The Guard

by Harri Aburrow-Newman

  Ysabel cleared her throat, knowing that the physical sound would snap me out of my reverie. She raised an eyebrow and tapped an imaginary watch,

  “Tick tock, ma chérie… this isn’t a pleasure flight remember…” the whisper in my mind had an amused edge that softened the reprimand, but still I scowled at her.

  “The quicker we find these stinking, stake-wielding humans, the quicker we have to separate. I will take all the pleasure flights I want whilst I still have you to take them with.”

  I regretted my words as soon as I had thought them, but by then it was already too late. Ysabel curled her mind inwards, withdrawing it so that I couldn’t feel her so clearly, but I caught the scent of sadness from her before she did.

  “I’m sorry” I said quietly, knowing that she could hear me.

  I gave her a gentle nudge with my mind and dipped one wing so that I swung through the air towards her, brushing the tip of my lowered wing against the underside of hers. I loved those wings; my own were scaled on the top side, so were heavier and not as delicate as hers, which were soft as lamb’s leather and pure, pearlescent white in colour. The edges of them were razor sharp though, and could cut through flesh like a hot knife through butter… beautiful violence incarnate. Her mind fluttered against mine, forgiving me.

  I began to focus then, taking Ysabel’s words to heart, and began scanning the ground we were passing over with my mind, briefly dipping into each consciousness I happened across. We had been flying for nearly an hour, making passes backwards and forwards across the city, to cover the ground as thoroughly as possible, when we hit the jackpot. Both of us noticed them at the same time; a small of group of humans with a certain air of cynicism around them, and not a hint of shock at having found themselves in a world populated by vampires. The average human mind nowadays was jumpy and fractious; having had everything it thought it knew thrown into disarray by the knowledge that actually, it isn’t top of the food chain after all.

  We tipped ourselves into shallow dives, aiming towards the house that the humans were in. It was a squat, ugly townhouse with all the curtains drawn, a ragged line of smoke was sputtering out of the chimney like they had just lit a fire and it was having trouble getting started. Ysabel and I landed on the other side of the street, opposite the door. I touched down first, keeping in the shadows, and then Yzzy came down behind me so that my black wings shielded her more obvious white ones until she could sheath them. Once done, she came up beside me and I sheathed my own wings. She had also tugged the hood of her jacket up so that it covered the gleam of her white blonde hair, which was almost as obvious as her wings. It was a good move I supposed, but I still couldn’t help but be disappointed that it also covered her face… she looked beautiful by moonlight.

  She jabbed me in the side with a huff, aware as ever of what I was thinking,

  “Are you going to concentrate at all tonight?” she chided me, grinning all the while, her face shrouded in the shadow from her hood.

  “Yes, yes oh my mistress” I replied sarcastically, rolling my eyes and earning myself another jab. I chuckled, arching my body away from her prodding finger,

  “You know, Yzzy, why don’t we just knock?” I asked, not waiting for an answer before I darted across the road, rapping on the peeling, flimsy wooden door before Yzzy could object. She appeared at my side looking mutinous,

  “I’m not your second in command anymore you know; you’re supposed to consult me before you do stupid things now.”

  The door was opened before I could dignify that with a response. A pair of suspicious human eyes and the barrel of a gun appeared in the small gap,

  “Who are you and what do you want?” the man spoke quickly, his shaky voice betraying the nerves that didn’t show in his eyes,

  “We’re looking for the IGS” said Ysabel, automatically taking over the role of human charming. Her soft French accent and innocent features made her perfectly suited to the job, along with the fact that she actually liked humans…

  Her response had shocked the man in the door and his eyes popped open wide. The gun barrel wavered and he stuttered a bit, obviously trying to work out what the procedure should be for this situation. He solved it simply, by slamming the door in our faces with a yell of,

  “Go away! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Ah, the age old response of a human who has something to hide.” I muttered under my breath.

