The Guard

by Harri Aburrow-Newman

  There was a sudden yell, human, from someone in the room and then the now unmistakable skitter of wings against the ground. My gun and those of the men around me were up in a flash, but not fast enough to fire on the feral that barrelled through the hanging vampires, flinging itself towards Beth. She stood straight up, still gripping the pole, an action which ripped it out of Ysabel’s chest with such violence that her entire body was lifted off the ground, dropping back down with a wet thud. Beth whipped round, lifting the pole and cracking the advancing feral across the face with it, sending it crashing into the wall next to Nathan. Jumping back out of the immediate range of its talons, he opened fire with his sidearm as it shook its head, stunned. The small calibre bullets did little more than dent its scales even at such close range, but then Beth was on it, slamming the spike into place in its heart, crushing and breaking the scales with a sheer, brute force that was frankly terrifying. It crumpled to the ground, leaving a bloody smear down the wall and Beth snatched up the body, twisting off its head in a single, vicious movement and then launching it across the room with a shriek of fury.

  After checking the rest of the room, physically and psychically, for any more ferals that had been missed, Beth returned to the space that had been cleared around Ysabel’s body. She went quietly and knelt beside Ysabel’s body, which was paler and more wasted than hers had ever been. But then she hadn’t been having her blood siphoned off. She reached over and snagged the bag containing the blood in question as if she had read my mind, and using her fangs, punctured the top before drinking down the entire contents in one draught. Shuddering, she doubled over and gasped, shaking her head, one hand shooting out to stop her toppling onto Ysabel. I started forward, but she straightened and waved me back again,

  “It’s OK, just a bit of a shock to the system.”

  She smiled slightly at me, and I realised her eyes had regained their gloss,

  “Hey, has it healed your eyes?”

  That got a grin,

  “Yea, and I gotta say man, you look rough as hell” she laughed half-heartedly, turning back to Ysabel.

  One of the soldiers had covered her naked body with a jacket, which provoked another small smile to quirk Beth’s lips before she pulled it down again, revealing the awful wound caused by the metal spike.

  Chapter 40

  Beth

  Yzzy was a real mess. Her always pale body had taken on the clammy, bluish-grey pallor of death, the effect of which was made worse by the jutting of her rib cage around the ragged crimson maw of the wound marring her left breast. I almost wished I hadn’t drunk the bag of her blood, had remained blind so that I didn’t have to look at her like this. I rocked back onto my heels for a moment, resisting the urge to destroy everything in a ten mile radius just to vent my anger at the bastards who had stolen her away and put her in this place.

  I drew one of my swords, driving the point of it deep into my left wrist, grimacing at the cold, biting pain. Holding the sword in place so the wound couldn’t heal again, I moved it over the hole in Yzzy’s chest, letting my powerful blood run freely onto the wound. The more blood I could get into it, the quicker it would begin to heal. It didn’t take long; Yzzy didn’t need much blood to survive anymore and apparently that applied to the healing of heart wounds as well. Almost immediately, I began to feel a lessening of the pain in my gut and head, the lightning-streaks of agony shrinking down to almost nothing. I moved my bleeding wrist over Yzzy’s mouth and she swallowed reflexively; her body recognising my blood even before her mind had awoken. As it moved through her system, the greyness of her skin began to recede, the jutting bones becoming subtly covered again by milk-white flesh… I held my breath, praying and praying that it wasn’t a trick; that her mind would heal as her body was. The wound in her chest was still there, but becoming shallower by the second. At the point when the wound in her heart must have healed completely her mind suddenly crackled back into life.

  I think I cried out as her newly energised mind assaulted mine, the scent of soft rose and cinnamon filling my consciousness as Ysabel enveloped me. I fell back, my vision blacking out again just after I caught a glimpse of the blood from my wrist violating her skin with red as I reflexively put back my hands to catch myself, my sword clattering from my grip onto the floor next to me. Michael and Nathan both rushed over to me, asking pointless questions, trying to look in my eyes and at my wrist. I shook them off, righting myself with some difficulty and leaning over Yzzy, my shaking, blood stained left hand pressing against her cheek as I watched her face intently for some sign that she would wake up fully. I opened my mind to her, the reunion like a drug that I didn’t think I would ever get enough of, and whispered to her, urging her to come back to me.

