Guardian's Hope
Authors: Jacqueline Rhoades
Tags: #vampires, #paranormal, #love story, #supernatural, #witches, #vampire romance, #pnr, #roamance
A Novel of the Guardians of the Race
by
Copyrighted 2012 by Jacqueline Rhoades
Cover design: Heather Rhoades
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My Thanks
To my husband, my real life hero, for putting
up with my odd hours and slapped together meals. You cheer with me
when I’m up and hold me close when I’m down. You bring me
coffee.
Most women dream of a Happily Ever After.
I don’t have to. I have you.
Table of Contents
She had to go back into the house. She had to
assess the damage, make repairs if necessary and make sure those
awful creatures hadn’t come back. She couldn’t put anyone else in
danger and those abominations were dangerous. Frightening and
dangerous. She knew it. It was why she ran.
The new tenants were scheduled to move in on
the first of the month and everything had to be moved out in the
next few days. What little inventory was left needed to be shipped
to the new owner and the computer files holding all the business
records needed to be turned over as soon as the check cleared. She
was being paid an unimaginable amount of money for that trashy
website and she couldn’t afford to ruin the deal now. She had to go
back into the house.
Hope stood, sheltered from the cold, in the
crevice formed where two large pines crossed their branches, and
stared at the shabby yellow house that had been her home for the
last six months. Lenny’s house. The most irascible man she’d ever
known, whose business was peddling sin. Despite all his faults,
he’d been her friend and savior.
Lenny took her in when she had nowhere else
to go. He taught her how to use a computer and how to run his
business and asked for nothing but her friendship in return. She
knew her father would say Lenny was now burning in Hell, but for
the kindness and generosity he’d shown her, she prayed he found
peace in Heaven.
“Get on with it,” she muttered to herself.
She’d been by the place at least twenty times in the last few weeks
at all hours of the day and night. There’d been no sign of the
horrid things that had sent her running. She took a step out from
the shadows and shrank back as something moved on the narrow porch
at the front of the house. Her breath blew out in exasperation. It
was only a cat. It leapt the three steps to the sidewalk below and
marched across the street directly to her, where it sat at her feet
and meowed.
“I know. I’m a coward.” The cat meowed again
as if it agreed. “You’re absolutely right. There are things that
need to be done. Whatever those creatures were, they’re not there
now.” Hope shrugged and stepped out from the shadows. “Maybe I
never saw them at all. Maybe Father is right and I’m as devil
ridden as my mother.”
Hope crossed the street and entered the
house, the cat following close at her heels.
The living room was torn apart. Lenny’s
battered brown sofa stood on end, leaning against the wall, arms
and back shredded by three-toed claws much larger than any cat’s.
Dirty, grey stuffing hung from the wounds. His beloved television
lay on its back in the corner, the glass screen shattered by the
leg of the rickety end table that once sat beside the couch. The
overstuffed chair she claimed for her own was upside down, three
legs poking skyward, the brick that served as the missing fourth
leg missing as well. Lenny’s few pictures were torn from the wall
and the remains of three lamps covered the room in chunks of
ceramic and glass. Ugly brown and deep grey stains spattered the
walls and she knew without further investigation that it was blood,
as was the crusted mat of rusty brown that covered the center of
the threadbare carpet.
Her altar, in memory of her mother and
lovingly placed in the corner, was shattered, the incense and herbs
scattered, the candles crushed and broken. Nothing was as it should
be.
Mindlessly, she righted the chair, found the
brick beneath and returned it to its position as substitute leg.
She sat and surveyed the destruction, winced and snapped her head
to the side as her mind rebelled against the vision of what must
have happened here. She knew she should check the rest of the
house, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. She could only sit
and stare.
The creatures she’d seen were real and this
room was her proof. The grotesque creature was not a figment of her
imagination and the snarling visage that flickered in and out of
the other’s human form was not the result of her father’s
frightening stories and her fear. They were real. And the woman
Hope was supposed to meet, what was she? Whose blood was on the
carpet and the walls? A scratching in the corner behind another
overturned end table distracted her from her thoughts.
“No,” she said sharply as she leapt from the
chair and made a grab for the cat. One of Lenny’s lines leapt to
her tongue, “This may look piss poor but that’s no reason to pee in
the corner.”
