Guardian's Joy #3 (4 page)

This time, he was ready for her and when she
struck, he grabbed her wrist. She snapped it downward, trying to
break his grasp and he heard the crack, saw the pained shock in her
eyes and let her go. She scrambled backward, bracing herself with
her good hand and kicking out with her legs.

“You bastard!” she screamed. She yelped as
shards of glass pierced her palm. “I didn’t kill that girl and you
know it. I heard her cry out. I was trying to help. It was your
kind that did it. Your kind. A monster. For all I know, it was
you.”

Shit. Shit. Shit! Nardo knew in her anger
she’d spoken the truth. He held his hands out in a calming gesture,
took a deep breath and then another to dispel the rage. He’d hurt
her and she was an innocent. He could have killed her. He’d wanted
to kill her. His stomach rolled at the thought.

“It wasn’t me,” he said when he felt his
fangs retract, “You had the knife, blood on your hands. I thought…
oh shit, I’m sorry.” He nodded toward her broken wrist. “You’re
injured. Let me help you.” He moved cautiously forward. “I won’t
hurt you. I’m okay now.”

His face and body had returned to normal. No,
not normal, just more human. You couldn’t consider a vampire normal
unless, of course, you
were
a vampire. Everything’s
relative. JJ smiled and then remembered this was no joke. What was
the matter with her? The adrenalin and other hormones rushing
through her body must be making her giddy.

“You’re a vampire. Stay away from me.” She
scooted back until she was propped against the wall, cradling her
broken wrist in her left hand.

“I’m a Guardian, not a vampire, at least not
yet,” Nardo said honestly, “I’d have to be killed before I could be
turned and that’s not something I plan on doing. We’re called
Paenitentia and our race has been around for as long as yours.” He
moved closer. He needed to touch her forehead with his thumb in
order to wipe away her recent memories. Unlike Canaan and Nico, he
wasn’t old enough to erase memories from a distance.

He slowly raised his hand toward her, palm
up, and an image came to mind of a horse trainer he’d once watched
as a boy, approaching a half-wild filly. This woman was like that
filly; fast, strong, half-wild, and beautiful.

“If you’re not a vampire, quit looking at me
like I’m lunch.” JJ held out her hand in a way that said stop and
she saw him wince at the gash on her palm. Good. It was his fault
she was cut.

He changed and lunged so fast she screamed.
In a flash of white light, he was on top of her, crushing her with
power and muscle and just as quickly he was torn away, torn and
thrown along the alley.

The beast that ripped the Guardian from her
then turned to tower over JJ. There was no sign of its human form,
only monster and it was bleeding from the neck and chest and legs.
It had come over the wall behind her to attack. Before she could
raise her hand and expel the fire that was now searing her hand
with the need to be released, the vampire, Guardian or whatever he
was, leaped on the beast’s back with a strange, curved blade in his
hand. He aimed for the neck, but the creature twisted and screeched
in pain when the blade sliced through its shoulder.

JJ rolled away from the fight and was on her
feet, her useless right hand by her side and her left extended,
fingers crackling with electric flame. The two creatures, beast and
other, were locked in combat, rolling, slashing, coming together
and moving apart. She should have released the flame into the two
of them, yet she couldn’t. Each time she thought of it, the flames
at her fingertips died. He’d saved her life, she couldn’t take his
now. The back of his jacket was shredded and blood seeped from the
tears. More blood covered the side of his face and neck though she
couldn’t tell if it was his or the beast’s. She heard someone
calling, two voices, his friends, coming to his aid. Would they
want to kill her, too?

The Guardian rolled to his back, drew his
knees up to his chest and kicked out with a miraculous force to
send the beast crashing into the wall. JJ threw the fire at the
beast’s chest. It screamed as the blue flame, sizzling and
crackling, coated its body. The other was safe. Her debt was paid.
JJ turned and ran.

Nardo stared at the demon splayed against the
wall. He’d never seen anything like it. Blue flame skimmed over the
demon’s skin like St. Elmo’s fire. The creature screamed until the
flame petered out and it fell to the ground. Nardo carved out the
still beating heart and held it aloft.

