Her mouth quirked in a trembling smile. “Besides, I don’t have to grow to love you, Baen. If I didn’t love you already, I wouldn’t be so bloody terrified of losing you.”
“Amare.” His thumbs rubbed the tears from her cheek, his mouth descending to kiss her watery eyes. “You could never lose me, little one. There is no place under the Light where you could go that I would not follow. No, I am afraid you are stuck with me. I will follow you into the heart of Darkness, if I have to.”
Ivy laughed. The sound came out a little gurgly because of those tears she still couldn’t stop, and a little giddy because of all the joy welling up inside her. But hey, those weren’t necessarily bad things, right? Baen didn’t seem to mind.
“You know, if I didn’t totally get where you were coming from, that would sound a little stalkerish,” she teased, pulling him down to kiss him through her wide grin.
“Stalkerish?” He frowned. “What is that?”
She chuckled. “I’ll explain later. Right now, I feel like celebrating. C’mere.”
Baen offered not a word of protest. In fact, he seized control of the kiss she pressed on him, devouring her mouth with unchecked fervor. And here Ivy had thought him passionate before. Apparently, the big Guardian had been holding back on her.
Well, not anymore. He made that clear when he crawled onto the bed on top of her, caging her in with his huge, muscular body. He made her feel small and vulnerable in the most exciting way, because she knew he was strong enough to overpower her and yet too respectful and tender to try.
Unless she asked him to, very, very nicely.
At the moment, she didn’t have that option. He had captured her mouth and showed no signs of yielding the territory. He nipped at her lips, stroked with his tongue, and basically drove her crazier and crazier with each breathless minute that passed. Hmm, she had a sneaking suspicion that two could play at that game.
She surrendered to the kiss, responding to his demands with eager participation, but as busy as her lips were, her hands hated to miss all the fun. They glided down Baen’s sides to the waistband of his jeans, tracing the path of the denim to the button closure in front. A few quick tugs had it popping free, and a few more brought his zipper hissing down.
His erection spilled into her hands, already full and hard and leaking drops of fluid from the tip. She curled her fingers around the shaft and brushed her thumb across the head, rubbing his own moisture back into his heated skin. He groaned into her mouth, a fierce, guttural sound that only made her more determined to shatter his control.
She tightened her fingers, squeezing his cock, and began pumping his length in slow, firm strokes. His groans turned to a low, rumbling growl that vibrated against her chest and made her press her legs together against the tingling arousal at her core. The fact that she could affect him this way enthralled her. To have all his power at her mercy made her head spin and her sex grow slick and eager. She wanted him inside her, but she was having too much fun teasing him to rush things.
Too bad Baen seemed to be in a bit of a hurry.
He gripped the neck of her tank top in two huge fists and tore it to shreds without even bothering to break their kiss. A second later, her panties suffered the same fate, scraps of lace and cotton fluttering to the floor like confetti. She might have cared if she hadn’t been too busy shuddering at the press of his skin against hers as he settled his body over her and pressed her into the mattress. Trapped between a rock and a soft place, Ivy couldn’t think of a single location she’d rather be.
She used her free hand to push his jeans down over his hips, refusing to release her grip on his cock. The soft skin over the hard length fascinated her, and the way he hissed and grunted every time she stroked him only fueled her arousal. With his trousers loosened, she wrapped her legs around his bare hips and used her feet to push the annoying fabric completely out of the way.
She couldn’t bear to have anything between them any longer, and Baen seemed to share her sentiment. He kicked the garment to the floor and settled heavily between her thighs, rocking against her until she could feel the backs of her own fingers pressing into her wetness.
Enough of that.
Giving up on her teasing, she guided him to her entrance, pressing up against him and begging him to enter her. Lifting his head, Baen broke the kiss and held her gaze and he began to drive himself within her. “Te amo, amica mea.”
