Bodyguards (3 page)

She shook her head and pushed that
treacherous thought away. She didn’t want to hear from Brad. Not at all.

When she returned downstairs, the
light was still on above the front-room door. It was all right; she’d talk to
Anabel after running, and maybe by then Vivien would have calmed down enough
that she’d sound reasonable rather than agitated when she told Anabel she was
thinking of moving out on her own.

She started down the street,
stretching her arms above her head, her keys jiggling lightly in her zipped
right pocket. Her phone was in the left, just in case. She walked to the
corner, then started jogging. The park she was going to was two blocks away,
and it only took her minutes to reach the path of beaten earth.

For the first time since she had
made a fool out of herself at the coffee shop, Vivien’s mind started to clear.
She concentrated on her breathing, on keeping her strides even and regular, and
the rest of the world slowly disappeared.

She had started running during her
senior year of high school when the fencing studio where she had taken lessons
for six years had closed its doors. It had been a very different kind of
exercise, and for the first time the only adversary she had needed to confront
had been herself. She ran every day, rain or shine, whether she felt like it or
not, and took a quiet pride in her discipline. It didn’t matter how long she
ran, or how fast, or even how far. A few minutes were always enough to give her
peace.

It had been a couple years since
she had last jogged through this park. It was the closest to her home, but the
path became muddy and slippery when bad weather hit, and she’d found another
place to run, with gravel-covered paths and flowering shrubs, that she could
use anytime. That was where she had run with Brad, where he would be waiting
for her, maybe, even despite what she had told him.

She frowned as her thoughts
returned to Brad once more, and made a conscious effort to chase him from her
mind again. Why think of him, when she was in such a nice place? In the
afternoon light, the park was like an ode to spring, every imaginable hue of
green bursting with life, from the pale, tender green of new grass to the
deeper colors of evergreens. She’d tried going to the campus gym and running
there on a treadmill, but she had missed this: nature’s colors, the earthy
smells on the wind, peeks of small animals or birds, the occasional barking of
a dog in the distance.

Everything changed in the blink of
an eye.

A streak of silver flashed from
somewhere behind her and hit a cluster of trees. The next thing she knew, a man
was falling from the cover of the trees. He lay still across the trail,
something thin, long, and silver sticking out of his chest. Vivien came to a
dead halt when she realized it was a knife.

Her eyes grew wide. Her breath
hitched in her throat. She took one step forward toward the man, but stopped
again as someone came out of the same cluster from which he had fallen. The man
was dressed all in black, and he had a knife in each hand. He looked down at
the man on the ground—the man dressed exactly as he was—then back up toward
Vivien. He wasn’t looking at her, however, but at something behind her.

Her heart hammering in her chest,
Vivien started to look back, only to see someone run from behind her to come
stand between her and the man with the knives. He, too, was dressed all in
black and carried a weapon.

She gasped when this third man
glanced at her and said urgently, “Run, Vivien!”

It was Brad.

CHAPTER THREE

Senseless

In her dream, Vivien had run. Now,
she remained frozen, unable to move as time flashed before her.

It made no sense.

None of it did.

The dead man, still as a rock,
with a knife in his chest, blood soaking into the ground under him. The other
one, his knives twirling and gleaming as he attacked Brad. Brad’s very presence
on this trail when he had had no way of knowing where she would be. The knife
that he, too, handled effortlessly. Or rather, knives. The killing blow had
come from behind her—from where Brad had been. Had it really been Brad, the
same shy man who thought dating her would not be proper, who had killed that
first man? It had to be, since he suddenly pulled the knife out of the dead
man’s chest to better counter his opponent.

What was going on?

Vivien wanted to run away, go
home, and escape this madness. Or maybe wake up; this had to be another
dream—another nightmare. The alternative was too outlandish. Yet she remained
there, standing in the middle of the trail, watching sparks fly whenever Brad’s
knives clashed against his opponent’s blades.

A tiny part of her, the part that
remembered six years of fencing lessons, was in awe of the two men’s technique,
of the speed and agility with which they handled their weapons. Silver flashed
faster than her eyes could follow, but still neither of them seemed to be hurt,
at least not yet. It was bordering on incredible, actually. Who could be that
fast in wielding a weapon—any weapon?

All of a sudden, a thought struck
Vivien, emerging from the haze of confusion. She had a phone! Why wasn’t she
calling the police already?

With trembling hands, she fumbled
to unzip her pocket and pulled her phone out. She had time to dial 9-1 before a
strong, cold hand closed over her phone and gently tugged it out of her hands.
She gasped and looked up into Brad’s steely eyes.

“Please come with me,” he said in
a low voice. “You are not safe here.”

The second man was nowhere to be
seen.

She hung on to the phone for a
second, but when she saw the two knives sheathed on either side of Brad’s belt,
the line of blood on his cheek, her mind turned blank, her fingers nerveless.
He pulled the phone out of her hand and made it disappear into one of his
pockets.

“Not safe?” she repeated, feeling
a little numb.

