Guardian's Joy #3 (5 page)

Nardo kicked at the bathroom door in his
anger, sending it slamming open and into the wall and then hissed
as pain shot from his big toe to his heel. He’d forgotten his feet
were bare. By the Nephilim, he was losing his mind.

*****

JJ fumbled with her house key, dropped it for
a third time and curled her lip at the cat waiting patiently to be
let into the house. It purred and rubbed its cheek against her
ankle.

“If you’re going to live here, you could at
least make yourself useful and pick the damn thing up,” she said
around the white paper bag clutched between her teeth. She finally
got the key in its slot and opened the front door. “Don’t just sit
there. Get in the house.”

She’d spent the last seven hours in the
emergency room, three of them sitting in the waiting room. What
followed was a nightmare on top of a nightmare.

When her number was finally called, the nurse
looked her over, took her temperature, pulse, and blood pressure,
wasted more time taking a medical history that had nothing to do
with her injuries and listened skeptically as JJ lied about how she
obtained her broken wrist and gashes. JJ could only think of the
infection that was probably coursing through her veins while the
woman took care of paperwork. When, at last, the nurse washed out
the cuts on her hand and prepared the wounds for stitching, JJ
thought she was home free, but no. It was another half hour before
the doctor came to put in the seventeen stitches needed to close
the wounds and another hour before x-rays were taken of her broken
wrist. And then the highlight of her morning rumbled in.

With grizzled grey hair framing her face, a
stout body that looked physically capable in spite of its size and
a lined, frowning face that had seen it all and was bored with it,
the social worker looked her up and down over the rims of a pair of
finger smudged reading glasses.

“Who attacked you?” She raised her eyebrows.
“Stranger, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband? And you can save us both
some time by telling the truth.” She glanced at JJ’s left hand
which was bandaged to the size of a baseball mitt.

JJ smirked and snorted in her head. You want
the truth? Well you see, ma’am, in my spare time, I hunt monsters,
not the beastly human kind, but the real kind and I was out
scouting and came across this good looking guy, but when he saw me
leaning over the body of a dead girl, he thought I killed her, but
it was really a vampire who killed her because I saw him and this
good looking guy, who’s also some fangy sort of fellow, with this
fancy sort of name that sounded like it came from some Latin class
chased me because he was going to kill me and then he caught me and
held me up against the wall and, well, we’ll just skip ahead to
when the monster came over the wall and I zapped it with the
electric blue fire that comes off of my fingertips and then I ran.
Got that or would you like me to repeat it? JJ felt hysterical
laughter welling up inside and she stuffed it back down.

“I already told the nurse what happened,” she
said instead.

The woman pursed her lips over to the side.
Her “Humph” said exactly what she thought of the story JJ gave the
nurse. She pointed her pen at the broken wrist.

“That’s a spiral fracture, honey. Somebody
twisted your arm. Your face is bruised and you look like you’ve
been dragged though shit. You didn’t get that way falling on the
ice.”

JJ caught herself just before she rolled her
eyes. How many times had she seen a perp do the same thing? “Look,
it’s pretty simple. I lost my footing on the ice when I was getting
in my car. I guess I didn’t let go of the handle when I fell and
twisted and landed in a pile of glass at the curb. Maybe I hit my
face when I fell. God knows what I rolled in when I was picking
myself up out of the gutter.”

The woman jotted a few notes on her clip
board before looking up. “No, you look. It doesn’t matter how you
earn your living. No one has the right to do this to you. It’s a
crime. I don’t care what you’ve heard; no john has the right…”

“John? You think I’m a …?”

This was rich. The woman thought she was in
the life, a prostitute. JJ shook her head. Once again, she was way
over dressed and had she ever seen a hooker wearing utility boots?
The laughter, this time painful laughter, bubbled up again. Her sex
life had been bone dry for three years, though she’d never been
that good at it anyway and so far she hadn’t really missed it. How
ironic that this woman thought she peddled it for a living.

“That’s my story and I’m sticking to it,” she
said, “Now, are they going to cast this fucking thing or do I just
go home and wrap it myself.”

