Page 15 of Hound (Guardian)

LORENZO DEVON

I f I had the choice to be beside rotten human corpses, I’d choose that over drowning in rancid vampire blood.

But that wasn’t the case when bullets speared through the air in echoing waves. Vampires, half-humans, and humans dropped like flies. Royalty and not, reaching death or nearing it in seconds. Regardless of appearance, they all bled red.

Figures covered head to toe in black infiltrated every corner. Fear lined the guests’ faces as they scurried, bodies colliding like ants. Except Christopher. He stood next to me with hands wrapped around mine.

Screams reverberated around us. More rounds fired. If he stayed, I couldn’t ensure anyone’s safety. Because his was my priority.

“Get out. Now! ” I gritted as the beast slowly surfaced, inching closer by the second.

“I can’t leave you!” Christopher tried to hide his horror by biting back, but it was all over his trembling voice and intense cold skin.

“You will. There’s danger, and if you don’t leave, my focus will remain on you. This isn’t a fucking request, Doll. Go !”

He hovered by my side, my back shielding us from anything and everything. His lips parted and hesitation hardened his face as fangs glistened underneath the bright white lights. When I thought Christopher would keep resisting, he left. He had no choice but to listen to his guardian. Because that’s what I’d always been. His to use as a sword.

But I was his shield, too. He was mine to protect.

I fell into motion. Screams diluted in my ears as my main focus remained: get every breathing being in this ballroom out of here.

Nina got into action, too. We both fell into sync as the crammed crowd parted us. It was the first time my cousin and me fought together. Hopefully the last.

The same strain in her muscles lined my body. The same loss of breath from shock. While my offense was coordinated, hers was destructive. Messy. The Hound had gone through these motions countless times. She hadn’t and I wasn’t letting her go down this path. Never. Wherever this attack came from, it needed to be shut down—without the beast, even if he clawed to appear.

A towering body dressed in all-black and a hooded mask turned to me, aiming a gun at me. Before their finger could press the trigger, I dashed forward. My moves were swift but harsh, the gun tumbling out of their grip. They bent and I drove my knee into their face. Their body slumped to the ground, out cold. . .but still breathing.

It was impossible to take over the hordes of attackers. While defensive and offensive guardians flowed through the chaos, it wasn’t enough. With each neutralized attacker, more appeared, all varying in height and size.

But what remained the same were the guns they were relying too fucking much on.

Muscles stretched and expanded as I snapped the guns around me, offensive guardians taking note and following my unspoken plan. They handled those I left weaponless. It was flowing smoothly until guns aimed at my cousin, who had Alek and Kaleb, the third Sephtis kid, beside her shoulders.

Logic didn’t exist in the face of death. Nina couldn’t meet an end, especially not one like this.

I sprinted. My shoulders rammed into a back, guns rattling onto the blood-coated floor. Surrounding figures turned to me. Gunshots fired, but none tore my skin. There was no chance when I took every single fucker in my vicinity.

But they kept multiplying.

This wouldn’t be a problem if you’d let me out.

The beasts crawled on my skin, echoed in my chest, but I bit it back. There were too many witnesses. The only way I’d let it happen is if I met death myself.

Another whisper emerged in the back of my mind.

You’re about to.

Nina glided meters from me, her swift blows on a masked figure taking me by storm. She was way stronger than I thought. Had she always been like this?

Suddenly, the air froze as the man drew closer and her voice trembled.

“Lace?”

Everything tilted as a chill crawled up my spine, rendering me motionless. No, there was no way?—

Masked figures swarmed me by wrapping their hands around my shoulders and flung me, my body crashing onto the ground. A groan escaped my throat as pain spiked on my side, darkness spotting my eyes. . .until the unmasked person straightened.

Everything came crashing down.

Lace stood taller than ever before, his eyes never meeting mine. “It’s been quite a while since we last brawled.” The voice that came out of his mouth wasn’t warm or familiar.

It was emotionless. Distant. One I’d never heard before.

This Lace wasn’t the one I’d known for six years. He was someone completely different.

Nina’s eyebrows furrowed, the same doubt aching in my chest lining her face. “What? What’s going on? Why. . .”

