Betrayal's Shadow Read online

  Book Description

  What would you do to save your people from extinction?

  What if your race held the key to mankind’s future?

  One Guardian will risk hell to change the future.

  Descended from the race of Guardians, Turen’s people have survived the last two hundred years, quarantined and isolated. Living in secrecy with no mates and no offspring, they fail to deliver on their ability to replenish and heal human souls through the birth of their Guardian children. Risking his life, Turen chooses capture at the hands of a comrade-turned-enemy to seek answers to change the future.

  Mia Bowman has no knowledge of the secret Guardian race. Yet, her uncontrollable, nocturnal summons to Turen’s prison cell and her strong sense of justice leave her with little choice but to help him. She can heed his warning and stay clear of his people’s problems or she can ferret out the lies and unravel an ancient tale of murder and deceit. It will take an ultimate sacrifice to stop the unexpected evil and reverse a fatal ending to the Guardian line.

  THE GUARDIANS OF EDEN:

  A race of beings created in a Sanctum at the far edge of Eden. Co-existing with mankind, they safeguarded human souls and the promise of eternity—until a virus killed all over the age of eighteen. The surviving children fled to the Sanctum for protection, children raising children without the full legacy of their history and knowledge. Two hundred years of solitude have produced a race of semi-immortals fortified with powers and intellect but lacking the mates who will make them whole and allow them to fulfill their covenant with mankind.

  BETRAYAL’S SHADOW

  The Guardians of Eden Book 1

  By K.H. LeMoyne

  Published by Digital Crystal Press

  GENRE: Paranormal/Urban Fantasy Romance

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it please return and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, place and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  BETRAYAL’S SHADOW – The Guardians of Eden Book 1

  Copyright 2011 by KH LeMoyne

  Published by Digital Crystal Press

  Cover Art designed by Robin Ludwig Design

  ISBN: 978-1-937080-00-6

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

  Thank you to the following people.

  To my incredible critique partner Linda, because you’ve been there from beginning to end and you never hold back feedback or support. To my very talented cover designer, Robin. To my editors Linda and Jennifer, and my proofreader Cora. To my better half, because you bring patience and sanity to every day when I need it most. (vD)

  The Covenant

  And humans were cast from the Garden of Eden

  To work the lands far from their blessed origins

  To survive outside the comfort and glory of God’s original design.

  Mankind came to know both good and evil

  To suffer under the consequences of free will.

  For their salvation, God enacted a covenant with other beings of His creation.

  Beings whose convention and purpose would be the release and healing of souls unto mankind.

  Beings empowered with select skills to guide humanity from the perils of their own making.

  Beings birthed in the far edges of Eden’s Sanctuary.

  Though not God’s chosen people, these wardens would be gifted for their service.

  Bonded in time with those who would match them in commitment.

  Gifted with one mate and rewarded with the sharing of one soul for eternity.

  CHAPTER 1

  A sonic crack followed by searing fire along Turen’s shoulder blade shattered his resolve. He snagged the leather tail on its next pass, twisted around, and yanked, hard. The seven feet of bullwhip wrenched out of his captor’s hand and snaked across the floor to coil at Turen’s feet.

  Wrists manacled, bound by two feet of chain, he still managed a hard strike to Shank’s thick jaw and a swift jab with the whip’s handle to the guard’s stomach. He backed away into a crouch and rolled the whip in his hand, waiting on the next assault.

  Two months in this prison hellhole were about to end his two hundred and fifty years of peaceful co-existence with humanity. He’d endured abuse for the sake of his guards’ entertainment. He’d tempered his anger. He’d camouflaged his strength and skills in exchange for access to even the smallest bits of information. Yet he had learned nothing.

  No more. With Shank’s attack, he let his anger and festered frustration feed the raw black desire to dish back some pain. As the sweat dripped down Turen’s face and stung at the corners of his eyes, he met Shank’s glare. The shift of the man’s meaty fingers registered as they twitched near his holstered gun.

  Shank issued no warning, no order that would alert anyone listening on the intercom of his intent. From the gleam in Shank’s dark eyes, he didn’t intend to allow anyone to stop him from adding Turen’s death as a notch to his ego.

  So be it. Turen wasn’t leaving this world alone. He flexed his fingers, circled Shank and edged toward the chamber door, the whip and his nerve his only tools of defense. No internal surge of Guardian power responded to the summons his mind issued. His powers were dead, or at least crippled. The composite alloy of the manacles stemmed the natural flow of his energy, though the chain’s closest link quivered a fraction of an inch at his attempt.

  Not enough to count as headway or success.

  Shank raised the gun. Turen let loose a strike with the whip and dove for the door. Splinters of rock fragments from the wall by his head shattered over his shoulders. He turned to gauge Shank’s next move as a sizzling wave of current speared above his kidney and echoed through every nerve in his body. The impact vaulted him into the air and slammed him to the stone floor.

  “Enough.”

