The Guardian Chronicles 2: Dark Horizon (11 page)

“Jonathan wants to talk to you before you go back,” Ryan explained, as they entered into a large open room. Despite its ancient looking exterior, the inside was well furnished with modern furniture and other amenities. A large fireplace dominated one wall, surrounded by several leather chairs and sofas. A door opened at the far end and Jonathan walked out.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” Jonathan smiled, extending his hand. “I see that you have already been to the weapons master?”

Gabriel nodded. “She gave me a sword.”

“May I see it?”

Jonathan slowly unsheathed the blade and looked at it. “A fine weapon, what did she name it?”

“Aequitas,” Gabriel said.

“It seems fitting for you,” Jonathan responded with a smile. “If you wouldn’t mind I’d like to have a few words with you.”

“Sure.”

“I promise that this won’t take long and then I’ll have you back to Ryan and Tony for training.”

Both his new-found teammates nodded, taking seats in the furniture around fireplace. Gabriel took back Aequitas and followed Jonathan through the door and down a corridor, stepping inside a small but expensive looking office. Jonathan took a seat behind a large desk and then gestured to one of two chairs across directly across from it.

“How are things so far?” Jonathan asked.

“Um…I guess good so far,” Gabriel shrugged. “I mean I haven’t really done anything all that impressive yet, other than not impale myself with my sword walking over here.”

Jonathan smiled at that comment. “And how is everyone treating you?”

“Good,” Gabriel nodded. “I everyone has been very nice so far.”

“Have they told you what it is that we do here?” Jonathan asked.

“Bits and pieces,” Gabriel shrugged. “We fight demons, right?”

“We do more than that,” Jonathan said. “Demons are just among the many things that we defend the world from. There is a different world out there, a world that we try very hard to keep from the public. Demons, vampires, werewolves, magic, monsters...all those things that you thought were nothing more than fairy tales or myths are very real indeed. It is our job to make sure that this fight doesn’t spill over into the real world where they are nothing more than make believe.”

“So I am starting to believe,” Gabriel said. “I mean I’m still trying to get used to all this.”

“It takes time,” Jonathan nodded. “But soon it will be like second nature. Ryan and Tony are very good at what they do; they’ll get you up to speed pretty quickly.”

“I hope so,” Gabriel nodded. “I feel very out of place here.”

“That will fade as well,” Jonathan said. “I don’t suppose that they told you much about your accident?” Jonathan asked.

“Other than I was used as a demon's chew toy, not really,” Gabriel shrugged. “I’m still not even sure how the demons got there.”

“They were released by this man,” Jonathan stated, sliding his tablet across the desk to Gabriel. “Jean Sainte-Pierre, and he’s not a man actually he’s a Unkari demon.”

“A what?” Gabriel asked.

“The Unkari are a species of demon, probably one of the oldest around,” Jonathan explained. “They are one of the few that can pass almost entirely for human, and usually stay far away from the illegal side of things. Sainte-Pierre on the other hand has been dabbling in some form of weapons dealing for the past twenty-five years.”

“Um…why not take him out then?”

Jonathan smiled thinly at that comment. “We’ve had that particular conversation several times with the council but Sainte-Pierre serves a purpose, we allow some of his less dangerous operations to continue and he feeds us information on more dangerous people and organizations.”

“So what changed?” Gabriel asked, looking down at the image.

“Sainte-Pierre was meeting Daniel Cray, leader of the New Aryan Nation, we presume to buy weapons. Normally, something like this we would leak to the FBI or ATF, but the situation changed somewhat when we received information that he might be dealing in not so conventional weaponry. We sent a team into investigate…”

“And the unconventional weaponry turned out be demons?” Gabriel asked. Some of the events of that night were starting to make a lot more sense.

“Precisely,” Jonathan nodded. “And you managed to get caught in the crossfire.”

“But why was Sainte-Pierre selling lesser demons to the New Aryan Nation?” Gabriel asked. He mentally patted himself on the back for remembering the terminology that Jonathan had used to describe the ones that attacked him.

“That we don’t know,” Jonathan sighed. “And to make matters worse it appears as though he has already disappeared off our radar again. We’ll find him, he won’t stay hidden for long but until we do I am afraid that we are going to be left with a lot more questions than we have answers.”

Gabriel nodded. “Everyone I’ve met seems pretty good at their job, I am sure that you’ll catch him in no time.”

“I can only hope,” Jonathan said, retrieving the tablet. “In the meantime, I wanted to thank you for coming aboard and let you know that should you need anything don’t hesitate to contact me. My contact information has been added to your phone.”

“Thanks,” Gabriel said.

“I’m sure that Ryan and Tony are anxious to get started on your training, I’ll check in with you later.”

That apparently was a signal to go; Gabriel stood up and was almost out the door when he remembered that that he left his sword propped up against his chair. He was about to go back in and retrieve it when it leapt from where it was standing and landed solidly in his hand. He was sure that his yelp of surprise came out way more high pitched then he would have wanted it too. Jonathan looked up from his desk and chuckled.

“They didn’t tell you about that little trick yet, did they?”

“No sir,” Gabriel said, taking a deep breath.

“Your weapon has been chained to you, through magic. Whenever you call for it, it will come to you…like now. You thought about picking it up and voila! It ended up in your hand. Very useful in combat, but not so useful around the house. Tony and Ryan can go over some basic mediation and techniques to make sure you don’t put a hole in the living room wall.”

Oh great, Gabriel thought. Now I have to worry about putting holes in walls with my thoughts? This is turning out to be a real good day.

Gabriel headed out of Jonathan’s office and back out to where Tony and Ryan were sitting.

“Alright, let’s get back to Aegis,” Ryan said. “You’ve spent enough time wandering around looking at stuff. It's time to get down to work.”

