Excerpt from "Damian's Immortal"

I forgot it was my day to post to the website today!  So sorry!  Anyway, I'm posting an excerpt from "Damian's Immorta." I'll be cruel to my poor readers by not sharing what happened to bring the immortal Jule and the Magician, Yully, to this point. 

This is the unedited version, so ignore all blatant and blasphemous grammatical errors.  Christine will beat this into shape in about a week!

Excerpt:

Yully cracked the door open, suspecting the man named Jule was there even before she

flipped on the lights.  Warm light flooded the cold room, and her breath caught.  She stared at him, not sure to say or think about finding a man chained to her basement wall.

Jule sat with his back against the far wall, his lip bloodied, one eye black, and his hands chained above his head to the pipes running from the floor to the ceiling.  He raised his head as she took a step into the room and met her gaze.  She wasn't sure she'd seen a man as big as he was anywhere but on the TV.  He looked like a professional wrestler with his

muscular physique, tattoos and long braid.  The thin pipes didn't look strong enough to hold him.

"I bet you don't know what that means," he said, glancing at her necklace.  His voice jarred her as it had in the alley.  It was low and gravelly with an edge of huskiness.

"You're really here," she replied, distraught. "Who did this to you?"

"You know who, sweetheart," he replied in his soft growl.

"Don't call me that!"

"Don't know your name."

"It's none of your business."

Jule leaned his head against the wall.  Yully took in his wounds again, unable to fathom why her father would chain him to the wall in their wine cellar.  What could this man possibly know that her father needed?  And how did she stomach the thought of her  father doing such a thing to someone?  Troubled, she toyed with the necklace around her throat.

"What does this mean?" she asked.

"It's the House your father belongs to.  An ancient bloodline of immortals, one of the oldest," he replied.

"Immortals," she repeated.

"His kind don't age.  Ever notice that?"

"Yes." It was one of the many oddities about her father that she'd accepted over the years.  While their servants aged, her father never did.  He looked the same as when he'd come for her at the orphanage.

"I wear one, too," Jule continued.

"I don't see it," she said, gaze dropping to his chest.

"I'm chained.  You can dig it out."

She looked him over again, certain he could escape whenever he wanted.

"You're safe with me," he said at her hesitation.

She felt the truth in his words, perhaps because their souls had touched when they first met the day before.  Yully moved towards him and knelt.  Her hand brushed one of his forearms, held in place over his head by the handcuffs.

"Your skin's like ice," she said, suddenly realizing how cold it was in the storage room.  He wore only jeans and a dark t-shirt that stretched across his chest in all the right places and clung to bulging biceps.

"Cold won't kill me," he said, unconcerned.

"An Irish winter will," she returned.

She saw the silver chain around his neck and delicately tugged the round emblem free.  It was a silver coin, warmed by his skin, with a circle of cuneiform symbols surrounding a star with two arrows. Her own necklace had the same symbols surrounding five stars.

"You're an immortal," she said and dropped the necklace.  Her eyes went to his dark, steady gaze.  "You're a Guardian?"

"Yes."

She sat back with a frown.  He'd just admitted to being what her father warned her about!  Guardians were her enemies, creatures who preyed on humans, and her father said she must use her powers to kill them.  The man before her looked pretty human himself, with beautiful brown eyes and a body unlike any she'd seen before.  She'd sensed more danger from her father than from the man before her.

His intent gaze was steady, and she wondered if he could read her mind like her father

did.  The air between them shimmered with his body heat and her magic, and he didn't flinch away like normal people did.  This man seemed to accept her freakish powers,

until he spoke again.

"I feel your magic.  What are you?" he asked.

"I have to go." She flushed and stood.  Accustomed to being shunned by people, she'd almost felt normal around the stranger that seemed unaffected by her magic.  With regret, she realized her father was right: no one could accept someone like her.

She strode to the door.

"I may freeze to death tonight," he warned. "You may not have another chance to ask me

what you want to know."

"What makes you think I want to know anything from you?"

"The fact that you didn't close the door and walk away the moment you saw me." His voice was quiet and confident, and she felt like a visitor in his throne room rather than a woman talking to a stranger chained to her basement wall.

"Did my father hit you?" she whispered.

"You know the answer."

She chewed her lip.  "He said you want to kill me.  Do you?"

"Yes, I did," he replied. "But I don't now."

 

To be continued …. (hehehehehe)