“You will be, but not here. We
have to go.”

He curled an arm behind her back
and steered her away while barely touching her. In just moments they were out
of the park.

Vivien couldn’t stop shaking. She
wrapped her arms around herself, but it brought her no comfort. She wished Brad
would talk to her, reassure her, explain what had happened—or say anything,
really. Instead, he led her onward, his hand brushing against her back without
ever settling there, urging her forward whenever she started to slow down.

“What...what’s going on?” she
finally managed to ask. “Who were those guys? Why do you have knives?”

“I carry knives for occasions such
as this one. Please hurry. We need to get you inside.”

The loop of images going through
her mind suddenly stopped on that first snapshot: the black-clad man falling to
the ground with a knife in his chest. She stilled, unable to take one more
step, and stared at Brad with wide eyes.

“You killed a man,” she breathed,
her disbelief shattering in front of simple facts.

Brad considered her with eyes that
had never seemed so cold before. “Two. They were going to take you, so I killed
them. I will do it again any time I have to, this I swear to you. Now please, I
need to get you to safety.”

His arm pressed across her back,
pushing lightly until she started to walk again.

Should she run? Vivien couldn’t
decide if she ought to try. Brad would catch her easily if she did, but there
were a few people on the street, cars driving by, houses where she could ask
for help. Was it worth taking the risk?

She eyed the knives at his waist.
He’d proved that he knew how to use those and had no qualms in drawing blood.
What chance did she have when she had no weapon of her own?

And still, even after witnessing
his fight, Vivien could hardly believe that Brad could or would hurt anyone,
let alone her. Could it have been a prank? Fake blood, retractable blades, some
elaborate act... The university had a very active role-playing group; she’d seen
them on campus before, wearing realistic helmets and carrying swords as though
they had been on their way to kill a dragon rather than off to attend a
chemistry lecture. But why here, why now, why involve her?

Before she could make up her mind
to run, it was already too late. They had reached an apartment building, and
Brad guided her to a first-floor apartment. He reached to open the door, and as
she watched his wrist when he turned the key in the lock, she realized it was
all even worse than she had thought.

The skin on the inside of his
wrist was pale and clean, free of any tattoo.

It wasn’t Brad. This man—this
killer—had Brad’s face and voice, but he wasn’t—couldn’t be—Brad. Were they
brothers? Twins? Or was it only a mask? An extraordinary coincidence?

It didn’t matter.

She jerked back, finally knowing
what she had to do, if not what was going on. The only reason she had followed
this man was because she had thought she knew him, and part of her had believed
him when he said he had been protecting her. But if he wasn’t Brad, how could
she believe anything he said?

She turned around, finally ready
to escape, and gasped when she almost ran straight into Brad. Or was it someone
else who only looked like Brad? Needing to know, she took hold of his hand and
turned his wrist upward. The familiar tattoo gleamed under the hallway lights.
She breathed a sigh of relief.

Brad’s gaze flew between Vivien
and his doppelganger.

“What happened?”

“Inside,” the other man grunted,
at the same time as Vivien said, “Help me! He killed two men!”

Brad’s reaction was nothing Vivien
could have expected. His hand twisted in Vivien’s grip so that he captured hers
and pulled her in through the open door.

“Only two?” he asked the other
man. “Are there more coming?”

Never before had the sound of a
closing door seemed so ominous.

“Probably. He sent us to get her,
but knowing him, he sent another unit as back up.”

Stunned, Vivien let herself be led
to an old, battered sofa that had seen better days. Her knees all but gave in
under her and she sat, clutching her hands in front of her, watching the two
men standing in front of her like mirror images of each other. Brad reached for
the other man’s face and rubbed off the dried blood on his cheek with his
thumb. The cut underneath was little more than a pale line, as though it’d been
healed for days.

“Do you think they’re vampires,
too?”

Vivien frowned, now certain she
had heard wrong—either that, or it was all just a big game. Not-Brad never even
cracked a smile at the word ‘vampire.’

“Probably. A unit usually has two
vampires and a channeler. You did shield—”

“This place? Of course. With all
the Quickening I could gather. She’s safe here. But if they’re looking for
traces of channeling, they’ll find us fast. We should get her home and soon.”

At that, they both turned to look
down at her. Yet again, Vivien was struck by how similar they looked.
Still...something in the way they held themselves set them apart. Brad seemed
more relaxed, while his double stood straight, his shoulders squared. He seemed
ready to jump into action at a moment’s notice. And then, there were their
eyes. Brad’s eyes were a pale blue, like a bright sky. The other man’s were
blue-gray, almost metallic looking.

“What’s going on?” Vivien
breathed. She hated how much her voice trembled, and tried to firm up her words
when she said, “If this is all just a joke, I swear—”

“Vivien, no.” Brad stepped closer
and sat on the sofa near her, his body angled toward her. “This is not a joke.
You are in danger, and Aedan—” He nodded at the other man, who had retreated to
stand by the wall. “—and I want nothing more than to keep you safe.”

