Blood Guard

by Erickson, Megan

  “You already said that!” Michael yelled, trying to grab his hat three times as he stood up. I picked it up for him and placed it on his head. He muttered a thanks and followed his brothers toward the door. “Bye, Sugar!” Carl yelled.

  “Get home safe!” I yelled back.

  I glanced at the corner quickly, but the large man was gone. He must have slipped out while I was talking at the bar. I shivered, hoping he never came back. And then kinda hoping he did.

  “You all right?” Kev’s brows were knit in concern.

  “Me? Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “You looked like you saw a ghost or something.”

  “Just felt like someone walked on my grave,” I said, watching as the last customer walked out the door. Ruby immediately sat down on a chair, took off her shoes, and stuck her feet in a pair of flip-flops. She was a petite black woman, and her flip-flops were child-size, which I teased her about a lot. She gasped and wiggled her toes. “I don’t know how you walk in those things all night and then the whole way home.” She glared at me, then nudged her red heel and scrunched her nose. “I hate them. Devil shoes.” She crossed her fingers and hissed at it.

  I shrugged and began to clean up the tables and lift the chairs. “I don’t know. They don’t bother me. And they are awesome weapons.” Mom was always big on self-defense. I was like MacGyver in a fight. Hell, I’d find a way to use a paper clip to rip open a jugular.

  We cleaned up the bar in record time, and I plunked down on a stool at the bar to down a glass of water before the mile walk home. Ruby stood next to me and rested her head on my shoulder. “How are you? I feel like we haven’t talked in forever.”

  I shrugged her off me with a laugh. “You’ve been busy with your woman.”

  Ruby sat down next to me, nibbling her lip. “I know, but you’re my friend. I should be making time.”

  “Stop, it’s a new relationship. You just feel bad because you know I don’t have any other friends.” Ruby sucked in a breath. Maybe I hadn’t meant to say that out loud, and not so bluntly, but it was true. I sighed. “It’s fine, really. I’ve been catching up on some k-dramas. I don’t mind being alone.”

  Ruby rubbed her bare shoulder. “Maybe the three of us can hang out.”

  I shrugged.

  “She said she might stop in sometime next week when I’m working. If you want to meet her.” Ruby was a peacemaker. She liked everyone happy and okay with each other.

  I was a little too cynical for that, but I’d make it work for her. “Sure, that’d be nice.”

  Ruby’s face brightened, despite the tired lines in her face. “Great. I’ll tell her. I want you two to like each other.”

  Classic Ruby. Wanting a get-along gang. Which was not a bad thing, so I needed to get over myself. “I’m sure we’ll get along just fine.”

  She squeezed my hand, then stood up. “I’m going to get going. Kev, you okay closing down?”

  “Got it handled, ladies,” he said, pausing as he counted the money in the drawer. “Go on home.”

  After saying good night to Kev and Ruby, I slipped on my leather jacket, turned up the collar, and began my walk home. The night air was cool, but a comfortable cool, a slight breeze lifting my hair and cooling my neck and clammy skin.

  When Mom was alive, she’d wake up just to come to the bar to walk me home. I’d told her I could handle it myself, but she said she enjoyed it. We’d talk about everything and nothing in the darkness, and it ended up being some of my best memories.

  I was depressing the hell out of myself right now.

  I didn’t hear his footsteps, I didn’t see him, but I felt his presence, that same overwhelming fog that spun my head. I’d always prided myself on my instincts, but this was on a whole other sixth-sense level.

  I slipped my hand into the pocket of my jacket and fingered my switchblade. Ruby asked me one time why I didn’t carry pepper spray like a regular person. But my mom had always insisted I learned how to physically defend myself. She hadn’t expected me to jump at the chance to take a class on weapon training, but I had. So a switchblade was my weapon of choice, and I was never without it on my walk home from work. Whether this man wanted to rape me, rob me, or kill me, I was going to be prepared. And then I was getting the hell out of Mission.

  He was drawing closer now, the air thick with him, and I struggled to breathe, to keep my wits about me. I would not be beat today.

