Storm and Fury (The Harbinger 1)

A blur of movement shot in front of the TV. Misha didn’t react to it, so my eyes narrowed. Was it Peanut, my sort of, not exactly alive, friend? I hadn’t seen that punk all day or night. God only knew what he was up to.

A door opened somewhere in the massive house, slamming shut a few seconds later. I stopped pacing. Only then did Misha look at me. He raised his brows.

Heavy footsteps echoed down the hall outside the living room, and I turned to the arched opening. Thierry entered, tugging a fresh shirt on over his bald head. He was still too far away for me to gain much from the expression on his dark brown face. Matthew was right behind him, only slightly shorter and less broad. I clasped my hands together.

“I have several things I need to say, but I want to know something first,” Thierry’s deep voice boomed. “What in the Hell was she doing outside those walls?”

My mouth opened.

“I have no idea.” Misha pulled his legs off the couch and sat up, twisting at the waist so he could see Thierry. “I was happily asleep when she snuck off.”

I snapped my jaw shut, wondering exactly how in the world Misha knew I was outside the walls if he’d been asleep. The bond wouldn’t have alerted him to that. It didn’t work that way.

“It is your responsibility to know where she is at all times,” Thierry responded. “Even if you’re asleep.”

“Okay, that seems a bit implausible,” I said, jumping into the conversation. “And I’m the one who went over the wall, so I don’t know why you’re asking him why I did it.”

Thierry slowly turned to me, and now that he was closer, I could see the hard lines of his jaw and his narrowed eyes. Eek! Probably should’ve kept my mouth shut.

“He is your Protector. He should know where you are.”

Without even looking at Misha, I could feel him glaring daggers into me. “He can’t be responsible for me while—”

“I’m not sure if you fully understand his role, but yes, he is always responsible for you. Asleep or awake, it doesn’t matter,” Thierry interrupted while Matthew leaned against the back of the couch. “Why were you outside those walls, Trinity?”

For what felt like the thousandth time tonight, I explained myself. “I woke up and I knew there were demons nearby. I sensed them—”

“While you were asleep?” Matthew asked, reddish brows snapping together. I nodded, and he glanced at Thierry. “That’s new.”

“Not exactly,” I said. “The last time they came, I sensed them in the middle of the night. It woke me up.”

“And that night you did what you knew you should have,” Thierry responded. “You stayed inside, where—”

“Where it’s safe. I know that.” Frustration rose. “And that night two Wardens died.”

“It doesn’t matter how many die.” Thierry took a step toward me. “Your safety is the number one priority.”

I inhaled sharply. “I can fight. I can fight better than most Wardens! It’s what I’ve been trained for since I could walk, but I’m expected to sit around twiddling my thumbs while people die? And don’t say their lives don’t matter. I’m tired of hearing that.” My hands curled into fists. “Misha’s life matters. Matthew’s life matters. Your life matters! Everyone here matters.” Except for Clay, but that was splitting hairs. “I’m tired of sitting around and doing nothing when people are dying. Knowing better gets people killed. It killed my mother—” I cut myself off with a sharp inhale.

It was so silent you could hear a cricket sneeze.

The vibe of the entire room shifted. Misha rose as if he was going to come to where I was standing, but I took a step back. I didn’t want him to touch me. I didn’t want his sympathy or empathy.

I didn’t want anything other than to do what I was put on this Earth to do. Fight.

Everything about Thierry softened, even his voice. “You didn’t get your mother killed.”

Yeah, that was his opinion and not a fact.

“I know you want to get out there and help,” he continued, “and I know you’re trained and you’re good, but, Trinity...you need to be careful with your vision, especially at night.”

Steel shot down my spine. “I know what my vision is like at night, but it didn’t stop me from kicking some demon ass. It never will.”

All of us in the room knew that was a lie, because eventually my vision would stop me.

It would stop me from doing a lot of things, which kind of canceled out the whole being superspecial thing I had going on.

But that wasn’t going to be today or even tomorrow.

I lifted up my chin as Matthew and Thierry exchanged helpless looks. “At some point, my father is going to summon me, and I doubt that whatever fight he wants me involved in will happen only during the daytime, and even then, my vision still sucks. That’s not going to change. That’s why I train eight hours a day and practice all the time. I should be out there, getting real experience, before I’m summoned.”

