The Silver Guardian Bk. 01 Ch. 01

This is my very first ever attempt at writing my own story. I had a lot of fun writing it and think it is at least entertaining and amusing, and I hope you will find it so as well. All sexual interactions are between characters 18 years of age or older. I took inspiration from many sources, as I have been an avid reader of Literotica for over 10 years and most of the stories I read are from various authors who post here. Some of my favorite stories are 'Lady In Red' by Harddaysknight, 'Life as a New Hire' by FinalStand, 'Blazing Glory' by ShadowNinjaX, and Etaski's 'Red Sister series with Sirana'. There are many others I enjoy but those are some of my favorites, and elements and characters from them have provided some of the inspiration for my own attempt at writing. I don't believe for a moment that my writing and story are on any level like theirs, but I hope you enjoy it all the same. This is an original work and is not to be reproduced or posted on any other site or by anyone without my specific authorization. I have planned this as a three-book series. Book 1 is completely written and I am partway through having it edited. I will post more chapters as I become satisfied with them. Comments and feedback are welcome and encouraged, I will try to respond to them quickly as I am able.

A big shout out and thanks to Tex Beethoven for his wonderful editing magic that really polished this up!

All that being said, here we go...

The Silver Guardian

Book 1

Chapter 1

The night was dark with chaos surrounding him and he heard gunshots all around as he scanned his surroundings, searching out threats to himself and his team. They were moving quickly through the streets of the small Iraqi village, trying to reach their rendezvous point. Hawthorn didn't feel good about their prospects.

It was a Friday and they had been on a mission in Mosul when they were ambushed late in the night and had become pinned down. Dante, as point man for Alpha Fire Team, had sensed it right before the ambush dropped like a sledgehammer on his brothers, clipping three of the team before he was able to find them any hard cover so they could return fire without committing instant suicide. His Lt. Commander was on the radio calling in for extraction to a new rendezvous point as quickly as HQ could provide it. In the heat of the battle, Dante's senses were fully alerted and on a razor's edge.

Among his team he was acknowledged as being the most centered, and he thrived in the thick of the battle, never losing control of himself. When pressed, he became hyper focused, with his senses becoming sharper and sharper the worse the situation became. Two enemies leaned out behind the building behind them. Dante squeezed his trigger four times and with two shots to each combatant, one to the heart and one to the head, he secured their flank.

LT roared out to his Point Man that they'd been given a new extraction point two clicks to the east, LT and 'Doc' Holliday the team medic would secure the rest of the team and that Dante was to lead them to the helicopter to get them the fuck out of here.

20 minutes later and after several more brief exchanges of fire, Dante had led his team to evac as he heard the clipped and welcome sounds of the chopper about to land. Dante stopped and crouched next to a low mud brick wall near the clearing and turned to provide fire support for his team, so they could make it into the open bay doors of the chopper.

As the members of his team were loading into the chopper Dante was returning fire, trying to keep the enemy combatants off his team and evac everyone, he heard the LT's voice screaming, "Wolf, get your ass in gear and get in the bird!" using the squad's nickname for Dante.

He turned and out of the corner of his vision saw a cone of flame spitting out towards him. Time seemed to slow as his boots hit the dirt one after another, trying to gain distance from the RPG heading towards the wall he had been firing from, his muscles flexing and power and heat surging through his body as he dove towards safety, trying to escape the oncoming blast... his world erupting in a white flash before darkness overtook him.

***

Dante surged out of bed in the dark, heat rolling off his body, breathing in great gasps. His vision cleared and he saw that he was standing in his bedroom.

"Just a nightmare," he said softly to himself as his breathing gradually came back under control. It had been six months since he was nearly killed in that blast in Mosul. He had awakened two days later in a hospital in Baghdad and learned that the explosion and shrapnel had thrown him twenty feet and left him broken and bleeding. His LT had thrown him on the chopper and within hours he was being operated on to save his life; the field dressings barely keeping him alive and sufficiently stabilized to make it to the operating room in the first place.

His nervous system was a roadmap of pain and suffering. But that was nothing new; growing up in the orphanage followed by six years in the Navy, including three tours and countless missions, had provided him with souvenirs that reminded him constantly of where he'd been. Several bullet wounds, some deep scars and minor cuts from hand to hand combat in hot spots all over the world had left him well acquainted with his oldest friend, pain.

But this time was different, and he knew it almost immediately after awakening in the hospital: his back had been lacerated to shreds from the shrapnel and the blast, and his left knee was immobile and fucked. A large chunk of the wall he had been using for cover had been blown into his knee, dislocating it and tearing the muscles and tendons inside.

A week to stabilize and begin the recovery from the surgery in the hospital, then he was flown back stateside to convalesce at the SEAL base in Little Creek, VA. Dante had always healed exceptionally quickly growing up, and it had served him well in the Teams through the numerous times he'd been injured. He spent the first several weeks on base healing and starting physical therapy, to rebuild and teach himself how to use his left knee again, but he'd already been told he wouldn't be rejoining his Team and he was out of combat for good.

