Twilight Guardians

It wasn’t, Charlie discovered, very hard to break into a funeral parlor. She didn’t imagine too many people tried. The place was in the suburbs and surrounded by trees and hedges. The window lock in the back broke with minimal effort. She just pulled and the little clasps on the inside snapped off, and she crawled inside, then closed the window behind her. Then she turned to check the place out.

  It was a big old Victorian style house that had probably had an ordinary family living in it a century or so ago. It was completely lined in wallpaper—roses and vines in crushed red velvet on a gold background. A big brass and glass chandelier hung in the center of the room. There were folding chairs stacked on a cart, pushed up against a wall, and stands of all sizes and shapes for holding flowers. The place smelled like lilies, even though there were no flowers currently on display. Their heavy scent lingered. But no coffin. No body.

  She tiptoed through the main room, which had doors off both ends and one off the side, but that just went to a restroom. The first door led to another room just like the one she was in, and the second, marked “staff only”, led to an office. The office wasn’t of interest, but the door that led from the far side of it was. It wasn’t locked, and she walked through it slowly, the silence like a blanket around her, into what looked like a treatment room at your average medical clinic. A table with a concave headrest sat beside a tray littered with a bizarre mashup of medical instruments and cosmetics. Suture needles, combs and hairspray, eyeshadow, glue.

  Her gaze got stuck on that table for a minute, wondering if her mom’s body had been lying on it. Who had picked out the clothes she would wear? Who had told them how she liked her hair? Those things were her job. She should have done them.

  She gave herself a mental shake and moved on, through yet another door in the back of this room, a door unlike the others. It was heavy and made of stainless steel, and when she opened it, the air that hit her was chilled. A walk-in cooler. Oh, hell. God, she didn’t want to step inside that room. And yet she forced herself.

  Three steps in, she paused to let her eyes adjust. It was dim, no windows in there, and she didn’t dare turn on the lights. She left the door open though, for some reason creeped out by the idea of closing herself in with the dead.

  Caskets, four of them, stood side by side like soldiers awaiting inspection. She moved closer, walking up to the first one, a cream colored box with gold trim. Very fancy. Gripping the side, she stiffened her resolve and lifted the lid.

  A little old lady with too much rouge on her cheeks lay as peacefully as if she was sleeping. “I’m sorry,” Charlie whispered and closed the lid and moved on.

  The second casket was huge, dark cherry wood with black enamel hardware that looked like porcelain. Bracing herself again, she opened it. Wide open eyes stared at her from a purplish blue face. She dropped the lid and jumped backward, banging into the coffin behind her. Her heart started banging against her ribcage, and she pressed her hands to it and ordered it to calm the fuck down.

  Okay, okay, he just hasn’t been prettied up yet. Look again, he’s not a vampire. He’s not a zombie. He’s just a dead guy.

  She made herself open the lid again, just a little bit, then a little more. No, he was not a vampire. His face was blue and his eyes were shrunken and filmy. Completely dead. She replaced the lid with a full body shudder, and just for good measure, turned the oversized, T-shaped key that was sticking out one end of the gleaming box, which she thought locked the lid.

  It crossed her mind that maybe morticians knew more than the rest of the world, if they felt it necessary to lock the dead inside their caskets.

  She tried the lid to make sure, and it didn’t budge. Nice. Blue-boy wasn’t going anywhere.

  Still clutching the giant key in one hand, she went to the third coffin, gleaming black with silver handles. She didn’t think her mom would be in a box like that. Tucking the turnkey into her back pocket, she opened it and found she was right. This one was occupied by a dignified, silver haired man with a perfect mustache to match. He looked like a wax figure, or maybe a mannequin. Not natural at all.

  Charlie turned to the final casket. It was oak, and the handles and trim were copper. It looked like something her mother would’ve liked. She didn’t see one she thought would’ve been a better choice for her, which was probably why she’d saved this one for last.

  Let her makeup be finished, she prayed. Don’t let her look like that blue guy. She put her hands on the lid and paused for a minute, because tears welled up and made it impossible to see. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there, Mom. I could’ve saved you. I know I could have.” She sniffed, wiped her eyes with the back of one hand. “I’m sorry I was so rotten so much of the time. I love you, Mom. I really love you. I always did. Always will.”

  Then she lifted the lid.

  But the coffin was empty.

  “She’s not in there, Charlie.”

