Hellbound: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Realm Protectors Book 1) Read online

  “So yeah, Gloomsville. Home sweet home, right?” Sahara said.

  Harold nodded, hands resting on the table, also shining in the overhead white light, but sticky from long-spilled soda pop.

  “Do you wanna talk about it?” Sahara asked. “I mean, maybe that’ll help. I’ve had my fair share of heartaches too. And I’ve been around almost two hundred years. It never gets easier, but talking about it sometimes helps.”

  Harold waved her off. “Not really. No.”

  “Well, what do you wanna talk about?”

  “I’m perfectly fine sitting in silence. I’m just hungry. Haven’t had a proper meal in god knows how long.”

  “Well this is the place to get a proper meal. I’ve been coming here since they opened in the fifties. Hasn’t really changed much since then either.”

  The fifties, Harold thought.

  “Yeah,” he agreed, chuckling. “This place must’ve been modern back then, or Civil War themed.”

  “Come on, we really should talk about it. It’s just gonna be awkward if we don’t. And if we’re going to be working together, it’s best we get to know each other. A little bit, at least.”

  “We aren’t working together,” Harold said. He bowed his head, as if saying a silent prayer, but really it was just from exhaustion. A mixture of things.

  “I told you, you have no choice. You’re a Protector now, Harold Storm. Get the key out of you and you’ll die. The spell will consume you. Only thing keeping it at bay is what you have in your bones.”

  The Wolves.

  “What happens if I die?” he asked.

  “Good luck,” Sahara said before the waitress waddled over with two plates in hand. She had a thumb in Harold’s fries, but he wasn’t phased. His mouth watered regardless. Would’ve ate them had she sneezed all over the dish.

  “There ya go,” she said, ripping a piece of paper from her notepad and slamming it down on the table. “I’ll take that whenever you’re ready. But don’t take too long.” She started to walk away.

  Sahara offered up a gracious smile.

  “I’m serious,” the waitress said. “I got things to do.”

  Harold rolled his eyes, hoped the food wasn’t as bad as the service.

  “How do I get the key out of me?” he asked, lifting up the burger, putting it in his mouth and biting away a large chunk of beef, cheese and bun. His mouth exploded with flavor, as if god himself made the burger. But he knew that wasn’t the case. The tubby bathroom ruiner had. But whatever. He was starving.

  “I don’t know,” she said through a mouthful. “That doesn’t matter. Just talk to me about Marcy. What was all that about back there? Who was tall, blonde, and handsome?”

  Harold thought back to the way the man had looked at him. Like he was nothing more than a piece of trash that blew to their front porch. A homeless man. The type of guy you avoid in a dark alley when you’re by yourself.

  “Beats me.”

  “I was sure you were gonna kill him. You should’ve seen the look in your eye. Just craziness. That guy was a total dick. But I thought she was your fiancé,” she said. “What happened to that?”

  “Life happened.”

  “Don’t I know it. I just got out of a long term relationship myself. Vampires can be such prissy assholes.”

  “Wouldn’t know.”

  Vampires?

  “So what happened? You cheat on her or something? No offense, but you look like the kind of guy who’d do that.”

  “Drinking problem,” Harold said, not looking at her, swallowing his food whole.

  “Not because of the burns or anything. Honestly, those are kind of good look for you. Intimidating. Like really rad tattoos. Chicks dig a guy with tattoos. At least, I do. But I meant your face — it’s kinda douchey-looking or whatever the kids are saying these days.”

  Harold slammed his fist down on the table, his plate rose a few centimeters then clattered back down. “Do you ever shut up?” he said.

  “Careful, careful. Don’t want to say the wrong words by accident and that blade to come out. Not yet. Place like this, they don’t have insurance. Saul back in the kitchen is pretty old school, and if you haven’t noticed, this place is in a shady part of town so I wouldn’t doubt that he’s got a twelve gauge under the counter. Ready at a moment’s notice.”

  “I’d welcome a twelve gauge to the face right now,” he said.

  Sahara squinted her eyes, leaned forward a bit, as if waiting for the punchline.

