Angel's Guardian: A Contemporary Vampire Romance

by Zeecé Lugo

Max could hardly help the small twitch at the corner of his lips that threatened to erupt into full laughter. That would be a mistake, encouraging her familiarity. “Nina, it’s fall. The trees have few leaves. Would you like to see me sick like your mom? Who’d take care of you and little Marco then?”

  She looked at him with earnest, serious eyes and shook her head to say no. Her lips quivered, and he feared she would cry. He was convinced she practiced that too. Panic set in, prompting him to find alternatives that would stave the dreaded tears.

  “Come, let’s see what we can find on YouTube that you might like.” The little girl smiled and eagerly hopped on his lap. The scent of her hair, and the gentle thrum of her pulsing heartbeat immediately assaulted his vampire senses. He would need to feed tonight.

  He sighed in exasperation. How did he get into this mess? His peace and privacy were shot to hell, and his safe haven was a nursery for strange, needy children. The great, fierce vampire Maxim was now a babysitter outsmarted and manipulated by a six-year-old child.

  That evening when he went downstairs, he found the pallet was neatly packed and the parlor space empty. They’ve left. Joy, joy, joy! I’m alone again! The clink of glassware that came from the kitchen told him otherwise. No, no such luck. They were just extending the scope of their occupation. He strode purposefully to the kitchen, annoyance sparking a flash of anger.

  “Hi!” The woman greeted him with a wide, cheerful smile. While she still looked pale, she was not in the extreme pain she’d evidenced before. On the long, wooden counter were half a dozen glasses as well as plates, forks, and spoons. “I hope you don’t mind, but I looked through your cabinets and pulled these things. It looks like they’ve never been used, so I washed them.”

  “I had forgotten those things were there. Why did you take them out?”

  She looked confused by his question. “Because I should be cooking. We can’t keep eating hamburgers and nuggets for every meal. It’s not healthy for Nina.”

  He realized that the woman was right. Still, she had asked to stay until she was strong enough to walk and carry her baby. If she could wash dishes and cook, she could definitely walk and carry a baby. Maybe, she meant to have one healthy meal and then go. The thought cheered him up immensely.

  “I thought,” she continued cautiously, “that you could take me shopping for a few things. I told you I have a little money.”

  “Seems you’re well enough to move about.” He meant to imply that she was well enough to leave if she was well enough to go shopping.

  “I think I’ll be fine as long as I don’t overdo it. We really need food I can cook. I’d also like a large cardboard box that I can cut down and make a separate pallet for the baby.”

  Little Marco was sleeping on his tummy on a towel on top of the kitchen table. Max felt guilty. He should have seen to better accommodations for the baby, but in all fairness, he was not expecting or encouraging a long stay. He needed to be rid of them.

  Still, he was unwilling to throw them out to die after he’d saved their lives. His efforts and inconveniences up to this point could not go for nothing. What would a couple of days hurt?

  ******

  They looked like an average typical little family as they walked along the city sidewalk. Angel carried the baby, and Max held Nina’s little hand. The children were warm enough in their shabby but heavy winter wear, but Angel had to be cold in the oversized hoodie and rolled up sweat pants he’d pulled out from the bottom of his closet. She was too small for any of his coats.

  On a window display, there were mannequins wearing woman’s clothing. It was a boutique, and it was open late. Max walked up to the display and made a decision.

  “Come,” he said to a confused Angel who was reluctant to follow. “Come, you need a coat. What you’re wearing is pitiful, and it attracts unwanted attention.”

  Angel looked down at herself and blushed deeply. “Max, I need to try to keep my money for food.” A coat in that boutique will cost three times what I have in my wallet.”

  Max gave another exasperated sigh, one of many he’d given since rescuing the ragtag little family. “Don’t worry about money. I have plenty and don’t mind spending if it means getting you on your way and out of my hair. Come,” he insisted impatiently.

  When they left the shop, Angel was wearing a beautiful, long, gray, wool coat and matching scarf. She was also sporting a new pair of designer jeans and a stylish but warm, navy blue, wool pullover. She was mortified when Max took out his Visa to pay the exorbitant bill, but she also felt grateful to her guardian angel.