  Damn near jumping out of her skin, she spun around, her back to the casket. Lieutenant Lucas Townsend was standing there, only a few feet behind her. Holy hell, she should never have come here.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought that vampire had you.”

  “Where is my mother, LT? What did you do with her?”

  He frowned as if puzzled by her hostile attitude. “We had to have her cremated. When there’s a vamp attack, you just never know. Sometimes...sometimes they come back.”

  She didn’t think that was true. In fact, she was certain it was a lie, but she made a note to ask Killian about it later. If she could get away from this asshole, anyway.

  And just when, she wondered, had she become so sure Killian was the good guy and LT the bad one?

  “The casket is just for show,” he said. “For the funeral, you know.”

  She nodded and tried to make herself seem a little more friendly, a little less angry. “That was generous of you. Thank you for that.” She ran a hand over the wood, leaving the lid open and getting her words in order before speaking them. “You were right. The vampire had me. I got away. I intended to head straight back to camp, but...I just had to come here first.”

  He was watching her closely, and she couldn’t tell if he believed her or not. “I don’t blame you. How did you manage to escape?” he asked.

  “I just bided my time until daylight. I knew he’d have to sleep. When my chance came, I took it.”

  He nodded, coming a little bit closer. “I’ve been waiting. I figured you’d come here.”

  “I guess I’m more predictable than I realized.” She took a step backward.

  He stopped moving. “He’s filled your head with lies, hasn’t he Charlie? I can see it in your eyes. You don’t trust me anymore. Am I right?”

  “He said some things, yes.”

  “He’d say anything to get you away from us.”

  “Because he wants to...feed on me, you said. Because of the antigen.”

  “Yes, Charlie. Yes, that’s the only thing any of them want.” He came another step closer, was standing in between two caskets now. She stayed just out of his reach but tried not to be obvious about it.

  “Then why didn’t he?” she asked, wondering just what he would say.

  He frowned, gave his head a shake.

  “Why didn’t he just do it? He had all night. See, that’s what I can’t figure out.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he was full, from all the recruits he murdered on his way in to get to you. We lost twenty-three last night, Charlie. Twenty-three.”

  She lowered her head and didn’t have to fake the emotion. This place was filled with it, and so was she. She couldn’t even see her mother one last time. Emotion was easy. “Whoever did that should die,” she said, and she meant it. Whoever killed all those recruits, whoever killed her mother, deserved death. Worse than death. “But how did he do that? One vampire? Against all those Exers? How did he kill them?”

  “He had help. Two others were with him.”

  “Still, twenty three–”
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  “They just lunge from one to the next, ripping their jugulars out, drinking their fill and tossing them aside. It was a bloodbath.”

  It was. She’d seen it. But it hadn’t been their throats torn open. He was lying to her. She kept sidling sideways, and so did he.

  “We wounded one of his cohorts, captured them both. We’ll get him, too. Come with me,” he said. “We had to bug out. Camp is deserted now. They’ll burn it soon.”

  Bug out to where? And were the vampire captives in the same place? Killian’s friends, Rhiannon and Roland? And if that was where they took prisoners and if they were the ones who’d taken Roxy, would she be there too? She moved a little more, keeping him across from her. He did too. Soon he was in front of the empty coffin, and she was facing him.

  “I’m exhausted,” she said. “A long car ride will have me puking, I swear–”

  “It’s not far. Fifteen minutes.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, LT. There’s no way you have a secret military base hidden within fifteen minutes of Portland.” She made her smile big and ironic, shaking her head like she knew he was playing with her and was playing right back.

  “Fifteen minutes by chopper. It’s an–” He stopped himself, looked at her. “Come on, Charlie. Just come with me. I’ll take care of you, I promise.” He held out a hand.

  She sighed, nodded heavily. “You’re right. I need some rest.” She held out her hand, and he took another step to close the gap between them. She punched him hard, an uppercut to the chin. His head snapped back, hit the open coffin lid. He stumbled, started to straighten, and she grabbed the lid and brought it down hard, hitting him in the head again. Then she shoved him right into the box, closed the lid, and holding it down with one hand, she yanked the turnkey from her pocket with the other and locked him in while he pounded and yelled.

  “Apparently, you didn’t take your own cure, LT. You could’ve fought me if you had. But I doubt you’d have beat me anyway.”

