Angels of the Dark (Dark Guardians #1)

Ich bin in der Hölle.

It was my first thought as I stepped inside the hallways of my seventeen-year-old daughter Morrigan’s high school for parent-teacher conferences. I’d moved here with her so she could go through all four years of high school in one place, and so I could take a break from the pressures of being in a well-known gothic rock band.

My species weren’t typically close to our children, usually leaving the picture as soon as we’d gotten the human mothers schwanger, but Morrigan was an exception. I took full custody of her shortly after she was born, raised her all on my own. Though my two bandmates Adrian and Reiner were her honorary uncles.

Like me, Adrian and Reiner were Guardians of Darkness: assassins for the netherworld, more or less dark angels. All three of us became what we are after our mortal deaths; Morrigan was born with her powers but hers didn’t develop until she was around five years old. And unlike myself and her honorary uncles, she was still fully mortal. She wouldn’t gain immortality until her first death. It didn’t bother her. Or, didn’t seem to, anyway. Not that she was in a hurry to gain immortality from the netherworld of supernatural evil.

Right now, the halls were crawling with students and their parents. I could handle performing before a crowd that numbers in the thousands, but I felt very out of place in a high school hallway.

“Where are we going first?” I looked sideways at my daughter, who studied the schedule in her hand before returning my look. Seeing my unease, she grinned.

“Was ist denn los?” She switched to English, her tone teasing. “Scared?”

“Morrigan.” My tone was warning enough. Teenage Dark Guardian she might be—and while she knows I would never strike her—she knew better than to test my patience whenever I was feeling overwhelmed.

“Okay, okay.” She looked down at her schedule for her first period class. “Follow me.”

She took off through the halls toward the classroom. I followed, feeling the eyes of very interested women on me. Irritation simmered at the unwanted attention. I moved here to get away from the stress of fame and groupies, not shag everyone who’s interested in making a move on me. Besides, unless ordered to by the Infernal Council, I didn’t go after married women.

Blame it on more than one event that happened in my past.

Morrigan stopped outside a door, waiting for me to catch up. “This is my English class. Please, don’t do anything to embarrass me, Vati.”

“Would I really do thatin your school?”

She rolled her eyes. “If you’re performing onstage, yes.”

I snorted dryly. “That’s different, and you know it.”

“Right.” So saying, she opened the door and stepped inside her classroom so I could meet her English teacher for this semester.

The instructor who greeted us was one I wasn’t familiar with from previous years, but then again, I didn’t know all of the faculty here.

“Mr. Wolf.” She gave me a quick, critical once-over from where she sat behind her desk. It was something I’m used to, either from my usual goth fashion choices or people thinking I don’t quite look old enough to be the father of a seventeen-year-old, due to permanently being stuck looking like I’m 35. “Morrigan does well on her written assignments. Very well, actually.”

I shrugged. “I’ve seen her grades; she brings home As. But...?” There was a but coming from the teacher; I knew it.

“But in class discussions, she’s... disruptive.”

Morrigan crossed her arms and scowled. “Bin nicht.”

I shot her a stern look before focusing my attention on her teacher. “Disruptive how?”

“Argumentative, more like.” The teacher corrected herself. “Deliberately raises issues with certain readings of the text. Disregards her peers’ thoughts on the matter, or is highly confrontational about it.”

I stretched my legs out as much as I could in order to appear relaxed. “I see. Out of curiosity, what is it you’re currently reading in class?”

“The Reader.”

“By Bernhard Schlink?”

“Yes.”

“It’s better in the original German,” Morrigan grumbled, still scowling.

“Morrigan! Du kennst besser. Jetzt sei still.”

She sulked but remained silent. I turned my focus again on the English teacher. “My apologies. Believe me, I will be discussing this with her at home. Are we finished here?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, you’re free to go. I have other students waiting.”

We both stood, moved out of the classroom.

Back out in the hallway and a few yards from her English teacher’s room, I leaned against a set of lockers and gave my daughter my best stern look. “Arguing with your teacher and classmates over Der Vorleser? Seriously?”

She shrugged, still looking sullen. “It’s about a 15-year-old kid who starts a sexual relationship with an older woman, post-war, and it turns out she worked the female barracks in a concentration camp, but can’t read. I haven’t exactly hid the fact I’m half-German and you’ve taken me over there more than once when I was a kid, y’know?”

