The Guardian's, Book One, Chapter Three

                                                  Chapter Three



         Michael’s eyes glanced over the faces of the eight people sitting at the mansion’s huge dining room table. Leah, Jayla, and Sarris had joined them, and surprisingly, everyone else was home to make it tonight, except Gaden, who remained asleep. The table was lined with bowls and platters of everything from pasta and soup, to meat and bread, cakes and pudding. Jeremiah, the mansions only butler and cook, had been raised in an Italian family. He believed in hearty eating and always prepared too much.

Michael’s eyes froze on Sarris as she bit into a mozzarella and meatball stuffed shell. A little moan of delight escaped her lips as she chewed slowly, savoring the flavor. The sound went straight to his core and burned there.

A choking sound beside him drew his attention to Gareth, who-damn him- was grinning at him like an escapee from the loony bin.

“Not you’re usual,” Gareth said quietly to him, so no one else could hear.

Michael didn’t respond, just gave him a go to hell look, spun some spaghetti onto his fork, and shoveled it into his mouth. If there was one thing he could fully appreciate, it was good food, and Jeremiah knew his stuff in the kitchen.

“This should be interesting then,” Gareth added to him, and then raised his voice over the other conversations being held around the table. All eyes turned on him, and he said,

“I’d like you all to welcome a new member to our household. For those of you who haven’t met her yet, this is Sarris Alin,” he indicated Sarris, who blushed prettily as all those eyes turned to her, but smiled brightly nonetheless. Almost as if it were an afterthought, Gareth added, “Her son will be arriving tomorrow, so please welcome him, too.”

Michael’s head whipped around. How could this young, beautiful, lively woman be a mother? Most of the mother’s he knew were tired looking and worn out from raising children, but Sarris was the furthest thing from worn out. Gareth hadn’t mentioned a father to the boy, or a husband, he realized, then asked himself why the hell it mattered. His brother was right; she wasn’t his type of woman.

Blyth, the big, muscled, red-haired man beside Sarris was the first to extend his welcome. With his booming, Irish-accented voice, he said smoothly,

“Good to have you here, Sarris. I’m Blyth. If you should need anything, you only have to ask. ”

Sarris gave him a big, warm smile. Blyth usually got that reaction from people, especially women. He just seemed to draw the happiness out in people.

Raj’s cool voice drew Michael’s eyes to the man that sat on his other side. The man was big and muscled like the rest of them, with jet-black hair pulled back and bound in a pony tail. He had a five o’clock shadow from his beard and a thin black mustache, which made his pale skin seem paler. Steely, intelligent, gray eyes shown with unusual interest from the man who often seemed so distant and cold.

“If you don’t mind my asking, why have you decided to move into the mansion?” He asked Sarris. Michael watched the woman’s face closely as she took a deep breath, seeming to prepare herself.

“I’ve already told Gareth, but I suppose you all have a right to know, since I’m in your home.” She paused, and then continued, eyes down so Michael couldn’t read them. “When my son was born, his father tried to take him from me. It wasn’t until after that that I figured out what he really was: some kind of shape-shifter demon. So I took my son and ran and hide with him, but his father always found us. We’ve avoided being caught by him for seventeen years. He found us, though, and we wouldn’t have made it out that time if it hadn’t been for Leah and Jayla.” She reached over and took Leah’s hand for a moment, giving thanks and taking comfort.          Sarris’s voice was strong and unwavering as she spoke, and Michael had the impression that there was a lot more strength in her than meets the eye. Michael wanted to give her some kind of comfort himself, though he didn’t want to examine the reasons why, so he said,

“We’ll, you’ve certainly came to the right place for protection.”

She looked at him with those honey eyes and said,

“I’m so grateful to all of you. Holden and I will do everything we can to earn our keep, I assure you.”

“Nonsense,” Gareth said, “we are grateful to you for offering to be our Healer. Lord knows, we defiantly need one, as many times as we call on Leah and Jayla.”

“At all hours of the day and night!” Jayla commented with a laugh, tossing her copper hair so it caught the light. They were all aware of the fact that neither Healer minded, though. They had known Gareth for years and he always aided them when they asked.  They enjoyed helping out, whether it be passing on information gathered from their many clients or healing.

