The Guard

by Harri Aburrow-Newman

  “Sure”, I got up and headed out of the room quickly, before Beth imploded from holding in her temper.

  Eventually Glen and Nathan arrived, and we managed to get started. Lexi also burst in, all flustered because she hadn’t been invited, and plopped down into a chair with a sneer in my direction, showing how unimpressed she was. I quelled the urge to roll my eyes; between her and Beth, I could tell that this wasn’t going to be the most pleasant of experiences.

  “Shall we get started then?” Nathan spoke up,

  “I’m sure we’re all just dying to know how all those vamps ended up being blood cows for the ferals.”

  Beth stood up sharply, the chair she was sat on teetering on its back legs before remaining upright. She held up hands up in a gesture of surrender as she backed away from us,

  “Nope. I’m out.” She was breathing very steadily and deliberately through her nose, and Ysabel was watching her intently,

  “Yzzy can let me know what’s going on. If I have to sit for one more minute with that pathetic excuse for a vampire, as well as listening to him”, she shot Nathan a glare, “talking about blood cows, someone is going to end up dead.”

  With that, she turned and disappeared out of the room. Jesse smirked again,

  “Good to see she still has such marvellous control of herself.”

  Ysabel scowled at him,

  “Shall we get on with this? How did you get caught?”

  Jesse shrugged,

  “It’s a pretty short story to be honest. Believe it or not I’ve been doing my best to save as many vampires as possible. I’ve been travelling around, visiting old colonies and hide outs, trying to find survivors…”

  “And when you do?” prompted Ysabel,

  “Help them however I can – money, blood, clothes, a safe house,” he shrugged, “whatever they need.”

  “Safe houses?” asked Lexi, sounding sceptical, “I didn’t realise there was anywhere safe from the ferals.”

  Jesse smiled patronisingly,

  “Well if the IGS and their minions knew about them, they could hardly be considered safe, could they? Anyway, I was investigating an old colony in the countryside outside of London when I was jumped and staked. Fast forward a couple of months, and here I am.”

  He spread his arms and turned to Ysabel,

  “What about you? Why wasn’t your dear Elizabeth there to protect you?”

  “Watch your tone, Masters.” Ysabel glared steadily at him, “you’re here as a guest, remember? You wouldn’t want to seem rude.” She turned to me, “I have no idea how the ferals found out where we lived. But five second gens and two firsts crashed in through the front door, windows and balcony doors and that was that. I stood no chance against that many on my own, particularly as I was taken by surprise. Then nothing, until Beth woke me up yesterday.”

  “What do you think the point of it was?” I asked,

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Jesse replied, “they wanted to drink our blood.”

  “Why would the ferals want to drink vampire blood? I thought you needed human blood.” I frowned.

  Ysabel responded this time, “we do; we can’t sustain ourselves on the blood of other vampires. However,” she grimaced, “blood is power. If we drink the blood of other vampires, we get a temporary power boost. Do it enough, and that becomes a permanent power boost. And the older and more powerful the blood, the better.” She looked at me, her eyes worried,

  “If the ferals have been drinking the blood of high vampires then we may have a serious problem; it could increase their strength exponentially, and I dread to think who’s been receiving my blood for the last four weeks.”

  I heard Lexi blow out a breath next to me, curiosity wiping away her earlier annoyance,

  “Do you think there might be more than one of these… facilities?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” Ysabel shrugged, “I can’t imagine Archer is stupid enough to put all his vampires in one basket.”

  Lexi nodded,

  “I’ll put a memo out to the other branches of the IGS to tell them to keep a special eye out.”

  “Good idea,” I agreed, “in the mean time though, we need to decide what to do with you, Jesse.”

  “Me?” his eyes widened slightly, “well I assumed that I would be free to go…”

  “Sure, but if you think you have anything you can offer us…? We need all the help we can get.”

  “Well,” he paused, thinking, “I’m just a historian, really. I research the past and record the present for posterity. I suppose I could help with the vampires who were in that facility with us and have yet to be awoken. They would probably be more trusting of a high vampire than a human, and there might be something they could tell me that would help.”

