Guardian's Faith

by Jacqueline Rhoades

  "You go ahead and make your plans, Agdta, but don't blame me when the Bride and her Vampire don't show. I'm going to toss these sheets in the washer and see what I can find for a snack."

  "Don't touch my breasts," Agdta called after her. "They're for dinner!"

  Laughing at what Adam would make of Agdta's directive, Faith passed the front entry hall with its massive door that was no longer used. She thought she heard a knock and she paused unsure if it was real or merely the click of her sandals on the stone floor. The knock came again.

  The hall was as big as her bedroom with long reception rooms to either side where Lucien's mother held her parties. The whole front of the house was designed for public entertainment and the courtyard rooms now used as bedrooms were originally meant for private gatherings of family and close friends. Lucien used barely a third of the original hacienda. The whole second floor was permanently closed.

  Faith set her basket in the middle of the hall and pulled back the iron bolts that locked the front door. She swore once when her hand slipped and she cut the edge of her palm. She sucked on the cut as she opened the door and looked up into the bluest eyes she'd ever seen. They weren't deep and dark like Lucien's or a light sky blue like her own. These eyes were blue like the ocean, a blue that was almost green. His nose was straight, his jaw square and his shoulders could only be described as immense.

  He reminded Faith of the twins, the nephews of Lord Canaan and trainees in his House. The twins, Dov and Col, were beautiful and were often referred to as Adonis-like. They were free spirited young men with the faces of innocent angels which made them a sexy success with women.

  There was nothing angelic about this man's face, but Faith would bet her last dollar he was as great a success with women as the twins. He had a bad boy look about him that would draw women like moths to the flame. Faith might have fallen for those looks as well, had she not been so badly burned before. The demon Tyn disguised himself as a bad boy, too.

  This was no demon. Faith was older now, her powers more developed and she would have seen through his disguise to the double exposure image of the monster that lay beneath. It didn't stop her from staring, though.

  "Is your master at home? If so, please fetch him and tell him Evrard ad Gautier has come to call."

  He spoke slowly and condescendingly, in English, as if she might not understand or… as if she was a child he didn't want to frighten.

  Faith looked down at her faded blue smock and baggy cotton pants. She was wearing one of Lalo's ball caps with her hair tucked up inside to keep the dust and cobwebs out. The cap was too large and the bill kept sliding down over her nose so she'd turned it to the side to keep it out of her way. She couldn't blame him for making the mistake. Still, it rankled.

  She held out her hand to touch him and he grasped it lightly and stepped inside as if he expected her to lead him somewhere. She had to give a little tug to get it back.

  "Lucien isn't here at the moment, but he should be back within the hour," she signed, "Would you like to wait or would you prefer to leave a message."

  She smiled when he took a step back, surprise widening his eyes. Was it because he understood her or because she called her master Lucien?

  "Don't be frightened," she told him though she didn't think this man would frighten easily. She wiggled her fingers at him, enjoying herself. "It's a gift. I'm a Daughter of Man." He was Paenitentia. He would understand the term.

  He laughed, regaining his composure. "I'd like to wait if your Liege Lord would allow it."

  His eyes moved down and back up her body and Faith knew she'd been judged and found wanting. He wasn't impressed and why should he be. The Daughters of Man he'd grown up imagining were probably more like JJ, tall and powerful. Even sweet and gentle Hope looked intimidating when she was dressed in one of her expensive business suits and referred to those suits as her armor.

  "We'd heard he had one of your kind living here. Many of us thought you no longer existed," Evrard ad Gautier said as she led him up the hall.

  'Your kind' didn't sound particularly complimentary, but she decided to ignore it. The Daughters of Man weren't high on the Paenitentia's list of favorite people.

  "Oh, we're still around. Making a comeback, you might say. My name is Faith."

  She was proud of herself for not being intimidated by this large, good looking stranger. Only a few months ago, his presence would have sent her scurrying for the nearest corner. She wasn't sure where she should put him, though. Lucien had an office that was overflowing with books and papers, but she didn't know if he'd want a stranger left in there alone. Then again, he might not be a stranger.

