Amy Blankenship - Blood Bond

Now, the fallen were a different story. They had been hard to track at first, but recently they were so unstable that he’d given up though he knew when they were close… he could feel them. He thought back to the history lesson he had gotten from Storm.

The short version was the fallen had almost destroyed their own world by breaking through to our dimension and stealing some of our women because they thought they were beautiful. Stealing humans had only been their first mistake. Once they were back on the other side of the wormhole, the fallen had taken turns breeding with the stolen women.

The problem was… the children that came from those unions were not what they expected and the birth always killed the human females.

Only a small percent of the children were born full-blooded fallen and only one out of hundreds were female. The rest were known as demons… hybrids that didn’t turn out to be full blooded anything. Most hybrids were what humans called monsters. As those monsters turned on their own creators, the fallen started eradicating their world of all the hybrids… whether they were monsters or not.

Once they were finished with their genocide, they found there was now dozens of males to each female in their world. So the idiots had come back through the wormhole, this time keeping their creations on our side as they mated with as many women as they could… as quickly as possible.

As the children were born and the mothers died, the fallen would pluck any full blooded fallen and take them back to their world, leaving the hybrids behind. Not needing the male children that were born, they took them and trained them to fight their half breed siblings.

Just before those boys hit puberty, the leaders of the fallen sent them back here and closed the wormhole between the two dimensions… stranding all children here except for the female fallen for whom they had sacrificed so many lives.

The story hadn’t ended there. Those young warriors had been trained to do the same thing their fathers had done… rip openings into the bordering dimension… just not the one leading to their home world. This new one existed so close to us that it was only a breath away. One could only presume this was where the theory of Hell originated. So close that humans with heightened senses could feel it and sometimes see it.

As the warriors sought out the hybrids, they found that many of their rivals were just as powerful as the full blood fallen. Bloodshed happened on both sides and it was also documented that some of the fallen were dragged into the alternate dimension with the hybrids.

The murdering masterminds that had sent their children here had known it was a death sentence. They had counted on the fact that their progeny would kill each other and clean up the mess they’d left behind.

Only a handful of those boys still roamed the earth and most were younger than the first batch, arriving after the war had died down and the surviving hybrids had scattered. In Ren’s opinion, this was where things got muddled. Not all hybrids were what you would call demonic… and if undetected they could blend in with the humans and animals… again breeding hybrids for over a millennium.

The big secret Storm was protecting was the fact that most paranormal creatures, shifters and weres, or humans with even the slightest abnormal ability were more than likely the descendant of one of these hybrids… including the succubus powers he’d been using to track them then turn against them. It still made Ren uneasy to think of himself as part hybrid.

In his own defense, Ren was pretty sure the demons he’d killed in the past were not of the redeeming quality… either that or he would call it self-defense because they had sure been trying to kill him.

To make matters worse, Storm just had to drop the bomb on him that some original hybrids are not evil, even though they give off the same aura as a high class demon would. And if that wasn’t enough of a headache, then add the fact that a vampire is not a hybrid at all… but something entirely different that had invaded earth.

Ren rubbed his left temple still staring at the grid map. All area’s he found where he’d felt a power boost were black-lighted and considering Misery never stayed in one place… that was most of the city. But taking into account that she had a fetish for soulless vampires, he could only allow her to claim the areas that were near the vampire nest.

That left a lot of unlisted power and somewhere among it was the reason for Storm’s bloody prophecy. Speaking of Storm, he hadn’t seen him since he’d tossed his fortune telling butt back on the island and so far no one had shown up claiming to be part of PIT.

Ren smirked knowing exactly how to get Storm’s attention. He had become so in tune with the high-tech computer system that he no longer had to do anything but be in the same room with it. He watched the computer screen flash as it linked up to the main PIT system then fed the grid map behind the thick firewalls that only he and Storm could access.

It usually only took a few minutes before Storm would respond or pop into existence, so when the minutes ticked by with no response, Ren became worried. Then the screen flashed.

Storm appeared on the screen so Ren could see him and lowered a crimson spotted cloth from his nose before he leaned back in his chair and smiled at Ren via the webcam.

Ren frowned at that and could also see that Storm was at home on the island. “I’m surprised you didn’t come yourself… but then it kind of looks like you’ve been breaking the rules again,” Ren chastised with an arched eyebrow.

“The time flux in your area is keeping me from jumping and giving me one hell of a headache.” Storm explained holding the bloody tissues in his fist.

“Then stop trying,” Ren glared.

Storm nodded, “We’re going to have to stay in touch this way until things settle down on your end. For now, you have incoming PIT teams and it’s time you start learning how to work with them for everyone’s sake. Since you have a photographic memory and have read their files, I’m sure you will know more about them than even they know about themselves.”

“So you’re finally putting me in the middle of a lot of people with powers? Is that a smart thing to do? What if I can’t control it?” Ren asked not relishing the idea of working with someone else besides Storm.

Storm grinned and lifted his shoulders in a shrug, “Practice makes perfect Ren and you’re about to get a crash course in human interaction. Zachary and Angelica are moving in with you so they can access the databank and all the equipment I’ve stored in the castle. They’ll also handle most of the PIT teams that are coming. As for you, your job is to try to find out what the hell is causing the time flux and barring me from the area.”

He paused for a moment before leaning toward the screen. “Answer your door.”

The video link abruptly disconnected, leaving Ren staring at it with raised eyebrows. A loud knock at the door made him look in that direction then back at the blank screen.

“I hate it when he does that.” Ren grumbled and stood up from his chair grabbing his sunglasses to hide his eyes.

Walking through the open double doors that led into the foyer, Ren answered the door and stared at his visitors… soon to be roommates.

Zachary was smiling when he saw the young man standing on the other side of the entrance. “It’s nice to finally meet the real ‘ace in the hole’ that Storm has been talking about for as long as I’ve known him.”

Ren gritted his teeth but accepted Zachary’s outstretched hand and nodded at Angelica before standing aside and letting them in. He knew every face on PIT’s roster and what their gifts were. He’d made a point to memorize the profiles of all PIT members not long after Storm took him in.