Protector (21 page)

Alessandro looks at
Anna-Marie.  She is staring at him with wide tear-ridden eyes.  He knows he is fighting a losing battle, but he also knows he can’t give up.  She is depending on him. 
You guys better hurry the hell up!
he thinks to himself.

“
Anna-Marie, do you trust me?”

She is still unable to speak, but manages to
nod her head “yes.”

“I need you to hold on as tight as you can.  Can you do that for me?”

She stares at him through her tears and grabs a hold of the door handle then closes her eyes.

With a
nother loud crash he rams his beloved car into a light pole on the side of the road.  The impact throws Anna-Marie through the windshield and almost knocks Alessandro unconscious. 

“Come here
, little puppy,” says the Rogue that was on top of the car as he snatches Alessandro from the wreckage. 

Alessandro squints in the dark through crimson blood at the Rogue towering over him.  His head is pounding from the impact and is swimming with fogginess.  He knows he has to get it together and hold on to consciousness or he has no chance
, and neither will Anna-Marie. 

The Rogue hoists him up by his collar about a foot off the ground, which isn’t an easy task considering their almost the same size, but the Rogue is much stronger and it takes him little effort.

Alessandro rolls his head to the side and sees Anna-Marie lying on the ground unconscious.  The other Rogue is looming over her.  A very familiar vision from his deepest nightmares invades his sight.  One of his terrified mother lying on the sidewalk as a Mixed Breed stands over her. 

No!
  Alessandro’s head screams. 
I have to snap out of it.

The Rogue has him by the collar with both hands so the monster
’s hands are preoccupied at the moment.  But for how much longer?  He has to act quickly.

He uses all of his strength and brings his knee up, driving it deep into the Rogue’s crotch, taking the Rogue by surprise.  The Rogue loosens the grip he has on his collar.  Alessandro makes his next move and his fist explodes into the Rogue
’s face with a thunderous crack.

The Rogue lets go completely this time and takes a few steps back to hold his broken nose, as his vile tainted blood pours out of it. 

“God damn mutt!  I will kill you for that and your little bitch, too,” the Rogue yells.

Alessandro takes his chance
, as little as it may be.  He has to do something to help her, and fast. 

He is still weak from the accident and stu
mbles as he tries to run to her. “Anna-Marie!  Dammit, Anna-Marie, get up!”  She doesn’t move.

The Rogue is seriously infuriated now and charges forward to grab Alessandro again. 

“Screw you scum!” Alessandro yells back.

They collide once again, but this time the Rogue gets his massive hands around Alessandro’s throat.  Alessandro swings out of his grip and rocks the Rogue with another right hook to the nose.  Blood pours out even harder. 
It’s a damn shame they heal so fast, it makes it hard to enjoy it. 

The Rogue charges again, this time not as off guard by the blow the second time around and gets a hold of Alessandro’s neck once again
.  This time Alessandro can’t escape.  He throws a few more punches and makes a couple connect, but what little strength he has is dwindling along with the air in his lungs.  They are screaming for air. 

He fears he will die here in the street at the hands of such a worthless life form.  The worst part is he promised
Anna-Marie he would protect her, but now she will most likely die as well, and it will be all his fault.  Had he not fallen in love with her and been around her so publicly, none of this would have happened.

He takes what little strength he has left and turns his head to look past the filth that is about to kill him, to look at her beautiful still face one last time.

Before he closes his eyes, a single tear runs down his cheek.  The first tear he’s shed since his mother’s body was found.  She isn’t there and neither is the other Rogue.  He knows if they have her, she won’t be alive for much longer.  He will gladly take his place and die right here.

14

Alessandro regains awareness to sounds all around him.  There is something going on, but he can’t seem to open his eyes to see what it is. 

Dear God, I’m dead,
he says to himself, not as a question, but merely an acknowledgement of his current state.

“Alessandro!  Alessandro
, man, wake up!”

He hears someone calling his name and feels jolts to his body
.  Still he is unable to open his eyes. 

Does a ghost feel?  Shouldn’t I be looking down on my limp body waiting for judgment on my soul to be placed, like you see in the movies?

“Alessandro!”

Hmm
. . . this angel sounds like Michael,
he says to himself and laughs at the thought.
Yeah right, my brother is far from an angel.

“Marquis, I can’t wake him!”

Father?  Wait!  What the hell is going on?

Marquis places his huge hands on his beloved son’s broken body.  “Alessandro
, my boy, you have to wake up now.”  He pauses and takes a deep breath, “It may not be too late for her yet.”

Marquis doesn’t believe what he is saying, not for a second, but he knows his son.  He knows the guilt he has carried since his mother was taken, so if he thinks there is any hope at finding
Anna-Marie, he will fight his way through this.

Her? 
Anna-Marie?  Oh, my goddess, Anna-Marie.

He pushes through the thick fog to open his eyes, but they are too swollen, so he tries to swallow through the razor sharp grit in his throat to speak. “Father.”  Alessandro manages to get out in barely a whisper.

“I’m here, son.”

“
Anna-Marie?”

“She’s gone.”

“They have her.”

“I know
, son.”

