The Guard

by Harri Aburrow-Newman

  The scene inside the room was a bloody mess. Two of the humans had been completely eviscerated in the few seconds before I had managed to get in and another was slumped against the wall, unconscious, with blood flowing freely from a large gash across his forehead. The two ferals in there had been occupied with smashing through the door to the rest of the house that had obviously been slammed in their faces, but swung around as soon as I entered. They stared stupidly at me for an instant, with slack, fang-filled jaws that drooled a disgusting mess of blood and venomous saliva onto the floor, and eyes a dull, dark red that didn’t register even a vague intelligence. A particularly pathetic example of the new breed of vampire, I thought, even as they launched themselves towards me, stunted wings dragging uselessly after them. They were easily and simultaneously dispatched; I simply stood my ground, dropping slightly and thrusting my wings out before me, driving them upwards so they slid under the already battered scales on their chests into their hearts. They shrieked briefly and impotently before slumping, useless. I lifted the now dead weights off the ground, flexing the powerful muscles in my wings and turned to fling them out of the window, back into the street.

  Ysabel leapt lightly into the room after me and we headed quickly downstairs, easily removing the door that the ferals had been having so much trouble getting through. We could hear a commotion in the kitchen, so headed there.

  The big central table had been cleared in a hurry, the various cups and pieces of guns that had previously been on it now scattered across the kitchen floor, but was rapidly getting ruined by the flow of blood coming from the body that had been laid on it. The humans who hadn’t been in the fight were bustling around in a panic, bumping into each other as they gathered tubs of water, and ferried gauze and other medical supplies to the table. The cause of their panic became quickly apparent as we moved in close enough to see that the wounded human in question was Lexi.

  Her black curls were scattered around her battered face in a messy, blood-spattered halo. She had an egg-sized lump above one eye, which was already going purple, and her bottom lip was split almost clean through. But the real damage, and source of the large majority of the blood, was a deep, ragged gash across her chest through which the hard white of her sternum and rib cage glistened. It seemed that she had only narrowly avoided becoming the third eviscerated corpse in the house.

  An older woman stood at her head, stroking her hair back and talking to her, until Jackson whirled into room, panic written all over his face, and took her place. Although going by the rolling of Lexi’s one open eye and erratic, almost non-existent thought patterns, she was going to go unconscious any second. I stopped short as the people in the room noticed us, their distaste at our presence creating an almost physical barrier. I pushed through it, normalising hurriedly and approaching Owen, who was about to try and stitch up Lexi’s chest.

  “Don’t,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder, “she’s lost too much blood. Stitching it won’t help.”

  He slammed the stitching kit down on the table, turning to me with a mix of fury and despair on his face,

  “so what the hell do you suggest, huh?” he was shaking with the force of his emotions, “you led those damn things here and now they’ve killed my daughter!”

  He lost it, his grief transmuting rapidly into anger, and stood suddenly, throwing his fist haphazardly towards my face. I easily slid around it, pushing him slightly as his momentum carried him past me so that he fell towards Ysabel, who grabbed him and pinned his arms to his sides. I moved up next to Lexi, wary of Jackson, who I thought was the only person likely to be brave enough to question me in the absence of orders from his father.

  “Can you help her?” he asked in a whisper, his voice cracking slightly, making my eyes shift from Lexi to him. His own eyes were filling with tears, a vulnerability that I didn’t expect to see.

  “Of course I can” I smiled. Healing Lexi was a simple matter really, but in his furious state, Owen would probably not have sanctioned it. I drew one of my swords and drove it deep into my opposite wrist, releasing a flush of blood over the wound on Lexi’s chest. Laying my sword on the table, I caught some of the blood in a cupped hand before the wound healed, letting it drip steadily into Lexi’s mouth. I saw Jackson stiffen at this, and Owen hollered,

  “Don’t you dare turn my daughter you leech!”

