Shadow Guardians: The Beast

Zachiel stared into the death and hatred of the five abysmal red eyes of the shadowy demon dog, whose maw and lengthy six-tendril tongue bound around his legs and squeezed the life right out of him in a very literal sense. He could feel himself weakening, his limbs numbing, and the beat of his blood slowing. A loud pop and a flash of light later, the thing screeched and exploded into ash under the wrath of Magnus’ blessed handguns. Zachiel’s knees gave way beneath him, his body limp from the vitality the leech had sucked from him.

Magnus sprang to his side. “I’m fine,” Z choked out. He could already feel the lingering weakening effects of the creature fade as he took in more oxygen. “Draven…I’m fine… Draven...”

Magnus glanced over his shoulder. Draven was up against a wall. A black demon that looked like a moving slop of tar embraced him tighter than one of his lovers, right up close and personal. You’d think the thing was gunning for a smooch from the scarred brother. The thing let out a blare of hatred. Magnus loosed rapid-fire bullets at the demon, which merely got lodged in the thick, dark sludge of its body. But its surprise was enough that it loosened its hold on Draven, who managed to grab hold of his sword.

He hacked pieces off it, but it merely slugged its way back together. Draven bent over, and where its form had touched him, there were ugly burns on his skin, like the demon’s body was acid. They were already knitting closed, and he grunted at the agony. It came for him in his moment of weakness and thinned itself, like it now wanted to crawl right into his mouth.

“Hey!”

The sludge demon seized and glared at Magnus with hate-filled eyes. “Why don’t you try that with me?”

The ancient creature let out another bawl and stalked toward him, unable to resist an outright challenge.

Zachiel managed to get back on all fours and watched them. He grinned as the thing stalked closer to Magnus, right into the pits of hell, so to speak. It got within about five inches of him before it seemed to realize that he wasn’t just an ordinary vampire and started retreating in haste. By then, it was too late for the demon.

Magnus grabbed onto the creature, its acidic body burning into his own skin. Magnus ignored the burn and spoke to it in the ancient language, words only he was old enough to know and comprehend. Because he’d been into the Abyss, where he learned them. With the incantations and his embrace, the tar demon gradually dissolved in its body until it was mere smoke.

Then Magnus did that thing of his...

He inhaled the demon, taking it into the fires of his belly, which nearly burned as hot as the Abyss itself. His eyes turned, and then white light radiated out of his eyes and mouth as the thing perished inside him. Some ancient demons could not be killed. They had to be eaten by a beast. Magnus blew out rings of smoke like he’d puffed on a very expensive cigar. He looked down at his skin. The burns were already healed.

Zachiel went over to check on Draven, but he was already back on his feet. “I hate when they hold onto you like that. Makes me want to crawl out of my own skin.” Draven shuddered. He looked at Magnus. “Can’t imagine how you dove into a whole fucking cloud of that shit down below for years on end.”

“I was made to be there. Hell’s kind of a second home to me. Why’d you think I spent a century there?” Magnus joked. They made their way out of the alley.

But it was no laughing matter. Magnus didn’t really volunteer to go into the Abyss for a century. But he was irreparable when Ramona was lost to a demon. He’d expressed uncontainable fury, and then he’d gone insane with grief.

He didn’t eat, didn’t sleep for months. He was a hollow man in body and soul. A bonded male who lost his mate was the closest thing to death that a vampire could experience. It was like one’s very soul disintegrated. If the death had been natural, he might’ve taken it better. But the fact that she was killed by a demon... Magnus was on the brink of ending it when the gods of the Light Realm appeared and cast him into the trenches of the Abyss.

Zachiel remembered it well. He was the first to find out that Ramona had been killed from a nosferi.

Zachiel stormed into the house and ran past the crowds on the lower floors to get to the elevator. He was not keen on delivering the news. He found Draven first.

“Evening, brother. I think we should call Thomas in for Magnus. He didn’t seem well today. Earlier, when I went to him, he clutched at his chest like he was about to succumb to a heart attack. He seemed dead pale, even though he’d said he was fine. We have to come up with some kind of excuse. You know how he is about seeing the doctor...”

Zachiel stopped dead in his tracks and stared at Draven. He leaned in and whispered in his brother’s ear. Draven’s eyebrows drew in, then his eyes widened.

“Gods of the Light...”

“Indeed, it’s not a heart attack he’s feeling,”

It was the breaking of the bond. And Zachiel knew full well that he’d told Ramona to stay out of the fight tonight. His instincts probably warned him that something was wrong. And he couldn’t leave the compound because they’d had a breach the night before, and he had to stay to make sure everything was secure.

But as usual, she wouldn’t listen. She’d gone off by herself in a blaze of glory with the warriors and left his side, against his permission. She was always stubborn.

“How in the Abyss are we going to tell him this?” Draven asked.

“Without mincing words, if we can.”

“You shall be the one to tell.”

“As always,” Zachiel said regrettably.

They marched down the hallway together. Magnus was in the library on the top floor. They barged in through the doors, and Magnus stood up from the chair he was sitting in. As soon as Zachiel was in the door, he nearly lost his nerve, seeing his brother. Two nosferi were standing in front of him. No doubt he was instructing them on where to raid.

