Shadow Guardians: The Beast
Chapter 2

“You sure I can’t come over for dinner tomorrow, Maryann?” Theo asked, all flashing teeth and puffing out his chest, hoping it’d make him look good in his police uniform. He’d been working out more. He was eye candy, and he knew it. It didn’t really matter that Maryann was thirty years his junior.

Maryann, who was thirty-one, blonde with blue eyes, and a cop herself, didn’t seem impressed. But he wouldn’t let up. She drew her thin, burgundy lips into a smile. “Sorry, Theo. I have the night shift tomorrow. And the day thereafter, and the day thereafter.”

“Man, you really shouldn’t be out at night. New York isn’t safe at night.”

On the contrary, Maryann thought, it’s safer at night than during the day. And she was one of very few humans who knew that. She’d known about the Shadow Guardians since she was a child. And they’ve never allowed anything to happen to her. But she really wished that Serena’s leave would end. Nightshifts weren’t as easy on her as they were on nosferi.

“I’ll be fine, Theo. I’ll just be here answering phones.” Actually, she really didn’t like Theo. He was a pain in the ass. But whatever, she had to work with the guy.

He narrowed his eyes at her, kind of eating her with them.

Maryann tapped her pencil on the pine desk. The police front desk was drab in beige. Beige walls. Beige chairs. Grey carpet. Cabinets that looked like they survived World War I.

Please just leave already.

The phone rang.

“Oh, that’s my cue,” Maryann reacted eagerly, grateful for the distraction. She reached for the receiver and raised her brows when he didn’t leave. “I’m working, Theo!”

He held up his hands. “Fine. Fine. See you tomorrow.” He ambled out.

So not looking forward to it. Creep who thinks he’s God’s gift to womankind. She’ll never understand how he ended up in the system.

She picked up the receiver. “This is the NYPD. I’m Maryann. How can I help you?”

“I...I need help! There’s someone upstairs!”

“Did someone break in?”

“I-I’m not sure; I didn’t hear windows breaking, and all the doors were locked.”

The woman was sobbing with fear. But Maryann had already identified the first warning sign. She heard something crash in the background, and the woman on the other end of the phone let out a small yelp.

“Where are you, ma’am? Is someone in the house with you?”

“Y-yes, my nine-year-old son. I’m downstairs, hiding behind the couch. I-I was watching tele-”

“Do you smell something burning in the house?”

“Well, yes, but I burned cookies earlier...”

“What’s your address?”

The woman stammered out her address. Maryann said they’d have someone over and hang up. She glanced around to make sure she was alone. She scanned the computer to see which patrol was the farthest away from the building the woman lived in, then radioed that car. She trailed off the emergency and gave the address. Then she dialled another number.

It barely rang before someone answered.

“Hello, Maryann.”

“Zachiel, where are you guys?”

The door burst open, and two massive men in black came in, one dark blonde and one with a black ponytail. Both had to bend their heads to actually be able to get through the door.

The blonde one with the phone to his ear smirked. “Right here, Maryann.” He put the phone away, took off sunglasses to reveal two cat-like green eyes. He had a jaw that could cut diamonds.

Same jaw for the other guy, showing their relation, yet he had an ugly scar running over his right eye from above his eyebrow to his right nostril. The ladies loved that, as if his dark and dangerous appearance weren’t enough reason to get him naked. And then, of course, he had two different colours of iris. One blue, the other green.

But she was missing the third one.

“Where’s Magnus?” She asked.

“Our dearest brother is working Central New York tonight.” Draven, the dark one, said.

“Hate it when he does that, but I wouldn’t dare stop him.”

You didn’t stop Magnus. You just didn’t, lest you make him angry and flip his psycho-switch.

All three brothers were dangerous vampires. But Magnus, he was a whole different level of crazy.

And Zachiel, commonly referred to as Z, was the unofficial leader of the clan they housed in New York. Because Draven was too distracted with the ladies to be interested, and Magnus was too... well, best not go there. Z was the most level-headed of the three.

