Metal Guardian: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Rings of the Inconquo Book 2)

by A. L. Knorr

  Lowe and Uncle Iry did their best to look abashed, but a moment later, they were both sniggering again. I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “You two are hopeless.”

  I was overjoyed that the two most important men in my life were getting along so well, but I was avoiding the inevitable. I didn’t want to face what came next, partly because I didn’t know how Lowe would react and partly because even though it wasn’t even past lunch, I was dead tired. I just wanted to find a cozy alcove to crash in and handle all the explaining and strategizing later.

  Jackie must have sensed my flagging resolve. She cleared her throat and jerked her head towards Sark – his face hidden behind the locks dangling from his bowed head.

  “Oh,” Lowe said as he regarded the bedraggled man, sounding the quintessential Englishman. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard the ladies talk about you before, sir. Who might you be?”

  Sark’s head rose, and something passed between the disgraced Winterthür agent and the ghost. The air seemed markedly cooler, and an undercurrent of tension crackled between them.

  “You have heard them talk about me,” Sark said flatly, without pride or apology. “I’m Dillon Sark.”

  Lowe’s pale eyes glinted dangerously, and he seemed to loom beyond his already impressive height. The temperature dropped noticeably.

  “Is he a prisoner?” Lowe hissed as he searched Sark’s body for restraints. “Why have you brought him?”

  Sensing mounting danger, I stepped between Lowe and Sark, my hands raised.

  “Lowe,” I said slowly, noting how my breath fogged in the frosty air. “This is going to take some explaining, but we need to stay calm … you need to stay calm.”

  The hot gleam in the ghost’s eyes had grown until his eyes melted to pools of murky silver, and he continued to arch upward. His features stretched like taffy until his handsome face was frighteningly distorted.

  “Why is he here?” Lowe demanded, the words coming out in a deep, elemental rumble.

  Sark, Jackie, and Uncle Iry looked ready to run screaming for the hills. If I hadn’t kept reminding myself who I was talking to, I might have run with them.

  “James,” I pleaded, my neck arching back to keep his gaze. “Please, you need to listen.”

  The ghost paused then stuttered like a streaming video as it buffered. I’d seen this once before and suddenly worried that he would vanish. Last time he’d done this he’d been incommunicado for some time, and right now, I needed him to listen and help me figure out what to do.

  Fortunately, Lowe diminished, shrinking into a noticeably deflated version of himself: flatter, less three dimensional than he should have been. His eyes, back to their spectral blue-grey, did not waver from Sark, but when he spoke, he it was to me.

  “Please explain,” he said softly, the barest hint of his former fury sharpening his tone.

  “Can we go sit down?” I heard every minute of lost sleep in my raw voice. “This is going to take a while.”

  ---

  “Daria wanted you to know that Ninurta had been released,” I said, completing my summary of the past eighteen hours, and grateful that Lowe had listened with relative calm the whole time.

  “Ninurta?” he said softly, his eyes becoming distant as he pondered the name. “She wanted me to know about Ninurta, but why?”

  “You are a ghost, and this Ninurta is some kind of mummy or zombie, maybe?” Uncle Iry offered. “It could have something to do with that.”

  “No,” Dillon’s voice was quiet but firm. “I repeat: Ninurta is alive. Not undead, not reanimated, not capable of being brought back to life. The monitors are showing heartbeats and respiration. His body is atrophied, and his mind comatose, but he is very much alive.”

  We lapsed into silence, wrestling with the implications of the declaration.

  Sark swallowed then added, “He’s too powerful to just die.”

  “Okay, so it’s not the ghost thing.” I chewed my lower lip. “There must be some other reason she wanted me to tell you. What if it has to do with something else you might know? You were a professor of the Ancient Near East.”

  Lowe’s frown deepened as he rose and began to pace the floor in a tight circuit.

  “Maybe, he, Ninurta, I mean, is some kind of ally,” Jackie said, looking between Lowe and me. “He is supposed to be the first Inconquo, right? Maybe, Daria wants to save him and have him help you fight the Group of Winterthür?”

