The Guard

by Harri Aburrow-Newman

  THE

  GUARD

  First published 2019 through Amazon KDP

  Text Copyright © Harri Aburrow-Newman 2019

  Harri Aburrow-Newman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  For the people who never quit on me, not once. You know who you are.

  Chapter 1

  Beth

  11.50pm 31st December 1899

  Attempting to detach myself from the steady drone of the elders’ chanting, I let my eyes rove slowly over the row of humans kneeling in front of the high table. Ten. One for each decade of the new century, each accompanied by the vampire who was to become their sire. Mostly, this century’s crop were guileless, wide eyed youngsters, eager for their gift of eternity. At the high table, the twelve elders sat facing them, looking out into the high vaulted room where the ceremony was to take place, the humans’ families and various important vampires seated on plush chairs like the audience at an exclusive play.

  Despite my best efforts, the elders’ monotonous chanting grated on me, nudging at my temper, and I drew in a slow breath through my nose, closing my eyes briefly as I wrestled with my annoyance. My head filled with the musty scent of the chapel, almost masked by the cloying smoke from incense and the oil lamps dotted around the perimeter of the room. I scanned the people present, both physically and with a quick brush of my mind. All of the guard, the warrior class vampires, were present, ranged around the edge of the room, penning in the guests. To my left and right, spaced evenly along the back wall, directly behind the elders stood the elite. Older than me, all of them, they nevertheless deferred to me without question; soft, respectful touches of their minds against mine heralded the arrival of information they had gathered from their own observations, or passed on from lower ranking guards elsewhere in the room.

  As guard leader, I stood behind and to the right of the high elder, with my second in command, a petite French vampire named Ysabel d’Avinho, taking the place on his left. A more proprietary touch fluttered against my shields, soft as a butterfly’s wing, but with an ownership that made a shiver run up my spine, and my heart stutter for a beat. I tilted my head towards my second as I lowered my shields for her, allowing a mutual connection, a courtesy not given to any other of my guards. The scent of roses danced around me as she whispered into my mind,

  “Beware Archer.”

  My drifting attention snapped back into focus as I pinned it on a human kneeling at one end of the row. He had black hair and clear blue eyes that were almost beautiful, but he bubbled with hatred and violence. I had fought hard to have him rejected for this ceremony; madness and sadism had no place in vampire society, and especially not in the guard. But his family had long been our most powerful human allies, so I had been overruled, and here he was. My anger spiked again at the memory, and when he noticed me watching him, and pursed his lips in a mocking kiss, it took everything I had not to shift. The lights flared as my pupils began to expand, and I felt Ysabel’s alarm through our still-open connection,

  “Breathe,” my second counselled, “do not give him the satisfaction of seeing you lose control.”

  “It would be worth it to rip his foul head off.”

  “Fine,” she replied, unruffled, “then let me remind you of the threat the elders made against me should you step out of line again.”

  Her words were freezing water dumped unceremoniously on my temper, replacing it with a brief stab of fear for her; my instincts automatically making me take the course that would keep my mate safe. I glared at Archer one last time, cocking an eyebrow at him coolly, before turning my gaze back to the guests. There was nothing I could do about him now.

  At that moment, the bells began. Midnight. The elders’ chanting stopped and the humans rose to their feet for the last time as mortals. By one minute past midnight, on the first day of the new century, they would be well on their way to becoming vampires. The next generation of the warrior class. The room was completely silent except for the chime, counting down the seconds. Waves of anxiety rolled around the humans, and even arrogant Archer looked a little pale. On the last strike, the sires stepped forward, and as one, delivered the turning bite to the human in front of them, all of whom then dropped back to their knees. There was very little ceremony to this part; no sucking of blood or protracted announcements, just a quick, deliberate injection of venom. The soon-to-be-guard keeled over rapidly and began to convulse as the venom roared through them, filling and warping their cells into something new. Everyone, even the vampires, held their breath. The full transformation into a high vampire took around three days, but the warrior class turn was much quicker, usually occurring in something closer to three minutes. It was a violent, traumatic transformation, and despite all our preparations, occasionally the fragile, human bodies just couldn’t survive it.

  An unexpected ripple of shock hit me, and I swung my head towards its source; the people at the end of the room nearest Archer. Archer was groaning in agony like all the other turnees, but unlike the others, he was completely awake, scrabbling at his chest with taloned fingers. His shirt shredded under the assault, exposing mottled, distorted skin that was bulging and twisting like something was trying to get out. I took half a step forward, reaching for one of my sword hilts as the rush of adrenaline made my eyes shift and fangs lengthen. The high elder threw his arm out, halting me,

  “No! This could be a new evolution!”