  "Are you a friend of Lucien's?" she asked, trying to sound casually curious.

  "A friend? No, though he'll know who I am. We only met once, a long time ago."

  That crossed the office off her list. Agdta and Vasco were cleaning the large room where Lucien read and the boys played cards. It was Faith's idea to uncover the rest of the furniture and rearrange it to accommodate the promised TV. There was the piano in there, too, that probably hadn't been touched in years. Agdta said there was a man in the village who could tune it.

  That left the kitchen and the dining room and she couldn't very well leave him sitting at that big dining room table alone.

  "I was going to put on a pot of coffee and find myself something to eat. Care to join me?"

  The poor man couldn't very well say no. She offered him a seat in one of the mismatched chairs before she went to the sink to wash her hands and fill the coffee pot. She didn't turn back until the coffee was heating on the old fashioned stove.

  "Sorry for the accommodations. You've caught us at a bad time. We're in the middle of cleaning. Most of the other rooms here are unused, so…" she spread her hands.

  "That's quite all right. I'm used to it. At my last posting, there were only three rooms; the kitchen, the Liege Lord's room, and the long barracks where the rest of us slept."

  "Oh? Where was that?" she asked before ducking into the pantry to look for something that was suitable for a guest.

  "Columbia. Before that, I was in Brazil. It was a beautiful mansion in the middle of nowhere and we spent half our time beating back the jungle. Columbia was actually a relief. No one cared how close the jungle grew. I saw a lot more action there, too."

  Faith returned with a pie she was pretty sure Agdta was saving for dinner. "So I guess it's a safe guess to say you're a Guardian."

  Before she knew it, Faith was sitting at the kitchen table sharing coffee and pie with Evrard ad Gautier and telling him about Canaan ad Simeon's House of Guardians and the people who lived there.

  The crashing of the back door alerted her to the boy's return. The spring closer was beyond repair and neither one of the trainees seemed capable of quietly opening or closing the door.

  "Lucien's trainees," she informed Evrard as she rose to retrieve more plates and forks. "They can't walk past the kitchen door without stopping in."

  "Hey Agdta, what's to eat? And don't say it's almost dinnertime because that's over an hour away… well shit!" Adam stopped short in the doorway and Lalo bumped into his back.

  "Get your ass out of the way. I'm hungry… well shit! Didn't expect to see you here so soon, uh, sir."

  "You know each other?"

  "We've met," the newcomer corrected, "Apparently your Liege Lord saw fit to allow these two to patrol on their own. I bumped into them; you might say while I was out walking."

  Faith knew that Lucien had allowed the boys to patrol together by the Paenitentia enclave where they were least likely to run into anything malicious. It would be reasonable to assume they met Evrard ad Gautier somewhere outside the enclave. Why then, was Lalo looking anywhere but at Evrard while Adam searched in vain for something to eat in the refrigerator which had been open far past his normal thirty-six seconds?

  She had no time to question this because a scream and a crash reverberated through the halls.

  "Agdt
a!"

  Faith's short legs were no match for the longer Guardian ones and she was the last to reach the scene. The ladder lay across the baby grand. Agdta lay beneath it, blood pouring from a gash in her forehead and one arm folded at an unnatural angle beneath her back. Vasco was kneeling beside her and Adam was bending to pick her up. Faith slapped the piano to get their attention, but all eyes were on Agdta and no one was looking at her. She pushed her way past Lalo and the visitor and shoved Adam's shoulder.

  "Don't move her!" she quickly signed. "Let me see what's wrong with her first."

  "Is she a doctor?" Evrard asked the young man he'd met in the Hills of the Dead.

  "She's a healer," Lalo told him as they watched the golden light crackle across her fingertips, "a bruja, but not the bad kind. Faith is a Daughter of Man."

  Chapter 28

  Towel wrapped around his middle to protect his trousers from spattering oil, Evrard ad Gautier directed traffic in the kitchen like a master chef.

  "Where do you keep your oregano?" he asked after supervising the chopping of onion and garlic and tossing them in the pot with olive oil. "I need those tomatoes sometime this year." He pointed to Faith who was chopping as fast as she could.