  I felt Yzzy’s temper flare, a rare occurrence, and she cuffed Owen around the head so that he instantly crumpled, unconscious in her arms. I turned my head around to look at her, raising an eyebrow, which she responded to by just shrugging one shoulder nonchalantly.

  “Don’t worry,” I addressed Jackson, who looked pretty indifferent to Yzzy’s treatment of his father, his concern for his sister overriding everything else,

  “We can’t turn someone like that. It’ll just speed up the healing. Look,”

  I directed his attention to her chest, where the skin was already knitting back together under the influence of my blood. The fibres of muscle and skin stretched like questing tendrils across the gap, contracting when they met one from the other side so the wound was pulled together, covering the glistening bone.

  “She’ll still need a blood transfusion… have you got any?”

  Jackson replied by simply turning and signalling to a couple of the men gathered around the table, who disappeared into another part of the house, obviously going to fetch the required blood. He looked up at me from where he was still bending over Lexi, stroking her hair,

  “We’ll help.”

  Chapter 3

  Michael

  An insistent bleeping worked its way into my nightmares and pulled me upwards, a vague annoyance mingling with relief rippled through me at morning having already arrived, before my eyes popped open and the cleaning-fluid-and-bad-food smell reminded me of where I was. I stared for a moment at the blank white of the ceiling, the annoyance turning to dread as the bleeping was joined by a cacophony of voices shouting unintelligible things and the bustle of a number of people gathering around the man in the bed opposite me,

  “He’s crashing!”

  There; a medical term I understood too well… I propped myself up on my elbows to look across, just in time to see a harassed looking nurse pull the curtain around, blocking the dying man off from the rest of us. Glancing around the room, I could see everyone else watching the curtains too, all of them with the same pale expression on their face… that of someone who has seen too much in too short a time of death. Or rather, of death of friends… no one can become hardened to that. Not even us. Sighing, I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, grabbing my crutches and beginning the painful walk out to the small bathroom down the hall. I didn’t need to watch this again.

  It had been two weeks since the rout that had been our attempt to clear out a nest of vampires and rescue a group of people they had kidnapped. The few men who had survived were all in this hospital… their numbers still decreasing by the day. It had been sheer luck, and the loss of many lives covering us that had gotten us out. I felt sick when I thought about it, I had been pulled out early after getting my leg broken so had missed the worst of the fighting… I should have been there. I shook my head sharply, trying to rattle myself out of that poisonous train of thought. It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t anyone’s fault really… there was no way for us to know that the vampires would be tougher than those we’d come across before, a fact that was still causing a lot of concern among the high ups as well as the guys on the ground. I had just never suffered quite so definite a defeat before, or lost so many men.

  The bathroom, like the rest of the hospital, was clinically white and a bit chilly; the bobbled floor tiles sending shivers up my one good leg through the thin, surgical stocking I wore. I suppressed a shudder and sat down heavily on the edge of the bath, spinning the hot tap on full. Billows of steam huffed up into the air, quickly misting up the mirror opposite me and plastering my hair down onto my forehead. I watched the water inching up the sides
of the bath, wondering when I would be allowed to escape this place… we hadn’t even been debriefed yet. I scowled. What were they playing at? Nearly our entire unit lost and they hadn’t even bothered to send someone to talk to the few of us remaining. I closed my eyes as the lingering threads of my nightmare tugged at me, filling my ears with the screams of my dying men. Vivid flashes of blood, fangs and death, so much death, accompanied the memories. Abruptly, I reached over and yanked the tap closed again, losing patience with waiting. I hauled myself up and hopped back out into the corridor, heading away from the ward in search of a phone.

  I hammered awkwardly on the door of the nurses’ station, my crutch rattling against it noisily. A petite, red headed nurse who looked supremely tired opened it after a moment’s pause, looking at me quizzically. She quickly let me in after I’d stated my request, directing me towards a phone in one corner and pulling a chair over so I could sit down. I thudded down into it and grabbed the phone, punching in the number of the only person I could think of that might be able to hurry things along.