The tiny cat easily evaded her grasp, flicked
its tail in disdain and sat a few feet away staring at the corner
from which it came. Hope checked for a puddle of evidence and
gasped. Five glass candle holders, each shaped like a five pointed
star, a small cut glass bowl, and a remarkably clear rose quartz
crystal the size of an egg, sat along the wall unmarred by chip or
crack. These were her mother’s things, the ones she’d found hidden
in the rafters of the gardening shed. Her athame, the ceremonial
double edged dagger, was the only thing missing. Hopefully she
would find it when she cleaned up the mess.
“Thank you.” She nodded to the cat who purred
in response. Hope laughed quietly. “If I didn’t know better, I’d
think you understand me.” She raised her eyebrows in question.
“Maybe you’re my familiar. You know, a witch’s cat.” The tawny
yellow cat rose and arched its back, hair standing on end. It
hissed as it walked from the room with its twitching tail held
high. Hope laughed again and shrugged. “Okay, maybe not,” and
followed the cat.
What was once a dining room, now an office,
had suffered only minor damage. The bulletin board rested on the
floor where it had slid from its nail on the wall. Notes and
reminders were still push-pinned to the cork. A leg from one of the
tables and the neck half of the whiskey bottle she’d used as a vase
sat side by side against the opposite wall under a broken window.
The rose that had once graced the bottle lay on the sill, its pink
perfection dried and brittle. The rest of the room looked untouched
and Hope sighed with relief when she opened the doors to the
cabinet that held the computer. Everything appeared intact. She
stroked a few keys and the screen came to life. A few more and she
smiled. Nothing was missing.
Relief made her brave and she searched
through the rest of the house. The kitchen and two upstairs
bedrooms were just as she’d left them, a coating of dust the only
evidence she’d been gone. Whatever happened here had happened
quickly and no one had been here since.
She thought, as she had many times since that
night, she ought to call the police, but what could she tell them?
Two slavering monsters with a woman companion leading them had
charged into her house. They were obviously afraid and running away
from someone or something, though what could frighten such
fearsome, hideous creatures she couldn’t guess. Yes, Hope was
expecting a woman who called herself Andi. No, she didn’t know the
woman or even if Andi was her real name. She could picture the
looks on the officer’s faces. Would they offer her a sketch artist
or a trip to the psychiatric ward?
No, calling the police was out of the
question. She retrieved a broom and dust pan from the kitchen and
set about putting the place in order.
As she worked, picking up the broken pieces
of a less than stellar life, she thought about the man who’d made
her future possible. She missed the cantankerous Lenny, but she
wouldn’t miss his business and was glad to be rid of it. Every time
she placed an order with a supplier or shipped an order to a
customer, she felt dirty. No matter how much he teased about her
red-faced naiveté, selling kinky sexual paraphernalia just wasn’t
the future she was looking for. She silently laughed at the picture
that popped into her head; her father’s furious and apoplectic
face. Easy to laugh when she didn’t have to face him and explain.
The laughter silently died. It was all over now anyway. There was
nothing left to explain. Lenny was gone, the business was sold and
the house was rented with an option for purchase. After what
happened here, she could never sleep comfortably. Why hadn’t she
used her head? How many times had Lenny warned her about the
dangers of the internet?
“This ain’t the world you grew up in,
girlie,” Lenny would say, “And that there computer is a source of
more evil than even your daddy can imagine. Folks say things and
order merchandise they wouldn’t have the nerve for if they had to
do it face to face. You be careful.” This from a man who earned his
living from the very people he warned against. “Ain’t never claimed
to be no saint. I know what I am and you know what I am. It’s them
folks you don’t know that should be a worry to ya.”
She wouldn’t have agreed to meet a stranger
in the middle of the night if Lenny was still here. It was the
loneliness and the prospect of finding a kindred spirit who could
help her learn what her mother hadn’t had time to teach her that
led her to agree and it had turned into the most horrifying mistake
of her life.
“What’s done is done,” she said aloud. Thanks
to Lenny, she had enough money to do what she’d come to the city to
do. She no longer had to worry about getting enough to eat or
finding a safe place to sleep.
She fixed herself a bowl of soup and called
the cat to a saucer of milk, but the cat had disappeared.
*****
A fire blazed in the hearth, adding a sense
of warmth and solace to the room that central heating never could.
The parlor hadn’t changed much, or so he’d been told, since this
House of Guardian’s was established over a hundred years ago.
Normally, this was his favorite room in the house and while the
others good naturedly argued about who would have what room in the
new wing when the construction was complete, he’d opted to take
over, Otto, the old vampire’s former apartment in the attic just so
he could be close to the comfort of this room. Today, though, he
found no peace.