Dread consumes him once again like a kick in the gut.  He had hoped it had all just been a bad dream, that
Anna-Marie is really home sleeping soundly in her bed.  No such luck.  Instead he is faced with the reality that his worst nightmare has come true.  He knows that because of him, she will surely die.

Alessandro doesn’t try to speak again.  He has no will.  They have her and there is nothing he can do about it.  He promised her he would protect her and he has failed.

Marquis doesn’t push any further because he knows this as well.  History has taught them that.

“Come
, Michael.  Let’s get him in the car and back to the manor.  We’ll send someone back for his car.”

“Yes
, sir.”

They gently and easily pick up Alessandro’s limp body and carry him to the car.

***

Alessandro squints his eyes open, just barely.  The swelling
in his face has mostly gone down, but his eye lids are still tight.  He turns his achy head to the left and jumps up with a growl as he latches on to the figure in the dark room sitting close to him. 

Instantly, he has the intruder by the throat wanting so badly to rip his head off.

The creature swings out of his still weakened grip and jumps behind him and grabs both of his arms and pulls them tight behind his back. 

“God
dammit, Ales!  What the hell is wrong with you?”

Alessandro stops squirming at the sound of the familiar voice.

“Michael?”

“Yeah, man.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”  Alessandro looks around the dark room.  “Where the hell is here exactly?”

“Man, you’re in the med ward.”

Alessandro looks around again, still not able to focus in the dark.

“Shit, does this place have any lights or is it a cave?”

Michael lets go of his friend’s arms to turn on the overhead light.  Alessandro is blinded instantly as the burning light penetrates his retinas.

“Ahh
. . . shit!  Cut it off!  Cut it off!” he yells.

When the lights go off, Alessandro feels for the bed and lies back down.  Protectors heal quickly, but because they are part human, it isn’t as quick as they’d like and until he does, the pain remains.

“Why am I in here?”

“Because
, man, you were pretty beat up from your accident and that Rogue really messed you up.  You were practically dead when we got to you.  I kicked that bastard’s skull in.”  Michael smiles to himself at the memory.  There’s not much greater in his world than killing Rogue or their bastard spawns.

Michael looks back at Alessandro, this time with a serious expression
.  “You’ve been unconscious for two days.”

Alessandro opens his eyes as wide as he can despite the swelling, “I’ve been out of it for two whole days?”
Dammit!  There is no hope for her now,
he says to himself.

“Ales, what the hell happened out there?”

Alessandro closes his eyes again as the pictures of the night’s events flash into his memory like a horror movie from his worst nightmares.

“My father and I scouted out the buildings you told us
about,” Alessandro says remembering that night.  “We saw five Rogues go into a building so we came back here to tell the rest of you.  Father wanted me to go get Anna-Marie and bring her back here because it was too dangerous for her right now.

“While I was at her apartment, I could smell that putrid smell of a Rogue, so I looked out the window and saw one running from the fire escape across from her building.  I knew it had to have followed me,
so we left as fast as we could.

“A few blocks up the road, we saw a Rogue standing in the middle of the road and another one behind us.  There was nowhere to go but straight.”

Michael clinches his fists and starts to pace back and forth through the small space.

“I tried to outrun them.”  Alessandro looks at Michael pacing back and forth with anger radiating off of him.  “Bu
t even I knew it was pointless.

“One of them jumped on the car and smashed through my window, so I ran into a light pole to get him off.  Looking back now that was a pretty lame m
ove, but I had to do something.

“
Anna-Marie was thrown through the windshield and knocked unconscious.  I couldn’t get to her because I was going in and out of consciousness as well.  One of them pulled me out of the car and I tried to fight.  I swear I tried, but I had no strength.  I thought for sure I was a goner.  All I wanted to do was look at her one last time, but she wasn’t there anymore.”

Alessandro stops talking and closes his eyes as the last memory of the night come
s back to him.  His voice is gone and his throat is burning from holding back his emotions.

Michael notices the quietness and stops pacing and looks at his brother.  Alessandro is so pained it’s hard for him to look at him.  Michael has never seen him so defeated before, except when his mom died
.  This time is different.  Alessandro already felt what a loss of this magnitude feels like, now he has to feel it all over again.  Never in his life has he ever felt like he needed to worry about Alessandro.  Not until now.  The raw emotion is vibrating off of him and smashing into every object in the room, including Michael.  Alessandro opens his red eyes and sits up.

“Man, they took her because of me.  I knew better, but I didn’t listen to my brain screaming at me about how damn stupid it is to fall for a human.”

“Dude, you couldn’t have known.”

“Seriously, with our lives and from what we have seen in the past, yes
, I most definitely should have known.  Had I not been such a selfish prick, she would be in her apartment right now, probably still miserable and hating life, but at least she’d be alive.”

“You don’t know that she is dead.” 

“Whatever, man!  I know better than to believe that shit,” Alessandro says and lays back down and closes his eyes again. 

Michael knows he’s right.  Rogues are vicious animals.  They are deadly and uncontrollable.  There’s no way a puny little human woman can take care of herself against even one of them, let alone a nest.