I tilted my head back against the cool metal of the lockers, closed my eyes, and sighed in exasperation. I named her after the Irish goddess of war to spite her Anglo-American, old-money mother, but Morrigan definitely took after me in more ways than one. “Are there any kids who bully you for it?”

She took too long to respond, and I sighed again. “First of all, if you’re going to use your powers to retaliate, don’t kill anyone. More importantly, don’t get caught.”

“I know, I know. We can’t risk exposing ourselves to humans. Those of us on both sides. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times.”

“Tja. But that’s not what I was going to say. You can’t afford right now to get in trouble with any authority figures. But if you do want to get back at these students teasing you, be subtle about it and make sure it can’t be traced back to you.”

She understood what I was saying, smiled. “Alles klar.”

“Now let’s finish this up and get the hell out of here, okay?”

“Deal.”

An hour later, we’d finished with the conferences, and I was mentally drained.

Morrigan had met up with some of her friends and went off with them, so I was currently on my own.

I was heading past the library and making my way toward the exit when a single parent in her early forties (at a glance, anyway) stepped into my path.

“Hello there, handsome.” She curled her lips in a flirtatious smile, moved in close, and ran a finger down my chest. Tilted her head. “I’m Julia. Want to come home with me?”

Oh gods. Play dumb.

Because no, I did not want to go home with her. I didn’t want to go home with anyone other than my daughter, where we could watch a family movie before going to bed. I was not looking to get into a romance, much less have a one-night stand with someone I wasn’t assigned to seduce by the Infernal Council.

“Entschuldigung Sie, meine Dame, aber ich spreche Englisch nicht.”

It was a lie. I’m fluent in English, but Julia didn’t need to know that.

“Don’t speak English, huh? Doesn’t matter to me.” Her voice was a purr, and it gave me bad flashbacks to my past in Braunschweig 184 years ago. Not to mention past encounters with groupies, which were not my thing.

“Hey, you! Damon!”

I turned, saw a good-looking guy with shaggy brown hair and glasses quickly walking toward me.

Thank the gods. It was the new librarian. I didn’t know why he was looking for me, but if he would get me out of this situation, I’d take it.

It’s not like I could go around killing everyone who made me uncomfortable or got in the way of my plans, after all. People dropping like flies, badly burned when there’s no reason for them to be, certainly catches the attention of law enforcement. That was the last thing I wanted or needed—and I’d taught Morrigan to blend in as well. Some demons, evil witches or warlocks, and Dark Guardians didn’t bother and enjoyed running in with the law, flaunting their allegiance to evil.

“Ja?”

He moved close, placed a hand on my arm, and walked me away from Julia toward the library. “Morrigan’s told me so much about you that I wanted to catch you while I still could.”

He opened the door to the lower section of the media center and ushered me inside. The door swung shut behind us with a click.

I waited until we’re in the second floor where the library was held before saying anything. “Morrigan told you about me, huh?”

“She did.”

“Thanks for saving me back there.” I cocked my head to the side, studying him. “You clearly know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Yeah, well.” He smiled faintly. “You didn’t look comfortable at all. As for my name, it’s Pierce. Justin Pierce.”

I resisted the urge to make a James Bond joke and instead dipped my head in acknowledgment. “Okay then, Herr Pierce.”

“Justin. Call me Justin.”

“Why would I do that when we don’t know each other?”

“Yet.” He gave me a suggestive look.

Cocky bastard. Yet I couldn’t help admiring his audacity. It was welcome in a way Julia’s forwardness was not. True, I wasn’t looking to enter a romantic relationship—“love at first sight” isn’t a thing that happens for me, ever—but the thought occurred to me that I wouldn’t mind his hands on me.

I shut that thought down before it went any further and stepped back. “Herr Pierce.” Deliberately, I deepened my natural northern German accent. “With all due respect, I’m not looking to enter a relationship right now. At the moment, all I want is to get the fuck out of here and go home with my daughter.”

I’d had more than enough of being around people—specifically, humans—for one night.

“All right.” The school librarian shrugged, and the smile he flashed at me didn’t quite reach his eyes. “That woman’s probably gone by now anyway.”

A faint noise of agreement was all the response he got from me. Then I was turning on my heel, heading down the stairs into the lower section of the media center. My senses reached out for Morrigan, found her. A quick text let her know I was heading home and would see her there soon. I pocketed the cell phone, concentrated.

Seconds later, my body dissolved to a swirl of black ash, and then I was gone.

Justin’s gaze tracked Damon as the other man turned on his heel and walked down the stairs, lingered on the quick view of his ass clad in form-fitting black jeans.

