Chapter 15 #2
That drew him up short. Right. Valac said Julian was his.
It was one thing to hear that in a dream when his days were filled with self-imposed isolation and soul-gnawing loneliness.
Everyone wanted to feel wanted, after all.
It was another thing entirely to hear it while he was awake, coming from a demon he barely knew outside his dreams, who was the most otherworldly being he’d ever laid eyes on.
What did it really mean for him? For his soul?
Shaking those thoughts away, he focused on the task in front of him.
Getting dressed. Thanking the Sentinels for their help.
Picking up the scattered pieces of his cobbled-together life.
One thing at a time. He pulled the clean shirt on and unbuttoned his jeans.
When he stood to push them down his legs, Valac was there, helping steady him when he wobbled.
When he sat back down to remove them, Valac followed him, taking a knee.
With a gentle touch, he tugged Julian’s jeans from his lower legs and cast them away.
Julian’s face burned. Sitting in his boxers with a beautiful man on his knees before him, his body took notice.
Valac’s hands were impossibly warm, soft but firm, guiding Julian’s ankles into the clean joggers one at a time.
He stood, his hands on Valac’s sturdy shoulders.
Doing so almost brought them flush, and he felt the heat of Valac’s breath on his stomach.
His hands followed the waistband around, the backs of his thumbs dragging up Julian’s hamstrings and over the swell of his rear, pressing too firmly to be anything but intentional.
A quiet sound left Julian’s throat, and Valac looked up the long plane of Julian’s abdomen to meet his eyes.
“I want you to make that sound for me again,” Valac said, slipping a hand under the front of Julian’s T-shirt and pushing the fabric up.
“Later. When you’re feeling better.” He pressed a kiss to Julian’s exposed stomach, and Julian could expire on the spot.
It was a good thing he’d experienced severe blood loss, or he would be having a serious problem right now.
Valac stood, and Julian went from staring down at him to craning his head back to look up, up, up.
“Would you like me to carry you?” Valac offered.
Julian snorted. “No, I’d really rather keep at least some of my dignity in front of these guys.”
Valac tilted his head. “They saw me carry you once already when you were unconscious and bleeding.”
Julian gave him a pursed smile. “Yeah. Thanks for that, by the way.” He said it jokingly, but he meant the words themselves very much.
Valac’s eyes crinkled at the corners. The softness there said he understood. “Of course.”
“Come on, let’s go face the music.”
“They haven’t been playing music.”
Julian laughed weakly. “No, I meant—it’s a figure of speech.”
Valac hovered by his side but let him walk on his own.
Blood loss after a demonic healing seemed to feel a lot like severe exhaustion mixed with dehydration.
His muscles ached, and his head felt floaty.
Going from the cot to the door left him breathless, and when he put his hand on the doorknob, he paused to lean against the door, panting.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to carry you?” Valac asked.
“I’m sure,” Julian groaned, even though he was beginning to doubt himself.
Eventually, he shuffled out the door and into the main room. Everyone was there, including the teenagers sitting on the sofa with textbooks open in their laps.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Nathan said, drawing everyone’s attention to him. He stood from the chair beside the sofa and strode over, studying Julian with concern. “How are you? I’m glad to see you on your feet, Julian.” He offered his hand, and Julian shook it with a weary smile.
“Thanks. Glad to still be here. I hear I have all of you to thank for that.”
“No, it was all Valac.”
“I don’t just mean tonight,” Julian said.
“Valac told me you were all taking time to patrol the area around my house. Thank you, I appreciate it. It didn’t stop them from finding me another way, but…
feeling unsafe in my own home was one of the worst feelings in the world. Thank you all for your help.”
“It sounds like they’ve been coming after you for a while now,” Luke said, leaning his hip against the air hockey table and folding his impressive arms. “Can you tell us why?”
Julian sighed. “Yeah. I think I owe you all an explanation.”
“He should sit,” Valac said.
“Of course. Come, sit anywhere,” Nathan said.
When he’d collapsed into a wooden rocking chair and the Sentinels had congregated on the mismatched furniture around him, he began to speak.
He told them about the whippings in the courtyard, and the tension in the guild.
How people didn’t talk and laugh anymore there.
They kept their heads down and worked, everyone too afraid of suffering the same fate if they spoke up.