  “We need to find a place to shop for the kids. Nina has been wearing the same thing for days,” he said.

  “We have plenty of clothes at our room in the shelter, but it’s a risk going back. It’s probably being watched.”

  “It’s closing time for the shops. We were lucky to catch the boutique before it closed,” he said.

  “Is there a Walmart anywhere near?” Angel asked. “They stay open around-the-clock.”

  Now, why didn’t he think of that? Walmart was the answer to every vampire’s dream. It sold everything and was open all night. Before Walmart, vampires were forced to break into shops to find clothes or anything else needed, especially in the old days when most shops closed at five.

  It was lucky that shops were public places and not homes, and a vampire could enter without being invited in. He stepped out on the curb and signaled confidently to a cab. “To Walmart,” he told the cab driver.

  As they walked through the store, Angel pulled on Max’s arm to stop him. “Max, please, you keep putting things in the cart that I can’t afford. I will not be able to pay you back for this in years.”

  “You don’t have to pay me back,” he glared and spoke gruffly. “I’m making sure that you’re able to leave as soon as possible without making any excuses. The children need warm clothes so they don’t freeze in the winter cold. The baby needs a sleeping pen and a small stroller that you can easily push through the sidewalks. Nina needs things she can do during the day. If you’re going to cook, you need cooking utensils. You can take it all when you leave, as I won’t need it. I can assure you, I’m wealthy enough to afford this.”

  “All right, then.” Angel burst into tears.

  “Woman, stop that,” he snapped, looking around him in discomfort. “People will think I’m abusing you. You’ll draw attention to us,” he fumed. Her tears made him itchy, made him want to escape. “In a few days, you leave. I want to make sure you have what you need and no excuse to come back.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she cried, wiping her face with her hands. “It’s the postpartum hormones making me emotional.”

  “Max, look, they’re showing Frozen on the big TV! Can we look?” Nina pulled at his arm trying to drag him to the colorful, large screen. The colors were vibrant, almost blinding. She gazed as if entranced. “She’s a princess. She’s bootiful!”

  “You mean she’s beautiful,” the vampire corrected.

  “Yes, that’s what I said, bootiful.”

  He hired two cabs to return home. The flat screen TV and the groceries took one whole cab. The Roku would be great. He could open a Netflix account over the internet. That would keep Nina busy the next few days and out of his hair. He had meant to get a television set anyway, had thought about it for months. They could have the clothes, pots, dishes, baby things, but the TV was his.

  The playpen for the baby would keep him off the floor and the table. They could make themselves at home in the bottom floor and leave him alone in the second. He need not see them at all the next few days. The vampire was excited. He was tackling problems constantly and providing solutions.

  Nina, exhausted, fell asleep in the cab near midnight. The baby’s nappy was changed at the store, and he now slept deeply in his new carrier. Max would leave them all sleeping, and he would spend the rest of the night prowling the heights. He must not let his guard down. His enemies were watching, he feared.
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  CHAPTER 11

  The cold wind whipped at his hair and long, open trench coat, causing them to trail behind him. He roamed as he did on any given night, high up on the highest roof top, his eyes scouring the city below. It spread out beneath him, a sea of lights stretching into the distance, the movement of vehicles and people still heavy, hours past midnight. In truth, this city never slept. Once again, he thought, perfect for the night breeds.

  He could see the park easily, a distinct pool of darkness in a brilliant sea of lights. He leaped to the next roof top, beginning his trek to the park. There, lurking in the dark, waiting for hapless prey, the dross of human society could be found. That was Max’s prey of choice: robbers, rapists, murderers, drug dealers, addicts, the thugs for hire.

  As a vampire, Max had long ago accepted his nature. He stopped feeling guilt many, many years ago. The lion had to eat, so he killed. A vampire was no different. A living thing’s first directive was to keep living, to protect its right to survival.

