“What is this?” Sean chuckled, then pursed his lips. “This isn’t funny, whatever this is. Harry?”
     To Sean, Harry could see that his eyes were darting back and forth, from Elise to Sean and back again. Clearing his throat, Harry tugged at the corner of his sleeves. He was wearing dark clothing, the fabric shimmering like nylon in the low light in where he stood stock still in the middle of foyer. Wrapped around Harry’s neck was what Sean suspected to be a pulled down ski mask and his waist was lined with small pouches that hooked onto an inconspicuous belt. Harry turned to face him head on. Sean could see a two way radio strapped right next to a gun’s holster on his cousin’s right hip.
Sean stared down at the holstered gun, then flicked his eyes back up to Harry; his cousin’s face was unreadable, expressionless. He wasn’t surprised. Wasn’t shocked. Harry just stood and stared. He was no longer Harry, Sean knew that well enough by looking into his eyes. Standing two yards away from him was someone else. Someone who was not his cousin.
“I can explain.” Harry said in a low, muted tone. “This must seem... surreal to you right now.”
Sean blinked. This guy still talked like the Harry he knew. But then he sounded. . .different. More serious, less casual. More grit and grime in his voice. Pain, anger and sorrow that had been repressed earlier now stood out like a jackhammer in an orchestra pit. Harry’s new and commanding personality discomforted Sean.
“Either this-” Sean pointed at Elise and Harry with both fingers. “This is some kind of. . . really messed up, elaborate prank or-” Sean’s voice faded away as he stared into the eyes of the two standing before him. Elise, with her rigid wooden gaze. The guy who had called himself his cousin, standing straight and tall, very much unlike the Harry Sean knew just a few days ago. Sean shook his head, breaking away from two pairs of eyes staring back at him. Elise stepped forward, her head angled a degree off center, her eyes still boring into Sean’s.
“From what you’ve experienced-what you’ve seen tonight, Knite,” Elise stopped a foot short away from Sean’s nose. He could feel her breath wafting over his healing cut on his forehead. “I can assure you. This is very real.”
Sean flexed his jaw. He could hear his own brain falling into disrepair. He heard the small gears crunch and grind against each other as they attempted to run over this revelating theory-that all of this-just might be real. None of it was a dream, or some kind of nightmare. He was actually here, breathing and awake. Completely conscious in the room. Aubrey was really dead.
“Am I in danger?” Sean said out loud. When neither Elise nor Harry spoke, Sean repeated.“Am I in danger? Am I gonna wind up like Aubrey?”
“Not if you decide to step out of this room.” Elise began, then gestured to the seat of the couch in front of her. “Sit down. You need to know a few things. I understand you have a lot of-”
“If I have any questions, they’ll be answered by him.” Sean gritted his teeth and pointed at Harry.  “Because he has-oh man-you have a lot of explaining to do.”
Elise glared at Sea. “Knite, if you’re going to be-”
“I’m done listening to you.”
Harold Deuce-Harry Knite, or whatever his name was-looked at the girl in the green hood and said, “Elise? Give us a few?”
Elise set her jaw, but she didn’t say anything. Instead she stared daggers at Sean one last time, switched her gaze to Harold, then turned on her heel and paced into the adjacent kitchen, throwing up her hood in subtle protest. Silence rode the breeze carried through the window and swirled around the room. Harold lout a tired sigh as he looked at the back of Elise, then gestured with an open hand to the couch in front of him. Sean stared at him for a second, then moved backwards and sat in the couch opposite from Harold. He just shrugged, a complacent expression waxing his face. He produced a water bottle from the small of his back.
    Cracking open the bottle with a quick twist of the cap, he poured the entire contents in his mouth, taking large gulps until he sucked the plastic bottle dry. Then he crumpled it with one hand under Sean’s stone glare, and threw it into the corner of his couch.
    “So.” Harold Deuce said, licking his lips. “You have questions.”
    Sean nodded, saying nothing.
