Guardians of the Portals

by Nya Rawlyns

  Leonov would want to understand how Knutr managed shipments that got around every surveillance net, short-circuiting even his own wide-spread grid. Whether or not Knutr would violate Greyfalcon's most sacred trust was anyone's guess, but he had a good idea as to how this was going down. Betrayal wasn't new. The consequences were clear-cut. Justice was meted out with surgical precision. If he were a betting man, he'd go with Knutr spilling the beans about the Portals. He'd withhold just enough to control his own future and give himself the patina of being 'indispensible'.

  The rain failed to materialize. Shifts changed. Boredom and tedium took their toll. Two of the guards dozed fitfully while the third played games on his cell phone. The wall patrol passed with decreasing frequency. The lights in the house winked out, flaring on again in a different section, to his left and in his quadrant. Stupid to advertise movement within. A faint bluish light danced on the veranda off to his right. Likely the interior guard had fallen asleep in front of the TV.

  Time to move.

  Trey set his shields to absolute minimum. They would give him a few seconds' advantage. Not much but enough.

  The perimeter sentry approached, his rifle slung carelessly off his shoulder, eyes on the ground as he negotiated the verdant plant life. He fell in a heap, his body eased into the shadows along the wall. Moving soundlessly, Trey sidled along the near side of the bungalow, not bothering to duck under windows, his weak shielding enough to mask his passing.

  A short compact man of indeterminate age lolled in a deck chair, snoring fitfully. His taller comrade, perched against a large ceramic planter, jerked awake and felt in a pocket for cigarettes. He fell forward, his neck snapped. Trey held back a grunt as he eased the body to the ground. The dead man's comrade continued to loll in the chair, apparently asleep.

  Trey nodded in satisfaction. Three down.

  The third house guard had wandered off to a stand of bougainvillea on the west side of the small veranda to relieve himself. He zipped his pants and stretched backwards and sideways, then lit a cigarette before picking up his rifle. Ducking to avoid being caught in the brief flare of the match, Trey knocked aside a plaster garden ornament.

  The man muttered, "Chto yebut...?" as he flipped the rifle off his shoulder and swung the butt in a sharp arc, connecting with the point of Trey's left shoulder and pitching him off balance.

  Trey groaned as pain radiated down his arm and across his collar bone. He could almost feel the bones grinding against each other. He bit back the nausea and reached for his blade with the undamaged arm. Movement, and his perception of the advancing rifle stock angling toward his head and the final killing blow, slowed imperceptibly. He shrugged the rifle off his right shoulder and let it fall to the ground with a soft thud. He managed to turn away from his attacker, presenting the damaged arm as a target, swallowing the pain and bile as the stock connected with blinding force, sending him sprawling onto the sandy surface.

  His body's stasis field threatened to bury him in her sweet embrace, lulling him into nothingness to repair and dream a sleepless dream. He fought it, her, the link. Everything pulled or pushed, pressed or hammered, never releasing, never freeing him. He felt rather than heard the pounding of booted feet. The outer guard, running on a hard surface. The driveway curved at the front of the house, leading to an overhang, a shelter from the hot sun. He'd be coming by way of the narrow flagstone walkway outlining the perimeter.

  Hard hands grasped his collar and yanked him to a sitting position. The pain was almost unbearable. Almost. It took all he had to fight his body's final flight into safety. The blade lay sheathed at his waist, tucked out of sight by his right arm. He balanced against doing a face plant on the close-cropped Bermuda grass, bracing with the good hand.

  The blue light from the television flicked to a wash of soft yellow followed by a glare of halogen floods that ignited the grounds in a magnesium flare, blinding everyone. The advancing sentry yelled something in guttural Russian. The floods kicked off, leaving the veranda lit in a rectangle of pale light, more than enough to establish his incapacity.

  Head and arm throbbing, Trey floated in and out of consciousness, aware only of three pairs of booted feet standing in a semi-circle. He barely registered the lift and thrust, nor did he record the excruciating stab of pain as a boot impacted on his broken arm and collar bone. He felt the trickle of blood, warm and oddly soothing, and thought of Caitlin and how she'd tended to him in the cave.

