Chapter 2

“Dude!” A young vamp with red hair and freckles shoved his way to the front of the pack of pointy-tooths who had apparently ditched all sense of self-preservation and decided that blocking Jarvis’s exit was the smart thing to do. The Berkeley wannabe had been boxed out by the other vamps so Jarvis hadn’t noticed him before, but he was noticing him now. Hard not to. He was wearing a hot pink tie-dyed T-shirt, Birkenstocks, and a herd of macrame bracelets halfway up his forearm. “You gotta help us! Rocco’s like going down big-time, and you’re the only one who can save him.”

Jarvis swore at the look of raw terror on the kid’s face. The fledgling couldn’t be more than twenty years old, still with enough humanity to retain the carrot top and think it was just fine for the Holy Undead to use words like “dude,” or admit to caring about something other than being stoic and dull. A face with the unabashed guile of someone who’d put his heart out there for his buddy and was in the process of having it crushed.

Son of a bitch. “Shit, kid. I wish I could help you, but now’s not the time. Come find me in a year—”

“A year? He’ll be dead!” Sylvan grabbed Jarvis’s wrist before Jarvis realized he was going to make a move.

He’d forgotten how fast vampires were. Hadn’t run into one since he’d been kidnapped. Maybe he should find a couple as sparring partners. Might be nice to actually get a challenge.

“Seriously! Look at him!” Sylvan pointed frantically toward the door. The pack of vamps split, revealing a rent-a-wreck bloodsucker being dragged along by his wrist. The poor bastard was dirty, wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and torn jeans no sane vampire would allow within a mile of his refined palette. The decrepit creature was so pale he made the others look like they’d just spent a month in the tropics with baby oil. He was bleeding from an impressive wound in his chest.

Jarvis didn’t like to see anyone like that, even a vampire. “Your buddy get staked?”

“Dude, yeah, by his girlfriend.”

Anger stirred inside Jarvis at that hellish fate of an innocent. Why in the hell would any man turn his back on a woman?

Maybe his teammate Blaine had found a woman who didn’t torture him, but Blaine was too caught up in salvation and poetry to think straight. What was the point of learning not to trust women if a man threw his lot in with the first non-Den woman he met? No chance Jarvis would do that. He had a brain, and he liked to use it.

Then the image of a certain auburn-haired gal flashed in his mind. There was one woman he’d met who was different. Reina Fleming had courage. Her blue eyes were the same color as the delphiniums Christian kept in their common room, and her sensual lips would make even the most cynical warrior believe there was a God.

Yeah, she was female all right, but she’d also impressed him with her loyalty. She’d stood by Blaine’s new woman, no matter what cost, and he liked that. But just because that kind of loyalty was noteworthy, it didn’t mean he was going to be dropping trou and letting her line up her sights on his jewels.

Unlike the poor bastard in front of him who’d let a chick near him with a wooden instrument o’ torture.

Pascal groaned and shifted suddenly, nearly wrenching himself out of Jarvis’s grip. Chat time over. Getting Pascal out of the Den was critical. “Sorry, Sylvan, but there’s nothing I can do.” He jerked his head toward Nigel, who was finishing off the last of the lady vipers. “Artist boy over there is the healer, but you’re gonna have to get in line—”

“No!” Sylvan slammed his palm into Jarvis’s chest and sent him crashing against the wall.

“Shit!” Jarvis used his body to protect Pascal as they hit the stainless steel wallpaper. He swore as the metal burned his skin, eating away at his strength and defenses. Mother of hell. He never thought he’d have to feel that stainless attacking him again. He fucking hated that metal.

“You will be at ease.” Damien laid his hand on top of Sylvan’s head. The kid blanched (impressive feat for a vampire), then Damien chanted something in an ancient language. The youth’s face went blank. Utterly expressionless.

The fangbanger had mindrolled his own kind? Disgust surged through Jarvis. If a man couldn’t count on his peeps, he had nothing.

