The Guard

by Harri Aburrow-Newman

  “Rude.” I responded mildly, no heat in it.

  “I’m serious! You should lighten up when you have the chance. Drink, dance, kiss some of the men who were eyeing you up all night.”

  I pulled a face as he waggled his eyebrows at me.

  “Uh, no. Thanks. Not really my kind of thing.”

  “What, fun isn’t your thing?”

  I laughed at him,

  “No, drinking myself into oblivion is not my thing. Hangovers are not my thing. And men are certainly not my thing. None of those sound like ‘fun’ to me.”

  His eyebrows shot up,

  “Oh? But you’re too pretty to be a lesbian – you have long hair!”

  I glared at him and he held his hands up in mock surrender,

  “I kid, I kid! Please don’t kill me… you are though, right? That’s what you meant?”

  “I am what? Too pretty to be a lesbian?” I sniped at him.

  “Oh… pff…” he huffed, “you know what I mean.”

  I tutted at him,

  “Yes, Glen. I’m super gay.”

  The word fell awkwardly from my tongue and I pursed my lips a little as Glen observed me for a moment, a thoughtful look on his face. It was such a human word, and I realised it was probably the first time that I’d actually referred to myself using it. When I first fell in love with a woman, it meant something entirely different. But then, when I was turned into a vampire, the word “vampire” wasn’t used. So strange how arrangements of letters can carry so much weight. I snapped out of my musings as Glen spoke again, sounding annoyingly chipper.

  “Lisa’s gay.”

  “Uh, who? And so what?” I squinted at him suspiciously.

  “And single…” he trailed off, waggling his eyebrows again.

  “Oh lord, Glen, no. I really don’t want you playing matchmaker.”

  “Come ooon,” he wheedled, “if you don’t want to have fun at least let me have some by setting you up!”

  “No. Just drop it.” I growled at him, a sick feeling building in my stomach at the mere implication that someone other than Ysabel would touch me, which intensified as that image flipped to someone else touching her. A burning pain settled in my chest.

  “Up.” I snarled at Glen, sliding off of the bench and snatching up a wooden practice sword.

  “What?” he looked at me warily.

  “You’ve been sat on your ass long enough. As your partner’s tapped out, you can pair with me.” I kicked at his foot for emphasis, “move.”

  He scowled at me,

  “Tiny, evil demon lady.” He muttered as he pushed off the cabinet to follow me.

  “I heard that!” I shouted back over my shoulder as I marched onto the practice field.

  After a month of waiting around for something to happen; every day just doing drills, reading emails and listening to patrol reports, I was itching for some real action. The stabs of pain from not being with Ysabel were increasing by the day, and without a distraction soon, I thought I was actually going to go mad. I traipsed across base with Glen after training, determined to get Michael to let me do more now that our month of grace was up. It was time to start doing our job. I could feel Glen glancing at me as we walked, uncharacteristically quiet.

  “Spit it out, man.” I finally snapped at him, and he huffed a small laugh,

  “Just wondering what’s up. You’ve been pretty snippy the last couple of days, even by your standards.”

  “Are you sure you’re not just getting more sensitive?” I smirked at him, “I do kick your ass on a fairly regular basis, maybe I’ve finally put a hole in your ego.”

  “Oof, not a chance, little lady. It’ll take more than a couple of prods with a wooden sword to do that.” He grinned and rapped his knuckles against his chest, “I’ve spent years making it iron clad.”

  I chuckled and poked at his arm,

  “Feels pretty soft to me… I guess I’ll just have to hit you harder from now on though, just to make sure.”

  “You’re trying to damage my ego?” he shook his head, despair on his face, “so cruel. So, so cruel…”

  I shot him an evil grin.

  “Seriously, though…” he trailed off, his wounded expression fading.

  I sighed,

  “I’m just a little frustrated. I want to be doing something!”

  “You are doing something; you’re helping to turn this unit into something that can be a real threat to the vampires. We came into this with a group of men and women from different services, who had never worked together before… did you really expect to be able to throw them straight into a real-life combat situation?”

