Guardian's Joy #3 (26 page)

Time seemed to expand and each second slowed
to a minute. Still running, JJ reached out her hand, felt the blue
flame crackle and aimed for the man in the road. The flame
sputtered and died. Panic bloomed. Her legs kept pumping, but she
felt like she was standing still. She saw him fumble the gun, right
it in his hand and rise to his knees. The gun came up.

And slo-mo changed instantly to fast forward.
JJ was running flat out, too fast to stop or change her trajectory.
She lowered her shoulders and hit him with a flying tackle that was
packed with her speed and weight behind it. Her extended right hand
caught his wrist. She felt the hand clench, heard the
pffft
of the suppressed shot, saw the gun fly and a chip of brick explode
from the corner of the nearest building. And then she was flying.
The force of her blow brought the perp’s knees off the ground and
hurled him sideways. JJ went sailing over his body. Her right knee
caught his neck and his arm twisted in her grip.

The combination saved her from skidding along
the street on her face. Her left leg flew over his head and her
foot hit the pavement as the right leg followed. She let go of his
wrist as her body twisted and spun. And shit! The bastard was
rising again. She used her arms to continue the momentum of the
spin, kept her left foot on the pavement and struck out with her
right. She caught his ear and cheek with the blow. His eyes rolled
back in his head. He was down for the count.

JJ glanced around wildly for the gun. It had
disappeared and she didn’t have the time to waste searching under
the nearby cars. She ran down the side street from which the perp
had come, her heart pounding as loud in her ears as her feet on the
pavement. The second camo guy was slumped in a doorway, his chin on
his chest and his legs splayed. Blood ran from his upper right arm
and pooled at his limp fingers.

Nardo glanced up, expecting to see the return
of the guard he’d tossed in that direction. Instead, he saw Joy.
Shock, anger, and alarm boiled up from his gut and if the vampire
hadn’t roared as he lashed out with his fist, Nardo’s head would
have been splattered against the wall. He ducked and pushed off
that wall with his foot and roared. His shoulder slammed into the
vampire’s gut. It folded in the middle, staggered back a few steps,
but didn’t go down. Instead, with a snarl, the vampire brought both
arms down in a two handed fist on the small of Nardo’s back. His
kidney exploded with pain, but instead of rising with it as the
instinct to protect his back insisted he do, he bent further,
grabbed the vampire’s calves and heaved upward. The vampire over
balanced as Nardo lifted its legs into the air. Nardo threw himself
backward and the two plowed into the wall behind them, the vampire
taking the brunt of the crushing blow.

“Joy! Go back!”

Those few words cost him. The vampire rolled
to his feet, grabbed Nardo around the neck and hurled him at the
same wall. Feet up, the Guardian walked the wall. Six feet above
the ground, he ran along the brick. The vampire was strong, more
powerful than any demon Nardo had fought, but unlike the demons, he
was slow. He couldn’t turn fast enough to follow Nardo’s run and
lost his grip.

Nardo pushed off and landed facing the
vampire. He saw the creature, no longer called man, look past his
shoulder to where Joy was coming toward them. It ran its tongue
over fangs extended far beyond any Nardo had ever seen and then it
smiled. It saw his Joy as nothing more than fresh meat. Enraged,
Nardo snarled, stepped back and reached for the knife sheathed at
his back. It was time to finish it.

JJ heard Nardo call out and saw him thrown
against the wall like a bundle of rags, saw him regain control and
counter the move with remarkable speed and agility. His face and
body were the same as when she first saw him; his features frozen
in stone with short fangs extended, his body more developed and
formidable than his normal ropy and muscular physique.

The vampire, and there was no doubt in her
mind about what this creature was, stared at her and she had that
same sense of double vision that struck her as the trio had walked
around the corner. It was disconcerting and she glanced away to
clear her vision only to catch sight of Camo II raising a wobbling
gun in his left hand. It was aimed at Nardo’s exposed back.

“No!” she screamed and threw herself at the
man with the gun.

Nardo heard the scream behind him. Joy! He
turned and saw her throw herself at the injured guard, heard the
gun go off with a soft pop of air and blood shoot out between the
two bodies.