  Her mom had always left an emergency credit card tucked in the back of her glove compartment, and it was still there. Charlie used it to buy some fast food burgers to fill her empty stomach, and then visited a grocery store for supplies for the farmhouse, human food, heavy on the protein. Then she drove back, arriving by noon, certain she hadn’t been followed. And since everyone else was still sleeping, she put the groceries away, took that little black satchel to the van, and drove off again to satisfy her curiosity.....

  She was sick of waiting for Killian to provide proof of which side he was on. She needed to make up her mind–either believe him or don’t. Period. This uncertainty was maddening. And if what he was saying was true, unfair.

  And in her heart, she thought it was true. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the image of those hands that had touched her so tenderly, murdering anyone. Or those lips she so wanted to kiss again, draining her mother’s life away. She couldn’t. He couldn’t have done it. He couldn’t have.

  She wanted to believe him. But her brain wanted proof.

  So she drove east, the way he’d pointed when he’d mentioned Roxy’s pickup, because she had to see it for herself.

  The truck was not wrapped around a tree as Killian had told her it would be. It had been moved off the road into a weedy field. The debris that was supposed to have been scattered everywhere was gone. The road and roadsides were clean. Someone had come back here and cleaned up the scene. They would probably come back for the truck, too.

  Pulling the van off to the side and taking a careful look around, Charlie thought it might be safe, at the moment. She got out and left the van running, its door open. The sun pounded down, and the pavement reflected it up into her face. She wished for a pair of sunglasses and shielded her eyes as she walked closer.

  There were black marks on the road, rubber left behind from skidding tires. She walked past them, jumped the ditch on the roadside, and then moved toward the pickup truck. There was no glass in it. Every window had been shattered, and the truck was riddled with bullet holes. She pushed a hand into her hair, and a chill ran up her spine at nightmare images of Roxy, her grandmother, sitting behind the wheel while that many bullets were being fired at her. Or at her truck. Seemed like if they’d wanted to kill her, they’d certainly had the ammo to do it, whoever they were.

  She went to the truck, opened the driver’s door, looked underneath the front seat. But there was no phone there. She checked the other side, too, but nothing. Even the glove compartment was empty.

  She flipped down the visors, and a pair of sunglasses fell out. Aviators. Old fashioned, like Roxy was. Just what she’d been wishing for. It made her eyes tear up. “Thanks, Roxy,” she said softly, and she put them on and walked back to the van. From there she went off in search of the barn where Killian was resting, so she could read the files from the lab at Fort Rogers and wait for him to wake up.

  Rhiannon woke all at once, her head coming upright, her neck stiff and sore from its bent position. She wasn’t lying down. She was upright, in a chair, her arms held to the chair’s arms by thick metal cuffs that covered her from elbow to wrist. Tugging at them to test their strength, she quickly looked around her. Roland? Where are you?

  No answer came. And he was nowhere in sight. She was in a large square room that resembled a gymnasium. There was a gleaming wood floor with red paint marking a large circle for some sport or other. It took up most of the room. Only the room’s corners were outside the painted circle. She and her imprisoning chair were situated in one of those corners. There was a door in the corner opposite her. She tried hopping, chair and all, but its legs were apparently bolted to the floor.

  “Dammit.” She looked down to see for sure, but stopped when she saw that her legs were covered in some sort of form fitting spandex cat suit. Her own clothes, she recalled, had been torn by the bullets that had ripped through her and soaked by her own blood. She had healed during the day sleep. Her clothing, apparently, had not. Her boots, thank the Gods, remained, ankle high and black with potentially deadly heels.

  Lifting her head and looking around, she called out, “All right, mortals, whoever you are. You have me. Now what?” She wasn’t sure what sort of building she was in. She could smell the sea. The air tasted of it.

  There was no sound, but she could feel that she was being watched. As her keen eyes scanned the entire room, she saw how high the ceilings were. Way up along the topmost parts of the walls, there were two panes of darkly tinted glass, one on either side, opposite each other. Like sky boxes for watching whatever sport took place here. She squinted to see through them, strained her mind to sense Roland’s presence or anyone else’s for that matter. And then, suddenly, that door across from her slid upward from the floor, and Rhiannon saw movement in the darkness beyond. Squinting, she leaned forward, for now she sensed a presence.

  And since when can’t I pick up on someone just because they’re on the other side of a door, she wondered. But she knew the answer. In the past, DPI had used some high end technology only Eric could understand, to block telepathic transmissions. Vampires couldn’t communicate or sense each other, or anyone else for that matter, through it. This place must be built with that same sort of construction. Which meant she would be unable to call out for help or let any other vampires know where she was being held from within the walls that surrounded her.

