Guardians and Immortals
At around 2:15AM Heinlein hears an unmistakable rumbling and mechanical noise up on the roof – a rotorcraft. A helicopter is landing. He lies in his bed – fully clothed, staring at the ceiling – wondering why he was told by Dimitrios to “be ready” to make his way topside. Something is going on. Then the rumbling and mechanical sounds start up again – the helicopter is leaving.
Dimitrios knocks on his door and enters. He carries a stack of folded clothes and what appears to be tactical black footgear.
“We’ve been asked to change into these outfits and go upstairs when we are called”.
Heinlein takes his stack and heads to the bathroom. He wants to shave and make himself look presentable.
He closes the bathroom door behind him and examines the clothes he is to change into. Everything is tactical. Seal-Team Six stuff. And black Special Forces footgear. And a neck-fastening hooded cloak, warm enough to beat back the roof gales that will be ripping in off the Hudson this time of night. A leather midriff belt and x-crossing bandolero-style chest straps are included, together with animal-skin wrist cuffs and gaiters – also black. This is gear for military ops – close quarters target neutralization and Ninja extractions. Everything but weapons. Since no holsters or back-up bullet magazine pouches are fitted to his stripped midriff belt, Heinlein suspects that he’s not going to be trusted with a firearm.
“I guess I’m just expected to look pretty…not threatening.” He mumbles to himself while he starts pulling on the black costume.
It’s been a while since he’s been on so much as a SWAT Team raid, let alone a full-tactical exercise. But tonight, he’s unarmed – and feels like he’s little more than an observer on a drug bust at an “Eyes Wide Shut” themed Halloween party. Still, Heinlein rides up the elevator with Dimitrios to the roof with a queasy feeling in his stomach. They’re dressed identically – hooded, all in black. Lookin’ lean and mean. But Dimitrios has a gun. What’s going on?
The elevator doors open to the rooftop. The Hudson River winds attack them suddenly and mercilessly, shearing at their skin like ice-cold sandpaper. Heinlein grabs his cloak and pulls it tight around his body and buries his head inside the deep hood. Dimitrios does the same standing next to him.
Heinlein tries to make sense out of what he sees before him on the large open roof space.
Standing like a statute with his back to them about twenty paces ahead is “The Master” Semyon Thaumaturgus – dressed all in black and wearing his signature long hooded cloak. As the wind gusts around him, Heinlein catches a glimpse of what he’s wearing underneath. The “Master” is apparently outfitted in that same Persian “Assassinid” getup that Heinlein saw him in once before. Including the sizable Seax blade hanging off his midriff belt.
Further distant from Semyon Thaumaturgus is another man – hooded – also in black. He’s as broad-chested as a brick wall – like a weightlifter – and his cloak is whipping around him. He looks like a defiant sea captain – Captain Ahab – on the deck of his ship outracing a Nor’easter gale. Next to him is a heavy chair with a person strapped to it. The person is wearing a torn bodysuit, black trainers and gloves. Its head is covered by a heavy black bag. It’s thrashing its upper torso left and right – and muffled howls are coming from its direction.
Suddenly, the winds cease. An unnatural calm descends over the roof and New York in the distance seems foggy, unrecognizable. The temperature, though cold, becomes oddly suspended in midair. There are no sounds of boats or river traffic wafting up the Hudson. There’s no sounds of New York City Street traffic. No sounds of airliners that have just taken off from Kennedy Airport. No sounds of planes coming in for landings.
Heinlein can now hear stifled screams coming from the poor bastard pinned to that chair more clearly. It’s the sounds of a woman. Her gloved hands are lashed to the armrests – and twisting relentlessly against the leather bonds that anchor her to it. With each passing second, the physical space they all occupy becomes as quiet as the grave. It’s like they’re all in a vacuum bottle.
Heinlein has only felt this kind of death-like stillness once before – in the Deserted Village. In the Watchung Reservation. At the Indian Ceremony where Sargeant Leeds was taken away. His stomach starts to churn. His mind is racing. What the Hell is going on here? The cold Hudson River air has now completely stopped moving and hovers ominously in front of his mouth.
Time is standing still.