“Fine,” the woman huffed. “I have other
people to see who really want help.” She reached into the pocket of
her baggy purple cardigan and pulled out a card, checked both sides
and handed it to JJ. “If you ever change your mind or need a way
out, call that number. They’ll help you.”

The social worker gathered her things and
left as quickly as she’d come.

JJ checked the card, front and back, as the
social worker did. It was for an R and R, not rest and relaxation,
but recovery and retraining. She’d dropped more than one pro at its
doors.

They wanted to take more X-rays, of her head
this time, ‘just to be safe’, but she refused.

“My head is fine. Just fix the damn wrist and
let me get out of here.”

Her arm was cast by a young, earnest looking
intern who patted her hand when he finished.

“You be careful out there,” he said.

JJ nodded her thanks. Yep, cops, prostitutes
and monster hunters, you be careful out there.

It took her forever to drive home. She was so
tired her eyes were crossed and she couldn’t get the car out of
second gear. It was too damn painful and she couldn’t wait to get
home to take the painkillers she’d refused at the hospital.

She used her teeth to open the stapled bag as
soon as she reached the kitchen only to find the idiots had sealed
them in child-proof bottles. She wanted to scream, but instead,
wedged the three bottles, one at a time, between two butter knives
and smashed them open with a hammer from the junk drawer. Bits of
brown plastic and pills scattered everywhere. She didn’t know what
pills belonged to which bottle, so she took two of each, went back
to the living room, wiggled out of her pants and vest and fell onto
the sofa, where she covered herself with the afghan that was always
draped over the back because she was always so cold.

JJ settled herself against one of the sofa’s
matching pillows, closed her eyes and found two eyes staring back;
his eyes, with the tiny flecks of silver in the hazel of the iris,
the crinkles in the corner from strain or worry. They couldn’t be
laugh lines. He was too serious for those. His lashes were thick,
thicker than hers when she piled on the mascara. Why did men have
all the luck? His brows were full and straight; serious brows for a
serious face.

His teeth were straight, too, and sparkling
white like when you first walked out of the dentist’s. Did
Paenitentia go to the dentist? She giggled a little. She liked his
teeth. Okay, face it, she liked the whole package. Without the
fangs and the bulging hardness, the guy was hot. With them, he was
super-hot.

Whoa. She tried to lift up from the pillow,
but her head was too damn heavy. Must be the drugs. Must be the
drugs that were talking in her head, too, and she didn’t like where
this conversation was going.

Okay, so she found him sexually attractive.
It was nothing more than a visceral reaction and was only
surprising because she’d been without those kinds of thoughts for
so long. It had to be some kind of vampire whammy. Or maybe it was
the drugs.

JJ yawned. It was all moot anyway. She’d
never see this guy again. In a city this size…

The cat leapt to the sofa to curl up at JJ’s
feet and kept watch while the young woman slept.

*****

“The facility was not as secure as we hoped,
Sir.”

Salvador held the phone out from his ear
while the High Lord ranted on the other end. This whole operation
had been a disaster waiting to happen from the moment he arrived, a
cluster fuck of incompetence.

“If you remember, Father, I suggested at the
very beginning the operation should remain within the confines of
the Sanctuary.” He winced. “Yes, Sir, I realize money is
important.”

Salvador wanted to lay the law down with that
prissy Director from the beginning. The man needed to learn who was
in charge. But he was ordered to tread softly. The movement needed
money and Director ad Doren had plenty to spare as well as access
to others who had plenty more.

“Witnesses?” Shit. He hadn’t planned to
mention that. The High Lord must have someone else reporting.
“There was only one to the test subject, a woman. The Guardian
arrived after the subject escaped. Yes Sir, it’ll be in my report.
Yes Sir, I’ll see to it.”

Salvador clicked his phone shut, lifted his
foot and shoved the small table in front of him across the room.
The High Lord had a spy in the lab, one who thought it necessary to
report the woman who shot lightning from her fingers. He’d have to
re-interview the guard who saw it. The man claimed to have only
glimpsed the event while chasing down the subject, the subject he
had allowed to escape. Why then, had he repeated it to someone
else?

