Abednego: Book 1 of the Guardians Series

By Devanye Hansen

Abednego is the Last of the Herd, his noble race all but destroyed by mortals in the Hunts of the Middle Ages. By the revolutions and collapse of monarchy in Europe, he'd become convinced he was the last of all Guardians, a species derived from the hybrids of Angels and human women in Genesis. The great men of old, monsters called Nephilim. All Guardians fell eventually if they didn't find their mate, the one person who could invoke their name and prevent them from committing heinous atrocities. Their keeper.
Abednego hadn't hoped to find his. After all this time? For what conceivable purpose? It was absurd! Wonderful, but absurd.
But he had, in an American Soldier who had managed to fall into the clutches of a troupe of Nephilim. One he'd been trying to free for six months.
And Private First Class Samantha "Sam" Trent was having none of him. Brainwashed, tortured, mostly dead and delirious from her ordeal, she bolted with what little strength she had left.
Straight into the ruins of Hiddenrealm, the ancient Kingdom of the Fae.

They were not alone, and they both have to learn to understand each other as Abednego tries to coax Sam back into his protection and Sam tries to rationalize this surreal new world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483563930

Book preview

Wyr

y name is Private First Class Trent. Number 298-72-9804. I am an American Soldier being held against my will."

The interrogator narrowed his dark eyes at his victim. It was barely recognizable as human anymore. The jaw was set at an odd angle, but it was still thrust forward defiantly, the bloodied mouth set in a snarling grimace. It shouldn’t be conscious. It shouldn’t be living any more.

This one was tough. Tougher than other, much bigger prisoners. Tougher than many of the males. It didn’t belly-ache when they starved it. Its reactions were animalistic, incoherent. It was linguistically silent.

In fact, it knew only three sentences and it said them in order every time and in an infuriatingly calm, collected voice. And it never cried. And it never quit.

You know, the interrogator whispered viciously, "your protectors gave you to me. Your men." He spat the word contemptuously. They deserved his contempt, luring a woman into this situation. He’d had her in his sights for a year before she left the FOB. She was a cautious one, but she knew everything. "You were betrayed by those stronger than yourself. Brothers. Betrayed into the hands of those you cannot hope to face alone. You are only a woman. Fuqot."

My name is—

It has been six months, Private First Class Trent. They are not looking for you. I have been lenient, but I must have results. I have superiors, too.

—Private First Class Trent. Number 298-72-9804. I am— It raised its voice to drown him out.

"If you do not give me meaningful information, do not doubt that you will die in exactly twelve hours’ time. Starting…" He glanced at his watch.

—an American Soldier—

Now.

—being held against my will!

It was his regular secret patrol. Abednego winged through the air, thankful for the night to hide him and lend him strength. He would need all the strength the Creator had blessed him with.

And then some.

There was an innocent nearby in desperate need. He’d been tracking her all over the globe, but her captors remained a step ahead of him. Not this time. This time her need of him was so great, Abednego knew he would pierce himself with his own horn before he failed again.

He circled the cement port-way that opened into the underground shelter. Landing lightly on his feet, he shifted into a less conspicuous form. Traveling as a winged horse was fastest, especially at night, and he had great need of speed.

But now he needed stealth. Dissolving into mist, he pulled the night vapor around him as a cloak and slipped through the heavy human lock.

Well, Private First Class Trent, I have given you ample time. The interrogator leaned close to his victim who lay strapped to a table. Have you any last words?

My name is Private First Class Trent. Number 298-72-9804. I am an American Soldier being held against my will. Her eyes, red slits behind swollen purple and green eyelids, flared dangerously at him. She dared him to do his worst.

He would oblige her. It would be satisfying after these six long and fruitless months. Smiling wryly, the interrogator picked up a syringe full of an ominous-looking liquid.

This is scorpion venom mixed with the venom of a King Cobra. It will be most painful and somewhat slow. He sidled closer. It will be most…intimate to watch your life ebb from your eyes as I ravish what’s left of your body.

The victim’s eyes popped open wide, revealing the bloody whites of her eyes. Yes, he should have tried this tactic long ago. Have you anything to say now?

M-my name is Private First Class Trent. Number 298-72-9804. I am, she faltered, I am an American Soldier! I am being held against my will!

The interrogator shrugged, situating the syringe in one hand and holding her ankle with the other. So be it. She was emaciated and weak, unable to maintain her body heat. Her breathing was shallow, her heartbeat erratic. This was a mercy killing.

It would be like raping a dead fish.

He found the thick vein on the inside of her thigh, close to the sex organ she held in such high regard that she would stammer and falter in her practiced recital. He would enjoy filling her just because of the pain it would cause this most stubborn of women.