  I hammered on the door again, harder this time so that it rattled in its hinges, and Yzzy hissed at me quietly, warning me off scaring them. Shame. The now rather more rickety door was thrown open all the way, and I found myself face to barrel with a sawn off shotgun that was toted by a rather more competent looking human than the one who had previously opened the door. I raised an eyebrow, unflinching as the man shoved the gun closer to me.

  “Piss off. We don’t take new recruits.” He snarled. No denials of who they were there then,

  “But if you don’t take new recruits, how do you replace the ones that get chewed on?” I smiled and blinked at him, all exaggerated sincerity. Yzzy stepped forward then, putting herself between us and pushing back her hood,

  “We just want to help you.”

  She said it soothingly, like she was trying to calm an enraged animal, and it actually seemed to work. The man lowered the gun slightly and looked carefully at us with wary eyes,

  “You two don’t exactly look the sort to be running around killing vamps,” he mused, squinting, “what do you really think you could help us with?”

  “Information.” She replied bluntly, raising her eyebrows. She looked away briefly, biting on her lip, “and if I’m being honest, we could use your help too.” She finished with a half-smile up at him, a perfectly balanced play between helpless girl and hard-ass businesswoman. He caved. Backing away from the door and standing to one side, he jerked the gun sideways, gesturing for us to go past him into the musty interior.

  Once inside, the stocky scot who had opened the door slammed and dead bolted it, then hefted his gun again whilst yelling for someone to give him a hand,

  “We’re going to have to search you,” he said without apology, a shrug of one shoulder telling us it wasn’t an unusual necessity, “we don’t let strangers carry weapons in our house.”

  “Uhh…” the sound escaped me subconsciously and I automatically gripped the hilts of my short swords, unaccountably nervous about being parted from them. They had been a gift when I was made leader of the guard and they had only ever left my side to shower or sleep in all the years since then.

  “No way we can keep them, boss?” I shot him what I hoped was a nervous grin, copying his one shoulder shrug, “I think you can understand that I get a little jumpy when I’m not armed these days…”

  He squinted at me and shook his head sharply,

  “Nope, sorry. You’re safe here though, and you’ll get them back when you leave or when we trust you.”

  Ysabel laid her arm briefly on mine,

  “It’s fine, ma chérie.” She said it quietly, reinforced with a mental caress.

  I sighed, unbuckling my well-worn sword belt and handing it over to one of the people who had responded to the man’s yell - a woman who looked the weapons over curiously, which was unsurprising considering humans were rarely armed with blades of any kind beyond your standard kitchen knife. I was pleased that Ysabel didn’t often carry her long sword or we would have been there for ages whilst their curiosity got its fill.

  When the humans had finally finished searching us, satisfied that they had recovered all of our weapons, we were led deeper into the house to a large, surprisingly airy kitchen. There was a big, rustic wooden table in the centre, surrounded by a mismatched set of chairs that were occupied by an equally mismatched set of humans. The man with the shotgun moved around us and sat at the head of the table, with the man and woman who had searched us placing themselves on either side of him. He directed us towards a couple of empty chairs with a wave of his
hand.

  “Would you like anything to eat or drink? Though I’m afraid we don’t have much to offer” he spoke calmly, in a deep, measured voice that reverberated with his Scottish heritage. I imagined it could be very charismatic when he wanted it to be.

  Ysabel replied with a nod, “I’d like a coffee if you have any,” he nodded and sent one of the younger men to switch on the kettle, “thank you.”

  There was no talk until the coffee had been made. Large mugs of black, sweetened liquid were placed in front of both Ysabel and myself with a shrug from the young man,

  “no milk, sorry.”

  He scuttled back to one corner of the kitchen with a nervous glance back at us, and then the man that was obviously the leader finally spoke,

  “So,” he began, “my name is Owen McClennon. This is my daughter Lexi and my son, Jackson. And this,” he gestured expansively, spreading his arms wide to encompass the entire room and its twenty or so ragged inhabitants, “is the London branch of the IGS, or what’s left of it, anyway.” He folded his arms across his chest again, peering at us with suspicious brown eyes, “and you are?”

