Hard Breaker

by Christine Warren

  “And a weapon could be manufactured,” Thiago added.

  The two Wardens had been Rose’s support system while her Guardian was absent and had helped to develop the plan to defeat the Darkness, so it was clear the Frenchwoman valued their opinion. She had invited them to join tonight’s meeting. Considering that they were also training the other Wardens in the house to fight with magic in the face of the Order, it made sense that she should keep up to date with the threat they all faced.

  “What kind of weapon?”

  Thiago shrugged. “The Seven are the natural enemies of the Guardians, therefore they have been adapted to inflict harm. If one of the Demons were to sacrifice a claw, perhaps, or a tooth, it could be fashioned into a blade as effective against a Guardian as one of steel is against an ordinary man.”

  Oh, now that was good news, Ivy thought. She clung a little tighter to Baen and tried not to think about what the Order had planned. She already knew too much for her own comfort.

  “Then what Ivy heard is possible?” Rose demanded.

  “I am afraid so.” Aldous nodded.

  Rose fell silent for a moment. Her chin dipped toward her chest, and she clasped her hands together in front of her as if in prayer. She drew several deep breaths before she looked back up at the Guardians and Wardens gathered around her, and her eyes glinted with fury and determination as she spoke.

  “If that is the case, then we have no choice,” she said. “We will not leave one of our own in the hands of the filthy nocturnis. We will rescue Ghrem, and we will put a stop to the rise of the Darkness. N’est-ce pas?”

  Her words might be polite, but Ivy heard the steel and fire behind them. She certainly wasn’t going to be the one to gainsay the mate of a threatened Guardian. Especially not one she had seen hurl fireballs the size of Volkswagens during their magical training sessions.

  So, that just left one thing to do. In order to save the missing Guardian before he ended up sacrificed to the Darkness, they first had to find him.

  Had anyone been listening when Ivy said she didn’t see anything in her visions? She hadn’t the faintest clue where the Order was hiding their captive. For all she knew, he was tied up in the underwater lair of a villain out of a bad James Bond movie.

  Ghrem could be anywhere in the world right now. Now ask her again how they were going to find him?

  * * *

  The room full of people asked Ivy where to find the Order’s hiding place, the location where they kept Ghrem while they waited to spill his blood. It was the one advantage they had at the moment, that the nocturnis would not likely carry out the sacrificial ritual immediately. According to Aldous, they would wait for the next night when the moon went dark and the earth passed through the shadow of an ominous astrological object called a dark star. A thing of legend and cultic fascination, it provided what the little German called the perfect atmosphere for the raising of Dark energy. A great deal of such power would be necessary to rewrite the Seven.

  Unfortunately, that meant they had only hours to locate Ghrem and bring down the Seven before it was too late. At the apex of the new moon, Aldous predicted, the priests of the Order would perform their ritual, kill Ghrem, and release Belgrethnakkar, bringing the Seven back together at last. The Guardians and the Wardens could not afford to let that happen.

  Baen understood all that. He felt the same compulsion to destroy his enemy and rescue his fallen brother, but it didn’t make it any easier to deal with the way the others threw questions at his mate in rapid succession. They peppered her with demands, asking her to provide information she clearly didn’t think she had, and as she sat in his lap, shaking and retreating from the relentless barrage, he grew angrier and angrier with his friends.

  “Enough!” he barked when he saw the way Ivy’s eyes had begun to glisten with moisture. He knew how badly they all wanted to find Ghrem, but he would not have his mate reduced to tears to accomplish it. “You give her no room to breathe, let alone to search her mind for your answers. If you cannot behave responsibly, you can all keep your mouths shut.”

