Shadow Guardians: The Beast

One would never think there’d be a nosferi doctor smack dab in the middle of the New York nightclub scene, but Magnus supposed that was exactly why Thomas’s place was so obscured from humans.

He ignored the groups of prostitutes giving him their eyes. He didn’t know what it was, but some of them seemed willing to die to hang all over him, and others anxiously scrambled to get out of his way.

He’d taken out a few more demons—right, 43 more—and while his kill-craving hadn’t really fizzed out yet (probably never will fizz out anyway), he felt himself getting edgy. He needed to take care of himself now before he lost control and went nuts. Because nobody would like that. Besides, below the edge was the drag of fatigue, and the combination of the two meant only one thing. He needed to drink. And not beer.

His, ah, uniqueness, required him to feed and drink more often than other vampiric species. While most could get by with drinking once a week—some forgo it for months—he needed it at least three times a week. He couldn’t take the chance and allow himself to go hungry for too long. It triggered his psycho side. And the only release he could get to keep that psycho at bay was either through killing, drinking, or sex. And he wasn’t doing the latter. He’d been celibate since Ramona.

While vampires could mate with nosferi, he’d never felt attracted to any of them. He’d had a wife four centuries ago. Ramona was a beautiful vampire who was descended from an aristocratic family. She died in battle. And since her, there’d been no one else. Now it was just him and the endless war to protect humans.

Drinking wasn’t his favorite pastime. In the old times as well as today, drinking blood was an intimate act, like sex. It was something that was intended to be shared with a mate. But years of prosecution of his species have created the need for blood banks to be used instead.

The nosferi, lesser vampires, in particular used blood banks more often and drank from plastic bags. Cold, lifeless blood. Especially those who were not truly mated with someone, because there was a difference between being mated and just giving out or receiving fucks, which was Draven’s thing.

It was so... impersonal. But he supposed that if someone never knew what it was to bond with and drink from a mate, they wouldn’t miss it.

The wet tarmac made smacky-splashy sounds beneath his boots. One of the clubs to his right vomited out a bunch of humans dressed up in... Halloween costumes? His ears picked out the word birthday. Ah, so it was a celebration, then. And then it came right at him...

The guy dressed in the Dracula suit.

“Bleh! Bleh! I am Count Dracula of Transylvania!” The guy hissed and bared long, fake fangs. Something like ketchup dripped off the side of his mouth.

Magnus shook his head and wore a half smile. And now he looked like a Halloween show too, with his leathers all torn. Hell, he looked like he sported tiger stripes on his arms and legs. “Man, they teach you guys a load of bullshit.”

“I want to drink your blood!”

Magnus kept walking, and for some reason, the guy followed him. “Kid, what you really want is to not get between me and food.” He’d had way too many shots, Magnus thought.

“Bleh, bleh!” The guy jumped like a damn rabbit after him.

Magnus swung around and growled. The kid yelped and darted off.

“Goddamn pop culture shit,” he cursed. “Dracula. Glittery vampires. Fuck me.”

It angered him. Because all that misinformation caused humans to go whack when they found out about a vampire or nosferi. As if they needed their dwindling population to be persecuted by the very species they’re trying to protect. As if the demons weren’t doing a good enough job already.

He rounded the corner and found a steel door in the wall of a red brick building. He knocked twice. Hard. A pale, thin, and bald man wearing a white lab coat opened the door. The nosferi’s beady black eyes narrowed.

“Thomas,” Magnus said.

Thomas could almost feel the hunger vibrating off him, like the buzz of a live wire.

“You’ve waited too long again; you’re playing with fire.”

He stood aside and let the warrior in.

“It was a day, Thomas. A day.”

“You know you can’t afford it.” He was soft-spoken.

“And you know how much I hate this.” Magnus answered.

“Would you rather have the beast come out?” Thomas asked then.

Magnus smiled tightly. “Like I can control that.”

He could. But only so far. He’d flirted with longer periods of going without, but that required that he kill more demons.

And while there were plenty of lesser demons roaming around doing the bidding of higher masters, sometimes the numbers weren’t as many as he needed them to be. He needed the release of both drinking and killing to keep his beast reigned in and satisfied.

But there were other things that were triggers too. Anger, pain in battle. Those were wildcards.

Thomas led him past his labs and procedure rooms, past the pharmacy, and into the very back of his rented space where he had his blood bank set up.

His supply was dwindling. He’d have to stock up soon. He’d worked nightshifts at many hospitals in his day and had completed his medical degrees six times over the years to stay up-to-date. With his respectable background in the medical industry and being certified, no hospital ever thought twice about sharing their supplies with him.

He had human blood and he had nosferi blood. They were separated onto their own shelves, and then the stock was further separated between male and female. He had regular nosferi donors. He went straight to their shelf and picked up two bags of blood from a female. No use in trying to give Magnus human blood. Nosferi could get away with it, but it just wouldn’t do the trick for a pureblood, and certainly not for him.

He handed the bag to Magnus, who kind of stared at it like it was boiled, wilted broccoli. Fuck, he couldn’t even microwave the stuff to make it warmer. Because he’d destroy the nutrition he needed in it.