“I’ve always liked a harsh brawl when the competition arises. I just never sought one out until now.” Lace motioned his neck to the side, guardians and masked figures encircling us with heavy stomps. Two grabbed Nina’s wrist while a few forced Alek and Kaleb on their feet—or tried to with the way he flopped around unconscious.

I barely took them into account as red seeped into my vision. Swallowing rage coursed through my veins, suffocating my throat as I tried to breathe in. But no air could calm the overpowering fury that grew, thickening to the point it became one with me.

“Lace. What’s all of this?”

Burying the pain that caved my chest and pulsed in my bones.

“In the beginning, it was all a scheme devised by him.” Lace pointed the firearm in his grip at Kaleb. There was no care in the way his fingers loosely held the metal junk. “But there was a minor twist added by my superior. She thought it would be a great opportunity to achieve what we’ve been planning for so long.”

Feeding the purest form of anger that called the beast.

“What type of bullshit are you spitting?”

“Ah, ah, ah.” Lace waved the firearm in my face. At me, his best friend and comrade of six fucking years. Where did that all go? Had it ever even fucking existed? “I don’t enjoy it when obedient dogs bark back at their owner.”

The beast was here. He wanted to rip him to fucking pieces. And I had no sense of control—except a sliver in my voice.

“What the fuck are you?—”

Blaring gunshots exploded beside my ears. My fingertips froze. Fire spread through my chest, flaming a trail throughout my skin. A metallic scent oxidized the air. A fiery punch echoed in my back as fear churned in my stomach. Where was this darkness edging the corners of my vision coming from? Words muffled as my surroundings blurred.

Hooded, brown eyes fell on me, the familiar warmth they had since the first day we met gone, replaced by a never-ending pit. Where was the boss that had welcomed Nina and me with open arms? Where was the best friend that spent countless nights listening to my worries and sharing advice to calm my nerves? Where was the comrade who’d given me my motorcycle after my first year at the CEG? The man I owed everything and more to? The Lace that saw my cousin and me as beings instead of?—

His lips moved, his eyes staring somewhere else, and the voice that spoke belonged to Lace, but the words didn’t. They couldn’t. How was that possible? “Lorenzo was ordered to be killed by the superior long ago. I, instead, kept him alive for my benefit. Yet, his feelings proved to be an inconvenience. We couldn’t have an attached hound , now, could we?”

My name was a poison he spat on the growing fog.

Suddenly, wisps of black strands fanned next to me, a small body sinking into the bed as a familiar face burrowed into my chest. Nina? Why was she so little? I tried tugging her closer, but then, she washed away, leaving me alone in the closing dark.

Shadows swirled, creeping from the soil and to the moon-lit gravestones. There had to be hundreds of them, but only one stood out as a pale figure beside it turned. Moss-green eyes settled on me. The hairs on my neck stood. Mom.

Who would clean her grave?

I forced my lips to part, but they didn’t respond even as a mantra of Mom! Mom! Mom! echoed. She looked exactly like her. Dirty brown hair was pulled back into a bun, emphasizing the heart-shaped face that tapered into soft cheeks and thin lips. Yet, this wasn’t the mom I knew.

Her smooth skin lacked the glow she always had. Her thin, dark eyebrows furrowed with irritation. And those eyes—they were hollow.

Everything stilled as light outlined her white coat, enhancing the words on the left breast pocket.

Cecilia Epide.

No. This wasn’t my mom. She couldn’t be Elia Devon.

“ You were a failure.”

I had failed.

“ Katerina, too, if she continues to be dormant.”

No. Nina couldn’t fail. She couldn’t end up like me. No, no, no. There was no?—

A whisper crawled from my side. I tried to follow it, but numbness echoed in my fingertips, startling my skin into a state of stillness. There was nothing to inhale. Fear itched to the surface as voices blended into each other, but just as quick as it emerged, it vanished. My throat tightened as I tried to do. . .what exactly?

A distant roar echoed. Brightness in the form of sage-green blanketed the darkness in my gaze. Beauty wasn’t supposed to be attainable in this world, yet I had witnessed it. Touched it. Loved it. Christopher had been mine and I’d lost him.

Everything washed away. A void sunk into me. Deeper, deeper, until only a brisk wave swept over me. I never felt cold, until now as it wrapped around my body. An empty silence descended, and I plummeted.

Luck had never shone on me. Succeeding was never in my cards. There was only one end I was supposed to meet.

Death.