The Last Guardian (Ch. 6)

The Last Guardian

Chapter 6

The knock on Harry's door was loud and persistent, as if the person knocking didn’t have time to wait. The rain had started to fall again, drumming loudly against the motel overhang. Harry set down the TV remote and crossed the threadbare carpet. He already knew who was on the other side of the door.

Lana stood under the flickering yellow porch light, her hair slicked with rain. Her eyes were wide with something that hovered between annoyance and frustration. All five feet of her was shivering in her wet sweater and denim jeans. 

“Hey,” Harry said, trying to sound casual. He hadn’t known Lana for long, but he knew enough to know that she didn’t like being made a fuss over. He stepped aside to let her in. “You wanna come in?”

Lana didn’t hesitate and immediately came inside. She scanned the room automatically and wrinkled her nose cutely. The old motel rooms had the persistent smell of old cigarette smoke. After a moment, she sighed and sat on the edge of Harry’s bed, the mattress creaking under her delicate weight. She didn’t take off her jacket.

Harry closed the door behind her. “Bad day?” he asked, settling on the other side of the bed with more space between them than usual. Lana looked at her knees, and Harry touched her shoulder and pumped some of his magic into her. Her clothes began steaming as they dried, and her hair whipped around wildly as if caught by a huge gust of warm wind. A second later, Lana was warm and completely dry. She smiled at him gratefully. 

“Remember when I told you about Jason?” she said. Her voice was flat. It wasn’t the cheery, teasing tone she often used when they were hanging out in her apartment, nor was it the gentle warmth she reserved for close friends.

Harry looked at her strangely. He did remember. He was the guy she had been dating while living in France. As far as Harry knew, he was supposed to be on a different continent, far from Kansas.

“Yeah,” Harry answered. “The guy from Paris.” He watched her carefully. “What about him?”

“He’s here,” she said, looking up at Harry with wide eyes. “He’s in Smallville.”

Harry blinked. “Are you serious?” His first instinct was to laugh. Smallville was the kind of place people only ended up in by accident or maybe by a supernatural force. However, Lana wasn’t joking. Her hands gripped her knees so hard that her knuckles began to turn white.

“He just showed up at the Talon today,” Lana continued. “No warning, no nothing. He just showed up out of the blue.”

Harry searched her face. “Really?” he asked, and Lana nodded. 

“It was so bizarre.” She shook her head, trying to make sense of it herself. “He wants to pretend nothing’s changed. He wants to pick up where we left off, back when I was still in Paris and things were …” She stopped again, squeezing her eyes shut for a second. “Less complicated.”

Harry let out a low whistle. “That’s… a bit much.”

“Yeah,” Lana agreed. “He thinks we’re still together.” Her laughter sounded brittle. “He’s not dangerous. He’s just… stubborn.”

Harry watched her, the way her body curled in on itself. He felt a surge of protectiveness that surprised him. “Are you sure he’s not dangerous?” Harry asked. Following someone across continents wasn’t usually a sign of mental stability. 

“No. He just … He looked so angry for a second, and then he stopped himself. He smiled and said that he hoped we could still be friends. I mean … Who follows someone home like that?” Lana asked, her voice going up a few octaves. 

Harry nodded. He stretched his arm along the back of the bed, not quite touching her. “Do you want me to talk to him?” he asked. He’d make sure the guy stayed away if Lana didn’t want him around. 

Lana managed a small smile. “No, it’s okay. I just needed to talk to someone who wouldn’t think I’m overreacting.” She exhaled, the stress draining out of her shoulders. “Thank you.”

They sat in silence for a while, the rain providing a steady background noise. Harry tried to imagine what Jason was thinking. He probably didn’t understand how creepy it was to do what he was doing, and he probably didn’t know that he was freaking Lana out. He thought about telling her that she was safe as long as he was around, and that he’d never let anything happen to her. However, judging by the way she instinctively scooched closer to him, he had a feeling that she already knew that. Instead, he reached for her hand. She let him take it. He squeezed gently, and she squeezed back.

“People can be really dumb about love,” Harry said at last. “Sometimes it makes them do things that don’t make sense. But you don’t owe him anything.”

Lana’s eyes flicked up. She studied his face for a moment, then nodded. “I know.”

Harry felt her relax, just a little. He smiled brightly at her, and Lana’s cheeks turned a little pink. “You want to go get something to eat? There’s a place down the street that serves strawberry pie.”