He injected the venom with practiced ease. Soon, she was writhing on the table, straining against her bonds, her back arching seductively as animal cries tore from her throat. She screamed for the release he’d just given her, begging for death without words or conscious thought.

Now she would give him release. The interrogator wasted no time with his zipper, coming only as far out of his clothes as necessary. He climbed on the table between her legs, his eyes gleaming evilly as he took in her tormented form. He noted with disappointment that her eyes were tightly shut, forbidding the passage of tears.

She had an iron will, that much was certain. How much more delicious then, was this act of divesting her of the thing over which she needed complete control.

He was nearly inside her when his air was suddenly cut off, his victim’s legs wrapped around his neck. He saw a dangerous look in her eyes, desperate.

Trent arched her hips, bracing herself for this final maneuver. She inhaled, and then exploded into action on the exhale, flinging her hips over her head and sideways so the force of her movement snapped the neck of her tormentor. Then came the part she dreaded.

Her hips followed the interrogator over the side of the table and wrenched her frail body. Her shoulders detached from their sockets, muscles and ligaments tore, her neck cracked, signaling the dark numbness of oblivion and probably death.

Abednego screamed in dismay at the actions of the innocent. He’d freed her legs so he could get her away from the confrontation, and she’d taken matters into her own hands! And so in dispatching her enemy, she’d fallen on her own sword.

What was worse was the boiling venom he felt in his own blood stream, the uncharacteristic killing rage towards the human male. It was territorial and violent, not at all like the gentle equestrian nature standard of the Pegasus.

This was his mate, for whom he and his stallion had waited for centuries upon centuries. And she was dying, just when he’d found her! Trumpeting white hot hatred, he trampled the man’s lifeless form until he was certain the usurper was well on his way to the Lake of Fire.

Panting, he turned to the table where his mate hung by her wrists, her back curled over and her neck and the back of her head crushed against the edge of the operating surface. His heart stopped entirely.

Abednego had never known such a lack of control. The panicking man faded away entirely as the stallion was forced to take over. A horn of blackest diamond protruded from his brow. She was his, his for eternity, so ordained by the Creator before the Dawn of Time. It was by the Creator’s will he was here in time to save his mate with the abilities that sole same Creator had bestowed in him.

In the form of a centaur, the stallion gathered his mate into his blue-black arms, slicing the leather thongs about her wrists with his horn. She lay in his arms, broken. Her arms hung limply at bizarre angles and her head lolled sickly. Her face was ashen and green like death. Her naked body bled and was broken and bruised.

The stallion stamped his hoof in outrage at the atrocities committed against his mate. He had to get her away from this place of death, back to his home valley where the healing waters would speed the healing he could only begin here.

He charged from the torture room, trampling guards in his path. Two such guards stood resolutely at the door, staring at the centaur-form in wide-eyed disbelief. They aimed their rifles at his mate and the stallion reared, screaming his challenge at them. His hooves struck them, knocking them dead immediately. He pivoted on his front legs and kicked out with his hind quarters, shattering the door.

Abednego was in such a killing rage as he fled the underground complex that lightning completely incinerated the area. The sky churned green-grey, darkening ominously as more lightning flashed, threatening to strike again and again until nothing at all remained within miles of the site that could cost him his mate.

Thunder crashed violently as the centaur unfurled obsidian wings and launched into the night. He understood the dark side of his race in this terrifying moment as he cradled his broken woman in his arms. The Aughisky—the only Pegasus ever to turn Nephilim—who once hated the human race with a dark and terrible malice, who once hunted mankind as a creature of legend and myth because the truth was too terrible to behold, would have a darker, more terrible brother should his mate lose her life to the whims of a human.

The Pegasi had never adhered to the same limitations of Men, the Children of the Creator. They were among the immortals of Creation whom the Creator fashioned to live either for or against Him, but not with Him. That was the honor of only one race: Men. The Children. Even Angels were not admitted to the Throne Room unless they were the elite, the Archangels, which numbered four.

His vengeance did not belong to the Creator. He was sometimes—often—the Creator’s tool of justice. Generally, he was used in a preventative manner, to rescue a child from a depraved pedophile, to stop an assault before it happened. He was the Creator’s protector of innocence, as were all of his kind. Innocence taken could never be recovered, though the effort had driven many Pegasi mad, until they came to the conclusion that all of mankind was perverse. At that moment, they could have become as the murdering Aughisky that seduced men to watery graves. But the men had killed them first.

Abednego knew he was dangerously close to that edge, an edge which, once crossed, could never be remedied. He knew without a doubt that his mate—the one whom the Creator had given him for all eternity to carry out His only command—lay dying and broken in his arms at the hands of a man.

The man knew not all Children of the Creator were to blame, but he was nearly mad with grief. The stallion knew only that his mate’s life flowed steadily and speedily away from her, and that Man was responsible. Man would have to pay.