  Turen drew in a harsh breath, kept his eyes closed, and listened for the clipped strike of leather boots closing in on his personal hell. A hand fisted in his hair and yanked his head up, but he refused to meet the gaze of his tormentor. While Shank’s attentions were brutal, Rasheer brought a new meaning to the word torture. Unlike the guards who reported to him, Rasheer modified his abuse with each session as if Turen had become his personal test lab for pain.

  “Be insolent and see what that buys you.” Calm and contained, Rasheer’s voice resonated with aggression as he turned on Shank. “Secure him and report to the loading docks.”

  “He—” Shank’s growl sputtered to a halt at a grating shuffle and the clank of metal on metal.

  Turen slid a glance to the door. Thick gray six-foot tentacles supported a clear jellied head, round and flat, the shape of a three-foot wheel of cheese. Saliva dripped from beneath the head; rows of razored teeth ground in the circular maw as lights danced from a computer implant surgically connected to its neural pathways. The hybrid creature slithered back and forth in an overexcited dance.

  He looked away. The altered aquatic creature, somehow mutated for land, was lethal. It was impossible to believe that any of his comrades could sink to the creation of such an aberration. However, the creature’s appearance and potential threat had at least blocked Shank’s plans for retaliation.

  And Turen’s exit.

  Pain ripped across Turen’s shoulders as Shank forced him to his knees and clipped his chains into a hook on the wall behind his back. Despite the violent show of d
ominance, Turen clenched his teeth, refusing to allow even a glimmer of emotion to cross his face.

  Shank’s breath beat hot at his back, but the hybrid creature Rasheer had brought into the room as his personal guard encouraged the six-foot, two hundred and fifty pound bulldog of a man to leave as ordered.

  Rasheer squatted before him, gripping in one hand the whip Turen had dropped when he was Tasered. “You cause a lot of trouble here in my master’s cells.”

  The comment didn’t require an answer.

  A smirk of satisfaction split the long, pale scar that ran from Rasheer’s chin through the corner of his mouth and ended just shy of the right eye socket. Combined with the narrow-set black eyes, Xavier’s Captain of the Guards exhibited a fair depiction of hostile and deadly.

  Turen swallowed back the urge to spit in the man’s face. Death wouldn’t achieve his goals. What was a little pain and humiliation compared to freedom for his Guardian race?

  “I should leave you to Shank’s influence.” Rasheer said with a humorless laugh.

  Influence. Right. Each day four guards escorted him from his cell to Rasheer’s interrogation room, each trip an exercise in survival. Always chained, always outnumbered. His human guards found a bound captive sporting. He would shown them sporting. This time Turen had left two guards unconscious, broken ribs on the third and a visible streak of blood on Shank’s chin from the whip strike.

  Guardian twenty-five, humans two.

  Turen maintained the running count. It kept him sane. He awarded them one point for his capture, another when they rendered him unconscious during the first long trip through the compound’s hallways. No points for them since. He refused to add to his people’s mortality rate.

  With a glance over Rasheer’s shoulder, Turen recalculated the odds of escape. A repetitive exercise he used to kill time while in this room. Futile, maybe, but only for now. Once free, he would give his jailers a taste of something worse than the Taser they’d become so fond of.

  Rasheer pushed the bottom of his boot into Turen’s shoulder. The motion rocked him against the chain’s pull and wrenched his arms. “You can spend forever in Xavier’s dungeons. You can die here. But first, I’ll extract what you are and what you know.”

  Turen gritted his teeth and glared at Rasheer. He would never give this human weasel the time of day, much less divulge information on his people or his reasons for seeking out Xavier. Evidently, Xavier had shared no information with his second in command either.

  Not that Rasheer didn’t already have more information than was safe. Several months ago, Turen had agreed to a meeting in an absurd hope to enlist Xavier’s aid.

  Rasheer had appeared instead, not Turen’s former leader. In a split-second decision, Turen allowed his own capture, hoping to gain an opportunity. He had pitiful little to show for his sacrifice after months of confinement and abuse.

  No information, no details to help his people, and even less indication as to whether Xavier could be brought back from the brink of madness to fight for their cause. There were days when Turen wondered if Xavier orchestrated this abuse at Rasheer’s hands as the ultimate punishment for a comrade trusting enough to fall into his custody. That hypothesis assumed Xavier gave a damn.

  Drug lord and leader of this den of thieves, Xavier never attended these sessions. Turen had yet to see more than a quick glimpse of him. Only Rasheer’s references confirmed this was indeed Xavier’s base of operations.

  “The woman who betrayed you would have proved more malleable.” Rasheer turned away, one hand fisted around the whip. “Someone else delivered their bit of justice before I was able to question her.” He glanced over his shoulder.

  Air stopped in Turen’s lungs and a heavy weight pressed with his attempt to breathe. Isabella, dead? He’d assumed her safe at the Sanctum. The undercover cop who had helped Isa track down Xavier had left with her before Turen arrived at the meeting point. A tiny sparkled outline of her mark on the alley’s brick wall was the only sign he had that she had been there and left.

  He closed his eyes with a grimace. The little information he’d gleaned in this compound wasn’t worth Isa’s death. Nothing justified the death of one of his own people, much less the youngest.

