Shadow Guardians: The Beast

Katherine shifted uncomfortably in her seat. It was ludicrous, but she felt like every person in the restaurant’s eyes were on her. The smell of searing meat wafted through the air, and it would’ve been nice if she’d had any sort of appetite for food. Then there were all the people and the hanging globes of amber lights overhead that made the whole atmosphere feel even smal-er-cozier. Men laughed and drank by the bar.

Draven was out with the nosferi, hunting demons. Zachiel was staying home with Ophelia because she’d had some uncomfortable contractions. He’d taken her to the doctor, but he had said that everything was fine, and their baby girl was still baking happily.

And here she was with Magnus.

She’d gotten some clothes by now, and she was dressed casually in jeans and a loose sky blue sweater. Magnus, by contrast, was chic in black slacks and a mulberry silk dress shirt. He looked sharp next to her, but he insisted that she dress for comfort. She was thankful since she wasn’t feeling this whole dinner date thing at all.

Especially since nearly every waitress that passed their table mooned over him. That did wonders for Katherine’s self-esteem...

She couldn’t even make herself some sort of presentable. Her hair was dry and brittle, and when she tried braiding it into an up do, it just looked like a messy bird’s nest. So she left it down to at least cover her gaunt cheeks. She also tried applying makeup to cover up the paleness. But just like a brush stroke of orange paint over a white wall, it seemed plastered on. So she gave up on the makeup too.

Magnus told her she was perfect the way she was. Yeah right.

“Stop thinking about the other people and look at the menu instead,” he said, taking her small and ice-cold hand in his own.

“You know every single woman in here is staring at you.”

He turned over the menu to look at the meat options. “I have my woman. They can look all they want. Focus on me, I like your attention,” he smiled.

She sighed and placed her elbow on the table, leaning her chin into her palm. She looked at her hand, which was nestled in his. Maybe he was right. She was being ridiculous, feeling so self-conscious.

A waitress came over with an impressive hourglass figure, nicely augmented breasts, and a cascading wave of fiery red hair. And man, she was stripping Magnus bare with her eyes and doing so much more to him in her imagination while wearing that side smile. She didn’t even look in Katherine’s direction.

“Can I take your order?” She asked in a smoky voice, lifting one shoulder slightly and pushing out those boobs.

Magnus didn’t look at her. He just leafed through the menu. “Yes, please. I’ll have your porterhouse steak, double the fries, then the ravioli stroganoff and the escargot pot pie. Add a garden salad. How much butter do you add to your chicken soup?”

Katherine’s eyes widened. Good grief, and they’ll be needing a bigger table. And a baseball bat, for the way the waitress was drooling over him. His expression bore all the enthusiasm of someone who’d been staring at a wall of gray paint for five hours.

When she hesitated to answer, he continued. “Nevermind. Tell the chef to scoop out some of the chicken in the soup and add more vegetables and fat. Tell him to add exactly two tablespoons of fresh ginger.”

She cocked a brow and wrote all that down, intrigued by his specificity. “How do you like your steak?”

“Still breathing.”

Katherine snorted. She noted how he smiled with his mouth closed, no doubt to hide his fangs. She wondered why they were slightly extended at all when they’d been nearly invisible for the last couple of days.

“I’m thirsty,” he said, both answering her question and prompting the waitress, who was sucked deep into a wet dream starring him, to inquire about which drinks they’d like to order. Katherine wondered if he would like to be at her vein again. He gave her a quiet moan in reply.

The waitress stood closer to him, leaning over him apparently to hear better and thinking his moan was for her, her long wave of fiery hair creating a wall between him and Katherine. He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms, annoyed.

“What would you like?” She licked her lips as she asked the question.

“Mineral water.” He muttered.

“Got all that. What about your sister here?”

“She’s my wife.”

Katherine cleared her throat and shifted around again. She took a lock of her hair and twisted it around her finger. “I’m not hungry.”

“I’ll be back.” The waitress winked at him and brushed her hip against his shoulder as she passed him by on route to the kitchens.

“Wow,” was all she said.

“I’m sorry for all that.”

