by Mary Calmes
After getting out, I put my jacket back on to cover the sheaths on my back. I was not carrying my swords—Kyle was, under his leather duster—but I had Ryan’s katana and Jackson’s rapier. Malic was packing his spatha and Leith’s kilij under his jacket. My hook swords were not discreet, small weapons. I normally carried them crisscrossed on my back in a double scabbard. Kyle, who was dressed like someone out of the Matrix—which amused the hell out of Jackson for some reason—had offered to carry in my swords. There was no guard at the door checking for weapons. It was Sodom and Gomorrah in there. There were demons throwing the party, after all. Weapons were not a consideration. And besides, I was certain, as I eased Ryan forward in front of me, my hand on the small of his back, that no one would be giving anyone but my fellow warder the time of day.
As I suspected, the doorman took one look at Ryan Dean and waved us forward to the front of the line.
Ryan did his walk, the runway stride, the strut, head back, wet lips parted, glittering eyes forward, doing the glide that made him look fluid and boneless. It was impressive, and I wondered, just for a minute, how Julian dealt with everyone wanting a piece of Ryan Dean.
He reached the front and tipped his head up, his eyes drifting slowly open, the look wicked and hot and molten.
I saw the doorman shiver.
“Welcome,” the man barely got out. I was sure that with his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth was making it hard to articulate. “Please step inside.”
“Thank you,” Ryan purred, moving by him.
No one saw me, no one saw Malic, and most importantly, no one saw Kyle. We moved through the crowd and people made a path for Ryan.
“What the hell,” Leith grumbled behind me.
Apparently he and Jackson were groped quite a bit as we moved through the mob, especially Leith with his long hair trailing behind him.
“It’s ’cause you’re pretty.” Jackson smiled even as hands slid over him, grabbed his ass, and tried to stop him.
“How come no one’s grabbin’ at Ry?”
“It’s the walk.” Malic was grinning when I looked over my shoulder. “It’s the ‘I’m too good for you’ walk. No one would dare put their hands on him.”
And it occurred to me that he was right. Ryan was movie-star handsome, so no one even tried to touch him. Maybe before Julian he had been lonely instead of busy.
Once we reached the back, I helped Ryan up on a low platform to dance. The trance music was not something I had ever liked, but Ryan had been gyrating in clubs for years, from New York to Paris to Rome to Tokyo and back at home in the city by the bay. It was second nature to him.
The hostess came, and we ordered a round of drinks. She offered other things, party favors, and Malic smiled at her and said maybe later. She looked concerned until Jackson took her hand and stroked over her knuckles, smiling up at her at the same time. She was charmed by the time she left.
“I wasn’t charming?” Malic asked.
“You sound like a cop,” I told my friend.
“How?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed, smiling. “But you come off like a vice detective or something.”
“I’m just not pretty like the rest of you.” He smirked.
I wasn’t, either, not like Leith and Jackson and Ryan. They were stunning. Malic and I were more handsome, if one needed to apply an adjective to us. We sort of blended into the background, forgettable, but neither of us a breathtaking beauty.
“Don’t kid yourselves.” Jackson yawned, smiling.
I had no idea what that meant.
Shane looked uncomfortable, and so I took a seat next to him. Malic sat and pulled Leith down into his lap. It looked odd to me, but it wouldn’t to anyone else. The only one who belonged in the big man’s lap was his hearth, Dylan Shaw. Dylan would have been wriggling around, trying to wedge Malic’s groin between his cheeks. I liked watching my friend get all flustered by his young, irrepressible mate.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it didn’t take long. Again, Ryan was like a beacon, and there wasn’t a lot of him left to the imagination.
“Here we go,” Jackson said under his breath as one man, flanked by another two, approached our table.
He stood for a minute, looking Ryan up and down, leering, before he passed him to face… me. Why it was always me, I had no idea. Yes, I was the oldest at thirty-five, but the stranger didn’t know that.
“Hello.” The man extended his hand, “I’m Breka. I own this club. I would love to have you and your friends join me for a private party.”
“Breka,” I said, getting up, Malic moving in behind the other two men, Jackson beside him. “I have a lot to talk to you about.”
He squinted at me at the same time the man behind him gasped.
When he tried to turn, I grabbed his bicep and yanked him sideways, throwing him down onto the suede-covered sectional I had been sitting on a moment earlier.
Malic stepped back and, wielding the spatha powerfully, he easily cleaved the demon in half before a hole opened in the floor and he dropped the creature into it. Jackson’s movement was similar but more artful, with finesse. The demon’s throat was torn open with a quick slash of the rapier before he too was dropped into a black hole that swallowed him fast.
Between the thumping, driving music, the ferocious wall of conversation, and the crowd, no one saw a thing. I stood towering over Breka, and I saw him trembling. Squatting down, I took the scabbard Kyle passed me at the same time.
