Guardians of the Boundary (The Conjurors Series Book 3) (6 page)

“Maybe the Oracles or the People
of the Woods know more,” Valerie suggested.

Oberon nodded thoughtfully. “The
power of the People of the Woods was critical in binding Earth’s magic. They
may have stories of the Byways.”

Reaper must be confident that he
is close to opening up the pathway between worlds to make his plea to the Grand
Masters.

“We only need to destroy one Byway,
right?” Valerie asked, thinking hard.

I believe so. They work in
tandem as I remember.

“Then the Fractus must be
scouring Earth as well,” Henry said.

Valerie agreed. It made sense
now why the Fractus were pumping humans for information. They were searching
for clues to the location of the Byway on Earth.

“The time to act is now. If Reaper
activates those Byways, the floodgates between worlds will open, and he’ll send
his entire army to Earth,” Valerie said.

The implications of an army of
Fractus against the human population was terrifying enough that it should have
brought Valerie to her knees. Instead, a sense of purpose and power pervaded
her entire being. This was the battle she was born to fight.

Valerie’s first action was to
find Chisisi in order to strategize on how to protect humans from the Fractus
who had already come to Earth.

She didn’t have a charm to
locate Chisisi, so finding him was difficult. He wasn’t at his home, the
gravesite of his brother, or any of the hidden Guardian locations on Earth that
he had told her about. She was ready to give up and try again another day when
she thought of one person on Earth who might be able to find Chisisi with less
magical means. Thai had Chisisi’s phone number.

The part of Valerie that was a teenager
with a broken heart balked. But she set her face into a calm mask and dug
around her dresser drawer for Thai’s charm. She drew a breath and touched it.

The first thing she saw when her
mind reached Earth were the yellow eyes of one of her oldest tormentors—Zunya.
Her heart went to her stomach at the sight of him, but she quickly reined in her
emotions. Zunya was a vampyre who fed on fear, and she wouldn’t give him any extra
ammunition.

“You’ve made your point,”
Chisisi’s voice was cool, but Valerie could hear a thread of fear beneath it
that he was struggling to hide.

Valerie turned at the sound of
Chisisi’s voice, and saw that he was clutching an unmoving Thai in his arms. At
the sight of Thai’s pale face, her pulse skyrocketed.

Zunya was on Earth in person, and
he’d already found and hurt the person she loved most.

“Get away from him!” Valerie
shrieked, dropping to her knees beside Thai.

Zunya’s surprise was quickly
replaced by a smug smile.

“I had so hoped we’d meet again
soon,” Zunya’s oily voice made Valerie sick to her stomach. “But even I could
never have orchestrated such perfect timing. This is a warning. You and your
brother have friends on Earth you’d like to remain intact.”

Thai groaned, and Valerie almost
collapsed with relief. He wasn’t dead.

“Mind your business and leave us
to ours,” Zunya continued. “Or my next warning will make this one seem
friendly.”

Chisisi gently laid Thai on the
ground. When he stood up, his face was tense with anger.

“You’re not welcome here,”
Chisisi said.

“What do you think you can do
about it, human?” Zunya snarled.

Zunya’s surprised gasp matched
Valerie’s when Chisisi whipped out two throwing stars from his sleeves and
hurtled them at the vampyre.

Zunya moved quickly, but his arm
was sliced cleanly. He snarled and leapt for Chisisi, but the lithe Guardian
was ready for the attack. In a move that reminded Valerie of one of her own,
Chisisi used Zunya’s momentum against him and hurtled him over his shoulder,
slamming him into the ground.

Chisisi winced at the physical contact
with the vampyre, which Valerie knew was incredibly painful, even for those who
didn’t have magic that Zunya could steal. Zunya could rip away Chisisi’s life
with prolonged contact.

Chisisi didn’t give him the
chance. He grabbed a strange silver wire off a wall near the door of the room
and hit Zunya’s leg with it, hard. The wire latched around the vampyre’s ankle,
and Zunya made a noise of pain. His body shook as if he were having a seizure.

The cords of muscle on Chisisi’s
arms flexed as he gripped the wire and dragged Zunya out of the room. Zunya
struggled weakly, but before he could fully recover Chisisi had yanked him through
the open door.