    “Come on.” A slight spark of Harry cracked dimples at the corners of his mouth. “Don’t tell me I drank all that water for nothing. Got any questions you need me to answer?”
    Sean didn’t say anything. He kept on glaring.
    “Well, what do you want me to say?” Harold grunted, holding out his hands in surrender. Sean swallowed, gulped, and then cleared his throat. Then his words crawled out of his mouth.
    “Is your name. . .are you really Harold Deuce?”
    Harry-Harold-stared back at Sean with an even gaze and nodded.
    “Yes. And no.” Harold said. “Deuce is just my nickname. I was born an orphan, never really given a proper name. You can still call me Harry, you know.”
    Sean smiled, frowning, both expressions clashing together into a mix of sarcasm. “If you’re not Harry then you’re not my cousin... Harold.”
    Harold sighed. “Okay. Listen. Sean, you never had a cousin. No second time removed cousins, no extended family, none of that. Your family-your mom and your sister-is all that there is left of the Knites.”
    Sean felt like his gut had just receded an inch into his pelvis. His father’s sniper rifle round hanging around his neck seemed to drag Sean down further into the couch’s leather folds. He clutched at it, as if holding it steady would prevent him from crumpling into a fetal position. Sweat built up on the outside of his pores at the base of his temples and around his neck.
    “We were friends, Sean.” Harold said. “In fact, I really hope that we still can be. You know, start over?”
    Sean’s eyes snapped up. He scoffed. “Even though you’ve pretended to be a cousin I never had, practically lied to my face every time I saw you, you have the audacity to say something like that.” Sean shook his head slowly. “Apparently you’ve never had any friends.” Sean’s gaze flicked over Harold and to the back of Elise’s mountain green hood. “Not any real ones, anyway.”
    Cracking a dry, weary smile, Harold looked away and stared out through the miniature crack the window’s curtains made. His gaze was filled with the stars, Harold’s mind-for moment-transported some place far off and detached from where he was sitting on the couch. Then Sean let out a small chuckle, and shook his head. Harold glanced back at Sean.
    “I don’t know how I didn’t see it.” Sean said, his voice low and unsure, his mind recollecting recent events that Harry had been in. Memories. “Kinda makes sense, now that I think about it. You not being my cousin, I mean. I don’t even know anything about you and we just accepted that you were a Knite. We didn’t ask any questions, we just sat back and let you invade our lives.”
    Sean wiped the half left side of his face with the back of his palm, and then sat back, his head cocked at a confused angle.
    “I don’t know a single darn thing about you.” He whispered, staring into Harold’s eyes. “I don’t even remember how we met. I don’t even remember us having a conversation at my dad’s funeral. All I remember is that when I came back from the funeral, I suddenly had this memory that you were my cousin.”
    “But you remember how I got you that job at the museum, correct?” Harold said, sitting higher in his seat. “And you do remember that night I came over for dinner? That was real. That actually happened. I wasn’t faking it, giving out fake smiles and just shooting bull out of my nose, otherwise you would have most definitely noticed. I genuinely enjoyed the time I was with you and your family!” Harold’s voice began to slip into a recognizable cadence that Sean could only describe as the old Harry. Warm. Bright. Filled with energy. Enthusiastic. This guy, whoever he was-Harry-Harold Deuce, this guy seemed genuine. At least, that was what Sean wanted to believe. And he did.
    Harold sat farther up on the couch’s seat, his head down, eyes wide.
    “So believe me when I say that you can trust me. What’s been done is done, the subterfuge is over, and now is the time where I explain myself.”
    In his reclined position, Sean’s eyes moved around the room in a slow sweeping motion. The kitchen. The back of Elise’s hood. The walls. The curtained window. The floor. Back to Harold’s half grin.
    “How can I believe you now?” Sean said, more to himself than an actual question to Harold. Harold pressed a short breath out through his nostrils, and sucked in a sigh.
    He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll try everything in my power to convince you. So how about you ask me a question. Any question.” Harold’s gaze was even and steady. “It could be about anything. Ask a question and I swear to God, I’ll answer it as truthfully as I possibly can.”
