The Midnight Guardian

by Sarah-Jane Stratford

  Fireballs leaped from the factory and all its surrounding buildings in a deafening display. The bombs inside went off, sending even more fire into the sky and down the surrounding streets. Ball after ball of fire bounced toward town and the ashes of dead men were all dwarfed by the ashes of two millennial vampires.

  Mors bore Brigit deep into the sewers, outrunning flames and sharp debris. Brigit didn’t even feel them move. Meaghan’s eyes had finally burst and sent green marbles of liquid in a hot shower that had landed on Brigit. The feel of Meaghan’s eyes on her skin doused every other sensation.

  It was a long time before either of them moved or spoke. A sound, an echo of the explosions far above them, roused Brigit suddenly, reminding her that they were alone.

  “Cleland!” she cried.

  “He’s all right. He had to run through the U-Bahn tunnels, that’s all. He’s fine. Fine.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I am. He’s Cleland.”

  “Mors, please. Don’t protect me.”

  “It’s true. He’s been my friend for fifteen hundred years. I would know.”

  “How? Even you aren’t that good.”

  “But Cleland is. He’s got too much life in him to die. Not here, not now, and not alone.”

  Brigit nodded, clinging hard to the belief. Mors smiled at her.

  “I don’t know if cowards die many times before their deaths, but it certainly does seem that the valiant never taste of death but once. Would you have ever imagined we’d say such a thing about Swefred and Meaghan?”

  She shook her head, wishing she could brush the droplets of eyes off her skin. She was proud of the dead couple, proud that they’d created a new legend to awe the humans, but it was Cleland she was thinking of now, hating that he was alone, fighting off the thought of any other possibility, and wishing with all her power that she could reach out into the darkness and pull them into the circle made by herself and Mors. For the first time since leaving England, she put Eamon completely out of her mind and concentrated all her energy on Cleland.

  Cleland. Sweet, strong, wonderful friend. Don’t be dead. Don’t be gone, a pile of ash, caught up in the remains of all those horrid Nazis. Don’t be debris, blown through the air, part of the smoke. A shadow, a problem of theirs solved. Be alive, my dear friend. Be their headache, their disaster, their doom. Hurt them, hinder them. Be their nightmare, and then come home. To Padraic, to Otonia, to Eamon, to me, and to Mors. Your family. Be strong, be brave, and Cleland, whom I love so well … be.

  Mors was humming a lullaby that dipped into her brain and blew away the buzz. Only minutes ago, she thought she could never achieve peace again, but now she was drifting into sleep. Mors wrapped himself more tightly around her and they slept for hours.

  Brigit woke and blinked, readjusting her eyes to the sewer’s poor light. Mors was already awake and on his feet, stretching like a yogi, working his muscles and even breathing so as to focus his power and energy.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting ready.”

  “Where are we going now?”

  “No, my dear friend. Not we. I’ve had a long think and there’s only one sure path for each of us now.”

  She sat up very straight.

  “What are you saying?”

  He spoke with deep seriousness.

  “It stopped being about vengeance, or even our food supply, quite some time ago. You knew that. We all did. I want to see an end to these Nazis. They’ll eat the world if they’re not stopped. I’m not going to sneak back to Britain with my tail between my legs, and anyway, we haven’t the time to waste. It’s quicker for you to go on your own and less dangerous, too. On your own, you’ll make it easily.”

  “But … but what about you?” None of what Mors was saying was the least bit comprehensible.

  “Rumor has it, the Nazis have their eye on Russia. The idiots. I don’t think they know what a Russian winter is. I’ll pay Moscow a call, rally up the comrades a bit. Their problem is relying a tad too much on that snow of theirs to slow invaders up. I’d like to give the bear a bit more teeth than that.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Yes, I’d like to see the Nazis exit, pursued by a bear.”

  Brigit was in no mood for such jokes.