  Lieutenant Glen Salisbury was my right hand man and best friend, and usually served as my second in command. He hadn’t been able to act as such on this last mission, which had perturbed me at first, although in hind sight I had never been so grateful for the meddling of bureaucrats. He picked up on the second ring, reliable as ever.

  “Yo?” Glen’s voice sounded slightly distorted, like he’d answered the phone on loudspeaker.

  “Glen! It’s Michael.”

  I heard him scramble for the phone, and his next words were clearer.

  “Jesus, Michael! Where the hell are you? I can’t anyone to tell me a damned thing, just that you’re yet to be debriefed.”

  I blew out a long breath, wondering at the secrecy that seemed to have shrouded our failure.

  “Yea, we had some issues. I was starting to think that we’d been forgotten... wondered if you might be able to rattle the chain of command a bit, annoy someone enough that they come and sort this mess out?”

  “Sure, sure... anything, mate. Anyone in particular or shall I just shout a lot in an upwards direction?”

  “To be honest Glen, I just need out of here. We all do. Obviously I can’t tell you much because we haven’t been debriefed, but morale’s pretty low.”

  “Okay...” Glen paused, “you’re alright though? Off record.”

  I heaved a sigh before answering,

  “Physically, I’ve had worse. Mentally...” I shook my head, staring down at the rough, white surface of my cast, “I need a shit load of beer and my own bed. That’d make a good start.”

  “Alright. I’m on it. Chin up, man.”

  “Thanks, Glen.”

  We hung up and I sat for a minute, savouring the quiet, bustle-free atmosphere of the nurses’ station. Glen would get us out of here, without a doubt.

  His shouting worked quicker than I could have hoped. Just two days after our phone call, the major in command of our squadron showed up at the hospital with a string of other, high ranking officers, and the debriefing of the remaining few members of my unit was over in double-quick time. After those who were well enough to go home had been seen off, and I had gotten dressed and packed for my own departure, the major beckoned me into a side room.

  “I wanted to personally apologise for the delay in your debriefing, Captain,” he grimaced as he spoke, looking down at his clasped hands as he considered what to say, “unfortunately there was a lot of back-and-forth about exactly what we thought should be released regarding your mission. The somewhat... worrying result of it is causing no small amount of concern.”

  He looked up, meeting my eyes properly for the first time.

  “I just wanted to assure you that we are doing all we can to find out what was so different about the vampires on this mission. We will not be conducting any more raids of that type until we are absolutely sure that the result will be different.”

  “Thank you, sir” I spoke cautiously, “I would hate for another unit to suffer the same fate as us.”

  “Of course, of course.” The major replied, “what I need you to do now is go home and recuperate. We’ll contact you in a few weeks to discuss your return to work, but in the meantime, if you need anything then you know where to find us.”

  He stood, and I clambered awkwardly to my feet too, snapping a slightly lop-sided salute, which he returned, before striding past me out of the room. I heaved a sigh and slipped my arm back into my crutch, following him out of the hospital and to the car waiting to take me home.

  Glen was already at home when I arrived. Walking in to my small flat to the smell of fresh coffee and cooking meat was heavenly, and not for the first time, I was supremely glad that Glen had his own key. He stuck his head out of my small kitchen when he heard the front door and sauntered out wiping his hands on a tea towel, his grin fading as he took me in.

  “Christ, Michael. You look like shit.” He grimaced sympathetically as I flopped down on the sofa,

  “Ugh,” I groaned, “I’m OK. A lot of guys have got it a lot worse.”

  “You want a cup of tea or something stronger?”

  “Stronger, definitely stronger.”

  “Right. Give us a minute, and then you’re going to tell me what the fuck happened.”