Sean spoke without hesitation, his question already jumping off the tip of tongue as if it had been anticipating this moment. It had been dancing at the brink of his mind ever since he saw Harold enter the apartment.
    “Who are you working for and who killed Aubrey?”
    With the same amount of readiness, Sean suspected that Harold had prepared for such a question, or something similar. His answer was clear and concise, without any fumbles or sighs or unnecessary pauses. Also, Harold’s response sounded rehearsed.
    “I work for a secret branch of a clandestine operating unit called the Vanguard. The Vanguard are a special kind of unit tasked with containing specific kinds of threats around the world.” Harold stopped, his hands on knees, his lips a fine line.
    Sean turned his head to the side, his eyes still on Harold.
    “And?” He gestured with his hand, as if to coax more words out of the Harold’s mouth.
    “‘And’?” Harold repeated Sean’s question, a frown on his face.
    “Yeah, and what else?” Sean wondered, raising an eyebrow. Harold looked surprised, then shook his head.
    “That’s it.” He said, his eyes darting to the left and then back to Sean. He steepled his fingers in between his knees, his gaze down. “Now. For your other question. Who killed Aubrey.” Sean saw wrinkles shadow the corners of Harold’s eyes as he spoke, every word was a chisel that brought down a rock carving force.
    “We have reason to believe the same person who shot Aubrey is the same lethal assassin known most famously-or, really infamously- as the Angel of Death. He has no real name that we know of, and if he did, he most likely would have forgotten it ages ago.”
Sean stared at Harold, then heard Elise say from the kitchen, “He literally means ‘ages’. Our sources in the Vanguard confirm that he’s over a hundred years old.”
“Wait, what?” Sean said, disbelief coating every his every syllable. “You’re telling me a one hundred year old man killed Aubrey?”
Harold nodded, his beady brown eyes watching Sean. Sean scoffed, “That sounds like total bull, you guys know that, right?” He chuckled, but then when he saw Harold’s and Elise’s stern expressions, he dropped his head.
“Oh. No. You guys are serious.”
Harold nodded slowly and continued, ignoring Sean’s critical gaze. “He is neither angel, nor man, though our limited records do say he was once human at one point. He has been active several times through history, as sparse as his kill count has been. He’s famous for his impressive marksmanship and the ability of never being caught. No doubt you’ve heard of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr?”
    Sean coughed and held up a hand. “Are you telling me, whoever killed Aubrey killed a president of the United States and Martin Luther King Jr?”
    Harold shook his head and ran a hand through his mop of hair. “No, no, of course not.” Harold chuckled, waving one hand in the air. “We’re pretty sure he only shot one of them. Specifically which one, we don’t know, but we do have a theory on King” Then he clasped his hands, putting his fingertips at the bottom of his lips. He stared hard at Sean, and the room became quiet for a second. Harold continued, his voice a low rumble that ebbed and flowed throughout the apartment.
    “But despite murdering famous people, he has murdered hundreds-countless hundreds of others. He’s infamous for many deaths, but many more are unknown. He’s the grim reaper, an angel of death.”
    Sean wiped the underside of his jaw, the top of his hand pulling away with grime and sweat and grease. “And he’s out there? Right now? He’s the one who killed Aubrey?”
    Harold nodded.
    “Why?”
    Harold shrugged, “We don’t know.”
    “But you know he’s been alive for-what, a hundred years? And you say that he’s never been caught, so how do you guys know that he even exists; if he’s so good at never being caught, then how do you explain that? And to top if all off, you guys are ‘pretty sure’ he either killed Kennedy or King Jr?” Sean wiped his hands on his dirty jeans, shaking his head and rising a few inches off the couch. “I’m sorry, man. I’m really trying my best to understand what you’re trying to say right now-I really am. but this-this is just way too much! What even is this, Harold?”
