Guardian's Joy #3 (25 page)

“No happily ever after?”

“For some. Not for my folks. They had the
white rose and they had me, but as far back as I can remember, they
didn’t get along. They were stuck with each other until I turned
twenty.”

“Is that the way it always is? No divorce? No
running off with a lover?”

“With the white rose, you can sleep with
other people, but you’ll never be satisfied. It’ll be sex with no
connection. You can’t break the mating. My grandfather said it was
to preserve the Race. We can’t… ah… impregnate a woman unless we’re
mated to them and once a child is born, we’re compelled to care for
the child for the next twenty years. The compulsion is stronger in
women. A lot of Paenitentia kids are educated at home or enclaves
like Moonlight Sanctuary run their own schools because it’s so hard
on mothers to send their kids away. Broadbent went to some fancy
boarding school and he says it almost killed his mother, something
she never lets him forget, by the way. Men have it easier. As long
as their mates and children are provided for, they’re okay.
Grandfather said that’s because our ancestors were warriors and
hunters. They had no choice but to leave their families.”

“Being stuck with a guy you don’t like for
twenty years sucks. I don’t think I like this mating business.”
Nardo had mentioned mating in the War Room. He needed to know she
wasn’t interested.

Nardo took another bite of donut and
shrugged. “We’re a long lived people, so twenty years isn’t that
long. I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. Most people are
happy with their matings and they renew their vows over and over
and then there are the ones who find their true mates, like Canaan
and Grace or Nico and Hope. That’s a blood bond and can never be
broken. Their roses are red.”

Nardo stared at her with an intensity she
found disconcerting. She was going to sleep with him. She knew
that, but she couldn’t think of anything beyond it.

“You never answered my question,” she said,
bringing the conversation back to its beginning and away from
things that made her uncomfortable.

“Ahh, my grandfather was a retired Guardian.
He lost his leg in a demon uprising up in the Aleutians during
World War Two.” At her surprised look, he laughed. “We heal
quickly, but we don’t grow new limbs. He came to live with us.
Neither of my parents liked it. They’re both die hard pacifists,
but the free babysitting was hard to turn down. Technically, they
took good care of me, but they never had much time for me. My
grandfather did. I grew up on stories about the Guardians. I also
grew up in a high tech environment. It wasn’t until I heard about
Canaan that I found a way to combine the two.”

JJ nodded as if she understood, but she
didn’t. She’d never had an adult in her life she completely
trusted. From her earliest memories, even her mother, who loved
her, was irresponsible and JJ sometimes felt like their roles were
reversed. She glanced at her watch and then offered Nardo the last
donut.

“It’s been real, but it’s time to go.”

A young couple exited the building when JJ
and Nardo were at the bottom of the steps and Nardo leapt to grab
the closing door.

“Lucky catch,” he grinned, “I wasn’t sure how
we were going to get past the security door.”

“You get someone to buzz you in,” JJ told
him. She’d done it before when she needed a place to get out of the
weather. “You pretend you’re pizza delivery with the wrong
apartment number. Bug ‘em enough and they’ll let you in.”

“Too late for that. Humans tend to get a
little grumpy when you wake them up at four in the morning.”

“Oh please,” JJ said with a roll of her eyes,
“This place is loaded with others, I mean Paenitentia. Almost every
light is on in every apartment and those two joggers were like
you.” She laughed at Nardo’s surprise. “I’ve always been able to
recognize otherness. That’s what I called it before I met you… and
the other Guardians of course.”

“Clever girl. Where’d you learn to do that
pizza delivery thing?” He sounded casually curious. He pulled out a
wallet of picks and set to work as soon as they found the right
door.

“It’s a long story.” JJ waved his question
off. She silently watched him work the picks and thought the
subject closed until he spoke without removing his eyes from the
lock.

“Go ahead. Spill. I can listen and work at
the same time.”

