Chapter 10

Chapter

Ten

C osmo sat in the living room, not sure what he should do. Hawk was still asleep. Not the kind of sleep that he worried Hawk would slip into, just normal sleep. But no one was up yet. And Cosmo wanted to… He didn't know. Play cribbage? Watch a movie with somebody?

Just talk to his brothers about how it had been to be in his dragon form with Hawk and not be mocked for it. Oh, the dragons that they knew on the other side of the house, the Rocky Mountain clutch, had never mocked them. Neither had the people in their village down in Lunastra. But he knew they were something of a novelty.

Hawk just seemed as though he accepted Cosmo for what he was, and that was strange. It caused all sorts of feelings in his chest, and he didn't know how to deal with them.

All of this was new. This whole bonding was nuts, and he just…felt like he really was, well, he was gonna explode. Maybe. Who knew?

Just when he thought he was going to get up and run laps around the house, Corbin came downstairs, hunting something in the kitchen. So Cosmo got up and wandered along behind him. Maybe he'd have a Coke, or maybe he wouldn't. He didn't know.

Corbin looked at him. "Are you okay? You seem…restless."

"I think I am. I don't know what to do about Hawk."

"What about him? I thought you were like all over the thing with him. Like super happy."

"I am, and I'm not gonna get rid of him or anything. I mean. I love him so much already, but I just—don't know how to deal with some of the stuff that's going on in my head. You know?"

"Wait, you have a brain?"

"Oh, shut up, you asshole." He frowned thunderously, and Corbin held his hands up.

"Joking. Joking. Wow, you're really caught up in this guy, if you can't take a joke."

"Well, I am. I mean, I really am!" And he found himself dangerously close to tears, which really pissed him off. He threw one hand up and stormed to the fridge. "Never fucking mind, I'm fine. I just need a drink."

There was silence from behind him, and Cosmo was going to have an absolute temper tantrum if his brother just walked off and left him when he was in a snit and didn't even say he was sorry or anything, when familiar arms wrapped around him, hugging him tight.

"Dude, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that it was this big."

Not bad. Corbin hadn't said bad, and that was a huge jump forward for his stubborn brother.

"It really is. You don't understand. He's willing to stay here and never cross over just to be with me because I want to be with you both."

"Well, you know that if you needed to…" Corbin couldn't even finish the sentence before Cosmo was shaking his head.

"But we all know I can't. None of us can. This isn't about what we wanted. No one ever asked us. You do understand that, right? No one asked us because we never had a choice. We were always going to be the next Guardians."

"Did Hawk tell you that?"

"No. No, but I'm not stupid. I have enough sense to know when I hear the stories about the other guardians of the other places—when they were all half dragon and half something else, or half something and half something else and there was always three of them—Aren't you listening?"

Corbin stared at him. "Yeah. I'm listening."

"Aren't you mad?"

Cosmo was, and he wasn't even sure absolutely one hundred percent why, but he knew he was mad.

Possibly because nobody had given them any choice and warned them, even though there really wasn't anybody to warn them, because they'd already been stuck in this job before Hawk was there to explain to them what the history was so that he could figure out that they were fucked.

Cullen came down, frowning. "What the hell are you guys screaming about?"

"I'm not screaming." Corbin pointed out. "That's Cosmo. He's very angry."

"Obvi. What the fuck is going on?"

"None of you are listening to me! We've trapped Hawk here. Completely by accident."

"No, we haven't. Nobody did anything. He can go."

Cosmo was going to hit Cullen in the face. Bang.

It was less fun than normal to hit Cullen in the face because, well, he was already purple. So when he bruised, he just sort of got a little darker. It wasn't particularly colorful, so that wasn't near as satisfying, but the sound, just the sound of going whack?—

"No hitting." Corbin sighed. "I really think you need a drink."

"I really do." Cosmo sat down in one of the kitchen chairs. Hard.

"I got you." Cullen went to the fridge to pull out milk, then grabbed the Mexican hot chocolate stuff. Oh. Hot cocoa would be good.

"Adult hot chocolate," Cullen said into the void. "That's appropriate for this time of the morning. I'll spike it with that vanilla vodka."

"Yum." He blinked, trying to push aside some of the adrenaline and the worry and the—the rage. Which had come out of nowhere.

Love, are you well? Hawk seemed to be tapped into his moods, just like his brothers would be.

I don't know. Cullen is making hot chocolate.

I'll be down in a moment. Can you warn your brothers?

Of course. " Hawk is on his way down."

"I'll make pancakes." Corbin ruffled his hair. "It's going to be okay, bro. I promise."

"How?"

"I dunno. It's a mystery."

"Okay, yeah." He chuckled. Corbin loved to paraphrase his favorite movies when he was stressed. "But maple syrup will help."