He shoved himself off the wall, gritting his teeth at the burning in his cells as the stainless began to invade his body. Mother of hell. He wasn’t going down that road again. “You have one chance to get out of my way, and then you’re toast.” His hand twitched around the handle of his sword. “I hope you choose not to move.”

Damien immediately dropped to one knee and bowed his head. At the flick of his wrist, all the vampires behind him followed suit. All except Rocco-the-staked, who had slumped to the floor and was reciting random and awkward poetry about broken hearts and true love. The only other one not genuflecting was Sylvan, who was still standing there like a zombie.

Well, hell, it was against his ethics to behead someone who was bowing before him. That was too much like taking out a bunny rabbit who’d rolled over for a belly scratch. Jarvis lowered his sword in disgust. “Get up.”

Damien kept his eyes on the mold growing between the cracks in the cement. “My Lord, we humbly request your assistance with Rocco. He is the son of our leader, Abraham. If he returns from his sabbatical and finds his son died while in our care, we will all suffer greatly.”

Pascal groaned and twitched again. Jesus. What was wrong with the warrior? “You guys can heal yourself, so get on it.”

“Rocco does not desire recovery, so his body must obey.” Damien still didn’t lift his head, wouldn’t even look him in the eye. “We’ve had three interventions, but Rocco keeps returning to his woman. After she staked him two days ago, it broke his soul, and he is trying to die.”

Jarvis snorted. “Tell him to toughen up.” Was this what regular males were like? Wanting to die because some chick had blown him off? Try a hundred and fifty years in the Den. No tears in torture-land. Almost made him appreciate Angelica for forcing him to man-up. No chick would ever reduce him to blubbering tears and a willingness to give it all up. Not even Reina.

Shit. Why did he keep thinking of her? Ever since he’d had her pinned to the floor for a little private discussion, she’d been shoving her way into his thoughts. He barely knew her, had spoken to her maybe a handful of times, but he’d had her breasts wedged up against his chest, and her body had been warm and soft when he’d been on top of her. He’d been reliving that feeling ever since it had happened. When he’d finally convinced her he wasn’t the enemy, and he’d felt her whole body relax beneath him, he’d felt like a king for getting her to trust him.

And for that moment, that brief instant when she was under him, he’d had a chance to experience physical intimacy with a woman who wasn’t trying to kill him. That moment, feeling the warmth of her body against his, those deliciously feminine curves molded to his body… shit. He’d never forget that sensation.

Reina had baggage, and she trusted no one except her friend Trinity, and then she’d let go and stopped fighting him. When he’d realized that he’d given her relief and diffused some of her tension, given her a moment of peace… Hell. He’d felt satisfaction unlike anything he’d ever felt in his life.

He’d felt like a man, and no woman had ever made him feel like a man before. Women made him hurt, they invoked his antipathy, they haunted his nightmares. But never, ever had a woman brought words of comfort and soothing to his lips. And he’d liked it. For that split second, for that instant, a part of him had come to life that he’d never met before.

Had the connection been real? Had he imagined it? Half the time, he was sure it had been some devious female trick, and he was ready to take out Reina the next time he saw her. But sometimes… sometimes…

“Toughen up? You insult us with that suggestion.” Anger flashed in Damien’s eyes, jerking Jarvis back to the present. “You think we have not tried every method known to us to help the boy find the will to live? Words mean nothing when the soul is broken.”

“Yeah, broken souls are a bitch,” he acknowledged. He’d helped bury too many warriors whose souls had been broken by Angelica. There was no hope for someone who wanted to die. “Sorry to hear that.” And he was.

Because there was no sense in wasting time on those who’d packed it in. He focused on the ones who fought to survive. Like Pascal, who was now groaning constantly, interspersed with occasional shrieks of pain. There was something stirring inside him that was not good. “Nigel. What’s your status?”

