Page 11 of Crazy as Hell

Viktor wanted to believe them, but guilt wasn’t always rational. Logic told him he hadn’t failed them, yet his heart insisted otherwise. Every friend who had fallen, every warrior who had trusted his leadership, every life forever changed by that war became another weight he carried in silence. No amount of reassurance could erase the conviction that somehow, some way, he should have seen it coming.

While he didn’t miss living under the ruling gods in the Celestial Realm, he did regret leaving the home he had shared with his family. He could have recreated a version of it in the Hell Realm just to keep their memory close, but that felt too disrespectful. Besides, even after spending centuries in the Hell Realm, he’d always felt like an intruder there.

When his friend, Killian Black, a powerful reaper and the leader of the Guardians of the Underworld, approached him with an offer to relocate to the Human Realm and become a guardian, Viktor hadn’t needed much convincing. A fresh start in a new realm, far removed from the painful reminders of his past, was exactly what he needed.

The opportunity offered something even more valuable than a change of scenery. His premonitions, which had so often burdened him with glimpses of disasters and other future events, could be used to protect others before tragedy struck. It was a chance to serve a greater purpose. To save lives, and perhaps, in some small way, atone for all the people he hadn’t been able to save.

He’d been an investigator for the Guardians for centuries, traveling all over the Human Realm to check out magical anomalies and potential threats. Most of the time, he would do the initial assessment of a situation, and once he had enough evidence to deem it a credible threat, he would pass the information off to the local guardians to handle. He could have done more, but he had found it best if he kept a relative distance from the cases he worked so his premonitions wouldn’t be affected.

He enjoyed the autonomy of working alone, and the freedom of choosing what he was doing and where he went next. It gave him the power to shift and change his itinerary at will. Sometimes his premonitions overlapped, and he had to rank his investigations by priority level.

Other times, he went months without having a single vision.

During those times, he could either take a break or follow up on some of the other guardians’ reports. It wasn’t like having a normal job where he had a set schedule. Since he’d had a lot of downtime recently, he had been asked to train a new investigator. His instincts had warned him not to do it, but he had given in since it was a favor for an old friend.

Taking on Cassian Daga as his new assistant should have been a straightforward assignment. In theory, all Viktor had to do was show him the ropes and make sure he survived long enough to become a useful, independent investigator. Unfortunately, nothing involving magic was ever that simple.

Cassian was an angel-fae hybrid who had served as a guardian for a few decades, earning a reputation as someone who threw himself into every case with relentless determination. He was intelligent, capable, and genuinely wanted to help people. Those qualities would have made him an excellent investigator, if they weren’t paired with an almost reckless devotion to doing what he believed was right.

The problem was that Cassian viewed the world in absolutes. Justice mattered more than politics. Saving one innocent life outweighed any strategic compromise, and he had an unfortunate habit of charging toward danger before considering all of the consequences.

To Viktor, that wasn’t courage.

It was inexperience disguised as conviction.

Viktor thought the younger guardian would have fit better working with the Supernatural Council than with the Guardians of the Underworld. He felt Cassian would do better following a specific set of rules and guidelines, and the Council certainly had enough of those.

On the other hand, the Guardians operated in the gray spaces where impossible choices were part of the job description. Their duty wasn’t simply to uphold justice. It was to preserve the balance between the supernatural and human communities, even when those decisions required violence and bloodshed.

A guardian had to be adaptable and clear-headed, and an investigator working alone needed to understand that more freedom to act also meant more responsibility. Every reckless decision Cassian made had the potential to affect not just him and the people involved in the case, but also the other guardians he might send into dangerous situations.

Where Cassian served wasn’t Viktor’s decision to make, though. His only concerns were to keep the hybrid alive, sharpen his skills, and hone his instincts. And if he was lucky, he could somehow teach him to thoroughly think things through before acting.

But that was easier said than done.

Their current assignment proved that.

Tracking the magical black market network was an ongoing issue. It had plagued the realms for centuries, growing into a sprawling criminal network that refused to stay dead. Every time the Guardians or the Supernatural Council dismantled one operation, two more seemed to emerge somewhere else. It was less like fighting an organization and more like battling a hydra.

Cut off one head, and two more inevitably took its place.

The magical black market adapted faster than anyone could eradicate it. And new buyers were always emerging, willing to spend a lot of money or trade precious items for what they wanted. The Guardians had spent countless hours tracking the different operations, trying to put together a comprehensive map of all the different arms of the organization.

Unfortunately, they seemed to add more cells than they had eradicated.

The traffickers dealt in nearly every form of forbidden magic imaginable. Harmful charms and spells designed to manipulate emotions were sold at high prices, along with curses and hexes capable of destroying bloodlines. Secret auctions catered to the wealthiest and most ruthless buyers, offering enchanted weapons, rare magical ingredients, stolen artifacts, and ancient relics that should never again see the light of day.

Some of the merchandise was merely rare, valuable to collectors with more money than morality. Other items were catastrophically dangerous. They were objects that could erase memories, imprison souls, corrupt magic, or rewrite the threads of fate itself. In the wrong hands, some artifacts could destabilize kingdoms or ignite wars, while others had the power to alter destinies.

Those were the items Viktor worried about most.

Power could always be abused, but objects capable of reshaping fate had consequences that extended far beyond the individual who possessed them. One careless transaction made in the shadows could ripple across the realms, creating disasters no one saw coming. Except for someone like him, who was born with the ability to see glimpses of the future.

The trafficking ring had quickly become one of his highest priorities after intelligence suggested the organization had recently acquired several powerful relics. The magical items were capable of causing devastating damage if they fell into the wrong hands, it was vital to recover those items before they wreaked havoc on the supernatural and human communities.

While he’d been studying the data, Viktor had a premonition that showed him fleeting glimpses of an exclusive auction hidden behind layers of magic and secrecy. Wealthy bidders sat in elegant chairs, paddles raised as priceless treasures changed hands. The vision was fragmented, but one thing was unmistakable. It was a chance to recover several dangerous items and take down some high-value targets.

Finding out where the auction was being held proved to be more difficult than expected. Since he wasn’t able to decipher the exact location from his vision, they’d switched their efforts to tracking down the traffickers he’d seen in his premonition. It had taken days before they had traced one of the traffickers to an area outside of Seattle.