“Safe from who?” She shook her
head. “Who is he?” she gestured at—Aedan, was it? “Why did he kill those men
rather than just call the police?” And speaking of the police... She held her
hand out toward Aedan, palm up. “I want my phone back.”

Aedan didn’t move. His eyes were
on her, as cold as ever, but he didn’t seem to have heard a word of what she
said. He was as immobile as a statue, his hands at his side close to the
knives. He was so still, in fact, he didn’t even appear to breathe.

“Safe from a very powerful man
called Rhuinn,” Brad said, drawing her attention back to him. “He’s the ruler
of our world. Aedan is my twin. He killed those men because they were after you
and the police couldn’t have done a thing to stop them. And that is also why we
are not going to call them.”

Annoyance coursed through Vivien,
chasing away what remained of her fear. He had answered each of her questions,
and still he hadn’t explained anything. She closed her hands into fists and
stood. At once, both brothers tensed.

“You’re not making any sense,” she
said as calmly as she could. “I’m going home.”

Without a word, without even a
sound, Aedan slid three steps to the right to stand in front of the door. Brad
sighed softly and took Vivien’s hand, holding on to it even as she tried to
pull away.

“Please, Vivien. There are things
you need to know. I tried to convince Anabel that she should tell you, but she
wanted to wait for your birthday. I’m afraid we can’t wait another three
weeks.”

Vivien’s heart jumped inside her
chest as though trying to break free. Her knees weakened, and she sat down
again—or rather, she let herself fall.

“How...how do you know Anabel?”
Her words barely seemed loud enough over the thumping of her heartbeat in her
ears. “How do you know when my birthday is? What on Earth is going on!”

The smallest of smiles flickered
on Brad’s lips, as though she had said something amusing. He soon regained his
gravity, however, and proceeded, again, to answer each of her questions in
turn—and raise a dozen more with each word.

“Anabel and I have the same duty:
to protect you. Sometimes we disagree on how to do that best. I know when your
birthday is because I’ve been waiting for you to turn twenty to finally bring
you home to Foh’Ran. But it looks like Rhuinn decided he wouldn’t wait for you
to come and challenge him for your birthright. He sent his guards to snatch
you. If Aedan hadn’t been there, they might have done just that.”

Still trying to process his words
and order her thoughts, Vivien let her gaze drift between the two brothers.

Standing still against the wall,
Aedan asked, “Why were you not with her, anyway? I told you he was getting
restless.”

Embarrassment drifted over Brad’s
features like a shadow, reawakening Vivien’s own. Had it been hours ago that
she had asked him on a date? It felt like a lot more time had passed, but that
might have been an effect of how confused she felt.

“I lost her at school,” Brad muttered
before looking back at Vivien. “It would have been easier if I could just have
told you, but Anabel was dead set against it, and she made me promise not to
say a word to you until she did. She was mad at me for even talking to you.”

These words, at least, seemed to
make sense. From the first time Vivien had mentioned Brad, Anabel had bristled
at the mere mention of his name. It wasn’t too difficult to accept that they
did know each other. But the rest...

“I don’t understand,” Vivien said.
She twirled the ring on her thumb round and round, keeping her hands busy while
her mind tried to piece things together. “Why would anyone want to hurt me? Why
would you want to protect me?”

Brad’s gaze was too strong for
Vivien to hold, his eyes narrow and intense as though he were willing her to
believe him. She lowered her eyes and noticed he was rubbing his fingers
against the swirls of the tattoo on the inside of his left wrist.

“Aedan and I are both part of the
QuickSilver Guard,” he said in a low, vibrating voice. “We swore to protect the
true heir to the throne of Foh’Ran from the usurper king.”

Vivien looked up, holding her
breath. She had a feeling she knew what he would say next. And indeed, his
words turned solemn when he intoned, “We swore an oath to protect you.”

“I’m nobody’s heir,” she
protested. “I’m just a girl. My parents died in a car crash.”

Aedan’s voice rose, slow but
strong. It was the first time he addressed Vivien since Brad’s arrival.

“Your mother was Eleoren Te
Celden. She was the ruler of our world, the seventh in the line of Celden
rulers that began with Lahien the Great. She did not die in a car crash.” He
sneered at the words. “She was murdered for being too favorable to vampire
rights four years after she sent you to the Otherworld for your own
protection.”

Vivien stared at him. He had
recited those names as though they meant the world to him, as though she was
supposed to trust every word he said when all she knew about him was that he
was a killer.

“This is crazy. Why should I
believe you?”

Aedan didn’t bat an eyelash, but
his eyes seemed to gleam with a metallic reflection. “Whether you believe me or
not is irrelevant, Dame Vivien. You are safe. You will remain safe. That is all
that matters to me.”

“Aedan,” Brad said, the word heavy
with reproach. “If she doesn’t believe us, how can she ever trust us?”

“Our vows said nothing about
trust. Once we Pass Through, she’ll have no choice but to believe. We should go
now.”