Cruxim: Dark Guardians Fantasy Series, #1

C R U X I M

Book 1

Dark Guardians Fantasy Series

A Dark Fantasy / Paranormal Romance Novel

by Karin L Cox

First published 2013 by Indelible Ink Press

Copyright © Karin L Cox 2013

ISBN 978-0-9873602-3-6

Cover Design by Eden Crane Designs

Edited by Michele Perry

Proofread by Jenx Byron & Jessica Meigs

License Notes:

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

Publisher’s Note:

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express written permission from the publisher. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without prior written permission of the copyright owner.

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, vampires, vampire hunters, fallen angels, dark hunters, female warriors, sphinxes, Cruxim or other mythological beasts, living or dead, or to historical events, is purely coincidental.

Discover other titles by Karin L Cox at http://www.karincox.com and follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/KarinCox.Author

Dedicated to Helen, for everything.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

BONUS MATERIAL

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER ONE

IT IS WET BEYOND, WET and slippery, but the slight partition I have laboriously scratched out in the wall over decades is still there. My trembling fingers feel for it, seeking the familiar dull sharpness, the blade of cold stone made smooth with scraping—the weapon of my slow-growing hope. I take it out and pry a wedge of stone from the wall to resume my work. Grasping the blunter end and covering my fingers with the twill of my coat, I watch as chips of stone flick up from the blade.

A sparrow is singing. Its cheery trill echoes through the chamber, but I cannot see it. The gray walls outside conceal its plump body. Perhaps it is secreted behind a turret or piling twigs into a crack in the masonry. The pungent odor of the guano that concretes the window mingles with the stench of my sweat from countless nightmares.

Yes, even I have fears.

I scan again, craning my neck through the grate, sliding it with a metallic rattle, but it is the same: slow-growing green lichen mottling the walls, a rust-red trail of water dripping with melancholy repetition from a window ledge.

I am thirsty, or perhaps my throat is dry with anticipation. Maybe tomorrow I will break through to daylight. Today, I smell the sunshine like victory, and I can almost taste my freedom. It swims in my mouth like wine.

It has been more than forty years now. Forty years of solitude, but for the man and then, more recently, the girl, the trembling girl, I assume is his daughter. It would seem a long time to anyone but me. Yet the assault on my liberty bothers me more than the time. It keeps me from my purpose, and my task daily grows larger. When you have lived for centuries, immortal, half of a mortal lifespan is a pittance.

The girl comes once a week. Fearful. Fast. She brings me bread, a little thin soup, and sometimes cheese. Very occasionally, a bucket to wash in. She rarely brings meat (I must catch rats and sparrows for that), and never blood. The latter is fine with me. It is not human blood I seek, although they will not believe that. They see the alabaster of my teeth, the high arch of my brow, the silkiness of my dark hair, the gleam of my skin and eyes, and before my incarceration and slow decay, my superhuman strength and speed, and they assume I am one of them. A Vampire. It has ever been thus.

I have given up trying to convince them that although supernatural I have more in common with man than with those merchants of death: the bloodsucking agents of hell they so fear. I have given up wondering how they could mistake me so, for though paranormal I am neither demon nor devil. My work is holy.

A gentle breeze cools me, and I realize I am flapping in agitation. Or is it anticipation? I am unsure. My wings are weak now. The tower is cramped, and the cold walls and low ceiling restrict my movement. I wonder if my wings will have the strength to carry my weight, even if I can worm through the crevice I have spent decades scratching out. I look over my shoulder and give my wings a firm flap, noting, with a certain weariness, how dirty, how tatty my once snow-white feathers have become. Some are missing, others blackened, and some are still growing back; yet others I pulled out with my own hands and piled in the corner to create a nest on the frigid stone. Few human comforts are afforded me, and no human rights. It seems I do not deserve a blanket, although I feel the cold. Bitterly.

They did not intend to imprison me, of course. First, they tried to kill me. They tried in every conceivable way. Torture you might call it, had it been inflicted on a mortal. They bound me. They slit my throat. They punctured my heart. They drew out my teeth with pliers. They set me alight. They plucked and cauterized my wings. They carved a crucifix into my chest. Still I prevailed. I agonized, I scarred, but I prevailed. They threw holy water on me, read scripture to me, smeared garlic upon me. They left me in sunlight, showed me my own mutilated face in the mirror, placed a silver crucifix around my neck (those poor, misguided men of the cloth). They even tried to exorcise me. Had I any devil in me, it surely would have fled at their ministrations. But I do not.

You are in concert with Satan. Admit it and we will let you live, they insisted, as if they had the power to do otherwise.

To my knowledge, only two things can kill me, and my captors are unlikely to attempt either.

I am innocent of such a charge, I protested.

Liar! Demon! We found you with them.