  Ivy sagged against him, her gratitude obvious as silence descended on the tense group. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice tight. “I wish I could tell you where he is, but I didn’t see it. I didn’t see anything. I never do. That’s why I told you I don’t have a talent worth mentioning. You’d get as much out of some well-planned eavesdropping as you get out of me. Believe me, I want to find him as badly as you do. After what they did to Martin…”

  She lapsed into silence, shuddering. The expression of pain she wore and the way she bit hard into her lower lip showed how much the memory of what she’d heard haunted her. Baen could not resist gathering her close and rocking her with comforting motions.

  “Hush, amare,” he murmured. “Never say your talent is useless. Without you, we would not know what the Order has planned for us. You have given us a chance to stop them before it is too late. That is not only worth mentioning, it is invaluable.”

  Rose agreed. “Baen is right, Ivy. We should apologize for the way we just treated you. Our worry and the pressure of time is our only excuse, but it is a poor one. You have already done us all a great favor.”

  Ivy scoffed. “By showing you what you have to look forward to? I wouldn’t exactly call that a favor, myself.”

  “Stop, little one,” Baen ordered. “Push aside your doubts and your worries and focus on me. Can you do that? I want to try something.”

  She turned those gray eyes on him and frowned, but she was already nodding her agreement. “Try what?”

  “Seeing things is not the only way to gather information. I think if only one of us asks the questions, you might be able to recall something from what you heard to give us some clues. Will you try for me?”

  The corner of her mouth kicked up. “I’d try anything for you.”

  He felt his heart swell and had to force himself to focus. “Thank you, amare. Now, close your eyes and listen to my voice. Can you try to remember the first thing you heard earlier? Was it the chanting?”

  Ivy leaned back against his arm and let her eyelids drift shut. He saw the way she shifted her attention inward with a small frown that drew a tiny crease between her brows. He ignored the way it made him want to trace the soft skin with his fingertip.

  “The chanting and the screaming,” she said, her mouth tightening. “I heard both at the same time.”

  “What did it sound like? Not what they said, but the environment. Could you hear anything in the background? Traffic outside, planes overhead, mechanical noises of any kind.”

  Her frown deepened as she concentrated on her memories. After a moment, she slowly shook her head. “None of that. It sounded … cut off. Isolated. Like it was separate from everything. Secret. The voices drowned everything else out. Except for the screams.”

  “Good girl. What about acoustical qualities? Was there an echo? A reverberation, like in a cavern or a concert hall?”

  “No echo.” She paused. “And not exactly a reverberation. Oh, hell, this is so not my field of expertise.” Her eyes popped open, and she stared unhappily at him. “I don’t know acoustics, Baen. All I know are words, but I do remember what the voice said to Martin, and a few of its phrases struck me as odd. Tell me if you feel the same.”

  Baen listened as Ivy did her best to re-create the threats and taunts of the hissing voice that had spoken to the doomed Martin. He stiffened to hear the way the voice spoke of “stones your forefathers laid” and the “seat of the enemy.” The wording gave him an uneasy feeling.

  Apparently, he wasn’t the only one. As soon as Ivy mentioned the idea of feeding on Martin’s soul “in the presence of the Light,” Aldous jumped to his feet and cried out as if he’d just been goosed with a cattle prod.

  “It can’t be!” The German gasped. “They could not have desecrated our most sacred rooms that way. Light forbid it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ivy demanded. “Did that crap mean somethi
ng to you? Because if it did, you need to tell us. Now.”

  Aldous wrung his hands and looked like someone had just kicked his puppy. His voice shook when he tried to answer her question. “You are very certain you heard those particular words? ‘In the presence of the Light’?”

  “I’m positive.”

  The little man whimpered and looked at Rose. “I fear that the Order has befouled our very home, Fräulein. The stones laid by our forefathers are the stones of the Guild headquarters in Paris. And calling it the seat of their enemy only confirms this. The nocturnis have gathered at our stronghold in order to destroy us! They mock us with bringing Darkness to the heart of a place that was built to serve the Light.”