He sighed and snatched the bags from Thomas.

“You didn’t have to come here, you know. I’ve sent supplies to the house.”

“Yeah, but I’m not in the mood to deal with 112 nosferi right now. When I get home, I’m going straight upstairs.”

“You should really have that fridge room built for you and your brothers on your floor.”

“Construction’s already begun. And man, I wish it was over already.”

The construction guys trashed the building site where they worked on the uppermost floor, because they weren’t exactly aware that they were in a mansion full of vampiric people. To them, it seemed like they were alone.

They had to leave the automatic window shutters open during the day so the humans could see what they were doing while everyone slumbered in their bedrooms. Luckily, they had human servants that cleaned up the mess, tight families that had been serving their kind for centuries. The roles of housekeepers were often handed down through the generations, and training started very young. The children often knew no other way, but those that didn’t follow in the line still remained fealty to their vampiric masters. Like Maryann at the police station.

“I can imagine it must be uncomfortable having a strict bedtime curfew now that the windows are open,” Thomas said.

“Yeah. Speaking of curfews I’ve gotta spin. Thanks doc.”

“You’re very welcome.”

Draven and Zachiel drove through the wrought iron gates of Grandfall Manor. The 140-bedroom, six story modern mansion stood tall and proud on a hill with rolling green lawns. The construction was modern and clean; the walls were white with accents of umber cladding and black marble, and the roof was dark. It didn’t have the big, open, and airy windows of most modern houses, but long, narrow ones.

It looked like your average super-rich family house.

Security cameras followed them into the garage and then down into the underground parking lot, which held around sixty designer cars and a couple of riot vans.

“Man, he better be home,” Zachiel said. “He’s not answering his calls. I hope to hell he didn’t transform without us somewhere.”

“He can take care of himself. He’d come home if he felt he couldn’t control it.”

Zachiel pictured the worst in his mind. When his brother transformed into his beast and then back again, he was naked, limp, and shivering in pain. Because every bone in his body had to fracture to transform, then knit back together. The agony was nuts, and if he just so happened to swallow a soulless, demon-controlled human or creature whole, that added a bad case of indigestion to the mix, too. He could hardly move or defend himself.

When the brothers’ parents died, they swore their fealty and love to each other. They swore to protect one another, even if they got on each other’s nerves sometimes.

They took the elevator up to the top floor of the house. There was a party going on downstairs for one of the nosferi’s 143rd birthday.

The elevator door opened, and a beautiful being with pearly skin and long black hair threw herself around Zachiel. He drew in her wonderful, sweet scent and felt himself go almost instantly hard between the legs. His Ophie. His wife. He kissed her enduringly, lusciously.

He framed her face to look into her violet eyes. “I’ve missed you,” he murmured.

“And I you,” she smiled full, bearing the most beautiful, delicate fangs he’d ever seen. He could almost feel their delicious nip in his neck and the warmth of her breath there as she sucked, as he fed her. It stirred the lust in him.

Draven rolled his eyes at the lovebirds. Z thought he was probably wondering why have one when there are so many flowers to be plucked?

“Tell me my brother is home and safe.”

She gave a small nod. “He’s in the west television room. I’ll be waiting for you in our room?”

Zachiel took her lips once more. Ah, the taste. He couldn’t get enough of her taste. Then he brought a hand to her slightly bulging belly to feel the kick of their child. She’d lost two already. They were hoping this one would make it.

He and Draven found Magnus leaning on the sofa in front of the television, dressed casually in a turtleneck gray long-sleeve shirt and jeans. He was barefoot and sipped something through a straw in a black plastic cup. Blood, Zachiel thought. Because drinking the stuff through a straw was the only way he could get it in his body. And then he still grimaced at the taste. Next to him was half a box of jumbo pepperoni pizza. And beneath it was an empty box he’d already finished.

He felt sorry for his brother. He truly did. Losing Ramona was a hard blow, and it took him a full century to, mostly, recover from it. Draven didn’t understand the bond of a mate yet. So he couldn’t sympathize on the same level.

“Why the hell don’t you answer our calls?” Draven snapped, annoyed.

Magnus held up his phone. “Dead. Time for a new one. Battery doesn’t last as long as it used to.”

“Is there anything left of that pizza?”

A loud slurping sound signaled that he’d reached the end of the cup of cold blood, thankfully. He was ready to start gagging soon.

“In the kitchen. I got ten.”

“How many did you eat?”

“Three and a half jumbos.”

“Jesus.” Draven laughed.

“Man, you’re going to go into a carb-coma.” Zachiel said. He was a beast, and he ate like one.

Magnus rose from the sofa. “Yeah, that’s the idea. I’ll sleep deep.” He ambled past them to his bedroom, where the walls and floors were black and made of obsidian crystal, and there was soundproofing.

Vampiric species could not dematerialize through obsidian, so it was both a safe space and a potential prison.

“Night. Save some pizza for Ophelia. The pregnancy cravings have been rough, she tells me.” He said, laying a hand on Zachiel’s shoulder.

He left them to go sleep in his bed, alone.