  The way Sark had been talking about him, Ninurta had grown into a boogeyman, but maybe Jackie was right. The idea had elements I found comforting. Not being the only soldier in this war against Winterthür would be a good thing. I wasn’t technically alone, but as tough as Jackie was, she and any other normal person could only be support staff. Lowe was different, being a ghost, but that came with a whole other set of limitations that kept him from being on the front-line. I didn’t trust Sark enough––no matter what he said––to consider him a potential ally. And as broken as he seemed, I wasn’t sure he could be much use.

  Thinking of Sark, he was back to hanging his head, shaking it slowly from side to side. His nutty, side-walker doom-caller routine wasn’t helpful. I stifled a huff of frustration and looked to Lowe, surprised to see he was shaking his head as well.

  “Professor?” I prompted, as the ghost’s pacing quickened.

  “No, not an ally,” Lowe said. “Ninurta was variably recorded as a god and king, depending on the source, a holy warrior against demons and a founder of cities.”

  All eyes turned to Lowe, even Sark’s.

  “Doesn’t sound like such a bad guy to me.” Jackie was unwilling to surrender her theory just yet.

  “It’s claimed he established Kalhu in a time before we have any solid records,” Lowe continued, not hearing Jackie’s interjection. “In fact, it is believed by many scholars that the Nimrod of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions is a reference to Ninurta. Genesis 10:10 ‘Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.’ From there, it tells of the cities he founded or ruled. But the text isn’t quite clear.”

  “A mighty hunter before the Lord,” I repeated. “That doesn’t sound too bad. We could use someone like that against Winterthür.”

  Lowe seemed to consider my words, then shook his head as he clasped his hands behind his back. “‘Before the Lord’ is not ‘in the sight of’ as many have interpreted, but ‘in the face of’ as we currently understand the language. He hunted in defiance of God, to show his dominion over what was created.”

  “Oh.” My elusive hopes withered. “Sounds less, um … inspiring.”

  Lowe nodded and rolled onto the balls of his feet. “Several rabbinical and apocryphal texts go much further, describing Nimrod as one of the first, or at least the first famous, militant misotheist.”

  “Misotheesey, what?” Jackie interjected, nonplussed with the utter debunking of her theory. I felt her pain.

  “Misotheist,” Lowe said in his most professorial diction. “Those who hate God or the gods. Ninurta, or Nimrod, hated or envied the divine and sought to usurp or free himself from it or them, as you prefer. He is recorded as a hunter, a killer, before his rulership, because the foundation of his power was slaughter. In fact, in some of the ancient texts, it talks about how the gods, sensing, maybe even fearing, Ninurta’s designs to rule the world and the heavens conceived a way to trap and defeat him.”

  “But they didn’t kill him.” I settled back in my chair.

  “No,” Lowe agreed, then shrugged. “At least none of the texts claim that, though many of them are incomplete.”

  We slouched in our seats, staring at the floor or some middle distance.

  “I don’t suppose any of that is very cheerful given the circumstances,” Lowe said with a faltering chuckle. “But it does at least point us to one encouraging conclusion.”

  I looked up from my sulk, giving Lowe a long look.

  “Care to share with the class, Professor?” I asked, not caring how snarky I sounded.


  “Daria hasn’t betrayed us.” Lowe’s face almost beamed with the pronouncement. “True, I question her methods, but her intentions, upon consideration, are legitimate and good.”

  Jackie and I were too gobsmacked to respond immediately, but Uncle Iry sat forward, cautiously raising an open hand as though he were in a classroom.

  “Sir,” he began, “you must help me understand. This woman, Daria, you are saying she did not betray Ibby but didn’t she give Mr Sark the key to free this ancient king who you just explained to us is a very bad man. How is this not treachery?”

  Lowe’s eyes shone with excitement as he looked at each of us in turn, his voice just above a hoarse whisper.