  “You dare say such a thing, you dare even think, you …”

  She flew into him, punching and kicking with what little strength she had left. Mors subdued her quickly, folding her limbs underneath him.

  “It’s my way, Brigit, it’s my way. You know me. I don’t want to leave you, why would I want to leave you?”

  “But you said …”

  “It’s what I have to do. You won’t travel safely with me. They know my face too well. You, wonderful girl, you’re going to live. I need you to live, and thrive. You’re going to get home to our London and … and to Eamon.”

  The crack in his voice pulled her straight into his eyes. There it was, the love that he had kept so carefully tucked inside him, hidden. He didn’t have the strength to hide it anymore, and didn’t need to if he was going away. The sharp edge of that unrequited love sliced into Brigit’s heart. He pulled away from her eyes, not wanting to be tempted to speak what she already knew, however much she didn’t understand it.

  “Why? You had so many, many years after Aelric and before Eamon. Why didn’t you say something?” She spoke with the full weight of hypocrisy, knowing that to have become the lover of Mors would have meant there would be no Eamon, but the idea that Mors had loved her all this time and, perhaps, forgone any other love in his life because of her, shredded her insides to ribbons, and she had to know why.

  He pressed his face against the sewer wall. She moved to stroke his arm and he pulled away from her. His hand slowly crushed a loose brick into dust.

  “Mors, I … I …”

  “Oh, Brigit,” he croaked, and reached for her. He turned her to face him, her hands wrapped in his. The rims of his eyes were pink and his whisper ragged.

  “Don’t you see? You were always the perfect one for me, but I was never the perfect one for you.”

  The heavy truth of that bit into her. When she was Brigantia, their energies were far too similarly high and angry and potent. One fire would have burned out another’s burning. They’d have been the greatest legend of all, but they would not have lasted. Or she wouldn’t. Mors was not made for dying, but she, without the more balanced temperament given her first by the seconds before Aelric’s death and then by Eamon, she would not have stepped into the possibility of infinity. Mors would have given her much, but he could never have tempered her, have given her leisure for reflection. The energy in her was so powerful only because she gave it room to breathe. Her pursuit of knowledge, her passion for the arts, her communion with herbs—in as much as Mors would have encouraged all this, and of course he himself indulged in the arts and loved knowledge, they would instead have drained each other. With Eamon, she reached for the stars, but with Mors, she might have sought to touch the sun, and thus burned.

  Thinking of the sun brought her back to the dark sewer and Mors’s new intention.

  “Please, Mors, my dearest friend. Don’t go to Russia. If we have to travel separately, all right, we’ll travel separately, but I have to know you’re going home with me, you’re going back where we both belong and can now do the most good. You can’t go to Russia. Even you can’t survive white nights.”

  “Oh, now, Brigit, can you really be underestimating me?”

  She smiled despite herself.

  “But Mors, please. England needs you. I need you.”

  His glance slid to his knees and he spoke flatly.

  “And what about what I need?”

  Brigit was pierced. She’d loved Mors like a brother, given him so much, second only to Eamon, but he had never suggested there might be something in the world he actually needed. She wondered if this reckless plan was the answer, that he needed to constantly brush up against his own death to feel alive, if
he couldn’t have love.

  His eyes, those beautiful green eyes, so different from Meaghan’s and so wholly magnetic, found hers again. She didn’t register them coming closer, half-shutting, the lashes brushing her brows until his lips were on hers. Their arms were so tight around each other, there was no telling where one set ended and another began. As they kissed, Brigit felt herself spinning back through centuries, through all of Mors’s happy dreams, dreams that involved her and the merry adventures they had behind his closed eyes. Deep in his mind’s eye, he was her maker, it was he who enfolded her in the dark kiss and then, the next night, opened her body to his and channeled that fire in wave upon wave of unending lust. Suddenly she was drinking, a sweet, sparkling liquid coursing through her, filling her up, sending her bouncing and floating through ether with an unheard-of potency. It was better than being drunk, because she was in complete control.

