The Midnight Guardian

by Sarah-Jane Stratford

Disgusted, Brigit made her way to the back of the train where Mors stood alone, leaning on the wrought-iron gate, watching a long-invisible England disappear further into the mist.

  He smiled at Brigit. It never failed to amuse and yet vex her that he almost always knew exactly what she was thinking, and today was no exception.

  “Well, perhaps they’re not so wrong. What do we do for them, really?”

  “Give them the stuff with which to scare their children into behaving.”

  “And nightmares, don’t forget nightmares.”

  “A little abject terror is good for a person.”

  “Too right. How else do you know you’re alive?”

  Brigit’s laugh was stopped short by the sight of a church spire. Norman, and lit in a majestic orange glow, it radiated surety and solidity to the market town.

  “I almost want to make ten vampires, just to upset their precious pleasant order.”

  Mors smiled his most wicked smile.

  “Feeling energetic, aren’t you?”

  “And angry.”

  “Save that. You’ll need it later.”

  What he really meant, they both knew, was that she had to be careful. Brigit was possessed of a kind of fire inside that was a unique beast, separate from the demon. Time away from Eamon was not likely to keep it tamped down. It had exploded twice in her life, and nearly killed her both times. Mors knew how to guard her, but they’d be working far apart every night. She placed her trust in her control, and the essence of Eamon that clung to her. She was determined it would be enough.

  The smell hit them like a blunt object as soon as they crossed the border into Germany. Brigit inadvertently dug her fingernails into her palm, a reaction as much to the reeking air as Meaghan’s low whine and shudder.

  They had to change trains for Berlin. Stepping out onto the platform, Brigit had a strong sense of walking through a curtain of ice water. She and Eamon had once traveled to Berlin to see Beethoven debut a new symphony, and they’d enjoyed themselves. The food was a bit hearty, perhaps, but lined the stomach well for the crisp autumn nights. There were pleasant cafés for lingering, reading papers, and savoring the marvelous coffee. To be sure, there was a stridency about the people that one didn’t see with the French, and certainly not with their beloved British, but there was nothing to make a vampire uneasy.

  This was quite different. Blinking away grit, she inhaled coldness, trepidation, and what she could only imagine must be the smell of impending catastrophe. It was Eamon, not herself, who had a sense of things coming, so she hoped it was just a fancy. The others, after an initial wrinkling of noses and shiver, had recovered their mantles of businesslike indifference. Except for Mors, who was casting a bold eye over a pretty young woman. She was blushing, but seemed to enjoy the look.

  Lots of luck, my friend. The train’s due in ten minutes.

  The other waiting people, well-wrapped in winter coats, noticed nothing. Brigit studied them. Just civilians. Looking ordinary. Tired, perhaps, and impatient for the train, but nothing to cause alarm. They were just people. Simple, small, edible people. But not appetizing. The vague uneasiness in a few, the whipped-up lather in too many others, it didn’t smack of anything digestible. Brigit told herself it could be worse. And it had been. The Civil War, that had been bad. And countless other times.

  Maybe I just don’t care for foreign food.

  She meandered down to the end of the platform and leaned against the railing to better stare out at the empty track. In her mind’s eye, she followed it back to Calais and then across the Channel and home, to Eamon.

  Feeling the danger of that thought, she turned the other way and looked instead toward Berlin, to the lair Ulrika had described, and the task ahead. She closed her eyes to better summon her strength. Then it happened. As surely as if she had turned her eyes inward, she saw the apprehension in the demon. It felt something akin to fear. It had the power to thrive on fear, although it generally chose not to use it, preferring to gain strength in sensuality and desire. That the demon could lose its nerve had never occurred to Brigit. She chose to be cross. She had not spent so many years learning to be mistress over that inner beast to let it assert itself through faintheartedness now. Its fear would feed on her, and she wouldn’t have that. It and she would go home again, once they had completed their work.