  “Seriously. What the Hell do I have to live for?”

  “Uh…hello? You want Satan and his billions of minions to run the world? Don’t you have family? Friends you care about? You die, they suffer for all of eternity.”

  “They’re all dead. It was just Marcy.” He took a drink of the Pepsi the waitress brought him.

  “Marcy’s a bitch. Screw her. You like to drink, so what? Life is stressful. Drink up! There’s bigger fish to fry.”

  Harold tried his best to tune her out. His eyes looking towards the pictures on the walls. One in particular struck a sour note with him. It was a group of kids ice skating. They all held hands, forming a circle, while one kid, dressed in way too many layers, had his eyes cast down to the mirror-like ice. An outcast. Suddenly, the gun in his waistband called to him like a Siren. He leaned forward, reached back, and brushed the cool metal. Swore his skin buzzed when he touched it like it was another key.

  The Wolves howled. A noise so heavy and piercing that he had to make it stop.

  He couldn’t resist.

  Sahara droned on and on about how important he was, but he knew it all was a lie. Satan might escape if the Shadow Eaters succeed in getting the key back. So what? Sahara was a big girl. She could handle herself, plus the old homeless Wizard dude would be back eventually, she said.

  She hadn’t noticed the gun in his hand. Hadn’t even noticed when he brought it up to his temple. Her eyes didn’t get wide until he cocked the hammer back.

  But it was too late.

  He pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 11

  The gun clapped. There was no more window. It blew out in a cracked mess, littering the floor with pieces of glass. Harold slumped over. The bullet went clean through. Blood leaked from both sides of his head. Bits of brain dribbled onto his shoulder and the, now red, booth. He felt numb for a second. Everything he’d ever known — gone. All the gears whirring inside — stopped. All just for a second.

  Sahara’s Deathblade had come out when the thunderous shot killed the silence of the diner. It speared the table, splitting it in half, coming inches away from Harold’s middle.

  He looked down at the metallic point threatening to gut him. His breath came out in rattling gasps. Wheezes, actually. His ears rung. The gun had fallen onto the checkered floor, bouncing, the sound echoing in Harold’s ears.

  He didn’t care about the blade. Didn’t care about the glass window. Why was he still alive? Why could he still blink? Still breathe? See? Hear? Smell?

  Sahara shook her head, the color blossoming in her face, cheeks getting rosy. “Was the food that bad?” she asked. “We could’ve gotten Olive Garden or something. Geez.” She looked past him and pointed to the counter. “Yup, time to go.”

  Harold turned his head, vision spinning, rimming with fiery-red. Saul wasn’t holding the twelve gauge, like Sahara had predicted. Saul wasn’t there at all. It was the waitress instead. She was about as pale as a blank sheet of paper, and the barrel shook violently.

  Fear overtook logic, and Harold shivered, blood leaking down his face, running through the burnt flesh, and he slid out towards the window, following Sahara. He paused for a moment, not sure if his brain was finally giving up, but instinctively bent down and picked up the pistol before the first shot vaporized a quarter of the booth he huddled behind and about three stools to his right attached to the counter.

  “Psychos!” the waitress yelled. “They’re back. They’re back!”

  Sahara was f
ast. Almost too fast for Harold to keep up. Maybe he would’ve had he not shot himself in the head, but running on wet concrete while your brain pulsed like the bass in a techno song was not a recipe for success.

  And the howls. They were so loud that he almost stopped to look over his shoulder to see if a pack of wolves skulked on the street corner.

  He paused about five hundred feet from the diner. Having gone down a few alleyways, making turns that made Harold’s head spin even more, but Sahara thought it a decent place to catch their breath.

  “You’re such an idiot,” she said.

  Harold bent down, hands resting on his knees, then he brought the right one up to the entry wound, running the tips of his fingers over it. Nothing. Just beef jerky skin. Rough. Burnt.

  His back was against a metal fence, the bars culminated to a nasty point. He thought of the Deathblade inside of him and the bullet that passed through his mind. The Wolves. What was going on with him?

