Academy of Protectors (The Protector Guild Book 1) Page 16

  “Decapitated!” I yelled, my words echoing around the room. I looked around, most everyone was gone except for Atlas, Eli, Ro, and Izzy. The latter of whom was snickering behind her hand.

  Right, I guess that wasn’t really the sort of thing people went around triumphantly yelling.

  “Again,” Atlas said, knocking the practice staff away from his head. “This time aim for the heart. If the autopsy of that vamp revealed anything, it’s that you don’t have the best aim.”

  I narrowed my eyes, frustrated by the comment, but didn’t say anything. As much as I wished he was wrong, he was right.

  “Dude, can’t we go eat?” Ro asked, leaning against the wall. He was freshly showered and wearing a new pair of jeans. “Everyone else left half an hour ago. You’re going to wear her out.”

  “Again,” I said, echoing Atlas.

  Ro groaned, but he gave up arguing. He knew how to tell the difference between when I was being stubborn but malleable, and when I was three shades past stubborn, in which case there was no hope. And this was the latter.

  It took another twenty minutes before I landed a hit that would have pierced his heart, had I been using my full strength and not swinging a blunt weapon. Worst I could do with this glorified stick was bruise him for a few seconds or give him an annoying splinter.

  The two of us met, entwined, unraveled, over and over again until I had trouble deciphering where my body ended and his began. We were both caked in sweat—even though I was pretty sure most of it was mine—our chests heaving with heavy breaths. Neither of us wanted to break, neither of us wanted to give in to the other.

  My eyes met his, temporarily entrancing me as I watched gold bleed into brown. I licked my lips, suddenly aware of how very close we were—how there was nothing more than a thin layer of fabric blocking my chest from his.

  A low, guttural growl built up in his chest and for a moment I half thought he might grab me in the way a man grabs a woman, not in the way two fighters embrace. The moment slipped away as soon as it came. Feeling foolish, I took advantage of the awkward transition. With a heavy thrust, I feigned left before digging into the mat with my feet and shoving into his chest, directly over his heart.

  Izzy jumped up and started dancing around. “Hell yes, that’s my girl!”

  It was weird to have someone cheering me on for killing a fake vampire, but I couldn’t deny that her unusually peppy support made the victory even sweeter—so long as I swallowed the memory of what had distracted me in the first place.

  I took a faux bow and winked at her. “Anything, for my adoring fans.”

  Atlas tilted his head down, swiping the weapon away as if it were nothing more than a feather. “That wasn’t great, but it’s better than what you’ve been giving me most of the day. Go get cleaned up and eat. You’ll pick this up again tomorrow.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Declan

  “Hey Declan,” a soft voice echoed behind me. I was still chewing the last bite of my food as I left the dining hall. There were enough people around that I could pretend I didn’t hear anyone and keep walking. Today was a day from fucking hell and all I wanted was to try and get a few decent hours of sleep before I had to go through it all again. Was I technically an instructor right now? Yes. Did that mean I wanted to talk to the students after hours? Abso-fucking-lutely not.

  I pushed the heavy door open into the dark night. Hopping down the stairs three at a time, out of habit, I scanned the wooded boundaries surrounding me. My body seemed cloaked in an extra layer of hypervigilance these days, and I couldn’t shake the fear that pretty soon we’d see an attack on campus. If vamps were already getting ballsy enough to attack in our town, it was only a matter of time.

  I pressed my eyelids together, trying desperately to erase the image of Max, covered in blood when Atlas had carried her home. While I could usually push the images away during the day, in my dreams, her languid battered body was constantly interchanged with Sarah’s. It was beyond maddening.

  An annoying set of steps behind me clued me in to the fact that my shadow wasn’t leaving me. Just my luck. Stopping short, I spun around, the force of a solid body drawing a surprised breath from me. “What the hell?”

  “I’m so, sorry. Are you okay?”

  Speak of the devil. I looked down into a pair of dark brown eyes set into an oval face with high cheekbones. She was still caked in sweat from the intense bout with Atlas, flyaway hairs curling around her forehead like a crown.

