The Black God (#2, Damian Eternal Series) (9 page)

He seemed lost in the moment as well, his
face an inscrutable mask and his emotions shuttered behind dark
eyes.

“Well,” she said, a little breathlessly
under his intent look. “Take us back.”

He shifted feet and lifted his gaze, as if
catching himself staring at her.

The world around them melted into a
kaleidoscopic swirl of colors and shapes before reforming into
different shapes and colors. Ashley’s stomach dropped and for a
moment, she feared she’d seize up from Traveling with someone else.
Waiting to see what her body did, she blinked away the momentary
sense of disorientation and righted her senses.

They were near the University in an alley
close to her apartment building. She’d been hoping he was bluffing
about knowing where she lived.

“You aren’t going to have one,” Jonny told
her. “You can let go now.”

Warmth reached her cheeks as she realized
how hard she was squeezing his hand. Ashley released Jonny and
started away.

“Remember, Ash. Fuck with my vamps, I fuck
with you,” he warned her as she stepped away.

Furious her plan for vengeance was ruined by
her own body’s weakness, she flipped him off without turning and
strode out of the alley.

The next afternoon, Ashley slammed over and
over into the punching bag in the boxing gym down the street from
where she lived. It was quiet on a Sunday with only the hardcore
fighters in the ring or working various bags.

Exhausted from her night as well as the
episode, she nonetheless pounded into the bag, unable to shake her
anger and embarrassment at how poorly she’d done the day before.
Not only had she been captured vamps, but Jonny – the man she
despised most in the world – had rescued her. She’d then failed to
seek her revenge because of her weak body.

She deserved the bloodied knuckles beneath
her hand wraps and the bruises forming from her merciless attack on
the bag. She deserved to hurt or maybe … the physical pain
alleviated the humiliation of her night.

She drove herself until she became too dizzy
to stand and wrapped her arms around the bag, chest heaving. Ashley
let the bag support her weight for a long moment, always leery of
any warning signs another seizure was eminent.

“You got some moves,” one of the regulars
said from the bag nearest her.

Ashley opened her eyes and pushed away.
“Thanks.”

“Where did learn to fight like that?”

“Um, stepdad mostly,” she said with some
awkwardness.

“He a champ?”

She snorted and offered the familiar fighter
a smile. “Not really. It’s a hobby I guess.” She retrieved her
towel from the ground and started away. “See you tomorrow.”

He lifted a gloved hand.

Ashley left the boxing gym and stepped into
the warm fall evening softened by a cool ocean breeze. She tossed
her towel over her shoulder and began walking slowly, more because
she was a little unsteady than because she had nowhere to be. She
had at least one assignment due the upcoming week and needed some
good sleep after her weekend. But it was hard when she wanted
nothing more than to scream every five seconds. Her enemy hadn’t
just saved her life but managed to remind her she had never meant
anything to him to start off with.

Revenge wasn’t quite as
satisfying when the other person didn’t care. Ashley wasn’t certain
what to do about this fact, or the knowledge she’d spent four years
waiting for the moment she could see the regret in his eyes. Jonny
would never feel it. Her vengeance would never be complete.
She
would never be whole again or reclaim
the trust in the world she’d lost when he’d betrayed
her.

And Jonny would go on being the Black God,
oblivious to what she felt. In all her plotting, she’d never truly
considered he was indifferent to her and always had been. Vengeance
seemed futile in this light.

“This is killing me,” she murmured and wiped
sweat from her forehead. She walked home and into her apartment,
where Brandon sat on the couch as usual.

“What took you so long?” he asked, glancing
up from the laptop.

“Just needed more time to punch stuff,” she
replied.

“At least you were at the gym and not in
some warehouse.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She paused
on her way to her bedroom and planted her hands on her hips.

“I told you beating up vamps wouldn’t turn
out well.”

“I’m not quitting, just because Jonny knows
where we live!”

“Seriously?” Her brother sat back from his
computer. “He let us go as a favor to Xander. There won’t be a next
time if we keep taking out his vamps.”

