Hard Breaker Read online

  Baen stepped forward and curled his lip, wishing there were a fang there for him to flash. “I do not recall you summoning anyone, human, so perhaps one more lost Warden will not make such a very big impact.”

  “Hey, settle down.” Ivy moved to stand between the Warden and Baen looming over him. “The last thing we need here is arguing among ourselves. Everybody take a deep breath and get a grip.”

  The kettle chose just that moment to whistle, the sound making Martin jump visibly. Baen felt a surge of dark satisfaction.

  “Guardian, you should sit,” she instructed. “There.” She pointed to the chair at the small dinette that held the position farthest from Martin. The distance would not slow down an angry Guardian, but it might offer the human a false sense of security. “I think we could all use some tea.”

  “I could use more information.” Reluctantly, Baen took the seat the female indicated, settling his large frame onto the spindly wooden frame with caution. “To begin with, what has happened to the Guild of Wardens?”

  “How much time have you got?” Martin scoffed.

  Ivy sent him a narrow look. “I doubt there’s any milk in the fridge, Martin, but why don’t you look for some sugar?”

  If Baen read the subtext properly—never a Guardian’s strong suit, mind you; his kind tended to find human behavior baffling—he detected a definite note of “and if you tell me you take it black I’ll pour it down your trousers” in the request. Perhaps the human male did, too, because he rose to examine the counters and cupboards.

  “I told you I’m not a member of the Guild,” Ivy said, “so I wasn’t aware of any problem at all until about eight months ago. That’s when my uncle and cousin were killed.”

  He watched her fiddle with the teapot, lifting the lid to check the color of the brew before pouring three mugs of the hot liquid. Baen had no desire to drink tea, but even less to interrupt the female’s story, so he said nothing.

  “They were both members of the Guild,” she continued. “Uncle George was my mother’s older brother, and Jamie—James—was his son. His only child. Mum’s family have been in the Guild for generations. The Fitzroys. I grew up knowing about the existence of magic and the basics behind the Guild and the Order. I heard all the stories and everything, but we moved back to the States when I was only three, and since neither of my parents was a Warden I was well out of it for most of my life. I mean, we visited Uncle George every year, but demon hunting really never featured as a topic during family reunions.”

  Baen should hope not. The Guild and the Guardians existed so that the rest of humanity did not have to concern themselves with the activities of the Order or the Demons they served. That should apply especially to human children, as Ivy had been.

  “I knew Uncle George was a Warden, though, and I knew Jamie trained as one, too. We all sent him congratulations and gifts when he was inducted into the Guild, but that’s as much thought as I really gave it. I guess like most people, I took for granted that we weren’t in any real danger from the Darkness, because if we were, then the Wardens and the Guardians were there to deal with the threat.”

  “That is how it’s supposed to work.” Martin set a small bowl on the table and immediately transferred three spoonfuls of white crystals from it into his teacup. “Most Wardens don’t expect to get involved in anything too messy. That’s why each Guardian has a personal Warden and why some Wardens specialize in battle magic and such things. Me, I was always much more the academic sort. I did research, spell testing, that kind of thing.”

  Of that, Baen had no doubt. He could never imagine the timid male willingly facing off against a threat, even one as minor as a single nocturni. Put him up against a demon, and Martin would run screaming.

  Or puking, as he had demonstrated in the alley earlier.

  “Yes, well, it only works like that when the Guild has enough members,” Ivy said, shaking her head when the other human nudged the sugar bowl her way. “I didn’t know it until Uncle George was already gone, but several years ago, the Order began to … to pick off Wardens. I guess that’s the only way to describe it. They started with the most isolated ones, the ones least likely to be missed, and just made them disappear. They killed them.”

  She paused to sip her tea before continuing. “No one registered it was a pattern until they started disappearing faster than the Guild could induct and train replacements. And still, it stayed quiet except in the immediate community of Wardens. It’s not the sort of thing they’d want to advertise, you know? Plus, outside of the Guild, who even knows they exist? Besides the nocturnis, of course. But not talking about it only made it easier for the Order to get to them, because they weren’t really expecting trouble. Then they hit the Guild headquarters directly. Not only did they take out almost a hundred Wardens in one shot, they destroyed the archives as well. It threw everything into chaos. The head council was wiped out; the rosters were gone. Honestly, had it never occurred to anyone that an electronic backup might be an idea worth considering? But anyway, no one even had access to records to tell them which Wardens were left or where to find them. At that point, the ones who were still alive went into hiding for their own protection.”

  Baen tried to imagine the situation. It would have been chaos, indeed. The Guild had always clung to the traditions laid down during its long history, distrusting technology because they claimed it interfered with their magical abilities. He didn’t know if that was true or not. Guardians were magical beings, made of magic, but they could not utilize it in the way the Wardens did. A Guardian could never cast a spell. It might appear to be magic when he altered his form to appear human, but that was simply an alternate state of being as natural to him as his winged form. It had no effect on technology, and technology could not affect it.