  Mors had disappeared, but Brigit studied the other three, wondering if they had taken any stock of their demons. It wasn’t the sort of thing she could ask. The demon was each vampire’s own personal creature, that innermost part of the self in that other world. It was them, and yet not them. In the human world, with their human faces on, it was as though the demon did not exist. Not that they pretended it did not, it was merely that there was no acknowledgment. They were two different creatures, and neither was human.

  Brigit pressed her fingers to her eyelids, collecting herself. When she looked up, she saw a man watching her curiously. She tossed her head and smiled at him.

  “Just a bit of grit in my eyes.”

  “Ah, yes. Inevitable. But the stations are much cleaner now, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Oh, certainly.”

  Did he really think so? It didn’t seem any more clean than the French or British stations, and a damn sight less cheerful, too. However, she nodded politely and moved down to rejoin the others. Her first insincere conversation in Germany. She wondered how many more she would have before she could leave. The thought nearly made her smile, but it was interrupted by the screeching arrival of the train.

  Mors swung up behind her, whistling. She turned to him with questioning eyes. He winked.

  “Got a toothpick?”

  “Seven minutes. I’m impressed. And what about teeth marks? Tracks covered?”

  He edged her farther into the dark corner and raised a hand—one fingernail stretched out long into a blade-like talon.

  “Throat slit. Which is why you shouldn’t struggle when being mugged. Why parents don’t teach their children these things, I don’t know.”

  He flipped open his coat just enough to show Brigit the woman’s handbag.

  “Extra identity, which you’ll probably need. You can thank me later.”

  “Such a giver you are. So, a violent crime in a peopled train station. How shocking. Here I thought the Nazis had established themselves on a platform of law and order.”

  “Scandalous, isn’t it?”

  Brigit hesitated, then had to ask.

  “And the taste?”

  Mors had just started toward the others. He paused and turned to look at Brigit with some resignation.

  “Well, we didn’t come here for the food.”

  Indeed.

  The train was a local and unbearably slow. Brigit rubbed her wrist absentmindedly, then gazed down at the pink mark she’d made.

  Pink. Her skin turned pink under his hands, his mouth. The blood that lay so still under her flesh always rose with eager obedience to meet his touch. She followed the path of his hand up her leg, her thigh. He nipped the inside of her knee and she moaned, clutching the sheets as his mouth slowly worked its way upward.

  More of her body yielded to him, to his insistent tongue. A tiny pocket of her mind wanted her to pay closer attention than she ever had, because this might be the last time, the last time that she was lost in such perfect ecstasy. But Brigit did not want to think such things. Eamon’s mouth now trailed up her stomach, closed around her left nipple. His eyes, warm and sensual, rolled upward to see the heat in her face. It was a look and a gesture that never failed to inflame her further, and she groaned with the exquisite pain of wanting more.

  And there was more. And more. And she didn’t care what anyone might think—she was not going to bathe the scent of him out of her hair before the journey. But she wasn’t leaving yet. Not yet. She held his face in her hands and concentrated on the feel of his skin, the sheen of his eyes, the curl of his mouth. She had known him the moment she’d met him, but she would memorize him yet ag
ain. Even through the glaze of tears that she couldn’t keep from clouding her eyes.

  “Eamon. My Eamon. My most beloved.”

  She woke suddenly, wondering if she had spoken out loud. But only Mors was looking at her. She shifted her gaze away from him, and her thoughts away from the dream. It was easier to think about Mors. Mors was very different from the rest of them. Nearly all had been notably beautiful humans, and young, quite young. Few were older than twenty-five when made, because most of the chosen, men and women alike, were virginal and comparatively untethered to life. Mors was, the guess went, forty. Possibly older, perhaps younger, it was difficult to say. He had certainly been a soldier. A Roman general, they thought with some certainty. His way with a sword, or even a pair of swords, was terrifying in its power and artistry. In his occasional moments of restlessness, he sought out hunters to fight and dispatched them with his big, easy laugh. His was an untold history, though there was no one who didn’t wish to learn it.

