Hard to Handle

by Christine Warren

  “No one ever told them to me,” he protested.

  “There didn’t seem a need. Other men in the family had a touch after him without another one being chosen. No one thought it would ever happen again. Especially once you were grown. Those that are chosen are chosen early.”

  “I still should have known.”

  “Perhaps, and if I had your sister’s gift, I certainly would not have kept it to myself. I’m sorry, dear. I had no desire to hurt you with this, and no thought that I possibly could.”

  Ash could see the rapid play of emotions making their way across Drum’s face, but even had she had the experience to identify them, she didn’t believe she could have. They passed so quickly she wondered if he could identify them himself.

  “Does that mean that you understand all of this about Darkness and Demons and Guilds and wars?” he asked after a moment.

  “Good heavens, no.” Maddie laughed. “All I know is that there are Wardens and there are Guardians, and it’s their job to protect us from anything that the good Lord might ask them to.” She looked up and caught Ash’s gaze. “And I know that a fire of protection burns behind a Guardian’s eyes.”

  Ash had not thought that the flames visible in the black eyes of her natural form carried over to her human disguise. Or maybe Maddie Drummond saw more than the average human.

  She offered the woman a nod of respect.

  A soft sound came from the girl on the sofa a moment before her blue eyes fluttered open. Her gaze locked on her brother’s face and tears began to stream onto her cheeks. “Michael. Michael, it was so horrible. So dark and so cold. And so much blood. Everywhere.”

  The broken whispers brought Ash to immediate attention. She stepped close and leaned down to hear Maeve better. “What did you see, Maeve? Where was the cold, dark place?”

  “Back off, Guardian,” Drum growled, gathering his sister into his arms and sliding down to sit beside her. “Give her a minute, for fuck’s sake. Can’t you see she’s crying?”

  “Michael! Language!”

  Maddie’s outrage at least made Drum stop glaring at Ash. He turned all his attention back to his sister and used a corner of the blanket to dry her tears. “Hush, Mae, love. You’re home safe. Nothing is going to hurt you.”

  Ash bit back her anger and reminded herself that Drum still did not understand the true extent of the threat posed by the Darkness. If he did, he would not think her urgency so intrusive.

  She tried to explain. “I can see that Maeve’s vision has frightened her, but that is why it is so important that she share it. We cannot hope to stop what we are not prepared to face. I only wish—”

  “I don’t care about your wishes! I care about my sister, my family, and right now you’re making their fear worse. Get out. I don’t have time for you. I’ll deal with you later.”

  “I am trying to ensure that there is a later, Michael Drummond.” Ash bit the words out, frustration closing a fist around her throat. “I would not be here if you, your sister, your family, and the rest of your bloody country were not in imminent danger. Do you understand that? A Guardian is not called from sleep unless the threat is so dire that the battle would be lost without us. That is the truth, but right now I do not even know where the battle will be fought. Your sister might be the only one who can tell me. Now, would you rather protect her from me? Or from those who would harm both her and every other human around you?”

  “Michael, it’s all right.” Maeve still spoke softly, and her words held both tears and exhaustion behind the low tones. She curled a hand around her brother’s wrist and patted in reassurance. “Ash is right. So many people could die. What I saw…” She shuddered, and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “It was awful. If those things are what’s in store for us, Ash will need every advantage she can get. I can’t even describe to you what they were like. I tried to look, but it was like staring at the sun. My eyes would close whether I wanted them to or not. I just know that their presence made me sick to my stomach and so afraid I couldn’t move. Couldn’t even scream. I just stood there and watched while they tore the world into little bloody pieces.”

  Ash cursed under her breath in Ancient Sumerian. She had the very bad feeling that Maeve was describing more than the ordinary servants of Darkness, that she had seen one of the Seven itself. Humans did not look upon those Demons and walk away. More powerful than any entity to ever cross into the mortal plane, the Seven could join together to give life to the Darkness itself. They were the reason the first Guardians had ever been summoned. Since their defeat, they had been kept imprisoned in separate, extradimensional planes that existed only to contain their evil. If one or more had escaped, human deaths were inevitable until they could be defeated and taken captive once more.