Shame that Damon wasn’t open to a romantic relationship at the moment. Not that romance was exactly what Justin had in mind.

Besides, if his suspicions about Morrigan and her father were correct...

Justin scowled and shook his head to clear it, angry with himself at the way his thoughts were heading. He had sworn to destroy their kind, after all. Demons, witches, vampires...

Although he was sure that Morrigan and Damon belonged to an evil far more ancient than Transylvania’s undead.

Again, a shame. Damon sure was hot.

“You idiot,” Justin muttered to himself. “He’s out of your league, and you’re in over your head.”

I dropped back into solid form, and it took a few seconds for my new surroundings to take shape. Finally, I was at home. Living room of the two-story house I shared with my daughter.

Morrigan materialized a few minutes later, running a hand through her hair as she yawned. “Parent-teacher conferences, am I right?”

“That’s one of my worst nightmares, and you know it.”

She shot me her most innocent-looking smile and headed into the kitchen to make popcorn. “Still want to do movie night?”

“After that? Yes.” While she was busy with the popcorn for us both, I browsed through our collection of DVDs and VHS tapes. “What do you want to watch?”

“Der König der Löwen!” Two minutes later, Morrigan entered the room carrying a large bowl of popcorn. I set up our copy of The Lion King, press Play, and settled down on the couch to watch Morrigan’s favorite movie. She happily plop[ed down next to me and plunged her hand into the bowl, began munching on popcorn.

It was the German dub of the film that I bought on VHS while over in Germany during the late 90s. Morrigan was as familiar with it as she was the original English version. And she coukdn’t help but sing along to all the songs, especially “Ich will jetzt gleich König sein.”

More than once, when she was younger, she paralleled herself to Simba, me to Mufasa, and her uncle—my older brother Christian—to Scar. When she was old enough to start asking about her family and understood what I told her, at least. It wasn’t the sort of thing one shared with a toddler-to-seven-year-old.

I never hid from her that I wasn’t human, let her know that she would inherit the same abilities as me one day. That when her powers emerged, she had to hide them and keep herself safe from humans. As a general rule, they didn’t react well to finding out that magic is real and supernatural beings of all moral alignments exist.

Personally, I didn’t really care about the whole Good vs Evil battle fought between demons and others of my kind and light-magic witches and Guardians of light on the other. Let them all kill each other. I was just here to have a good time and enjoy my best immortal life, hopefully without being killed a second time.

Not that my species was easy to kill, but the point stands.

On-screen, Scar was meeting with the hyenas in the Elephant Graveyard and one of them has asked what were they supposed to do, kill Mufasa?

Scar’s reply of “Erraten!” sent an involuntary chill down my spine due to Thomas Fritsch’s voice acting.

Then the music for “Seid Bereit” started up. Morrigan’s eyes were glued to the screen, her hand resting on the edge of the popcorn bowl. I snagged a handful and chomp away.

Hey, she’d had most of the popcorn so far anyway. Time for me to have a turn.

The song came to a close, the laughter of Scar and his hyena followers ringing out into the on-screen night illuminated by a huge crescent moon, when there was a knock at the door.

I frowned, glanced at Morrigan. “Were you expecting anyone?”

Her brow furrowed, and she shook her head. “Nein. Du?”

“Nein. Bleib da.”

I rose from the couch and headed warily for the front door. Just to be safe, I summoned an athame from my netherworld lair in a puff of black smoke and gripped it tightly for reassurance.

I paused just before the door, looked out through the peephole. It was too dark to get a good look, and alarm bells were going off in my head.

“Who is it?” My voice came out sharper than I’d intended, but that was fine.

“It’s me, Justin.”

Justin? What the fuck is he doing here?

Cautiously, I extended my senses. I couldn’t just take him at his word. Vocal mimicry was an ability shared not only by my species, but some demons as well. Then there were shapeshifters, glamouring, possession...

But he read as fully human. Were he a supernatural being masquerading as Justin, my Dark Guardian senses would detect it. Primarily, my sensing ability was meant for detecting full-fledged Guardians of Light in close proximity to me, but my mentor taught me how to scan for other supernatural beings as well.

Satisfied that it truly was Justin on the other side of my front door, I still didn’t open it. “What are you doing here at this time of night? And how did you get our address?”

“I am still a member of school faculty. Her address is on file. As for why I’m here, I need to talk to you.”

There was a pause, and then...

“I know what you are, Damon.”