  I barely suppressed a sneer, but did as I was told, even as I loosened my twin short swords in their sheaths. Tension pressed on me, leaking from everyone in the room, and I reinforced my mental shield, blocking out the distraction. Abruptly, the skin of Archer’s back tore open and black wings, dripping with blood and heavy with scales, burst out and flared open behind him. I started, and stared; I had never seen scaled wings before, except my own, and a shocked gasp from Ysabel told me that she hadn’t either. But his similarity to me ended there; a mass of smaller scales began ripping from his chest and shoulders. They were black, like his wings, and soon covered his entire chest and back, extending across his shoulders and up his neck, tapering off around his elbows and under his jaw. He got to his feet shakily, looking down at his chest and touching the bloody scales gingerly. His eyes snapped up to meet mine, and the full horror that had taken over his face became apparent. Instead of the flat, wholly black eyes of the guard, his eyes were the dark, brownish red of old blood, filled with malice, and his mouth was distorted by the snaggled mess of fangs that had replaced every one of his teeth. Warrior class vampires were sleek and elegant; beautiful, powerful killing machines. Archer was an abomination. I took another slow step forward, pressing against the high elder’s arm, which he still held across my stomach. He was looking at Archer with something like awe on his face,

  “amazing,” he whispered.

  Archer’s attention switched to the high elder and he grinned viciously,

  “Yes. I am.”

  His words were garbled, barely understandable as they struggled past the forest of fangs, but then he shrieked; the pure, unearthly war cry of the guard, and threw himself towards the high elder, talons reaching for his ancient face. The room exploded with movement as the guard launched into action at a silent command from me, given as I shoved the high elder to one side and swiftly drew my swords. Just quick enough to slash them towards Archer’s neck. Somehow, he managed to twist away, so fast! My own wings were out now, and I attacked again as Ysabel came at him from the opposite side. He avoided my blades and wings, but the razor edge of Ysabel’s wing dragged across his side, slicing deeply through the surprisingly soft scales. Archer paused at that and backed off, looking warily at the guard now surrounding him. He eyed my half-spread wings, their scales, which had until now been uni
que.

  “I’m just like you,” he slurred, “but better.”

  “You are nothing like me, you vile creature.” I growled, mentally signalling the guard to start closing the circle.

  “We’ll see… I guess you were right about something though; I am too volatile for the guard.” Archer’s face twisted into what I guessed was supposed to be a smirk, then he launched himself upwards, crashing through the old timber and tile roof and disappearing. Five guards shot through the hole after him. I spun on my heel, sheathing my swords with enough force that they nearly tore through the bottom of their sheaths, and stalked back to where the elders peered from between the protective, spread wings of the elite. The high elder looked shaken, his half-black eyes wide. I hissed at him, baring my fangs, and not even Ysabel could muster a flicker of shock at my insubordination.

  “You should have listened, my lord.”

  I spat out the I-told-you-so, injecting his title with as much sarcasm as I could muster, then followed Archer, leaving Ysabel to deal with the rattled guests and scared, bloodling guards.

  1st January 2000.

  The room was filled with the stench of burnt flesh, and an evil black smoke lingered near the ceiling. Body parts that had escaped the fires littered the room and blood was pooling on the floor and running down the walls in crimson rivulets. The bodies of the humans who had been present had been left where they had been thrown, ravaged and torn almost beyond recognition. One woman was still alive, curled in a corner. She was thankfully unconscious, her breathing a shallow rattle; the air struggling through what was left of her throat. The thump of large wings sounded outside, followed by a soft crunch as their owner landed on the roof. At that moment, the human woman’s heart finally stopped, one last breath exiting her lungs with a bloody wheeze. The creature on the roof shrieked; an unearthly cry of pain that echoed through the carnage-filled room and out into the hazy dawn.

  Chapter 2

  Beth

  Present day, Lille, France.

  The ferals had pushed us back too far. The warehouse building where the humans were being kept was only a hundred or so metres away; the low cries and muffled sobs of those being kept inside beginning to filter through to us, reaching our ears faintly through the chattering racket of the ferals. We jogged steadily, looking around for a way to lead them in the opposite direction. We were supposed to be protecting the humans that had been captured so that we could free them when possible, so the last thing we needed was for the ferals guarding them to realise that we were around. I growled in frustration. Even Ysabel and I couldn’t fight this many at once.

  Yzzy spotted an alleyway on our left and dived into it, with me following after her loosing a harsh cry, daring the ferals to follow. They didn’t. We stopped and watched as they streamed past the end of the alleyway in a foul torrent, trailing the stench of the rotting blood that stiffened the rags that passed for their clothing.

  “Putain.” Ysabel dropped down into a squat, her wings spreading out across the floor on either side of her. She folded her arms across her knees and let her head drop forward onto them, a wave of despair rolling off of her as she caught her breath. I vented my frustration on the dirty brick wall, driving my fist into it and throwing out a gout of brick dust towards my face, which just served to make me even more angry.

  We had been picking off ferals guerrilla style for years now with little success; we’d kill twenty and thirty more would take their place. They were always one step ahead of us, and I had lost count now of the number of times that we had been forced to retreat, or worse, lost the humans that we were supposed to be protecting. I let out a strangled growl, and Ysabel looked up at me,

  “We can’t keep doing this Yzzy! It’s ridiculous. It doesn’t fucking work” I threw another punch at the wall as I heard Yzzy sigh,

  “You don’t need to tell me that, love. But what else can we do?” She stood up, shaking her arms out and sheathing her wings so she could lean against the wall, “we go out hunting the damn things every night and it doesn’t do any good. And it won’t until we find the higher generations and can hunt with some kind of direction.”

