Guardian Glass
Christopher G. Nuttall
Cover Blurb
Fourteen years ago, the gateway to Faerie opened and the denizens spilled forth into our world, fleeing a war that was destroying their world. The Faerie, Elves, Imps, Goblins, Vampires, Werewolves, Dragons and thousands of other supernatural creatures infested our world, struggling to co-exist with humanity. And they brought back the magic. It’s not a sane world any longer.
When a child is kidnapped through magic, Guardian Glass is ordered to find her, by any means necessary. As he begins his investigation, it becomes increasingly clear that nothing is what it seems…and that the kidnapping is only the first step in a plot that strikes at the very heart of magic, and threatens to plunge humanity into eternal darkness.
Prologue
Call me Glass.
It’s not my real name, of course. Those of us who work with magic know better than to share our real names with just anyone. An enemy with bad intentions could use our names, the core of our very beings, against us. I chose Glass. You want to make something of it?
Anyway, what you need to know is simple. Ten years ago, the magic returned to our world. At first, it was just strange sightings and rumours, mainly out in the countryside. No one believed a word of it, not even when cattle and sheep started to vanish, until the first humans started to vanish. Hitchhikers, isolated farmers, even the occasional child…and then, finally, it became too great to ignore. The world was changing right in front of us.
It turned out that the Faerie – the Fair Folk – were losing a war. They called their enemies the Forsaken – we don’t know why – and they were being forced to flee into our world, a world they had abandoned long ago. Imagine the refugees of a war fleeing across the border and trying to make a new life somewhere else. That’s what was happening to the Fair Folk…and the thousands of other denizens of their world. Ghosts and demons, dragons and mermaids, vampires and werewolves and things that go bump in the night. They were moving into our world…
And they brought the magic back. Suddenly, humans were developing strange and new powers, trying to come to terms with the way the world had changed all around them. I was a child at the time, but I recall the first burst of power passing through me, revealing my new talents for all to see.
They call us Guardians, the men and women who try to keep some kind of sanity in a world that is no longer sane, no longer safe for human beings. The Government appoints us and then washes its hands of us. They don’t want to know what we have to do to keep the balance. They wouldn’t want to know even if they could understand it. It’s our world now.
Chapter One
There were people who called themselves Satanists who made Crowley squirm. It wasn't just the things they did, it was the way they blamed it all on Hell. They'd come up with some stomach-churning idea that no demon could have thought of in a thousand years, some dark and mindless unpleasantness that only a fully-functioning human brain could conceive, then shout “The Devil Made Me Do It” and get the sympathy of the court when the whole point was that the Devil hardly ever made anyone do anything. He didn't have to.
-Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
The stench of magic was so powerful that anyone – everyone - could sense it.
It hit me the moment I stepped onto the grounds. The waves of dark magic, of power, roaring out from a gateway into Hell and spilling out into the mundane world. The school looked normal, from a distance, but I knew that something was badly wrong. The complete absence of children in sight and the police cars marking out a barrier, surrounding the school, only added to the sense of looming disaster. Something was very wrong.
“We heard a vague report from the school before it happened,” the police chief said. He was a short fat man, competent enough in his own field, but completely out of his depth when dealing with magic. Most people are scared of magic and not without reason. Untamed magic is the most dangerous power on Earth. “The team that responded went inside and we never heard anything from them again. We screamed to the Feds…”
“And the Feds screamed to me,” I said. There just aren’t enough people like me in the world. There are only a handful of Guardians and we’re always badly overworked. We get paid more than a General, but we rarely have time to sit back and relax, let alone spend it. “Any idea what caused it?”
I had half an idea already, but I wanted to hear what he had to say. “No,” the police chief said. “We only got here when it was already underway.”
“I see,” I said. I had automatic command of any situation involving magic. Luckily, this police officer was inclined to cooperate. “Keep your men well back. I’m going in there alone.”
The sense of imminent doom only grew stronger as I walked up the path towards the main entrance. The school was one of those schools for rich little boys and girls, specialising in turning their brains to mush while feeding them a diet that was supposed to keep them healthy, but they didn’t deserve whatever was happening inside. I paused on the threshold and closed my eyes, feeling the waves of dark emotion spinning around me, and pushed open the door. It was like standing against a hurricane, but I pressed on through it, somehow. I’m protected, but don’t ask by what.
The answer would only upset you.
I saw the blood as soon as I opened my eyes. There was blood everywhere, more than I would have expected to see from a single body, although there was more blood in a person than most people generally expected. There were upwards of five hundred teenage kids trapped somewhere within the school, I knew, but it seemed as if they had all been killed to drench the entire area in blood. Now I could use my senses properly, I could feel the twisting waves of magic emanating through the school…and locate their source. It was somewhere towards the rear of the school.
