He’d led her into some kind of trap.
“What’re you doing, Shane?” she asked. “You don’t know what these
things are.”

“I do. They’re going to turn me into one of
them in exchange for helping them trap you.”

I definitely have a
type.
Her initial instinct was right. Her
choice of guys was fatally flawed. Ashley glared at him. The vamps
were closing in. Several emerged from the shadows, armed to the
teeth with weapons, their red eyes glowing.

Jonny must’ve gotten tired of her picking on
his vamps. How he found her, though, she had no idea. She was
protected by Brandon’s Natural ability or so she thought. What had
she done wrong? Left her student identification at a fight? Failed
to notice one of the vamps tagging her with a GPS locator? Or did
Jonny’s power as the Black God grant him the ability to bypass
Brandon’s gift?

She reached into her pocket and pulled out
her phone. She and Brandon had a code developed when they were
still kids and molded by Xander’s paranoid influence in their
lives. She unlocked the phone and rested her thumb on the app he
had created for emergencies. Shoving the phone back in her pocket,
she prepared herself to fight.

“All right. Step up,” she told the vamps,
her heart pounding hard despite the bravado of her words. “I’ve
already beaten a ton of you. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Ten of them closed in on her. She had the
urge to run, nowhere near confident enough to face so many. Her one
solace: if they wanted her dead, they’d have shot her by now. She
didn’t know what Jonny was doing, but Xander would always find her.
How he’d react when he discovered what she’d been doing was less
encouraging. She’d rather face her fate when she got to it than die
before that moment.

“Let’s get this started,” she said and drew
a deep breath.

“I need good news. Tasha. Stu.” Jonny
watched over the shoulder of the hacker named Stuart at his
workstation in the operations center in the basement of his Oregon
headquarters. The vamp’s shoulders were hunched, a sign of his
discomfort at having the Black God and his charged energy so close,
and his fingers flew over the keyboard.

“I might have some,” replied the female
vamp, his third in command.

Easing back, Jonny went to Tasha’s adjacent
workstation. “The talisman is working?” he asked. The slender,
stone like tool they’d recovered from the phone Brandon had sat on
top of her laptop.

“Sort of,” replied the blonde vamp.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s working. But it’s not.”

“We need a dataset to focus it,” Stuart
supplied. “It can’t just find anyone. It has to have a point of
reference. Some sort of historical data or individual signature for
it to track.”

“It’s a simple form of artificial
intelligence. Or I guess, magic,” Tasha added. “But in order to
learn, it has to have a starting point.”

Jonny listened. It wasn’t the greatest news
ever, but it was better than nothing.

“Did it work?” Charles asked from behind
him. The vamp smelled of fire and blood from his long night and day
in Idaho and had returned to Jonny’s side immediately upon
returning, as usual. The Traveler with him winked out of existence,
leaving a singed Charles.

“I’m not sure yet,” Jonny replied.

“We followed his instructions exactly.”

Jonny nodded, waiting patiently to see if
their gamble paid off. Stuart had instructed Charles how to access
the trunk and now was testing their ability to link into the White
God’s system.

“We’re in,” the hacker reported. “Testing
out our ability to access the Guardian records system.” Before he
completed the sentence, the screen filled with an alphabetical
index of Guardians.

Jonny watched the names with interest,
wishing he had the ability to exploit the information rather than
use it defensively. Perhaps, once he’d fixed his rogue vamp
problem, he could. For now, he needed the names of every Tracker he
could get. “Find the ones not yet pulled into the organization,” he
told Stu. “We need to quietly grab the people least likely to be
noticed.”

Charles moved away from them while Jonny
watched his hacker work. Jonny half-listened as his second spoke on
the phone.

“There are about a fifty spread out all over
the world,” the hacker reported. “Their ages range from five years
to seventy.”

“Narrow it down to ages eighteen to forty or
so,” Jonny instructed. “Healthy enough to survive being
vamped.”

“Fourteen.”

“Send me and Charles the list.”

“Got it. There’s a chance they’ll notice
we’re in the database, depending on their security measures,” the
hacker said. “You want me to mirror the database?”

“Yeah. And anyone we identify, can you take
them out of the database or mark them as dead or similar?”

Stuart was quiet for a moment. “Anything I
alter is a potential red flag,” he said. “Let me play around with
it and see if there’s something I can do to alter files without
leaving a trail.”

“Good.” Jonny leaned back.

“If you ever … uh … want to vamp another
hacker, it’d be useful,” Stuart added.

“I’ve got a recruitment requirement out for
one,” Jonny reported. “We’re having problems keeping recruits right
now. Tasha’s working on it.”

“Yep. I have two identified,” Tasha added.
“We’re approaching them soon.”

“Yeah. I know.” The hacker sounded
disappointed. “Someone with network security skills would be
good.”

“Noted,” said Tasha.

“Ikir
,” Charles said quietly.

“Yeah.”

Charles indicated the hallway outside the
ops center. “Minor problem.” He held out the phone to Jonny.

Jonny accepted it quizzically and placed it
to his ear. “What is it?”

“What do you mean,
what is it
?” came the
infuriated voice of Brandon. “You know why I’m calling.”

Jonny glanced at Charles, who shrugged. “No
idea how he got my number,” Charles said quietly.

Jonny motioned him away and waited until
certain no one was within hearing distance. The last thing he
needed was someone else thinking he’d gone soft by sparing the
vigilantes.

“I’m afraid I don’t,” he replied coolly.
“What do you want?”

“I want my sister back!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Sorry.” Jonny started to lower the phone, determined to hang up on
him, when Brandon’s next words stopped him.

“Vamps grabbed her last night.”

Jonny debated hanging up. No other missions
were authorized last night in California, aside from his own trip
to visit Brandon. His people were too tapped out to sneak away and
disobey him, which left one possibility. “Go on,” he said.

“You just couldn’t leave her alone! She
didn’t kill any of your vamps. She just wanted to help people and
practice her skills. What did you do with her? Kill her? Vamp her?”
Brandon was panicking. “How the hell –”

“Brandon, listen. I –”

“No,
you
listen! I’m going to
–”

“Stop!” Jonny’s sharp tone silenced the
young man close to his age on the other side of the call. “I don’t
have her. I wouldn’t risk Xander’s anger.”

“It’s quite a coincidence you showed up in
the middle of our apartment and then she disappears.”

It is,
he agreed silently. But chances were, she’d crossed Valon’s
rogue vamps one time too many and they tracked her down to stop her
from interfering again. “There’s a lot going on you don’t know
about. If you want to find her, go get Xan –”

“I know where she is.” Brandon was calming.
“Xander will kill us if he finds out.”

“And I won’t?”

“No offense, but I’m more afraid of him than
you.”

Jonny rolled his eyes.

“Swear you don’t have her.”

“I don’t. None of my guys do, either.”