  “Well no, of course not. But there have been patrols going out all month, and Michael hasn’t let me go on a single one.”

  “You can’t blame him for being cautious… all we really have to go on is your word – “

  “You’ve seen me fight plenty of times!” I cut him off incredulously. He raised a hand and I shut my mouth with a snap.

  “We’ve seen you spar, in a controlled environment, against humans. AND!” he broke off briefly to glare at me as I opened my mouth to argue, “you still refuse to use a gun.”

  I threw my arms up in frustration, not having the will to argue about bloody guns again.

  “Just be patient. Michael’s willing to let you come on proper operations, and the better you do in them, the more of a role you’ll be allowed as time goes on.”

  I let out a slow breath through my nose, closing my eyes briefly as I tried again to summon the patience that Glen had suggested. Usually, it wasn’t a problem for vampires; when you live for centuries, you don’t mind taking your time over something. Training a new batch of the guard to an acceptable level took years, but Archer’s ferals were increasing in number every day, and every day the true vampires were being hunted closer and closer to extinction. We didn’t have the luxury of time being on our side anymore.

  Michael looked up from his laptop with a smile as we went in to his office and waved us into chairs.

  “So?” I asked immediately, “can we start killing vampires now?”

  He raised an eyebrow at me, and Glen rolled his eyes,

  “Yes.” Michael responded drily, “we can start killing vampires.”

  “Halle-bloody-lujah”, I muttered.

  “And you’ll be pleased to know that we already have our first target,” he continued, “there’s been a rash of disappearances reported, and the intelligence we’re getting from your people is suggesting that they might be being kept in this building.” He slid a piece of paper towards us, with a map and a slightly grainy photograph of a tall, abandoned-looking house with boarded up windows.

  “We’ve had our own surveillance on it as well, and there has been some vampire activity, so it’s worth a look. Up for it?”

  He gave me a challenging look and I grinned widely,

  “hell yes.”

  The plan was pretty basic; surround the building, enter all at the same time, kill the ferals, save the humans. So far, so simple. Although annoyingly, I was crouched outside the building, hiding in the shadows with the back-up, while the main team did the leg work. Despite my best efforts, I hadn’t been able to argue my way into anything else. It was this or stay at the base. I fidgeted where I knelt on one knee next to Glen, who had been assigned to babysit me, irritated by the unwieldy tactical vest I had been told to wear. It was ruching up under my chin, and sat awkwardly on my back, irritating the sensitive skin around my wing sheaths.

  “Will you keep still?” Glen hissed at me, not taking his eyes off of the target house.

  I sighed through my nose,

  “I’ve got an itch.”

  “Well suck it up, princess.”

  I started to retort, but at that moment, Michael, who was leading the team in the front, gave the signal to move in. They crashed through the door and quickly disappeared inside the house. I strained to hear what was going on, the sounds from inside the house were steady…
the men clearing the rooms quietly and efficiently. I couldn’t hear anything that would indicate there were ferals in there. I fidgeted again, unused to not being in on the action. Glen’s radio crackled and Michael’s voice came through,

  “House is clear and secure. No sign of any vampires or humans, but there is some evidence that there have been humans held captive here.”

  “What evidence?” I muttered to Glen, and he relayed my question.

  “Blood stains, human waste, doors with locks on the outside.”

  “But no bodies?”

  “Negative.”

  I frowned, thinking.

  “Vampires hate the smell of decay. Dead blood. If they’ve bothered to remove the bodies it means they’re planning on coming back. Probably with more supplies…” I trailed off,

  “Supplies?” Glen stared at me, “you mean more people?”

  “Exactly.”

  “We’re pulling out.” Michael’s voice came through once more.

  The teams that had entered the building were soon gathered in the street with us.

  “Beth, any idea when they might come back?” Michael looked to me.

  I shrugged,

  “could be tonight, could be next week. There’s not really any way to tell, although as they’ve cleared the bodies, I’m inclined to think sooner rather than later.”

