Guardian's Joy #3

by Jacqueline Rhoades

  “Being stuck with a guy you don’t like for twenty years sucks. I don’t think I like this mating business.” Nardo had mentioned mating in the War Room. He needed to know she wasn’t interested.

  Nardo took another bite of donut and shrugged. “We’re a long lived people, so twenty years isn’t that long. I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. Most people are happy with their matings and they renew their vows over and over and then there are the ones who find their true mates, like Canaan and Grace or Nico and Hope. That’s a blood bond and can never be broken. Their roses are red.”

  Nardo stared at her with an intensity she found disconcerting. She was going to sleep with him. She knew that, but she couldn’t think of anything beyond it.

  “You never answered my question,” she said, bringing the conversation back to its beginning and away from things that made her uncomfortable.

  “Ahh, my grandfather was a retired Guardian. He lost his leg in a demon uprising up in the Aleutians during World War Two.” At her surprised look, he laughed. “We heal quickly, but we don’t grow new limbs. He came to live with us. Neither of my parents liked it. They’re both die hard pacifists, but the free babysitting was hard to turn down. Technically, they took good care of me, but they never had much time for me. My grandfather did. I grew up on stories about the Guardians. I also grew up in a high tech environment. It wasn’t until I heard about Canaan that I found a way to combine the two.”

  JJ nodded as if she understood, but she didn’t. She’d never had an adult in her life she completely trusted. From her earliest memories, even her mother, who loved her, was irresponsible and JJ sometimes felt like their roles were reversed. She glanced at her watch and then offered Nardo the last donut.

  “It’s been real, but it’s time to go.”

  A young couple exited the building when JJ and Nardo were at the bottom of the steps and Nardo leapt to grab the closing door.

  “Lucky catch,” he grinned, “I wasn’t sure how we were going to get past the security door.”

  “You get someone to buzz you in,” JJ told him. She’d done it before when she needed a place to get out of the weather. “You pretend you’re pizza delivery with the wrong apartment number. Bug ‘em enough and they’ll let you in.”

  “Too late for that. Humans tend to get a little grumpy when you wake them up at four in the morning.”

  “Oh please,” JJ said with a roll of her eyes, “This place is loaded with others, I mean Paenitentia. Almost every light is on in every apartment and those two joggers were like you.” She laughed at Nardo’s surprise. “I’ve always been able to recognize otherness. That’s what I called it before I met you… and the other Guardians of course.”

  “Clever girl. Where’d you learn to do that pizza delivery thing?” He sounded casually curious. He pulled out a wallet of picks and set to work as soon as they found the right door.

  “It’s a long story.” JJ waved his question off. She silently watched him work the picks and thought the subject closed until he spoke without removing his eyes from the lock.

  “Go ahead. Spill. I can listen and work at the same time.”

  Okay, it’s no big deal. Give him the gist and leave out the details. “When I first woke up, I was alone.” She snorted softly. Yeah, alone and naked and sprawled on a twenty foot pile of trash. It was the sound of garbage trucks that woke her. “I knew my name and remembered everything up until I was twelve. Everything after that was gone.” Except the knowledge that someone tried to kill me, but that idea might have come because someone had thrown me away like a piece of garbage. “I figured out pretty quick that I couldn’t earn my living the way a lot of young girls on the street do. Because I tried and failed. “I was homeless and buildings like this sometimes have good places to hide and stay warm.”

  Nardo opened the door just as JJ laughed. It was a strange laugh, bitter and filled with pain.

  “I stayed in a dead guy’s apartment once for six months.” Nardo’s head snapped up and she laughed again at his horrified expression. John had looked just like that when she first told him. “The dead guy wasn’t there. I overheard two of his neighbors talking at a Laundromat I used to hang out in.” Should I tell him how warm those places are, how I folded other people’s laundry so the night clerk would think it was mine?

  She started in the kitchen, looking through drawers and cabinets. Everything was freakishly neat. Even the canned goods were lined up in alphabetical order. “They were saying it could take months before the apartment could be put up for sale and he had no immediate family to settle the estate. And how there was nothing that could be done because his fees we prepaid to the end of the year.”

  This wasn’t a guy who would leave notes or phone numbers lying around. She checked under the sink; cleaning supplies and a spotless, empty trash can.

  “Thanks to Henry Johnson, I had an address. I had time to get a birth certificate, a driver’s license and all the stuff you need to get a job. And then I found this high school on the internet where I could get a diploma instead of a GED. Took me two days to hitch rides, but I made it and I passed the test. A week after I got my diploma in the mail, I came home to a moving van out front.” Once more her life was nothing but trash. “I lost all my stuff, but I had a job and money and…” She wanted to sound as strong and brave as when she’d told the story to John, but her voice hitched and she couldn’t speak.

  Nardo had been listening to her talk while he searched through the drawers and pigeon holes in an old roll top desk, but now he looked up at her choked silence. Her face was a mask of pain and she was fighting for control. He left the desk and went to her, touching her shoulder in concern.

  “What is it?” he asked quietly.

  JJ shook her head and tried to push his hand away. She didn’t want his sympathy and pity. She didn’t need it.

