Blood Bond . Amy Blankenship

had been a thrill to breech the firewalls set up on a division of the government that supposedly didn’t exist.

      The paranormal investigation team, otherwise known as P.I.T., knew Ren was stalking their assignments and siphoning their encrypted information, but so far they had never caught up with him and they had never found a firewall thick enough to keep him out of their private system. Not only was he stealing their data, but Ren was leaving data behind from his own paranormal investigations.

      After several years, the head of PIT had started leaving Rin messages behind the thickest, most encrypted firewalls Rin had ever seen. It was behind those walls that Rin had secretly joined the elusive P.I.T. group, but only on his own terms… that he worked alone.

      Whoever was behind that wall not only knew his name, but also some other things about him that no one else knew… like the fact that he wasn’t entirely human. It was only after he’d taken on a level seven demon that had started a flesh eating cult in the Congo and been severely wounded that the head man of P.I.T. had finally caught up with him.

      Ren was in the middle of a fight with the skin-demon and very much on the losing end when a hand had gripped his shoulder… the next thing he knew, he was on a small private island in the middle of the ocean. Rin had turned around to come face to face with the man behind the encrypted walls… Storm.

      Rin shook his head at the memory of those first few moments. Storm looked like he should have been the lead singer for some 80’s rock band instead of the mastermind behind the most secretive group of people in the world.

      Storm had only smiled and removed the hand that had still been gripping his shoulder. “Trying to retire from P.I.T. the hard fast way? Why don’t you stick around a while? I’d hate to lose my best friend, before we have a chance to become friends.”

      “What?” Ren winced, holding his hand over his chest where the demon had tried to scratch his heart out.

      “Sorry,” Storm sighed reaching for him again. They were suddenly in the half underground, half underwater facility that was hidden deep under the island. “There isn’t anyone here with the power to heal, but I can always take you to someone that can if you’d prefer.”

      “No,” Ren practically growled. “If you can give me some needle and thread, I think I can handle staying in one place for a few damn minutes.” He leaned back against a counter trying to stay out of Storm’s reach, “And if you touch me again, you’re gonna lose your hand.”

      Storm laughed and opened one of the upper cabinets then waved his hand at all the medical supplies. His smile vanished when Ren unbuttoned his shirt and Storm saw the deep groves the skin-demon had made. A couple more seconds and Ren would have been gone.

      “I think that since you have a fetish for demons, you might need to learn a little about them before you challenge another one to a fight.” Storm looked away from the claw marks already knowing what the scars would look like. He’d known Rin for a long time… that friendship just hadn’t happened yet.

      Ren reached into the open cabinet and grabbed what looked like a sterilized stitching kit then moved toward the mirror on the wall. “If you’ve met one demon then you’ve met them all… right?” He couldn’t keep the sarcasm from his voice as he tried to mentally block out the pain… it wasn’t working.

      “Wrong.” Storm corrected, “You only know what I’ve allowed uploaded into the database.” He sat down on the hospital bed in the middle of the room.

      Ren looked in the mirror at the man behind him. The things hidden in that database were enough to set the world on fire… enough to where just having the database was a danger. It was hard to believe there was more… but then, he knew some things that weren’t even in the database.

      “I’m listening.” And listen he did… for weeks.

      Storm was right to keep the information he shared out of the archives for the same reasons the Vatican held their stuff in secret vaults. If some of this information was to reach the normal population, it would be the end of the world as we know it.

      Rin knew without a doubt that the man was still withholding information because whatever gods had handed him the power to jump through time and space had also made it dangerous for him to tell anyone anything beyond the present moment. He could be the best history teacher in the world… but if Storm tried to tell anyone the future, it could rip the space-time link… and the link was Storm himself.

      He was also right about their friendship. They had been friends from day one, and that was saying a lot since neither of them was the type to trust anyone. Truth was… they were both a lot alike in many ways.

      Storm’s little island getaway was actually somewhere in the past but Storm had given it all the comforts of a modern day mansion and a futuristic base. One side of the building made Ren feel like he was in a huge fish tank while the other side was built into the sturdy rock surrounding the island. The best part about it was the complete solitude. This was the one place Ren could come where nothing paranormal could touch him except for Storm’s time jumping ability.

      At first, he’d thought Storm was only in his mid-twenties, but after knowing him for over ten years, Storm had never aged a single day so he wondered just how long Storm had been around. Rin’s own aging had even slowed down because he spent so much time near Storm and his power.

      Ren flinched when a voice jerked him from his musing.

      “I’ve just made you the proud owner of one of the oldest houses in LA,” Storm announced as he appeared at the end of the long pier that stretched out from his island. He smirked seeing Ren almost jump out of his skin.

      “Damn it, will you please make a noise when you pop out of nowhere like that?” Ren turned around and leaned back against the railing seeing the satisfied look in Storm’s face.

      “You were expecting someone else?” Storm laughed.

      Ren just gave him a deadpan look since no one else had ever stepped foot on his island. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why did you buy me an old rundown shack? It’s not even my birthday.”

      Without warning, Storm reached out and gripped Ren’s shoulder and the ocean fell away leaving them standing in the grass and facing what could pass as a modern day gothic mansion made out of dark stone. Hearing the crash of waves, Ren looked off to the right seeing the ocean. Turning full circle, he frowned noticing the driveway went on as far as the eye could see and the left side was nothing but a thick forest of trees.

      “Not bad for a rundown shack,” Storm nodded toward the house, “Fifty ocean front acres and remodeled with every update. It’s hard to believe this used to be a small castle.

      “Not that hard,” Ren turned his head and stared at Storm, “What’s the catch?”

      “LA needs you,” Storm shrugged and started forward. “Can you not feel it?”

      Ren didn’t answer as he followed storm into the place. Truth was, his spider sense was telling him to run like hell. Los Angeles… so far it sounded more like a forced vacation.

      Once inside, he found himself in a huge circular space with an open winding staircase across the room leading to the next floor which split into two separate wings. Storm headed for the huge double doors on the right so Ren sighed and followed him.

      “Now this is more my style,” Ren breathed seeing wall to wall monitoring systems and a glass desk with the computer built right into it.

      “Thought you would like this,” Storm stretched out on the sofa that was set off by itself in an empty part of the huge room. He watched as Ren slid in behind the desk and started investigating the controls. “No one can trace you here except maybe you… and luckily, you don’t count.”

      Storm watched his friend's eyes glow as Ren hovered his palms inches above the keyboard. It was a strange power to have and he didn’t know anyone else who could do it but that’s how Ren could break through the PIT fire walls that were one hundred years more advanced than what the