  Keep it together, Ten. I counted in my head, knowing he was gaining on me, that I wouldn’t be able to outrun him, no way. Not a man that size. Not when I was wearing heels.

  Five. I closed my fingers around the handle of my blade. Four. I adjusted the grip. Three. I pressed the small button to flick out the blade. Two. I took a deep breath.

  One.

  I whirled around, crouching down while at the same time swiping the knife in an upward arc across my body.

  I’d been right; he was there, inches behind me, and he reared back, narrowly avoiding the blade from slicing across his neck. In a fluid motion, I brought the blade back down and went for the gut, the vulnerable area between the sides of his unzipped jacket.

  I didn’t even see his hand until his fingers closed around my wrist, squeezing my pressure point immediately, forcing me to drop my blade. With a frustrated yell, I reached behind me, slipped off my shoe, and tried to stab him in the face with my stiletto. But he knocked it out of my hand with ease, sending it flying into the street.

  My heart beat a panicked rhythm and as he tugged me to his chest, I struggled to stay on my feet, to focus on getting away from him alive. I had one last defense, so I brought my knee up with a jerk to slam his groin.

  I didn’t get anywhere near my target, because he was no longer in front of me, and in the next second I was airborne, His arms wrapped around me from behind, and my legs dangled uselessly as he crushed my back to his chest. I tried to fling my head back to head-butt him, but his monstrous height and my shortness rendered that move ineffective.

  My last resort, the only thing I had left, which would get me nowhere in this part of town, was to scream.

  So I did. I screamed my fucking lungs out and flailed like a wild animal. He muttered, his voice a deep rumble along my spine, “I’m sorry to do this, Tendra,” before passing his wrist in front of my face.

  I inhaled something sweet, sickly sweet. “What the…” The last word didn’t come. My lips and tongue wouldn’t move. My vision darkened at the edges, and the last thing I remembered was fingers brushing my hair off my forehead before everything went black.

  Chapter 2

  Tendra

  I dreamed of my mother. Her long blond hair—the same as mine—her soft hands, kind eyes. In my dream, she was smiling, and I smiled back, tears gathering in my eyes as I reached out to her. Just one touch, one last hug, one last inhale of her.

  But then her face twisted, her eyes turned red, and her mouth opened wider and wider until it was a black hole that took up her whole face. Something dark flew out of it, heading right for me, and I woke up with a jerk.

  I blinked, my vision still blurry. I hadn’t dreamed of her, not once since her death. But that wasn’t a dream—that was a nightmare. My skin crawled and my heart pounded in my ears as I fought to catch my breath. I shook my head, wishing I could erase the vision of her turning demon-like. I tried to move my body, but something was restricting me, preventing my movements, and my shoulders were stiff…

  When my vision finally cleared, I glanced down to see my ankles bound and lashed to the rung of a chair. My arms were behind me, tied together. I was in a strange apartment that was mostly unfurnished save for a few random pieces. The plaster was peeling, the ceiling nearly caving in, and a breeze from the cool night air was wafting over my skin due to a partially broken window. Peering out, I guessed we were about five floors up. My bare toes scraped against splintered subfloor.

  In front of me? Was the man. The one from the bar with the dark eyes. He was sprawled casually in another c
hair, his long legs and thick thighs encased in black denim, black-booted feet on the ground.

  The panic welled in my chest. I was trapped in a strange apartment with a strange man who probably outweighed me trifold. I opened up my mouth to scream but he held up his hand and said in a deep voice, “You scream, and I’ll just put you to sleep again.”

  My jaw snapped shut. I focused on breathing. In and out. In and out. I wanted to thrash and yell, and holler, but he’d somehow knocked me out before and I would be useless if he did it again.

  I glanced around. The only light was from a small, dim bare bulb above us. The rest of the room was in shadow. There was nothing I could use for a weapon, not even my shoes. I focused back on the man in front of me. “How’d we get here?”

  “I carried you,” he answered, his voice a rumble that I felt down to my bones.