"Maple syrup is proof that there is a greater power, and that she loves us," Cosmo admitted. "I'm sorry, guys."

He shrugged, pulling into himself. He wasn't sure what the hell was going on inside of him, but there were all of these horrible feelings that just wouldn't stop, wouldn't cease their endless bubbling and colliding. It was ridiculous.

I'm afraid that's partially me. Rosie . Hawk's voice was a gentle touch, but so different than his brothers', so much bigger.

Your fault?

I've been around a very long time. And I can be moody.

Well, are you moody now? I mean, are you unhappy?

No. I've been waiting for you for millennia. How could I be unhappy? I have my mate.

Cosmo had to smile because honestly all he did feel from Hawk's mental voice was happiness. Hawk didn't regret being stuck here, at least not yet. In fact, he was happy to have Cosmo.

Still, someone should have told him about the whole Guardian thing. Someone should have warned them.

"I don't think that anyone knew," Corbin said, answering his unspoken worries. "I still don't understand about this whole warning thing. I know that I'm slow, but can you explain?"

Hawk came rolling in wearing a pair of bright yellow pants that looked like bananas, along with a purple velvet smoking jacket.

Interesting sartorial choices. Cosmo liked it.

"Let me see if I can explain," Hawk said. "Over the millennia—as far as I know, and I would assume as far as most anyone knows—when the veil opens, there has always been a set of triplets who were the product of two magical species. They've guarded the connection between the worlds, allowing the very few stragglers in and out as it needed to happen. And protecting these separate spaces from one another. It seems like that you three got the job."

"Well, that's not too bad, is it?" Cullen asked. "I mean, we like this house. We like each other. Hawk's okay. We get to go all over. Where's the bad?"

"Well, the bad is they didn't?—"

The vision took him in a rush, and suddenly, all he could see were oceans of blood. The entire world turned red and sticky. The smell of copper everywhere and flashing teeth and ruby eyes and anger. Just this awful, empty, mindless anger.

No, no, that wasn't anger.

It was hunger.

Cosmo knew someone was talking to him, but he really couldn't hear what was going on. All he could do was let the vision have him until it was done. He hoped that whatever he was seeing was just a product of his dour mood about being a guardian, but he didn't think so.

These waves of prescience happened, and then, sooner or later, something came along to prove that his talent really was seeing what was going to happen in the future. Cosmo really wished he had a better talent, something that wasn't going make him utterly insane one of these days.

Maybe that was why Hawk was there. He didn't know.

When he snapped back to himself, his eyes rolling back down out of his head, Hawk was holding him. He'd fallen out of his chair, he thought.

"What did you see?" Cullen asked.

It was pretty obvious that he was having a vision, he guessed. There was no getting away with saying oh, I just kind of had a seizure or something.

Cosmo blinked, trying to figure out how to put into words what he had seen. And what he'd felt. "It was all red," he said. "And hunger. It was awful."

Hawk held him closer, lending strength and heat, which was lovely, but Cosmo couldn't shake the vision.

Corbin stared into his eyes. "What kind of hunger? What are you talking about?"

"Well, if I knew. It would be useful, wouldn't it? It was toothy, whatever it was, and it was coming for us. It's something that we have to guard against, and maybe that's why I've been feeling so uneasy."

"That's it, I'm buying garlic."

"What?" Cosmo was nowhere near unrattled enough to follow whatever the hell Corbin was talking about.

"Vampires. This place was attacked by vampires. Infested with vampires. They killed two dragons here. It hasn't been that long. We were still cleaning the blood out of the wood not long ago. You can still smell dragon blood in my side of the house!" Corbin was just getting warmed up. "I'm buying garlic—cases of it. And crosses. Can you buy holy water?"

"I'll look it up," Cullen said. "I can get sun lamps too. I wonder if they make portable sun lamps?"

Hawk growled low. "Vampires. Soulless creatures. We're infinitely more satisfying to them than humans. They cannot be allowed through the veil."

"Well, I guess that that's our job then, to sit here and let them suck on us and bleed us dry so that they can't get through the veil." Cosmo didn't like this at all.

"Oh, bullshit. We're going to cover this entire house on the front end with roses, a la the Sleeping Beauty myth. Big thorny roses everywhere—we'll leave a door for the Amazon delivery and groceries. Then we will just put garlic wreaths everywhere." Corbin was going on and on, and Cosmo dropped his head in his hands.

Then he lifted it and sighed. "If you don't stop him, he's going to start inventing handheld sun lamp ray gun things. I know." He put his head back down again. Then lifted it. "I've seen it."

"Oh, ray guns are cool." Hawk held him, rocked him, and smiled at Corbin. "I think we should research what is fact and what is fiction before we start just buying many of one sort of item. No worries, though. I do know one thing."

Cosmo looked up at Hawk. "What's that, mate?"

"There's never been a vampire born that could withstand lava."