The Guardian - Rated R excerpts

Nathan and Michael Grace 18 years in the future

Spoiler alert. This is where Michael Grace and Nathan are going in the future. Don't read if you don't want to know. Adults only. Explicit.

Nathan trembled as he felt Michael Grace trace a finger over his collarbone. For so long he had played big brother to her, watching her grow at an alarming rate, so that when she was only six she looked like an adult woman. Now, she was eighteen and he was thirty-one. In years anyway. He cursed the day he had been turned into a vampire. He was thirteen, almost fourteen when it had happened, trapping him in a pubescent body. For eighteen long years, he had watched over her, dealt with her escapades as she grew and developed her strengths. Early on, his feelings toward her evolved away from those of a doting brother to those of a jealous lover. He could not help himself as she grew into a woman's body, but he more than anyone protected her innocence. He watched as lecherous strangers devoured her beauty with their eyes, and he would always be the one to make sure they knew who she belonged to.

Now, after all these years, his patience was paying off. Michael Grace had wanted to spread her wings and show her parents she was not as fragile as they thought she was. Those parents were his also, only they had adopted him after he had been transformed. She had taken off into the night and had taken several knives, her favorite weapon, with her. He had known this, as he was her usual sparring partner and knew what was missing from the armory. He had promised Emil and Evan he would bring their wayward daughter back in one piece. More often than not, this was his job, chasing after Mikey. He had found her in a club in a seedy part of Saint Louis, trying to show off for some humans. You see, she was not completely vampire. Her parents were, Nathan was, but she had been conceived when her mother was still human, before she completed the transformation. She had several traits common to vampires, but she had a heartbeat. She still needed food. She was not as strong as a vampire, but vastly stronger than the strongest human man. She was very fast, but not as quick as vampires. She had also inherited some of her mother's talent as an empath, but the ancient witch lineage had seemingly manifested itself most in Mikey. This was what she was showing off with now, making simple flames dance around the clubgoers heads or on their drinks. It was not the best she could do, but it was safe. The humans were pressing her to show them more, but she was not ready to do much more, as she had not been practicing with Marie like she should.

Nathan stood back a little longer, watching as one of the drunken males grabbed her arm and got closer to her, asking her something even his vampiric ears could not pick up. The indignation Mikey answered with left nothing to the imagination, though. He stepped forward and placed himself between the human and his ward. She looked him levelly in the eye and frowned. "Why are you here?"

"I'm here for your own good. Come on," he said, thankful he was as tall as he was, despite how young he looked. The only thing being a vampire had done for him, in his opinion, was to allow him to look like a young eighteen at the most. He was still not as tall as he would have grown had he remained human, nor had he filled out as much as he would have.

"Hey, kid, how'd you get in here?" came the slurred words of the man who was trying to get ahold of Michael Grace once more.

Nathan turned around and leveled his most sinister gaze on the human, and then turned back to Mikey. "Come on. Let's go. You see what they want. You don't need to be here."

She set her jaw and nodded. They began to walk away together when the human grabbed her roughly by the arm again. Nathan whirled on him faster than a human mind could comprehend and had the man in an arm bar hold with his head smashed into the tabletop closest to them.

"Don't you dare lay another hand on her. I will fucking rip it off, do you understand?"

"Shit, man. What the fuck?" the human mumbled through a smashed jaw.