  Something moved in the corner of my vision and I peered into the dark. A form materialized, and I must have been dreaming still because Brex was there. He stalked toward me, rubbed against my leg, then sat down by my feet like a feline guard. I tried to be calm, but I was close to losing it. I didn’t date. Was this how people dated now? Maybe it was a thing. “Why is my cat here?”

  My captor didn’t move, and half of his face was in shadow. “I brought him.”

  “I don’t keep my ID on me, so how’d you know where I live?”

  “I didn’t need your ID.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “I’ve been watching you.”

  Oh, just fucking great. A stalker. I’d be lucky if I made it out of here without my head in a freezer and him wearing my skin like clothes. “Okay, cool. Well, uh, hi. I’m Tendra. I applaud you for your unconventional, um, greeting. Want to untie me? We can go for a drink. I make a mean screwdriver.”

  Confusion flickered over his face, then his scowl deepened, like uncertainty angered him. “No.”

  I didn’t want to make him mad, but I’d never been great at keeping my mouth shut. Sometimes me opening my mouth was the reason we had to move. “Do you want money? Because I’m sorry to say, you kidnapped the wrong girl. Especially because I just paid rent. I’m eating peanut butter out of the tub for the next week.”

  Again with the angry confusion. He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t want your money.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Well, now you have me here. What do you plan to do to me?” The panic was slowly switching over to anger, the fight instinct my mother instilled in me strong as ever. If he was going to kill me, maybe I could piss him off enough that it would be quick. “Because I’ll tell you right now, I will fight you to my dying breath and then come back from the dead and haunt you until I convince you to cut your own dick off.”

  His expression didn’t change. “Charming.”

  I was signing my death warrant, but I couldn’t resist getting a shot in. “Fuck you, you creeper.”

  His chest rose as he inhaled sharply. “Right, so let’s have it out. I’m your guard, because you’re destined to be delivered to my older brother in order to make our clan stronger.”

  I didn’t move. Not an inch. Because holy shit, not only was he a creepy stalker, but he was out of his gourd, too. I couldn’t just have an evil stalker. Oh, no, I had to have a lunatic one, too. Zero of what he said made sense, so I focused on one thing at a time. “Excuse me? Clan? What are you, cavemen?”

  I thought he’d take offense, but instead he just looked bored. “No, not cavemen. Vampires.”

  I blinked.

  And blinked again.

  But nope, he was still there. This was still happening. Only me. If I made it out of here alive, what a story I’d have to sell about my stalker who thought he was a vampire. I had visions of the guy trying to bite my neck with his blunt teeth. Which made a giggle bubble up in my throat, which turned into a laugh, which turned into me throwing my head back in hysterical laughter until tears streamed down my cheeks.

  When I dropped my head and focused on him through my tears, he was watching me carefully, that impassive expression still on his face.

  He reached down and picked up Brex by the scruff of his neck, which immediately caused any and all amusement on my part to cease. “If you hurt my cat, swear to God—”

  Brex yowled and swiped a paw across the man’s face. A thin line of scarlet bloomed on his cheekbone before the man dropped Brex, who scurried off to hide under a small table near an old couch. “Good job, Brex!” I shouted after him. “Now come back and finish the job!”

  I turned to my stalker, and whatever I was about to say died in my throat. I watched as the cut sealed up and vanished before my eyes.

  Gone.

  No mark, no blood. No nothing.

  And those dark eyes were still trained on me.

  Oh, fuck this shit.

  Now I screamed my lungs out as absolute terror scraped up my throat like razor blades. I didn’t care if he put me to sleep again. At least when he carved up my body for whatever Satanic ritual he had planned, I’d be fucking out of it. My thrashing caused my chair to tip over onto its side, and my shoulder slammed into the floor painfully.

  Now the man moved, clapping a hand over my mouth and shoving something in my face. I squeezed my eyes shut, refusing to look into whatever he wanted me to, because no way was I going to be hypnotized or turned into stone or whatever.

  “Tendra, look at what I’m showing you!” he hissed.

