Authors: Christine Warren
That was the other problem with Kees staring at her while she worked. He knew immediately when she found something and he always demanded she share that very instant.
Her expression tightened as she waved him forward. “This is a news article from an English-language news site in Paris. I didn’t find it right away, because it was published more than a year ago, so it got buried under more recent results.”
She shifted aside so he could see the screen more clearly. Kees leaned over her shoulder and focused on the headline that filled the computer monitor:
23 DEAD, NO SURVIVORS AS CATASTROPHIC FIRE CONSUMES HISTORIC BUILDING
The Guild of Wardens no longer inhabited the shell of the old structure in the ancient quarter of Paris. No one did, according to the article.
The Guild had been destroyed.
Ella felt the silence take over the room. It covered everything like a blanket, making the atmosphere heavy and claustrophobic.. She even found herself turning her head to look at Kees, just to make certain he hadn’t turned back to stone. He held himself too stiff and still she worried for a minute until she saw his chest expand when he drew in a breath.
“Read the article to me.” His voice sounded tight and fierce as he barked the command. He pushed himself away from Ella’s desk and began to pace, his tail swishing behind him like an angry cat’s. “Tell me everything it says. Tell me exactly what happened.”
Ella’s heart ached as she turned back to the screen and read about the destruction of Kees’s strongest link to the human world. She knew the loss of those twenty-three lives must represent the loss of centuries and centuries of friendships and families and a community that was all he had, a rock the stone-skinned sentinel could lean on during his long ages of sleep. And now it had been ripped away from him.
Ripped away more than a year ago, and he hadn’t even known.
The story couldn’t possibly make him feel any better, but Ella read it anyway. He deserved to know. According to the news article, the fire had started in a “file room” in the old building, feeding quickly on dry paper and books. The Guild headquarters was described as the home and offices of a “private research society” concerned with “historical and political philosophy,” a description Ella thought dry enough to burn all on its own.
The blaze broke out at night, the first bad sign, when society members and employees were sleeping. Outdated wiring took the blame for fire alarms failing to sound, and the age of the building was cited when the report mentioned exits had been blocked by fallen debris, trapping victims in the flames. By the time other residents of the street noticed the flames and called the fire department, the inferno already raged out of control. Officials made the decision to concentrate their efforts on saving neighboring buildings, and the Guild headquarters burned until nearly noon the next day before the blaze was brought under control and finally extinguished.
As of the time the article was written, the cause of the fire had not been determined, but authorities were “investigating.”
Kees listened to every word in silence. Ella felt a flash of surprise when she realized that even in his enormous natural form, he made hardly a sound as he paced across her wooden floor. Of course, considering how gracefully he moved at any size, she shouldn’t wonder at the quiet.
She did wonder about what he was thinking, though. His expression had turned back to stone, even if the rest of him remained awake and alive, and she couldn’t detect so much as a hint of emotion behind the carved mask of inscrutability.
When she finished reading, Ella swiveled her chair to face her companion and twisted her hands in her lap. She wanted to reach out and touch him, wanted to comfort him, but she didn’t know how. Didn’t know if he would let her. Right now, he looked as forbidding as he had the first time she saw him move in the museum gardens. This time, he didn’t frighten her, but that didn’t mean she felt confident in offering him her sympathy.
She couldn’t keep silent, though.
She stayed in her chair, but her eyes followed him across the room.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, wishing she could find other words. Better words. “For your friends. For you.”
His stride caught, hesitated, just a bit, just for a second, but he didn’t turn to look at her. “The fire was not an accident, no matter what their authorities chose to reveal. Wardens can create fire, and they can extinguish fire. Such a thing as an uncontrollable blaze could never have occurred unless there was Dark magic deliberately fanning the flames.”
Ella started, realization jolting through her. “You think the
nocturnis
caused the fire. You think they tried to wipe out the entire Guild?”
Finally he looked at her. Gone were the black eyes and pinprick flames she had grown accustomed to. In their place, the very fires of hell seemed to burn. Not even the fire at the Guild could have burned so hotly and so bright.
“I think that twenty-four Wardens are dead in three years,” he snarled, fangs bared fully and fiercely. “I think such a thing has never occurred in all the ages that I have known. I think that such a thing feels to me like an act of war against those who oppose the Darkness. Do you think differently?”
“No. I—I—I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think I know enough to know.” She wished idly for a jolt of caffeine. Or maybe liquor. Something that would clear the confusion buzzing through it. A short pause let her try again. “I think it’s really weird that we went to find our Warden, and he turned out to be dead without you getting a replacement like you expected. And I think it’s even weirder that the people who were supposed to provide that replacement wound up dead, too. But I also think that the things you guys go up against, the things that killed Gregory and burned down the Guild house? Those things scare the crap out of me. And the thing they want to do? That scares me even more.”
When Kees opened his mouth to roar at her, she held up a hand and pushed herself to her feet.
“I think there’s something really big going on here,” she continued, “bigger than just you and me. You’re one Guardian, and I’m one human being. Whether or not I have the potential to be something more someday, I’m not even a Warden, and I so do not feel capable of rushing out of here and taking on an entire Order of magic-wielding sociopaths and their demon overlords. I don’t have that kind of courage. Or that kind of stupidity.”
She saw some new kind of emotion flash behind Kees’s blazing eyes, but it was gone too fast for her to read. All she could do was read his expression, which at the moment was bad enough. He looked like he wanted to simultaneously howl at the moon, bench-press Mount Waddington, and rip the heads and limbs off every last living member of the Order of Eternal Darkness. And then he could really start to vent.
Her reptilian hindbrain had its suitcases in hand and was screaming at her that South America was really nice this time of year, but Ella didn’t move. Whether that was because her legs were frozen in fear, or she knew Kees wouldn’t hurt her was not a question she wanted to bet on right now.