    “This is real life!” Elise shouted. Sean jumped backwards in the sofa, wide eyed and startled. Elise was now standing to his left, glowering over him, her head bent down, and her eyes drilling into his. Twin fiery balls of green shimmered and sparkled in the dimly lit apartment. Sean’s mouth had gone slack. She had just crossed fifteen feet-from the kitchen to Sean’s side-without so much as twitching. One moment she was standing near the island counter, then the next moment she was staring daggers down at Sean. It was impossible.
    Sean flinched away from Elise, as if she had just sneezed in his ear. “What just happened?”
    “If you still think this is an elaborate prank, you’re either mental and have some kind of prolonged denial syndrome, or you’re just the slowest person in the whole world, because right now-right now you are really testing our patience!”
    Sean opened and shut his mouth. He raised an eyebrow. “Seems like you’re the only one getting her patience tested.”
    “Sean.” Harold cleared his throat. His head was lowered and Sean could see the tiniest hint of a shadow of a vein bulging near the top of temple. “She’s right. You need to start taking us seriously and stop thinking that you’re in rainbows and sunshine-‘cause guess what, you’re not. Do you need to go through another evening like tonight for you to finally understand that this isn’t a dream?”
    “Whenever the Angel arrives,” Elise said, crossing her arms. “he brings death with him. You should be glad that I found you before you ended up like the cashier.”
    Sean looked at one deadpan face to another, none of them saying a word. The Sean looked down at his hands. He saw that they were shaking. Sean looked up to meet Harold’s gaze.
    “I’m not sure what to think anymore. What’s to stop this-whatever his name is-this. . . Angel of Death from killing me? Guys. I want to go home. I don’t want to be here, I-I…”
    Putting his head in between his hands, Sean grasped fistfuls of his hair and let out a groan in frustration. Harold got up from his place on the couch and put hand on one of Sean’s shaking shoulders.
     He squeezed hard and spoke softly, but there was still a stern tone affixed to his words.
    “That’s why we’re. We’re gonna get you home.”
    Sean wiped his nose, sniffing. He looked up at Harold. Sean saw Harold’s eyes. Brown and rugged and assuring. Exhibiting calmness and firmness all at the same time. Sean nodded, accepting Harold’s outstretched hand.
    “That’s what the Vanguard does.” Harold said, white teeth shining through his smile as he pulled Sean to his feet.
    Then Harold’s head broke in two. It split into pieces everywhere and all around. Sean watched Harold’s head pop like an overfilled water balloon. Except this was much harder to look at. It was as if a lumberjack’s axe was forcefully slicing itself into a watermelon. Flying droplets stung Sean’s face. Viscous, heavy liquid speeding at twenty miles per hour spattered into his eyes, blanketing his face with what used to be Harold Deuce’s brain matter. Flesh and bone coated the floor, the wall to Sean’s right, and Sean himself. His face felt like it was on fire, his ears were ringing in his head like whistles, his eyes twitching and snapping back and forth at the carnage.
    Harold. Without his head. It was completely gone. Shattered to bits.
The floor. Harold’s body slumped down onto the carpet. Remnants of obliterated brain matter, flesh and bone speckled the designer couches.
The giant hole in the wall. It looked as if a body builder had punched a hole straight into the drywall. Sean snapped backwards, tumbled against the couch behind him, and tripped over it, landing in a heap on the floor. A flash of blue light sparked across the room and in an instant the a dome of glowing woven strands of luminescent gold covered him and the entire living room. The dome looked as if a golden wicker bowl had been overturned on him, the strands of the dome moving and darting in and out of its weave. It looked alive; almost like really long worms or snakes intertwining into each other. It was also transparent, and Sean could see Elise on the outside. She threw herself into the dome, her body passing through the material as if it were water.
Rippling behind her, the dome closed after her form entered. Elise shouted. Her voice sounded echoey and compressed, as if she were speaking in a tin can. “Get up! He’s found us! We need to move, now!”