Gabriel wasn’t sure exactly what that meant but he had a feeling that he was going to be very sore person tomorrow.

Six hours later, Gabriel was sweaty and exhausted. He was sore and had a feeling that he wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning. Ryan and Tony had been relentless in their drills, first putting him through a grueling three mile run and then two hours of weight lifting (turned out he was stronger than anyone thought) followed by several hours of actual combat drills. He went through boxing lessons, martial arts lessons, shooting lessons, sword combat lessons…pretty much everything that they could think of.

Now he was standing underneath an almost scalding hot spray of water, letting it ease his suffering. He knew that it would be hard but he hadn’t prepared himself for this level of physical activity.
 The first ten minutes into the run he felt like he was going to puke his guts out. But Ryan and Tony wouldn’t let him rest and demanded he to keep going. The two of them seemed to have a good routine down; Ryan playing good cop and Tony playing bad cop. It was highly effective.

After standing under the hot spray for what seemed like hours, he stepped out. His muscles were already protesting the workout that he had been through and to make matters worse, he knew that they would through it all over again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day…he shook his head. Thinking like that was not going to make things easier; he needed to take one day at a time. He changed back into his clothes and stuffed the sweaty ones back into his gym bag.

He was limping by the time that he left the locker room and met up with Ryan and Tony. Both of whom looked just as refreshed as if they had just gotten up from a long night’s sleep. Then again, they both had been doing this considerably longer than himself and he had a feeling that nothing they did today even remotely got close to having them break a sweat.

“Feel better?” Ryan asked.

“I hurt in places that I didn’t even know I had muscles,” Gabriel grunted. “It’s going to be a lot worse tomorrow, isn’t it?”

“Oh yeah,” Ryan nodded. “Take a lot of ibuprofen and drink a lot of water; you’re going to be sore for weeks.”

“That’s not all that up lifting.”

“No one told you that it was going to be easy,” Tony reminded him. They set off down the hall, Gabriel doing his best to move his already tired and strained muscles. They made their way slowly toward the elevator that would carry the back up to the main floors and the exit. Once outside, they bid Tony farewell. He walked over to his motorcycle and moments later peeled out of the parking lot.

“Isn’t he worried about falling off that thing?” Gabriel asked, as he continued to limp toward Ryan’s truck.

“Hasn’t yet,” Ryan shrugged. “Keep moving, sitting still won’t help you any.”

“Moving doesn’t feel like it’s helping me out a lot either.”

Ryan chuckled a little at that comment. They reached his truck and climbed in, Gabriel happy to finally be sitting down again.

“So, what are you going to do tonight?”

“Find a tub of ice and sit in it.”

Ryan frowned at that comment. “Nope, you’re hanging out with me.”

“I am?”

“Yeah, you are,” Ryan nodded, as his truck growled to life. “Besides, we have a whole lot of other things to go over. Demons, mages, and such.”

“Oh right, that.”

They took off from Aegis and got back on the highway.

“Hungry?” Ryan asked.

“I’m starving!”

Ryan nodded, he always got famished after a hard workout and what they put Gabriel through was the definition of hard. He took the next exit and swung through a local drive through. Normally, he would steer clear of fast food, mostly because you didn’t get a lot out of it but he figured that Gabriel wasn’t that picky and he knew that every once and awhile a little indulgence never hurt anyone, especially not the way that they trained.

After ordering their food they continued on toward Ryan’s house. He wasn’t sure what they were going to do, although as long as it didn’t have anything to do with a lot of moving around he didn’t really care. He wondered if Ryan’s house had a hot tub, given what he had seen of it, he had a hard time believing that it didn’t.

“Come on,” Ryan said, as he parked his truck. “Let’s head out back, I can start a fire and you can start exercising your mind too…unless of course you want to step back into the ring.”

“Oh good lord no,” Gabriel moaned. “I think that you have sufficiently kicked my ass enough for one day.”

Ryan chuckled. “All things considered, you did a pretty well, you’re more agile than I would have thought and you’ve got the athleticism and coordination, all we need to do is get you to focus.”

“I was in dance for a few years,” Gabriel said, inwardly cringing as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

“Cool,” Ryan nodded, as they entered the house. “Explains your agility, everyone keeps giving guys crap about that but really, it’s a great way to improve your flexibility and agility. They do the same thing with guys that are into gymnastics.”

“My brother is into that,” Gabriel responded. “And last I checked he could bench more than me…isn’t Tony also into it?”

“Yeah,” Ryan nodded again, leading him toward the back of the house. “And he is really good at it. Even if he wasn’t a Guardian, I still don’t think that I would want to mess with him.”

Gabriel nodded in agreement, slowly lowering himself down to one of the benches. Ryan jogged back to the house and then reappeared a few moments later, holding bottles of water for both of them. Gabriel took the offered water and began to greedily chug it down. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was and eagerly gulped down almost the whole bottle in one go.

Ryan rummaged around in his back pack and pulled out a tablet, handing it over to Gabriel.

“Here you go, courtesy of the Guardians,” Ryan smiled. “Makes it easier to follow along and we added a few pretty nifty apps for our line of work.”

“Thanks,” Gabriel said, taking the tablet.

Ryan pulled out his own tablet. “Alright Guardian 101, you already know something about what we do but it’s a lot more complicated than just killing bad guys.”

“I gathered as much after Jonathan told me about Sainte-Pierre.”

“Oh yeah, that guy,” Ryan growled. “Tactically I guess it makes sense but from a moral perspective, it’s really annoying.”

“Yeah, I guess I can understand that.”

“You already saw magic first hand and experienced it through the portals and with your sword. Demons generally fall into two categories, lesser demons and greater demons.”