  I raised my eyebrows, but was beaten to the reply by Nathan,

  “Well that sounds good to me. I was wondering what we were going to do with them.”

  “Ysabel,” I turned to her, “what are your thoughts?”

  She was looking at Jesse with a pensive look on her face,

  “I suppose that could work,” she said slowly, “it would save myself and Beth taking time out to do it. And, well… we might not get a great reception from them.”

  She cringed suddenly, putting a hand to her head, and hissed.

  “Ysabel?” Lexi asked, alarmed, as myself and Nathan put an instinctive hand to our side arms. Ysabel waved us off with a flap of her hand,

  “I need to talk to Beth. Give me a minute.”

  She stood and left the room quickly, leaving me wondering what on earth had just happened. Jesse chuckled,

  “I imagine our esteemed guard leader has some objections to my presence.” Again with the smirk, “we’ve never really seen eye to eye…”

  I raised my eyebrows at him and got up to follow Ysabel, with Nathan and Lexi on my heels.

  Beth and Ysabel were in the courtyard outside. Beth was half shifted and visibly furious. She looked up as she noticed us coming down the building’s steps,

  “You’re making a huge mistake Michael. He should be escorted off of the base and sent on his way.”

  Ysabel growled in frustration,

  “Beth, you’re being ridiculous! He’s a high vampire, and an elder, and if he’s offering to help then it makes no sense to turn him down.”

  “I wouldn’t care if he was the fucking high elder,” Beth ground out, clenching her fists and glaring at Ysabel, “I don’t trust him.”

  “Beth,” Lexi said, “we need the help. You know that the high vampires might not trust you and Ysabel if they still think of you as traitors.”

  “And Michael? What do you think, Captain?” Beth snarled in my direction, although still shooting daggers at Ysabel.

  “I agree with Ysabel.” I grimaced slightly, “I’m not going to go so far as to like Jesse, but he’s given us no reason to distrust him. And we do need the help.”

  Beth let out a strangled yell of frustration and her wings burst from her back. She took a couple of steps towards Ysabel and hissed something at her, too quietly for me to hear, then leapt in the air.

  “Well,” Jesse said from behind me, amusement in his voice, “that went well.”

  Ysabel whipped round and was up the steps in a blink, shoving Jesse back against the closed doors.

  “You had better not prove me wrong Masters.” She growled in his face, “go and get on with your damned job, then.”

  He shrugged her off with a smile, “as you wish,” then headed down the steps in the direction of the hospital building. Ysabel watched him go with clear dislike on her face.

  “What did Beth say to you just now?” I asked.

  She answered quietly, on a sigh,

  “She told me to remember what happened the last time her concerns about someone were dismissed.”

  “Archer?”

  She nodded slowly in confirmation, a flicker of doubt crossing her face,

  “Archer… I’m going to go and help Jesse.”

&n
bsp; I followed Ysabel more slowly, after talking briefly with Lexi and Nathan. Lexi agreed to go back to IGS and start communicating with the other branches to see if she could find any more ‘facilities’, and Nathan went to get some sleep, as he was the officer on duty that night. The largest room in the hospital had been taken over to house the stricken vampires from the facility, and they were lying on trolleys around the perimeter of the room. There were 16 high vampires in all, not including Jesse and Ysabel, and to a one, they looked appalling. Although the harpoon-like stakes had been removed from their chests, the small amount of blood that had been poured into the wounds had done little to heal them. Ysabel and Jesse were talking quietly in the middle of the room, but they stopped and turned to me as I approached them.

  “Do you think they can be saved?” I asked, my voice unconsciously hushed.

  “Most of them, yes” Jesse answered, frowning around the room.

  “Why only most?”

  Jesse wandered off distractedly, towards the nearest trolley, leaving Ysabel to respond,

  “Two of these vampires are bloodlings… um, very young,” she added at the blank look I gave her, “we don’t recognise them, which means they must have been turned sometime after 2000. They might not be strong enough to heal from this, but – “ she shrugged “- if we give them enough of mine or Beth’s blood they might pull through. And then there are these three,” she gestured towards the three trolleys to our right, a female and two males, “we know they had bonded mates, who aren’t here. Their mates almost certainly died after they were staked, so we aren’t even going to attempt to wake them up. Even if we were able to, they would only die as soon as their body realised the bond was no longer in place.”