  “Maeve, I need you to tell me what you saw,” Ash said with quiet insistence. “Please. Start at the beginning.”

  Maeve shook her head. “There was no beginning. I told you, my visions don’t play like a film inside my head. They’re just images that flash into my mind one after the other, but they’re not joined together, and they’re not always in order. Besides, I thought you’d want to hear about the other Guardians first.”

  Ash drew up in shock. “Other Guardians?”

  “My vision contained four others,” Maeve said. “Two of them were helping you attack that thing, but there were another two someplace else who were also somehow supporting what you were doing. I’m not sure I understand it, but the visions don’t always make sense to me.”

  Ash almost choked on her own surprise. “You mean that you saw three Guardians together in one place?”

  “Yes, and I think there were Wardens there. I mean, these were women, but they seemed linked to the Guardians somehow, and they were using magic to fight against some other people in these strange, black robes.”

  Shock after shock exploded in Ash’s mind like little land mines of revelation. Her archive of information inherited upon her summoning told her that what Maeve described was impossible. A Guardian worked alone unless the threat was so large he had to call on one of his brothers for aid. For three to join forces against one foe could only mean that one of the Seven had not only escaped its prison, it had regained its full strength on the mortal plane. The thought was enough to make even a Guardian go pale.

  The vision also indicated that more unexpected changes to tradition had occurred in recent days than just the summoning of a female Guardian and the existence of an untrained Warden. Maeve had seen female Wardens, which were uncommon to begin with, linked in service to active Guardians. As far as Ash knew, such a thing only happened when those Wardens were destined to be their Guardians’ mates, and multiple Guardians had not mated at the same time since the very first among their kind.

  Everything Ash thought she knew was being called into question by a single human female’s precognitive vision. Confusion seemed to well up inside her until she feared she would drown. Instinct urged her to trust in what Maeve was telling her, but its voice almost disappeared beneath the shouting of her logical mind. How much stock could she really place in the accuracy of a girl who had never been identified by the Guild, let alone gotten proper training in how to handle and interpret the images she received?

  Ash hadn’t realized she was shaking her head until Maddie placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I know how you feel, Guardian. The first time Maeve fainted, I thought it was because she had a touch of the flu. But then she opened her eyes and told me, as plain and certain as Sunday roast, that her big sister Síle would be coming home from school in a white car with a red fella and would be getting married before Brigid’s Day. And sure enough, on the very next Saturday what should happen but that Síle pulls up to the house in Colin Faraday’s white car and introduces that sweet, ginger boy as her future husband. Maeve scattered rose petals down the aisle before them on the last Saturday of January.”

  It occurred to Ash to point out that predicting an engagement and wedding was a far cry from
predicting a possible apocalypse, but she understood Maddie’s meaning. Maeve’s family had faith in the accuracy of her visions, and they wanted to assure Ash that she could trust in them, as well; but Ash could not help but remember everything at stake. Trusting in the gifts of a human woman she had met less than twenty-four hours ago would mean gambling for stakes that were murderously high.

  “I’m never wrong,” Maeve said softly, bringing Ash’s attention back to her. “Often enough I’ve wished I was. I understand, though. Maybe there’s a way to get proof about what I saw. If Michael could use his gift to find another Guardian, would that make you feel better?”

  Drum protested. “Wait a minute. I never said I had any intention of trying such a thing. Didn’t anyone notice that the last time I tried to locate a person, the only thing my bloody gift showed me was a broken-down pile of stone?”

  “Not true.” Ash saw Drum’s frustration, along with his anger at those around him who continued to push him into using his sight. She also saw that underneath the others, the emotion that most continued to plague him was fear. She could not pretend to understand his relationship with the power inside him, but Maeve was correct that it might be the only thing at this point that could save them. Ash caught his eyes as she reminded him, “It showed me the identity of my Warden.”