  Ella pounced on that possibility. “That can’t be right. The headquarters was completely destroyed in the attack two years ago. Rose, you said you were there, and I know you’ve been to the site since then. Is there enough of the building left to hold rituals in, let alone to hide a captive Guardian?”

  “You don’t understand,” Aldous continued before Rose could respond. “They are not in the building; they are beneath it. The first Wardens used magic to dig a stronghold under the site of the headquarters and built a series of rooms deep under the ground. They were meant to be used as a refuge in the case of a direct attack by the Order, and in the early years of the Guild, it was said that the Inner Council used them for important rituals. Those rooms were the site where the Guardian summonings used to take place, and they say that the central room featured a mural inlaid with magic and precious stones. It was supposed to depict the servants of the Light and to have been created by one of the Maidens. The work itself was known as The Light, and if the Order is within its presence, then they are in that room!”

  Baen turned to Rose. “Could these underground rooms have survived the blast? Is it possible that the nocturnis returned there after they destroyed the building and have been orchestrating their evil from under our very noses?”

  “The site was fenced off for safety reasons, so I have not walked through it, but I saw no signs that the foundation was compromised.” The Frenchwoman looked pained. “I think it is very possible a secret cellar might have remained intact. If the area giving access to it also survived, or was suitable for excavation…” She shrugged. “Oui. It might be the case.”

  Curses in a number of different languages exploded into the room. Kylie’s Yiddish and Fil’s Lithuanian added color to the mostly dead languages the Guardians seemed to prefer. Baen certainly found himself giving his Latin a workout.

  “I guess that means we’re going to Paris,” Wynn said calmly, but with steel underlying her tone. “It doesn’t matter if they’re using our space, or even if they’ve decorated every single wall with smeared blood and severed heads. We know where they are, so we go after them. We’re not leaving Ghrem in their hands, and we’re not letting the Darkness win. Am I right?”

  “You’re right.” Drum agreed. “Though I do hope you’re wrong about the severed heads.”

  The Wardens shared a brief smile, but what pleased Baen was seeing how every head in the room nodded in agreement. Guardians and Wardens all appeared united in their determination to strike back at the Darkness and banish it from this world permanently.

  Thiago stepped forward, his dark features set in lines of resolve. “I have showed every Warden here the spell we will need to defeat the Demons and return them to their prisons. I had hoped we would have more time to practice together, but you all know what you must do. I am confident you will do it well.”

  “Wait. Is that all the spell is going to do?” Dag demanded. “It only sends the Demons back to the same places from which they already escaped? How does that help us? They have proven those prisons will not hold them forever. What happens the next time they begin entertaining ambitions?”

  “The problem did not lie with the prisons themselves,” Thiago said. “It was the fault of the Guild. They grew complacent in the millennia since the Darkness was banished. They forgot that even the strongest wards need to be maintained. They failed to renew the energy in the magic that sealed the prisons. Believe me, the new Guild will not be so lax.”

  Baen was glad to hear it. He only intended to fight this battle once.

  He also saw the way the Wardens greeted Thiago’s declaration. It had a proprietary ring, as if the Spaniard expected to have a definite say in the reconstruction of the Wardens’ Guild. Based on the strength of the other Wardens in the room, Baen was betting the man would face some stiff competition when it came to deciding who would run things in the future. If they were lucky, it would create a better and stronger organization for all of them.

  “So that’s the plan, then?” Kylie asked, rising to her feet and bouncing up and down on her toes. The tiny human rarely kept still. Even while she was seated, one foot beat a rapid rhythm against the air in front of the settee. “We storm the castle—er, basement—we wave our magic hands, and we bippity-boppity-boo the Demons into the Detention Dimension?”

  Baen blinked. Sometimes it took him a few minutes to translate Kylie’s irreverent and slang-laden speech into English he could understand. This was one of those times.

  After he’d digested the question, he nodded cautiously. “Yes, I believe that is the plan.”