  Nardo wasn’t about to leave her alone. She was his whether she admitted it or not and it was his responsibility to share her pain, help her carry the burden, and give her comfort. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him.

  “Tell me,” he said. Not an order exactly, yet his tone left no room for her to refuse.

  JJ remained stiff against his chest, her head held over his heart. The steady beat of it steadied her and the deep rise and fall of his breathing infused her with calm. His hard body pressed against hers was like a rock she could cling to and lean on. How was it he could affect her like this? He somehow made her recall all the pain in her life, yet a touch of his hand soothed it away. Nardo was a pillar of duty and honor. She instinctively trusted him. And she was so, so tired of facing her life alone. She felt herself melting against him and her arms slipped around his waist. Her fingers traced the knife sheath along his spine. That comforted her, too. Nardo was such a Boy Scout, always prepared.

  “That’s it, baby, hold on to me. Whatever it is, it’s all right. We’ll make it all right.”

  “I made him up,” she whispered, telling him something she’d never told John. “The dead man, Henry Johnson. I pretended he was alive, that he was my uncle. I made up stories about him for the people I worked with at the coffee shop. I kept his home spotless so he would be pleased and I jotted down reminders of things to tell him about when he came home. I wanted a dead man to be proud of me.” She closed her eyes. “How’s that for weak and pathetic?”

  “Seems to me you were strong and resourceful,” he said and his voice was as calm and solid as the arms that held her. “You were lost and alone and if you needed that fantasy to keep you going, what’s the harm in that? What’s pathetic is that someone put a young girl in that position not that the young girl survived it.”

  She looked up into Nardo’s eyes. “I wanted someone to love me. I wanted somewhere to belong.”

  “And now you have those things. You have me and the House.” He said it so matter-of-factly.

  He held her against him for another few minutes and then he held her away. “We have work to do and time i
s running short. You take the bedroom. I’ll finish up here.”

  She nodded and turned to go. Nardo’s hand slid down her arm and grasped her hand. He lifted it to his lips and whispered against it.

  “You’ll spend today with me and all your days to come. I won’t let you be alone again. Not ever. And that’s a promise.”

  JJ could only nod once more. She wanted to believe him, knew he was sincere, but her history said otherwise. She was destined to be alone.

  The bedroom was as regimentally tidy as the living area. In the closet, the clothes and their hangers were evenly spaced with a few empties pressed close to the wall. It would be difficult to tell if anything was missing, but if it was, it would be easy to describe. All the slacks were olive drab cargos and all the t-shirts were a matching camouflage. The single pair of boots was a highly polished military style. At the end of the row was a light weight jacket also olive drab. JJ pulled the sleeve out to get a better look at the insignia near the shoulder.

  “Nardo! I’ve found something!” JJ held it out to him with shaking hands. “This is the symbol I remember; the lilies cleaved by the sword.” Beneath the lilies, the ribbon banner read, Nonveniae.

  Nardo took the jacket from its hanger and checked the pockets where he found two gold toned coins. They were larger than quarters and their flattened edges formed an octagon. Both were imprinted with the same design as the jacket patch. On the reverse was a raised fist closed around what appeared to be a heart circled by the Latin words Nobis Pignus and Sanguinem Nostrum.

  “Our pledge, our blood,” Nardo translated. He hefted the coins in his hand. “I think these are real gold. We need to get them back to the House.”

  “We need to get back to the last apartment,” JJ contradicted. “I think I saw those coins in a jar of change by the bed. I thought they were game tokens like they use at an arcade. I might be wrong, but it’s worth taking a look.”

  A quick look at the second bedroom yielded nothing more. It was as spotless as the rest of the place and filled with professional looking exercise equipment. If this stuff was regularly used, and Nardo suspected it was, then this guy was in great shape.

  They weren’t two blocks away from the apartment when three men rounded the corner. Two were dressed in clothes like those in the closet though their jackets were heavier winter wear. The guy between them was taller, broader and his fatigues were solid black.

  JJ blinked and tried to refocus on the guy in the center. Even at this distance, she could see the features of the outside guys, but her vision blurred over the guy in black.

  “I think we’re about to meet occupant Number Five,” Nardo said.

  The words were barely out of his mouth when one of the men yelled “Guardian!” and JJ yelled “Gun!”

  Chapter 25

  No muzzle flash, no report, just the thunk of crushing metal as the round hit the car beside them. Nardo grabbed JJ’s arm and dragged her behind the vehicle though their assailants were already running in the opposite direction. He handed her his phone.

  “Hit two. Tell them where we are and stay here,” he ordered. He was gone in a flash of white light, following the attackers around the corner.

  The speed with which he moved was incredible. Stunned, JJ pressed the button and reported in as if she was still on the force. Someone said hello and she rattled off their names, the code for an armed perp and requested back-up at the address. And then she ran, snapping the phone shut and shoving it in her pocket as she rounded the corner where Nardo had turned. Stay there while he went up against a three on one? Bullshit!

  She ran up the side street checking each short dead end that branched to the left or right, having no idea of how far the four men ran. A shout and a body flying into the street pinpointed her destination.