  This time when Drum released a long and heartfelt string of curses, he spoke them in Irish. His mother pressed her lips together and gave him a sour look. “Just because I can’t understand exactly what you’re saying doesn’t mean you should be saying it under my roof, Michael Stephen. I’ll thank you to watch your language—both your languages—in my presence, boyo.”

  Drum lapsed into brooding silence.

  Ash shared his frustration. She enjoyed their current predicament no more than he. A Guardian had not been designed to sit idly by while danger loomed, nor to rely on the aid of others before taking action against the enemy. The Wardens who served them might control their sleeping and waking, but once a Guardian was summoned, members of the Guild became support staff rather than the key to a mission’s success. It chafed her to ask him to use his gift as much as it chafed Drum to use it, but he could likely read her emotions and know her thoughts better than she did his.

  In the end, it mattered not what either of them wanted. It mattered that the Darkness be stopped.

  “I need to know,” Ash said. “I need to know if the Guardians your sister has seen have already awoken. If they have, then I need to know where they are, and if they have not, then I need to know that as well so I may search for them myself. Maeve has seen what is at stake, and I know the extent of the danger that awaits. You must help me, Michael Drummond, or all will be lost.”

  He stared at her for several long seconds that seemed to stretch into lifetimes. His anger was obvious in the narrowing of his eyes and the clenching of his jaw. In that moment, she knew he hated her, and deep inside something strange and unfamiliar cringed and wailed at the thought.

  “Fine,” he bit out, the capitulation bitter and familiar. “I’ll do it, on one condition. If I tell you where to find these other Guardians, you go after them alone. You leave me and my family and you forget that we even exist.”

  Maeve made a soft sound of distress. “Michael, she can’t do that. I told you that my vision last night said we have to work together—”

  He cut her off with a sharp shake of his head and a raised palm. “No. That was last night. You know as well as I do that every choice we make creates changes in the possible future. What we did today may have made that last vision obsolete. In the new one you said you saw the Guardians and female Wardens using magic. The only Guardian here is her, and even if she’s right that I’m a Warden, I’m sure as f-feck not female.”

  It took a force of will for Ash to keep her temper. Fury might be one of the Guardians’ very few emotions, but they felt it deeply. Drum might see himself as only refusing to be dragged into something he had never asked for, but to Ash his choice amounted to a betrayal. For him to turn his back on his duty as a Warden served to strengthen the enemy and weaken the forces of the Light.

  It also meant that the only things he felt when he looked at her were anger and dislike.

  He had placed her between the sword and the executioner’s axe. In order to have any hope of victory, she would have to concede to his terms, leaving her without a Warden to aid her cause. She had to grit her teeth and take a very deep breath before she could force herself to agree.

  She barely managed the nod.

  Drum’s was equally abrupt. Once he gave in, he pushed to his feet and turned to leave. “We’ll do this outside. My sisters are bringing their families for dinner in a few hours. I don’t want any trace of this to touch them.”

  Ash straightened her shoulders and trailed after him. She did not wish a single particle of Darkness to affect his family, either. That was why she had demanded his assistance.

  “Ash, do you need my help?” Maeve called softly from her nest on the sofa. “He needed to touch you to look for the Warden…?”

  “No.” Ash shook her head. “He knows what a Guardian is. If he has the ability to find them, he’ll be able to do it without you showing him what you saw.”

  Maeve nodded, her face still troubled with worry. Ash ignored the urge to offer comfort. She didn’t think she had any to give. Quietly, she traced Drum’s steps out to the kitchen and drew the Drummonds’ door closed behind her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Drum stepped out of his mother’s house for the third time that day. Unlike on the last occasion, he was followed not by a relentless Guardian intent on using him to further her own ends but by the sound of laughter, happy chatter, and familiar voices raised in song. His family remained inside to overflow the bounds of the sitting room and occupy every seat they could scrounge together. Bellies were full, drinks still flowed, and the Drummond clan had settled in for an impromptu bit of craic.