She nodded silently but kept her eyes down. She wanted to shrink away somewhere. He tilted her chin up with his fingers so she would look at him.

“They don’t know the real me like you do. I’m not attracted to humans.”

She smiled lightly. “You didn’t pester me about eating, so distracted were you with her.”

He frowned and shook his head. “I didn’t need to pester you. I’ve ordered for you.”

“Seriously?”

“I knew you weren’t going to order anything. I’m not letting you leave without eating something.”

She thinned her lips and ran her fingertip over the laminated corner of the menu. “The chicken soup is for me.”

“And the salad.”

She shook her head.

He took both her hands in his and leaned forward. Listen, meeran, I’ve talked to Thomas, our doctor. If you’re considering going through the change, he suggested that we do it at his hospital. If he could give you a blood transfusion before, it’ll give you the strength to go through it.”

“Does he think I can make it?”

“Well, the chances are considerably better if you’re there so he can monitor your vitals through the change.”

Katherine couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face, and seeing it made Magnus very happy. She felt the stress melt from her shoulders. She was afraid of doctors in general, but Thomas wasn’t your average doctor. He understood everything about vampiric biology, and he could help her survive something that human doctors can’t even begin to comprehend.

If she wasn’t such a downer about it, she might’ve thought of it herself when she realized there was a nosferi doctor. He’d come to the house to examine Ophelia, after all. But she’d been too sick to care to ask questions. It was so thoughtful of Magnus to ask him, and it reassured her that he cared about her safety exactly as much as he said he did.

“I’ll try that,” she said. For the first time, she started feeling a twinge of excitement about it instead of just dread that she might die. “Yeah, I can go through with that.”

She could see the glint of happiness in Magnus’ eyes. “I’ll see when we can get an appointment with him. You’ll have to go with the servants for the transfusion earlier in the day. He’s prepared to open up the consultation room just for you. He said your body would need some time to adjust before we got to the change. So we’ll go in for that at night.”

“I feel good about this. It’s the first time I have. I’m...excited,”

“So am I,” he said, kissing her hands. “I can’t wait. After the change, we can get married officially.”

She laughed. It had been days. Days. But she’d unknowingly sealed her fate on the first night that she laid with him. For the first time in her existence, she had more than just an end to look forward to. And she wasn’t getting out of this one. She wouldn’t want to, even if she could. She was sure it was the neron in her, but she was ecstatic about the idea of marrying him. Yeah, wanting to marry a guy after a few days definitely was not a very normal human thing to do, although some humans did that in Vegas.

The food arrived, and it was spread out on the table by the same waitress from before. Magnus heaved a sigh of silent frustration, and Katherine brought a hand up to her mouth to stifle a giggle at the sheer amount of food on the table. He shifted the soup and the salad over to her, and she knew he would be watching her with a sharp eye to make sure she ate.

The waitress smiled seductively and pressed a napkin with some blue ink on it towards him, no doubt her number. Then she made a move so daring that Katherine wondered how she still worked here. She leaned in until she was just four inches from his mouth, exposing a whole lot of cleavage.

“Let me know if there’s anything else you need...”

Katherine gritted her teeth and wrapped her arms around herself. Suddenly she smelled Magnus’ bonding scent in the air, but there was something different about it—it was spicier. She saw a slight color change in his neck, saw the skin raise slightly in the shape of scales, and gulped. Uh-oh... Beastie letting loose in a restaurant full of people wasn’t a nightmare she wanted to live through.

“Yeah,” he smiled tightly at the waitress, “I need you to get the hell out of my face and take the fucking hint... ”

Her face turned stoic, and she rose, leaving them.

Magnus took a deep breath and started digging into the steak.

Katherine watched him eat and stirred the soup around in the bowl. Fearing that he’d try to feed her in public, she checked where the bathroom was, then surrendered and took a bite. The soup was pleasantly warm, and the extra ginger seemed to unknot her stomach. She ate slowly, and they talked more about Thomas and demons and symbols.

Magnus pushed away the empty plate that had the steak and took the ravioli. She was only halfway through her soup.