“We have to keep doing
it.
I
have to.”
Her throat was tight. Fatigued from her weekend, her emotions were
closer to snapping than usual.

“Why does this mean so much to you?” Brandon
asked, puzzled. “Why can’t you become a UFC fighter or
something?”

She sighed. “Because I want to make a
difference. And Jonny …” She drifted off, thoughts on the previous
night.

“Jonny what?” Brandon’s features turned
concerned. “Did he hurt you?”

“Hello, Brandon. I can take him. Only Xander
is a better fighter than me.”

“But you saw him.”

“Yeah.” She paused again and then shook her
head. “I hate him.”

“But he didn’t hurt you.”

Aside from the vampire
bites?
She touched her neck absently. She
hadn’t told Brandon the entire truth about what happened or about
her episode. “No. Just my pride,” she said.

“Maybe you aren’t cut out for revenge.”

She glared at him.

“Just sayin’.”

“He almost got us all killed!”

“That shit happened years ago. Maybe you
should just let it go.”

Her mouth dropped open. Her brother was
serious. “You know what happened Brandon! How can you say such a
thing?”

“I don’t know
everything
that
happened,” he said pointedly. “Like what went on between you two
after you ditched your family and ran away with a
vampire.”

Ashley could think of nothing to say that
wouldn’t make matters worse. She’d wanted to believe the worst
about Jonny and after he dumped her, she’d told Brandon only the
bad stuff. She hadn’t mentioned how sweet Jonny was when they were
one-on-one, when he wasn’t plotting to lure their cousin into a
trap or working with the Others to try and destroy the world. She
should hate Jonny more than she did, but when she recalled how he’d
protected her, held her, spoken to her …

Everything became jumbled.

“What I know is bad enough for him to be
unredeemable in my eyes,” Brandon added. “But if you want to piss
him off, aren’t you better off doing it under the protection of the
Guardians? I mean, they fight vamps for a living. You’d fit right
in.”

Ashley continued to her room without
answering. They spent the summers at the Texas ranch where the
headquarters of the White God – and the Guardians’ – was located.
Her training had started there, and they were both aware they had a
place with the Guardians if they wanted it.

But … she didn’t want it. Not yet. They
fought vamps as part of their job. She did it out of revenge.
Ashley dropped onto her bed with a sigh. She wanted to finish
college, get revenge and then …

She really didn’t know.

Ashley struggled to sit, tired. She went to
the bathroom to clean up her bloodied fists and take a quick
shower. She and Brandon alternated cooking dinner, and a
cheeseburger was sitting out for her on the counter when she left
her room. Wolfing it down, she plopped onto the couch beside him
and glanced at his computer screen.

“What’re you doing?” she asked.

“Hacking shit.”

“What shit?”

“Someone hired me.”

“To hack stuff? Is that legal?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?” she prodded.

“Yeah.”

She rolled her eyes. When he was in the
zone, he wasn’t going to say much more. She stared blankly at the
television for several minutes, unable to keep her thoughts from
returning to Jonny, to how handsome she’d forgotten he was and how
different – colder – he’d seemed.

How he’d helped her and claimed to have a
mutiny on his hands.

I never really knew him
either,
she thought, troubled.

“You can change it,” Brandon said.

Ashley blinked away her thoughts and took
the remote from him. She wasn’t in the mood for television or her
project or anything else. She wanted to return to the gym and beat
herself senseless until she stopped thinking about Jonny.

“How’s he doing?” Jonny asked, looking over
the shoulder of the tense hacker vamp.

“Good,” came Stuart’s preoccupied response.
“I figured out he’s been using the cell phones they find to locate
other local vamp activity for the vigilante.”

“I didn’t think it was possible with
throwaways.”

“If everyone were using throwaways, it
wouldn’t be. But only the foot soldiers use disposables. Per your
orders, everyone programs their boss’s number into the contacts as
soon as they get the phones. He’s using that data to track our
vamps.”