  "The shoebox on the third shelf," Agdta called from her chair in the corner.

  Lalo had carried the easy chair in from Faith's former bedroom when Agdta refused to go to bed or leave her kitchen in the hands of a stranger.

  "Can't find it," Lalo called back.

  Agdta flipped the hand that wasn't resting in the sling made from a torn pillowcase and slid her foot from the stool that supported it. "I'll get it." She started to rise, disturbing the cat that was curled in her lap.

  "No you don't, Mamacita," Adam was in front of her chair shaking a finger at her nose. "You sit in that chair or I will toss you over my shoulder and carry you off to bed."

  "You watch your mouth, boy," Vasco admonished. "That's no way to talk to a girl in front of her father. You want to bed her, you marry her first." Badly shaken by his daughter's fall, the old man was working his way through a bottle of tequila. "I need more lemon."

  "You need more food and coffee," Agdta scolded. "Adam, take that bottle away from him. He'll be up for hours singing sad songs."

  "Found it!" Lalo emerged triumphant from the pantry.

  Lucien and Álvaro walked in on this scene of controlled chaos. Lucien took one look at the blood on Faith's smock and dropped the packages he was carrying. He was at her side in three steps and removing the knife from her hand.

  "What happened? Where were you hurt?"

  "Not me, Lucien. Agdta fell from the ladder. Now give me back my knife before Chef Evrard over there gets grumpy. We're having Pasta with Chicken Sauce or something like that. Whatever it is, it smells delicious."

  After assuring Lucien that she'd suffered only minor discomfort after healing Agdta's injuries, Lucien turned to the woman who'd suffered the most and was suffering more under her brother's lashing tongue.

  "What were you thinking, you fool woman. You have no business climbing ladders. And where were you two?" Álvaro turned on Adam and Lalo.

  Agdta slapped at his leg. "Stop it, Álvaro. They help me whenever I ask and Adam carried me all the way in here and Lalo carried the chair. They're good boys and I've been cleaning this house for more than thirty years. It was my own fault."

  A tap on the table got the arguing siblings attention. "It was my fault," Faith said to Álvaro. "I wanted to have the room all cleaned and arranged by the time you came home. I should have been on the ladder."

  "Yeah, like you could reach any better than Agdta," one of the trainees muttered, but Faith didn't bother to turn to see which one.

  "Evrard would have been just as comfortable waiting in there as he was in the kitchen. Oh! Lucien! Where is my brain?" She turned to the man at the stove. "This is Evrard ad Gautier. He came to see you and ended up cooking us dinner."

  Evrard, stirring whatever was in yet another pot, lifted a wooden spoon in salute to Faith. "It's my privilege. I haven't had such an exciting night in years or at least one that didn't involve demons."

  Lucien was staring at the man. "Ad Gautier? Are you…?"

  "Nephew," Evrard answered, "and before I ask for a position in your House, my Lord, I suppose I should ask if that will be a problem."

  The Liege Lord didn't answer. Instead, he said, "You look like him."

  "So my mother says." He handed his spoon to Lalo. "Don't let it burn," he said, pointing to the pan of cream and then turned back to Lucien, "Will it be a problem, my Lord?"

  "We can talk about it later. You'll spend the day, of course." Lucien walked over to his housekeeper and laid his hand on her head. "You are to do nothing for the next two days and if Faith thinks you need more time, you'll take that, too. I know, I know," he said when she started to protest, "You're fine, but nevertheless, you've sustained a shock and I'm not sure that's something Faith can cure. You rest. That's an order."

  *****

  Faith curled against Lucien with her head on his shoulder and her hand across the lilies and skull. The golden band he wore on his right bicep felt warm against her skin. It was the symbol of his office as Liege Lord and tonight, she could see how heavy that office's burden was. He'd barely spoken to her as they readied for bed.

  "Did I do something wrong, Lucien? Should I not have invited him in? I thought you'd be happy to have another Guardian under your roof."