  Ivy grimaced, pulling his attention back to her story. “Maybe if Uncle George and Jamie had hidden, they’d still be alive, but they had realized what was happening. The Order had gone after the Guild to weaken it, but especially to prevent them from summoning the Guardians. We think the nocturnis have been trying to locate you guys as urgently as we have, only they want to get to you so that they can destroy you while you’re vulnerable.”

  It was a sensible plan, though entirely lacking in honor. A Guardian possessed very few physical vulnerabilities. They were almost entirely immune to magic, supernaturally strong, and fiercely effective in battle. In their natural forms, their skin acted as armor superior to anything mankind had ever invented, and even when disguised as human, they remained stronger, faster, and harder to injure than any mortal. They also healed from wounds with amazing speed. An active Guardian was nearly impossible to kill.

  However, when in their sleeping state, in the grip of magical slumber, a Guardian was very much like the stone statue he resembled. He weathered like stone in the elements—though that damage would disappear upon waking—and he could be smashed like stone with sufficient force. Being dropped from a great height, for example, would destroy a Guardian, as would explosives, or anything else that could generate massive concussive force.

  Baen frowned. “I am confused by this. Yes, the nocturnis could attempt to destroy me and my brothers while we slept, but when one Guardian falls, another is immediately summoned. What good would it do the servants of the Darkness to break our sleeping forms when we would simply be replaced by another of equal ferocity?”

  “The Guild has already discovered that’s not quite the way it works,” Ivy said, her expression grim. “An active Guardian who falls is immediately replaced, but if one of you is destroyed while you’re asleep, you don’t get a replacement until you’re called for. Until he’s called for. Whatever. A Guardian doesn’t just appear. A summoning still has to take place. So if the Order could thin out the Guild, destroy the Guardians while they’re in their statue forms, and not have enough Wardens left to perform summonings—”

  “They could potentially strike before we could rise to stop them,” Baen finished, his voice degener
ating into a snarl as the intention behind the nocturnis’ scheme became clear. “They could perhaps even manage to free one of the Seven from its prison without anything to stand in their way.”

  “One?” Martin scoffed. The sound held a note of hysteria. “We’d be lucky if it were just one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He’d risen halfway out of his chair before Ivy’s outstretched hand brushed against his arm and stopped him in his tracks. He didn’t know why.

  “He means that we think that’s already happened,” she told him, a soft push urging him back into his seat. He fixed his gaze on her, and found her misty-gray eyes already watching him, their expression troubled but determined. “In fact, we think it’s happened more than once.”

  The news made sparks of rage light in Baen’s chest. The urge to fly at something, to fight, to destroy, filled his veins with heat and burned behind his eyes. How had this been allowed to happen? Where were his brothers while this scourge of Darkness invaded the human world? Surely, in the face of such a serious threat, they could have woken without their Wardens’ ritual summonings.

  “My contact in France says the group in Paris think there may be three of the Seven already here. And the Order won’t stop until they have freed them all.”

  Chapter Six

  For a minute there, Ivy thought she might be trapped in a cartoon, because it certainly looked as if Baen’s head was about to explode all over the dead Warden’s kitchen. The news of the Order’s recent activities clearly did not sit well with the Guardian.

  Imagine that—a warrior all bent out of shape over the idea that his enemies were on the verge of routing his side before he’d ever gotten a chance to take the field. Who’da thunk?

  “I must make contact with my brothers. Immediately.”

  It took a minute for Ivy to figure out what Baen had said. She had to translate the words into English from the barely intelligible, animalistic snarl in which he’d actually uttered them.

  “The other Guardians? Good luck.” She shook her head. “Do you think that every remaining member of the Guild hasn’t been searching for them from the first moment they realized what was going on? You guys are MIA. You were stationed in cities all over the world, from what anyone can remember, but only the archives recorded exactly where. And we’re pretty sure that your personal Wardens were the first ones the Order got rid of, making finding you next to impossible. Let alone summoning you.”

  He locked that blazing gaze on her, the flames that had previously flickered in the black depths now roaring like an inferno, almost obscuring the dark. “I am here now. I also do not believe that none of my brothers would not have already woken in the face of such a grave threat.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, where are they, then?” Martin asked. He looked both belligerent and downtrodden, an odd combination, but each emotion suited what Ivy had seen of his character. He had shown himself to be both a wuss and a whiner. “If the Guardians are among us, they’re bloody well taking their time in sorting this mess out.”

  As much as Ivy hated to agree with the man, he did have a point. “The remaining Guild in Paris have had no contact from any of you. Wouldn’t that be the first thing you did if you were summoned? Get in touch with other Wardens?”

  “Were we summoned?” Baen countered. “Did either of you perform that ritual to waken me from my sleep?”

  The question struck Ivy for the first time. In the face of the demonic attack, she had not stopped to think about where the Guardian had come from, let alone how he had gotten there. She had been too grateful for his rescue to worry about the hows and whys. But now that she thought about it, it made no sense. At least, not according to all the stories and legends her family had told her over the years.