Okay, it’s no big deal
. Give him the
gist and leave out the details. “When I first woke up, I was
alone.” She snorted softly
. Yeah, alone and naked and sprawled
on a twenty foot pile of trash.
It was the sound of garbage
trucks that woke her. “I knew my name and remembered everything up
until I was twelve. Everything after that was gone.”
Except the
knowledge that someone tried to kill me, but that idea might have
come because someone had thrown me away like a piece of
garbage
. “I figured out pretty quick that I couldn’t earn my
living the way a lot of young girls on the street do.
Because I
tried and failed
. “I was homeless and buildings like this
sometimes have good places to hide and stay warm.”

Nardo opened the door just as JJ laughed. It
was a strange laugh, bitter and filled with pain.

“I stayed in a dead guy’s apartment once for
six months.” Nardo’s head snapped up and she laughed again at his
horrified expression. John had looked just like that when she first
told him. “The dead guy wasn’t there. I overheard two of his
neighbors talking at a Laundromat I used to hang out in.”
Should
I tell him how warm those places are, how I folded other people’s
laundry so the night clerk would think it was mine
?

She started in the kitchen, looking through
drawers and cabinets. Everything was freakishly neat. Even the
canned goods were lined up in alphabetical order. “They were saying
it could take months before the apartment could be put up for sale
and he had no immediate family to settle the estate. And how there
was nothing that could be done because his fees we prepaid to the
end of the year.”

This wasn’t a guy who would leave notes or
phone numbers lying around. She checked under the sink; cleaning
supplies and a spotless, empty trash can.

“Thanks to Henry Johnson, I had an address. I
had time to get a birth certificate, a driver’s license and all the
stuff you need to get a job. And then I found this high school on
the internet where I could get a diploma instead of a GED. Took me
two days to hitch rides, but I made it and I passed the test. A
week after I got my diploma in the mail, I came home to a moving
van out front.” Once more her life was nothing but trash. “I lost
all my stuff, but I had a job and money and…” She wanted to sound
as strong and brave as when she’d told the story to John, but her
voice hitched and she couldn’t speak.

Nardo had been listening to her talk while he
searched through the drawers and pigeon holes in an old roll top
desk, but now he looked up at her choked silence. Her face was a
mask of pain and she was fighting for control. He left the desk and
went to her, touching her shoulder in concern.

“What is it?” he asked quietly.

JJ shook her head and tried to push his hand
away. She didn’t want his sympathy and pity. She didn’t need
it.

Nardo wasn’t about to leave her alone. She
was his whether she admitted it or not and it was his
responsibility to share her pain, help her carry the burden, and
give her comfort. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to
him.

“Tell me,” he said. Not an order exactly, yet
his tone left no room for her to refuse.

JJ remained stiff against his chest, her head
held over his heart. The steady beat of it steadied her and the
deep rise and fall of his breathing infused her with calm. His hard
body pressed against hers was like a rock she could cling to and
lean on. How was it he could affect her like this? He somehow made
her recall all the pain in her life, yet a touch of his hand
soothed it away. Nardo was a pillar of duty and honor. She
instinctively trusted him. And she was so, so tired of facing her
life alone. She felt herself melting against him and her arms
slipped around his waist. Her fingers traced the knife sheath along
his spine. That comforted her, too. Nardo was such a Boy Scout,
always prepared.

“That’s it, baby, hold on to me. Whatever it
is, it’s all right. We’ll make it all right.”

“I made him up,” she whispered, telling him
something she’d never told John. “The dead man, Henry Johnson. I
pretended he was alive, that he was my uncle. I made up stories
about him for the people I worked with at the coffee shop. I kept
his home spotless so he would be pleased and I jotted down
reminders of things to tell him about when he came home. I wanted a
dead man to be proud of me.” She closed her eyes. “How’s that for
weak and pathetic?”

“Seems to me you were strong and
resourceful,” he said and his voice was as calm and solid as the
arms that held her. “You were lost and alone and if you needed that
fantasy to keep you going, what’s the harm in that? What’s pathetic
is that someone put a young girl in that position not that the
young girl survived it.”

She looked up into Nardo’s eyes. “I wanted
someone to love me. I wanted somewhere to belong.”