  He had to get away for a moment.

  Gravel and crushed stone crunched beneath his boots as he crossed the drive and open parking area. A dry stone wall, built generations before his great-grandfather had first farmed the fields beyond, lay a few yards past the barn his father had converted to a garage when he opened his own business as a mechanic. The fields had been leased to the neighbors for more than twenty years now, and while Drummonds still crawled all over the place, none of them made their living tilling soil and planting seed. A lot had changed.

  They still maintained the section of wall though, and Drum leaned his arms upon it as he gazed out onto the starlit night. He drew in a lungful of crisp, fresh country air, held it for a moment, then blew it out in a slow, steady stream. The tension in his gut didn’t follow. It stayed put, a tight fist kneading in his belly. He’d had a rough evening.

  He snorted at his own mental understatement. Rough was one word for it, but probably not the most accurate one. It had started with his failed search for the Guardians, and even the company of his tight-knit family hadn’t been able to salvage it. He’d been trapped by his own words and his own failure. Because he hadn’t been able to point Ash toward the others of her kind, he would be forced to continue working at her side.

  When he had opened his eyes after his search attempt, the temptation to lie had nearly pulled him under. His first thought had been that she couldn’t read his mind. She had no idea what he had seen or not seen. He could have made up anything, sent her on a wild-goose chase to the deepest part of the Amazon or the most remote point on the Mongolian steppes. She wouldn’t know the difference until it was too late. His lips had parted, his tongue poised to utter the words that would free him from this surrealistic nightmare of obligation, but she met his eyes steadily, her expression calm but expectant, and he hadn’t been able to do it.

  He told her exactly what he had seen.

  “I can see four,” he said in a flat tone. “Maeve got that right. Four are up and moving. Two more statues, but they’re still frozen.” He saw
triumph and excitement start to fill her and hurried to finish. “But there’s no way on earth I can tell you where to find them. Just not here. Not in Ireland. But I imagine that’s as helpful as telling you they’re not on Mars. Maybe at least one is in America, because that certainly narrows it down.”

  Ash grunted and closed her eyes, her chin dropping to her chest as she absorbed the blow. After a moment, she looked up and her expression had cleared to show nothing but firm resolve. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” he spat. “I didn’t find a fucking thing. It looks like this is the start of a beautiful bloody disaster.”

  Then he had stomped back into the house, leaving her behind in the deserted garage and letting the kitchen door slam behind him.

  She hadn’t deserved that. Regret filled him. She bore no responsibility for his failure. Even if he’d told her not to expect any answers, his logical mind understood why she had taken the chance, that she hadn’t had any choice. Ash wasn’t the reason he’d found himself in such a situation; that was on fate. Someone up above was having one hell of a laugh at his expense.

  MICHAEL STEPHEN DRUMMOND, WARDEN

  INCOMPETENT PSYCHIC. THINGS NOT FOUND. ONE SPELL, ACCIDENTALLY CAST.

  He should get himself a Web site, drum up some business, in case the whole publican gig fell through.

  God’s mercy, what a mess.

  And as if the whole gargoyles, demons, magic, end-of-the-world situation wasn’t complicated enough, he had discovered that not even rage, hatred, or bitter resentment could hammer so much as a dent in his attraction to the inhumanly beautiful Ash.

  He felt ridiculous. The woman didn’t even belong to his bloody species, and he couldn’t keep his eyes or his mind off her. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if calling her a woman was the appropriate terminology. After all, didn’t the word imply a humanity that the female Guardian had never claimed to possess? There was no doubt she was female, though, so he supposed the question didn’t much matter. Ash was female, Drum was male, and his hormones wasted no opportunity in reminding him of the relationship between those two facts.