How Julian decided there was no rule against simply turning in his ring and walking away, so that was what he’d done.
He told them about his hours-long interrogation with Sloan and the things Maxwell told him during his evaluation about faking the medical examination of a child to suit the guild’s purposes twenty years ago.
Isaac curled in on himself at that, and Shadrach wrapped an arm around his shoulders, whispering softly in his ear and cradling his cheek with his hand.
“After I left, things were fine at first. I found a couple of jobs to make ends meet. But after a while, it was like they couldn’t stand that I was out there on my own.
They threw a brick through my window. I woke up one night to a burning cross in my front yard.
They’d splashed blood on my porch to attract demons.
They set fire to my back deck. I did what I could to reinforce the doors, and that was when Valac asked you guys for some stronger wards, because my current ones were just painted on the windows and doors with holy water. ”
Alex hummed. Those were the standard wards for paladins living outside of HQ.
“And then tonight they showed up at the restaurant where I work. They sat in my section so I had to serve them. They taunted me, and they got physical when I stood my ground. One of my coworkers threatened to call the cops, so they left. Or I thought they left. They jumped me in the parking lot after my shift. All eight of them.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Isaac murmured, and Shadrach shot him a gleeful grin at the language.
“They beat me. Stabbed me. Wallace told me I was no better than a monster, because I’d walked away from the cause.
If I could walk away, I had to be evil.” He sighed, passing a hand down his face.
“I just didn’t want to hurt people. That’s all.
I didn’t want to see any more of my friends tied up and tortured in the courtyard for disagreeing with Sloan.
And now I don’t even know if some of those friends were involved in this.
Like Nic and Danny. Do they know about this?
Do they care?” Anger bloomed hot and fast in his chest. “How can they justify this? I wasn’t hurting anyone. ”
“They’re zealots,” Talon said softly, his arms folded across his chest. “They always have been, really. You just couldn’t see it before. Nothing had ever pushed them to extremes like this.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, Alex and I set all of this in motion.”
Alex reached for him. “Tal.”
Talon tugged him closer, looping an arm around him. “It’s true. I had to have you, and Sloan couldn’t stand that you were with me. Every person who’s left the guild since then has damaged his pride further. He won’t stop until he has complete control over everyone.”
“And now he doesn’t even answer to the council,” Julian said. “There’s nothing holding him back from doing whatever he wants.”
Talon nodded sagely. “I’m not surprised.
If anyone can strong-arm the council into submission, it’s the guy who leads the soldiers of the guild.
He’s openly whipping people who disagree with him now.
I’m not surprised they were some of the first ones he made an example of.
They were his opposition. Now everyone knows better than to try and stop him. ”
Guilt and terror lurched through Julian.
Was that what happened to Maxwell after he failed to give Sloan a medical reason to dismiss Julian’s resignation?
Had Nicolas and Daniel suffered the same fate for associating with a traitor?
Daniel had already been whipped once. Had they blamed him for Julian’s decision to leave?
“We can’t let him get away with this,” Julian said. “But what do we do? We can’t just wage war on the guild with…” He counted them all. “Twelve people.”
“Fourteen,” the teenage girl said stubbornly, and Julian caught Nathan and Luke exchanging a long-suffering look.
“Angela, you and Zach aren’t waging war on anybody,” Luke said. “You’re still trainees.”
“I’m fifteen now, y’know,” she said.
“None of us graduated into field work until we were eighteen,” Alex pointed out.
“I’m eighteen,” Zachary said.
“But you haven’t been training as long as we did,” Nathan said. “We have to make sure you’re prepared before you go into battle. We don’t want to see either of you get hurt.”
“Yeah, well, that was the way that stupid guild operated, and you don’t want to be like them, do you?” she shot back.
“Girl’s got a point,” Isaac said, folding his arms loosely.
“You’re not helping,” Nathan said.
Isaac scoffed. “Do I ever?”
“We’ll figure something out,” Talon said, trying to get them back on track.
“How?” Malachi asked from an armchair. He crossed his ankles in front of him and pushed his glossy black hair behind his ear. “With the halflings still pissed and the paladins growing more volatile, we’re boxed in.”
Beside Julian, Valac straightened. “I can help with that.”