  “Beth…?”

  I laughed, and tears streaked through the grime of the battle on my cheeks as Yzzy opened her beloved eyes, those sparkling, beautiful green irises that I had never dared to hope I would see again. They opened wide, drinking in my face as I drank in hers and she mirrored me, laying her own left hand against my face, which I leaned into like a cat, still not sure whether to truly let myself believe that she was alive. Sliding her hand round the back of my neck, she pulled me down, propping herself up on her elbow to meet me halfway in a kiss. I vaguely noticed a ragged cheer go up from the few men that had remained in the area, but mostly I was absorbed in her. Her lips pressed against mine and our tongues danced, the taste of my blood mingling with the salt of both our tears and her own, unidentifiably perfect taste, which lingered in my mouth and mind and set me on fire. I gasped as we pulled apart, the knowledge that she was really there, that I hadn’t lost her, suddenly overwhelming me. She sat up completely, uncaring as the jacket slipped off of her, and wrapped her arms around my head. She pressed her lips to my hair as I crumpled into her and fell apart, sobs wracking my body for the first time in over 300 years.

  Ysabel and I managed to drag ourselves apart after what seemed like only seconds to us but what was actually, we were later informed, nearly an hour. I couldn’t help but be amused at Michael’s worry that we had both fallen into some kind of coma as we simply clung to each other, foreheads pressed together, not moving a millimetre for over forty five minutes as we simply basked in each other’s presence. What snapped us from our trance was the sudden intrusion of another vampiric mind; a high vampire, not a feral. I made a quick run outside, raiding one of the trucks for a spare set of combat gear for Ysabel to put on, then Michael led us to the other side of the room, where the rest of the vampires who had been trapped were lain out.

  After a couple of them saw me filling Ysabel’s chest wound with blood, the enterprising soldiers had done the same to the others, opening the bags and bottles and reuniting the owners with their contents. As none of them were warrior class, or for the most part even particularly old, the healing process didn’t happen so quickly as it did with Yzzy. They would need a lot more blood than what had been in the bags to get back to full working order. The vampire who we had sensed was by far the oldest there, just a few years younger than Ysabel, a man who I knew from my days in the guard. I felt Yzzy’s mental sigh as we saw him... He was one of the few who hadn’t been completely stripped of his clothes, and he carried himself in his ragged trousers as if they were a designer suit.

  “Well, well” he sneered at us, “if it isn’t the traitor guards.”

  A growl ripped out of me and I started forward, yanking my arm out of Ysabel’s grip as she went to stop me.

  “May I remind you, you sanctimonious bastard, that these traitor guards just saved your sorry hide. Or do the concepts of respect and gratitude still not ring any bells with you?”

  I stopped a couple of feet from him, unusually irritated by my short stature as I was forced to look up at him. He had been the bane of my life when I had been the guard leader, constantly questioning me and making my position difficult. He didn’t think that I should have been in the guard at all, saying that as an unsanctioned turn and given my spotte
d past, I had no right to be a part of vampire society, never mind in a position of power. Unfortunately, despite being used as an advisor on occasion, he was too young to be eligible for the council proper, so had not been present to die at the turning ceremony massacre.

  He smirked down at me, his casual arrogance tweaking my temper enough that I shifted, my wings curving over my head and fanning out around my body, the cartilage ribs vibrating with an low rumble and their razor edges arcing towards Jesse’s face in an automatic, threatening display. A hiss snaked out from between my clenched fangs.