That much was true. I had been in Paris at the time and had flown out to feed. They had found me with a Vampire coven near the village of Sezanne. I was the only awake creature among them; the others hung from the ceiling, tick-full from a night of nourishing themselves on mortal blood. I was perusing the menu, wondering which to take first, when the firebomb burst through the door, closely followed by men with pitchforks. I had not fed for many weeks. I was weak. They caught me off guard. Not so much the men, but the Vampires.

That was only the second time Vampires ever got the better of me. My strength, stealth, and speed usually work to their detriment, but on that occasion I was beset on both sides. All my long life I have fallen somewhere between these two beasts—man and Vampire—and yet I am neither, just as I am neither devil nor truly angel. I am a hybrid, very rare, seldom seen, so little known that some think me nothing more than a chimera. Like most creatures that dwell in the shadows, or resonate in the mythologies of man—dark fallen angels, mighty sphinxes, nosferatu, werewolves, screeching harpies, sneering gargoyles, goblins, and winged griffins—I keep my distance. But I am real. I am Cruxim.

THE CHINK OF A KEY in a lock startles me. The girl is coming. I am surprised; it has been less than a week by my reckoning. I cough to muffle the grinding of the stone sliding back into place and hurriedly push the knife back into its nook, wondering, as I do so, why she is here. What change in fortune is afoot to bring this shivering child before me twice in such a short span of time?

It is not that I need the food. I can survive years, decades even, without it, growing weaker but never succumbing. It is that even her small scrap of company is something. Her father (or the man I assume was such) never spoke to me, but sometimes she does. Just a word—Here—as she pushes the food through the small door in the bars. Sometimes, she speaks to herself, her lips moving in a prayer that might be for me or, more likely, calls for her God to save her from me.

I suppose I should be grateful for food. At first, the good people of Sezanne tried starving me. They left me for months. When they returned, my eyes burned hatred at them from my wan, thin-skinned face, but I was otherwise unchanged. They left me again. A year this time. My eye sockets ringed my sunken eyes. My ribs were a bony corset in my chest. But I was still alive. Only the return of my wings convinced them to start feeding me again, however infrequently. After all, wings are the guise of the angels. Some count me among them, but I have no recollection of my Maker. All I know is my purpose.

Here. Today is one of the days she speaks.

I hurry to the bars. Thank you. Nodding, I stretch a hand out to the pail. It is soup, thin and gray, along with a hunk of bitter bread.

She draws back, one step, two—beyond the reach of even the longest arm.

Beef?

She nods, and then, Yes.

Tell me. The man who used to come, your father—

Uncle.

What happened to him?

She looks wary, young. One milk-white hand flies to her hair and she halts indecisively.

What happened? I press again.

He is dead.

Something in me shudders. I know, without her even telling me, that it was them. My fists clench at my sides and I drop my bread to the floor. I can feel the increased heat of her, her fear at my eyes’ reddish glow.

I could do something about this. About them, I snarl. If only you would let me out. I rattle the bars.

She turns, too quickly, as if she has tarried too long. The white swan of her neck stretches eagerly toward the door out of the tower.

How beautiful it is, I think. How beautiful that slim, graceful neck would be to them. A small silver cross glistens at the hollow of her throat.

At the top of the stairs, she pauses. Head cocked, she looks at me with eyes bluer than lapis, and her lips move again in a silent prayer. There is something wistful in her eyes, sad even. In that moment, she reminds me of Sabine.

CHAPTER TWO

SABINE. HOW I MISS her. I wonder where she is now. Probably perched on a turret or sitting stone-like somewhere, waiting. If only I could let her know where I am. Has she been waiting for me these forty years? Possibly. Her kind are renowned for their patience.

We met more than a century ago, she and I. I had been feeding, had already drunk my fill really. The Vampire that lay before me had convulsed into death and his rich blood had already satiated me when I heard a sound unmistakable to a being such as I: the gentle swoosh of wings overhead. Owl-like, I froze.

Recognizing the wing beats, I stared around me for what I thought must be Seraph or Cruxim like myself, and then I saw her.

She, too, had frozen stone-still. For a moment, I thought she was indeed a statue. Only the dull rhythm of her heart, echoing in my ears, and the subtle tic of her tail gave her away.

She was magnificent—is magnificent. Like me, she knows not the ravages of time. A face so finely wrought it is understandable that many mistake her for sculpture. When she knew I had seen her, she sprang lightly down from the façade behind me with feline grace.

Sabine had been wary, as had I. She had prowled the shadows at first, a low growl issuing from her throat until she finally fixed me with a stare from her jade eyes and said, You are Cruxim?

Yes.

I was enchanted by her, too. By the dusky wings held rigidly away from her body, ready to bear her away until she could be certain of my intentions; by the beauty of her fine-boned face; the perfection of her breasts; but mostly by the supple slinkiness of her lioness body. And you? I asked, already anticipating the answer.

Her answer came in a throaty purr. Sphinx.

The guardian?

Yes.