  I waved him off, leaning back into the sofa and closing my eyes, just happy to be in my own home. Away from the smells and noise and constant flashing lights of the hospital. I might even get some decent sleep… hopefully the nightmares would ease now I was in my own safe space again. Glen came back a few minutes later with a bottle of scotch, two tumblers and a four pack of beers. Sitting down on the sofa next to me, he put the whole lot on the low coffee table in front of us, poured two generous measures of scotch, then handed me one with an expectant look on his face. I downed it in one swift gulp, grimacing slightly as it burned its way into my stomach. Glen topped it up again, then settled back into the cushions.

  “Right, spill.”

  I sighed, visions of my men being torn to shreds flashing through my mind again, and did as I was told. Glen listened without interruption, waiting patiently when I paused and twisting his face in sympathy at times. I talked for twenty minutes or so, telling him every detail, feeling like I was purging myself of the memories as I did. When I finally stopped, Glen’s usually cheerful face was as grave as I had ever seen it. He blew out a long, slow breath, looking unsure about what to say. He finally settled on swearing,

  “Fuuuuuck. I mean… god, I have no idea what to say, man. I’m so fucking sorry.” He ran a hand over the ginger stubble on his cheek, downcast. The men of that squadron had been his friends too. “They have any idea what happened? We’ve run loads of these raids now and they’ve always been fairly straight forward.”

  I shook my head,

  “No, nothing. All I’ve been told is that they’re working on it, and no more missions will be run until they’re sure of what happened.”

  “Well I suppose that’s something… fuck.” Glen swore again, draining the last of his second glass of scotch and reaching for a beer. He popped one for each of us, and we sat without talking for a while, letting a companionable, if slightly melancholy, silence descend. I heaved my broken leg onto the coffee table with a thunk. Glen eyed it,

  “I feel like I need to sign that. Got a felt tip anywhere?” He grinned at me, a quick, evil flash of teeth.

  “Not a chance! You’d just draw a cock.”

  “Oh please. I’m far too old for drawing cocks, what do you take me for?!”

  He gasped and put a hand over his heart, mock offence written all over his face, I just looked at him, waiting for the punchline. He sat back with a huff, sulking,

  “I was going to draw boobs.”

  I laughed, properly, for the first time in what felt like forever. The more I laughed, the funnier his stupid comment became, until both of us were howling, clutching our aching sides with tears running down our faces. We finally stopped and I sigh
ed, feeling lighter, and took a long swig of my beer.

  “So what now?” Glen asked,

  “Well,” I mused, “I guess I sit around waiting for my leg to heal and then… try again. I imagine I’ll be given a new command…”

  I trailed off with a shrug.

  “It all depends on if we find out what went wrong, I guess.”

  “Aye,” Glen agreed, “it’ll all come out in the wash.”

  I didn’t bother responding to that, keeping my fatalistic thoughts to myself, and just raised my beer bottle to him slightly, before draining it and reaching for another.

  Chapter 4

  Beth

  With Jackson on our side and Lexi recovering quickly, working with the IGS went fairly smoothly. I hated to admit it, but their swift communication and hundreds of operatives were exactly what we needed. Yzzy and I had expected some resistance from the militaries we were contacting, but aided by the surprisingly high ranking officers who were already part of the guild, it was all too soon that Yzzy and I had to separate. I watched Yzzy move around our bedroom, and in and out of the walk-in wardrobe, filling her suitcase, and glowered from my perch on the edge of the bed. I gripped the duvet tightly, trying to suppress the growing feelings of dread that were clutching at my heart. A frown line creased the skin between Yzzy’s eyebrows, and she didn’t look at me as she bustled around efficiently, but her own knot of feelings was agitating mine; the hurt zipping back and forth across our bond, winding us both up further. I shook my head, trying to clear it with a quick, convulsive twitch, fighting down the desperation that was rapidly becoming overwhelming. Yzzy stopped moving abruptly, her head dropping forward as she braced one hand on the wall,

  “Beth, please,” she whispered, her eyes closed.

  I grimaced, trying, and failing, to reinforce my mental shields. I heaved a sigh, giving up,