“There’s a lot of information to work through in those books.”

“Yeah, but if there was a character reference, I could learn the alphabet and then help you guys work through it.”

“Ophie has suggested the same thing. There isn’t a key, but I can make one for you. Some of the meanings of those chronicles have been lost to time, though. Even I can’t read them.”

“Where did the archaic chronicles come from anyway?” Katherine asked, blowing soup on her spoon.

“That’s another thing that nobody remembers.”

“I think me and Ophie could work together to decipher some of it while you guys are out hunting. That way, the work doesn’t stop just because you’re not there. We could make a cork board, flashcards, and stuff,” she scratched behind her ear. “Eh, maybe not. It sounds like a murder investigation.”

Magnus smiled as he forked up the last of the pasta. “I think it’s a great idea. It’ll better help us make connections and keep you ladies safe and busy. And it is a murder investigation, meeran. Actually, it’s damn genocide.”

“He’s going to do a lot more damage in the meantime, isn’t he?”

Magnus nodded, placed the empty pasta plate on top of the empty steak plate, and reached for the pot pie. Katherine was nearing the end of the soup... She started laughing.

“I know my appetite is a joke.” Magnus said, “I’m a bottomless pit. Z and Draven needle me for it all the time.”

He dug into the pie, frowned, then added salt. “And yes, he’s going to continue wreaking havoc. One of the teams discovered another church that was taken over last night. They...” he seemed to stop himself.

“What did they do?” Katherine asked. Whatever it was, he seemed upset by it.

He sighed. “I don’t want you to lose your appetite.”

“Just tell me.”

He studied her, considering. “They found three women. They were tied to altars, and they were disemboweled. Their hearts were removed and cut into pieces for the, ah, followers, to feast on. Their blood was drained to be taken as wine.”

Katherine swallowed back bile and slowly leaned back in her chair. Hell. It could’ve been her. She remembered the knife that Chloe had lifted over her, probably going straight for her heart.

“The team killed fifty of them. The demon is a manipulator. He’s convincing the priests to gather disciples for him. Then he eats their souls to fuel his own power, turns them into khad.”

“I thought priests were supposed to be men of God.” Katherine felt disgusted. Magnus watched her absent-mindedly push away the soup bowl, unfinished. He lightly shook his head. He knew it would upset her.

“Everyone is corruptible. Even we are. We just have a bullshit meter when it comes to demons. They’re not to be trusted, no matter what they promise you.”

She thought of all the shitty stuff she’d seen in the world. She only had to think back to when she was in the hospital. The doctors were so hungry for more money that they barely gave their patients the attention that they needed. Sometimes they even made the wrong diagnosis. The shelter took people in, but nobody cared enough to donate the money required to keep it going. Politicians put up the shelters and get off on the media attention, but they don’t maintain the centers. People cheat each other out of anything imaginable. Were these all the works of demons, or were humans just innately bad?

“It’s a bit of both,” Magnus answered her question, and she wondered if she needed to be annoyed that he read her mind so much. “We save humans because we believe in the good in them. Sometimes good prevails over the influence of the demons. They’re not all bad and worth saving.”

She toyed with her brittle fingernails. The thumb’s nail had already cracked again. “I want to fight with you when I’ve transformed.”

Magnus smiled. “I expected as much.”

“Why?”

“You’re a fighter. You’ve fought illness all your life, you’ve fought to survive. It makes sense for you.” He thought of Ramona for a moment, but decided he wasn’t going to let what happened to her make him dictate Katherine’s life for her. In any case, he didn’t know what he wanted more—to keep her locked up safe or to have her kickass by his side. “It makes sense to me if you want to do it. But I won’t push you into it, so feel free to change your mind any time.”

Maybe for once in her life, Katherine could mean something in the world and be a part of something instead of just existing or trying to continue existing.

The waitress came over again, seeming to have gotten fresh motivation somewhere. Magnus sighed and took out his wallet. “Let’s pay, and then get the hell out of here. You want to take the salad with?”

“No, I’m done.”

He supposed the soup was better than nothing. He could always feed her back home, away from dallying tarts.