  Scowling, my mind wandered for the millionth time to work over everywhere I could think of that the high generations could be holed up. The leaders of the ferals, all within two or three turns from Archer himself, were the driving force behind the packs that we fought every day. These were essentially drones; if we killed the lead generations, the ferals would lose all focus, crash and burn… with a little help from us they would anyway. But even if we did work out where they were, there was no way that we could take out that many vampires - essentially warrior class ones with added armouring - with just the two of us. We had even tried trapping a few ferals and diving into their weird, animal minds, seeking to follow the threads of control back to whoever held the reins, but whoever that was inevitably detected our presence and cut loose the ferals before we could get to them.

  I blew out a long breath and normalised with some difficulty, reaching out to take Yzzy’s hand. We walked back out of the alley and retraced our steps down the narrow, littered road, studiously ignoring the sounds emanating from the nearby warehouse. I squeezed Ysabel’s hand gently, she always took it worse than I did when we messed up and humans took the rap for it. She’d grown up knowing that she would be a vampire someday, and had the instinctive protective urge towards humans that all the sanctioned turns had, having been taught their entire lives that humans were to be revered.

  The fight against the ferals was hardly a war anymore; the remaining high vampires had gone into hiding years ago, and as far as Yzzy and I were aware, we were the last of the warrior class. Although if we didn’t find some way to turn the tide soon, there would be nothing left to fight for anyway.

  We got back to the small, dusty flat that we had temporarily commandeered and began gathering our things; there was no point staying here now. The pack of ferals that we had failed to divert would have decimated the warehouse by now, leaving nothing but bloodless bodies behind them. The rumours of the human ‘farm’ had been what drew us here in the first place, so now that was gone it was time to move on to try and make a dent in the ferals elsewhere.

  A few weeks later and we had found ourselves back in London. It was eerie and hollow-seeming, for even during the day, few humans ventured out. The ferals rarely attacked during the day as they were more sensitive to the light than us thanks to their state of permanent shift keeping their pupils wide open, but no one liked to risk it. The country was barely holding itself together, with the large majority of business having moved into the remoter countryside areas, and no one had any idea where the government had hidden themselves away. The only industry still booming in the capital was the military; they had taken over large swathes of residential areas to use as bases, erecting makeshift barricades around them and arming themselves to the teeth with the most powerful weapons they could lay their hands on. There was also tell of another group of people who had moved into the capital at the same time as the ferals, and they were the reason Ysabel and I were here.

  The slayers I had bumped into in the past had always been a ragtag bunch of misfits and half trained soldiers, looking for something to rail against. Lucky (or unlucky, depending upon how you look at it) enough to stumble across the presence of the supernatural, they had focused their aggressions on that. Nowadays, they were rather more organised and a lot more extensive. They called themselves the IGS, the International Guild of Slayers, which I found hilariously pretentious, but it was them who we had come back to London to seek out.

  It was Ysabel’s idea to recruit them. Whilst everyone fighting the ferals was fighting them separately, none of us was going to get anywhere, but in order to try and consolidate the effort on a global scale we needed more than the two of us. I was still leery about going anywhere near them, but Yzzy assured me that we wouldn’t have to work with them long; we only needed time to convince them of our plan’s worth. And the slayers w
ere never all that down on vampires, the best of them managed to at least half accept us as not the mindless evil brutes that pop culture and legend made us out to be. There were plenty of other creatures lurking around the fringes of what humans see as real that were a lot worse than us, although I was sure the ferals would have changed that attitude rather.

  Our search for Archer was proving completely fruitless; there was simply too much ground to cover. With the help of the IGS we wanted to teach the human armies how to fight the ferals more effectively by installing slayers as advisors. Ysabel and I would be the advisors for the American and British armies. My mind cringed violently away from the notion that this would mean us separating, but as we were fairly sure that Archer would be in one of those two countries, we had little choice.

  First though, we had to locate the slayers. We dropped our bags at our flat on the outskirts of the city and then immediately shifted, wasting no time on settling back in. Leaving via the balcony window, Ysabel shot me a small smile as we took off, sharing her pleasure in flight with me. The rush of wind pounding over us as we flew higher in spirals, dipping and weaving around each other… settling in was one thing, but time with Ysabel, when we weren’t completely concentrating on the business of the ferals… that was something else, and definitely worth wasting time on. Yzzy and I transmitted our thoughts and feelings to each other unconsciously, they ran through our bond like the blood through our veins, and that feeling was no exception. I heard her laugh softly and she rolled in the air underneath me, blowing me a kiss at the brief moment when her turn brought us face to face. Grinning, I snapped my wings out, steadying my flight, and glided easily over the city. Half of my mind was listening out for the tell-tale feel of a slayer’s mind and half of it lost in Ysabel, just relaxing in the peace of her presence.