  “I am Ysabel d’Avinho, and this is Beth Miller.” Yzzy replied, taking the helm again, “we’ve been trying to find the IGS for some weeks now. We believe we may know a way to end this war, or at least even the odds. But we can’t do it with just the two of us…”

  She broke off as her statement provoked a burst of exclamations from everyone in the room except Owen, who just stared at us, nothing but doubt coming from his mind. He held a hand up, and the room almost immediately quietened down as he leaned forward in his chair towards us,

  “May I ask how you two girls, barely adults by the looks of you, and armed with nothing but fancy knives have happened across information like that, when the IGS has found nothing? We have hundreds of slayers now, placed all around the globe. I find it very hard to believe that you have anything that we don’t already know.” He sat back again, refolding his arms and scrutinising us.

  “How about that the masses you see running around the streets everyday operate as a sort of hive mind?” Yzzy asked, “they are controlled by the first couple of generations of vampires that were created by the first born. Kill the controllers and the masses lose all direction.”

  Owen huffed,

  “Oh please! Vampires have been around for longer than we could possibly fathom. Are you really trying to tell me that only now have the very oldest of them worked out this hive mind thing?” he laughed out loud, “hell! You’re trying to tell me that these oldest vamps are even still alive?! Girls, I am sensing some serious flaws in your logic.” Raising an eyebrow, he stared us down, shaking his head with a mirthless amusement.

  “Well” replied Ysabel slowly, “have you not wondered why the vampires you’ve been seeing in the last ten years or so have been so much more aggressive? And have seemed rather… unkempt?”

  “You’ve noticed that too, huh? We just assumed that they’ve been getting less picky about who they turn to boost their numbers.”

  “No, it’s an entirely new type of vampire created by accident around a century ago. The massive increase in their numbers that you’ve seen has been due to an extreme decline in the numbers of the true vampires, who were keeping them in check.” We watched him cautiously following this statement from Yzzy… from experience with other single slayers we’d happened across we knew that it could be taken seriously, or more likely with complete disbelief and our subsequent eviction back out into the street for being blatant liars.

  “Ook…” Owen said slowly, mulling this new theory over in his mind, “I’ll humour you for now. What caused this ‘extreme decline’ in the original vamps?”

  I scowled, remembering, and spat out the answer before Ysabel could,

  “Idiocy. And arrogance. The vampires gathered all their guards and elders in one place and the ferals took advantage of it. They got wiped out in one fell swoop.” Owen looked slightly taken aback by the anger in my voice, and I noticed his daughter Lexi staring at me with intense, almost-black eyes.

  “Wow. Uh, shit. So there are none of the normal vamps left?” once it had sunk in, my venom was forgotten and an air of stunned horror descended over the room… their thoughts were all over the place, but luckily for Ysabel and myself, the general attitude seemed to be that this was a bad thing.

  “There are,” Ysabel took over speaking again, “but the remaining ones are in hiding, and as I’m sure you know, they’re not really fighters anyway. There are two of the warrior class left though, and they’re still around and fighting. Unfortunately, as I’ve already mentioned, there’s not much that they can do on their own…” she cocked an eyebrow at Owen, waiting to see if he would pick up on the brick like hint that she had just dropped on him. He didn’t, of course, but Lexi did. She gasped suddenly, a quick, quiet intake of breath, and those dark eyes popped open wide,

  “You two…” it left her in a shocked, rushed whisper, but Owen heard and groped reflexively for his gun as adrenaline coursed through his system with the realisation.

  “Bloody sneaky vampires,” he growled, re-aiming his gun at us as nearly everyone else in the room snatched up their weapons too,

  “Get out.”

  “No!” this was Lexi again, looking appalled at the suggestion, “they can help us! And if they’re anything like the warrior vampires we’ve met in the past then if they wanted to kill us they could have easily done it already!”

  I chuckled, “she’s got a point.”

  “Mmhm. And you’ve got four right there in your mouth. Out”

  I rolled my eyes, “Eight, actually. But whatever… come on Ysabel.”