Sean’s head felt like it would explode. The ringing in his ears increased with every shouted command Elise barked at him inside the dome. She dove behind the overturned couch, shot both hands underneath Sean’s armpits and began dragging him away out of the living room and into the kitchen. Away from the window. As Elise pulled Sean to safety, the dome moved with them. Sean could see that the window and drapes had been blown apart, ripped to shreds. The blue curtains were now reduced to fluttering wisps of cloth swaying gently in the breeze.
He didn’t realize it, but Sean found that he was still screaming. He felt with his hands all over his face. Trying to scrape off the bits of Harold that covered him. It was in his hair, in his eyes and ears. Even in his mouth. He could taste it. He could taste blood and bone.  Her hand slapped his face; hard. Once, twice, three times to make him stop shouting. He and Elise were in the kitchen now. Sean’s eyes looked from the shattered window down to the floor where the remains of Harold lay. His legs were splayed out in an awkward position, one foot twisted down towards the floor, his left knee bent into a knee-breaking ‘L’ shape. Harold’s legs were motionless.
“Sean,” Elise’s voice rang inside of the dome, piercing the skin of Sean’s ear drums. “I need you to close your mouth and hold your gut, can you do that? Sean! Can you do that for me?”
Sean opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. He blinked rapidly, clearing tears from his eyes.
“Look at him.” Sean’s voice slurred heavily as he made an attempt to crawl outside of the dome. “He’s just lying there, he’s gonna get shot! Harold!”
Elise grabbed fistfuls of Sean’s shirt and hauled back to herself, wrapping her arms around him, pinning his arms to his sides. She shouted into his ear, “Leave him-there’s no use! He’s dead!”
And then the world beneath Sean’s feet fell down around him for the third time that night, swallowing him whole. He knew the process. He clenched his abdomen hard. This time, the trip felt altered. The laminate flooring spun and swirled down to a small hole underneath Elise’s feet, the wooden floor twisting like a whirlpool inside a bathtub. Sean felt himself being sucked in, and he didn’t fight it. He was in too much shock to even struggle against his body being wedged down through the hole, too preoccupied about what happened to Harold to notice his six foot ten inch frame being crammed into a hole no larger than a closed fist.
A darkness swallowed up the apartment, and Sean slipped into a black void without color or atmosphere. It was like plunging into a crystal clear lake in the dead of night, except Sean was lit well enough that he could see his shoes. He could see his own hands, his feet, and when he looked up at the pinprick of a hole that he had squeezed through Sean saw Elise following close behind. He saw the treads of her boots speeding towards him, and she eventually leveled with him after a few seconds. Sean tried to shout, but noise didn’t exist. He couldn’t hear anything. Just complete silence. Complete silence as they traveled down further and further into the chasm.
Even though everything around them was black as ink, Elise and Sean were the only figures that weren’t devoid of color. Then Elise motioned to Sean with her left hand, then held up five fingers, taking down one finger at a time. Sean couldn’t figure out the first hand gesture, but he understood that something was going to happen in the next three seconds.
Elise went down to two fingers. . .
Then one finger. ..
Just as she lowered her index finger onto her palm, Sean and Elise flipped right side up to upside down, their heads pointing to a gray hole about a yard wide. Without feeling nauseous or even unsettled, Sean looked up at the hole in the empty void and squinted. He could see moon light coming from the hole, as little as there was. And he could even see the slightest pinpricks of stars. They both shot up to meet the hole.
Sean and Elise crawled out of a manhole in the middle of a thin patch of road. Elise was the first one out. Just before their exit out of the void, she pointed her arms to the sky, reached the lip of the maintenance shaft, and pushed herself out. Then it was Sean’s turn, who slapped at the concrete road until he had to be hauled out by Elise. He rolled over onto his side, putting one hand down on the cold asphalt and breathed deep and hard. One breath. Three breaths. Five.
He felt like he was hyper-ventilating. He wiped and scratched and clawed at his eyes; they were so itchy, they felt like they were being hard baked in a clay oven. Elise replaced the manhole cover and walked over to Sean who was laying on the ground.