Then Heinlein sees it. A nightmare returning. Sixty feet or so ahead of them all – just at the end of the flat building’s roof – is a pulsating green dot. It’s flashing on and off. After a few seconds, it becomes constant and – much to Heinlein’s growing dread – starts expanding outward. The edge of this green dot now defines itself – and slowly stretches outward into a radiating disc of luminescence. Just like the one in the Indian Deserted Village ceremony in the Watchung Reservation, its interior becomes a “scintillating evanescence of light ripples and waves”. Multi-colored light perturbations – like the watery surface of the very Hudson River itself – undulating and rippling inward like vacillating filaments of time itself.
The light variates and intensifies as it increases its diameter. The circle radius reaches about forty feet across – when vague outlines of three glistening anthropomorphic silhouettes take shape within it. It’s a light portal – a doorway. The threshold to our world. These three ephemeral shapes make their way to the eerie, absolute stillness of the rooftop.
Heinlein can taste dread in his mouth saliva. It’s the Watchung Mountains – it’s Deja Vu all over again.
Three enormous, dark, hooded and robed figures emerge from the light portal. The one in the center is over ten feet tall. His companions to his left and right are eight or nine feet tall. They are wearing long, black hooded cloaks, fastened around their necks. The hoods completely cover their heads but reveal enough of their hideous physiognomy to confirm Heinlein’s suspected “Reptilian – Silurian” evolutionary antecedents. Their eyes flash red under their head coverings. Heinlein sees that underneath the cloaks the entities are outfitted in the same getup they wore at the Indian ceremony in Watchung – black leggings and large, impeccably tooled tactical footwear. Heinlein glimpses what is under the cloaks as they move: fitted black military-like tunics belted at the waist, precisely tailored to their muscled upper body torsos. Their hands – or claws – are covered with large cuffed “gages” – combat gloves – in the medieval style, reinforced with dark metallic chain mail. The entity in the center clearly has a Seax blade in a sheath suspended from his midriff belt – just as the one in Watchung did and just like “The Master” Semyon Thaumaturgus does now.
Heinlein’s observations are suddenly shattered by a lightning bolt of agony splitting through his skull – a familiar hot, blinding flash grips his eyes and almost collapses his knees. Heinlein knows what’s coming next.
Communication – actually, thought transference – is beginning. The Guardian speaks.
‘PEACE BE UPON YOU, SIMON MAGUS”
“The Master” responds in kind.
“AND PEACE BE UPON YOU, ALARIC….”
Thaumaturgus – Simon Magus – gestures to his powerfully built confederate standing next to the chair their prisoner is lashed to. The brute starts unfastening the woman’s bonds. Simon Magus again addresses the Guardian.
“I GIVE YOU SHE WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR HUNTING AND KILLING THE DEGENERATED ONE THAT ATTACKED THE HUMANS ABOVE THEIR WARREN. I MAKE THIS OFFERING IN EXPIATION FOR HER VIOLATION OF OUR MOST ANCIENT SACRED PACT”.
As if on cue – now released from her wrist restraints – the mysterious woman instinctively jumps up and starts ripping at the black sack that covers her head.
The large man – Longinus – immediately grabs the woman by the throat. As she gasps for breath, he rips the black bag off of her head and tears a rag out of her mouth that was keeping her from talking. He then drops her to the floor where she claws at her throat, hacking breath and spit from her mouth.
“PAGAN WITCH!” Longinus growls the words with disgust.
Heinlein stares agape at her disheveled, torn bodysuit and bruises as she struggles to breathe while collapsed in a heap on the rooftop. Her right eye is blackened – and swelling. Blood is crusted at the corner of her mouth and is smeared over her matted hair. He studies her face and almost wretches his guts up.
“Oh my God…” Heinlen whispers audibly. “Ilse Sommerlund…....”
The woman locks her eyes on him and screams – there’s enough of his face showing under his hood for her to recognize him.
“YOU SON OF A BITCH! I’LL KILL YOU FOR THIS! YOU HELPED ME SET IT ALL UP! YOU USED ME!! YOU’RE MAKING ME THE FALL GUY? YOU ROTTEN BASTARD! YOU GODDAMN DICKLESS VERMIN!!”
Longinus leans over and smacks her – hard – upside her head as she’s trying to get up. There’s nothing gentlemanly about this guy. She falls down again – but keeps cursing – loudly. She’s on her knees, irrationally screaming the vilest profanity, her voice raspy and throat still hacking for air from Longinus’ death-grip on her throat. The intimidating human monolith hovering over her growls again –
“PAGAN WHORE!”