  "This one is pretty. Can I have him, Pasha?"

  "Maybe later, faggot. Get him inside. I hafta call the boss." The man called Pasha pulled his cell phone from a pocket and hit speed dial. The feet turned away, heading toward the driveway.

  "Come on, fairy. Give me a hand. I don't think this one's gonna be walking much on his own."

  The two pairs of boots advanced to either side of Trey's legs. Strong hands lifted him easily off the ground. Weight lifters. He massed far more than ordinary humans. It should not have been that easy to pick him up. A hand strayed to his privates and he cringed involuntarily. The other one laughed and mumbled something.

  As they dragged him into the bungalow and through the small den to a hallway leading to the rear of the house, he prayed to Freyja to give him the strength to carry on. The sadist on his left jerked on his broken arm with every step. They stopped at a door at the far end of the hall. The pervert fumbled with a key, unlatched the door and stepped aside. The sadist gave his shoulder one last twist.

  He fell onto the tiled floor, unconscious before he hit the ground.

  ****

  "Falcon? Come on, man, wake up. Don't do this thing again. I need you."

  Trey floated slowly to the surface. His body temps had soared while in stasis, leaving him clammy and coated with sweat. He shivered once. Only once. It would be days before his shoulder would function again, if ever. He'd never felt such searing agony, not even gut wounds came close to the feel of hot nails poking his flesh with every breath. Movement would be problematic. He wanted nothing more than to return to a comatose state but the voice insisted otherwise. He recognized the speaker. Kieran? But it might be a dream. He'd dreamt of her, holding her once more, the feel of her flesh on his, so thin and fragile and his alone. But no longer. He drifted.

  "Falcon," the stranger-friend pleaded, "please, I can't do this anymore."

  The sound of metal grating, a door opened. Shut. Footsteps, soft, slippered. Noiseless. A dream. Perhaps it was her. She would lie next to him and keep him safe from himself. His mate understood the pain—why he'd done it.

  He shifted, his eyes squinting through lashes coated with grit, unable to focus. The feet shuffled next to his position, a twinge as rough hands pinched, then the sharp shock and an agonized moan that came from somewhere in the room. Surely not from him. He lost focus and through a haze saw the needle, heard the moan trail to an 'umm' of contentment and the slap of flesh-to-flesh, the final bellow of triumph.

  He faded on memories of Bryn and the slick glide of the blade as he'd gutted his brother.

  ****

  "No, I don't know how he found us. But I assure you. He doesn't belong to either. And drugging him won't work. Not once he's healed." Knutr held the cell phone away from his ear, his face a mask of disgust. "Yes, I will find out everything I can." He flipped the phone closed and stood over the prone figure.

  "Trey. Wake up."

  "Did you bring it?" The voice whined and choked, the cough rasping, harsh. "I need it. Please?"

  "Yes, yes. I have it. How my cousin ever put up with you I'll never know." He handed the syringe to the pathetic creature huddled on the cot opposite Trey. Leonov had balked at giving product away, especially to a commodity that had failed to prove his worth. Knutr was hard-pressed to convince the Russian that Kieran had extraordinary gifts, if they could get his addiction regulated and under their control.

  Knutr glared at Kieran. "What did they do to him for crying out loud? He's a mess." The short, stocky man pulled the sheet away a
nd grimaced at blood and other substances coating the bottom sheet.

  Kieran expertly tied the tourniquet, holding an end with his teeth as he slid the needle into a prominent vein. Hitching his head he dislodged the band, letting it and the syringe roll off the side of the cot onto a filthy tiled floor littered with the detritus of the terminally lost.

  Kieran murmured, "Maltsev," as he drifted into his private hell.

  Knutr swore, "Gods damn that pervert. Fuck, fuck, fuck." He shook Trey's shoulder hard. He might as well have been talking to a corpse. Turning on his heel he strode out the door, leaving the bored guard to lock up after him.

  He stormed into the small alcove that functioned as a utilitarian kitchen. A brown-haired, middle-aged man sat at the counter taking a gulp from a can of beer. He looked up from a newspaper he'd been perusing and sneered at the interruption. Knutr ignored him and leaned over the counter to press a finger into the man's barrel chest.