  He pulled back lightly then, pressing his forehead to hers, coaxing her eyes into his, a hand stroking her cheek. She gasped, realizing what he had done, and wildly wondering if this was where fairy tales got the notion of resurrecting kisses. He’d gifted her with a new strength, a power only a double millennial could wield, and with that weapon and the echo of Eamon’s music, she would have the capacity to get home.

  “But Mors, you need that! You have to need it more than me.”

  “For now, I have everything I need. I do. And I’ve got plenty of strength in reserve. I grow it like you grow your herbs. I’ll be all right, trust me.”

  “I’m begging you. Don’t leave me alone.”

  “Brigit. If there’s one thing we’ve all known for centuries, is that as long as Eamon’s somewhere, you’re never alone. They’ve started attacking our England proper. I hear it. One mission failed, so now we’ve each got a new mission. We wanted to interfere with the humans, so this is where we are. And you and I, we’re vampires of honor, we’re going to see it all through to the end. It’s not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves. Isn’t that right? Now, look at me.”

  He folded her hands against his chest and stared intently into her eyes. One tiny heartbeat fluttered under her palm and then went still again.

  “That’s it. Look at me and promise me one tiny thing. You won’t go forgetting this silly old mug, okay?”

  Her eyes traveled the circumference of his intriguing, endlessly attractive face. That beloved half-smile, the cocked brow, the dancing eyes. She laid a hand on his cheek, then wrapped her arms around him, nestling her head into his neck. His arms went tight around her again, and she could feel a cool sigh down the back of her blouse. She stroked the back of his smooth head, wishing she had Eamon’s gift of feeling what might be coming, or Mors’s own powerful confidence in the future, but she had neither. So there was no choice, then, but to hope that some bright night, back in a peaceful England, Mors might come singing through the darkness, a dog by his side, ready to join their community again, and with new stories to tell.

  When her tears started splashing onto his neck, he slowly pulled away from her. His own eyes were wet, but he winked, and tugged a strand of hair from her head. He tucked it somewhere in the depths of his clothes, chucked her under the chin, and strode off down the tunnel, whistling an old, old tune. It echoed for a long time.

  The sobs drove her first to her knees, and then facedown into the dirt. She cried until she was nearly choking on mud made by her own surprisingly hot tears. She found herself wishing for Otonia, for something like a mother, for a memory she didn’t even have of someone into whose unconditionally loving lap she could crawl to howl and beg and beat with fists until at last she was limp. Someone who would rock and stroke and assure her that the whole world hadn’t collapsed upon itself even though they both knew this was a lie.

  Isn’t that the job of a parent, to tell a child a beautiful little lie so that she can sleep? That’s the contract between parents and children: The parents tell the lie, pretending it is truth, and the children pretend to believe it.

  Finally, there was nothing left inside her and she lay quiet. She wondered how long she could lie there before her body dissolved into the dirt. She wondered what was happening in the world above while her own precious world was crumbling, and cursed every desire any of them had ever possessed for trying to make a difference in that human world.

  “Eamon, oh, Eamon. Eamon, I’m lost. I’m lost, and there’s nothing left, and I don’t know how to get home.”

  There was no answer. She felt nothing except cold, the coldest cold she’d ever felt in her life. She almost fancied she heard footsteps, but the cold and misery and exhaustion had overwhelmed her. She couldn’t concentrate on the sensation. She was empty.

  It was only the tip of the stake, a stake wielding the definitive power of death, pressing under her left shoulder, just behind her heart, that roused her.

  “Hello, Brigit. Or should I say, Brigantia?”

  Chapter 18

  London. August 1940.