  “Don’t you see? She was disappointed that Ibby has not been more active in battling Winterthür, so she wants her to become more active. She wanted you to tell me about Ninurta so you can see that he is a serious threat. This is Daria trying to lead us to foiling Winterthür and stopping Ninurta from rising again. She hasn’t betrayed us, in fact––in her own way––the opposite. She is helping us defeat a great evil.”

  Lowe obviously meant this revelation to be some kind of great comfort, but one look at the other faces around the circle told me they shared my feelings of doubt.

  “Why do that when she could just bloody well ask?” Jackie demanded. “What sort of psychopath starts the doomsday clock in some daft attempt to get someone off the bench?”

  “There would be better ways,” Uncle Iry agreed with a nod, though his tone was gentle. He turned a sympathetic eye to Lowe.

  “They’ve got a point, Professor,” I said. “If that really is Daria’s goal, then she’s got a dangerous notion of friendship, and we can’t take it for granted that she won’t find other, even more dangerous ways to motivate us. If we’ve misread things, then she’s downright toxic. Either way, we can’t trust her anymore.”

  Lowe scowled, but looking around the group at our faces, his shoulders sagged in defeat.

  “Very well.” He sounded so forlorn my heart caught in my chest. “But promise me that whatever we do, we don’t treat her like the enemy. We may not be able to trust her, but at the very least, we cannot work against her. She cannot be a target, understand?”

  Lowe had always been my advisor, my guide. I wasn’t used to him giving directives. My mind flashed back to the vision of him from earlier, and I wondered if there had been other changes I’d missed over the intervening months.

  “We’ll try to make sure it doesn’t come to that,” I reassured him. The fact that we might have no choice hung unspoken in the air.

  For a while, no one seemed to want to speak, and then as the silence deepened, we seemed unable to break it. Thank God for Jackie otherwise I don’t know how long we’d’ve sat there.

  “So, what’s next?”

  To my surprise, it was Sark who raised his shaggy head, “We need to go on the offensive.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  Sark had something of the old, roguish sparkle in his eyes. “It means I have a plan.”

  Chapter Ten

  “This is a stupid plan.” Jackie slammed her back against the wall and slouched down into a squat. The tight denim strained at her muscled thighs, but somehow that made her look more dangerous than ridiculous. I appreciated that because we needed to look as intimidating as possible.

  Jackie and I were hunkered next to a hostel bathroom in a particularly seedy corner of Croydon.

  The hostel itself was a small step above a flophouse, but Sark had insisted that it was a safe place for him to get cleaned up and collect some resources for the plan he’d laid out. Jackie, who obviously didn’t like the plan, didn’t want to let him go about unsupervised either. When she’d said she was going with him, I went too, not just to watch her back but to talk.

  Sark was in the bathroom using the supplies he’d purchased in a prefilled duffle to tame his appearance enough to set the first stage of the plan in motion. I had removed the restraints from his legs, and the bangles were back on my arms.

  “I know you don’t like it,” I said, “but it has the potential to throw Winterthür off-balance. We’ll have a better chance of hitting them, and Ninurta, where it really hurts.”

  “I get why the plan seems good,” she said, baring her teeth in something that wasn’t a smile. “I’m saying it is stupid for us to trust a single thing he says. Of course, he is going to offer something we want, that’s what he does right before he uses it against you.”

  The words were hard and bitter, but the anger was directed inward. Beneath the fierce warrior’s scowl, I could see something of the young, naive, carefree woman who’d once trusted Sark, intimately, and had paid the price.

  “Ibby, if we trust Sark, he is going to turn on us,” Jackie snapped. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but he will. I know you and Lowe are thinking the enemy of my enemy and all that, but the more freedom we give him, the more chances he has to turn on us. Don’t. Underestimate. Him.”

  Those final words struck me hard, and rebellion burned in my gut. I wanted to rail, to tell Jackie to keep her sniping at Snark under control because it wasn’t helping me or anybody else. I wanted to demand her support and tell her to stuff her criticism, but I swallowed it all. Jackie was trying to help; the last thing I wanted to do was alienate her.

  “You’re probably right.” I hid a smile as her pugnacious grimace dissolved into a bemused stare. “But until he does betray us, we need him to get the ball rolling.”