As always he was alone, or at least on his own, just as he'd been since the earliest memories he could recall. Recovery in Little Creek was no different. He'd found a small and temporary place he'd belonged in the Teams, and it was the first and only time he'd ever had a sense of that feeling, but now it was gone and it wouldn't be coming back. Dante knew that for certain, and as much as it hurt, he knew he had to accept it as fact.

Back in his teens, when he wasn't healing or training, he spent all of his time in the small garage of his apartment working and wrenching on his car. It was his pride and joy and one of the few belongings he actually cared about and had hung onto. The deep black 1969 Chevelle SS nearly glowed in the fluorescent light of the garage, the black paint seemingly a mile deep, contrasting with a thin, candy green stripe running down each side to end in a four-leaf clover near the end of the rear quarter panel.

He had bought it his senior year of High School in Boston after he had become emancipated at sixteen to live on his own away from the orphanage he'd always known and hated growing up. He'd spent all of his spare money and time working on it, rebuilding it and modifying it. That had stayed constant during leave times throughout his time in the Navy and by the time of his last deployment he'd nearly finished it.

He had found a LS9 engine from a wrecked Corvette ZR1 that he had spent weeks massaging and dropping into the engine bay, then he married that to a Tremec 6-speed transmission. Over the years he had completely redone the interior with thick plush black carpeting, Recarro black leather seats and a top of the line Focal sound system that was an audiophile's wet dream. The suspension and frame had been completely redone and strengthened and would corner and handle better than nearly anything on the road. His time in the Navy as well as some of the time of his misbegotten youth spent in the orphanage had left him with a very wide set of skills.

He was an electronics genius who could code, hack or build damn near anything which the Navy had helped to sharpen even further, along with his physical fitness and combat skills. Early on as a youth he had fallen in love with music. He had learned how to play the guitar and piano, and that love for music had helped calm him down and enable him to cope with the traumas of the orphanage. It had helped keep him sane throughout the harsh lessons of his life and the meat grinder of combat.

He had spent the last few days on his laptop, sitting in the Chevelle programming the new engine and drivetrain, getting it ready to run and breathe life for the first time since he'd bought it. Hozier's Take Me to Church was playing in the background as he looked up and saw the clock, 1am in the morning and his eyes were burning from staring at the screen on his laptop for so long. Blinking, he closed his laptop and eased out of the car, grimacing as his knee groaned in pain from staying in one position for so long.

Dante had now nearly completed his recovery, but he still walked with a slight limp and likely would do so for the rest of his life. This pain would never go away, but pain was something he'd always lived with, and it even felt like a close companion. It was nothing new to him, so he stomached it. Like everything else in his life; he dealt with it and moved on, accepting there was nothing he could do about it, so he held it all inside.

At 25 he was a very quiet and distant man; he had always kept everyone at arm's length, internalizing everything and wrapping it around his soul as the armor he wore against the world. Standing up and stretching, Dante started making his way in from the garage to his small apartment, which was nearly empty and barely showed signs of habitation. As he started stripping down and getting ready for bed he thought, Tomorrow should be the day to light the beast up, I can't wait to hear her purr and roar. I've been waiting for this for 8 years now and a few more hours won't hurt anything... I can wait. Patience.

Dante lay down and closed his eyes as his mind slowly rolled over what was going on in his life and where he was heading next. He knew in the next few days he would be packing up the Chevelle, leaving Little Creek forever and opening up a new chapter in his life, once again alone and once again one man against the world.

* 6 Months Later *

Dante had spent the last half year traveling across the US with no destination and no goal in mind, wandering from town to town, never staying longer than a week in one place. He would pull up a map of the state on his laptop and surrounding area, almost randomly pick a point and drive there, every mile a memory and the music in his car his only companion as the miles swept by.

He had driven west out of Virginia and had wound up in Texas, taking in the heat and the flat land he was driving through, and had then started working his way north through Oklahoma, into Colorado and up into Wyoming. The most recent marker he'd decided to head to was Whitefish, Montana, a small town in northwest Montana with a population of a little over 7,000 people. He'd grown up in a small Catholic orphanage in Boston but had never really liked big cities; he'd always been more comfortable and at peace either alone in the countryside somewhere or within small towns that had their own sort of charm. He would pick up odd jobs in the places he stopped, normally labor-intensive ones, as stressing his body kept his conditioning up as well as making him feel useful at the end of the day in addition to earning some extra traveling money.

He had accumulated quite a nest egg over the years what with combat pay and his salary from the Navy and rarely having to pay for food or accommodation, plus he had invested wisely in certain stocks that had done quite well for him. He wasn't rich by any stretch of the imagination, but he could do just about anything he wanted within reason. He simply didn't like dipping into his savings too much if he could earn a couple bucks working wherever he stopped. Yesterday he'd crossed into Montana and had stopped and spent the night with his Chevelle parked off the road in a small clearing. He'd slept out under the stars. He had always preferred to sleep outdoors when he could, and had rarely ever felt cold from weather or storms; he had always run hot and had simply ignored the weather without thinking too hard on it throughout his life.