  “The whore would have been easy to break.” An odd vibration altered Rasheer’s voice, lending a sickening lilt to his words. The slight rise in pitch and cadence disturbed Turen more than the torture Rasheer meted out.

  He scrutinized Rasheer’s face, examined every muscle twitch and gesture for some confirmation that Xavier’s second hadn’t executed the kill. The reflection of disappointment in Rasheer’s expression was reassurance enough. Yet he’d kept Isa’s death a secret for two months, withheld the information until now as fresh torment. What else had he withheld?

  Turen didn’t credit Rasheer with such patience. Or intelligence.

  “She wouldn’t have broken for you.” Turen provoked Rasheer’s ire. His reward—a closed-fisted strike to his mouth.

  “Fool. You live only by my choice.” Rasheer’s face, infused with a mottled flush of deep red, almost vibrated as he stepped away.

  “Is that your version of mercy?” He forced a laugh. Rasheer whipped a quick lash against Turen’s stomach in retaliation.

  He withheld a flinch, slowly spit blood from between his split lips, and maintained Rasheer’s gaze. The more he pushed, the more Rasheer lost control. Less control provided more options and sometimes information. It would also drive a faster end to this session.

  “No matter.” Rasheer turned away and then back in an instant. “If you won’t break for me, then you can watch me break others.”

  Turen couldn’t stop the growl that erupted from his throat or the lunge forward against his restraints.

  “You’re an open book,” Rasheer whispered with a smile that didn’t reach his glistening black eyes. “I will flay you, Turen. Make you watch the fragile light fade from the eyes of others.” Rasheer stepped back, his hands fisted at his hips. “I’ll bring their bodies to the brink of death before I shatter them. Tear them to pieces until they beg for their end—from you. Because I will make it clear, you are the key to their escape. One word from you and I will stop their suffering. Quickly.”

  Muttering a silent curse, Turen was unable to repress the twitch of anger in his cheek. Power boiled beneath his flesh. It churned and fired, pulsing for release only to meet in a puny sizzle of heat from the manacles around his wrists and ankles. Impotent rage coursed through him instead, until he let loose a harsh breath and exerted effort to decompress.

  No force within him could break his power free despite the trigger of Rasheer’s cruelty. The damn manacles relegated him to mere human strength. Strength he needed to maintain in case the sadist provided an opening.

  Rasheer was more astute than Turen had credited—a deadly underestimation in his abilities.

  Turen couldn’t bear the burden of more souls, and Rasheer had known, had seen deeper than he should have been able. Not clearly, but with enough insight to know his methods caused a grievous effect. No matter how many more souls Turen might save, Rasheer would burden him with the death of innocent beings, a mental anguish more potent than any lash of the whip.

  “You have extraordinary resilience, for a man. But then, you endure like no normal human.” Rasheer paused. “You make me wonder about immortality. Where is the ultimate challenge if one can’t die? Not in the petty human issues of life and death, pain and suffering.”

  Balanced on the rigid edge of control, Turen waited.

  Rasheer pressed the end of his whip along Turen’s shoulder. “You may not consider me your equal, but I promise you, I can keep your attention.”

  “Maybe this time I’ll die and rob you of your prize,” he snapped.

  “Really? My master is happy to let you rot in his cells. He’ll never notice you’re gone, much less care. However, he believed the woman’s note—that you carry answers of value, some resolution, some closure. To what?” H
e spoke the last to himself and moved away. “I could have pulled the answers from her had I not wasted the time to deliver you here.” With a low grunt, he turned back, the sneer a solid fixture on Rasheer’s face again.

  His moods were mercurial. What Turen wouldn’t give to permanently remove that smirk.

  “Xavier recognized her and that she wanted something from you—something you refused her.” Rasheer made a cluck with his tongue and moved his whip in a caress down his hip and thigh. “I would have given her what she needed.”

  Turen swallowed back bile. Thank God; Isa hadn’t fallen into Rasheer’s hands. He prayed no woman ever did.

  A buzz signaled from the phone at the captain’s waist. With a quick glance at the message, he pressed a button on the wall’s intercom and signaled the hybrid guard to take Turen away. “Another time.”

  The heavy chains rose in the gray tentacles’ grip. Turen staggered to his feet and followed the creature, while his thoughts churned.

  This session had delivered one horrific bit of information—notification of Isa’s death.

  For her sake, for his, if there were more to learn here, he would muster the patience to find it.

  ***

  Mia Bowman toed off her running shoes, pressed the blinking light on her phone cradle, and leaned against the counter to stretch out her legs.

  “Hi, Mia. It’s Becca. Hope you’re okay. Haven’t heard from you. Rob and I still want you to come up and stay with us for a show and dinner sometime soon. Let me know if you’re free in the next few weeks. Quit hiding. Call me.” A click signaled the end of the call.

  A tame message. Not one of Alex’s friends, thank God.

  She grabbed several unassembled boxes propped against the wall and dropped them inside the guest room door on the way to her bedroom. Clothes stripped off into a wad on the floor, she walked into the bathroom and flipped on the hot water.