The Immortals had never before mated with Children of the Creator. Their mates did not naturally know death. The Hunts of the Dark Ages were the only comparison, and were remembered only by Abednego, the last of the Pegasi, the Horse Lords. The last of the Guardians. No other Pegasus would know this grief—could know this grief, for the only one who had suffered as Abednego did now had been the Aughisky. There was no Salvation for him, as was given to the Children, and yet it was because of the Children he had lost his innocence.

There was a lack of justice there, Abednego decided, a vacuum only the Creator could explain. Were not Pegasi and even the Aughisky of His creation, too? The only one among the Children of the Creator who the stallion felt any kindness for at this point lay dying in his arms. If she were gone, the Children would have a force against them worth reckoning with, the stallion swore. It was his right to avenge his mate. He had not completely exterminated the threat as of yet, and he knew it.

The man made a valiant attempt to reassert his power, stating in no uncertain terms to the raging stallion that his mate needed life as of yet, not vengeance. That, he alone could provide. The stallion snorted his assent, but his blood surged and boiled in his veins even as his hooves touched the earth.

Abednego’s half-human form on the centaur cradled his woman to his ebony chest. His onyx hooves clipped the marble stepping stones leading to the healing spring of his people. The water bubbled out of the earth, steaming in the crevice hidden in Abednego’s valley. The Children had not found this place to which he’d fled as a young colt towards the end of the Hunts. Now that he’d brought his mate into his sanctuary, no other Child ever would.

His legs dipped gracefully into the hot water and he settled himself securely, taking no clumsy chances with his mate’s fragile life. Already her spirit wavered, her heart stuttering. Her breathing was erratic at best, and so shallow she seemed not to breathe at all.

His memory balked at the task at hand. The Children’s initial discovery of the gifts of the Pegasi had led to the Hunts, extinguishing his race.

But his mate needed him. Abednego situated her carefully in the healing water and drew back his arm guard to reveal his wrist. Drawing in a cleansing breath, he slit the vein with his long horn of diamond, the hardest substance on Earth. With one hand he cradled his mate’s head, and with the other, he made her drink. In her weakened state, she offered no resistance.

Her arms set themselves back in their sockets, the tendons and muscles firm and sinewy. Her burns eased away more slowly than the lacerations, but soon her body was supple, soft, and pink. Her skin stretched less tautly over her bones and her hair shone. The monsters had, on top of everything else, shorn her head, leaving her hair in tatters. But now the color had returned and stunned Abednego.

She was neither red like rubies nor dark brown like the forest, and neither was she golden as the sun. Instead, she was all three, the beauty of the coloring making her earlier baldness more disgraceful. He clutched her to him, vowing anew destruction on the men that had nearly caused her death. He would never fail her again.

She moved her head toward him, her brows knitting together. My name is Private First Class Trent. Number 298-72-9804. I am an American Soldier…being held against my will.

That was an odd introduction, but it provided him with a name to call his mate. How unfortunate that she bore a man’s name. He must learn more of his woman. Uncaring that she would see him as a half-man, half-horse with wings and horn, Abednego urged her to open her eyes, so that he might see inside her soul.

Suddenly, her eyes squeezed resolutely shut. Never! She placed a mental block up so quickly that Abednego felt he’d rammed his head into a brick wall. He pressed again, gently.

My name is Private First Class Trent. Number 298-72-9804. I am an American Soldier being held against my will. My name is Private First Class Trent. Number 298-72-9804. I am an American Soldier being held against my will! My name is Private First Class Trent! Number 298-72-9804! I AM AN AMERICAN SOLDIER BEING HELD AGAINST MY WILL!

Well. This was most unexpected. Abednego had rather hoped she would have the same immediate reaction he’d had. This put a damper on his plans for eternity.

Rest assured, he breathed in her ear, I would do nothing against your will, Trent. I am healing you.

I do not accept your aid or your favors! My loyalty is to my people, my country, not to myself. My name is Private First Class Trent. Number 298-72-9804. I am an American Soldier being held against my will!

This was going to be a long, long eternity, Abednego decided as he gazed upon his stubborn mate, her eyes squeezed tightly shut and her mouth desperately repeating the litany engraved in her mind.

am Trent stretched luxuriously on the soft feather mattress, rolling over under the downy duvet that warmed her skin as it had not been warmed since she’d left the states. This was wonderful. She’d died and gone straight to Heaven. That was all she could think of. There was no more pain, no more aching hunger or thirst, no more sick nausea at the prospect of life-giving nourishment.