  I grimaced sympathetically,

  “do you know any of the vampires here?”

  “uh, yes. Apart from the bloodlings, I know all of them. At least in passing… the only one I know well is that one,” she pointed at a blonde female, “Jacqueline. She grew up in the same colony I did, albeit some 400 years later.”

  I felt the now familiar squirm in my stomach at the mention of their age, but squashed it.

  “Well, why don’t you wake her up first. If you’re worried about the possibility of the high vampires not being entirely happy about your presence then it’s probably best to start with one that knows you.”

  She slanted a smile at me,

  “Excellent plan.”

  As she spoke, a nurse rolled a cart of blood packs in and took it straight to Jacqueline’s trolley. Ysabel smiled again amusedly and I rolled my eyes at her, following as she and Jesse moved to Jacqueline’s side. They began tearing the tops off of the bags, pouring them directly into the chest wound over her heart and into her mouth, although she didn’t seem to swallow much. Every so often they stopped and peered closely at the wound.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked,

  “For it to start healing,” Ysabel explained, “If you look, the blood is being absorbed into her body, but the edges of the wound are still raw. Once it starts healing we’ll know we’ve put enough blood in.”

  “She’s pretty old, isn’t she? Why is it taking so long?”

  “It’ll be slower because we’re using human blood. And this is a hell of a wound…” she trailed off, “look.”

  I leaned over the table and looked at the hole in Jacqueline’s chest… it was still open, but I could see the edges of it beginning to contract and tendrils of flesh reached out and knitted together as I watched. Slowly but surely the hole got smaller and smaller until Jacqueline gasped and her eyes snapped open. She looked around, panicked, and immediately tried to sit up. Jesse leaned over quickly, pressing down gently on her shoulders,

  “Jacqueline, it’s alright. You’re safe.”

  “Oh mon dieu,” she whispered, “oh mon dieu…”

  “Here,” Jesse put a bag of blood in her hand and her eyes widened slightly before she tore into hungrily. She drank it far slower than I had seen Beth or Ysabel do so, her eyes closed as the colour gradually returned to her parched skin. When she had finished and handed the bag back to Jesse, he helped her sit up, pulling the blankets up with her to keep her covered. She winced, obviously still sore. Ysabel had hung back throughout all of this, but now came a little closer.

  “Bonjour, Jacqueline.” She said quietly, a worried expression on her face,

  “Ysabel? Oh my goodness, what are you doing here? And Jesse, and…” she hesitated, looking at me, “who is this?”

  “This is Captain Michael Beck. We have been working with his unit of human soldiers. They’ve been helping us fight.”

  “Oh… well, in that case thank you. All of you. I don’t...” she frowned and rubbed a hand over her eyes, “… I don’t know what happened. How did I get here? And where is here?!”

  “You’re in London,” I said, “and we liberated you from some kind of, um, blood harvesting facility that the ferals had set up. Jesse and Ysabel were there too, and these others.” I waved a hand around the room, which her eyes followed, widening again, “you’re the first we’ve woken up.”

  “Blood harvesting?” Jacqueline paled again, “why were they harvesting our blood?”

  “Well,” Ysabel said, “we imagine that the ferals have been using it to give themselves a power boost.”

  “Oh mon dieu,” she whispered again. Ysabel scowled slightly at the repeated mentions of God, but her face smoothed over again rapidly.

  “What happened?” she asked, “how did you end up there?”

  “I was living in a small country house in Hertfordshire, in the middle of nowhere. One night, a hoard of ferals came.” She shuddered, “I thought I was dead for sure.”

  Jesse blew out a breath,

  “So not far from here,” he said, turning to Ysabel and I, “I’ll carry on with the rest of them. Wait until they’re ready to talk and then record their stories. If there’s anything in them of note, I’ll let you know.” He gave a short nod to me, and a smile to Jacqueline,

  “Just stay in bed for now, and have some more blood if you want it.”