Chisisi quickly reentered the
room and pushed the door shut behind him. It was metal, with an elaborate wheel
attached to it. He spun the wheel quickly, and Valerie heard a lock slide into
place.

“It is my fault that Thai was
attacked. I was careless and left the door open,” Chisisi said, his eyes meeting
Valerie’s for the first time.

Valerie knelt beside Thai, who
was struggling to open his eyes, as she responded to Chisisi. “You were
amazing. You saved his life.”

Chisisi remained pale. “My
brother told me many times to always secure the safe house first, before doing
any other action. I should have heeded his words today.”

Thai was conscious now, though
weak. He pushed himself up to a seated position and noticed Valerie for the
first time.

“Did you see all that?” he asked
with a strange note in his voice. Was he embarrassed?

“Only the end. What happened?” Valerie
asked.

“He barely touched me, but it
was like my soul was being ripped from my body,” Thai said.

Valerie nodded. “I’ve been
there.”

“He did that to you?” Thai said,
his face tense with rage.

“I’ve never felt so helpless,”
she admitted. “Don’t let it eat you up that you couldn’t fight that. It means
that there must be a lot of magic in you for you to be so vulnerable to him.”

“Young miss is right,” Chisisi
agreed. “We are lucky his purpose was to threaten, not kill.”

“He wants me to know he’s going to
come after people I love if I try to stop him,” Valerie said, the weight of
Zunya’s words settling upon her heart now that the immediate danger had passed.
She saw a pained expression cross Thai’s face, and she wished she hadn’t
admitted out loud that she still loved him.

“You would do best to stay
hidden. It is not only you, but also your family who are vulnerable,” Chisisi
said to Thai. “I simply wish for you to consider all the risks if you decide to
become a Guardian on Earth.”

Valerie turned to Thai,
wide-eyed. “I thought you wanted a normal college life, away from all this.”

“My business with Chisisi has
nothing to do with you.”

Valerie forced herself not to
stamp her foot with frustration. “Obviously it does, since Zunya is using your
safety as leverage to keep me from stopping the Fractus!”

“Enough, young ones,” Chisisi
said firmly. “As much as we may all wish our fates were not bound up in this
battle, they are. I was wrong to dissuade either of you from your paths. We
will need all hands to stop the Fractus.”

Valerie nodded and forced
herself to breathe more slowly. A year ago, she would have tried to shield Thai
from danger, but like her, he had to make his own decisions. Her fear for
Thai’s safety couldn’t govern her every move. There were too many lives
depending on her now.

“I came here to talk to you,
Chisisi,” Valerie began, and she explained about the Fractus’s search for the Byways,
and the implications of what could happen.

Thai and Chisisi listened
without interrupting until she was done.

“Our contact with the Guardians
on the Globe ceased abruptly a few weeks ago. Azra has tried to keep us
informed on the actions of the Fractus when she’s been able to get away from
her duties, but we did not know the extent of the Fractus’s threat,” Chisisi
said. “There has been little guidance on how to approach their attacks on
Earth.”

“That’s because Midnight is
dead,” Valerie choked out. Thai made a sound of pain. Midnight had been his
friend, too, and had coached him through his transition as an amoebiate.

“How?” he asked, his face devoid
of color.

“Reaper murdered her,” Valerie
said, and couldn’t bring herself to say more. Instead, she changed the subject.
“Her successor, Oleander, can’t be trusted. She’s Fractus, and she had a hand
in Midnight’s death.”

Chisisi nodded gravely. “I have
met her. Her aura is dark.”

“I don’t know which Guardians on
the Globe can be trusted,” Valerie admitted.

“How do you advise us to
proceed?” Chisisi asked. His question took her by surprise, and Chisisi took
note of her expression. “I am not alone in considering you the commander of the
battle that is coming. The Guardians on Earth are at your disposal. We will
follow where you lead.”

A rush of dread
turned Valerie’s fingers to ice, but she accepted the responsibility without
struggling. This was her life now.

Valerie’s conversation with
Chisisi and Thai left her drained. She wished that she could crawl under her
covers and forget about the future for a while. She didn’t let herself give in
to the impulse, but she did allow herself to go find Cyrus.