  “And you’re sure they’ll be bringing more captives?”

  “It would make sense, as they’ve obviously had some success in keeping them here already.”

  “Well in that case, we can’t just leave it. We’ll set up an ambush. When they come back, we’ll be waiting for them.”

  The ferals came just after dark. I was again crouched in the street on one side of the house with Glen, with Michael and the rest of the soldiers spread across from us, hiding in the shadowy front gardens of the neighbouring houses. We assumed that the ferals would have captives with them, so rather than risk accidentally shooting one, we decided to let the ferals take them into the house and attack them when they came out again. If they didn’t come out, we would go back to our original plan and go in and clear them in the morning. They advanced towards us down the road, about fifteen fourth generations, five of them carrying the limp forms of human captives. Two ferals in the lead moved with more surety, and without the constant stream of venomous drool and gibbering coming from their mouths. Thirds, then. I whispered that information to Glen, leaning close to his ear, and he nodded once to acknowledge me. Then it seemed like we all held our breath… the slightest rustle, or even a lingering hint of someone’s shower gel could give us away. The third gens leading the pack slowed as they neared the house, sniffing the air and cocking their heads. They knew something wasn’t right. I felt Glen tense beside me. Carefully, oh so carefully, I pushed my mental shields outwards, suppressing a gasp as the simple act caused a ripple of pain to course through my head. I wrapped myself around the minds of the humans, barricading them from the questing senses of the ferals. The third generation had limited psychic abilities, limited abilities in general, really, but they might still be picking up on the twitchy, nervous energy coming from some of our soldiers. The ferals swung their grotesque faces to and fro for a moment longer, then carried on into the house with their captives. I breathed out a long, slow breath, keeping my shields extended with some effort. Glen touched my hand, and gave me a questioning look. I gave him a thumbs up and we settled down to wait again. The ferals emerged only a couple of minutes later, and started heading back the way they had come. We let them get a short distance away and then Michael stood with a yell and opened fire, followed a micro second later by everyone else. The ferals’ ever present chattering and gibbering turned into shrieks and they swung back towards us, barrelling through the hail of bullets. Some were knocked back and stayed down, the concentration of bullets flying at them high enough to crush through their scales, but the rest were soon on us.

  “Bayonets!” shouted Michael, and the soldiers braced themselves waiting for the wave to hit.

  The ferals were thankfully stupid enough that they didn’t stop to think about the blades, and several were successfully impaled by their own momentum. The soldiers leapt forward, working in pairs, with a sword each, to try and dispatch the remaining ferals. I allowed my eyes to shift ever so slightly, and they darted everywhere. Although Glen and Michael had insisted that I stay back from the fighting, I was determined to help in any way I could, and I tugged and struck at the ferals minds as much as I was able. Although I couldn’t take direct control of them, I could distract them enough that the soldiers were able to impale them, their swords sliding upwards through scales and into hearts, wrenching out again with a flush of blood. I smiled slightly as I jabbed at the mind of the feral attacking Glen and his partner, but then was abruptly jerked back, as another mind scraped against my shields. I snapped my head up, and looked straight into the eyes of one of the third gens,

  “Shit,” I muttered to myself.

  I stood, drawing a sword as the feral launched itself towards me. I was excruciatingly aware that I had to move at human speed, so by the time I had a throwing knife out as well and had flung it with my other hand, the feral had plenty of time to dodge. The throwing knife struck too high, sinking into its neck. It yanked it out and was on me. I’d managed to get my sword up, and leaped backwards, thrusting it towards its chest as I did so, which combined with its weight, flattened me to the ground. But the crunch that reverberated down my arms and its sudden dead weight told me that my sword had struck its mark. A cascade of blood poured out of the wound in the feral’s throat over my face, and I retched and shuddered as I resisted shifting. I could feel my fangs starting to lengthen and clenched my jaw tightly, forcing them back into their sheaths.

  “Beth!”