  “Hey!” yelled Michael, “cut that shit out! Vampiric bloody peacocks, that’s what you two look like right now.” He raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms across his chest. His outburst was such a surprise that I actually laughed, my furious mood dissolving almost instantaneously. I was still too high on Yzzy to be bothered with staying angry at a worm like Jesse anyway. I normalised and stepped back to Ysabel, waving Michael forward towards Jesse as I went. He and Nathaniel went up to him, both, I was pleased to see, making him look up at them. Jesse was annoyingly unfazed, he held out his hand to them to shake whilst introducing himself,

  “Jesse Masters” he simpered. Disgusting.

  “Charmed, I’m sure” Nathan drawled, not bothering to take the proffered hand, “I’m Captain Nathaniel Wheeler and this,” he jerked a thumb at Michael, “is Captain Michael Beck. And before one word comes out of your mouth I want to make it absolutely clear to you that we don’t give a rat’s arse how old you are or how important you think you are. We are in charge. And if we’re not around, they’re in charge.”

  He turned slightly and pointed at Ysabel and me. I struggled not to raise my eyebrows at this sudden show of camaraderie. Jesse didn’t even bother to try and hide his frown, but acquiesced anyway with a slight incline of his head,

  “Fair enough I suppose. Although I am loathe to admit it, in the old regime they both held more power than I did anyway. However, you do speak like you are expecting me to join you in fighting this little war…”

  He let the sentence hang and I rolled my eyes, I suppose I should be grateful that he was a cowardly so-and-so. At least I wouldn’t have to deal with him for long. I stepped forward slightly, keeping hold of Yzzy’s hand as I did.

  “Jesse is not one of the guard. We can’t expect him to fight the ferals.” I smirked at him, “we could however offer him safe haven until he finds somewhere else to hole up and wait for things to blow over… I suppose.”

  “Why on earth would you do that? I would have expected you to just throw me to the dogs… that was always your way wasn’t it? Dispose of those you dislike, in any way possible?”

  Jesse leered at me as he said this, deliberately trying to provoke me into losing my temper again… or maybe to cast some doubt over my integrity in front of Michael and Nathan. Either way, I wasn’t sure I could care less.

  “Piss off Masters,” I smiled sweetly, “stop trying to stir things or I may find myself becoming more like how you insist I am anyway. It would be an absolute delight for me to throw you to a pack of ferals and listen to you squeal, but unfortunately we can’t afford to let our population drop any lower than it already has. Hard times and all that… in any case” I added mentally to Ysabel, “I want to keep my eye on him… he stinks of something slimy.”

  “You always did think that, ma chérie…” she reminded me. I sighed at the touch of her mind and my thoughts scattered hopelessly. Michael seemed to notice the suddenly blank expression on my face and jumped in, clearing his throat.

  “OK then, well, I’m sure we can find Mr Masters somewhere to stay. Right now though, I think it might be beneficial for all of us to go and get showers, food and sleep. In that order. You three head back upstairs, Nathaniel and I will arrange the transportation of the rest of these vampires and then meet you up there.”

  Unsurprisingly, I suppose, Ysabel and I had no desire to return to our flat. As we drove back to the base, wedged in the back of a transport with Jesse and a score of humans, we told Michael and Nathan that it was because the security of it had been compromised, but we couldn’t help but admit to each other that the idea of going back there was faintly traumatising. The memories that lurked now in that place were not ones that we ever wanted to revisit. Michael made a quick phone call, and within ten minutes of arriving back at the base we were handed the key to a new flat within the compound; the penthouse of the building that Michael lived in. It was furnished in the same utilitarian way that they all were, but had a large bedroom with a queen size bed, as well as a decent sized bathroom with a bath and enclosed shower cubicle. It also had the added benefit of a balcony with French doors, so we could reach it easily from the air. I supposed that it was positively luxurious when compared to the rest of the flats… Michael must have taken into account my comments about them being awful, poky boxes when we had first met.