“I’ve got an emergency here. It sounds like some, ah, paranormal activity. Better get over there quick. I already called the squad car in.” She trailed off the address. “I think you guys need to-” And when she looked up, they were gone.

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. Damn poof’ing trick.

Zachiel and Draven stepped out of the Mercedes G-wagon into the cool, rank night air of New York. The apartment building was ordinary in every way. Red brick, with black filth leaking down the windows. It was a crummy neighbourhood.

“You wanna go in through the door?” Draven asked.

“You want to scare the poor woman to death? We go straight to the second floor.”

They dematerialized and reappeared in front of a nine-year-old boy with a bowl-cut of black hair and red eyes. He hissed at them.

“Oh great,” Draven said, throwing up his hands. “It’s in the kid.”

The boy’s face split into a sneer of canines.

And then they started crawling out of the walls. Black, hairless, sinewy masses of screeching demons. Draven counted ten.

“Ah, how I love being bait.” Z muttered.

“We’ve been bait for thousands of years, brother.” Draven said, removing a black, silver-embossed handle from his harness. As he pressed the jewelled button on its hilt, the bloodstone long sword extended, its dark green crystal dotted with red.

Draven tried to count the centuries they’d spent fighting the scourge of the Abyss, but even he couldn’t remember. He was young yet—only four centuries old—the youngest of the brothers. Since he was a child, there had been nothing but war between them and the demonic spawn. They would try anything to lure the vampiric species to them, while striving to enslave humans and cause general destruction and mayhem in the mortal world.

Only the vampiric species were long-lived enough to fight them. Because the spawn was endless. Lucky then, they were created with a near-endless bloodlust for the damned monsters.

Zachiel revealed bloodstone throwing stars. He held out his hand to the boy and spoke in an ancient language. He could feel the demon surfacing through the mortal as he continued reciting the exorcism chant. That pissed it off. And the ones that crawled out of the walls went wild.

They bounded towards Z, and Draven held them off. Screeches filled the air, as did the unmistakable sound of a blade slicing flesh.

The boy shuddered as the demon’s spirit surfaced from his body, crawling from his mouth and eyes in the form of black smoke. Zachiel had to concentrate to hold the energy in place because if it fully escaped, it would come right at him, and he’d have to break the chant and start over. He had to extract all of it first, or at least enough so he could get a hit in.

As fast as Draven was putting demons down, more spawned.

“Take your sweet time, brother!” He yelled as he ducked, swung, and sliced. Light and ash showered the room as his blade made quick work of the horde.

A black mass with red gashes of eyes floated above the child, who fell limp to the floor, pale as the dead. The demon didn’t even seem to have any sort of shape. It was an ethereal cloud.

“Ah fuck,” Z cursed, “It’s not one of ours!”

And then it talked, giving a low, growling laugh. “My master is coming soon, vampire. He will turn you to ash...”

“Yeah, yeah.” Zachiel turned the throwing stars in his hand toward the glint of moonlight on the windows. “I’ve heard it all before.”

He called a name. Auriel.

The glint on his stars brightened, and he threw them right through the black mass. They lodged themselves in the opposite wall.

The demon laughed. “Pathetic,”

Zachiel smirked. “Look again, asshole.”

Bright white light expanded in the centre of the black mass. It moaned in agony.

The light morphed into a near-humanoid shape and extended wings. The demon roared as the angel lifted her sword and brought it down. Both of them disappeared into a point in space.

All the other demons in the room turned to ash.

Draven let out a sigh. “Hell.”

Zachiel kneeled beside the boy. He was alive. He could hear the beat of his blood through his veins. He wiped his hand in front of his face, erasing his last memories.

“Man, this place is trashed now.” Draven said.

“Imagine what it would’ve been like if Magnus turned apeshit in here.”

“We should probably go replace him.”

They heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The whole ordeal lasted only minutes.

When Sarah Tally opened the door of her son’s bedroom, she gaped at the state of it. The desk was broken, the dresser overturned, and there was some sort of black ash everywhere. And her boy was soundly asleep in bed...