The doorway – no surprises there – was locked. I kicked it hard enough to smash in a window, but it didn’t budge. I pulled out a small toolkit – you need all kinds of equipment in my job – and carefully removed the lock from the door, pushing it open easily. I half-expected to be attacked the moment I stuck my head through the door, but instead all I saw was a pile of bodies, lying on the ground. I thought for a chilling moment that most of the kids had been slaughtered, but once I took a closer look I realised that it was some of the police team. They hadn’t died pleasantly – as if there were such a thing – and looked as if they had torn each other apart. There was blood on their hands and uniforms. They had weapons on their belts, but they hadn’t used them. They had simply turned on each other with their bare hands and blood ran through the corridors.
I could have sworn that I heard someone – or something – laughing in the distance.
It wasn’t easy to force down my rising gorge, but somehow I managed. It helped that I had actually seen worse, although I don’t know many others who had. It took barely a minute to check that all five of them were dead, but in doing so, I learned more than I had ever wanted to learn about how they had died. It hadn’t just been their bare hands. They had committed unspeakable acts on each other.
Whoever did this will pay, I thought, promising the dead the only consolation I could give them, bloody retribution. Whoever did this will pay in blood and suffering.
I tried to put it out of my mind as I stepped around the bodies and walked onwards, into the first classroom. It refused to fade. There were dark magical spells that were fuelled by death and suffering, the more violent the better, and it certainly felt as if the random slaughter hadn’t been as random and pointless as I had thought. Policemen do have their bad apples and buddy-fuckers, but most of them are good people, the second-best kind of magical sacrifice, assuming that one has the balls to start draining people for magical power. The
first best kind? Children; the younger the better.
And I really didn’t like the implications of this taking place in a school.
The first classroom was the first place where I saw signs of life, but not what I expected. There were fifteen teenage boys and twenty girls in the room and they were going at each other, fucking like crazy until their bodies were bleeding, driven onwards by their passion. It looked like one of those depraved college parties you hear so much about in the gutter press – and yet somehow never get invited to – but their eyes were those of the damned and suffering. Whatever had them in its thrall was playing with them, using their bodies to generate more power for its tangled web, while amusing itself at the same time. I concentrated, trying to weave a calming spell, but it was useless against the force controlling their bodies. I tried harder…
And they turned to look at me.
I don’t like mobs. There’s an old saying about a mob being only half as smart as the stupidest person in it. A mob has no rules, no limits, but at the same time, it wants the very basics. Hatred, fear, rage and pretty much every other dark emotion can be used to link a mob together into a howling mass that will not be satisfied, short of a bloody sacrifice. I had the feeling that this mob of naked teenage children, their eyes soulless, wanted me.
They lunged at me and I stepped back, drawing my two short fighting sticks as I dropped into a combat position. I could have drawn my ever-loaded pistol and shot most of them, but they weren't responsible for their actions. I had come into the school to save the survivors, however many there were of them, and I wasn't going to kill any of them if it could be avoided. I didn’t bother trying to negotiate with them, or plead for mercy; I merely fought as carefully as possible.
I was lucky. Whatever was controlling them didn’t care about their lives, or tactics, they just lunged at me. I’d been in similar positions back in the Army, although this mob wasn't armed to the teeth with the latest knock-off Russian weapons, and I didn’t panic. I moved quickly backwards and forwards, lashing out with neat precise blows, and left most of them on the ground, unconscious. The remainder kept fighting, their faces twisted into rage and hatred such as no teenage girl should ever show, and I kept ducking and dodging. One caught hold of my hair and pulled it back, another unleashed a wicked punch towards my groin and I was forced to kick her hard in the chest. The force controlling them didn’t care about their pain. A kick that should have had her on the ground gasping to breath didn’t stop her. I had to knock them all out to win.
“I’m sorry,” I said, afterwards. If they’d known what they were doing, in some dark recess of their minds, being knocked out had probably come as a relief. “I’ll get you out of here, somehow.”
The sense of dark magic, mixed with newer and even darker emissions, grew stronger as I walked onwards through the school. No one else sought to block my way, but as I glanced into classrooms, I saw scenes of horror. A school, even one run by do-gooders, is a maelstrom of suppressed emotions and hatreds, some of them seemingly trivial to adults. Nerds and Geeks hate Jocks with a fury and passion unknown even to the magic-driven terrorists who cause so much trouble these days. The social queens are hated by every other girl in the school. Popular teachers are loathed by the remainder of the teaching staff, while some teachers bear the brunt of universal hatred from their students. I could understand their feelings. I had been a bit of a geek at school myself and Big Jim the football star had found shoving my head down the toilet a fun way to pass the time. He’d been less happy when my magic manifested and turned him into a frog.