  “Hm. And what about the whole bunch of chanters Ivy here heard doing that ritual? I mean, we’ve all gotten our feet wet with fighting off nocturnis when we’ve had to, but it sounds like when we go in there, we’re gonna be seriously outnumbered. Not to mention that we Wardens are going to be distracted while casting the big spell. How are we supposed to do that while we have a battalion of pissed-off whack jobs trying to turn us into latkes?”

  Thiago interjected. “We will bring the other Wardens, the ones who have sheltered here. I will gather volunteers. I am certain most of them will wish to join the fight. They will handle the nocturnis while the seven Wardens bound to Guardians cast the spell.”

  “Most of them, huh?” Kylie pursed her lips and turned to face Rose. “In that case, I think you’re going to need a bigger car.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  They did need a larger car—actually, several vans—but only because the Guardians could safely carry no more than one or two Wardens at a time for the short flight back to Paris. Ivy volunteered to drive, but Baen would have none of it. The big galoot refused to let her out of his sight for a minute, let alone most of an hour.

  Which was why when she got to the French capital late the following evening, she needed a moment on solid land to remember how to work her legs again. She didn’t care what Baen said. She was not going to get used to that kind of flying. Not ever. She wanted a seat, a flight attendant, and a little rolling cart of free soda. Jumbo airliner, watch her come.

  The nocturnis, on the other hand, were welcome to look in an entirely different direction. Move it along, she thought as she stuck close to Baen’s side. Nothing to see here.

  They had landed on a (another) rooftop in a maneuver with which Ivy was becoming uncomfortably (and reluctantly) familiar. This one gave them a view of the rubble-strewn lot that was all that remained of the former Guild headquarters. The other six Guardians occupied similar positions on the surrounding streets. For the moment, they waited and watched, timing the moment when they would make their appearance as party crashers at the Order’s little soiree.

  Providing, of course, that the waiting didn’t kill her, Ivy reflected sourly. Patience had never numbered among her virtues, and she already felt as if she’d been waiting for the signal to move forward since they had hammered out their plan in the wee hours of the morning.

  No one had left the blue room until after sunrise, the group using the hours in between to discuss exactly how they would get into the Guild’s secret basement. Now that they suspected the place was crawling with nocturnis and whatever inhuman minions they had decided to conjure up that day, it seemed wise not to just burst in with guns blazing. Chances were, a full frontal assault
was exactly what the Order would be expecting.

  Luckily, their little Rebel Alliance had two advantages working in their favor. First, Aldous had actually visited the hidden rooms once, at least the ones closest to the entrance, and as a certifiable Guild geek, he had researched the rumors and the few known facts about them. All that had enabled the German to draw up a reasonably accurate floor plan of the space. So at least they knew they wouldn’t get lost, or waste all their time trying to fight their way through to a glorified storage room. Because that would just be awkward.

  Their second advantage was Drum. Although he had spent a lot of years like Ivy, ignoring his gift or dismissing it as having little value, he had recently learned its true strategic importance. Drum could locate things. He could focus on an object or a person and track them down using the magic of his talent, basically homing in on them as if they wore a GPS tracking device. According to Ash, he was more reliable than a bloodhound and only snored half as loud.

  Drum had shot his mate a look that promised retribution, but then accepted an article of clothing Rose said had belonged to Ghrem and had used it to focus on the missing Guardian. Several tense moments later, the Irish publican had been able to confirm that Ghrem was indeed in Paris, he was definitely someplace underground, and he was absolutely being guarded by a heavy force of cultists.

  It hadn’t exactly been good news, but it had let them know what they were walking into and that at least they were looking in the right place. As reconnaissance went, you couldn’t beat that.

  Of course, just because everyone knew where they were going and what to do once they got there didn’t mean they could just rush in yelling “Banzai!” (Or, as Kylie had suggested, “Bonsai! Little trees!”) No, they had to be smart about this, and that meant working according to a multistage plan.