Marked (Eternal Guardians #1)

  ***

  It was dangerous to open the portal in the same place he’d exited only days before. To keep from drawing unwanted attention, Theron chose a location fifty miles from Silver Hills and hot-wired a car he lifted off an abandoned side street to drive himself back to the small town.

  Man, it would just be easier if he could flash from place to place on earth like he could in Argolea. But no, that was an ability he and his Argolean kin enjoyed only in their homeland. And truth be told, if any humans saw him disappear into thin air, they’d probably freak out more than if they knew daemons roamed the lands around them.

  Since he’d walked among humans most of his life, he had a fair working knowledge of their technology, so the mechanical aspects of driving weren’t a big deal. He normally wasn’t one to steal, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and he was anxious to get to Silver Hills and get this little job over with.

  He slowed as he neared the town’s city limits and turned onto Main Street. A series of shops lined both sides of the street, while little banners announcing the annual Autumn Harvest Festival flapped in the wind from old-fashioned-patina light posts every two hundred feet. A few leaves desperate to hang on to summer clung to branches above the road, but their days were numbered. Mother Nature was in a foul mood, judging from the swirling black sky above, and she looked nearly ready to unleash.

  It was, Theron suspected, the quintessential American small town. When he’d passed through here only days before, he hadn’t paid it much heed, but now he did. The gingerbread trim, the hand-painted signs, the dried hops strung around doors and wound into wreaths. Part of him wondered what the humans who lived here would do if they knew one of his kind lived among them.

  His kind?

  No. Not his kind. This time the woman he’d come to find was nothing more than a human with a little something extra. Something Isadora needed.

  He parked the car halfway up Main Street and climbed out. Crisp air surrounded him as he headed down the sidewalk. The king had given him only a name—Acacia Simopolous—and told him of a store the woman’s family had run for the last twenty-odd years. He figured it was the best place to start.

  A few cars were parked along the street, but there were surprisingly few humans roaming around for this time of day. All things considered, it was fairly safe. Daemons didn’t like to come out during the day, though that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. Scanning businesses he passed, Theron spotted his target.

  A tingle ran over his spine, and he fleetingly thought of Casey again and wondered if he’d run into her on this trip.

  He hoped not, for more reasons than the most obvious.

  A “closed” sign swayed from a hook on the inside of the door. Theron peered into the shop and saw some of the lights were still on. Strange to be closing so early in the day, but what did he know of human behavior?

  He decided to try the door. To his surprise, it pushed open.

  A bell jingled above, and as he stepped inside he was immediately enveloped by warmth and scents of paper and vanilla wafting on the air.

  “I’ll be right with you,” a female voice called.

  Casey’s voice hit him like a punch to the gut, stealing the air from his lungs and nearly buckling his knees. The wicked attraction he’d felt for her at first sight erupted in his chest as he stepped farther into the store and saw her at the far end of an aisle of books, standing three steps up on a ladder, replacing leather-bound tomes on a high shelf. His body hardened with just one look, an urge to touch her soft skin, to feel her flesh against his, to finish what they’d started, as strong as it had been the night they’d been together.

  But now that desire was overshadowed by the reality that he’d been wrong. This human—whom he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about for three long days—was the woman he’d been sent to find.

  The king’s long-lost daughter.

  The lone woman who would save his race.

  The one he would lead into certain death.

  Chapter Eleven