Page 74 of Guardian

Winter spun her head back to Logan and the demons. Logan was battling one demon, while Aiden was having trouble fighting the other, one of his arms hanging limply by his side. With horror, she saw the demon plunge his dagger toward the injured guardian. He stopped in mid-motion. Hamish had snatched him from behind, dragged him back, and was now slicing his throat from ear to ear.

Her stomach lurched as she saw the green blood ooze from the dead creature. She looked away, her gaze now landing on Logan, who’d finished the third demon.

“Didn’t leave me any,” Manus complained, waving his unused dagger.

Hamish rushed to Aiden and put his arm around his waist to prevent him from collapsing. “Leila, the kids?”

Aiden motioned to the back of the store, where only now, Winter saw a door. “Storeroom,” Aiden pressed out. Then he looked at the spot where the blond woman lay. “I couldn’t save the store owner.”

Manus opened the door to the store room. “Leila, Xander, Julia, it’s all clear.”

Leila popped her head out, her children clinging to her legs. When her eyes fell on her husband, she let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, God.”

Manus pulled Julia into his arms, and Xander ran to his father. Leila, tears in her eyes, put her arms around her husband.

Aiden looked at his compound mates. “How did you guys know we were in trouble?”

Three sets of eyes—Hamish’s, Manus’s, and Logan’s—landed on Winter.

“Winter had a vision,” Logan said.

Aiden looked at her, locking eyes. “I owe you my family’s lives.”

Winter sighed, tears stinging her eyes. “It’s all good now. It’s over.” But her heart was still pounding, and she hadn’t been able to prevent the death of the store owner. She glanced at the dead woman again and shuddered, when she felt Logan’s hand on her arm.

“We need to clean up here, but we’ll be as quick as we can,” he said. Then he leaned in. “You did good, real good. You just saved the lives of Barclay’s family. He’ll change his vote.”

“His vote?” Aiden said from behind them.

Winter looked at him, as did Logan.

“My father voted to let Winter live.”

“You spoke to him about Winter?”

Aiden shook his head and winced from the pain of his injuries. “It’s not what you think. He calls me sometimes, talks to me about difficult decisions. When they voted on Winter’s fate, he called me without telling me any names or saying what the vote was about. But he was troubled by it. He said that he’d voted with the minority, but as the head of the council, he had to assure that the decision the council made was executed. I’m sorry. But he’s not the one you need to convince.” He smiled at Winter. “He already knows how valuable you are. But don’t despair. This incident might still convince another council member to change his or her vote. I’ll be your star witness.”

“Thank you, Aiden,” Winter said, forcing a smile.

“No. Thank you.”

While Hamish and Manus went about wrapping up the dead demons, using large black trash bags from the store room, Leila took care of Aiden’s injuries. The kids sat on the floor, playing with toys from the store.

“There’s a surveillance camera,” Logan said. “We need to find the recording.”

“I saw some electronic equipment in the storeroom,” Leila said.

“Thanks.” Logan marched into the storeroom.

Winter walked to the shop door and turned the sign in it to “We’re closed”, then closed the door. She was about to turn away from it to attend to the children, when a wheelchair entered her peripheral vision. She glanced down the walkway. An older woman in an electric wheelchair slowly drove by the store, her eyes looking forward, a colorful knitted bag on her lap. Winter stared at the bag. Her grandmother had had the same one: blue and orange with streaks of green and brown. It had been en vogue in the seventies, but it stuck out like a sore thumb now.

She shrugged and tried to turn away, but something stopped her. She stared at the bag again, but now the bag wasn’t sitting in the lap of the woman in the wheelchair. It was sitting on a chair next to a hospital bed. Her grandmother’s hospital bed. And there, in the bed, lay her grandmother. The medical staff had restrained her for fear she’d go into one of her fits and hurt herself.

Winter’s throat constricted. She looked so vulnerable.

A heart rate monitor beeped steadily.

A sound at the door made Winter turn her head. The door opened, and involuntarily, she stepped back into the shadows of the room. A man entered. He was tall and athletic and dressed in street clothes. Not one of the doctors or nurses that attended to Winter’s grandmother. He stepped closer to the bed and pulled something from his pocket.