“You need to get up.” She said, her voice quiet compared to Sean’s loud inhaling and exhaling. “Hey. We need to-” She put a hand on Sean’s shoulder. He whipped around and glared at her, his eyes wide as golf balls.
“Why? Why!” He shouted, his hand shooting out and grabbing her wrist. Sean used his grip on her wrist to pull himself up. He stared at her, a wild gleam in his eyes. “Why is this happening? Harold just-he-his head-”
Sean wiped the side of his mouth, flustering. He found it impossible to form a proper sentence. His forehead felt clammy and his right hand dangled limp at his side.
“It’s the Angel of Death.” Elise said, trying her best to sound calm, although her expression wasn’t. “He’s shot that girl Aubrey, he’s just killed Harold, and right now if we don’t move we are going to die too. Do you want that?”
Her eyes were just as wide as Sean’s; just as terrified and just as afraid. Deep patches of grief pooled underneath her eyelids, pulling down her face into a long grimace. But her voice seemed to placate Sean. He stopped shivering. His rapid breathing subsided and became normal. He let go of Elise’s wrist, and she pulled it to her side, rubbing it. Its color muted by the thick green cloth of her cloak, the honey colored glow faded.
“We need to get off the road and into the treeline,” She said, Elise’s eyes scanning her surroundings. Sean scanned the area with her. The road they were standing on wasn’t familiar to Sean. He didn’t know all the roads in his city, but he knew the major byways and highways leading in and out of the town. This road wasn’t any of them. It was a rough patch of unruly asphalt laid out in a wrinkled stretch in the middle of nowhere. On the left side of the road lay acres and acres of churned fields, and on the right was a small cropping of trees. Not exactly a ‘treeline’ as Elise had put it, but Sean guessed it was better than standing out in the open. They stepped off the road and headed for it.
Crouching low, Sean and Elise power walked their way across knee high weeds and clinging brush that scratched at their pants and bit into any skin that wasn’t protected by fabric.
“What do we do when we get there?” Sean asked, his hands out in front of him, following the barely visible figure of Elise. The moon was out, but dark gray clouds snuffed out most of its light. “Where are we?”
The two of them crouch-walked ten more steps before Elise whispered, “Somewhere in some pasture land. The very definition of middle of nowhere. I think we’re on the other side of Mount Diablo.”
Sean licked his lips and spat out dust. It tasted bitter on his tongue. He said, “Why heck did you send us here? Couldn’t you have teleported us somewhere else safer? Like police station? Or your Vanguard base?”
They were thirty yards away from the tree cropping. Sean could see Elise’s head look over at him.
“First of all, it’s not ‘teleport’. That’s for science fiction. What we just did back there is called ‘three dimensional linear upsurgence’, what I like to call vaulting.”
    “‘Vaulting’?” Sean said. “You could’ve fooled me.”
    They kept crouching, rustling through the undergrowth of the field. They were twenty yards out.
     “Secondly, I can only vault so many times in the span of five hours. My maximum is three, and you don’t want to be anywhere near me after my third vault.”
     They were out of the weeds and in small brush and foliage. Dead branches and fallen leaves crackled as they stepped forward.
     Fifteen yards out.
    “So you can vault by using the thing that glows underneath your cloak, right?” Sean asked, rubbing away a sneeze that built up in his nose. “That must be some kind of tech to be so small and yet do something like teleporting-I mean. . .vaulting.”
    Elise’s silhouette stopped in the middle of the field, crouching in a briar patch.
    “You think technology is keeping us alive?”
    Sean scoffed. “Well, what else would it be?” He stared into the deep cowl of Elise’s cloak. He couldn’t see any part of her face, not her nose, not her cheeks, nothing peeked out from the cowl. It was like looking into a well. Looking into a well that stared back. Sean felt a wave of tingles spread from the base of neck and make its way down to the small of his back.
    Elise replied, “So you think science is the more likely option than . . . something else?”
    “Well, yes, of course.” Sean said, he stepped forward, heading to the treeline. “How else could you do all that? It has to be some kind of insanely new technology.”
