by Mary Calmes
I saw them come like those ant hordes I watched on the Discovery Channel once, army ants, and they devoured everything in their path. I remembered the demons Emir and Arcan from Joe’s father’s shop and saw them briefly before they were attacked and consumed by the racers.
And then my stomach lurched and everything started to roll: the air, even the floor, with the strength of the displacement wave Jael was arriving on.
“You have to move back,” Leith said as he gagged and retched, “or we’re dying right now.”
The wave, usually not lethal, would throw off our equilibrium enough that we would be overrun by demons.
“Leith!”
He turned and I grabbed his arm, yanking him down as I rose up.
“Marcus!” he objected.
But I was right: Leith could move Malic, he was the one who could use a wormhole whenever he wanted—he had that strength—and just across the room was enough.
I took my place between him and Jackson. “Together, and don’t stop.”
Ryan was fastest, Jackson was second. I was like Malic, stronger, more brute force than speed, but I had to be the anchor, catching whatever they missed. It was necessary to keep the demons off Leith until Jael came and then away from Jael until he could move Malic. Once they were gone, we could get to the door just like everyone else had and lock them in and close the portal. We just needed to give Jael some time.
“Marcus!”
I couldn’t turn. I only heard, blessedly, my sentinel’s voice behind us.
“I have him! All of you come now!” he commanded.
But he knew there was no way, I knew he did. It was like a wave broke on us, the three of us hacking at a never-ending enemy. The demons that faced us died, but they were replaced in the same second by the next and the next. We had to move back, get out the way we had come in, and close the door. But the longer we stood there, the more I realized it was hopeless. We could inch back, but in the time it would take, we could not keep up the pace. The depths of hell could empty on us there, and eventually we would be overrun and eaten alive. All that could be hoped for was that Leith and Malic and Jael would live.
“Save him!” Ryan screamed, and I heard the tears in his voice, knew he was crying, even as I saw the sword carving up creatures in the corner of my eye.
“Go!” My voice boomed out of me, the pulse again slowing the onslaught for a moment, just enough for Jackson to regain his footing and not go down. We had a moment as the bodies in front of us began to make their own barricade, stacking up, the stench, the blood, the gore making my stomach roll.
“Marot! Jaka! Rindahl! Come to me!”
Jael’s voice called to me, spoke to the primal part of me that was all defender, guardian, warder. But I held my ground because there was no choice.
“Go!” I ordered my sentinel and again felt the rise of nausea as the displacement wave threatened to overwhelm us.
Gathering my strength, I leaped high, taking Ryan and Jackson with me, just enough to lift up over the torrent of creatures flooding the floor and escape the effects of Jael’s removal of Malic and Leith.
“He couldn’t have moved us without being overrun,” I yelled over to my fellow warders. “We saved Leith and Malic.”
“Which is good,” Jackson said before he went limp, dropping like a stone back down toward the demons.
They looked like piranha beneath him, and I knew he was already dead as he plummeted. I had not noticed how much blood he had lost, but I imagined Ryan in that instant, his body shredded, pieces torn away. I could tell, suddenly, by how cold I was that I had to be the same.
“So proud of you,” I managed to yell at Ryan.
But his head was back, and I realized I was cold because I was in the middle of a swirling vortex, the icy wind blasting my skin, the tiny shards of ice flying at me. Ryan, having the same strength as Leith, would take us.
But it was funneling closer and closer, closing, and there was no time. His strength was fading so fast, and I knew, in that second, that all of us could never go. The size, what he could do, was him and one other. He was losing control of it and any second it would snap back like a giant rubber band and suck him, and whoever was closest, through the vortex back to the strongest source of warder power. Back to his hearth. As warders, when we moved it was from one warder to the other, but with lack of consciousness or guidance, the wormhole would empty to the heart of a warder… to their hearth.
Ryan would return to Julian.
Diving, tumbling, I reached Jackson, let go of my swords, turned, wrenched around with all I had left, and pushed.
It was like a sonic blast tore through the room. The wormhole reached, spun, crackled through the air, and sucked up Jackson along with Ryan and was gone.
I took a breath, that content one, the one you take when you know everything is going to be all right, and let it out.
Burning hot razors hit me like a wall. I dissolved. The pain was all there was, and then there was no air, no light, nothing.
VI
I felt the liquid slithering down my throat and opened my eyes. I saw the gold lupine eyes, but I was just too tired to worry about it.
“Warder.”
I rolled my head sideways and saw a man.
“Do you know who I am?”
It was hard to keep my eyes open, but I could see jet black where his eyes should have been. He was an empty vessel, no soul in there at all.