  So Roland could be near, behind some barricade through which she could not feel.

  The movement in the darkness drew her attention back to the open door. Whatever was in there was inching through the darkness, ever closer to the opening, and Rhiannon renewed her efforts to break free of her bonds.

  Something crackled, electricity, deep in the shadows, and the creature howled in pain and jumped out into the open, an elf-sized body with a tangled mass of black hair.

  By the Gods, it was a girl. A human little girl. Ten? Twelve, perhaps. Too skinny to tell. And she emanated an essence that was completely foreign to Rhiannon. She didn’t feel quite
human. There were traces of The Chosen about her, but not quite. She was something different. Some kind of hybrid creature. Manmade, no doubt about that.

  As soon as she had cleared it, the door slammed closed behind her, and the child jumped, startled.

  A voice came, like the voice of God, if God were male, Rhiannon thought. It filled the room from some hidden speaker and echoed off the walls. “It’s a vampire,” the disembodied voice told the child. “Kill it.”

  Rhiannon lowered her head to hide her smile, lest she embarrass the girl. But the little thing let loose a growl and came charging at her. As she looked up in surprise, the metal cuffs holding her arms sprang free without warning, and Rhiannon surged to her feet out of pure instinct, and quick as a flash, put one hand on the child’s head to hold her at arm’s reach.

  The girl closed her hand around Rhiannon’s wrist, turned herself around like a dervish and flipped Rhiannon over her back, flinging her bodily halfway across the room.

  She landed face-up on the floor, shocked to her core. “What kind of child are you?”

  The girl pounced on her, moving beyond human speed, her hands flying, long nails tearing into Rhiannon’s face and neck, ripping through flesh. Pain followed the raking path of those claws, and Rhiannon flung her off and sprang to her feet again, crouching this time, ready to fight.

  “You’re no ordinary girl, that’s certain. What are you then? Another DPI experiment?”

  The girl’s eyes were blue, but they flashed with a golden-yellow light from behind her tangled hair for a moment as the two circled one another.

  “You are, aren’t you?” Rhiannon looked up toward the observation windows. “Have you no moral compass whatsoever? That you would use a child as a weapon?”

  The girl threw herself forward, doing a sort of flipping hand spring and nailing Rhiannon in the chest with both of her dirty, bare feet. It was a crushing blow. She felt her ribs crack as she flew backward, crashing into the wall behind her.

  She pushed herself up again, one arm hugging her own waist. The pain was excruciating, heightened, as was every sense in her kind. She got upright, looked at the child. “I cannot harm you, girl. Not only because you reek of the antigen that makes you family to me, but because....” She let her lips pull into a half smile. “I like you.”

  With a loud, terrifying growl, the girl came again, throwing a series of punches and kicks so rapidly that it was all Rhiannon could do to block them. She had to shut her mind down, stop thinking, and react from sheer instinct, her arms moving as fast as the child’s to block every blow, but then the little thing jumped up high and head-butted her, taking her by surprise. Pain exploded behind Rhiannon’s eyes, and she dropped to her knees, pressing the heel of one hand to her forehead. The girl jumped into the air and came down, elbow first, jamming it down onto Rhiannon’s nape. The blow would’ve snapped a mortal’s spinal cord, Rhiannon thought. She tried to move, but the child brought a knee up to her chin so hard it lifted her right up off the floor. She landed on her back again.

  Breathing hard, furious and hurting, Rhiannon pushed herself upright, into a sitting position. Then she clutched the wall behind her, climbing her way up onto her feet again. The pain would soon become debilitating. And she was bleeding from several places now. Just scratches, but still...anything deeper could kill her.

  She clung to the wall, hunched and hurting, but forced herself to straighten to her full height. The child, huffing and puffing and red-faced with anger and exertion, clenched her fists and came at her again.

  Rhiannon flung out her hands and shouted, “Enough!”

  The girl halted in her tracks as the powerful vampiric voice echoed off the walls.

  “I am not a mere vampiress, little one. I possess far greater powers than those of the Undead. I learned to wield magic at the feet of those who first mastered it. The Priestesses of Isis. And I, Rhianikki, say to you, Enough.”

  “Kill the vampire!” boomed the voice from beyond.

  Rhiannon held her hand up, casting a shield around her, and though the child took a step or two closer, she stopped, though she probably had no idea why.