  Lucien's greeting of Evrard ad Gautier had not been friendly. At dinner, he'd been tense, though with the exception of herself, Álvaro was the only one who seemed to notice. His eyes moved from his Patron to the newcomer in quiet observation and while he ate and complimented the chef with the others, Faith doubted he even tasted what he put in his mouth.

  Álvaro was suspicious of her at first, still was to a degree, but Faith had never seen that look of worry in his eyes when he looked across at her.

  The boys kept the conversation going with enthusiastic questions about the places their visitor had lived and things he'd seen. Evrard answered them all with confidence and didn't appear the least concerned with the quiet at the other end of the table.

  After dinner, Lucien and Evrard were closeted together for several hours while Faith and the trainees played poker. Faith's mind kept wandering to Lucien and her inattention cost her two hefty IOUs.

  "You did nothing wrong, hummingbird," Lucien said and lifted his head from the pillow to kiss her curls. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't bring my concerns to the bedroom."

  "This is exactly where you should bring them. You keep telling me to trust you and I do, but it works both ways. You have to trust me, too." She raised herself up on her elbow so she could see his face. "What bothers you about his name?"

  "There's nothing wrong with his name." He ran his hand along her back and cupped her rear. "You're too far away. Come up here where I can kiss you."

  "No kissing until you tell me what's going on." Faith pulled the hand on her bottom up to her waist. "Don't tell me his name doesn't bother you. It does and don't lie to me again. I'll know."

  "Another of your witchy gifts?" The hand at her waist crept up to her breast.

  "No, you're just really bad at it." She pushed the hand down again. "Now tell."

  Lucien's fingers drew circles on her skin, but the circles stayed at her waist. "Apollinaire ad Gautier was one of my father's men. His grandfather was a Guardian who lost his skull and tears and other Houses were leery of taking his grandson on, particularly since his father ignored his call and wasn't known for his kindness or generosity."

  Faith knew the 'call' to be a Guardian was genetic and ran in families through the father's line. Baby boys born with a red tear on their chests could receive or reject their calling. In the past, such a call was viewed with the highest regard, but in more recent times the calling was regularly ignored and being a member of the Guardians elite had gone out of fashion. The pendulum was now swinging back.

  T
he honor of being a Guardian wasn't permanent. It had to be continually earned. If a Guardian's actions violated his vows, he could lose his skull and tears and be cast from the ranks.

  "Your father gave Apollinaire a chance."

  "He did and Apollinaire served my father well, but I never liked him. I didn't like the way his eyes took in everything we owned or the way they looked when they lingered on my mother. I tried to tell my parents, but I was a boy and they interpreted my concerns as those of a boy. They thought I was jealous of him because of his position with my father and many men admired and flirted with my mother.

  "Apollinaire was very good at keeping his thoughts hidden when he was around adults, but he didn't bother with his loyal mask when he was around me. Why should he? I was just an inconsequential boy. As I grew older he, like the others of my father's men, helped with my training. He had a knack for making me lose my cool. Isn't that what they say? Lose your cool? That made my complaints even less believable. By his goading, he was only trying to make me stronger, you see. But I knew. I saw what was in his eyes."

  Faith kissed her lover's chest. "Lucien," she whispered aloud, but her voice would go no further. "I know what it's like to be a child and know that no one will listen." She kissed each blood red tear that fell from the skull on his chest. "Did Apollinaire die during the massacre?" Lucien told her that two had lived.

  She felt the air leave Lucien's chest.

  "So I am told. I've often regretted not remembering how I killed Apollinaire ad Gautier. He was the one who raped and killed my mother and drove Marisol insane. He was my father's Second."

  As Lucien said the words, a cold trickle of fear slithered over Faith's skin. Since the beginning, she'd known she had some purpose here, but the reasons were obscure. She'd hoped the completion of her own healing and finding love with Lucien would satisfy the compulsion, but still the feeling lingered. She had a purpose here, a role to play, and Evrard ad Gautier was a part of it.

  "What will you do?" she asked.

  "I don't know. No House can afford to turn away a Guardian of good standing and he is in good standing. He has letters from each House he has served and all sing his praise and yet his presence worries me. He has been gone a long time. Why return now?"