  Eamon awoke with a violent start, a gasp singeing his throat. Cold sweat pooled under his arms and his hair was damp. He knew he’d had no nightmare; he didn’t even register dreaming. Something terrible had happened in Berlin. Was still happening. Brigit was alone. Brutally alone. More than alone: She was in danger. He tried to reach out to her with his mind, feeling his way toward comprehension, assuring her that he was with her in spirit, but he couldn’t see the path. He touched the sketch of the two of them, gazing into her eyes. The longer he looked, the more he could see them imploring him to extend a hand to help her home.

  The Amati was in his hands almost without his realizing, and the music as good as played itself. Song after song after song, but Eamon didn’t hear any of them. His mind was extending forward into a dark tunnel in Berlin, wrapping itself around the beloved who needed his protection, and backward through centuries, tugging all the music into his fingertips.

  Others took care of preparing false papers, gathering German clothes, drawing up lists of important officials. Of the five vampires chosen for the mission, only Mors threw himself headlong into the arrangements. The others were free to do as they pleased in the days before they were to leave.

  Brigit and Eamon had not discussed it, had made no plans, but found themselves quietly traveling. There was no itinerary, no order. Nor was there any question that their first jaunt was to Bankside.

  It was moments like these that gave them pause, contemplating the curiosities of their existence. To traverse the area where the old theaters had once thrived: the Rose, the Swan, the short-lived Hope, and, of course, the Globe—it felt like walking on dreams. They themselves had been there, in their heavy silks and feathered caps, the jewel-encrusted hem of Brigit’s skirt lightly skimming the path. They had been glanced at through corners of eyes with some envy, perhaps occasionally some suspicion, but the whole of their own attention had been solely for what took place on the stage. There was danger in theatergoing, what with the open air and afternoon shows, but that was no deterrent. London’s recurrent fog hung like an amulet over them, allowing them to see a new clarity. True, they had first discovered Shakespeare on their regular, surreptitious visits to the castle at Whitehall, but it was here, in these purpose-built playhouses, before a cross-section of London’s people, that the words took true flight. The vampires reveled in language that began to touch on what they thought no human could see, not unless they lived many hundreds of lifetimes, and stepped into places they could not reach. Those playhouses were the site of thousands of hours of immeasurable joy.

  But there was nothing left. Tenements where the Globe had stood, an alley to the Rose. And themselves, with their memories. Brigit knelt and touched the cold cement.

  “The ghosts sleep under here. They may rise again.”

  Eamon held out a hand to help her up.

  “Will we go to the theater, the first night you come back?”

  His lips were pressed to her palm, his eyes warm and teasing. She grinned.

&nb
sp; “Perhaps the second night.”

  They strolled past Queen’s Hall, thinking of concerts, so many concerts. Music permeated almost every corner of London for them. And there had been times, more than once, when they’d detected the distinctive sound of Eamon’s melodies in someone else’s work. It pleased them. What other musicians might regard as plagiarism, they regarded as a promise fulfilled. They hoped it would never stop.

  Brigit needed to explore the countryside, damp and dark though it was. They traveled down to Hampshire, to Chawton, to Jane Austen’s house, where what Brigit considered the most perfect book she had ever read had been written. The afternoon was wet and raw, but that suited them, and in fact, they had the house to themselves save for the tiny, elderly woman who took their admission money and apologized several times for the chill. They had been here twice before, the first time shortly after the book’s publication. Having found out through some investigation who the anonymous author was, they actually tried to secure an invitation to a dinner the Austen sisters were attending in the village. They failed, but Brigit was happy simply to see the sisters walk out of their home. She liked the way Jane Austen walked—a woman comfortable in her skin. They visited again when the house was made a museum. It was unchanged, which pleased them.

  As they wandered through the rooms, absorbing the good energy, Eamon studied Brigit. She looked very smart in her navy wool suit with the pink blouse underneath. Her hat was navy with pink ribbon trim, and a matching handbag dangled from her wrist. Not much more than a hundred years ago, she had walked through these rooms in an empire-waist dress, her hair piled on her head, a cloak over her shoulders. How much and yet how little changed, and they themselves changed only their clothes.