  “Max,” I acknowledged reluctantly. She was still in my space, so all I could focus on was her presence. She was about a head shorter than me, and the warm vanilla scent of her hair surrounded me in a cloud. I breathed in through my mouth, trying to ignore the fact that it wasn’t the worst scent I’d ever smelled before. “What do you want? Can this wait until tomorrow?”

  She took a step back, breathing in and out a few times. Her almond-shaped eyes narrowed slightly and she looked everywhere but in my eyes. Instead, her focus landed just north, like she wanted the illusion of eye contact. Why?

  “Look, I’m really bad at this sort of thing.” She shook her head softly, sweeping a few strands of hair away from her face. “This morning, I was a complete ass. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. It’s just—these past few days have been a lot. And I’m trying to adjust to this,” she swept her arm out to the side in a lazy gesture, “whole place, but it’s a lot. I’m not the type of person who snaps at other people. I don’t usually have a temper at all, really, so—”

  “Max”

  “Yeah?”

  “Breathe.” I bit back a grin. Her presence was like an intoxicating cloud of happy that I couldn’t seem to get away from.

  She chuckled softly, her cheeks reddening a bit with embarrassment. “Right. Sorry. I tend to ramble. It’s a bad habit. One that I’m trying desperately to break.” For the first time since she chased me down, her eyes met mine. There was something so inviting about the way she looked at me, so open. “I just wanted to say that I was sorry. I was frustrated this morning about Ralph and I shouldn’t have taken that frustration out on you. You’ve been nothing but kind to me since I got here.”

  Kind? That wasn’t a word I would use to describe my actions. Not a word anyone would use in association with me.

  I studied her for a moment, watching the way she tried to calm her breathing back down before she got flustered again.

  “It’s okay. Thank you for apologizing—” I paused, looking up to see that Atlas was standing in the entryway, watching us. His head was cocked at an angle, and I knew that he was listening to every word we said, even though he was a good twenty feet away.

  Insufferable prick.

  “I’m sorry too,” I added, surprising myself. “I don’t think any of us really realized how difficult your transition into this lifestyle would be. It’s a lot. I can see that. And you haven’t exactly had an easy week, even from a protector standpoint.”

  The right side of her lips quirked up in a small smile and she scratched the back of her neck. Her eyes roamed around the woods, like she was searching for something to say. Some sort of answer. “Thank you.”

  With a grin of my own, I nodded before turning around. I took a few paces towards the cabin, not bothering to wait for Atlas to catch up. He was my best friend, but that sometimes made it harder to be around him. Since Sarah’s death, we both had a shared grief—a kind that shrouded us when we were together and refused to be ignored. Masks only worked around people who didn’t know to look under them.

  “Would you—” Max called behind me, stopping me in my tracks. “Er, would you maybe want to hang out?”

  I turned around, stunned. Aside from the fact that she was a few years younger than me, I wasn’t exactly the ‘hanging out’ type. Everyone knew that. Everyone who knew me anyway. Sarah was the life of the party, the one person in my life who constantly tried dragging me to parties and social events. With her gone, I didn’t even bother seeking out company beyond Atlas and the rest of the team.

  “Hang out?” I echoed, the words a bit more harsh than I’d intended.

  “Um, yeah. I don’t really have a lot of friends here and you seem cool. Izzy—you know Izzy right? Well she’s going to come hang with me and Ro. She wants to do a vampire pop culture marathon in honor of, you know, me surviving the attack. I know that probably sounds kind of strange, but I’m into the irony of it all. And laughing can be a good balm. Do you want—would you like to join us?”

  A vampire pop culture marathon. I discreetly brushed my hand along my lips, just to make sure my mouth wasn’t hanging open. I didn’t want to be rude. But a girls’ movie night wasn’t exactly my thing. I started to shake my head, prepared to politely turn down the offer, when my eyes caught on Atlas. His head shook, the movement so subtle I only caught it out of familiarity. Atlas was the closest thing I had to family. I knew his body language—thoughts, even—better than I did my own.

