Guardians

ran through and through until the blade chucked against the concrete wall. He fell in a slump where the blood had begun not seconds earlier to pool underneath his fifteen hundred dollar Italian leather shoes. It's a pity to be tied to so much and it serve you so little. I couldn't even hide the snicker from my lips when I looked up from my bounty. A little girl was playing in the park across the way and I could smell the scent of strawberries and flowers from the soap her mother had bathed her in the night before. She's some several hundred yards out and the scent is so strong. I am becoming feral again and soon will have to go back home to hide in the hills and caves up most high and call to my family until the phase passes.

These people wouldn't understand. They attend schools and bars and jobs and then go home to their mundane lives and their television sets and computers and games and are so lost to what is actually occurring right out their own front doors. Humans, you can't live with them but you can get a license to weed some of them out in the process of a pick-up! It's so funny how the eyes of a child can be so innocent but so understanding in these matters. She smiled at me and went about her dally with her bear and a little boy her own age in tow. Such beautiful creatures these two and it is a shame to see what their kind grows up to be. Now I have to contain the scene and get on the drive before my boss rings me again. I can only avoid his call so many times before they send out the cavalry for me and as futile as that is, it is still useful enough of a threat to fuck with my day.

On the ground crouches a small squat woman in black dress. From her head to her feet her clothes were as dark as soot and nothing really stood out about her. She looked friendly enough and smiled as the children played as she placed the heavy black nylon bag into the back of her jeep. Fumbling for her keys, she took one last glance at the little girl with her teddy and chuckled remembering her own little fists clutched to her memories back then. Boarding the driver's side she charged up the engine and was off, to nowhere, where no one goes, no one human dare tread.

All the cats loved her kind. She could see them staring at her from every doorstep and every landing as she passed slowly combing the streets for her last collar. Her badge was the only thing that mattered to her after losing her father some ten years ago. Having married too many times to count and lost too many children she thought it best to keep to the company of her own kind. It was safer this way for her and for them. How she loved the kill and the smell and the feel of the life force as she ripped it from some deserving soul after another. She was good at it and had excelled beyond her bosses expectations and is certainly qualified of her position and is just a bit disturbed that the Cabinet should find it necessary to keep tabs on her so closely. Driving down the long road towards the warehouse where she takes her prey, she plays wildly in her mind in the waterfalls back home filled with icy currents shielded by sheets of cold glass. Michael is calling her and she can hear him and his laughter. Soon her tablet will ring and she will toy with him as usual and he will balk at her and pretend it "wasn't so" and they will slip into the old routine. No matter the distance they will always hear each others thoughts. It is one of the reasons she decided to remain celibate after the last husband left. Michael as well because it made it just a teensy bit awkward when she went home to know in an instant that he was listening in on her love making. Never were two kids closer as twins and she herself being subject to many of her brother's dates caroling from the back seat of their father's old Volkswagon. Sure enough, like clockwork, the tablet on the seat next to her started chiming to the bells of Livonia and she touched it ever so lightly to see her twin's bubbly features. He tells her not to be late as if he thinks the torch of fatherhood was passed to him when papa died. She assures him she will be plenty late and drunk and even threw in that she will bring a "loud one" to randy with in her old room up close to the wall where he won't have to waste his skill to hear! Their shared laughter was jubilant and she bade him goodbye as her vehicle pulled into the bay.

Once the engine was killed and her paperwork handed over to the senior officer she proceeded to the back of the jeep to find her package missing. It was in there when she left and now she has to account for its whereabouts, and without much triviality of the situation she sauntered up in her waddlish way to the Collector's rooms. With hands folded and placed in her lap she fidgeted for an hour listening to the telephone conversation knowing it was going to be an inconvenience to no one but herself. It was him. she knew it and they had been searching for his ass for two centuries now. This one was insane to the point to where he was unpredictable. It wasn't that they couldn't catch him, her brother tried. So did her father. But now it would fall to her and his insanity had proved quite perfect for his release. Now her boss was glaring at her and accusing her and even threatening her and all she could do was to hold fast and dive into the icy falls in her mind as naked as the day she was born. Only this time, when she surfaced the pool was red and thick and choking in the blood of all her collars. She was tops and here was her proof. Panic set in and soon she would be back in the alleyway removing that blade and retracting the metal from her homeland into its kilt. The smell was coppery and acrid with a faint hint of new death upon it as it filled her nostrils and flooded her mind. It was sweet and tempting but she knew it would make her sick so she shook it off and made her apologies and headed for home. She would be back in two weeks and if it wasn't good enough they would have to lock her up for two weeks, so either way they had to let her go as her time had come upon her. It was only once a year in human time so it wasn't as if she had another choice. Home, the safety of the cliff dwelling her ancestral family built some millenia ago. Home was where her parents died and her children became lost and her husbands had fled in terror. Home and Michael and the forests.

As the engine roared one last time and the jeep disappears in the distance a smirk crosses her face again and her eyes squint into vile slits as the sun comes up. Torment from the wait they had succeeded in punishing her after all and it really didn't matter so long as she didn't transform within the city limits. Rats and cats and dogs were not her cup of tea and in the hills and aeries back home no one questioned the bloodshed as all were equally guilty in the need to eat. Smoke billowed from the tailpipe and was soon lost in the light of the sunstar as Michel drove in agony to her brother's keep.