She’d died, and God had provided her with the softest bedding in Paradise, knowing how bone-weary she was. She was never leaving the FOB again. In fact, she was going to go on extended leave. She’d been held captive half again her agreed tour, and she’d probably just as well leave the Army. Her contract was up at the end of her deployment, anyway. College was paid for, she’d gotten what she wanted.

And so much she didn’t. Sam shuddered as she remembered the interrogator. She hoped he burned in Hell. The memory of his hands on her sickened her, and she had a moment of panic when she considered what parts of her memories were hallucinations.

She was pretty sure killing him with her suddenly liberated legs was a figment of her imagination. He’d probably defaced her poor body once he was done with her. Tears stung her eyes.

Weren’t these awful memories supposed to go away in Paradise? Sam didn’t want to think of him inside her, riding her lifeless body in some sick parody of sex. She didn’t want to think of him at all.

Then don’t. The thought was foreign and immediately Sam put her blocks up, her heart slamming to a stop in her ribcage. Someone was in her mind. Could he read her thoughts? Had he injected her with truth serum? Oh, God, what had she told him? Was that how she’d wound up in a bed for the first time in six months, and a soft, feather bed with a duvet, too? What had she done?

Breathe.

No! She thought back furiously, filled with self-loathing. You promised I would be dead in twelve hours’ time!

There was an odd stillness in the air, as if the very room was aghast at her statement. Then a physical throat cleared somewhere on the other side of the duvet. Sam realized to her shame that she was cowering under the blanket like a child hiding from a nightmare. It was cowardly and unbecoming, and she did not deserve to be in that bed at all. She deserved another shot of that venom-cocktail.

You most certainly do not! A strange male voice objected to her self-condemnation. And do not mistake me for that monster again, I am nothing like him!

Sam felt her breath hitching at the sound of a male so close. Oh, God, what had she done? She remembered a feeling like flying, and then life surging through every cell of her. It had been electrifying, intimate, and she’d turned towards it.

Then he’d requested access. Through her eyes, to her soul. It had been bizarre, otherworldly. Perhaps it was simply more advanced technology than she was currently familiar with. She knew she’d been poisoned, possibly drugged.

What had he done to her?

Nothing! Trent, I did nothing to you, I swear. And the other could not take you either. You were quite fierce. There was pride in his voice and Sam warmed to it. Then she shrank away, pulling the duvet tighter over her head like a frightened child.

She’d thought it was finally over. Finally, she would have peace, if only the peace of the grave. But, no, she’d merely changed hands. It wasn’t over. It had only begun. Suddenly, her life gaped ahead of her, memories flying over those six longest months of her life. The fellow prisoners who had accepted favors for the guards to look away while they attempted escape. It was usually a free pass, and something the interrogator loved to point out. She would never get out if she didn’t put out, which she would never, never do. But the interrogator had always been too right about many things. Chief among those was that no one was looking for her. Her team had already escaped.

Suddenly, Sam felt small, insignificant. She would never escape this new captor. He knew her thoughts as they formed in her mind, he knew her intentions. He’d established a bond with her, somehow, and he would not hesitate to use it.

The bed. The thought flew to the forefront of her mind, even as Sam tried to squelch the horrible possibility to retain what little calm and dignity she still had left. Her grip tightened on the duvet though she knew it was hopeless. He would wear on her and he would win, just as the other had. She would give him nothing willingly, but he was stronger, and the idea was already planted in his head. Forcing himself on her would prove all too easy.

"I would never, never," Abednego shook his head in disbelief. But his mate was not listening to him. The duvet trembled, the woman balled up under it lost completely to her many fears.

Eighteen months of fears welled up, choking Sam. Tears spilled from her eyes and would not cease, as if a dam had burst under the pressure of her sorrow. Even under the duvet she felt frozen and shook uncontrollably as sobs wracked her body.

Abednego gave a soft cry of dismay, going to his mate. Highly physical as both stallion and man, he gathered Trent into his arms, duvet and all, and rocked her like a child. Her naked body was soft and healed under the downy coverlet, but her mind and heart were not so speedily healed. Her trust might never recover.

He cursed his stupidity regarding coverings. He’d found her naked, yes, but it was not her comfortable state. That was becoming increasingly clear as she sobbed harder and struggled wildly against him.

He held her face cupped in his hands and blew gently up her nose, maintaining eye-contact. It was the greeting of his people, one of peace and gentleness. Clearly, his mate knew nothing of this greeting as she thrashed more violently, landing a blow across his face. This was getting out of hand quickly.

Humans had sinned and the Creator exiled them from Eden wearing coverings of animal fur. The Children had been ashamed of nakedness since the Fall, and he should have remembered that. Now his mate was needlessly distressed and though her blows did not hurt him as they would a man, as a horse, he cringed from her fear of him.

A thought crossed Abednego’s mind. Trent feared the form of the man for what he could do to her. If he took