“Almost ready to blow this place.” Nigel came up beside him. Slung over his shoulder was a heavily tattooed warrior Jarvis recognized as Isaiah Hawthorne, the toughest son of a bitch Jarvis had ever met. Nigel was carrying a second inert form in his arms. Jarvis swore when he saw them. No man should be reduced to that. Ever.

He grabbed the victims from Nigel. “No one gets left behind.”

Nigel met his gaze, and Jarvis saw the same hardness in his teammate’s face. The scars from revisiting their old hell, and the relentless determination to end it. Now. “Never,” Nigel agreed, before turning and sprinting back into the room to retrieve the last three men.

Jarvis balanced one warrior on his free shoulder and the second on his left hip, keeping his sword hand free. “We’re taking them out together. Now.”

“My lord.” Damien had retreated back to his subordinate serf imitation. “We humbly request the assistance of the Guardian of Hate to imbue our dear and beloved friend with the blackest of emotions so that he is consumed with bitter bile that will drive him to hunt down and attack Sarah Dutton, drain her blood, rip out her heart, and destroy her so she no longer walks this earth.”

Dutton? Where had he heard that name before? Ah, now he remembered. It was a gathering of women who did shit like what had been done to Sylvan. Women who’d be a perfect fit in the Den.

“I like your dedication, Damien.” Nigel hoisted a seven foot male who was little more than blood and skin onto his left shoulder. “Not every brokenhearted teenager has friends thoughtful enough to turn him into a homicidal maniac.”

“Rocco won’t even drink blood or have sex right now,” Damien continued.

Sex. The word made Jarvis’s skin crawl, as it had ever since Angelica had taken him and the others into her personal hell and begun the warrior’s lessons on proper lovemaking. That was one place he wasn’t going. Not ever again. Having a female beneath him with ice picks in his nuts was just not the stuff wet dreams were made of. Now, if a woman was as soft and pliable as Reina had been that day, well—

“Do you realize how Rocco’s lack of sexual desire and bloodlust will break his father’s spirit?” Damien demanded. “All he does is recite poetry about broken love.”

“Hey, don’t underestimate poetry.” Nigel picked up the last warrior, a freakishly thin male who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. “Tapping into your artistic side is critical for a man to be sufficiently badass and violent.”

“Yeah, it looks like the poetry is serving him well.” Jarvis saw he had about thirty seconds before Nigel would be ready to leave, so he leveled his sword at Damien. “Release Sylvan’s mind. I’ll speak only to him.”

Damien was there to save his ass from getting whipped by his leader. Sylvan was there out of loyalty to his friend. The latter was the only motivation worthy of response.

Damien flicked a finger, and Sylvan suddenly returned to consciousness. “Dude! You going to help us?”

Jarvis lodged the tip of his sword under Sylvan’s chin and forced him to stand tall, like a warrior. “I admire your loyalty to your friend. Keep it up.”

Sylvan beamed. “Gee, thanks, Lord Hate. That’s really nice of you to say.” The neophyte pulled his shoulders back and puffed his chest out a little.

Nice. He liked to see that attitude in the kid.

Nigel snorted in amusement. “Lord Hate?”

“Stay clean, kid.” Jarvis ignored Nigel’s bark of laughter. “Hate’s bad shit, and you don’t want to mess with it.”

Especially not now. Jarvis had kept hate locked down for a hundred and fifty years, but if the vamps had tracked him here, that meant he was leaking. Yeah, theoretically, it was helpful to learn his recent testiness was because he was finally losing control of a noxious toxin that could blow up the entire world, but he’d rather have discovered he was just cranky from lack of battle and knitting—

Pascal suddenly unleashed a scream of holy hell and ripped himself out of Jarvis’s grasp with a strength no almost-dead warrior should possess. Claws erupted from his fingertips, and he launched himself at Sylvan.

Sylvan screeched, fanged out, and threw himself at Pascal.