“Holy shit! What the fuck did you do?” Dov
came to a skidding halt with Col two steps behind him. They stared
at the smoldering body that was already beginning to shrivel.

“I didn’t do it. She did.” Nardo pointed to
where Joy had been standing.

The woman was gone.

Chapter 5

Nardo entered the House of Guardians through
the concealed door in the pantry, heard Benny Goodman tootling
If I Could Be With You
on his clarinet and knew Grace was in
the kitchen starting dinner. She turned to him with a large metal
spoon in her hand.

“You’re hurt,” she said in greeting and
immediately began scrubbing her hands with soap and hot water. “How
bad?”

This was his Liege Lord’s lady. She bullied,
fussed at, cared for and cried over all of them and they, in turn,
teased and tormented her and loved her dearly.

“Bad,” he said and when he saw her concerned
glance past his shoulder, he added, “The situation, not us.
Everyone’s fine. Canaan and Nico were still at the scene when I
left, but they were heading over to Moonlight Sanctuary to break
the news. The twins’ll be along shortly. They’re finishing the
clean-up. It’s the victim that makes it bad Grace. She’s a member
of the Race and just reached her maturity. Her being from the
Sanctuary only makes it worse.”

Nardo winced as he peeled off his jacket and
shirt, taking with them the dried blood that sealed the wounds in
his back.

“I meant you,” she said as she dried her
hands on a clean towel from the drawer. She always scrubbed her
hands and their wounds with soap and water even though they weren’t
susceptible to human infections.

“I got clawed,” he said and waved off her
concern.

She shooed him toward the door and followed
with a basin of hot water. “Get back to the clinic and let me take
care of it.”

The clinic was actually a corner of the
all-purpose room at the back of the house. In addition to the game
and pool tables and state of the art entertainment system, Grace
had set up two cots and a cabinet that contained everything they
needed to treat the various injuries they collected while hunting
demons. There was even a screen for privacy though it was only
opened up when Hope was in the room.

Nico’s shy mate still wasn’t used to living
in a house where male modesty wasn’t a high priority. Much to his
shame, Nardo wondered what Hope was like in private. She always
flushed red when Nico kissed her in front of them.

While Grace pulled out what she needed, Nardo
sat on a low stool and hunched his back to give her better access
to his wounds.

“Tell me about Moonlight Sanctuary,” she
ordered as she began to clean the claw marks on his back.

“You make the twins go to their dances, but
you don’t know anything about it?” Nardo laughed and then coughed
when she scrubbed a particularly deep spot.

“I’ll make the boys go anywhere I think
they’ll meet a better class of female than they usually look
for.”

“Have you been spying?” he asked,
teasing.

“Don’t have to. I do their laundry. It reeks
of cheap perfume and other things I’d rather not identify.” She
rinsed her cloth and started scrubbing again. “I knew about
Moonlight Sanctuary before I came here. Like everybody else, I
thought it was a private community of some religious cult.”

“Good cover, huh? They’re outside the city
limits, so city officials leave them alone. Dov says it’s like a
village. They’ve got shops and restaurants and little businesses.
The House’s money managers live there.” A sharp pain made him jump.
“Damn, Grace, are you using a fork to clean that out?”

“There’s threads from your t-shirt in
here.”

“Yeah, I’m going to miss that shirt. Classic
Santana.”

“Maybe the twins are smarter than you think,
buying their shirts by the dozen. Hang on, here comes the holy
water.” She poured the liquid from a small vial and stood back to
avoid the acrid smoke rising from the wounds.

Nardo hissed as the poison from the demon’s
claws was neutralized.

“So why is this death more important than the
others?”

Nardo knew she meant more important than the
humans who’d lost their lives. “Because Moonlight Sanctuary is more
than an enclave of Paenitentia. It’s power and money and we can’t
afford to piss them off. The Meeting of the Congregants is coming
up and Canaan needs all the support he can get.”

