Bound by Revenge (Guardian Series) (9 page)

Bradley flinched back as if his own words stung.

“I’ll leave you for the evening to think about everything we’ve discussed. You must have
no
contact with anyone outside this house until I return for your answer. That’s not a suggestion, Alex.” He glared at his son once more. “Keep in mind, you have no idea who’s really on your side.”

Bradley quickly rearranged the paperwork on the table, stacking it in three piles with a picture on the top of each. “Read through these papers. Meet your enemies. I’ll see you in the AM.” Bradley turned to leave then abruptly spun back around. “And, Alex, you might want to grab your friend a new shirt. His display was effective, I have to admit, but Sam will have an easier time focusing if you get him dressed again.”

Sam’s breath caught in her throat and her jaw dropped open. Alex bounded up the stairs to grab a replacement shirt and when he returned everyone remained perfectly still as if someone had pressed pause. Alex tossed the shirt at Vance. Vance let it fall onto his lap before pulling it on and buttoning it with torturous precision as Sam watched.

As Bradley walked out the front door he actually laughed at the scene.

But as soon as he was gone, Vance and Sam refocused on the task in front of them and rushed to look at the papers that Bradley left on the table. Each one grabbed a stack for themselves.

“We should do this together. We’re
supposed
to be learning to behave as a team.” Abby’s voice soared above the chaos and grabbed everyone’s attention.

She reached out and took the stacks away from each of them then she took her father’s position at the head of the table. Abby owned the position and she controlled the room with the same ease and authority that Bradley had wielded just a little while before.

Over the course of the night, Abby led the group through discussions as they examined each of the papers her father left for them. These were biographies of the current leaders of the leanthans, detailed histories of former leaders and previous battles, tales of Bradley’s role in collecting intelligence while on his many business trips and in his day to day travels around Ruthers, how he infiltrated thousands of businesses to gather a definitive list of holdings owned by leanthans and how their new team was expected to defeat the threat.

By the time they got through the last stack, everyone in the room was as familiar with the threat as Bradley was. Now, they just needed to figure out how to face it, defeat it and save the world. No pressure there.

Arratta paced back and forth in front of the imposing mahogany desk in his second floor office at C & R Enterprises. For the past five hundred years, he had been the leader of his species. It was since the last time the leanthans went to war. The war that depleted their numbers, killing off all of the generation before him. All of it was for revenge. There were so many unnecessary deaths, across all species, just because they felt abandoned by their creator and they were foolish enough to think that by killing off the humans, the species that all the others protected, they would gain superiority in the world and rule over the others.

The war was violent beyond compare. It decimated half the population of leanthans and demons alike, not to mention the myriad human casualties.

Arratta had still been very young during the conflict. He was one of the youngest soldiers on the field, fighting under his father Latta. Had it been a time of peace, he would still have been considered a child among his kind. But it was a time of war and that meant everything else was put aside for the chance to build the strongest army.

At only two hundred years old, Arratta should have been a mere foot soldier. Good enough to fill out the ranks, but bringing little, if any, skill to the table. But being the child of a respected leanthan general, Arratta was determined to prove himself in battle and gain the respect of his father. Through his efforts, Arratta had quickly risen in ranks to become second in command at the battle that changed the way the leanthans lived and fought.

He remembered that chilly November day with perfect clarity. The troop woke up from their camp in the woods at the first rays of the sun and followed the rocky path into town within minutes of rising from their slumber. The village before them held a large human population for the times and was well protected. They had at least ten immortals stationed in their regular duties within the borders.

The world was different at that time. There was no phone communication to link populations. The only way information spread between communities was via word of mouth from travelers. This gave the leanthans the upper hand in their battles.

The leanthans assumed that this battle would be just like all the others they’d fought leading up to that day and as they planned their ambush, they counted on catching the inhabitants, humans and immortals alike, off guard.

Latta led the troops into the village that morning with Arratta walking in by his side. For the first time in the war things were different. Instead of walking into an empty town, to lay in wait until individuals began to emerge from their homes, they were met in the center of the village by a small and well armed group of demons and angels.

Each leanthan warrior took up the fight. They engaged in hand to hand combat at first, and then escalated to battle with swords and daggers. The armies were so equally met that neither side took control for what seemed like hours, but more realistically was less than thirty minutes, judging from the position of the sun. It was an exhausting blur of metal and bodies impacting each other. Battle cries and screams of agony filled the air and the heavily metallic smell of the blue blood was nauseating.

Only after the humans started trickling out, did the dynamic change. Their numbers increased quickly as they heard the sound of fighting and saw their friends, the immortals that had become part of their community, under attack trying to fight off a large group of outsiders.

The addition of the humans to the fray tripled the participants in the battle. With the increased numbers, it became harder for each side to remain in control. What had been an amazing show of battle skills, quickly turned into an all out blood bath. One by one, members of each side fell when the wounds they received went from superficial to fatal.