“No!” he screamed in echo of her cry. And the
vampire was on him, driving him to the ground, the creature’s fangs
descending to his neck. He twisted away, but the immense strength
of the thing held him in place. He brought his hands to its neck.
Using all his considerable strength, he drove his thumbs into its
windpipe and pushed. The maneuver gave him only enough room to
wedge his knee between them. He forced the creature up, but
couldn’t throw him off.

“No!” JJ screamed again, but this time it was
for Nardo with the vampire’s fangs just inched from his throat. She
saw the vampire rise up and she threw out her hand as if her will
alone could push the creature away.

The blue current shot from her fingers and
instantly enveloped the vampire. He reared up, stiff with the
shock. Nardo kicked out, shoving it further away. He scrambled from
beneath the creature as its mouth opened in a silent scream.

JJ struggled to her feet as Nardo ran to her.
“Is it dead?”

“Are you all right?” Nardo began running his
hands over her body. Fear and anger made his actions rough. Her
jacket and shirt were covered in blood. Was any of it hers? “Take
off the jacket. Let me see.”

She slapped at his hands as he unzipped her
coat. “I’m fine.”

Nardo’s face was still a mask of rage. “Fine?
Fine? You could have gotten yourself killed. You had no business
here, dammit. I told you to stay put, to call the House.”

“I called,” JJ snapped back, “And if I’d
waited like a good little girl, you’d be dead right now.”

He spun her around and pushed her toward the
end of the street. “I don’t have time for this right now. Go wait
out there and flag them down. I still have work to do.” He glanced
back at the twitching body of the vampire. “Go now, before he wakes
up.”

“I can help.”

“No, dammit! I don’t want you here for
this.”

“Hey, did you two lovebirds call for help?”
Col came sauntering down the middle of the street. “Whoa Nardo,
what’s with the Rage? Back it down a notch, bro. Looks like it’s
all over but the mopping up.” It was then he noticed the bodies
weren’t demons. “Holy shit. You killed a couple of members.”

“Yeah.” Nardo struggled to bring himself
under control. “We need to take care of things and…”

“I’m not leaving.”

Canaan’s arrival forestalled the argument.
Nardo settled for a glare which JJ returned. “My lord,” he
said.

“Your lord, my ass. What the hell happened
here?” Canaan looked around and raised his hand. “Later. This place
will be coming alive anytime now. Let’s get it done.” He withdrew
the long blade he carried along his thigh and knelt by Camo II and
whispered, “To your beginnings, I commend you.” In one swift
motion, he ran the blade across the dead man’s throat. The second
stroke severed the head.

Donuts and coffee filled JJ’s throat. Pride
made her swallow it back down. Except when Canaan set the head next
to the body, pride wasn’t enough and she turned away and lost it
all. She’d seen things as a cop, horrible things, but she’d never
seen anything like this. Using the building for support, she
stumbled toward Broadbent at the end of the street.

“I say,” he greeted her with a look of
concern, “You look like you’ve hit a bit of a rough patch.”

“You’re not looking so dapper yourself,” she
said more to cover her embarrassment than because it was true.
Broadbent had wet spots on his knees and one of his coat sleeves
was muddy.

“Touché,” he laughed. “Col and I had a set-to
of our own. It was small and remarkably feisty. Couldn’t get a grip
on the little bastard.” He brought out a handkerchief, neatly
pressed and folded from an inside pocket and handed it to her
wiping at the corner of his mouth with his finger.

JJ nodded her thanks more embarrassed than
before and used the cloth to wipe her face.

“Nasty business, this. Almost lost it a few
times myself,” the professor said sympathetically. He then signaled
to Otto who was standing a few feet away leaning against the fender
of an older model sedan. “Why don’t you take our JJ home, old son.
She looks like she could use bit of pampering and your Manon is
just the one to give it. Don’t you think?”

Otto nodded and quickly opened the passenger
door to usher her in.

“I don’t want to go home,” she told him as
she sat in the seat. “I just need a minute to settle my
stomach.”

Otto nodded sympathetically and closed the
door. “Killing demons is nasty work,” he said when he slid into the
driver’s seat. “Buckle up now.”