  He wanted me to go. To befriend Max. Get an in with her so that we could keep better track of her, maybe even figure out more about her and her family. Overnight, she’d become a mission. Another thing for him to obsessively pour all of his energy into. And I would help. Of course I would. That’s what family was for. Failure was an impossible thing for protectors to recover from.

  So, instead of throwing a ‘why me’ temper tantrum in the middle of the grounds, I settled for shooting him one of my death glares, braided with the silent promise of retribution.

  He narrowed his eyes, his face shifting into that dickish smirk of his, before he went back into the building, disappearing from sight. He knew he’d won, he didn’t need to stick around to watch the outcome unfold.

  “I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Max said, getting flustered by my silence. “Sorry, it was probably silly of me to assume you didn’t have better things to do with your night.”

  Better things? Not unless you counted poring over report after report from every werewolf reconnaissance in the last decade with Atlas.

  “Anyway, have a good night,” she said, turning back towards the building, her shoulders rounded slightly in defeat.

  I exhaled, a weird part of me sorry to see her so dejected. “Max, wait.”

  She spun around, her eyes sparkling with curiosity.

  “Let me go rinse off.” Despite my reluctance, I felt a smile unexpectedly start to carve across my face. “But yeah, a pop culture moviethon, or whatever the hell you called it sounds...nice. I’ll be up in an hour.”

  ◆◆◆

  “God he’s beautiful,” Rowan groaned. His legs were bent over the arm of the couch, his head resting in Max’s lap while she absentmindedly ran her fingers through his hair. Their relationship was so easy, so warm. They were closer even than Sarah and I were, maybe even closer than Wade and Atlas.

  My stomach tightened at the love between them, the absolute trust.

  “You can’t be serious?” I straightened up, accidentally brushing Max’s knee with my own. We both stilled at the contact.

  Three episodes of The Vampire Diaries in and I wasn’t hating my night of babysitting as much as I thought I would. The show was absolutely ridiculous, but it was weirdly fun listening to everyone’s commentary.

  “You know, Damon kind of looks like a male version of you,” Izzy said, her perfectly-groomed right brow arching as she smirked. “So I would take it as a compliment that we all think he’s hot.”

  Max coughed out a laugh and turned to face me, her brown eyes studying me with a renewed focus. I could feel my face warm from the attention, and I found myself suddenly hating my pale skin. Irish roots made it difficult to disguise embarrassment.

  “Yeah, he kind of does. You both have that dark hair, green eyes, loner, rebellious thing going for you.” Max broke off when Rowan nudged her knee with his fist. She paled a bit, her eyes wide with concern. “Sorry, I meant that as a compliment. Not loner in like a bad way. You’re the cool kind of loner. The badass sort. Not the creepy or weird kind of loner.”

  I bit back a grin, watching her stumble over her words. It was weirdly endearing—a sentiment that bugged me, like an itch I couldn’t quite scratch.

  “The guy’s killed a handful of people already, how can any of you find him attractive?” Damon was back on screen, blood dripping down his chin. “Plus he’s deliberately fucking with his family. I don’t understand why human media glamorizes vampirism. Between shows like this and the movies with the biters who sparkle, it’s a miracle real vamps don’t capitalize on their popularity and just lure teen girls in by the droves.”

  “I don’t know,” Max started, her knee bouncing up and down slightly against mine. “The murder is definitely bad, of course. But it’s kind of interesting that human media tends to explore the complexities of monsters. They aren’t all good or all bad, you know?” She flung her hair up into a messy bun, sending another cloud of her vanilla shampoo into the air. “It’s cool that the characters have the same complexities and shades of gray as we do—makes the stories more interesting to follow. It makes them, I don’t know—feel?” She bit her bottom lip softly, and I forced myself to focus elsewhere.

  “Plus vampire stories have traditionally been used as metaphors for thinking about humanity’s fear of the other.” Izzy said, shrugging as she flung through the pages of a magazine. I studied her until she lifted her eyes and glanced at us. “What? I’m a big fan of Dracula.”