Arratta continued fighting, keeping his back to the forest and never letting the battle surround him. This strategy alone, he felt, kept him alive and kept the chaos from enveloping him. What saved his life was also a stinging point of regret that haunted him through his long existence. His position kept him from fighting at his father’s side. He watched from across the growing pile of bodies, as his father was one of the last leanthans killed and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He was the only survivor of that battle. He realized it was over only after he skewered his final opponent, an ancient angel, with his father’s sword. He used his mind to pry the metal from Latta’s dead hands and impale the angel from behind. After collecting the daggers of each of his fallen comrades, Arratta returned home with news that the war had changed.

The creators had given psychic powers to one of the angels in the village, the very angel that Arratta had defeated at the end of the battle. Because of that gift, the immortals were prepared for the battle. Ready to fight.

Even though he had been able to defeat the psychic angel, Arratta knew that the creators would bestow that gift on others after seeing how helpful it proved to their side. To this day, psychic ability was the greatest gift that the creators would ever provide to an immortal and they'd only do so after the immortal had proven themselves worthy in a series of battles.

As his father’s only surviving son, Arratta became general of the leanthan army that day. Or what little remained of the army, after more than a year of constant battles. Arratta continued fighting in his father’s name. He joined with other squadrons to keep up their ranks but lost more comrades each time they went to battle. Soon he realized that there was nothing to be gained by this bloody war. Revenge wasn’t a good enough motivation for as many deaths as he’d seen.

With that epiphany, he vowed only to take his armies to war for a good cause in the future. Only if their livelihood was being threatened or if they were being attacked by another species. Now Arratta was left to reconcile this new war with that vow that he took so many years before.

Leus, Arratta’s great grandson, had the disproportionally large eyes of the younger generations of leanthans. But as a direct descendent of Arratta, he was still able to pass as human since his demonic genes remained strong. His unique look never got in the way of his interactions with humanity. With the wide range of human features, small differences were often considered attractive, and with the strong build and chiseled features of his family, Leus never lacked female attention, by the leanthan or human species.

Unlike Leus, many leanthans were easy to spot thanks to their mutation. Varying significantly in appearance from humans, most of the younger leanthans were forced to stay out of contact with the humans. So out of their self-preservation instincts, the leanthans had, over time, created all of the comforts of human society, just on a smaller scale for themselves.

The more obvious leanthans never left the colonies, while those who could pass for human were selected to mingle with human society, both socially, to keep up with their customs, and functionally, to obtain supplies that the leanthans didn’t have the ability or the financial means of creating themselves.

When Leus was young, he didn’t understand the hatred that most of his own felt towards the humans since he could pass freely between the two worlds. Often befriending humans, and frequently bedding the females, he only sought refuge of the colonies to hide the fact that unlike the humans, he didn’t age beyond what a human would consider thirty. Only after meeting Arriana, did he decide to permanently reside in the colony.

It was two hundred years ago that Leus returned to the northeast colony after spending three years among humans. The colony was located just outside the farthest borders of Ruthers, a fair sized city for the time, but nowhere near its current population. It was set up like many human villages. With the businesses and community building in the center and the homes cascading out in all directions.

Walking down the rock lined, dirt road, Leus glanced disinterestedly around the town as he headed to the home he hadn’t seen in years. With each step forward, he noticed changes in the neighborhood that he had, on-and-off his whole life, called his home. There were new houses built next to aged homes that Leus would recognize in his sleep. Flowers in front of some, trees in front of others, laundry hanging from lines, tools lying up against walls. They were all homes lived in by loving families.

Leus greeted neighbors as he passed, recognizing most of them. A group of young children chased each other around the road, laughing and shouting. Leus watched them play as he approached his home. At that moment, his life was altered.

A young woman, with golden blonde hair and amber eyes, stepped out of the house next door to the home he was finally going back to after so long on the road. Appearing only in her early twenties, she was of the newest generation of leanthans. She was not yet fully grown and she exhibited the large feline eyes of her line.

The woman turned back to her home, and the light melody of her voice travelled smoothly across the yard, as he listened to her address her family within. Leus stopped in front of his house and watched her, not wanting to miss a second.

The woman rivaled him in height, nearly six feet, a characteristic that was almost impossible to find among human women but was very fairly common among women of his own species. Her frame was slight, each movement delicate, almost as if she were dancing and as she caught Leus’ eye, she smiled. It wasn’t the sweet smile that Leus expected, but a wide, jubilant, Cheshire cat smile. Perfectly pink lips lined her brilliant white teeth, only adding to her beauty. That was when he knew his life was here in the colony with her.

The sun sprayed though the venetian blinds covering Alex’s windows. That alone separated the morning from the night before, since each person in the sitting room had remained awake and focused all through the past twelve hours. The room wasn’t as neat as it had been; papers littered the top of the table and others were divided in stacks along the floor. Each piece had been analyzed, discussed, memorized, and discarded.

A heavy knock on the front door drew everyone out from their own thoughts. Alex jumped from his seat, as if expecting an ambush right in his home. Abby groaned loud enough to ensure Alex heard her annoyance. She had always been the more grounded sibling, not prone to overreact like Alex always did.