Ivy wrapped herself around him, arms and legs clinging, feeling his muscles shift and flex as he joined their bodies together. Her pussy stretched and ached and welcomed him. Having him inside her made her feel complete in a way she hadn’t known was possible before now. She arched beneath him, wanting nothing more than to draw him closer. If she could have pulled him inside her skin, she’d have done it just to feel him even closer against her heart.
Baen dropped his head and took her mouth again. She felt dizzy and breathless and higher than a kite. She felt like her heart could burst and her lungs could seize and it wouldn’t matter, because they shared one heart and one breath and that was all they needed to survive.
Each other.
He began to move inside her, sliding deep only to draw back over and over, every motion a rough caress to her inner nerve endings. She began to tremble as the tension built inside her. She felt it like a knot of fire and pressure behind her pelvis, and the only way to assuage it was to move with him, to take him deep and cling tight against every attempt to withdraw. She fought a losing battle, but it didn’t matter, because they would both be able to claim this victory.
“Baen!” She shouted his name as he shifted his weight, bumping the head of his cock against a bundle of nerves that sent firecrackers exploding behind her closed eyelids. Her body clenched hard around his and he growled something unintelligible before repeating the movement again and again.
She shattered, body bowing off the mattress only to be slammed down again with the force of Baen’s final thrusts. All she could do was cling to him while the world fell away and her consciousness burst into millions of tiny fragments that danced off into the ether like the sparks from a popping bonfire.
Vaguely, she felt Baen go rigid as he surrendered to his own climax. She just held on while he emptied himself with shuddering groans, then collapsed atop her on a long, grunting sigh.
The sound made her smile, at least inside her head. She couldn’t feel a damn thing, so she had no idea whether her lips moved or not. It didn’t matter. That had been worth some paralysis and possible permanent sensory damage. It had been worth everything.
Love was, after all.
Chapter Twenty-one
She wasn’t certain what she heard first, the chanting or the screaming. In the end, it didn’t matter. They both came to her with unsettling clarity, and they both meant the same things—pain, death, evil.
Ivy struggled against the experience, but her “gift” had her firmly in its grasp, and it had no intention of letting go.
The voices chanted in a language she didn’t recognize. She couldn’t even be certain it was a language, because she couldn’t distinguish any words at all. It sounded as if someone had built a coded speech out of nails on chalkboards, microphone feedback, and the sound of breaking bones. It made the hair on her neck—hell, the hair everywhere—stand on end and sent her stomach pitching and rolling in her abdomen. It was, she realized, what the Darkness sounded like.
She didn’t need a translation. Whatever was being said had only one purpose, to cause pain and terror as it built a giant cone of Dark energy at the center of the assembled nocturnis.
Once Ivy realized that, her mind switched its focus to the screams, and those she recognized easily. Martin.
It didn’t matter that she hadn’t spent more than a few hours in his presence, didn’t matter that she’d never heard anyone scream like that, full of so much terror and agony that they no longer sounded human. It didn’t even matter that he had been a traitor to the Guild and all the people she had wor
ked so hard to save. None of that mattered, because no living creature ever deserved to suffer the way Martin was suffering.
“No! Master, please! I have served you faithfully! Nooooo!”
The chanting never ceased, never so much as hiccupped, but a low hissing voice began to slither underneath it. It made Ivy freeze and the urge to run, to run far, far away, filled her, but she couldn’t move. Her body was trapped by the power of her “vision,” and she couldn’t move a muscle.
“And you continue to serve us,” the voice mocked. “Your blood serves us as it stains these stones your forefathers laid down. Your pain and your terror serve us as they echo under the seat of our enemy. Your soul will serve us when we rip it from your body and feast in the presence of their impotent Light.”
More screams, terrible screams, and sobbing. Even in her paralyzed state, Ivy had to fight to swallow the bile that rose in her throat. She knew those sounds would haunt her for years to come.
“Scream, human,” the voice ordered, glee underlining its viperous tone. “Scream and beg and feed our power. Help us draw the Guardian to the home of his wretched kind that his blood may free our final Brother! Scream!”