  "You tell Maltsev he's not to go in there again. If he touches either one of them, I will personally cut off his balls and feed them to the sharks."

  The burly man shrugged and mumbled, "Yob tvoiu mat'."

  "I'm not kidding. If that little pizda so much as blinks at either of them, I'm calling Leonov. Maybe he'll put the two of you together in a cell, then we'll see how well you get along with that perv."

  The man gave him a gap-toothed smile and went back to reading his newspaper. Knutr stomped to his bedroom. He tried to get back to his research but couldn't shake the images from Trey's induction into manhood and the look on Bryn's face when the boy, at the tender age of twelve, finally became a man. Even amongst his brothers, the blonde giant was often taunted that he'd accepted argaskattr, inevitably bringing disgrace to his father and his clan mates. His proclivities had been an open secret but Gunnarr had turned a blind eye, as he often did with sons who had proven themselves through blood lust.

  When Trey had returned to the fold, Gunnarr had not insisted on a traditional punishment for one accused of fratricide. To Knutr that indicated he'd been aware of, at least on some level, what Trey had experienced under the guise of Bryn's brotherly love and trust. Gutting his older brother had been an act of self-defense, true, but the lack of remorse was telling. From hero-worship to murder, it was a huge step even in their harsh world. He had no doubt that the man they called the Falcon would morph into a demon of unimaginable fury when he awoke and realized that he'd been, once again, a victim of klámhogg, a rape of body as well as spirit.

  Until then he had to keep the Neanderthals at bay while Trey healed enough to listen to a proposition that would benefit them both.

  He needed Kieran's talents. Not even Trey, as strong and canny a warrior as he was, could match the preternatural abilities of the wastrel.

  Without Kieran he could not take down Gunnarr and assume his rightful place at the head of Greyfalcon. He fussed with a syringe, before heading down the hall.

  It was time to wake the Falcon and send him airborne to hunt.

  Chapter Twelve

  "I don't like it."

  "Trust me, son. I don't like it either. But we have no choice. We can't do this ourselves. I'd rather your people than his." Jake set the M-16 on the picnic table and lit a cigarette.

  Wolf stalked the edge of the clearing, his brow creased in irritation. Low clouds skudded across the horizon as a brisk on-shore breeze kicked up whitecaps on the bay. They'd picked the spot with care. Few visitors came to the National Seashore in winter. Jake had brought Caitlin across with a shallow-bottomed Bass boat. He'd parked O'Brien's Jeep in a lot far enough away to be inconspicuous. They were as ready as they'd ever be.

  "They're coming." Jake tilted his head and touched his nose, a signal to his daughter who hunkered in a dense stand of trees. "She's good, boy. Almost as good as me."

  "I don't want her in harm's way."

  "Get used to it."

  The 'ffpt, ffpt' of the copter settled into a steady whine, almost overshadowing the chug of a marine diesel on slow approach from the northeast.

  Wolf cocked his head in the direction of the bay and muttered, "Fuck."

  Jake said, "We allowed for that. Caty's got your back. I'm on bayside." He shouldered the rifle and melted into the brush, heading south toward the narrow spit that curled around the shallow inlet. He'd have a clear bead on anything going down from that angle.

  Wolf stood at rigid attention and watched the two men approach cautiously, eyes sweeping the area, weapons at the ready. Eirik had armed his men with state-of-the-art Steyr AUG assault rifles. He didn't recognize the advance party. They had the look of well-trained commandos, moving as a unit. As the men in front of him split and circled his position, he sensed rather than heard the rear group sweeping through the thinner brush lining the clearing. The sandy surface made for a quiet approach. He was effectively surrounded.

  Jake's voice vibrated in his skull, the sub-harmonics jarring his nerves. Three. That left one in the boat. Two in front, probably two more he couldn't see. Tyr was taking no chances. He was Eirik's next-in-line, supposedly distantly related and bound by a blood oath. Eirik had no legal offspring that anyone knew about, leaving his closest friend and fellow traveler through the minefield of Althing politics and cultural imperatives the obvious choice. They, the jarls, would have convened via conference call and come to an accord, leaving the messy business of democratic voting as an afterthought for calmer times. Tyr had always paid lip service to convention—more so than some other clan leaders—making it unlikely he'd be challenged, though Wolf often wondered at the quiet machinations required to keep the wheels greased.