  In any case, his face betrayed some time. Which could, Brigit supposed, make his association with four people half his age look questionable. On the other hand, he covered his shaved head with a fedora worn at a rakish angle and had a way of shouldering his greatcoat that made him seem to swagger even when lounging in his seat. In fact, far from looking distinctly older than the others, he simply looked roguish, powerful, a man who would naturally draw acolytes. Swefred and Meaghan existed separately from the group, Mors plainly had as little interest in them as they him, but whatever Brigit and Cleland might be to this older, knowing man with the ironically cocked eyebrow and curving, amused lips, that was another matter. One that gave some novel pleasure to those observers so disposed to lurid speculation.

  Theirs was to be the next stop, and Brigit was impatient. The sooner they were settled, the sooner they could begin. Ulrika’s detailed instructions for getting to the abandoned lair played out in her mind and she was grateful for their intricacy, and for being rather tired and hungry. It meant there was no mental acumen left for wondering what Eamon was doing right this moment.

  Extra distraction arrived in the shape of a startling smell. A young man, sweet and intoxicating, lurched past them toward the lavatories. All five pairs of eyes rolled toward him, intrigued. A spy, Brigit guessed, tapping him for Belgian. And a virgin, too, or at least not very experienced. On his way to meet a woman in Berlin. Desire and happy anticipation ran high in him. One good potential meal amid all the unappetizing lumps they’d encountered so far, and he’d have to go free. Mors singsonged out the window: “Going to be a loooong holiday.”

  Despite the late hour, the station was busy and no one noticed the attractive, well-dressed group of five, who, while they had sat together on the train, now peeled off to various points around the station. One of the ladies headed for the powder room, another to the newsagent. One of the men needed a quick pick-me-up at the bar before going home to deal with the wife—honestly, such a relief to have business in Paris, such a bother to have to go home to snapping wife and squalling children. The barman understood only too well and they swapped stories with spirit. Another man thought he might just as well get his shoes shined. The third was a tourist and roused the sleepy clerk at the information desk to inquire in painstaking German if he could take a bus to his hotel, or should he hail a taxi?

  The strolling guards usually noticed lovely young women who were traveling alone, but if the guards on duty had been questioned later, they would have sworn no single women had left the station all night. Nor men, for that matter. The vampires knew how to move with hot swiftness, clinging to shadows. Only one guard thought he saw a glint of something in the corner of his eye, but decided he’d either imagined it or it was a spark going off, or something equally innocuous. He’d never have guessed it was the rhinestone brooch on Meaghan’s felt hat.

  Two hours later, they all arrived at the lair. It was an idle section of the U-Bahn, with the extra advantage of never having been completed, so there was only one entrance accessible by humans. Over time, the vampires who had lived there had dug an extra tunnel that wended down into the sewer network. This was kept blocked by a concrete slab that you’d have to be at least a double centennial to budge. Even the stairs led up to a blocked entry, and then a conveniently sheltered yard behind an abandoned butcher’s shop. Brigit was surprised, what with the war machine revving up, that valuable property like this wasn’t being put to use; but the entire area was run-down and just enough on the city’s edge to be unappealing for anyone to want to work, much less live there, unless there was absolutely no other choice. She could understand why vampires had thrived here for so long. Ulrika had assured them that neither Nachtspeere nor true hunters had ever come anywhere near the lair.

  “The Nachtspeere, they’re interested in action, not subterfuge. They want to get us when we roam. They certainly don’t want to spend much time in forethought.”

  Brigit was unconvinced. The Nazis seemed to like convenience, and what could be more convenient than to find the homes of vampire families and simply throw firebombs in them at midday? For true hunters, of course, this was both unsporting and anticlimactic. A tactic saved for the last resort. One didn’t go through all that training and prepare for battle and death, only to kill a vampire without even looking at it first, showing it the face of its doom. This was not like war. A born vampire hunter lived the calling as an art. These wormy Nazi thugs who dared term themselves hunters were not interested in art, the refugees made that perfectly clear. But they were only too keen on seeing the eyes of their victims before they dissolved.