The Meeting of the Congregants was held every
two years and while it was supposed to represent all members of the
Race, only the most influential attended. During the Meeting the
Ruling Council met and made the decisions that affected the future
of the Paenitentia and this year, Canaan ad Simeon’s House of
Guardian’s would be on the docket. Their Liege Lord was trying to
bring the Guardians into the twenty-first century by eliminating
some of the old, outdated traditions while keeping what was
important intact. Those willing to join the ancient order of
warriors were becoming scarce and Canaan was trying to change that;
had changed that in his own House. Unfortunately, the majority of
the Ruling Council saw it as unnecessary and an affront to their
authority and now Nardo had added to the problem. He shook his head
in disgust.

“This is my fault, my responsibility. Canaan
gave me a job to do and I fucked up and because I fucked up, that
kid lost her life. The only question is how far my fuck up’s going
to reach.”

Grace walked around to face him, fists on
hips. “Your job was to send them home, not to hold their hands
while they were doing it. It’s a tragedy, but not your fault.”

“What was she doing alone, Grace? Women from
the Sanctuary are never left alone. Who brought her to that
place?”

“I’m sure Canaan is asking those very same
questions out at the Sanctuary,” she said and looked toward the
noise coming from the kitchen. “Boys are home. I need to get back
to supper. You need to get a clean shirt.”

Dov already had the oven door open and a fork
in his hand. “Nardo said we were having pot roast, but I thought he
just wanted to get us home.” He looked at Grace with adoring eyes.
“When you get tired of the old man, I’ll be your mate, Gracie.”

She laughed and grabbed a spoon from the
counter to swat him away from the pan. “You’re just afraid that if
he threw me out, you’d have to go back to eating take-out. Good
thing for both of us blood bonds are permanent.” She turned back to
Nardo. “Here, give me those. I’ll throw them away.”

She reached for the torn jacket and shirt
Nardo was picking up from the counter. He snatched the jacket out
of her reach.

“No, that’s all right. I’ll take care of it.”
There was a bloody handprint on the shoulder. He wasn’t sure why he
wanted it. A bloody handprint was a pretty sick memento of the
woman in black and a screwed up night. He didn’t know what he would
do with it, but he wasn’t going to throw it away. Not yet.

“I need a shower,” he said abruptly and
headed back to the room they’d come from and the passage to the
house next door.

At Grace’s suggestion, the second building
had been converted to sleeping quarters for the single men; two
room suites with baths. He and Broadbent had opted for the rooms on
the first floor, while the twins took over half of the second
floor. There were still two suites available, but they were
unlikely to be filled.

He emptied the pockets and laid the jacket
carefully on the table in his sitting area, folding it so the
handprint would remain smooth and undisturbed, kicked off his
shoes, unbuckled his pants and then turned back to the jacket on
the table.

Nardo stared at the print for the longest
time, seeing the picture in his mind of the hand that made it. He
stretched out his hand and let it hover over the mark to measure
his against hers. Her fingers were long and slender like the rest
of her with a palm so small it would take two of them to make one
of his. He widened the space between his fingers until he could see
the pattern of her imprint intermingled with them and had to stop
himself from gripping the leather to entwine the phantom fingers in
his. When he snatched his hand away, the jacket shifted slightly
and the folds formed a mock wrist to the bloody hand.

He groaned aloud with the thought of the pain
he had caused her settling deep in his gut. He winced as he heard
the bones crunch in her wrist. She was so delicate, so fragile. Why
hadn’t he seen it earlier? Why was he so quick to assume she was
the killer?

While he’d been obsessed with tormenting her…
“
Not her. Joy, her name is Joy
,” a small voice in his mind
shouted… a demon had been on the loose, capable of killing others.
Fortunately, the twins found it first when it returned to the body.
They injured it, but lost it when they stayed behind with the
victim, following orders.

The thing was blood crazed when it came over
the wall at Joy. Had it landed atop her, she would have died. Her
neck and chest would have been torn instead of his back. That he’d
saved her life was irrelevant. He’d cornered her there in the first
place, broken her wrist and torn open her palm. It was the smell of
her blood that drew the creature to her. He may as well have sent
up a spotlight. Free Food Here!