She knocked on his door, and he
didn’t give her a chance to speak before he was kissing her. Despite all her
worries, she giggled as he dragged her inside his room, slamming the door
behind her.

“I missed you,” he said, moving
his face back an inch.

“Me, too.”

Being with Cyrus was a relief—he
knew her longer and better than anyone else in the universe, and she didn’t
have to pretend like she knew what she was doing or she was stronger than she
really was.

“Of course you missed me, like a
flower misses the sunshine,” Cyrus joked.

Valerie tackled him to the
floor, easily pinning him beneath her.

“You could at least pretend that
was a little difficult for you,” Cyrus huffed, but she could see he wasn’t
really annoyed. She started to shift off of him, but he gripped her. “I didn’t
mean you should move. I surrender.”

Valerie kissed him again,
letting her body melt into his. Cyrus flipped her over so that she was on her
back, but she pulled away before she could lose her train of thought.

“I didn’t come here to make
out,” she said.

Cyrus leaned closer and kissed
her neck. Almost against her will, her eyes fluttered closed.

“Are you sure? I think maybe you
did,” he said, making her laugh again.

Valerie shoved him away, for
real this time. Cyrus groaned in frustration, but he moved away from her.

“I have to start looking for the
Byways,” she said to him. “Do you think Cara or Ceru might be able to put me in
contact with one of the People of the Woods to see what they know?”

Cara, Cyrus’s little sister, had
recently joined the People of the Woods on a secret mission after meeting Ceru.
Cyrus nodded slowly.

“Last I heard, she’s staying
with Elden’s people in the treetops near Dunsinane,” he said with a shudder. “I
wish she’d stay close to Silva where I could keep an eye on her.”

Valerie remembered Elden, a
leader of the People of the Woods whom she had met when she had returned to the
Globe the year before.

“Do you know how to get there?”
she asked Cyrus.

“It’s not a place you can find
unless the People of the Woods want you to. Ceru is visiting home right now, so
there’s no one I can ask,” Cyrus said.

“I’ll find a way,”
Valerie said.

Despite her confidence when she
talked to Cyrus, Valerie wasn’t sure whom to approach next. But she was
impatient and jittery, needing to take action. By habit, she headed to the
Knights of Light for training. Gideon was standing near the arches, scanning
the Conjurors roaming The Horseshoe.

“I wasn’t sure how to find you,”
Valerie said to her mentor.

“I have been waiting for you to
come for your guild training. You’re late, and though I am not your instructor,
it would be unwise to neglect your training,” he said sternly. Valerie was
about to interrupt to fill him in on what had happened, but Gideon continued.
“Azra has told me of Reaper’s appearance to the Grand Masters and suggested
that I go to the People of the Woods for their help.”

“Take me with you,” Valerie
said.

Gideon nodded. “It is why I came
to find you. In addition to teaching you to shield your mind against magical assaults,
you must also begin assembling an army of your own. It will not be long before
the Fractus attack the Globe, and we need our allies ready.”

“How do I convince people to put
themselves in danger for me?” she asked, hoping her voice didn’t sound as
childish to Gideon as it did to her own ears.

“They put themselves in danger
to protect their families, their way of life,” Gideon reminded her.

“But they’re trusting me to
guide them,” Valerie replied.

“To win their hearts to the
cause, you must fully believe in it yourself.”

If she was honest, Valerie could
see the appeal of free travel between the Earth and the Globe that the Fractus
promised. Many innocent people on Earth would benefit from magic, if it was
used for good.

“I believe the Fractus are evil,
and that they will abuse their power on Earth and the Globe if we allow it,”
she said cautiously.

“People need more than a common
enemy to be fully invested. You must find within yourself how both worlds can
be better by ending the Fractus’s threat,” Gideon said.

“I don’t know what that future should
be,” Valerie admitted.

“Leading people by inspiration
rather than fear means being able to tell a compelling story. One of a future
that is brighter than today,” Gideon said. “It is up to you to decide what that
story will be.”

Thinking about it that way gave
Valerie a measure of relief. One of her favorite things to do when she’d been
in the hospital on Earth was to make up stories to tell the sick children to
distract them.