Touch If You Dare Read online

  “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.”

  Chapter 3

  “Cameron!” Jarvis sprinted up the grassy hill toward the metal shack he’d called home nearly two hundred years ago. “Are you around?”

  There was no answer. Just his voice bouncing off the cliffs he and Cam had spent so many hours shimmying up when they were kids. An unfamiliar emotion swirled through Jarvis at the sight of the home where he’d last seen his family. The last place he’d been where anyone had touched him in kindness.

  Fuck that. He didn’t need to go there. He was a warrior, not a melodramatic pansy, no matter how hard Angelica had tried to turn him into one. He had his team, and that was all he needed.

  Jarvis bolted across the clearing to the shack and ripped the aluminum door off the hinges. Nothing inside but two cots and a pile of clothes in one corner. His dad’s guns were racked up on the west wall. And, of course, the framed letters of commendation for all the slippery bastards his bounty hunting dad had tracked down.

  Pride thickened his throat. Nice job, Pa.

  It was his dad who’d had Jarvis out on the shooting range at age two, who’d dropped Jarvis on his head from a height of twenty feet at age three, who’d taught him how to retrieve burning coins from a campfire with his bare hands simply by believing he could do it.

  His dad had given Jarvis the skills to survive Angelica, and it was right that his dad had gone on to such success.

  “Maybe your brother’s going on a walkabout. You know, finding his meaning in life.” Blaine Underhill III, the insanely love-sick warrior who’d spearheaded their escape from the Den two weeks ago, poked his head into the shed. When Blaine had heard about Jarvis’s quest, he’d hauled ass to catch up to Jarvis and provide that team support they all prided themselves in.

  It was the first time Blaine had been more than a hundred yards away from his woman since they’d hooked up, and Jarvis was well aware that only some serious concern about Jarvis’s future would have dragged Blaine away from her. He’d been surprised when Blaine had caught up to him, but it had felt damn good to know that Blaine was still his teammate even when he was shacking up with a woman. Trinity wasn’t going to destroy Blaine, and Jarvis was glad as hell about that. He grinned at the lover boy. “You sure you remember how to function without Trinity holding your hand?”

  “She’s having a girls’ day. Reina’s in some sort of trouble, and Trinity had to help her.” Blaine shrugged. “Figured I might as well save you instead.”

  “Reina’s in trouble?” Jarvis looked sharply at Blaine, his grip tightening around his sword. “What’s wrong?”

  “No clue. Trinity wouldn’t tell me, so I figure it’s a female thing.” Blaine rolled his eyes. “I know we were trained to go those places, but I’m happy to pretend I have no clue about girl things.”

  Jarvis’s blade began to glow, and dark anger pulsed through him. “What if it’s not a female thing? What if they can’t handle it?”

  “You questioning my ability to take care of my woman?” Blaine held up a fist, and a ball of flame appeared in his hand. “Because I’d have to kick the shit out of you for that.”

  “I’m not worried about Trinity.” Jarvis kicked aside the cot with a little more force than he’d intended. “But who’s got Reina’s back?”

  “Reina?” Blaine’s eyebrows shot up, and he extinguished the flame. “The woman works for Death. I think she’s got things covered.”

  “She’s not as tough as she pretends she is.” After all, she hadn’t been able to knock him out, had she? What if she ran into something else she couldn’t handle? He’d felt the tension she carried in her body, and he knew she wasn’t as together as she liked to pretend. Reina was afraid. Of what? He suddenly needed to know. Now. “She’s not like us. She needs protection.”

  A slow grin spread over Blaine’s face. “Shit, man, you’ve noticed she’s a woman, haven’t you? With one rocking bod, too.”

  Jarvis stopped in surprise. Was that what it was? Hell, no. He was too fucking smart for that. “I’m just watching your back. If something happens to Reina because you didn’t interfere, your girl will ride your ass to the end of hell and back.”

  Blaine paled. “Shit. You’re right. I gotta get back there.”

  Jarvis nodded and relaxed his grip on his sword. Next stop, Reina. They would make sure she was all right. “I’ll go with you.”

  Blaine nodded in acknowledgment. They were always a team. No one went it alone. Which was why Blaine didn’t take off to go after his woman right away, but looked around the shed instead, albeit with more impatience than he’d had two minutes ago. “Where’s your damn brother? Saving the world, one love bug at a time?”

  “Cam’s not motivated enough to go on an international tour. He waits for the adulation to come to him. He’s got to be around here.” Jarvis ducked back outside again, feeling even antsier to find his brother, take care of business, and get the hell out and help Blaine find Reina. And Trinity, of course. He knew what Trinity and Reina were like, and t
he odds of them being involved in something that was more than they could handle weren’t as low as he would have liked. “Cam!”

  Again, no answer.

  Just the distant roar of the waterfall he and Cam used to play in. How many times had his dad held him underwater, teaching him how to push past his limits, to reach beyond what every cell his body was screaming at him that he couldn’t do?

  The old man had cared enough to nearly drown Jarvis thousands of times, while poor Cameron had been off weaving daisies into crowns for the raccoons and making googly eyes at the neighbor’s girls. His dad had long given up trying to bless Cameron with the ability to be a man, and Jarvis felt a sudden pity for his little brother, left behind without any of the skills a young boy should have. What kind of life would Jarvis have had if he’d been left with love as his only tool to survive?

  He shuddered at the thought. Yeah, hate was a bitch, but he’d take that over lolling with the butterflies any day of the week. What could love get you anyway? A stake in the heart by your girlfriend, for one. Thank the gods of hell he didn’t have to worry about that soft emotion infiltrating his body, even if it did seem to agree with Blaine.

  It wasn’t his cuppa, and he was good with that.

  “Can you sense Cameron?” Blaine asked. “I thought you guys were connected.”

  “Yeah, we were, but it’s been a long time.” Jarvis closed his eyes and tried to attune himself to his brother’s frequency, but he was too tense. Too much energy bouncing around. “I’m on edge. Can’t do it.”

  That wasn’t a good sign. A quick inspection revealed there was a second tiny star on his palm now, beside the first one. He closed his fist. “Damien said Cam had been using a bonfire to contact Death.” The sky was blue in all directions. “Can you pick it up?”

  “Fire? Now you’re talking, baby.” The skull and bones tattoo on Blaine’s chest began to smoke. Blaine was three-quarters flames, and he had a special bond with anything smoky and hot. He closed his eyes, then pointed to the southeast. “That way.”