    Sean crouch walked a few paces forward, noticed Elise wasn’t following, and turned around to look back at her. “What?”
    “No other alternative theories?” Elise asked, a smile creeping in her words.
    “I thought you agreed to stop being so cryptic.”
    “I’m not being cryptic. Just prompting you.”
    “Prompting me?” Sean huffed, then turned back to the tree outcropping. “For what? How else could you explain it?”
     Ten yards away from the treeline, Sean paused mid crouch, and turned to face Elise.
    He looked into the cavern that was Elise’s cowl. Sean could almost see a smirk hiding somewhere in there.
    “Wait. Don’t tell me.” Sean groaned, putting a hand on the ground to steady his crouch. He brought it up again, his finger brushing painfully against a nettle. “You’re not suggesting--that it’s...?”
    “Magic?”
    Sean let out a bark of laughter, lifting himself off his haunches and straightening his back.
    “I thought you were crazy, but now that’s definitive proof.”
    Elise grabbed him by the arm and pulled him down, almost causing him to faceplant into the dirt and a patch of weeds in the ground.
    “Get down. Maintain a low profile.” Elise hissed.
    Sean nodded. “Yeah, okay, but are you serious? Magic? Come on.”
    Elise’s blackened out shoulders shrugged in the night. “It’s not fancy circuitry or calculus. Think about it. Think about tonight. How do explain what you’ve seen in the past hours? What kind of science equation can solve that?”
    Sean shook his head. “I still think you’re crazy.”
    “Have some respect. That’s no way to talk to someone who has saved your life twice in one night.” Elise said.
    “Then how come you couldn’t save Harold?” Sean snapped, then instantly regretted it. In the little light that backlit Elise, Sean could see her cowl dip ever so slightly forward.
    “I . . . you . . .” She tried to say, but then stopped. Silence swept over the empty field. It swam in the breeze that lilted through the three foot high weeds. Sean stared at Elise. He could see that she had put a hand to her mouth, and her shoulders were shaking.
    “I’m sorry.” Sean said, looking down at the ground. He didn’t know what else to say. All Sean could do was put a hand on Elise’s shoulder, and walk her the rest of the way to the grove of trees. For the better part of what remained of the night, Sean kept his distance from Elise. And he sensed that she needed some time to herself for a moment. No talking. No conversation. Just silence.
The wind blew its occasional song through the trees, but that was all.
There wasn’t even a single cicada buzzing or cricket chirping in the night. The night seemed to dead to Sean. Maybe because there was something dead stalking the field out there. Sean was sure his mind was playing tricks on him; his own fear taking over the imaginative processes in his mind. But Sean couldn’t help thinking that a man in a dark cloak holding a giant sickle reaping the fields, looking around, scanning the grounds. Searching. Seeking. Seeking Sean. He could imagine the man in the robe that was as black as the night itself, stalking the furrows and trees and eventually coming to where him and Elise were hiding. He could imagine the eyes of the man. Eyes as cold as iron and as horrific as hell that would stare into his soul, just before the man would rip it out of Sean’s body.
    Sean couldn’t take it any longer. The never ending silence seemed deafening to him. It felt too quiet. He paced over to where Elise lay leaning against a tree, facing outside the treelines’ perimeter. Her cloak was flung back and her braid of shoulder length brown hair drooped over one shoulder onto her chest. She said. “The rest of my squad is heading to our coordinates. I’ve estimated their time of arrival to eleven minutes.”
    Sean grunted a simple, “Okay” and sat down next to her on an adjacent fallen tree. He stared with her into the expanse of the fields in front of them. Sean opened his mouth to speak, but shut it.
    Elise said, “Harold told me to guard you with my life.”
    Sean sighed and hung his head. He clasped his hands together in a shaky grip.
    Elise continued. Sean heard a slight tremor as she talked.
“He was my commissioned monitor. But in something like our profession, he was my mentor. My boss. An older brother that I never had.”
