My Guardian

She unlocked the gate and glided past me. I followed her to an enhanced Steel door.

She opened two latches, strolled back, and screamed, "It is I, Julianna, who orders you, and you shall do my bidding. Open!"

The jinx changed subtly as the spell released the door. Julianna whirled it open. Inside, on a metal table riveted to the floor, lay a bare body.

Stark against the stainless steel, it was a queer speck of pale, whitish pink, as if it had been dimmed. A silver-steel saddle encircled the corpse's chest. A chain was as thick as my arm spanned from the saddle to a ring on the floor.

"We usually just band them, but with this one…" Julianna flapped her hand.

"Yeah." I glimpsed at the stub of the inlet.

"Not that he'll surge or anything. Not without a head. However, if anything…" She bobbed toward the blue circle of a dread button on the closest embankment.

"You armed?"

I unsheathed Slayer. Julianna jerked back from the shimmering blade.

"Whoa. Okay, that'll work."

I skidded the blade back into its sheath.

"There was a second carcass brought in with this one."

"Yeah. Sort of difficult to bypass that one."

"Any trace evidence?"

"Nice try." Julianna sneered.

"That's classified."

"I see," I mumbled.

"What about an m-scan?"

"That's classified, too."

I sough. Greg with his murky sights and excellent countenance, mutilated and shattered, locked away in some cubicle in this deserted, sterile niche. I battled the desire to double over and nestle the vacant space in my chest.

Julianna touched my shoulder.

"Who was he to you?" she inquired.

"My guardian," I notified her.

Seemingly my undertakings to emerge impersonal had undergone an impressive loss.

"You were close?"

"No. We used to be."

"What happened?"

I shrugged. "I grew up and he skipped to notice."

"Did he have any kids?"

"No. No wife, no kids. Only me."

Julianna stared at the vampire's carcass with apparent revulsion.

"You'd feel the Order would have sufficient keenness to appoint someone not pertained to this mess."

"I volunteered."

She bestowed me a bizarre glimpse.

"How about that? I aspire you realize what you're doing."

"So do I. There is no likelihood you'd allow me a glimpse at the m-scan?"

She sought her lips, thinking.

"Did you hear that?" I wriggled my head.

"I guess someone's at the gate. I'm getting on to go and check on it. I'm plopping my binder right here. Now, these are private reports. I don't need you gawking at them. In particular, I don't need you peeking at the reports from the third of this month. Or grabbing any copies out of this file." She whirled and trudged out of the cabin.

I skimmed through the notebook. There were eight necropsies on the third. Finding Greg didn't prove to be a dilemma.

The trace proof comprised four furs. In the origin section, somebody wrote "Un. Psb Feline der".

Anonymous, is probably a feline offshoot. Not a feline shapeshifter. They would've pegged it as Homo sapiens with a distinct felidae genus.

The lengthy folded sheet of the m-scan arrived next. Heeding the shake of my hand, it unravelled to its enormous three feet, illustrating a graph drawn by the delicate needles of the magic scanner.

The swoon-tinted lines on the graph flickered, a certain hint of several jinx impacts clashing in one speck.

It was inconclusive by the laxest of standards and no court would have authorized it into proof. The slight header in the top nook specified it as a copy. Oh, goodie.

I winked, striving to make sense of it. Greg's torso had proceeded to acquit its magic even after his demise and the scanner documented it as a sloping hazy line, occasionally an inch vast, periodically nearly unseen.

The intense crooked purple chopping across it had to be the vampire's jinx. I gawked harder. There was a third line, literally a sequel of lines, faint and dashing at irregular intervals through the reading.

The longest was about a quarter of an inch lengthy and the hue was undeterminable. I hoisted the graph so the light of the ceiling bulb shone through it. The ink stood out. Yellow. What the hell registered yellow?

I yanked at the graph, ripping it along the perforated lines and glided it into my folder. Julianna returned instantly.

"Nobody there. Well, I'll leave you to it."

She grabbed the binder and walked out, leaving me with the vampire's carcass. I strumbled on a pair of medical gloves and reached the torso.

The sequence of brands relied on the personality of the Master of the Dead. Phillian captioned his with a huge Eye of Horns whack in the middle of the forehead. Constance imprinted hers in the left armpit.

Since the forehead on this one was conveniently missing, it could have belonged to Phillian. Theoretically. I set about uncovering the brand.

The armpits were neat, and so was the chest, the spine, the posterior, the buttocks, the inside of the thighs and ankles. The only spot remaining was the scrotum, so I spread the vampire's legs.

The testicles were curtailed instantly after the human's death and proceeded to lessen during the vampire's life. There was a broad survey on dating the bloodsuckers based on the magnitude of the reproductive organs.

I didn't mind how old this one was but judging by the hints he had to be pushing fifty. And he was clean. No brand. There was a scar, nonetheless situated at the scrotum at the base on the left side. It gawked like it had been fastened jointly.

A sharp glimpse about notified me I would uncover no scalpel in this compartment. I snatched Slayer from its sheath. It smoked, grasping the undead. Thin tendrils of pale mist spiralled from the blade.

"Don't start trickling," I mumbled and mashed the very tip of the horizon against the scar.

The undead tissue shrieked as the sword plummeted into the flesh. I let it chop about a quarter of an inch and withdrew the sword, vacating a neat indentation.

Snatching the flap of the membrane, I yanked on it lightly, and it reached away from the groin, disclosing a polished burn scar about an inch large and three-quarters of an inch long.