He had been a quiet boy growing up, and had only increased that tendency as a man. He had found that while traveling he would often go days without speaking if he was alone with his thoughts and music, listening to the stereo and the roar of the engine as he drove across the land. This morning was no different as he silently packed his bedroll and small blanket and tossed them into the trunk of his car.

The sun was just beginning to break over the horizon and he luxuriously filled his lungs with the crisp, cool air. The smell of pine, grass, moisture and earth filled his nose and all of nature also excited his other senses as he centered himself to get ready to run through his morning routine and exercises.

He had splurged shortly before leaving Little Creek, and had picked up a pair of handguns to add to the collection of firearms he had collected over his time in the Navy, they were his favorites and were always on him. He had shopped around and found through a local gunsmith a pair of Spartan 1911 Sig Sauer .45ACP handguns and had a custom dual holster made for them. They both fit at the small of his back at 45-degree angles where he could easily reach back and grab either or both of them. One of the few items that Dante had always packed on his journey was plenty of ammunition. He wasn't expecting trouble or a war or anything, and so far his journey had been relatively uneventful, but he loved to shoot, so he kept up his practice every morning that he could, along with his exercise. It was always part of his routine and he never wanted to lose the skill and marksmanship he had developed over the years. It was the same reason he always practiced his hand to hand combat skills as well.

Dante laced up his boots and started running, though his limp slowed him down much more than he'd been used to before Mosul. As he was beginning his 5-mile circuit he chuckled to himself, thinking how most people would think him paranoid and dangerous, but in truth he was a kind and gentle soul who was used to being alone and contentedly living inside his own mind.

On the Teams, he had always easily been the most dangerous and deadly of the men he served with, always perfecting himself and striving to be stronger, faster, smarter, calmer; both to keep himself alive and also to bring his team in alive; but in civilian life he was reserved and stayed away from trouble, only stepping in when he came across someone in need. That was his one weakness, he couldn't fail to help someone in need. Granted if you tried to hurt or take advantage of him he became cold and ruthless, but to women and children and those in need he was as gentle as could be and was truly kind and caring. He had worked hard on developing that side of himself, always feeling he needed a well-honed compassion to balance the other half of himself that excelled in life and death struggles.

His senses were sharp and his body tight save for the constant pain in his knee as he reached the 3-mile mark, turning to head back to the clearing and his black baby waiting for him.

As he came in sight of the Chevelle and his little campground he slowed and walked into a large open area to begin his katas and to spar alone. He spent 30 minutes running through his steps and strikes, flowing from one to another with his eyes closed, visualizing each strike to produce the most impact and devastate and debilitate an imaginary opponent.

His LT on his Teams had always told him that when he watched Dante in action or sparring, if he didn't know how gentle and kind Dante was off the battlefield, that he would never see Dante as anything but lethal and emotionless. That was how Dante fought and how he operated; cold, calculating, lethal and remorseless... the exact opposite of himself and his quiet approach to life away from a fight. Emerging from the memory, Dante opened his eyes and grabbed a few paper targets from the Chevelle and walked a short way into the woods. He spent the final thirty minutes on shooting practice; dominant hand, off hand, both hands, drawing and firing as quickly as he could to keep himself on that razor's edge.

After going through dozens of rounds, he policed his brass and went back to the car to store the spent shells so he could reload them at some later point. He grabbed a small mat and set to cleaning his Spartans.

It was shortly after 7am and he entered the final stage of his morning routine: he sat down in the grass, closed his eyes and worked to find his calm and his centering place to begin his meditation. Slowly the noise and smells of nature faded, and he slipped deep into a place not of this world. He soon felt a wild presence filling his mind, one that had been there for him ever since he was young.

Growing up in Boston in the orphanage he'd always had a wicked sixth sense around him, warning him, urging him on and keeping his senses sharp. Through his time in the Navy and especially on the Teams it had often kept him and his team alive. Several times throughout his life there had been moments where he was at the end of his rope until a sudden rush of heat and power suffused him and gave him the strength and speed to avoid losing his life, this last time being the narrow escape right before the explosion in Mosul.

Growing up, he'd always questioned what it was and why he felt it, but had never found an answer, and most certainly had never discussed or even mentioned it to anyone. Who would he tell? He'd never been close enough to anyone to talk about something as weird as that, and he had no desire to sit in some quack's office and have his brain and psyche picked apart. As he meditated and communed with his spirit presence, he wondered why this undefinable sense had been so much closer to the surface during the past day and which seemed to be growing stronger the deeper he went into Montana.

Dante's breath deepened, and he slowly emerged from his fugue as he opened his eyes and slowly stood up, his knee once again protesting the action. "It's time," said Dante aloud as he got into the Chevelle and fired up its throaty engine. He hoped to make Whitefish by afternoon and approach it from the North. He loved winding through the backroads of the land he found himself in and wanted to spend some time blasting through the forests and mountains that were so beautiful around Whitefish. Plus, something was driving him to go there. He didn't know what or why, but the further into Montana he went, the more and more it felt like a beacon guiding him on. Only time would tell, and he hoped to find out why this journey seemed to be both predestined and important when he got there.

***