  I opened my eyes and they locked onto the pendant he had dangling in front of my face. It was a stone, identical to my mother’s necklace I kept hidden in my closet back in my apartment. He slowly dropped his hand from my mouth, and I swallowed to soothe my scratched throat. “Why do you have my mother’s necklace, you bastard?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not your mother’s. This one is my family’s.”

  I didn’t believe him. He must have stolen it when he took my cat, the fucking psycho. “Give that back to me.”

  With a sigh, he heaved himself to his feet and began to walk away.

  “Where are you going?” I called after him. “Untie me!”

  He didn’t answer, his long coat swishing around his legs as he covered the room in three long strides and was out of my vision.

  “Hey!” I called after him, wiggling to scoot my chair and bound body around. “I’m talking to you!”

  After about thirty seconds, he returned to my line of vision, the box in his hand where I kept my mother’s jewelry. He set the box near my head, then reached behind my back. After some tugging, my hands came loose. He untied my feet, too, and as soon as I was free, I grabbed the box and scrambled away from him on my hands and knees. I was on my feet and on my way to find a weapon or Brex when an arm wrapped around my waist and lifted me in the air.

  I growled. “Getting really tired of you picking me up!”

  “I’m getting really tired of picking you up,” he said as he tossed me like a rag doll onto the couch. Dust flew up all around me and I coughed.

  He pointed at the box. “Open it.”

  “No,” I said back, only because I didn’t like him telling me what to do.

  His nostrils flared a moment. Good, he was pissed. An emotion. Finally.

  “Tendra, we’re wasting time. I’m not the enemy. Open the goddamn box.”

  With a flick of the clasp, I opened it, the sight of my mother’s jewelry hitting me like a brick in the chest every time. There were her rings, the opal that glittered in the sun, her mother-of-pearl hair clip…and her emerald necklace.

  Which was identical to the one my kidnapper held in his meaty fist.

  What was going on?

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Athan,” he said.

  “And you’re a vampire.”

  He opened his mouth and curled back his upper lip. The black of his eyes mixed with a swirl of red, and within seconds, his canines descended into fangs.

  Fangs.

  Every instinct told me to flee, but didn’t predators have an innate sense of chase? So I stayed put
and self-consciously covered my neck with my hand. His eyes tracked my movements, and he immediately closed his mouth, his eyes returning to normal.

  Well, his normal.

  Vampires were myths, legends, something that parents told their kids about, and creatures to be featured as villains in movies.

  They weren’t real.

  But he healed, he moved fast and he had…fangs.

  I tried to stay calm. “So you have a necklace that looks like my mother’s and…fangs. What’s going on?”

  He sat down on the small table in front of me, the legs groaning under his weight. With his hands clasped between his knees, he was inches away. At least I was getting used to his presence a little now. It didn’t make me so dizzy.

  Brex’s white paw snuck out and smacked Athan on the ankle. He raised one dark eyebrow before lowering a giant hand to scoop up Brex. My cat looked rather put out when he was plopped in my lap. He shook his fur, then sat down beside me.

  “Your mom insisted you know how to defend yourself.”

  “Well, yeah, but she was big into exercise.”

  “She made sure.” He paused, enunciating his words. “You knew. How to fight.”

  “Yeah, I heard you the first time.” I scowled. “Fine, she made sure I learned, okay? But I began self-defense classes because of something that happened.”

  His jaw clenched. “And what was that?”

  “None of your business.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What. Happened?”

  “Some guys kidnapped my friends and me while we were on a field trip, okay?” I snapped. “We were at a museum. They snatched us and took us to a house where they tied us up. They said they had to hold us until dark. I didn’t know why, and neither did my friends. The only reason we got away was because a classmate followed us and caught the license plate number. And we were rescued before dark.”

  He swallowed, anger briefly flashing over his face. “Anything seem suspicious about that to you? That they were waiting until dark?”

  “Um, because it’s easier to transport three girls after dark?”

  “Right, not because vampires can’t be in the sun.”