Lana looked at him sideways. “Pie? At this hour?”

He shrugged. “I’m a growing boy.”

She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling for real now. “Let’s go, then. I can’t sleep anyway.”

The Last Guardian

Harry woke up to the wet slap of his ceiling leaking. Another drop fell, hit the floor, and added to the growing wet spot on his musty carpet. He stared at it from his place on the saggy mattress, one hand under his head, the other rubbing his sleepy eyes. The mini fridge door was open again. For some reason, it liked to open itself at random moments. It smelled like sour milk, even though it only held a two-liter bottle of orange soda and a half-eaten gas station burrito. Harry could have fixed the leak or the fridge with a flick of his will, but he didn’t bother. The owner of the motel wasn’t the nicest person, and Harry wasn’t eager to do him any favors. 

He flopped an arm across his eyes and groaned. Light from the cracked window speared his eyelids. He rolled away from it and grabbed the newspaper he’d bought while he and Lana were out eating pie the night before. The headline was about a tornado that had torn a strip out of Oklahoma, but the story next to it was better. “Miami Drug Kingpin Busted in Major Sting,” the headline screamed. The subheader was pure tabloid. “Federal agents say massive South American cartel may retaliate.” Harry flipped the page and read the list of seized assets. There were several million in cash, a dozen gold-plated machine guns, a speedboat, a dozen luxury cars, and two cheetah cubs. The cheetahs were going to a zoo, and the kingpin was going to prison for life.

Harry grinned and chuckled. “That’s one way to make a living,” he said, and tossed the paper aside. The new cell phone that Lana insisted he buy vibrated on the nightstand. It was Lana. She texted a photo of herself in front of the Talon. Her tongue was out and her eyes were crossed. Harry chuckled and sent her a text. Lana had found it hilarious when she discovered that he had never used a cell phone before. Thankfully, she was more than willing to teach him how to properly use it. 

Harry texted her back. “Looking good!” He didn’t wait for the reply. Instead, he swung his legs off the mattress and padded across the gross carpet. He looked around his motel room. He hated it. The walls were nicotine yellow. The sheets were industrial-grade polyester. The TV remote was chained to the nightstand with a piece of twisted wire. His only real possession here was a battered backpack stuffed with a few meager possessions.

He needed money. A lot of it. Harry already had a plan, but it would take start-up capital. Even with his powers, some things required folding green currency. He needed school supplies, a car, and most importantly, first and last month’s rent on something that didn’t smell like death. Harry could have conjured a stack of bills in a second, but he had a sneaking suspicion that anything more than a few hundred here and there would eventually get noticed. 

He opened the backpack, reached into the side pocket, and pulled out a handful of coins and wrinkled bills. He counted it. It was enough for breakfast, and maybe lunch if he skipped coffee. He sighed, then looked at his reflection in the dirty window. His hair was messier than ever. He ran a hand through it and frowned. His face had sharpened since coming to Smallville. His jawline had hardened, and his eyes were almost glowing with green. He looked older than he had before, but still like himself.

Harry sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the peeling wallpaper. He thought about the Miami drug lord, the millions in seized assets, and the string of events that led to a man winding up in a cell. There was always more money, and always more bad guys. Harry smiled to himself. It could be an opportunity to do good and get rewarded.

Harry concentrated, and his body flared green. He was suddenly clean and wearing new, crisp clothing. He placed his phone on the table. He didn’t want anyone, not even Lana, to know where he was going. Harry stood in the middle of the room, closed his eyes, and vanished. The air popped where he had been.

He reappeared thirty thousand feet above the Gulf of Mexico. The wind lashed his face and whipped his hair straight back. The sky was so blue it almost hurt to look at it. Harry flexed his will and shot south. He left a wake of green light behind him. Clouds blurred past in seconds. He dropped lower, letting the heat and pressure of the air wrap around his body. His shirt flapped and nearly ripped away. He laughed, and the sound was whipped away by the hurricane-force wind. In less than ten minutes, he was over South America. He slowed to a hover, suspended two miles above a vast tangle of green rainforest. The land below was veined with rivers, dirt roads, and smoke rising from small towns. He could feel the billions of living things below. Every bird, every mosquito, every mind. Harry let his consciousness open wide.