You have abandoned your post.

My charge is dead. She moved forward gracefully and her claws clacked on the cobbles. Finished? She nodded towards the corpse that lay before us. Curls, fair and leonine, tumbled around her exquisite face.

Yes.

May I? She nodded at the body again, and I noticed that, although her head was womanly, her teeth were feline. It had never occurred to me that she might need meat.

I was fascinated and smiled at the thought, cruelly you might think. Go ahead.

She ate hungrily but fastidiously, tearing great strips of meat off, ignoring my stare. All the while, her tail made a slow, snakelike twitching from side to side.

Aren’t your charges always dead? I asked her, returning to our former conversation in an effort to put her at ease.

She swallowed a mouthful of gristle and placed one enormous paw on a shoulder socket, tearing up another strip of flesh. Blood coursed over her breasts, which were bare and beguiling where their soft whiteness met the tawny texture of her fur. It was all I could do not to stare.

Not always, she said. Mostly.

You were guarding the undead? I had been curious, and I overstepped my mark.

Never! Her eyes burned, and the stirrings of a roar sprang from her throat.

Human?

She nodded again. Her tail twitched faster.

What is your name?

Sabine.

Amedeo.

Amedeo the Cruxim, she said, bemused. I have never met one before.

Nor I a Sphinx, I told her. It is hard to say who is rarer.

She had laughed at that, a mellifluous sound, both feminine and fierce. Yes, she said. Two curiosities drawn together to feed on the undead.

I squatted in the shadows, reducing my height to her level. Have you always fed on them?

No. She turned her eyes to mine. Only when I can.

I wondered whether she might disallow my next question, and I paused momentarily. So you eat humans?

She fixed me with a stare that was weary but not accusatory. Then she shook her head, making her golden curls bounce. Deer, sometimes dogs, birds, rabbits and rats at a pinch. Vampires when I can. I rarely have the strength to kill them myself; only you have that pleasure, I believe.

Indeed. I gestured to the corpse. Enjoy it, then. Killing them is always my pleasure. Even as I had said it, my thoughts had flown to the one among them I would give anything to never have to kill: Joslyn.

HOLED UP HERE IN THE tower, I have thought about Joslyn almost as much as Sabine, perhaps more. It is hard to say.

She was just a child when I met her, or rather, when she saw me. I had been shopping in the labyrinthine streets of the Gothic Quarter. My wings were carefully concealed beneath a long black cloak, a style fashionable in Barcelona at the time, and my arms were full of parcels. Just as I made my way from Plaça del Pi back onto La Rambla, a carriage careened around the corner toward me. The horses had taken the bit and screamed and whinnied as they clattered over the stones.

I had long learned, by then, that any injury to my person had the ability to reveal my wings, not to mention my immortality should a physician be called. Avoiding injury was a must. Yet the horses galloped on so quickly, and I was so unprepared—my arms full of bundles and my speed hindered by my heeled leather boots and cape—that, even with my speed, I had little recourse but to do what I did. Turning sideways, I leaped, and without thinking, gave my wings a hearty beat beneath the cloak, trusting them to lift me away from the pounding hooves. It was only when I landed that I saw her.

She had just turned four at the time and was rosy and brown from days spent in the Spanish sun. Azure eyes framed by long, dark lashes gazed at me intently. Then she had smiled, revealing dimples. Angel, she’d said, pointing.

I realized that not only had she seen me fly a little, but my rapid movement had disturbed my cloak, which lay flung back over one shoulder, exposing the downy white of my wings.

I fixed her with a stare and immediately righted my clothing, settling my wing feathers back flat against my shoulders.

"El meu angel de la guarda." She pointed again insistently, and her face shone.

No, I answered in my poor Catalan. "No, not your guardian angel. Jo sóc només un home. I’m just a man. Man," I said, slapping myself on the chest.

"Angel de la guarda, she repeated defiantly and held her little hands out wide, wanting to be picked up. I shook my head. No," I repeated, noting that her arms were scarred with burns.

Joslyn! A swarthy man hurried out of a nearby house and grabbed her arm, reefing it cruelly toward him. Come along. There’s work to be done.

No. She wriggled free of his grasp and stepped toward me.

Child! The man grabbed her again. You will obey your master!

No! Again she twisted from his grasp.

He was impeded by bundles of laundry cast over his shoulder, and he grabbed at her but missed. Kicking out, his foot connected with her shin, and the child cried in pain and struggled free again.

Joslyn! He struck out again, kicking her hard in the back as she fled. His capped leather boot met with the lowest point of her spine, and the child fell, face first and writhing in agony on the cobbles. The man wasted no time. Hauling her limp body up, he struck her full force across the face. The child’s head snapped back, and tears streamed from those bluer-than-blue eyes.

I could take no more. Darting forward, I picked the man up and threw him backwards against the wall of a church behind. In my anger, I underestimated my own strength;