“And now you have those things. You have me
and the House.” He said it so matter-of-factly.

He held her against him for another few
minutes and then he held her away. “We have work to do and time is
running short. You take the bedroom. I’ll finish up here.”

She nodded and turned to go. Nardo’s hand
slid down her arm and grasped her hand. He lifted it to his lips
and whispered against it.

“You’ll spend today with me and all your days
to come. I won’t let you be alone again. Not ever. And that’s a
promise.”

JJ could only nod once more. She wanted to
believe him, knew he was sincere, but her history said otherwise.
She was destined to be alone.

The bedroom was as regimentally tidy as the
living area. In the closet, the clothes and their hangers were
evenly spaced with a few empties pressed close to the wall. It
would be difficult to tell if anything was missing, but if it was,
it would be easy to describe. All the slacks were olive drab cargos
and all the t-shirts were a matching camouflage. The single pair of
boots was a highly polished military style. At the end of the row
was a light weight jacket also olive drab. JJ pulled the sleeve out
to get a better look at the insignia near the shoulder.

“Nardo! I’ve found something!” JJ held it out
to him with shaking hands. “This is the symbol I remember; the
lilies cleaved by the sword.” Beneath the lilies, the ribbon banner
read,
Nonveniae
.

Nardo took the jacket from its hanger and
checked the pockets where he found two gold toned coins. They were
larger than quarters and their flattened edges formed an octagon.
Both were imprinted with the same design as the jacket patch. On
the reverse was a raised fist closed around what appeared to be a
heart circled by the Latin words
Nobis
Pignus
and
Sanguinem Nostrum.

“Our pledge, our blood,” Nardo translated. He
hefted the coins in his hand. “I think these are real gold. We need
to get them back to the House.”

“We need to get back to the last apartment,”
JJ contradicted. “I think I saw those coins in a jar of change by
the bed. I thought they were game tokens like they use at an
arcade. I might be wrong, but it’s worth taking a look.”

A quick look at the second bedroom yielded
nothing more. It was as spotless as the rest of the place and
filled with professional looking exercise equipment. If this stuff
was regularly used, and Nardo suspected it was, then this guy was
in great shape.

They weren’t two blocks away from the
apartment when three men rounded the corner. Two were dressed in
clothes like those in the closet though their jackets were heavier
winter wear. The guy between them was taller, broader and his
fatigues were solid black.

JJ blinked and tried to refocus on the guy in
the center. Even at this distance, she could see the features of
the outside guys, but her vision blurred over the guy in black.

“I think we’re about to meet occupant Number
Five,” Nardo said.

The words were barely out of his mouth when
one of the men yelled “Guardian!” and JJ yelled “Gun!”

Chapter 25

No muzzle flash, no report, just the thunk of
crushing metal as the round hit the car beside them. Nardo grabbed
JJ’s arm and dragged her behind the vehicle though their assailants
were already running in the opposite direction. He handed her his
phone.

“Hit two. Tell them where we are and stay
here,” he ordered. He was gone in a flash of white light, following
the attackers around the corner.

The speed with which he moved was incredible.
Stunned, JJ pressed the button and reported in as if she was still
on the force. Someone said hello and she rattled off their names,
the code for an armed perp and requested back-up at the address.
And then she ran, snapping the phone shut and shoving it in her
pocket as she rounded the corner where Nardo had turned. Stay there
while he went up against a three on one? Bullshit!

She ran up the side street checking each
short dead end that branched to the left or right, having no idea
of how far the four men ran. A shout and a body flying into the
street pinpointed her destination.

It was a camouflage guy who slid on his back
across the pavement and into the curb on the opposite side. At the
speed with which he hit, he shouldn’t have been able to rise, but
as JJ ran forward, he rolled to his feet and shook his head. She
wasn’t too surprised. She’d watched the twins wrestle and spar in
the gym and do things to each other that would break the bones of a
human. The shock came when he crawled to the middle of the road,
reached out for what JJ realized was a gun.