“Shit!” Jarvis lunged for Pascal as he jammed his fist into Sylvan’s chest. Sylvan shrieked like a raven with a hangover, turned into a bat, then tail-whipped Pascal across the face so hard that the warrior’s head snapped back like a freaking rubber band.

Pascal howled and leapt into the air.

“Oh, hell,” Nigel said. “He’s going to go scaly, isn’t he?”

Wings exploded from Pascal’s back, scales erupted over his body, and acid-laced spines exploded from him, shooting in all directions. Welcome to the party, dragon boy.

“Stop, fledgling!” Damien lunged for Sylvan, but the two youths were already across the room, knocking each other around like a couple of playground bullies.

Hormonal supernatural badasses were difficult enough, but when one had been tortured into insanity and the other was terrified his friend was about to die, it made the situation a little more unpredictable.

“They’re both pretty quick. I like their potential.” Nigel stashed the injured warriors into a protected alcove behind a stainless steel weapons vat as Pascal began shooting acid-spiked spines all over the place. “You know, I had a bad feeling when Angelica let Pascal play with acid last month. I felt he was a little hotheaded for that kind of weapon.” Nigel ducked as one nearly took his eye out.

“It’s war!” Sylvan screamed, and all the other vampires shrieked in response. Eyes turned red. The temperature in the room dropped about sixty degrees as the undead prepared for war.

Lemmings.

“No!” Damien howled his orders, “Everyone down!”

Impressively, not a single one obeyed. Not every leader had that little control over his insanely murderous team.

Jarvis tore across the room toward Pascal, ducking his head against the onslaught of spines. Pascal’s eyes were pitch black, pulsing with pathological hate. That’s what this was about? Hate?

Son of a bitch. He’d infected Pascal with his hate and set off a frenzy among the vamps. How had that happened? Yeah, his skin could be toxic if he wasn’t paying attention, but he always kept it under rigid control and he never, ever lost his shit enough to infect people unlucky enough to simply be in his presence. What the hell was going on?

“Nigel!” Jarvis barked the command. “Get over here! Take Pascal. I can’t touch him.” His fingers flexed with the need to shut the kid down, but contact with him would make it worse. He hated feeling impotent. And he detested knowing that he was poison to those he wanted to keep safe.

“Take care of the bloodsuckers, Hate Boy.” Nigel was already running toward Pascal. “I’ll get the newbie.”

Jarvis whipped out his sword, set his weapon to a notch below dead as a doornail, then hit a vamp right in the chest. The undead dropped like a load of cement.

Jarvis took out another one as Damien raced over to check on his downed comrade, but apparently the thing was still alive, because Damien nodded, then went off to start taking down the others. Excellent. Team effort, everyone.

Thirty seconds later, it was nap time. Clean-shaven ghouls were unconscious and bleeding all over the floor, and Damien was breathing hard (who knew vampires even breathed? Learn something new every day). Nigel had knocked out Pascal so he couldn’t throw spines anymore, and the place was ready for tea and brunch. Pascal was still in his stuff-of-nightmares form, and his body was twitching, but he was sleeping like a man who’d just serviced a dozen women and a flock of angels.

“Well, I’m impressed, Jarvis.” Nigel slowly stood up, stretching his back. “Didn’t think you could infect an unconscious man with enough hate to wake up him from a coma and put him in full attack mode. You’re kinda like LSD for the uninitiated.”

Jarvis eyed his friend, searching for a sign that his buddy was about to get on the hate train. “You feeling okay?”

Nigel pulled out a sketch pad and a pen. “Give me two minutes, and I’ll be as good as a pansy in a patch of sunshine.” He glanced at a nearby bed, visibly stiffened, then chose to sit on the cement floor instead. He crossed his legs and began to draw.