“So your son is a shape-shifter?” Blyth asked her, his voice a little hard. Blyth didn’t have any powers, but he fought like nothing Michael had ever seen when he encountered demons. Blyth seemed to turn into a whole different man out in the field, one who was to be feared and respected. Michael thought of him as the Irish warrior sometimes. When he had asked about the complete change in attitude, Blyth had simply told him that demon’s had taken something from him he could never get back, and the pain in the man’s eyes had stopped him from prying further.

“No, not yet. He won’t receive his powers until his father is dead,” Sarris answered, but the hard tone was not lost on her. She met it with a look of open honesty as she said, “But if you’re really asking if my son is half demon, the answer is yes, though he is not evil. People are not born evil; they must choose to become evil, to let it work through them and inside them. Holden has a good, caring heart. Wait to meet him and see for yourself, before you judge him.”

“I did not mean to offend, I’m sorry,” Blyth said quickly and quietly.

Sarris nodded her acceptance of his apology and gave him a small, reassuring smile.

“Have you guys found out anything new about the dead women?” Jayla asked as she slurped soup off a spoon in an ungraceful way, not seeming to care at all about the way it looked or sounded.

“Michael and Raj said they found two more tonight. Same profile on the woman, same scene. When they showed up all that was left was the bodies and the Crawler’s. No clues, and Raj couldn’t See anything,” Gareth updated them.

That was the part that got them the most. Raj’s power was Sight. He could see past, present, and future, though he couldn’t call on the future like he could willingly do the other two. When he touched the women, he should’ve been able to see the last few moments of their lives, but he got nothing. He had told them it was like something dark was blocking him, like a blanket of evil.

Michael was glad everyone seemed to be done eating, except Jayla, who obviously had a strong stomach, now that the conversation had taken such a gruesome turn.

The young women who had been showing up dead all over L.A. for the past week haunted him. They had found eleven so far, all young, none over twenty, eyes wide with immeasurable fear, their heats cut out. Michael couldn’t help but think of the girls’ families and what they were going through. He could remember each of the eleven girls’ names, had read each file, which was composed by Raj’s talents with a computer, until he knew their lives in and out. He wanted it to end, but so far they were getting nowhere.

What they did have to go on was the list of similarities he had asked Raj to compile. All eleven of the women were no older than twenty, they lived in L.A., all had been killed terrified and surrounded by Crawlers, and all had their hearts removed. None had any connection to demons or seemed to have any knowledge of the supernatural at all. They knew it wasn’t the Crawler’s doing the removing, the beast weren’t smart enough, and they mutilated their pray upon killing it. No, it was as if the Crawler’s were there to guard something, but the beast were wild and untamable, he though. So, who was behind it?

Gareth broke the tense, strained silence as they seethed over the case. Sarris looked confused, but she didn’t ask, not wanting to add to the tension at the moment.

“I’m sure you all know about Gaden’s return by now. She was away in search of her brother, it seems, who is enslaved in the Shadows. She has asked for our help in going in after him again. I agreed, but none of you are under any obligation to go,” he finished in a voice that was serious enough that he didn’t have to mention the risk and dangers that waited in the Shadows, a world inside of our own that was hidden from human’s and served as a sort of demon retreat. It was a demon heaven, run by demons, like hell itself.  Out of them, only Gareth and Logan had been to the Shadows, when he rescued her from there, and now Gaden. So far, none of them had made it out in good conditions.

Thinking of Logan, he leaned forward to look at the woman who sat beside Raj, wondering how she was going to react to all this. As discussion broke out around the table, Michael didn’t even bother listening, because he knew that he was going in right behind his brother.

Logan’s bright auburn hair swung down to hide half her face, a shield she used to block people out. On the rare occasion he had seen her face, he had decided she was pretty, but there was so much sadness in her ivory, smooth skin and timelessly good looks. It was her eyes that she worked so hard to hide, he instinctively knew. They were mesmerizing, one cobalt electric blue, the other a deep, torrent sea green. When you met those eyes, it was as if time skipped a beat and you and she stepped outside of it and she peered through every lie and illusion to ever involve you, straight to the heart of who you really were. She was a Truth Seer, and a hell of a good one at that, but also a witch, though she didn’t use her powers.

Michael supposed he understood why she kept to herself. She rarely spoke, and when she chose to, it was usually to Gareth or Raj. He didn’t know the details of her life before she came to the mansion, but he could tell by the way Logan acted that her life had been hard. She always wore a thin hoodie and jogging pants and he knew from fighting beside her that she was good. He also knew that she could kill without lifting a finger.