At first, it was noise. Thoughts layered over each other. Memories, wishes, fear, and hunger were all a tangled mess. He filtered it, scanning for what he was looking for. He was looking for greed and evil, and he quickly found it. The mind of a man at the center of a vast illegal empire sprang out at him. The local drug lord was a very naughty boy.

Harry smirked, plummeted, then slowed to a stop a hundred feet above the jungle canopy. The compound was easy to find. It was a perfect square of cleared land surrounded by double fences and primitive guard towers. There were a dozen old trucks, three helicopters, and at least forty men with guns. In the center of the compound was a house the size of a palace. The windows were mirrored, and there was a pool in the shape of a palm tree. Harry rolled his eyes.

He watched the men for a minute. Some patrolled the fence line, some smoked under the shadow of the main house, and some lounged near the pool, rifles propped against plastic chairs. He listened in. Their Spanish slang was difficult to understand, but the intent was clear. They were on high alert. They expected an attack. Just not from above. The guards didn’t see him. Nobody looked up. Harry counted four on the main roof, two with binoculars. There was one watching the long driveway from a second-story balcony, and five more in the back, smoking under the sloping awning of a carport. He scanned for security cameras and found a dozen, all aimed at the obvious approaches. There was no blind spot.

Harry floated, invisible, above the main house. He closed his eyes and reached for the mind he’d marked earlier. It was the boss. The man was in his office, screaming into a satellite phone, veins bulging in his neck. Harry saw the man’s face. He wore a gold chain, and a thick mustache covered his upper lip. The boss was furious. One of his shipments had vanished in Florida. Someone was going to pay. Harry let the man’s thoughts flicker through him. He saw stacks of cash, rooms full of guns, and a vault buried deep within the bowels of the mansion. He opened his eyes and smiled. He knew where the money was.

He drifted down and stared through the window of the drug lord’s gaudy office. The drug lord was alone, pacing in front of a huge desk. The walls were covered in animal heads and paintings of nude women. Harry silently apparated in just as the man threw the phone against the wall. The man’s rage spiked. He screamed for his guards. Three men ran in, guns drawn. Harry listened as the boss barked orders and locked down the house. He told them to prepare the helicopter and to find out who in Miami had stolen his money. The guards nodded, then hurried out.

The drug lord reached under his desk and pressed something. A panel in the floor slid open, revealing a hidden staircase. The boss grabbed a pistol from a drawer and stomped down the steps. Harry followed, invisible and silent. He was getting the hang of the whole ghost routine.

The staircase led to a vault door at the bottom. The boss unlocked it with a fingerprint and a code. Inside was a room piled high with brown cardboard boxes. Each box was filled to the brim with bricks of cash. They were bundles of American one-hundred-dollar bills, hundreds stacked twelve feet high. There were also stacks of passports, piles of gold coins, and a suitcase full of expensive watches. The boss fell to his knees, scooped up a handful of money, and pressed it to his face. Harry almost laughed.

A security camera tracked the boss’s every move. Harry traced the camera feed. It went to a small room above, where a pair of bored guards watched rows of screens. Harry reached out with his will and gently put both men to sleep. They slumped over, drooling on their keyboards. He turned his attention back to the boss. With just a thought, Harry vaporized the security camera. He reached out and used his magic to rapidly lift the drug lord off his feet. Before he could even scream, his head smacked into the metal roof of the vault. He dropped down to the ground, completely unconscious. “Sorry,” Harry said, “but I need this more than you do.”

Harry then waved his hand, sending every single box, gold coin, and watch to his motel room. He then waved his hand again and vanished all the passports. He paused, then looked at the man one more time. “Maybe try a different line of work,” he said with a shake of his head. Unfortunately, the boss was out like a light and would never hear Harry’s wise words of wisdom. 

Just as Harry finished, someone must have discovered the sleeping guards and the cut camera feed because loud alarms started blaring. He knew it was probably a good time to leave. He vanished in a flash of green, leaving behind a completely empty vault. 

The Last Guardian

Lana pulled into the motel parking lot and eyed the peeling number on Harry’s motel door. The wind rattled the sign above the office, the “O” in “MOTEL” swinging by a thread of wire. The lot was nearly empty. Only a single rusted pickup truck shared the space. She climbed out and closed her door. The air smelled like cow manure, which wasn’t out of the ordinary for Smallville. Lana squared her shoulders, crossed the parking lot, and knocked.