  The Guardians had not been created by the Guild. As far as anyone could tell, they had been created by the Light itself, but they had first been summoned by the Wardens in order to battle the Demons of the Darkness. When the enemy had been defeated, the Wardens had then placed them in a form of magical slumber until they might again be needed to defend humanity. So, in a way, the appearance and withdrawal of the stone warriors had always been under the control of the members of the Guild.

  Personally, the idea had always struck Ivy as unfair, almost a form of slavery. Instead of allowing the Guardians to live in the world they defended, the Wardens kept them on a sort of magical leash, only allowing them brief periods of freedom during which they were expected to fight to save a population of beings to whom they had no real connection, either physical or emotional. Clearly, the Guardians were not human, but a separate species altogether, and since they did not live among humans, they had no chance to form any kind of emotional attachment to them. The Guild treated them like junkyard dogs in a way, isolating and ostracizing them, while still expecting loyalty and protection in the face of danger.

  Talk about getting the short end of the stick. From what Ivy could tell, the Guardians got that short end poked right in their eyes.

  Baen made a good point, though. Neither she nor Martin had performed the summoning spell that was supposedly required to draw a Guardian from sleep. She doubted either of them would have known how to go about it, even if they had wanted to. So, why was Baen not still sleeping atop that abandoned Gothic church in Croydon? His appearance and timely rescue should never have happened. It should have been impossible.

  “No,” she finally said in answer to his question. “We didn’t wake you. Not deliberately, anyway. How did that happen? Has it ever happened before? Is there supposed to be some other way to wake a Guardian than using the Guild’s spell?”

  She looked from Baen to Martin, but the Warden was shaking his head. “Not that I know of. Only personal Wardens are taught the spell to begin with, but according to the Guild, you have to perform it, and perform it properly, in order to wake one up.”

  “Then you shouldn’t be here.” She looked at Baen, now truly confused.

  “Yet here I am.” He spread his arms to indicate his presence. As if someone his size could be overlooked.

  “So you think that if you woke without a direct summons from a Warden, others like you might have done the same thing?”

  “Why not?”

  Martin made a face. “Perhaps because it should have been impossible the first time, so the odds against it happening a second, let alone a third or a seventh, rank somewhere in the range of astronomical. Trust me, Wardens don’t have that kind of luck. Not these days.”

  Ivy had to stifle the urge to slap the man. She’d had just about enough of his whinging. She ignored him and instead thought about the possibility for the first time.

  “If any other Guardians have woken, my contacts haven’t mentioned it,” she said. “I don’t think that’s the kind of thing they would have kept to themselves, either. Not only could everyone on our side use the morale boost that kind of news would have given us, but I’m pretty sure that putting the word out would make the best use of the network when it came to finding more of you. And I know the Guild has been looking. It’s the main task everyone we’ve gotten to safety has been put to work on. The survivors know perfectly well that without the Guardians, the world is pretty much screwed.”

  “We’re screwed anyway.”

  “My God, would you shut up?” Ivy rounded on Martin with a furious glare. “You are not helping, you whiny bastard. If you can’t contribute anything positive to the conversation, you can feel free to leave.”

  The man went white. “Y-you’re kicking me out? But—but what if there are more demons out there? Or nocturnis?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I meant you could leave the room.” As appealing as the idea of washing her hands of the Warden was, her conscience wouldn’t let her throw him to the wolves. More’s the pity. “There’s an entire empty house here, including three bedrooms upstairs. Why don’t you go and try to get some sleep, or something?”

  His expression of panic faded, and his features settled back into their
lines of discontent. “Fine. I know when I’m not wanted.”

  Ivy and Baen watched him shove away from the table and stalk out of the kitchen. A moment later, his footsteps sounded on the stairs to the second floor.

  “Clearly, he does not,” Baen rumbled, “or he would have made himself scarce some time ago.”

  Ivy snorted, but she actually felt some of the tension leave her muscles without Martin around to throw in his two cents. “I’m sure he’s just reacting badly to the fear and stress. He can’t be that bad normally, right?”

  Baen looked doubtful, but said nothing.

  She refocused on the interrupted conversation. “Anyway, I am pretty certain that if there are other Guardians currently awake and moving around, the contacts I have in France aren’t aware of it. Neither are the ones in Scotland, Spain, or the Channel Islands. So how could we find out either way?”

  The Guardian eyed her for a moment. He must have calmed down a bit from the shock of her news, because his eyes no longer looked the same as they had in his gargoylelike form. Now, they appeared entirely human, though she didn’t think she had ever seen a brown so deep before. Only a ring of dark amber around his pupils kept the iris from blending entirely into the black.

  “It would be helpful if you had received the proper training,” he said after a moment.

  “Training?” It took a moment for her to catch on. “You mean Guild training? I told you, I’m not a Warden.”

  “And I told you, you are mine.”

  The words sent a jolt through her, one that had very little to do with the shock of being called a Warden. Butterflies jigged in her belly, and an inappropriate flush of heat filled her.

  “My Warden,” he added a moment later. His gaze had heated, though. At least, she thought it had. The amber around his pupils suddenly bore a stark resemblance to the fire that burned behind his gargoyle’s black eyes.