  I heard Glen shout, and the ferals body was heaved off of me. I rolled over, breathing hard with my eyes tightly shut, unsure if they were still black.

  “Jesus, are you alright? Any of that blood yours?”

  I got to my feet with a grunt of disgust,

  “No,” I ground out, and spat more blood out.

  A wave of amusement rolled over me from Glen and I glared at him. Now he knew I wasn’t hurt, he was clearly trying hard to not laugh.

  “Piss off, Salisbury.” I tried to scowl at him but ended up just retching again, my body purging itself of the rancid blood. The last couple of ferals had been dispatched while I was dealing with my own, so he stayed there, waiting for me to straighten up again.

  “You kind of look like you’re the vampire now.” He remarked, “you sure your surname’s not Bathory?”

  I groaned, “pretty sure the vampires don’t throw the blood up again after they’ve drunk it. Are you going to give me some water or something, or just stand there being an ass?”

  He sucked in a breath through his teeth as if considering the question,

  “hmmm… decisions, decisions…”

  I almost growled in frustration, and pushed past him, heading for the house. He laughed, following me, and handed me his canteen,

  “Sorry, sorry. Here.”

  “Thank you.” I muttered, and took a long drink of water. We reached the front door just as Michael exited.

  His eyebrows shot up when he saw me, but I didn’t give him a chance to comment,

  “how are the captives?”

  “uh,” he looked me up and down quickly before answering, “they’re alive, which is something, although they’ve all got some nasty head wounds. They were whacked bloody hard. The transport’s on its way. We’ll get them back to base and we can assess them properly.”

  “Good. Mission well done, then.”

  “Yeaa… so are you going to tell me why you’re covered in blood?”

  “Method fighting,” Glen jumped in before I could answer, “she’s trying to really get inside the skin of the vampires, by trying out their diet. Know your enemy, you know?”

  I gaped at him,

  “Really?! Here t
hen,” I dragged my fingers down my face and held them out to him, “want a taste? It’s not really a fair test if I’m the only person trying it.”

  “Oh god,” Michael groaned and shook his head, “you’re both ridiculous. And for the record, Beth, you smell like rotten meat. Try and get some off before we have to be squashed in an enclosed space together, will you?”

  He strode off to see to the rest of his soldiers and check on any wounded. Amazingly, we didn’t have any casualties. An excellent first run.

  The next six weeks continued in much the same vein, but without the added excitement of human captives to rescue. We cleared three small nests, each with only five or six ferals in it. Only once had there been a third gen there, and there was no sign of any second or first gens anywhere. I heaved a frustrated sigh as I scanned through Lexi’s email. She was proving to be worth her weight in gold; spending her days trawling through reports sent to her from slayers all around the world, then cutting out the crap and sending me the useful parts. Two of the nests we had cleared were found by IGS patrols, which was infuriating Michael. He couldn’t understand how “a bunch of rank amateurs” were having more luck finding nests that his professionals. I didn’t like to tell him that those rank amateurs had been hunting the things that go bump in the night for far longer than the military had. As well as the small, day time patrols going out, larger patrols, armed to the teeth, were now going out at night. While the day time patrols had strict orders to observe and report, not engage, the night time ones were to engage and eliminate any ferals they came across. I chafed at the leash Michael had me on. He tolerated me coming to clear nests, and allowed me to go out with the day time patrols, but still didn’t trust me to go out at night. I tapped a pen against my teeth absently, yanking it away with an annoyed sigh when the slight vibration set the gums around my sheathed fangs to itching. We had been so sure that Archer would be here or somewhere in America, but besides a higher level of low gen feral activity in America, none of the reports from either country were showing any sign of him. I slapped my laptop shut and padded into the bedroom, yanking open the wardrobe that served as my weapons cabinet and surveying the contents. Many of these blades hadn’t been used in years, but maybe it was time to show Michael that I wasn’t just a pretty face with a big mouth. I pulled the hated body armour over my head and began strapping on knives.