  The bars were colder than the temperature outside, icy-cold. He slammed his head on the fence. “What am I?” he screamed into the night air. Oddly quiet for the city. Not a headlight in sight. The moon covered by a barrage of black clouds. They were in an isolated part of the city, the outskirts where the line between suburbia and metropolitan was oddly visible in the building’s architecture.

  “You’re damn near indestructible, Storm. Get used to it. And you might as well make the best of it.”

  He looked up, his whole body shaking. “I can’t do this. Can’t live like this.”

  “Get over it. You’re lucky.”

  “Look at me,” he demanded. “I’m a monster.”

  “It’s the insides that count, buddy. Perk up. And try to save the bullets, please. They’re not as cheap as you might think. Being a Protector isn’t exactly a six figure job.”

  “I don’t — ”

  She placed a hand on his shoulder, looking around him towards the great brick building beyond the fence. “Wait, what time is it?”

  Harold exhaled a deep breath.

  “You see that?”

  She pointed at the side of the building, but Harold didn’t care. Didn’t want to put up with anymore fairy tale garbage.

  “It’s gotta be close to midnight. If that’s who I think it is, then I know something that’ll cheer you right up. Get you back in the Protecting spirit. They might know where we can find the Shadow Eaters, too. I’ll show you how it’s done. C’mon.” She gripped the sleeve of his jacket, yanking him along the fence.

  Harold didn’t put up a fight. He just drooped his shoulders and went along for the ride like a lethargic, old dog on a leash.

  The building was rather large as he looked at it from the closed front gates, gave away that creepy lonely-haunted-house-on-a-hill vibe. A security checkpoint was on the right. A tiny light on, but no one seemed to be home. A banner fluttered in the night breeze. Red letters, the same shade of blood, on a white background.

  It read: SAVE A LIFE, DONATE TODAY!

  Donate what? God, how he hated the blank spots in his memory. It was there, he knew what they were donating, but couldn’t find the right word.

  Sahara sidled over to the security building, leaning slowly towards the glass on tip-toes. “Thought so. Not the group I was looking forward to dealing with. Damn it,” she muttered.

  Harold looked over her shoulder, saw a bloody handprint on the glass, streaking downwards. The security guard — name tag read RAMIREZ — laid in a heap under his rolling chair. His uniform seemed too baggy for him and as Harold’s eyes made their way up to his face, he saw how his cheekbones jutted out from his skin. How his eyes bulged. A sunken in face. Arms were nothing but bone. The man was nothing but bones.

  “You might wanna get that pistol ready,” Sahara said.

  He did. Pulled it out before she could finish her sentence. Somehow he felt safer, just hoped whatever did this to poor Ramirez was a little more susceptible to bullets. But as if Sahara had read his mind, she said: “Won’t kill them, but it’ll slow them down enough to get some answers.”

  “What the Hell are we dealing with?”

  She smirked. “I remember my first job — Werewolves back in Victorian London. That was before guns were as advanced as they are today. Took a nasty hit. One of the bastards bit off a piece of my arm.” She rolled her sleeve up, showing him a patch of skin paler than the rest. “Good thing my blade was easily mendable with silver. Poor wolf. Poor, poor wolf.” She shrugged. “At least I got a new coat out of it though.” And the smirk turned to a full-blown smile, eyes like a time machine in the past, reminiscing.

  Was it the same Wolves haunting Harold’s subconscious? He wanted to say something about it, even opened his mouth to speak, but different words came out.

  “Okay…” he said. “But if I’m basically invincible, so are you. Bet that didn’t even hurt.” He pointed to her arm.

  “Wrong,” she whispered. “So wrong. The key keeps the pain at bay, but it’s still there, as you know. Just muted. And besides bullets are one thing. Think back to when the Shadow Eaters hit you with their spell. You had the key on you then, too. And I bet it was the worst pain you’ve ever felt in your entire life. Supernatural stuff is another thing entirely. That type of magic will kill you.”

  Harold didn’t want to, but his mind reeled back to the night before. The forked tongue reaching out to his face. Charlie’s tight grip around his collar. The numbness in his legs. The fear. The confusion. Then the pain. Like a million volts of white hot electricity coursing through his body.