  “You might want to cover your ears, child. Auntie Rhiannon is angry now.” The girl frowned at her, and Rhiannon cupped her palms over her own ears in demonstration and nodded at the child to do the same. She quickly cast an invisible circle around the child, in hopes of protecting her from what was to come.

  “Kill the vampire!” the booming voice said again.

  “Oh, do shut up!” Rhiannon took a deep breath, opened her mouth and screamed. It wasn’t a horror movie victim sort of scream. It was a bestial shriek, much like that of the legendary Ben-sidhe, or so she liked to imagine. The wild child staggered backward, fell to the floor and clamped her hands over her ears. Only then did Rhiannon crank up the volume.

  The room vibrated. The two glass panes up above shattered into a million glittering shards and came raining down as she leaped forward to shield the child with her own body, covering her completely as she let the powerful cry die out.

  That corner door shot upright again, and the girl squirmed out from beneath Rhiannon and ran toward it.

  “No, wait!” Rhiannon lunged after her, but the door banged down behind her. An instant later, Roland landed on the floor from somewhere far above, still bound to a chair that demolished on impact. He’d been behind that glass, Rhiannon realized. They’d been forcing him to watch. He’d flung himself through once the impenetrable glass had been shattered. The chair was in pieces, its metal cuffs open and useless as he got to his feet.

  He gripped her arm, and she winced, but before she could protest, he’d leapt upward again, carrying her with him, jumping back through the broken window and into a room with seats, for viewing. When he landed, he yelped in pain.

  “Roland?”

  “Broken leg. Wrist, too, perhaps. No matter. You?”

  “Ribs. Skull, perhaps. That little demon gave me what for, didn’t she?” Rhiannon looked across to the window on the other side, but whoever had been there was long gone now, and Roland was pulling her toward a door, an exit she hoped.

  “She practically flayed you alive,” he said. He delivered a blow with the heel of his hand that sent the door off its hinges into the wall on the opposite side, then, still holding Rhiannon’s hand, raced into a corridor and down it.

  Armed men–DPI thugs–came toward them, bearing rifles in their arms, so she and Roland pivoted and headed in the other direction. When more came from that way, Rhiannon kicked in the first door she saw, and they entered a room with a large round window on the far side. Turning quickly, she bolted the door.

  “Well it’s about time. I thought I’d be stuck on this tub forever.”

  Whirling, Rhiannon widened her eyes. “Roxanne!”

  Roxy got to her feet, brushing off her hands. She limped slightly as she came closer and was clearly tired and worried. “Do you know anything about my granddaughter?” she asked.

  Men were pounding on the door. “Killian took her from the camp,” Rhiannon said. “There’s more, but we have no time.”

  “Less than none,” Roland said. “You’re going to have to trust us, Roxanne.” Then he ripped the round window out of its wall as men started hitting the door with something harder than their hands.

  Rhiannon looked out and saw a long drop and a lot of dark water. “I knew it. It’s a porthole. Roland, we’re on a ship!”

  “You’re just figuring that out?” Roxy asked. “And I thought vampires were perceptive.”

  “Yes,” Roland said, “a ship, and we’ll live to get off it if you will kindly launch yourself through that porthole before they get in here and kill us.”

  “We can’t leave the child, Roland.”

  “What child?” Roxy asked. “They have a child?”

  “We’re both injured. We’ll come back for her. I swear to you, my love, I will not rest until we have fetched her out of this vessel. Now please, go! Roxanne, you t
oo, and cling to Rhiannon’s back so her body takes the brunt of the impact. Go.”

  The door was shuddering now under each blow. Alarms were sounding. Rhiannon had no choice. She put her hands on the edges and pulled herself through the porthole, giving a final push with both arms to launch her on her way. Roxanne dove right out behind her, wrapping her arms around Rhiannon from behind and then holding on. Roland dove out last of all. Rhiannon stretched out her arms, aiming with her hands, and making her body as arrow-straight as she could. She rocketed past a name painted on the hull, upside down and backwards from her perspective. Then she hit the water hard. She sliced through it, Roxanne with her, but the impact was painful all the same on her already injured head. Bullets torpedoed through the depths around her as she descended downward. Roxanne let go at some point. Then Rhiannon opened her eyes to search frantically for Roland.

  Out of the murky deep, he appeared, stroking toward her. She caught his hand, and they surfaced, side by side, finding and grabbing hold of Roxanne and pulling her along with them as they sped away from the ship.

  Chapter Eighteen