  Jacqueline gave him a small smile back,

  “Thank you.” She turned back to Ysabel and I, “how did you end up working together?” she asked.

  “Ysabel and Beth pretended to be humans with information, and wheedled their way in that way.” I grinned ruefully, “well, Beth did. Ysabel did the same with my American equivalent. He’s here too now, as we believe Archer is in England.”

  “oh… Beth… but. You were in America?” Jacqueline frowned at Ysabel, “but, we thought you had bonded. We thought that that was why you disappeared together.”

  Ysabel shifted her weight, looking more uncomfortable than I had ever seen her.

  “We did bond. Unintentionally, but… it was done. We found ways to work around it so that we could be apart when necessary.”

  “That’s amazing,” murmured Jacqueline, “I didn’t realise it was possible.”

  “It shouldn’t be.” Ysabel said shortly, “and speaking of Beth, I need to go and talk to her. I wanted to be here when you awakened, but we have some things to discuss. If you’ll permit, I’m sure she’ll want to speak with you and the others tomorrow.”

  “Of course.”

  Ysabel nodded to me and turned away,

  “Ysabel!” Jacqueline called, and stopped Ysabel in her tracks. She said something softly in French and Ysabel smiled a little sadly,

  “It’s good to see you too.”

  Chapter 42

  Beth

  Ysabel slipped in through the balcony doors and I felt her mind brush cautiously against mine. I remained where I was, brooding in an armchair with my back to her, and kept my mind closed, feeling an echo of the fury I had felt earlier still lurking under my skin.

  “Beth,” she said from the doorway, “please let me in.”

  “Why?” I said through my teeth, gritted as they were, “so you can explain again what a paragon of society Jesse bloody Mas
ters is?”

  I heard her sigh almost inaudibly,

  “Of course not. I just…“ she trailed off and started walking towards the kitchen, “Jacqueline’s awake. I told her you’d go and see her tomorrow.”

  “Fine.” I replied shortly. I could feel the anger biting at me again and got up, following her, “why didn’t you just trust me, Yz? Why did you have to take their side?”

  She looked pained as she turned to me,

  “It’s nothing to do with not trusting you or taking anyone’s side. We’re all on the same one! I just don’t believe that Jesse would do anything to harm our efforts. Why would he? I know he’s a complete ass, but that doesn’t make him dangerous.”

  “ahh, ok. So really, what happened is that you think I let my personal dislike of him skew my judgement of the risk he poses.”

  Yzzy scowled, her own temper rising now it was just the two of us,

  “Well yes, actually. I do!” She took a step towards, gesticulating angrily as she talked, “you have never, ever liked him. You have always been completely convinced that his every act has been conceived of in an attempt to damage you, or your reputation or your leadership in some way.”

  “It HAS!” I roared, “he has admitted himself that he did everything he could to prevent me even being allowed to live! Why should that stop now?”

  “Because now it’s not all about you! You seriously think that he would doom his entire race because of some petty, centuries-old feud.”

  I growled under my breath,

  “No, of course not. I’m not saying he would do it as part of some vendetta against me, I’m just saying that that underhanded, nasty way of working just shows what sort a person he is. And –“ I broke off, throwing my hands up in frustration, “- it just doesn’t feel right.”

  Ysabel drew in a slow breath through her nose and closed her eyes briefly, calming herself down,

  “Well regardless of what horrors you feel Jesse might be capable of, what’s done is done. He’ll help waken the vampires and glean whatever information he can from them. When that’s finished, we’ll reassess.”

  She walked away from me and went into the bedroom, closing the door with a sharp snap and walling off her mind. I was still breathing hard, fighting to control my temper, but a worming sense of guilt was starting to creep in as I did. I looked at the worktop; Yzzy had left a mug with coffee granules in it on the side, abandoning it in her annoyance. I grimaced, the sight opening the flood gates for a whole tidal wave of guilt. I felt myself wilt completely, the last of my anger draining away, and flicked the kettle on again.