Ivy had no words for the sounds that came next. She didn’t want words, not for the horrible, wet rending sound, nor for the inhuman shriek of agony that followed it.
Nor for the outraged bellow that echoed inside her head as she sat bolt upright in the pitch-black bedroom, the pale sheets sliding away from her sweaty skin.
“Ghrem!”
Beside her, Baen jackknifed into a sitting position and reached for her. “Amare! Ivy, what is the matter?”
“The others.” She clutched at him with fingers that shook so hard, she almost couldn’t make them grip, no matter how badly she needed to cling to his strength. “Get the others. I just heard something. Something bad. We need to hurry.”
The Guardian wasted no time asking questions. Whether he heard the truth in her words or read the terror and panic on her face, it didn’t matter. He immediately left the bed and grabbed some clothes, bundling her into an oversized T-shirt and a pair of sweats, moving her arms and legs like a doll to get her dressed. He spared another two seconds to yank on his own discarded jeans before scooping her up into his arms and shouldering his way out of their bedroom.
He strode down the hallway lined with bedroom doors and bellowed loud enough to wake the dead. “Kees! Ash! Dag! Everyone wake! Spar! Knox! To arms!”
The huge old house began to thump and rattle as bodies tumbled from beds and doors flew open. Huge, broad-shouldered men and rumpled women began to appear, looking alarmed but alert.
“What has happened?”
“What is it? What is going on?”
“Yo, where’s the fire, Hudson?”
Rose stepped out of her room, tying the belt of an old-fashioned smoking jacket she wore as a robe. “Baen, what is this about?”
“Ivy heard something. Something significant. She says we all need to hear it.”
The woman looked from Baen to Ivy, who lay curled against his chest, shivering and traumatized. She tried to show with her eyes how important this was, because she couldn’t speak. Her teeth were chattering too hard. She felt as if she stood naked on a glacier during a blizzard. Never in her life had she felt chilled like this, like her bones had been constructed of ice and were freezing her from the inside out.
Rose must have sensed something, because she gave a brisk nod and waved for everyone to head toward the stairs. “We will meet in the blue room. You go down. I will make certain everyone is awake and get them to assemble. Go on now. And if someone wishes to make coffee, that would be appreciated.”
It took another ten minutes to get everyone together. Ivy spent it in Baen’s lap. He had claimed a well-padded love seat, settling her atop his thighs and wrapping her in the soft chenille blanket Fil found draped over a chair in the corner. Ella had rushed off to make coffee and dragged Wynn along with her, so by the time the stragglers appeared and chose seats of their own, the two women were passing out cups of the strong brew.
Baen doctored a mug with cream and sugar and helped it to her lips. She sipped gratefully, still shaking too hard to hold anything for herself. She supposed it must be shock putting her in this state, but it didn’t much matter what she called it.
Hell, it didn’t much matter what she felt. What mattered was what she had heard and what it revealed about their enemy.
“Ivy,” Rose prodded gently. “Can you tell us what you heard? What has put you in such a panic?”
It took another mouthful of coffee, several deep breaths, and the tightening of Baen’s arms around her before Ivy could manage to speak. And even then, she sounded like Katharine Hepburn with the worst of her tremors.
“I heard the Order. A ritual, I think,” she said, leaning heavily against Baen’s chest and grateful for his warmth. “I never see anything, so all I can tell you is what I heard.”
Rose nodded and made a gesture of encouragement.
“There was chanting, from a lot of voices. Dozens, at least. So many. They used a language I’ve never heard before. At least, I’m assuming it was a language. It sounded more like … chaos.” The memory made her shudder. “It had a definite rhythm, and it kept getting faster and faster, like they were building up to something.”
“Oh, I do not like the sound of that,” Fil murmured from the sofa opposite.
The Warden had no idea.
Ivy continued. “I also heard screaming. A person screaming,” she clarified. She looked up at Baen, then her gaze searched out Ash and Drum, the only others who shared the connection. “It was Martin. I’m sure of it.”