  Vampires, as a rule, did not kill their prey. Once they tasted the prey's blood, they were able to enter the human's mind and manipulate it. They could calm the person, place them into a thrall, and make them forget the experience. It helped that a human being had so much blood, too. The amount the vamp took was about the same you'd donate at a blood bank, maybe a tad more.

  It made sense. One thousand vampires tearing through the world ripping throats on a nightly basis, would decimate the human population in a few years. Not only would they destroy their one food source, but they would become quickly discovered and hunted. The movies had it all wrong. They had the werewolves wrong too.

  Now, as a rule, they did not kill. There were sociopaths and psychopaths and ferals among vampires just as they existed among the humans. They were rare though, and as soon as one surfaced, it was hunted and executed by its own people. The vampire race was very careful to protect itself and the secret of its existence.

  Max had more than most to feel guilty about. He did kill when he hunted, but he felt justified because he hunted killers and other predators. He never killed indiscriminately, and never with his teeth. He would never take a chance on leaving evidence that his people existed.

  Still, some humans might consider him an animal. Max felt he was much more than an animal. He had self-awareness, self-determination, a mind superior to others. Surely, he had a purpose beyond mere existence. He fed in a way that contributed to the natural order. It made him feel worthier, noble.

  Tonight, he skirted the park and leaped over the wall to the zoo. He smelled it, the smell of a human carcass mixed with the sundry smells of animal dung, urine, hair, and secretions. It was a distinct sour tang that insulted his senses and made him want to spit.

  He donned his innate hunter’s cloak, his lethal vampire senses sharpening. His pupils dilated, his nose twitched to the slightest breeze, his ears perked to the night noises. From a cage came a screech, joined at once by many screeches. Something had disturbed the small primates. Max sped with absolute silence towards the disturbance. By the primate cage, he slid down to the ground and behind a shrub.

  The man carried the dark bundle over his shoulder. He stopped momentarily and peered about him in the dark, obviously trying to get his bearing and readjusting the load. Taking out a tiny LED flashlight, he trained it on the trail but only momentarily before turning it off.

  The vampire followed the man silently and with utmost stealth. The human carcass he smelled was carried on the man’s shoulder. They just passed the snow monkeys’ exhibit. Max guessed the man was headed for the grizzly bears. They ate mostly anything, including dead animals.

  Max veered off and found his way quickly across the intervening exhibits. He posed himself to await his prey. He watched as the dark figure bent over the bundle on the floor and pulled on the edge of the wrapping tarp to unroll it. In the very dim, pale light of the quarter moon, the naked, pale body of a young boy was visible with stark, pitiful clarity to his vampiric sight.

  The boy could be maybe twelve, thirteen years old. His clear eyes were open in an empty, unfocused gaze. There were dark bruises and cuts all over his body, but he was clean of blood, as if the killer had bathed or washed him after death. Max recalled the recent news of boys gone missing in the city. By chance, he may have happened upon the killer.

  Max watched the man bend to pick up the body. On the periphery of his sight, the killer perceived a presence. Startled at first, he exerted his considerable will and devious cunning, forcing himself to fake unawareness. He continued to fumble around the body, but he was getting himself in position for his next move.

  The man had not lived years hunting and killing without learning a few survival tricks of his own. Turning slightly to his left, his hand took hold of the sharp dagger hidden in his boot. Rising on a sudden and sharp turn, he viciously plunged the dagger deep into the belly of the vampire behind him.

  The vampire was shocked by the pain and agony the blade caused as it found his flesh. It had been years since he’d felt the true bite of a knife. How had he allowed this beast to get the better of him? He grasped the attacker’s wrist before he could twist the blade or rip in an upwards motion.

  Feeling the iron grip on his blade hand, the killer threw a powerful punch to the head with his other hand. In the mad fury caused by the searing pain, Max caught the fist in his hand and slowly, inexorably, brought it close to his mouth. His glowing eyes sought those of the shocked human, and he hissed like a venomous snake as he bared long, sharp fangs, and sank them into his attacker’s wrist.