  Jackie snorted but didn’t immediately argue, which I took as a small victory.

  “We are going up against some real monsters here, Jackie,” I said earnestly. “That’s why I need you to help me keep watch on the one whose leash we’re holding.”

  She gave an incremental nod. Her eyes shone with unshed tears, though whether those tears were born of anger or fear, I couldn’t tell. She sniffed twice and then bought herself time by checking both ends of the hallway.

  “Okay, Ibby.” Her was voice thick with emotion. “Please be careful. For my sake, sure, but for your own as well. You’ve got a lot on your shoulders right now, and even a well behaved Sark could be a deadly distraction.”

  I nodded, accepting the warning and expressing my appreciation for her loyalty, but I felt my burden intensify. Jackie might be reactive when it came to Sark, but she wasn’t wrong about him being dangerous, and I did indeed have a lot riding on stopping Winterthür.

  The raising of Ninurta sounded so apocalyptic my mind struggled to contextualize it, but that wasn’t what pressed on me with such urgency. How many more Inconquo would they murder before Ninurta woke up, or they gave up? How many more children would they abduct and suck dry? For all I knew, every minute I stood here, another soul was being readied for their next attempt at unholy transfusion.

  The pressure of that thought made my ribs feel tight, and I struggled to keep my breathing even. As my powers had grown and my awareness of metal auras had heightened, I’d developed the focus and self-regulation to cope, but this was different. This wasn’t mental—it was emotional.

  I shoved off from the wall, desperate to move, to find some air.

  I paced the hallway, deepening my breaths with each step. When I reached a doorway, I turned back and made for the opposite end. By the time I reached the other end, the little trek had staved off the anxious constriction of my breathing. The pressure to act, though was still strong, so I made a bee-line for the bathroom door.

  I rapped my ringed knuckles on the door and sent a sliver of will to make the hinges rattle.

  “Time’s up, Cinderella,” I called, not caring how sharp I sounded. “You’re going to the ball, slippers or no.”

  Vague muttering came, then silence. I turned to Jackie, who shook her head derisively and casually drew the collapsed baton from her coat pocket. I was about to give the door a knock that would have knocked it off its hinges when it swung open.

  Standing in the doorway was the Dillon Sar
k of Christmas Past.

  His hair was salon-level perfect – I don’t know how he did it with limited tools – liberated from the hacking cut and blotchy patches of dye, while the mangy beard had been tamed into a goatee with just the right amount of stubble. The ill-fitting sweats were gone, replaced by a cream-coloured v-neck tee that helped soften the paleness of his complexion, and slim-fitting trousers. I’d never known Sark to need them, but dark-rimmed glasses were seated on his face at just the right angle to make him look clever but not bookish.

  He looked at me with a sardonic smile, my arm still raised, rings glinting.

  “Careful now,” he drawled as he moved past me into the hallway, shouldering the duffel bag. “You could hurt someone with those things.”

  Jackie raised her eyebrows and then held up the baton in offering.

  Frowning, I shook my head, and we turned to follow him.

  “I’m sure you were taking notes,” Sark said over his shoulder. “But since this is our first operation together, does everyone know their responsibilities?”

  He paused as he moved into a hallway from a horror film, head swivelling back to look at us. Jackie and I met his gaze with stony expressions and stiff nods.

  “Excellent.” Sark smirked and began to pick his way around the domestic refuse and strange stains that cluttered the hallway. Voices and disjointed music from the adjacent rooms warbled through the musty, half-lit corridor. I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck. This wasn’t the way we’d come in, and the shadowed doorways would be perfect spots for an ambush, though Sark seemed unaffected by the menacing ambiance.

  Jackie’s warning of Sark’s inevitable betrayal echoed in the back of my mind.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, trying to temper my unease.

  Sark skirted a pile of bulging and splitting rubbish bags. He moved in front of a span of wall covered with bare, stained plywood sheeting and stopped to consider the flaky wood.

  “Sark?” I pressed, feeling Jackie shift her stance beside me.