Sean gripped his hands tight, his shoulders hunched. He looked over at Elise. She was sitting straight now, no longer leaning against the tree trunk. She was fully erect and at attention. Her gaze fixed on the horizon, as if expecting the sun to come running up the sky and shine its rays upon her face. Sean saw her hand come up to the corner of her eye and sweep away a tear.
“He was family I never had.” Elise chuckled. “He taught me everything I know. Taught me how to survive, how to be courteous, how to love truth and virtue. How to be a Vanguard.”
Sean absently plucked a grain of wheat from the earth, twirling the straw in between his fingers. He watched it spin as he listened to Elise speak.
“He was a good man. But in his ten years of service he managed to get me enlisted. I’m the very first female to be in the Vanguard, did you know that? Harold-Harry recruited me from an orphanage in Ireland. I would’ve died if he hadn’t given me the opportunity to join the ‘Guard.”
    Elise shook her head, throwing her ponytail braid over her shoulder and onto her cowl on her back.
“Everyone thought a girl couldn’t do what men have been doing for thousands of years in the Vanguard. Everybody thought, ‘Oh, she’s too young’ and ‘No, she’s much too lanky’. But Harold insisted. He practically harassed the captain chief of officers day after day until he broke him and I was allowed in.”
Elise sniffed. “Harold saved me, like he did for so many other people. He was a good man.”
Sean nodded, disconsolately chucking the twisted strand of straw into the darkness. He turned to face Elise. She was still facing the horizon, the side portrait of her face silhouetted by the glow of moonshine from the clouds. He could make out her long hair tied back against her head, her sunken brow, and her thin triangular nose. He could see her lips, tight and pursed. He saw the ghost of a tear escaping the corner of her eye. Elise closed her eyes and shook her head again, chuckling in a bitter tone.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this.” She half-turned to Sean, her expression blank, yet searching at the same time. “You must think it weird.”
Sean shrugged. “Honestly? Yeah. Yeah it is.”
Elise faced forward and grunted, squaring her shoulders. “I knew it.”
“No, no,” Sean said, twisting to face her and making vague gestures with his hands. “It’s okay. I get it. You need to get some things off your chest.”
    Elise looked down at her pant legs and brushed away bits of brush and broken leaves that stuck to her. “The Vanguard will set a proper memorial in Harold’s honor once my team picks us up.”
    A cold breeze wafted through the trees. It brushed through Sean’s mussed and tousled hair. It cooled the sweat inside of his shirt. He sighed, breathing in the night air, and exhaled slowly.
    “About that,” Sean began, looking over his shoulder and then glancing at Elise. She turned to face him, the last remnants of a bitter tear sliding down her cheek. She wiped it away as Sean spoke.
    “Harold wasn’t very clear on exactly who you guys were. You know, the ‘Vanguard’? What do you guys do? Are you with the government or something? I’ve never heard of the name.”
    Elise’s lips pooched out, then receded into a thin line drawn across her face. She looked away from Sean and into the blank horizon, her eyes searching, moving back and forth.
    “We handle. . . specific situation such as these. Supernatural cases. Things that normal people can’t handle.”
    “‘Supernatural’?”
    “Don’t wear it out.”
    Sean gestured with his right hand as if swatting away a mosquito. “But, really, you’re going into that mystic part again. So, you know what? How about you cut to the crap and just tell me what you guys do, okay?”
    Elise tilted her head at Sean and stared at him for a long second. And then she stood, still keeping her gaze fixed, “If you’re not going to listen me, you might as well get a second opinion.”
    Sean frowned, looking up at her. Then he followed her gaze to the horizon. He squinted in the dim moonlight. Sean could just barely make out a thin wisp of dust trailing off into the night sky, disappearing into the backdrop of black. There was a car spearheading the cloud of dust, either a large truck or a van, Sean couldn’t tell. It was still a far ways off.
“They’re here, thank God.” Elise put her hands on her hips and stretched. Then she flipped her cowl onto her head, and turned to face Sean. He sat up and stretched too.
    Elise said. “If you want to know more about the Vanguard, it wouldn’t hurt if you met some members of the team.”