  He shuddered.

  “So something supernatural did this?” he asked after a moment, looking down to the dead body. Poor Ramirez. He probably had a wife and a kid. Just trying to make money for his family, so they could survive in this cruel world — or Realm, whatever.

  Sahara looked back into the security post, swallowed hard. Possibly potential vomit. Her fist went up to her mouth and she exhaled, puffing her cheeks out. “You think a Mortal could do that?” she asked.

  Harold shrugged. “I never thought anything could do that.”

  The gate was cracked open. They slipped through without touching the metal.

  Sahara dipped behind a bush, staying low. Harold followed suit. His heart beat wildly. For awhile, he was carefree, invested in the moment, feeling like he was in a spy movie or playing some kind of action game. And he loved it.

  A good way to look at it, he thought. No respawns in real life. Remember that, Harry old pal.

  “I’d say at least three of them. Maybe just two. But they usually roll in packs.”

  “What? What the Hell are they?” Harold said. His voice rushed and impatient.

  She gritted her teeth. “Vampires,” she said.

  He laughed then. “Vampires? You mean the sparkly, six pack-having freaks. The ones who fall in love with a normal girl and try their best not to eat her heart out.”

  “No. You saw the guard. I’m sure those kinds exist, but around this neck of the woods, these bastards will eat you first, ask questions later.”

  “Fair point,” he said, mental image of the dead Ramirez flashing into his mind. He looked up over the bush, saw the coast was clear and lurched forward. Sahara stopped his momentum full force.

  “Calm down. We have to be tactful. You can’t just barge in on a bunch of feeding Vamps.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Well, excuse me. I actually don’t know much in the way of supernatural etiquette. But don’t you think we should do something before more people get hurt?”

  “Do you know where we’re at?”

  He shook his head.

  She pointed to the large banner fluttering above the entrance way. “What do you think they’re asking people to donate? Sperm?”

  Harold narrowed his eyes.

  “Come on, think, Storm. What do Vamps eat? What do they crave?”

  “Whoa, we’re at a blood bank? That’s genius,” he said.

  “I thought they might be here, but not
the vicious kind. Couldn’t be from Roman’s pack.” She pointed up to the sky. “Sorry, Security Guard. This one’s on me.”

  “Roman?”

  She shrugged. “Long story, but Vamps gotta eat, too. Last time, I saw them, Felix made forged a treaty with them. We’d look the other way about raiding the blood banks as long as they cleaned up after themselves and no one got hurt.”

  “Well, the dead body back in that little room tells me your little peace offering’s been broken.”

  “No, duh,” she said. Her Deathblade came out in a burst of gunmetal gray. “I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t happy they did.”

  And the Wolves howled bloody murder, preparing for war.

  CHAPTER 12

  Harold Storm never really thought of himself as a scaredy-cat. He wasn’t the kind of guy to go out seeking fights or anything like that, but if one met him, he wouldn’t back down. He knew. That dark night at the blood bank would be his chance to prove to himself how he wasn’t scared.

  That was until he saw the Vampires.

  Then he nearly pissed himself.

  Sahara and him had snuck in easily through the front door. Picking locks with a Deathblade was like melting ice cream with a flame thrower. Inside, they were greeted by an empty front desk, pen hanging from a chain, moving like a pendulum, like someone had brushed past it no longer than a few minutes ago. Maybe they were kind enough to sign in. He glanced down at the clipboard, seeing a blank paper. Worth a shot.

  Not even Vamps could be that stupid, he thought.

  Next to the desk was a glowing blue fish tank. Three large goldfish floated lazily near an intricate toy castle. Harold grimaced at that. How could fish live in a nicer place than him? He bet their castles didn’t have roaches and a leaky kitchen sink. He sighed.

  Sahara put a finger to her lip, pointing to the double doors that led to the back. One still visibly swung enough to catch his eye, like the pen, as if a light breeze had made its way into the building.

  They were close. At least one of them had to be.