  “Real vampires are all bad,” I said, my voice low. “They kill humans and protectors indiscriminately. It’s how they’re built and people should fear them. I would think after your experience last weekend, that would be more clear,” I said, watching Max out of the corner of my eye. While I agreed with what I was saying, I found myself digging my heels in more than I usually would. Debating them and discussing humanity’s misconceptions about vampirism was weirdly entertaining.

  She stilled, and I could feel her muscles tense up against me. “That’s the nature of a metaphor though, right? It doesn’t have to represent every truth, just any truth. Don’t worry though, Declan,” she flung her brother’s head away and drew her knees to her chest. “I’m under no illusions that vampires are secretly capable of being saved.” She shivered slightly, before turning towards me again. “And what’s more, I met one in the dungeon when I visited Ralph, so I’m officially doubling down on vamps having a creepy vibe.”

  “Ooh, I almost forgot about the hot vamp you ran into,” Izzy said, flipping a page as she chuckled. “Shame that beauty so often gets wasted. Still, it doesn’t hurt to have eye candy, so long as no one gets close enough to try and take a bite.” She looked up at me and winked. “Pun intended.”

  I ran my fingers over the small half-moon marks my nails had dug into the soft flesh of my palm. The casual debate was hitting too close to home now. One breath in, one breath out. “You shouldn’t be down there, Max.” I didn’t want to boss her around, especially not when I’d been almost enjoying the night so far. But she had no idea how dangerous the creatures down there were. “Vampires are dangerous. But the ones down in the lab are next level.”

  “How so?” she asked, angling her body towards mine. “They’re kept in a prison, so it’s not like they can get out and attack.”

  “The Guild only keeps the creatures worth studying alive. Typically that tends to mean the strongest and smartest. And the vampires down there spend all of their time in the belly of their enemies, watching protectors day in and day out. Vampires are evil, but they aren’t unintelligent.” I took another breath, trying to steady my voice, remove the emotion from it. This wasn’t like me, it felt like my emotions were slowly leaking out of me, fit to burst. “On more than one occasion, the creatures down there have manipulated the scientists and caretakers who watch over them.”

  Max narrowed her eyes, the show providing an odd soundtrack to our conversation. “What do you mean? Like manipulated researchers into letting them out?”

  “Dec—can I call you Dec? Anyway, Dec’s right,” Izzy said, her lip tilting into a frown as she studied me with her storm-cloud eyes. It wasn’t quite pity in their depths, but something like pity’s slightly more tolerable older sibling. My stomach clenched. “It’s only happened a few times, but it does happen. The humanoids will occasionally manipulate a researcher into letting their guard down and then they strike. Best to stay away from them altogether. Vampires are predators in every sense of the term—their beauty, their draw, it can sometimes disguise their danger.”

  “Field team it is, then,” Ro said, a shadow crossing his features even as he smiled. Field work didn’t have the highest survival odds for protectors either. A fact that none of us would have the luxury of forgetting. Perhaps it was strange to warn her about viewing the monsters through the protection of glass, when I was training her to one day hunt them down and put them there.

  Max stood up and walked over to the kitchen. “Important point. We can just stick to admiring the fictional vampires on TV while hunting down the creepy ass ones in real life. Deal? Because that sounds good to me. Now,” she spun around, a gleaming smile on her face as the discomfort of the conversation melted away. How did she do that? Against my better judgment, my own irritation and tension evaporated too. “Who wants popcorn? I’m starving.”

  “Fuck yes,” Izzy said, tossing her magazine on the floor, the pages cascading in a puddle. “Triple butter. Or ice cream. Actually, fuck the or, let’s do both.”

  They started laughing and clamoring in the kitchen, the sound of their chatter washing over me like a strange warm light. Rowan’s eyes met mine with a grin, and we shared one of those looks that screamed ‘if-you-can’t-beat-em-join-em.’ It was just a moment, but it felt like a silent invitation into their world, their group. Maybe girls’ night wasn’t the worst assignment I’d ever been given.