“My brother,” he started, and he couldn’t keep the helpless tone out of his voice.

Magnus seemed to instinctively know something horrible had happened. His chest started laboring. He retreated back against the wall, like they were cornering him. “No…don’t…Z…please…”

Zachiel pressed his lips together. There was a heated shift in the air in the room. Draven felt it first, and every hair on his body stood on end.

Zachiel took a step forward. “Magnus…Ramona…” Gods, how did he tell him his mate was found mutilated of all her limbs and her face had been stripped clear off her skin? But he was already past the point of no return.

Sensing what was coming, Draven ordered the nosferi out.

They left the library and closed the wooden doors. But an almost fearsome sense of curiosity kept them near.

There were a few moments of dead silence.

And then a gut-wrenching scream split the air as though it were a block of concrete. The following force of power shattered the wooden doors into pieces, and the nosferi ducked out of the way. Furniture was hurled by the energy out of the room like it was being thrown in a violent hurricane. The nosferi watched as cracks ran up the walls, into the floor. The entire building shook like it was in the midst of an earthquake. Lights exploded overhead, candles flickered dead, and vases shattered.

Then everything settled down, and rather than go back in, the nosferi ran the other way.

Draven caught his brother as he collapsed to the floor. In the months that followed, he never left his bedroom. The fight continued without him. He never came to eat with them. He cut horrendous gashes into his skin in an effort to keep the pain alive, like he somehow deserved to live with it. And when he was completely empty of soul, he aimed the blade of his dagger at his heart.

And then Muona, a goddess of the Light Realm, appeared before him. Slim and clothed in white, the silver-haired beauty lowered the blade of the dagger with her own hand, so bright in the darkness of Magnus’ living pad that the boundless black of obsidian turned pure white. He did not raise his gaze to her; he would be blinded if he looked upon her. And she did not attempt to speak to him because he was beyond reasoning.

“I cast thou to the seventh dimension of the Abyss, Warrior. Where thou Beast shall savor the unholy flesh of the blight. Thou shall not resume the form of man for a hundred years, nor shall thou rest day or night while thou avenge thyn beloved.”

In an instant, the bright light was gone, and so was Magnus.

As they paraded the streets of New York, Zachiel hoped to the gods that Magnus wouldn’t have to go through the same thing again with Katherine. He didn’t think he could handle it again. When Magnus reemerged in the Earth Realm, they were shocked at the sight of him. He was just bones. His ribcage stood out from his body; the stomach was sunken in, and every bone in his spine protruded from thin, pale skin. He very nearly looked like the dead he’d been hunting. And while he looked like hell, there was a strange peacefulness about him. Perhaps at that point, the constant noise of war had finally become too much to bear, and there was no more anger or grief left to add extra oomph to the fight in him.

Zachiel was startled when Draven snapped his fingers in front of him. “I hope it’s Ophelia you’re dreaming about, my brother.”

“We’ve got another four hours left; how’s about we go hang out after some more ass-kicking?” Draven said.

“Can we just not go to Nova? I’m not into the strobe lights and the sheer magnitude of sweaty dancing bodies tonight.”

“I know a place,” Magnus said. “Down on Sixth Avenue, it’s called The Republic. Buddy of mine often goes there.” He smiled.

“A buddy? Of yours? Wait, like a human buddy?” Zachiel asked, stunned.

Magnus shrugged casually. “His name’s Harry. We played a casual game of billiards. He’s not so bad. The joint’s this kind of biker gang club. Drink and food’s good, so I hear anyway.”

The smell of brimstone rushed past them in a gush of cold air.

“Phew, get a whiff of that.” Draven extended his longsword and said, “Hope the guys at that chapel are having as much luck as we are.”

Nelo, Sergeant of the 7th Nightmare Division, crouched down into the ashes in the gothic chapel. The atmosphere had the eerie chill of a battlefield after the carnage and destruction that the beast had left in his wake. The floors were littered with red robes, some half incinerated. Sometimes, he wished his nosferi senses weren’t so keen on that damned brimstone smell. It haunted him in his dreams during the daytime. He couldn’t wait to be back home with his wife and their daughter, and he couldn’t understand how the vampire masters could have such an endless lust to kill the spawns of the Abyss. Gods of the Light, he was ready to retire.

He combed gloved fingers through the ashes while his team of eight searched the rest of the building from top to bottom and from corner to corner.

“Sir!” Nelo straightened and ran his hand over his skull-cropped dark hair as the half-century-old Ransley ran to him. He had reservations about taking the youngling out so early into the field, but he proved to be a bright star after all and a quick study.

“You got something for me, son?” Nelo asked.

The young nosferi held out his hand, palm facing up, and opened his fingers, revealing a shard of some sort of black glass. “We found this near the altar.”

Evil radiated from the stone in a gloomy mist. But Nelo knew it was important; it was somehow connected to the demon. He’d seen many things in his five centuries. “Box it up. It’s coming back to the house.”

The youngling looked sickened by the notion of bringing this object of intrinsic evil into their sanctuary.

“It will be held in the vault underground, son.” Nelo assured him. Then he whistled the rest of his men together.

No one else had anything worthwhile to show. So they left the chapel after calling in the paranormal cleaners.