She gathered her courage and reached out to lay a hand on his arm. She could almost feel the rage seething beneath his skin like flows of lava. Somehow, just touching all that anger and contained power filled her with strength and she felt her spine straighten.
“I think that if this is an act of war, you’re going to need an army to take into battle,” she said, marveling at the strength of her own voice. When had she become some kind of warrior woman?
“The Guild has been destroyed, human,” he sneered. “What army would you have me gather?”
“The building was destroyed, and we know that Gregory is dead,” Ella agreed, “but does that mean the Guild itself was wiped out? An organization that’s been around, according to you, since practically the dawn of time? I’m pretty certain any group like that is going to be made up of more than twenty-four humans. There have to be survivors out there. Not to mention the other Guardians. If you’re still around, shouldn’t they be, too? If you’re this anxious to kick demonic ass, imagine how your friends are going to feel.”
Ella watched as his eyes narrowed and the harsh planes of his face shifted from frozen rage to bloodthirsty anticipation.
“You are right, little human,” he rumbled, warmth returning to heat the gravel of his voice. “My brothers must hear of this. The must be woken as I was, and for that, we will need to find other members of the Guild.” He bent his head to look down at her. “I still do not know how you woke me from my slumber, but I have never heard of it happening before, so we cannot rely on your ability to wake the others, even if I knew where all of them were located now.”
“I agree. I don’t even know what I did, let alone how I did it. We need to find surviving Wardens, and hopefully those with enough experience to know how to wake the other Guardians. They will at least know how to find them, won’t they?”
“The Guild always knows where each of the Guardians lies at rest. If we find the Wardens, we can find my brothers.”
“Okay.” Ella’s mind raced as she considered the possibilities. “With the headquarters of the Guild destroyed, and so publicly, we have to assume that any Wardens who survived also believe that every member of the organization is under attack. If I were in their shoes, I think I’d be keeping a pretty low profile at the moment, so I think we should move forward on the understanding that the remaining Wardens have gone underground. That means we won’t be able to track them through their association.”
She was mostly talking to herself, playing through the idea to see where it led, but she knew Kees had been listening. She had come to recognize the feel of his gaze on hers. She just knew when he was close by, and when he was paying close attention. It was a little weird and a little cool.
“I’m going to need some specific names to search for,” she informed him. “That’s the quickest way I can think of to track them down, especially if they’re trying to escape notice. Do you remember any that you can give me?”
Kees grimaced. “I know the name of my own Warden, and the names of the three High Initiates of my last waking, but most of the others I would never have had reason to meet or to know. I cannot guarantee the names I give you are for Wardens still living.”
“Crap.” Ella chewed her lip as she considered what to do. She couldn’t say she was surprised by what Kees told her. From everything she’d learned of the Guardians and the Guild of Wardens, it was a loosely banded confederation, to say the least. Now, with the central authority taken out with the fire, stringing the pieces back together would be a challenge.
An idea occurred to her, and she felt her lips curve at the edges.
“Wait a minute. You said that most of the time, Wardens pass on their duties to their kids, right? The sons and daughters of Wardens usually become Wardens in their own right and take over when the parent retires.”
Kees nodded.
Ella flexed her fingers and plopped down in her computer chair. “Perfect. Give me those names you remember.”
“You think you will be able to locate them after so many years? They were not young the last time I woke. I would be very surprised if they still lived.”
She dismissed the concern, still smiling. “They don’t need to be alive,” she explained and pulled up the homepage for a huge genealogical database. “They just need to have offspring. Give me the names, big guy. If I can’t find the people themselves, I’ll bet you a toonie I can find their families. From there, it will be a. Piece. Of. Cake.”
Chapter Seven
Okay, so “piece of cake” might have been a slight exaggeration. Ella worked the Web site for four more hours, but hit a wall sometime after midnight. Considering how little she’d slept the night before, it shocked her that she hadn’t keeled over before the first of the prime-time TV lineup came on.
Damn, but she needed a nap.
Pushing away from the desk, she rose and stretched until every muscle in her body screamed a protest. The way they all fell back into place when she relaxed made her sigh. Better, but when this was all over, she needed to treat herself to a massage.
Of course, that idea raised the question of when all this
would
be over, and perhaps even more significantly, what all this was to begin with.
Somehow in the last twenty-four hours, Ella had gone from not knowing magic existed to working side by side with a living gargoyle to muster the forces of good and defeat the powers of evil. Along the way, she’d discovered that the thing she feared most about herself was of no concern to Kees, just magic she needed to learn to use, like somehow she’d gotten through school without learning how to read and now she was about to get a tutor to help with her ABC’s.
She’d also found out that demons existed, on more than creepy-fun television programs, and that they had a hankering to destroy the world. More than that, she—Ella Marie Harrow—might just be able to help stop them.
And underneath it all, Ella had learned that something about the huge, mythological monster who was guiding her through this fun house of her new reality drew her like nothing else she’d ever experienced.
Ella sighed and wrapped her arms around herself to ward off a sudden chill. She glanced around the open living-dining area of the apartment and realized it lay empty. Frowning, she recalled—vaguely, as she had a tendency to get lost in her head when she was concentrating on something—that Kees had excused himself a while ago with a rumble about fresh air. She didn’t, however, recall hearing the front door open or close, and she would swear in the Crown Court that he hadn’t shifted forms before he left. The process was so compelling and fascinating to watch, there was no way she would have missed that.
Recalling the moment when he had first introduced himself, Ella padded on her stocking feet through the door into the bedroom. Sure enough, the window was open and she could see a dark shadow leaning against the high railing of her fire escape.
She stuck her head out the window and looked up at him. “Aren’t you worried someone might walk by and see you out here?”