  Yzzy looked at me curiously, wondering what I was doing giving up so easily. In response, I send her a brief image of what I had just sensed heading towards us… a fair sized pack of ferals that must have been following our scent, closing in quickly.

  “We’re going to leave them to deal with those ferals alone?” she asked aloud,

  “Sure,” I shrugged, “they told us to get out.” I grabbed our weapons from Jackson's hands, blurring in close to him before he could flinch and threw Yzzy’s long knife to her, then headed towards the door at a human speed, belting my swords back on. A furious buzz rose behind us as the humans began a whispered argument amongst themselves. They came to a conclusion pretty quickly when the first yowl from the ferals sounded close enough for them to hear. The room froze, and then burst into frenzied action as everyone leapt up and scattered, obviously to their designated posts. Owen paused in front of us,

  “Alright. Help us, and we might consider helping you.” Then he disappeared into a room that faced into the street. Ysabel and I slipped out the front door to wait.

  As we stood just outside the house, the curtains were flung open along with the windows. Wooden shutters with holes cut in them to allow the barrels of guns to poke through were then slammed into place across the openings. A few of the humans had strung themselves out on the roof as well, looking dangerously exposed… one of them was Jackson, who had a gun that looked more suited to being bolted to the side of a helicopter hanging across his massive body on a thick, padded strap.

  Glancing over the building, I locked eyes with Lexi, standing in an upstairs window whilst the people around her bustled the shutters into place, holding some sort of military issue machine gun like she knew how to use it. She stared steadily at me as I shifted with a snarl, curiously brave for a human, not looking away once as my eyes blackened and my wings unfolded, flaring out behind me. Yzzy shifted beside me and my attention was dragged back to her, sharing in the anticipation of the coming battle. She laughed blackly, her wings twitching and flexing and a low growl rumbling through her chest… she threw her mind towards mine, and they collided and merged instantly, leading to the briefest moment of disorientation as we adjusted to moving, seeing and feeling everything the other was, before relaxing into comfortable familiarity.

  The ferals approach
ed unhurriedly from both sides, gibbering to themselves as they edged closer. Ysabel and I moved round each other so we were back to back and I drew my swords smoothly, the metal blades sliding out of their leather sheaths with a clear, crisp ring. As the ferals drew into range, the guns of the people in the house began their barking rattle, their bullets screaming through the air towards the enemy, biting into flesh and knocking them back. It became quickly apparent why the IGS numbered so few now though, as the large majority of the ferals simply picked themselves up and carried on, the bullets having glanced off of their scaled torsos, or just missed the all-important heart. The only gun that did any real damage to them was the massive thing that Jackson toted on the roof, its huge bullets were literally tearing the ferals to shreds… it almost made me want one.

  I crouched and then pushed off towards the ferals, horizontal to the ground. I kept my wings extended straight out to either side of me as I barrelled into their ragged masses, the razor edges removed a swathe of fanged heads before I tucked my feet under me, landed, and swung my swords into action. They leapt in my hands, sliding between scales and into armour-free armpits. I could feel Ysabel doing the same in the other group, who had approached from the opposite direction. She favoured a more ‘natural’ style of fighting, that is, she preferred to use just her talons, wings and teeth to decimate her foes, with her long knife making the occasional foray between a ribcage. It was a method that lent her a ferocious air that was quite at odds with the gentle, quiet demeanour that she usually possessed.

  I grinned as I fought, finding a vicious pleasure in the crunch of steel through flesh, in the warm spray of blood across my face and in the gurgle of a feral who had just found itself minus a working throat. The relatively small pack was nearly disposed of when there was a scream from the building. I whipped around to see a feral who had managed to get through the hail of gunfire and knives scuttling like a grotesque, winged spider up the face of the building towards one of the upstairs windows. The shutters across it were smashed inwards and the sound of scattered gun fire and people retreating down stairs emanated from it. I leapt for the window and Ysabel moved to a more central position to finish off the last of the stragglers who had so far avoided destruction.