I reached a gym hall, large enough to play a game of indoor baseball or something, and stopped. The waves of dark magic were centred on the hall and something was screaming at me to run, to leave the school and its helpless pupils behind and call in an air strike. A flight of bombers would deal with the school and the problem festering within its walls, I hoped, but it would also kill the pupils. Some of them might have been small bastards growing up to be big bastards, but they didn’t deserve to die. I steeled myself against the waves of repelling emotions, so powerful and pervasive that they made me feel dirty and unclean just by being so close to them, and pushed onwards. The door was unlocked, as if whoever was waiting for me had made a decision not to bar my passage any further…
Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here, I thought, and stepped inside.
The demon was waiting for me.
He - it; demons are sexless, taking whatever form amuses them or our minds grant them – looked human, at first. It was a tall naked Adonis, although where he should have had a penis to match his muscles there was nothing but smooth white skin, with the body of a Greek god. Literally, in its case; he had muscles on his muscles. It was strange, but merely looking at him made me feel small and insignificant. It was wearing the fantasy male body, created in the mind of a teenaged girl. Over-proportioned, yet non-threatening and handsome enough to be utterly unbelievable.
And then I looked closer. No one could have mistaken it for human. The eyes, which had seemed a soft brown colour, were burning coals. The face, so classically handsome, was cold and inhuman, beyond human weaknesses. The hair, seemingly as red as the hair of that stupid Irish pop band that everyone hates, was a wall of fire. The demon wasn't even bothering to try to deceive me any longer. I knew that it knew that I knew what it was.
“Well,” the demon said, in a pleasant voice that felt like burning coals in my head, “why not come in and enjoy the show?”
I forced myself to overcome the feeling of instinctive revulsion and stepped forward. Merely being so close to the demon was painful, and almost impossible. It stank of corruption and decay, of meat that had gone off for years, of every dark thought you’d had in your life. It seemed to be surrounded by a chorus of screams, the howling of the damned, and the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth of everyone who’d signed a bargain with it. Even standing where it was, trapped within an invisible wall, it was the most dangerous presence in the room and I knew it. It knew that I knew that too.
“Demon,” I said. It was suddenly so hard to talk. My mouth had gone completely dry. “How is it that thou are out of the pit?”
“Are such formalities necessary?” The demon asked, politely. There was an undertone of mockery in its voice. “We’re going to know each other so well, you and I.”
I concentrated, recalling my demon lore. This was no sprite summoned by a housewife to play mean tricks on her neighbours, or an imp or fairy from the Fair Courts, but a full-blooded demon. Well, full-spirited, but you get the idea. Like all such creatures, it was bound by the rules, which meant that it had to give the idiot who’d summoned it whatever they wanted, but it was never safe to trust a demon. They always had a sting in the tail. If a demon offers you eternal life, take care that it doesn’t mean as a ghost, or a stone statue. Both have happened in the past.
And it would lie. Demons always lie, unless a truth can hurt more.
“They are,” I said, firmly. One thing was certain. I hadn’t granted the demon any power over me. It might still be able to kill me, but it couldn’t command me. “How is it that thou are out of the pit?”
The demon smiled. “Look around you,” it said, casually. There was a mocking tone in its voice, as if it already knew the punch line of a joke. “Enjoy the show.”
I almost swore, but bit the words down in time. A demon might have taken advantage of a swearword to attack me; God only knew what I might summon so close to an active gateway to hell. Instead, I looked around…and saw the girls. The demon’s presence had been so overwhelming that I had missed them completely. I saw…and swallowed a second swearword. All of a sudden, I knew just what had happened here.
There were six of them, all naked, kneeling around the summoning circle, their faces blank and expressionless. I wasn't surprised by the nakedness – witches, enchantresses and sorceresses need to be naked to tap into their greatest powers – but I was surprised by their expressions. They should have
been dictating to the demon they’d summoned, but instead they were trapped, helpless. It took me a moment to understand why, but when I saw I shivered. There were five helpless girls, trapped in a moment of frozen magic…and their leader. She was shivering helplessly as the demon drained her, her face torn between youth and old age, her bones already showing through her flesh…
“She had a great hate,” the demon observed, conversationally. He might have been reading my mind, or he might have been following my expression. Either was possible with demons. “She looked in the mirror and saw fat. She was hounded and tormented by those she considered superior. She hated – oh, she hated as only a human can hate – and she lusted for revenge.”
I said nothing, examining the Seal of Solomon the girls had created. It should have held the demon properly, but I could see why things had gotten so badly out of control. They should have been able to hold the demon, but…
“She found this little coven,” the demon agreed. “She convinced them that she was a witch too. They were fooled. None of them were any great shakes when it came to magic.” I wasn’t fooled by its drop into slang. The odds were that it would try to mislead me now. “They drew this circle with their own blood and summoned me, decanting me into an idealised vision they held in their minds. If they’d all been magicians, it would have worked…”
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