Jonny growled under his breath. “Smart,” he
admitted reluctantly.

“Can we vamp him? He can help me with the
Guardian roster challenge,” Tasha asked.

“No. Not an option,” Jonny replied. “Can we
do the same thing with the rogue vamps?”

“If we had a phone, yeah,” answered
Stuart.

“The talisman is starting to learn to link
the locations of our vamps but it’s not as quick as I’d like it to
be,” Tasha said. “A phone might be enough to give us the location
of the rogues.”

“Someone who can write algorithms better
than I can would help,” Stu said hopefully. “If you could vamp
someone like that …”

“We’re working on it.” Tasha shot him a
look. “But this is a good development so far.”

I love good news.
It was rare when Jonny heard it.
“Charles.”

His loyal second stepped forward from his
position watching near the door.

“Send someone back to the restaurant and
warehouse in Monterey. See if there’s a phone someone missed we can
exploit,” Jonny ordered. “We can track them this way while we
continue to recruit the Natural Trackers we want to vamp.”

“You think it smart to trust a vigilante?”
Charles asked, frowning at the display of their vamp locations on
Stu’s computer screen.

“No,” Jonny replied. “But I can’t touch
them.”

Charles glanced at him. The vamp had enough
experience with Jonny to guess who the only people on the planet
were considered off limits, and Jonny didn’t volunteer any
information.

“If you see the vigilante attacking our
vamps, I want to know immediately,” Jonny added, thoughts on
Ashley.

“You think they’d be that stupid knowing you
can find them?”

“Yeah. I do.” He’d scared her but he didn’t
think one warning was going to be enough to discourage her,
especially when she knew his hands were generally tied because of
Xander. “I need to know the second someone spots her.”

“Her,” Charles repeated.

Jonny gave him a warning look. Charles took
the hint and didn’t pursue, instead issuing Jonny’s orders to his
underlings.

Jonny left the command center for his room.
He’d been unable to forget the way Ashley tasted or how she felt in
his arms. Or the fire in her eyes that was more of a turn on than
he expected. He normally preferred his dinner not to fight him, but
with her, he relished the challenge. If he were vulnerable to her
skills, he’d be more concerned. She moved like no one he’d ever
seen. Any injuries she managed to inflict upon him would heal
instantly, but he almost anticipated watching her marking him up
the next time she attacked his vamps.

Because there would be a next time. He
imagined she’d take a couple days to recover, perhaps with pressure
from Brandon, who Jonny was determined to keep beneath his thumb.
He’d paid another visit to her sibling and offered a trade off:
Brandon helped him find rogue vamps in exchange for Jonny not
fucking with either of them.

But Ashley had been too angry, too emotional
to back down, and Jonny didn’t think the deal was going to last
very long.

“Jonny,” Charles trotted after him. “We have
another problem.”

The words were becoming his mantra. “Lay it
on me,” he replied without turning.

“The rogue vamps are growing bolder. They
massacred everyone at a church mass today, perhaps in revenge for
you taking out their Monterey crew.”

Jonny listened and trotted up the stairs to
the second floor, mind working quickly. “Damian’s going to get
involved,” he said at last.

“Unless we go to him first.”

“I don’t want his help!”

“We may not have a choice.
If they keep drawing attention to themselves, Damian’s coming
after
you
. And we
don’t have the vamps we need for a war right now.”

Jonny clamped his jaw closed. Charles was
right. “What would you have me do? Set up another meeting with
Damian, the Grey God, Originals and Xander?” He absolutely loathed
the idea of publically admitting he couldn’t handle his domain.

“No meeting. Just show up at Damian’s. He’ll
respect your privacy if you ask him to.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I spent enough time with his people
to know.”

Jonny paused mid-hallway and faced Charles.
“I forget that sometimes.” Charles had been traded to Damian to
help the White God hunt Others as well as part of the hostage
exchange the two made for Damian to release a Guardian to help
train Jonny.