Thierry turned away, running his hand over his smooth head. Misha finally decided to speak up. “She didn’t have any problems,” he said, and that was about ninety-nine percent true. I hadn’t seen that one Raver until it was too late. “She did really well.”

I smiled at him, big and bright.

He shot me a look. “And we should probably be getting real-life experience.”

Matthew was watching his husband closely. He sighed as he folded his arms. “It’s a little too late at night to have that discussion.”

While I wanted to have that discussion, I also wanted to have what felt like a way more important one. “Isn’t it superweird that Ravers were out here? That was the first time I’d ever seen one, and wow, they’re really creepy, but I thought they were scavenger demons. Way lower level.”

“They are,” Thierry answered as he looked at Matthew. “They’re not supposed to be topside. They don’t remotely blend in.”

Due to the same cosmic rule that made it impossible to tell humans that demons were real, only demons who could blend in with humans were allowed topside. There were quite a few that, at first glance, looked perfectly human. Giant walking rats totally weren’t one of them.

“And not only that, Ravers are usually a sign of a much bigger problem,” Matthew added. “Where you see Ravers, you almost always find Upper Level demons.”

My heart nearly stopped in my chest. That little tidbit was probably taught in class, but I’d forgotten. I glanced over at Misha, and he looked just as uneasy as I felt.

Upper Level demons were the Big Bads.

Their abilities ran the gamut. Some could sway human minds to do bad, bad things. Others could summon fire and rain down brimstone, change their appearance at the drop of a hat, becoming human one moment and an animal the next. Many of them were biblically old. All of them could take out a Warden.

And if the Ravers being here meant that there was an Upper Level demon nearby, that was a big deal.

I crossed my arms, almost not wanting to ask what I already suspected. “Do you think it’s possible that an Upper Level demon knows about me?”

Thierry hesitated. “Every last one of your kind has been slaughtered, Trinity. If an Upper Level demon knew you were here, those walls would already be breached. Nothing would stop it from getting to you.”

* * *

There was a ghost in the driveway.

Again.

Could be worse, I supposed. But the Raver attack was two days ago, and our walls hadn’t been breached by an Upper Level demon hell-bent on devouring me.

Literally.

Even with my crap eyes, I knew the figure pacing in front of the hedges lining the wide driveway was superdead. I knew this mainly because his body kept flickering in and out like poor reception on an old television.

He definitely wasn’t a spirit, and I’d seen enough of the two in my eighteen years to know the difference. The man below in his gold-colored shirt hadn’t crossed over yet.

Spirits were the deceased who had seen the light—and there was almost always a light—had gone to it and then had come back for some reason or another. Usually they had a message or just wanted to check in on their loved ones.

Kneeling on the ledge of the Great Hall, I grasped the rough edge of the roof with one hand and placed my other on the curved shoulder of the stone gargoyle beside me. Heat radiated from the shell, warming my palm. I squinted behind my sunglasses and leaned as far as I could without falling face-first off the roof. The Great Hall was almost as tall as the wall and at least two stories higher than Thierry’s house.

Watching the ghost pace back and forth, obviously confused, I wondered where in the world he’d come from. The community wasn’t exactly easily reachable, nestled in the hills of the mountain and accessed only by back roads—winding, curvy back roads.

Probably a car accident.

Many a tired, unsuspecting traveler had fallen victim to those treacherous roads, with their sharp curves and steep, sudden embankments.

The poor dude had probably lost control and woken up dead before wandering here, like a lot of ghosts did. Last week it was a hiker who’d gotten lost on the mountain and fallen to her death. Two weeks ago it was an overdose—an older man who’d died on one of those back roads, too out of it to realize he was dying and too far away from help even if he had. Last month there’d been a girl, and hers had been the worst death I’d seen in a long time. She’d wandered away from her family during a camping trip and crossed paths with a kind of evil that was all too human.

The weight of that memory, of the girl’s screams for her mother, settled heavily in my chest. Moving her on hadn’t been easy, and there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t remember her cries.

Shaking off those memories, I focused on the newest ghostie down below. Car accidents were unexpected and often traumatic, but nothing like murder victims or those who died angry deaths. He wouldn’t be hard to move on.