“Holy fuck,” Shane said beside me. “What the hell was that?”
“That’s the warder void,” Jackson told him. “Just like you—”
“I have never seen anything like that.” Shane’s voice was shaky. “We…. no one dies like that. It’s bloody and messy, and… now I get why you thought we could get in and out of here without creating a huge scene. I had no idea.”
“Jesus,” Kyle said, and I could feel his eyes studying my profile. “Our sentinel said that some clutches were more powerful—the older the warders, the longer they stay together—but I ain’t never seen the likes of you all.”
“Breka,” I addressed the demon now quivering before me. “I want to talk to you about Elliot Locke and about Emir and Arcan, and I want to see the warder Tarin that you have in your possession. Do you understand?”
He nodded.
“I won’t touch you if you do what I say.”
More furious nodding.
“Now, which way are we following you?”
He pointed left.
“Okay, you tell Ry which way to walk, and then we’ll follow him, all right?”
“Yes.” He almost choked on the word.
Breka rose first; I walked at his side with Ryan leading the way. We moved as a single unit through the crowd. No one bothered to ask Breka where he was going. They could all see. He was following the guy with the gorgeous ass.
“Tell me how you do that.”
“Do what?” I asked Shane as we walked.
“The warder void, you called it. Tell me how you make it appear.”
“We don’t. It just is. I thought all warders were the same. I thought they all dealt the same death to every demon: the hole to the pit.”
“No, not every clutch is as strong as yours, Marcus. Did you know that every clutch has a center? Just like every warder has a hearth who is their omphalos, their center, every clutch has the same thing in a single warder. Kill that one warder, you destroy the clutch.”
I stopped walking because, really, there was just no way he was suddenly this font of information. Turning, I found a woman, not Shane Harris at all.
“Moira,” I said at the same time I saw the dagger.
I spun as she thrust forward, felt the blade drag across my arm, and watched, helplessly, as it was buried deep in Malic’s chest. He had moved fast to put himself between the lethal stroke and Ryan’s vulnerable back. The witch had aimed for me, her momentum had carried her toward Ryan, and she had ended up
catching my friend.
“Malic!” Leith yelled, and there was screaming around us instantly.
I dove forward and caught him as he dropped to the floor, Leith’s kilij and the spatha flying free, clattering away from us as we fell together. The blood was all I could see.
“Marcus!” Leith roared, and I turned my head to see the witch coming for me. Her blade was raised, she had talons instead of hands, and I had no way to defend myself from either. My swords that Kyle had thrown toward me before he ran were on the other side of Malic, and I couldn’t reach them. I had one arm under his back, the other over the gaping hole in his heart, pressing down to stem the flow of blood out of his body, but I moved as far as I could trying to grasp one.
She reached me, for me, and I did all I could.
I took a breath and released the pulse of power.
She screamed and tensed, slowed just enough, hesitated for a second, and I saw the flash along the blade, the outline of the steel, the way the light slid over the length as my hook sword, wielded by Ryan Dean, came and took the head of the witch.
Hot blood hit me like a sprinkler, and then the body flew into me, knocking me back and away from Malic under its weight.
“Marcus!” Jackson cried out my name, and I shook my head, trying to get my bearings. It was like I was in a dream, not in control of my muscles, my speed, or my strength as everything moved around me.
There was so much blood pumping from the headless torso of the witch, and I slid through it, slipped over the marble floor as I scrambled back to Malic’s side. I peeled off my jacket as I moved, drew Ryan’s katana from my back, and tossed it to him, then did the same with Jackson’s rapier, throwing it to the other warder. I yanked the scabbards off that had held the blades, then my shirt, and bunching it up, shoved it over Malic’s wound and pressed down hard. I grabbed him, cradled him tight, held him close, terrified because he was turning gray, because of the fall of his head, the heaviness of his limbs.
I opened the channel, screamed my need for my sentinel, and prayed even as I heard the shriek from the other side of the room.
“Hurry, Marcus,” Jackson yelled again, dropping into his stance, the rapier gleaming in the low light.
I looked for Kyle and saw him running with the rest of the terrified crowd for the exit. I had no idea when the witch had traded places with Shane, had no idea if he was dead or alive, and didn’t really even care. Only Malic mattered.
“Jackson, call Raph!” I roared, but I heard the shriek then and knew there was no time.
I had seen no traces of a dimensional door until that second. But we all saw the flood of creatures skittering across the floor toward us on their insect-like legs, their bodies all claws and teeth. The witch had brought racer demons with her from the pit, and they would tear us to shreds just by their sheer number.
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 liquid slithering down my throat and opened my eyes. I saw 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?” the man said.
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.
“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.