“They weren’t demons. They were men. Well,
two of them were.” Without thinking, JJ followed his
instruction.

Otto’s eyebrows shot up. “Humans?”

“No, Paenitentia.”

“We don’t kill Paenitentia,” Otto said as if
that was the final word on the subject. He started the car.

“Yeah, well somebody needs to tell them that
because they didn’t seem to have a problem with killing us. And it
wasn’t because we surprised them. They had suppressors on those
weapons. Maybe they weren’t hunting us, but they were prepared to
take care of any problems quietly.” It finally dawned on her that
they were heading for home even though she’d told him no. Grace was
right. They were all chauvinistic barbarians. She sighed. There was
no point in arguing. “And then there’s the little matter of their
buddy, the vampire.”

That made the old man’s eyes pop. “Vampire?
Did they have him in custody?” Otto didn’t think anyone but an
angry mob or a Guardian could bring down a vampire much less hold
him captive.

“They were more like armed escorts.
Paramilitary types. Didn’t you see the one out on the street?”

“There wasn’t anyone on the street.” The
retired Guardian grabbed JJ’s forearm. “Did you kill him?” he asked
urgently.

“No. No, he was alive when I left him. He
didn’t look like he was going anywhere soon, though.”

Otto nodded, his relief evident on his lined
face. “What about the vampire?”

JJ wasn’t sure what he meant, so she answered
with what was bothering her. “He looked normal when we first saw
him on the street,” she began and then she paused, considering.
“No. He didn’t look normal. He looked, I don’t know, fuzzy. His
face wasn’t clear like the other two.” She shook her head, trying
to think of the right words to express what she saw and felt.
“Weird,” was the best she could come up with.

“What do you see when you look at me?”

“Uncle Otto,” she said before she realized
what he meant. She’d forgotten what he was. “I see you, a man, a
Paenitentia.”

“Do I look like him?” he asked and when she
shook her head, he concluded, “Then he isn’t a vampire.”

“Then what the hell was he? He was bigger and
stronger than you guys, and while I only have Nardo to judge by,
this guy’s fangs looked a lot longer and meaner.”

“Like these?” Otto mumbled.

JJ glanced over and let out a startled,
“Shit!” and shoved herself up against the car door. “Yeah,” she
said nervously, “Just like that.”

The long incisors retracted. “They’re longer
and sharper because of the amount of blood we need. So, this
creature is not a vampire and yet he is.”

“What if he’s a different kind of vampire?”
JJ didn’t know enough about these people to say what was possible
and what wasn’t.

“There are no ‘kinds’ of vampires. You either
are or you are not.”

Chapter 26

“I have seen these before. Much older, but
the same coins nevertheless.” Nico frowned and hefted the gold
coins in his hand. There were four of them now; two from the
apartment, one each from the pockets of the dead. “I have six of
them in the vault at the Banque Eduard ad Galliard in
Switzerland.”

“Where are they from?” Nardo asked.

He was riding behind Nico, who rode shotgun
while Canaan drove. He shared the space with two bodies wrapped in
plastic tarps and two heads, each contained in their separate
plastic bag. They were taking them back to the House. Dawn was just
over the horizon and it was too late to bring them anywhere else.
He’d reluctantly given Col the keys to JJ’s Mustang and now
wondered if that wasn’t a mistake.

“Kurt and Boris, the Guardians who took me
in, left them to me.” He rubbed his thumb over one of the coins,
trying to recall the first time he saw them and what he’d been
told. “It was a long time ago. I was young and so much happened in
so short a time. I didn’t always pay the Guardians the attention I
should have.

“They belonged to a quasi-religious sect of
the Paenitentia. They called themselves a brotherhood.” He shook
his head and frown lines formed between his eyes as he tried to
remember the distant past. “Kurt and Boris destroyed them and felt
no guilt for it. I remember I admired their cold bloodedness. I
didn’t realize at the time that killing a Paenitentia was a serious
offense.” He glanced at the makeshift body bags. “What did Boris
call them? A myth come to life, that was it. The…” he tried a few
variations until he said, “Nonveniae. Yes, the Nonveniae.”

“Never heard of it,” Canaan said. He hit the
blinker for the turn onto Hayden Avenue. They were almost home.