  It was a camouflage guy who slid on his back across the pavement and into the curb on the opposite side. At the speed with which he hit, he shouldn’t have been able to rise, but as JJ ran forward, he rolled to his feet and shook his head. She wasn’t too surprised. She’d watched the twins wrestle and spar in the gym and do things to each other that would break the bones of a human. The shock came when he crawled to the middle of the road, reached out for what JJ realized was a gun.

  Time seemed to expand and each second slowed to a minute. Still running, JJ reached out her hand, felt the blue flame crackle and aimed for the man in the road. The flame sputtered and died. Panic bloomed. Her legs kept pumping, but she felt like she was standing still. She saw him fumble the gun, right it in his hand and rise to his knees. The gun came up.

  And slo-mo changed instantly to fast forward. JJ was running flat out, too fast to stop or change her trajectory. She lowered her shoulders and hit him with a flying tackle that was packed with her speed and weight behind it. Her extended right hand caught his wrist. She felt the hand clench, heard the pffft of the suppressed shot, saw the gun fly and a chip of brick explode from the corner of the nearest building. And then she was flying. The force of her blow brought the perp’s knees off the ground and hurled him sideways. JJ went sailing over his body. Her right knee caught his neck and his arm twisted in her grip.

  The combination saved her from skidding along the street on her face. Her left leg flew over his head and her foot hit the pavement as the right leg followed. She let go of his wrist as her body twisted and spun. And shit! The bastard was rising again. She used her arms to continue the momentum of the spin, kept her left foot on the pavement and struck out with her right. She caught his ear and cheek with the blow. His eyes rolled back in his head. He was down for the count.

  JJ glanced around wildly for the gun. It had disappeared and she didn’t have the time to waste searching under the nearby cars. She ran down the side street from which the perp had come, her heart pounding as loud in her ears as her feet on the pavement. The second camo guy was slumped in a doorway, his chin on his chest and his legs splayed. Blood ran from his upper right arm and pooled at his limp fingers.

  Nardo glanced up, expecting to see the return of the guard he’d tossed in that direction. Instead, he saw Joy. Shock, anger, and alarm boiled up from his gut and if the vampire hadn’t roared as he lashed out with his fist, Nardo’s head would have been splattered against the wall. He ducked and pushed off that wall with his foot and roared. His shoulder slammed into the vampire’s gut. It folded in the middle, staggered back a few steps, but didn’t go down. Instead, with a snarl, the vampire brought both arms down in a two handed fist on the small of Nardo’s back. His kidney exploded with pain, but instead of rising with it as the instinct to protect his back insisted he do, he bent further, grabbed the vampire’s calves and heaved upward. The vampire over balanced as Nardo lifted its legs into the air. Nardo threw himself backward and the two plowed into the wall behind them, the vampire taking the brunt of the crushing blow.

  “Joy! Go back!”

  Those few words cost him. The vampire rolled to his feet, grabbed Nardo around the neck and hurled him at the same wall. Feet up, the Guardian walked the wall. Six feet above the ground, he ran along the brick. The vampire was strong, more powerful than any demon Nardo had fought, but unlike the demons, he was slow. He couldn’t turn fast enough to follow Nardo’s run and lost his grip.

  Nardo pushed off and landed facing the vampire. He saw the creature, no longer called man, look past his shoulder to where Joy was coming toward them. It ran its tongue over fangs extended far beyond any Nardo had ever seen and then it smiled. It saw his Joy as nothing more than fresh meat. Enraged, Nardo snarled, stepped back and reached for the knife sheathed at his back. It was time to finish it.

  JJ heard Nardo call out and saw him thrown against the wall like a bundle of rags, saw him regain control and counter the move with remarkable speed and agility. His face and body were the same as when she first saw him; his features frozen in stone with short fangs extended, his body more developed and formidable than his normal ropy and muscular physique.

  The vampire, and there was no
doubt in her mind about what this creature was, stared at her and she had that same sense of double vision that struck her as the trio had walked around the corner. It was disconcerting and she glanced away to clear her vision only to catch sight of Camo II raising a wobbling gun in his left hand. It was aimed at Nardo’s exposed back.

  “No!” she screamed and threw herself at the man with the gun.

  Nardo heard the scream behind him. Joy! He turned and saw her throw herself at the injured guard, heard the gun go off with a soft pop of air and blood shoot out between the two bodies.

  “No!” he screamed in echo of her cry. And the vampire was on him, driving him to the ground, the creature’s fangs descending to his neck. He twisted away, but the immense strength of the thing held him in place. He brought his hands to its neck. Using all his considerable strength, he drove his thumbs into its windpipe and pushed. The maneuver gave him only enough room to wedge his knee between them. He forced the creature up, but couldn’t throw him off.

  “No!” JJ screamed again, but this time it was for Nardo with the vampire’s fangs just inched from his throat. She saw the vampire rise up and she threw out her hand as if her will alone could push the creature away.

  The blue current shot from her fingers and instantly enveloped the vampire. He reared up, stiff with the shock. Nardo kicked out, shoving it further away. He scrambled from beneath the creature as its mouth opened in a silent scream.