Lucky son of a bitch. Right now Jarvis would give his left arm for five minutes of the kind of peace that Nigel found in his art. Maybe he’d try knitting one more time. Worth it to take the edge off the adrenaline racing through him right now… then he scowled at the fury that rose deep inside him, as it always did when he thought about taking on the most hellaciously frustrating pastime ever created. Knitting was the last thing he needed right now.

He rolled his neck, trying to ease the restlessness in his body. “You okay, Damien?”

The bloodsucker was on his knees, his eyes were red, and his fangs were out. “Give me a sec.”

Damn. If he’d even gotten to an emotionally vacant bloodsucker with a thousand years of self-control… impressive, as Nigel has said. But not in a good way.

Nigel’s pen was flying across the page. “So, I’m guessing that the fact you accidentally caused this brouhaha isn’t a good thing?”

“Yeah.” The stream of blood gushing from Pascal’s side had gotten stronger. Nothing like turning into drooling dragon-boy to interfere with healing. “But as long as it’s only leaking outward, we’re okay. It’s when it starts to affect my own sanity, that’s when we really have a problem.”

Nigel shoved his sketch pad into his back pocket and gave Jarvis a long look as he began to pick up the warriors again. “What’s the deal? You going down? You need my help?” He set the warriors back down and took root in the place they’d been so desperate to leave. “I’ll heal you. Right now. Right here. I’m not letting you detonate.”

Jarvis shook out his shoulders. “All I need is ten minutes with my brother, and he can clean it up.” Yeah, he hadn’t seen his brother since Jarvis let himself be taken in Cameron’s place a hundred and fifty years ago. But the Guardian of Love would be there for him. As a brother. As a Guardian. As the only freaking being on the planet that could ease some of the hell inside Jarvis—

Jarvis suddenly noticed a sharp tingling in his palm. He looked down, then stiffened. There, at the very tip of his lifeline, was a tiny black star. The first signs of hate taking over his body.

He clenched his fist and swore. Every Guardian was eventually destroyed by the hate. Fifty years was the usual life span, and he’d already gone a buck fifty. He wasn’t ready to die. But even his brother couldn’t stop this slide.

Nigel narrowed his eyes suspiciously, as if he knew what Jarvis had seen on his palm. “How long do you have until you go insane and destroy the world if you don’t find your brother?”

“I’ll be fine.” Jarvis unclenched his fist. Maybe it couldn’t be stopped, but he could slow that train down to a crawl. His brother could help him. Now that he was out of the Den, Jarvis had the liberty of going after Cameron, and it was clearly time to get on it. As soon as he had the Hotel’s occupants safely stashed in his place—

“Lord Hate.” Damien’s eyes flashed. “You owe us now. Infect Rocco with hate so he can be happy again someday.”

“Hell, are you blind? You don’t want me.” He grabbed his sword, letting the heat of the handle burn into the mark on his palm. “Take Rocco to my brother. The Guardian of Love can help the girl fall in love with him and—”

“The Guardian of Love was indisposed,” Damien interrupted. “You were our second choice.”

“Indisposed?” Jarvis stiffened. Cameron was so in love with his abilities that he never turned down a chance to show off. “What are you talking about?”

“He informed us that he had abdicated,” Damien replied.

Jarvis’s tainted palm began to burn. “What are you talking about? The Guardian of Love can’t abdicate.” That’s why there was a Guardian of that damned emotion, and that was why Jarvis had taken the hit for his brother two centuries ago. Because love needed to be protected. “Love needs constant attention or it dies.”

Damien crouched beside Rocco and laid his pale hand on the boy’s cheek. “That appeared to be his plan. He had a bonfire flaming on the edge of the lake with blue flames spelling out the words ‘Death: I am ready.’”

“Bloody hell.” What had happened to his brother while Jarvis had been incarcerated? Was it impossible for anyone to be safe without Jarvis there to protect them? Both Jarvis and the entire world were fucked if Cameron went AWOL. “Nigel! Take care of Pascal and the others.” He broke into a sprint for the door. “I gotta go find Cam.”