Heinlein can’t believe his eyes. The woman is Dr. Ilsa Sommerlund, his erstwhile Bride-to-be.
At that moment another figure, a shorter one, emerges from the radiant circle of light from which the Guardians have just materialized. It walks like a woman – dressed in the same dark, hooded cloak and tactical, body-hugging gear and boots that Alaric and his companion’s wear. As she steps onto the rooftop, Alaric raises an enormous, gloved hand in towards her – as if giving his blessing for what she is about to do. She calmly approaches the irrationally unhinged Ilse.
Ilse Sommerlund is struggling to get up in her torn, disheveled garb and almost convulsing in a full-tilt mental rage. She’s defiantly cursing and screaming – hyperventilating. Her chest is heaving for air. She’s glaring at the Guardians and then snapping her head back to Heinlein to heap even more abuse on him.
The hooded woman gently moves a shiny object cuffed in her gloved hand over the back of Ilse Sommerlund’s head. Ilse goes limp and quiet. She is half-walked, half-dragged back to the radiant light portal by the hooded woman – who pushes her through the barrier like she’s throwing out old garbage. The rippling photonic pool of energy absorbs Sommerlund’s body like it’s a limp rag tossed into a raging torrent of floodwater. Ilse disappears immediately into the void. Just like that – she is gone from Heinlein’s space time continuum. In his mind’s eye, Heinlein can see her pathetically crawling on her hands and knees down some Einstein-Rosen Bridge to a surprise one-way destination. To her Judgment Day. Never to see Earth again. If there ever was a snapshot of Justice – that’s it.
The mystery women then assumes a position of pride near Alaric. Next to him she looks like a small child. A small proud child standing next to her Daddy.
The head Guardian’s next words blast through Heinlein’s cranium like gunshots as he points directly at the Detective.
“AND WHAT OF HIM, SIMON MAGUS?”
The Master answers in a subdued but firm voice.
“THE WOMAN YOU HAVE JUST TAKEN IS A SORCERESS – SHE BEWITCHED HEINLEIN.”
An uncomfortable silence follows. Heinlein can almost feel the Guardian’s red eyes boring holes thru his chest. The cop in him doesn’t like where this is going.
Finally, Alaric speaks again.
‘THERE MUST BE A TOKEN”.
Heinlein suddenly realizes Longinus is standing next to him. Before Heinlein can even glance at the hulking brute, Longinus grabs his left arm in a death-grip and twists Heinlein’s body into a corkscrew. He slams Heinlein’s immobilized appendage onto the seat that Ilse just vacated and splays the fingers of his left hand apart. In one fluid, blindingly fast motion Longinus reaches behind him and extracts from underneath his cloak a Gladius – and whacks it down on Heinlein’s left hand pinky finger.
Heinlein’s eyes bulge out of his sockets in horror as he watches his own finger roll towards the Guardian, weeping a trail in blood behind it.
Longinus deftly returns his Gladius to its nesting place with practiced precision – it’s back-sheath is somewhere between his ample shoulder blades – and wraps Heinlein’s hand in a handkerchief. As he returns control of Heinlein’s left hand to him, the old Centurion he utters one word through his blood-red scarred mouth:
“SORRY.”
The pain washes over Heinlein slowly. He grabs the top of the chair to steady himself. His body is a hot mess of anger, nausea, shock, surprise and revulsion. He feels like he’s going to pass out – or soil himself. Finally, he hears the Guardian’s voice tearing through his brain.
“LEARN FROM THIS EXPERIENCE, HUMAN. BE HONORABLE.”
The radiant circle begins to pulsate and grow brighter. The gigantic, hooded figures turn towards it and step inside. Their business is done here. Their outlines soon dissipate in the churning evanescence of the photonic energy wall.
One hooded figure remains. The mystery woman. As she watches the Guardians leave, she raises her arm in a gentle waive. In an instant, it’s all over.
Winds and cold once more envelope the roof expanse as their reality returns and time-space once again asserts itself. Sounds from boats on the Hudson River and planes overhead from Kennedy Airport and LaGuardia reverberate in the damp night air.
The woman faces Heinlein and pushes back her hood.
“Hello, Heinlein”.
It’s Leeds. A ghost dressed like a Ninja. Her voice is out of a dream. She offers him sage advice –
“Better get that hand looked at.”
Copyright, 2025 Jon Croft
www.bogironpatriot.com
www.bogironslav.com
Email: vlchek1@gmail.com