Ash cursed. Drum didn’t look much happier.
“Martin?” Rose frowned. “That was the Warden you were meant to send here, no? The one who betrayed you to the nocturnis.”
“Yes. They apparently decided to return the favor. They were—” Ivy broke off. She had to swallow hard against the bile that rose at the memory. “They tortured him. To raise power, I think. That was the purpose of the ritual. They tortured him and then they killed him.”
“Human sacrifice?” Wynn looked sickened, but not surprised. “That would certainly raise a good bit of energy, and not a drop of it untainted.”
Knox squeezed his Warden’s hand. “What did they need so much power for?”
Ivy shifted uncomfortably. She knew what she had heard, and she knew what her instincts told her, but she couldn’t be certain what the others would think when she told them. Would they believe her, or would they decide she had too little evidence to support her assertions?
Baen gave her a gentle cuddle and nodded when she met his gaze. His support and encouragement made her shove aside her doubts and just pour it out. Until she did, no one would take action; they would have no reason to.
“I think they used it to pull Ghrem out of the between. A voice said something that implied it, and just before I came out of it, I thought I heard him shout. One of those Guardian roars.” She met Rose’s shocked gaze and tried to convey both sorrow and sincerity. “Like I said, I couldn’t see him or anything else, but I’m certain that was what happened.”
“But why?” Rose asked, sounding confused and frightened and verging on panic. “Why should they pull him into our realm again? They were safer while he was busy in the between.”
Ivy braced herself to deliver the news she really, really wished she didn’t have to pass along. “That voice I heard said something. About that. It said his blood would free their final brother.”
“Mon Dieu! Non!”
The quiet French plea was drowned under an explosion of rage and denial. The Guardians looked ready to charge the gates of hell, and the Wardens looked horrified.
Ivy searched out Wynn’s gaze. The witch hadn’t been a Warden the longest, but she’d been using magic her whole life, and she understood how it worked better than any of the rest. She could work it better than any of them, too.
&
nbsp; “Do you think that could be possible?” Ivy asked her. “Could the Order believe that using a Guardian as a sacrifice could finally break down the strongest prison and let the last Demon go free? Would they even try it?”
“They would try anything,” Wynn replied. “They’ve killed teenagers, crippled the Guild, and destroyed entire villages to get this far. If they could get their hands on a Guardian, they would absolutely try to sacrifice him to raise the power needed to open the last prison. No question.”
“But would it work?” Drum asked.
“I am very, very afraid that it might,” the witch said grimly.
“But I thought you guys were immortal,” Kylie said. “I mean, I know that doesn’t mean invulnerable, but I’ve seen you get hacked at with weapons, blasted with spells, even attacked by minor demons. It would have to take a special kind of weapon for the Order to think they even had a chance of taking one of you out.”
“And even if they had something like that, how do they think they’re going to control one of you?” Ella asked. “I’ve seen the odds some of you guys have taken on. You plow through nocturnis like they’re toy soldiers. Pulling Ghrem out of the between is one thing, but once they got ahold of him, it’s not like he wouldn’t be fighting his way out of there like a scene from an old Errol Flynn movie.”
It wasn’t the sheer number of voices that she recalled from her episode that Ivy thought of, it was the gleeful way the hissing voice had spoken of its plans. She offered the others an apologetic look. “I don’t think this was some kind of ‘seize the moment and see what happens’ thing. This was planned, carefully planned, well before tonight. If they had time to think about it, I’m pretty sure they had time to come up with a way to keep a single Guardian contained.”
“There are spells they could use.” The timid voice came from the corner of the room, sounding almost apologetic for being there. Aldous pushed his glasses up his nose and seemed to shrink a little when the others turned their focus on him. “Guardians are immune to magic, but when certain material barriers are magically reinforced, the reinforcement becomes intrinsic to the material itself, and therefore can serve to contain even a creature as strong as a Guardian. Or, so the sources claim.”
Hard Breaker Page 25