  Bastards. Souls of geese that bear the shape of men.

  The place was musty, with the feel of a home that hadn’t been lived in for a long time. Even when vampires had been there, it was nothing like the lovely underground castle in London. Meaghan sniffed and looked fretful, but the others set about lighting a coal fire in the main room and airing the beds.

  “I don’t know about you lot, but I’m almost tired enough to sleep hanging upside-down from the ceiling,” Mors joked.

  Even Meaghan smiled at that. Some humans did get the funniest notions. Personally, Brigit loathed bats and found it insulting that anyone thought she might have an affinity with the filthy beasts, never mind partly being one.

  Besides, what a waste of time sleeping would be if you had only parts of your own self to wrap up in?

  Wishing she hadn’t thought that, Brigit concentrated on picking out her own pocket-sized chamber with a single bed. The less space to move, the less she might notice the body that wasn’t there with her. The body that had wrapped itself around her every day for more than seven hundred years.

  Brigit pressed her palms tight against her temples. She gulped hard, and even drew a few breaths. The body’s memory allowed the act to be calming. She wiped her hands on her skirt and was perfectly steady when she headed back to the main room, where Mors had called on them to gather.

  He’d thoughtfully filled a thermos with blood from the girl at the train station, and now poured it out into five goblets. He grinned as they all held them aloft, watching him.

  “To the mission,” he announced, with a solemnity that startled them.

  “To the mission,” they repeated, and drank. It wasn’t very tasty, but it was still warm, and filling. Better than trying to sleep on an empty stomach.

  “A little bit cheerier, all of you! Come on, this isn’t so bad. We’ll be home soon.” He looked steadily at Brigit and Cleland as he said it, his confident grin large.

  They nodded, even smiled, but carefully avoided one another’s eyes.

  Chapter 3

  London. November 1938.

  Everyone was being so kind. Suggestions for theater outings and concerts and the late-night museum shows and all the things he and Brigit partook of so readily flowed in every evening. Eamon was touched and grateful, but, for now, preferred to be alone. Padraic felt the same. Eamon, feeling his responsibility as one much older, had asked Padraic
if he maybe wanted to attend a scientific lecture at King’s College. Padraic and Cleland liked that sort of thing. He’d smiled at Eamon’s invitation, the first smile he’d managed in a week.

  “You wouldn’t stay awake ten minutes.” He grinned.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I could probably manage a good half hour for science. One of your strange numbers things, though, that would put me right out.”

  “And they say musicians have an affinity for mathematics.”

  “Not this musician.”

  Padraic smiled again, and nodded.

  “Thanks, Eamon. Another time, maybe?”

  Eamon nodded, too, and left Padraic to his studies.

  He prowled disconsolately around the West End. There was a lot of nervousness in the air. Londoners felt sure war was coming, and very likely soon. They were almost forcibly enjoying themselves, both to stave off apprehension and to laugh as much as possible before humor was sucked out of the world again. Eamon smiled. He liked their determination, their stoutness. It was the sort of thing that made him proud to be British.

  The theaters held no allurement for him tonight. He couldn’t imagine going to a show without Brigit. They’d been going to theater and concerts together for hundreds of years. How could he sit in a theater, how could he concentrate on a show, never mind try to enjoy it, without his Brigit by his side? Unthinkable.

  Instead, he walked slowly up Charing Cross Road, vaguely wondering if there was a letter waiting in the post office box they’d gone to such pains to secure. Eamon knew it was too soon for anything to have arrived. He preferred to enjoy the anticipation than experience the flatness of disappointment. Otonia had also devised a series of codes they could use for communicating via telegram, but this was only to be resorted to in an emergency. Picking up telegrams required visiting the office in person. She was sure they would eventually be able to steal their own telegraph machine, but until then, all steps must be taken to avoid suspicion.