There was a rustling inside, and the curtain beside the door twitched. Harry’s green eye peeked through the gap, then vanished. Lana frowned. He’d never been so cagey before. She knocked again, louder. The doorknob rattled, but the door didn’t open. “Harry?” she called out. “Are you naked in there, or are you just hiding from your adoring fans?” she teased. 

There was no answer. Instead, a flash of light hit her in the face. There was a split-second of blinding green, and then she was somewhere else. Her ears rang. The soles of her shoes hit cheap carpet, and she stumbled forward, losing her balance. Harry caught her around the waist before she faceplanted. “Sorry,” he said. His hand lingered a little too long, but she didn’t pull away.

“Warn me next time,” she muttered, smoothing her skirt. She blinked, waiting for her vision to clear. When it did, she nearly choked. There were boxes stacked up wall to wall. The motel room looked like an overflowing post office, except every box was bursting with cash. The carpet was buried, and the bed was a mountain of green paper. There was barely room to move. A gold bar gleamed from a stack in the corner. A hundred-dollar bill fluttered to her feet.

She turned slowly and deliberately to Harry. “Harry?” she asked. Her voice was dangerously calm.

He shot her a cute smile that made her belly flutter. “Yes, Lana?”

She folded her arms and gave him the look she reserved for people about to flunk algebra. “Did you rob a bank?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No, just a cartel. So, not technically a bank, but close enough.” He picked up a wad of bills and tossed it from hand to hand.

Lana stared at the stacks. “This is cartel money? That’s so much worse, Harry.”

He shrugged, then grinned wider. “I was careful. Nobody saw me. Nobody’s ever going to trace it here.” He tossed the bills onto the pile, where they landed with a soft fwap.

Lana walked the perimeter of the room, touching the boxes with one finger. The sheer amount of money made her dizzy. She stopped at the gold bar and lifted it. It weighed more than she expected. She turned back to him. “They’re going to come looking for this. They’ll find you. What if they hurt you?” she asked, sounding genuinely concerned. 

Harry rolled his eyes with a smile. “They don’t even know who to look for, and even if they did find out by some miracle, it’s not like they can do anything. I’m pretty hard to hurt these days.” He flexed his arm for effect. The sleeve of his shirt bulged. Lana resisted the urge to poke it.

She set the bar down and grabbed a loose stack of hundreds. She fanned them, letting the air tickle her nose. “I don’t even know how much is here,” she said. “Do you?”

Harry shook his head. “I have no idea. Several million? Maybe more.”

She whistled. “That’s insane.” She looked at the stack in her hand, then at him. “You can’t just spend this, you know. People will ask questions.”

He shrugged again. “Not if I’m smart about it. I’ll buy some land and start a business.” He looked at her, eyes shining. “Want some?”

Lana felt her cheeks flush. She set the stack back onto the nearest box. “No. That’s… that’s not right.”

He stepped closer to her. He was close enough that she could feel his pleasant breath on her cheek. Lana’s face began to heat up, and the fluttering in her belly got worse. “It’s not like they were going to use it for scholarships,” he said.

She shook her head, but not very hard. “Still. I don’t want to get in trouble.”

Harry grinned, then leaned against the wall. The wall creaked under his weight. “Suit yourself, but if you ever need anything, just ask.” His voice was soft now, almost serious.

She looked down at her hands, then back at the piles. “Maybe just one?” she said, and plucked a brick of cash from the pile. “Bills are expensive.” She smiled with an embarrassed expression. He laughed, and Lana couldn’t help but blush.

“So what are you going to do with all this?” she asked.

He looked at the cash and gold. “I dunno. I’m definitely going to buy a house with a nice piece of land. I’m pretty sick of this stinky motel room,” he told her. Lana couldn’t disagree. The motel was pretty bad. 

She sighed and stuffed the cash into her purse. Lana then stepped closer to him. “Just don’t get caught, okay?”

He smiled kindly at her and nodded. “I won’t,” he promised. He slipped his arms around her slim waist and hugged her. Lana pressed herself tighter to him and rested the side of her head against his muscled chest. She heard his heart thumping loudly, and the sound of it soothed her nerves. “Do you want to help me look for a new place?” he asked her. Lana looked up and smiled widely. 

“That sounds good, but first, we need to go buy school supplies,” she told him with a twinkle in her eyes. Harry groaned, which made her laugh. She took his hand and led him to her car.