  The child murderer tasted his own stark terror for the first time in his life. His eyes opened wide, his heart pounded in a surfeit of adrenaline, and he began to struggle desperately to free both his hands. Unable to break loose, he kicked and twisted. The vampire pulled his mouth away from the bleeding wrist. He forced the hand holding the dagger away from him, the dagger going with it.

  “What kind of monster are you?” asked the terrified human.

  “Unlike you, I’m a natural one,” answered the vampire as he forced the hand back slowly, on purpose, giving the killer time to taste his own terror. Max smelled the man’s fear as he saw his own death coming; it was a physical, powerful, sharp smell, like ammonia.

  It was later, when the man lay dead, eyes open to the sky to match his own victim’s eyes, that Max realized the smell was not fear. It was urine. The killer who so easily dealt death to the innocent for his own pleasure, had pissed himself at the coming of his own.

  CHAPTER 12

  Angel’s heart stumbled as Max came through the door, holding his hand to his midriff, covered in blood. The look on his face said he was in obvious pain. She ran to him, eager to help but not knowing what to do.

  “Oh, my God! You’re bleeding. What happened? How could this happen? What were you doing?” In her fear, she could not stop talking. He countered with a gruff question of his own.

  “Woman, why are you not resting? The sun isn’t up yet.”

  “I was using the bathroom. It’s by chance you find me up. Come, lie down in my pallet. Let me take a look.”

  His anger flared. He wanted privacy to deal with his meager injury. The last thing he needed was for Angel to see him as weak and in need of help.

  “Let me be, woman. This is a mere scratch. I can assure you, it is nothing. I need to be in my room. The sun will rise soon, and I need the dark. I fed well. I will heal during the day and be good as new by nightfall.” He glared at her angrily, hoping to disarm her of her annoying concern.

  “Is that how you were hurt? Feeding?”

  “No, I was hurt being stupid and over confident. Those are not just human failings. We tend to be guilty of them once in a while too. Not as often, I assure you.” He began to take off his trench coat and winced in pain.

  Undeterred, Angel slipped her shoulder under his arm to help him up the stairs. The disheveled and fierce-looking vampire gazed down at her with a look somewhere between fu
ry and disbelief. He pulled away from her as if her touch scalded him.

  “What are you doing, you insufferable, meddling creature? Are you seriously thinking I need your help to climb the stairs? The day I need a tiny, weak, human female to hold me up, I will walk into the sun and let it burn me to a crisp. Now, out of my way.”

  Angel remained silent, her dark eyes cautious and fearful, her feelings clearly hurt. Guilt peeked like a curious child over the wall around his heart. Unused to the emotion, the scruffy vampire humphed under his breath and looked away from the worried woman. She was probably thinking about her safety and her future, he thought. If something happened to him, she would once again be unprotected out in the world, easy prey for her enemies. Yes, that was surely it.

  “This little cut is nothing,” he insisted. “I could fight all night with a dozen such cuts. I have definitely done so in the past. I’m a warrior, a veteran of countless battles through the centuries, not some wimpy human.” He once again glared defiantly, willing her to say otherwise.

  “You’ll wake up Nina, and she’ll be terrified.”

  He looked across where the little girl slept on the corner mattress and felt a stab of guilt. “Sorry,” he muttered in a low, contrite voice before he stumped up the stairs with a lot of energy for a man in pain. Silently, she followed.

  “Lie down and let me look at it for you.”

  “What? You followed me to my room? Get out, get out!” he hollered, pointing at the door, his face red in his exasperation. “I’m about to undress, and if you’re not out of my room in ten seconds, I will not be responsible for what you see.”

  Angel stood firm, undaunted. “What, will I see something I haven’t seen before? I doubt it. A hairy bear would probably show more. Do you not know of the existence of scissors and razors?” Her eyes opened wide and her jaw clamped down as she waited for his retort.

  He had none.

  She helped him remove his coat and dark, bloody t-shirt. When she made to help him with his pants, he growled at her again. He turned his back on her and dropped his pants, cautious to step out of them and not bend. She was surprised to discover that he wore no underclothes.