Suddenly, she looked up, her hair shifting to reveal her face, her eyes going straight to Gareth. Though she looked at no one else, he knew she was completely aware of everything that went on around her.

“I will not go,” Logan said, her clear voice ringing out over the discussion and cutting straight through it. “No,” she continued, shaking her head. She hastily stood, the shield back in place, and left the dining room without looking back.



                                              ……………………



By the time they all cleared out of the dining room, it was decided that everyone except Logan, Leah, and Jayla were going, since the two healers’ went home after dinner to attend to their own business. Michael knew they all shared his main reason for going on this mission; they were as loyal to Gareth as him, and they all had his brother’s back.

         Gareth had saved them all, he knew, in one way or another. He had found out about all the others by the archangel Gabriel, the arrogant bastard that dropped out of the sky for a visit now and then. With each visit, he had sent Gareth on missions, to rescue and bring together what he deemed the Guardian’s. Upon his last visit, after Gareth returned from the Shadow’s with Logan, he had given them a book with all the demons in it, but it also contained a map of the Shadow’s. They had poured over the maps, made their plan, and decided to set out as soon as Sarris gave Gaden the okay.

         Thinking about that got him thinking about the healer again as he slammed into his bathroom and began to strip out of his clothes and turned on the shower. As he stepped under the warm spray and let it roll over his tired muscles, feeling them relax, he though of the way she had fired up at him when she had decided that she had wanted to go and he had automatically protested, instincts controlling his mouth. With livid eyes and a saucy attitude, she had informed him that she had studied different styles of fighting under monks all over the world and could give him a good run for his money.

         Of course, he had silently disagreed, but said nothing else. It wasn’t his place to tell her what to do. But, oh my god, he had wanted to jump across the table and ravish her mouth as those lips gave him a tongue lashing, he recalled. It had fascinated him that such a small, soft seeming woman would stand up to him without the slightest hesitation or fear. She had spine, but her skill remained to be seen. He decided he would keep an eye on her tomorrow and step in if it turned out she couldn’t hold her own as well as she thought.

         Damn, he thought, as he soaped up his body and washed off the day, the woman was practically all he had thought about since meeting her that day. It complicated things a little now that she was moving into the mansion because he was going to have to deal with these feelings. He couldn’t push them off and ignore them until she was gone and he wouldn’t have to worry about them. He was going to have to live in a house with her which probably meant he would see her daily. He was obviously physically attracted to her, but he also felt drawn to her, pulled to her somehow. Hopefully, he told himself, it would fade as he got to know her, got used to her.

              He shut off the water and toweled himself dry. He walked into his expensively furnished bedroom, all leather and black furniture, wine red walls. A big king size bed filled up the center of the room with red silk sheets and a black bilk duvet.

         Michael fell into the bed, completely naked, and secretly let himself enjoy the feel of the silk on his skin. He wouldn’t admit it, but he like the way silk felt, especially on a woman’s body... Unwillingly, a picture of Sarris in a sexy silk teddy formed in his mind and he groaned in frustration as his body responded immediately.

         What the hell was wrong with him, he wondered. When he chose the companionship of a woman, it was with one who wanted the same thing out of the “relationship” that he did and nothing more: sex and company. Sarris defiantly wasn’t that type of woman.

         It wasn’t that he was a sex addict or that he enjoyed using women. He used the sex as a vent to take the edge off his own personal inner beast, the core of his power, or curse, as he though of it. Anything that caused his physical exertion, such as fighting, working out and yes, sex, made it easier to find some rest from the rage inside of him.

         His power came from inside of him; the fire beast lived inside of him, and when he let his temper get the best of him, the beast emerged with a vengeance. His skin would catch fire, though he didn’t burn, and his vision would also go red as his mind was clouded with the monster’s fury and angry drive to destroy. He could manipulate fire in his normal state, but when they beast took over, his power intensified tenfold and it was always such a struggle to force the beast back inside. Michael feared one day, the beast would get what it wanted, and destroy everything he knew, everything around, even the people he cared about.

         With a deep sign, Michael reached over and turned off the lamp, throwing himself into the darkness. He then set about making his body and mind calm down, though he knew he would never find complete peace. Even after his body would finally let him fall asleep, he was still on edge, alert in his subconscious, the beast ready to leap out and wreak havoc when it got the chance.