  Hands from behind patted him down. He'd taken care to appear vulnerable and acquiescent. He'd been Eirik's man. With his patron gone, he fell into loose cannon territory. No doubt his men had already been conscripted and reassigned. He was thankful none of them had been deployed on this mission. The last thing he needed was for them to see their Captain kissing corporate ass.

  "Liuthr. I apologize for the show of force. These are hard times and we must exercise caution." Tyr nodded to the wood bench, inviting him to sit. "Please, join me. Let's get this unpleasantness behind us."

  Wolf sat gingerly, organizing his thoughts one last time. He needed to be sure of the timeline and the congruence of purpose before he laid all his cards on the table. If he gave away too much they could simply cut him down, though given their limited manpower resources it was more likely he'd be reassigned to a desk job, keeping him close until his loyalties could be ascertained. For now he was a threat, an extremely dangerous one.

  Wolf quickly recapped events as he understood them. He added details gleaned from Jake but carefully avoided any mention of Caitlin or her whereabouts. Tyr listened attentively, asked for clarification on several points, and skirted around the issue of 'the asset'. No one had any doubt that she was the trump card in all negotiations. Wolf understood that none of them must know about his bonding to the woman, for that simple fact would become a game changer for all concerned. And not to his or Caitlin's benefit. He had no wish for himself and his mate to become glorified breeders and lab rats for the rest of eternity.

  Tyr asked, "Are you certain about Trey? Can you trust your source?"

  "Yes."

  "Would you mind explaining...?" Tyr looked up at the compact older man advancing confidently, weapon slung casually off his right shoulder. He raised a brow at Wolf and peered furtively into the brush, fully expecting his men to materialize by his side. When they didn't, he squirmed in his seat and took a deep breath. Like a true politician he chose to ignore the painfully obvious and pressed on.

  "So, I assume this is your 'trusted source'." A statement of fact.

  Wolf was impressed with the new gothi's quick assessment of the situation and willingness to continue under radically altered odds. Unless... He glanced at Jake who nodded his understanding and backed toward bayside, rifle at the ready. Tyr had always been full of surprises, forever keeping the mild-mannered E
irik on his toes. It would be best not to underestimate the man.

  Jake mumbled 'another boat' and 'damn' as he melted into the woods. Wolf resisted the urge to glance toward the eastern edge of the clearing where Caitlin sheltered with her sniper rifle.

  "She's here, isn't she?"

  "Who?"

  "Don't play games with me, Liuthr. You never were any good at lying, even to save your soul."

  Tyr stood and walked toward the center of the clearing. He was built much like Eirik, same height and coloring, the same square jaw and slightly florid complexion. Whether or not he was capable of the same tenacity and cleverness of his cousin remained to be seen. For Wolf, how Tyr ruled the Althings was less important than the agenda he planned to carry forward. A point they had yet to establish.

  Wolf rose from the bench and approached the man. "What's your play, Tyr?"

  "Gothi Tyr."

  "Not until we come to an agreement."

  "Your information is intriguing and I'm impressed that you have access to some of the inner workings of Greyfalcon. Eirik was our only point of contact with Gunnarr. With him gone," Tyr's voice hitched and he coughed to mask the emotion clogging his throat, "we can no longer predict, with the same level of confidence, what that group plans to do."

  "You understand that Greyfalcon isn't the only player." Tyr's face remained impassive but his eyes turned hard and brittle. He continued, "I think you are already aware of the threat from that corner."

  "Ah, yes, Leonov. The man has become a force. We are evaluating his position in this affair."

  "The Mafiya had Knutr in their pocket. They are more than a bunch of common thugs. He has trained men, ex-KGB for sure, possibly some Chechen. All well-armed and well-funded. Leonov doesn't want to just take over Greyfalcon. We think he knows, or guesses, that we control the Portals. He might not understand completely what that means. All he needs to know is that Gunnarr has a way to circumvent the authorities, a nearly fool-proof device to move arms and personnel to wherever on this gods-damned planet he wants."