  Ysabel was still weak enough that I wouldn’t let her fly. After collecting some spare clothes and then walking, somewhat twitchily on my part, across the compound to the flats, I scooped her up before she could protest and winged up to the balcony, setting her down by the door so she could unlock it. Once inside we headed towards the bathroom without speaking, seeking to remove the grime and unpleasant, metallic odour that had pervaded the basement where Yzzy had been kept and that now clung to our skin and hair. The knowledge that Jesse had been given an apartment in this building as well played on my mind slightly; I didn’t like being in such close proximity to him, but the worries were wiped completely from my mind as Ysabel spun the dial on the shower, then shrugged out of the too-large jacket she had been wearing. She had her back to me and the muscles slid subtly underneath her smooth, white skin as she moved to release the belt that was cinched tight around her waist, letting the combat trousers drop to the floor as well. Turning to me, her pale hair threw miniscule shards of light into the room as it moved slightly around her form. I let my eyes shift, drinking in every detail of her, watching the tiny hairs on her arms lift with goose bumps and a slight flush spread across her chest as she blushed under my stare.

  She grabbed the hem of my tee shirt, pulling it swiftly over my head, then started on the Velcro straps that kept my combat vest tight to my body. Her own eyes shifted as she released the stiff garment, making me take a deep breath reflexively as the constriction disappeared, the shattered-emerald flecks in her eyes swallowed by fathomless black. I reached out with one hand, lightly tracing my fingers along her jawline,

  “You know you’re never leaving me again, right?”

  The whisper ran through me with a thrill, the glorious novelty of being able to hear her again having still not worn off.

  “Good.”

  “I’m serious.” She looked at me earnestly, eyes wide and unblinking, “we’re not playing this stupid game of putting ourselves through hell for duty anymore. I don’t ever want to feel from you again what I felt when you woke me up today. What I can still feel, lurking in here” she touched my temple lightly.

  I frowned at her slightly,

  “Act like a proper bonded pair?” I asked quietly, aloud, “in my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d hear you say something so wonderful.”

  She smiled, her eyes drifting closed briefly, and pressed her cheek into my hand,

  “I am nothing without you Beth, just the shadow of a shell of a vampire, and I am tired of pretending otherwise.” Her hand drifted down to lay over my heart, just barely touching the skin, “I am only strong where I can hear your heartbeat. So that is where I will stay.”

  I moved her hand gently from my chest, turning it palm upwards and pressing my lips into the centre of it, before pulling it around my back and drawing Ysabel closer to me, one hand still cradling her cheek. I ran my lips slowly along her jaw, inhaling the spicy sweet scent of her skin, soft against my lips, and planted a kiss on the sensitive area just below her ear. She laughed slightly under her breath and stepped away, pulling me after her towards the showe
r cubicle. I paused briefly to remove my own torn, dirty trousers and then opened the cubicle door, steam billowing out as I stepped in to join her underneath the welcoming hot water.

  Chapter 41

  Michael

  Jesse was lounging casually in a flimsy plastic chair, leaning back so that it looked dangerously close to breaking. He had a vague kind of smirk on his face, like he was finding the whole situation very amusing. On the other side of him sat Ysabel and Beth, the latter glaring stonily across the table at him. Leaving Ysabel and myself to play the mediators. I’d asked everyone to come so that we could hear Ysabel and Jesse’s version of events, in particular, we wanted to know how Jesse had ended up in that basement. Nathan and Glen were both en route, but I found myself wishing they would hurry up a little, as I didn’t think I could bear the opressive atmosphere being created by Beth much longer. I cleared my throat, breaking the silence,

  “Would anyone like a coffee while we’re waiting?”

  Ysabel looked up with a smile,

  “Yes, please.”

  “Beth?” I ventured,

  “No.”

  She answered shortly, not bothering to look my way. Jesse tutted loudly and sat forward in his chair,

  “Now, now, Elizabeth. That is not very polite.”

  He twisted slightly to face me,

  “I, however, am not so rude. Although I don’t like coffee, I would very much appreciate a cup of tea if you have any.”