“I’m made, yes?”
My brain, my lawyer brain, never stopped working. So I understood I was looking at a copy of someone else. And if I followed a logical thread, it could only be the missing warder.
“Tarin,” I rasped.
He nodded and gently placed a cloth swollen with liquid on my face. I sucked the fluid from the material, not letting the color or the odor bother me. I couldn’t be made to care. It was wet; that was all I cared about.
“You fell through a hole, warder, and there were lots of those creatures with you.”
Racers. I nodded.
“You’re in pieces,” he told me. “Your face, body—but you don’t need all those things here.”
“Where?” I managed as he moved the cloth, dipped it in a wooden bowl, and let it soak up whatever was in there again.
“The road to Nebo,” he said.
I shook my head. I didn’t know.
“If I can pass through all seven rings, I can ask to be real,” he said, and it was only then I noticed the clothes, the burlap pack, and realized that beside him sat an enormous wolf. “That sentinel, he made me to take Tarin’s place in the world when he locked him up. I was with his hearth, and now I want my own.”
I stared at him.
“The sentinel, he let the demons take me from the hearth, and then the demons threw me away when they saw you and your friends.”
It all seemed logical.
“The water is all you need for now, and there’s a well down the hill. You will have to get to it, because I can’t stay.”
I looked around, and there was nothing but what looked like high grass as far as the eye could see. I was lying beside a fire, small but warm, in a patch that had been burned, maybe. It was a small area.
“You’ve been here, dead, a week, warder.”
A week.
“I can’t wait. I have to go. The wolf says when the hunter comes that I can’t be here.”
He lifted to go, but I reached for him. It took all the strength I had, but I did it.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice broken and full of sand.
“If we cross paths again, you’ll remember this, yes, warder?”
I nodded.
His face was smeared with dirt; his clothes looked sturdy but old. He reminded me of the pictures in the textbooks of the people on the road during the Great Depression. He looked like he belonged to another time, human and in need of help. All except his eyes. His eyes were solid black, no iris, nothing.
“We’re brothers now, warder, yes?”<
br />
Again I nodded, giving him my promise.
“The hunter’s coming. I’m sorry to run, but there’s only me and the wolf, and we have far to go. I hope you live, warder.”
I did too.
“I think if you rise from this ring, from Nebo, you’ll die, warder. Just rest, regain your strength, and maybe follow me.” He pointed, and I saw the dirt road that cut through the grass. “If I see you on your feet, you may join us.”
I stared at him, at his eyes.
“The wolf said to kill you, eat you, take our sustenance, but I said no. I will be a man someday, warder. Men don’t eat other men.”
“No.”
He rose then, hand on the wolf’s ruff, and I watched them walk away. They didn’t look back, and when they walked around a small bend, I lost sight of them. The wind, I realized, was slowly rising, making it impossible to hear anything.
I closed my eyes.
The hunter was coming.
Christ.
I just hoped it would be fast. I didn’t… want… to….
Joe.
My body jolted painfully, and I realized that broken did not cover it. I doubted that I could move at all.
I had fallen through a warder void. I must have killed racers on the way down, and so the hole opened and this time instead of me stepping aside to drop a dead demon in, I had been sucked in. But Tarin, the fake warder, the doppelganger, had seen me fall. He and the wolf. They had dragged me away from the racers and put me beside the fire.
A week.
And from one level of hell to the other, time moved differently. There was no way of telling how long I had been there, what I had missed.
From what he said, I was broken, had been dead. Maybe there wasn’t enough to look at. Maybe I couldn’t pass for human anymore. Maybe Joe couldn’t love what was left.
There were no tears; I had nothing to make them with. I could only lay there, limp and lifeless, and wait.
I closed my eyes.
It was dark in a way that I could not see my hand in front of my face, and with the fire gone, it was cold. But I had been colder in a tent in Yosemite. I had been in more pain when I had fought at Jael’s side when we cleared a nest of creed demons and a tusk had been driven through my back. I had been more scared when I thought Malic was going to die in my arms. There were worse things, so I concentrated on my own breath. In and out, rise and fall. I just needed to get up. I would either die or I would sit. One or the other would happen. That was just logical. Leith would have been so proud.
There was no mistaking the sound of footsteps and as frightened as I was—I didn’t want to be devoured, it hadn’t been any fun the first time—I was really only focused on how empty my stomach was.
“Marcus!” came the scream, and I could hear the fury in it, the anger, the hopelessness, and the pain.
I could not imagine a better sound.
“Marcus!”
I had to swallow hard, had to get my voice to work, to rise.