The woman with the blue lightning was a
distraction the High Lord didn’t need. It would lead to the same
place the other reports had led; nowhere. She was an old wound that
never properly healed and some dumb fuck had just picked off the
scab. Now it would be Salvador’s job to bandage it back up.

If the witch woman found out, she wouldn’t be
happy about it either. Salvador knew she had great plans for their
triumphant return. She thought the High Lord would finally take
notice and place her by his side. Salvador knew it wouldn’t happen.
The High Lord liked his meat younger and tenderer, but that was a
problem to be dealt with later.

Chapter
6

“It wasn’t a demon.”

All heads at the table snapped up at Canaan’s
words. He’d refused to talk about his day at Moonlight Sanctuary
until after supper, when they’d all adjourned to the War Room, so
christened because of Nardo’s bank of computer terminals and the
large conference table around which they all sat. Enlarged street
maps of the city lined the walls.

“Murder? By a human? Could that happen?” Dov
looked around the table for confirmation.

“Of course it could,” Col answered. “Remember
that time the snatcher grabbed Mom’s purse. If he’d had a knife…”
He shrugged.

“When was this?” asked Canaan, momentarily
distracted. The twins’ mother was his sister.

Dov waved his hand. “Long time ago. Took her
two blocks to run him down. Beat the crap out of him and took her
purse back.” He laughed. “Don’t mess with Mom.”

“I really, really want to meet this woman,”
Grace whispered to Hope sitting beside her. “I’ve only talked to
her on the phone.”

Canaan nodded at Dov, but he didn’t laugh. He
addressed the table again.

“We don’t think it was a human murder either.
It was one of us. We may have ourselves a vampire.”

“Holy shit.”

“Do we know who it is?” This was Broadbent,
quietly tamping tobacco into his pipe. “Surely someone would have
reported a turning in the family.”

“Why? Canaan didn’t,” Dov waved at Uncle Otto
who sat at the far end, “At least not until he had you
contained.”

Canaan stared out across the table, took a
deep breath and slowly let it out between clenched teeth. “Dov ad
Willem, you will not speak again unless it is to acknowledge
orders. Are we clear?”

“Okay, sorry.” Dov slumped in his chair.

Canaan continued to stare. “Are. We.
Clear?”

He didn’t shout, but the room seemed to
reverberate with his voice. Everyone sat up a little straighter,
Dov much straighter than the others.

“I serve at my Liege Lord’s command,” Dov
said, his voice loud and his face red. He’d gone too far with his
clowning.

“Could be he’s a loner, an Independent. Could
be his family doesn’t know or doesn’t want to admit,” the Liege
Lord continued as if the interruption hadn’t occurred.

“He’s from the Sanctuary, my lord. You know
it. I know it. They know it.” Nico’s face was hard and his teeth
were clenched, but when his mate, Hope, reached over to pat his
hand affectionately, he visibly calmed.

Hope was tall for a human woman and buxom
with a narrow waist and broad hips. She wore plain dresses and had
an abundance of dark auburn hair that fell to her waist on its rare
release from the tightly controlled bun at the back of her head. A
year ago, no one would have matched her with the suave, unsmiling
Nico, but they’d clearly been mistaken. You could practically see
his batteries charge every time he looked at her and her shy smile
and blushing cheeked response told a story all its own.

“Go on Canaan. We’re listening,” she said
quietly.

“There’s nothing to prove the vampire
originated in Moonlight Sanctuary or if it’s a vampire at all for
that matter.” He raised his hand to halt Nico’s protest. “Hell’s
damnation, will you let me finish. Yes, the wounds were consistent
with a vampire attack and yes, there was a definite feeling at the
Sanctuary that they weren’t telling us everything, but that doesn’t
mean they’re protecting him. Their pride may be getting in the way
of good sense. They have their own police force out there, such as
it is, and those guys resent the hell out of our being called
in.”

“They were insulting,” Nico snarled. “They
offered you a cell in which to spend the day.”