The hunter was there.
In the predawn, the gunmetal-colored sky, I saw huge black feathered wings, felt the stirring of the stagnant air, the breeze on my face.
Only a whisper the first time, all I could do.
“Marcus!” he called again in frustration, the sound rising to a shriek, the struggle to hold onto the very last desperate shred of something.
I waited, gathered myself, breathed out, in, and used my voice for the second most important time in my life, the first being when I said I do to Joe.
“Raphael!” I called and just for a second I thought he was a fallen angel and so was I.
The darkness was like rain clouds over me, and then they parted, and an enormous black feather was caught between falling and floating before it drifted down, down, and came to rest beside me. And so did he.
Looking up, I found myself swallowed in smoky topaz, glittering and dark. I smiled slowly. “Wings?”
He cleared his throat. “Don’t tell Jackson.”
“I think,” I whispered, “he’d love them.”
He was squinting, working hard not to break down. Big, badass demon hunter, he shouldn’t have cried.
“Can you take me home?”
He nodded as the tears rolled down his cheeks.
I would have reached for him, comforted him, but I had done so much already. I had to rest.
He told me to.
It felt like being dropped into the deep end of a pool. I hit, went under, and was swallowed in liquid. When my eyes finally fluttered open, I saw Jael.
“Don’t drown me,” I groaned, knowing instantly where I was.
The bathtub in the castle masquerading as a house that he had in Sausalito, in the master bedroom; it could pass for a small pool. The man had me submerged, and he was purifying the water, pulling God knew what out of me.
I growled.
You would have thought I gave him a million dollars the way he smiled at me, dropped to his knees beside the tub, and put his hands on my face.
“Sonofabitch,” he barked.
I grunted.
“Marot.”
I shook my head at him. Not today.
“Marcus,” he exhaled, hands so gentle on my skin, holding me like I was fragile. “You are an extraordinary man.”
“All”—I coughed to get my voice working—“All warders are.”
He shook his head. “No, Marcus, you have strength that I’ve never seen. There are reserves in you I didn’t know a warder could have. You saved us all: you put us all before yourself, and then you lived on top of it.”
The big question. “How long was I gone?”
“Six months.”
Jesus.
“Everything will be all right,” he promised, which was not even logical.
“Joe,” I said.
“Joe is well, we check on him.”
“You don’t see him?”
“He doesn’t want to see us. It’s been very painful for him. He knows you’re alive because the house is still sealed, the branding touch hasn’t left him, but the not knowing….”
That would have been hardest for Joe, the uncertainty and the fact that I had put others before him. Because I could have reached him, could have been safe, could have left and gotten home. But I had placed Malic before him. Jackson and Leith before him. Ryan. How could I ever say that he was all there was… when he had not been.
“Did you tell him you found me?”
“No, I wanted you to tell him when you were ready. Or I can go get him right—”
“I’m disfigured, right?”
He frowned.
“Just tell me.”
“No, but why would that matter? Joe loves the man, not the wrapping.”
“You think just because Joe’s blind that he doesn’t care what I feel like when he touches me?”
His smile was warm as he rose and left the room. He returned with a hand-held mirror, and when he turned it on me, without warning, I realized instantly that I was looking at my own face.
I looked like me. My wide-set dark brown eyes, and my long, straight nose, full lips, high cheekbones, and thick eyebrows were familiar, and it was a relief. I could look down at my own body and see the gouges, the scars, the tears, and the bruises. It would take time, but I would be perfect before I laid eyes on Joseph Locke again.
“We should call him now, Marcus.”
I shook my head. I didn’t even have the strength to protect him. What use was I to him?
“You’re wrong,” was all Jael said.
But I didn’t want to fight. My life had to wait until I was ready.
VII
I talked to Jael, but I wasn’t ready to see anyone else. Even Raphael, who I had already seen, I didn’t want to visit me again.
Jael and I walked his property with his Irish wolfhounds, and after two weeks I could throw a stick for the dogs, and after one more I could run with them. Food, water, exercise—it took time, but I built back up.
Malic had done an amazing thing and gone to Helene Kessler and told her that I needed an extended leave of absence. When she had asked for particulars, he told her only that I was missing. Would she accept that? Apparently she had. He would update her when he knew anything. There was nothing she could do. All the appropriate authorities had been contacted, and that was all. Her willingness to take his word and wait had impressed him, Jael told me. Helene Kessler, Jael thought, could handle the truth when I was ready. She already had faith in me; he felt that was an excellent foundation to build on. She was quite a woman, quite a human being, period. I was betting on her being able to handle the truth.
