“Fools,” Ash muttered under her breath. Drum agreed, but he also understood the impulse to attempt to explain away something a human mind didn’t really want to understand. It took a lot less effort to cope with the reality where such things only happen in movies and scary stories.
“We start looking for the Guardians in Boston, then,” he said. He tried to think of a strategy to begin with but came up blank. “That’s an awfully big city for a clue that’s already half a year old. But I suppose it’s more than we knew an hour ago.”
“And less than you’ll know in a minute or two, if you let me finish,” Maeve said. “I haven’t even gotten to the most interesting part yet.”
When she paused and left that statement dangling like a baited hook in a fish pond, Drum had to pray for patience. “Stop teasing, Mae. Just spit it out already.”
His sister chuckled. “You’re no fun, but all right. One of the reasons that the stories about monsters got any traction outside of the tabloids is because at least one of the ‘hallucinations’ reported claimed that the helpful monsters were getting help from Kylie Kramer.”
“Kylie Kramer,” Drum repeated. “Where have I heard that name before?”
“Uh, how about everywhere? Honestly, Michael, I sometimes wonder if it ever rains in that cloud your head gets stuck in. I think ninety percent of the human population has heard of her. She’s the American girl genius who sold the app she developed to one of the major tech companies in the world for about twelve gajillion dollars. It made the top story in everything just a few years ago. It turns out that she lives in Boston.”
Ash leaned across his uninjured right side to speak into the phone. “And she worked with the Guardians during this battle?”
“That’s what the lunatics said right before the authorities dragged them away from the scene and to the nearest hospital,” Maeve said. “I’m not sure whether the stories held up once they got a few doses of antipsychotic medications in them. Meara says probably not. Kylie Kramer, of course, declined to comment.”
Drum nodded at Ash. “It sounds worth checking out. But how well-known is this woman? It might be difficult to get close enough to her to ask the necessary questions.”
“I would say so, since the fellow standing next to her in some of these news photos is variously identified as either her boyfriend or her bodyguard. He’s built like an American football player, and he looks about as friendly as Fionn mac Cumhaill on a rainy day. He also looks protective, whatever his relationship to Kramer.”
“He is a Guardian.” Ash’s voice held not a trace of doubt. She looked at Drum. “She may be his Warden. How soon can we travel to Boston?”
Maeve spoke again. “Not so fast. If you’ll remember, our current troubles are happening here, not in America. It seems to me that it would be more helpful to bring this particular mountain to Mohammed, so to speak. I’ve already sent an e-mail. Well, Meara did. Mama didn’t want me crashing her hard drive again.”
“What good is an e-mail going to do?” Drum grumbled. “Who’s to say she’ll even see it? If she’s a famous millionaire, she probably has an assistant who goes through that stuff and screens out the unsolicited junk. But even if it got through, are you really so gone in the head that you came right out and told her about what’s been going on here?”
“Give me a little credit, Michael. I told you this is all about keywords. The e-mail was perfectly bland and sane sounding. I just made sure to bury a few words here and there that only someone who already knew about the Guardians would pick up on.”
“But who’s to say she’ll even answer? Maybe she doesn’t care about a bunch of people in Ireland she’s never heard of?”
Ash shook her head. “If she understands, she will answer. Only one affiliated with the Guild or the Guardians directly will know of what your sister has written, and such a person cannot refuse an earnest call for aid. She would have to respond. There would be no choice.”
Drum could feel his brows draw together. “Unless the reason she understands the bloody e-mail and knows about Guardians is because she’s working for the other side.”
“Impossible. Were she nocturni, no Guardian would have let her walk out of that battle alive.” Ash sounded very certain.
“Okay,” he acknowledged reluctantly, “but we still have to wait for her to respond, and based on last night, I doubt we can wait forever.”
“Last night?” Maeve pounced on his slip. “What happened last night?”
“Nothing.”
“We were attacked.”
Ash spoke over his denial, making Drum frown and Maeve gasp. Dammit, if his sister heard about last night, it would be another ten seconds before his mother knew the whole story, as well. At that point, he would have to go into hiding to avoid her fussing followed by her scolding. In Maddie Drummond’s eyes, he might as well have still been eight years old and prone to bloody accidents. Last night did not count as any kind of accident.
“Attacked! Merciful heavens. Drum, are you all right?” Maeve demanded.
“I’m fine, Mae. I promise.”
“He received a burn on the shoulder, but he will recover soon.” Ash avoided his attempt to cover her mouth with his hand and ignored the dirty look he gave her. It was an entirely different kind of dirty than the looks he had given her last night. “There is no cause to worry. I made certain to treat and bandage the wound.”
“Thank you, Ash. Did you use Ma’s burn cream?”
“Liberally.”
“Good.”
“Yeah, it’s fan-fucking-tastic,” Drum snapped. “But do you think we can get back to important matters?”
Maeve made a clucking sound of chastisement. “He’s never been one to stay in good spirits when he is under the weather. Bit of a whinger.”
“Maeve!”
“My goodness! Fine, have it your way,” she said. “I promise that I’ll let you know the very minute I get an answer.”
“And in the meantime?”
“First thing, I suggest you practice your dodge, big brother.” Maeve disconnected before he could respond to that pithy suggestion.
He stared at the phone for a second and nearly gave in to the urge to hurl it against a wall. Only a sharp twinge in his shoulder restrained him.
Ash patted his chest. “In the meantime, we wait. And, we keep our guard up. I will not allow the Order to sneak up on us a second time.”
Drum forced down his anger and frustration until he could release the worst of it in a sigh. He replaced his mobile on the bedside table and wrapped his arms around his lover. “Good,” he said as he began to relax. “The first time wasn’t all that grand.”
She smiled at him and slid her hand to the south. “Perhaps you need assistance in focusing on something more pleasant.”
His eyebrow quirked upward. “Perhaps I do,” he murmured an instant before her hand closed around him, drawing his breath out in a hiss.
“Let me help with that,” she said, and settled her mouth over his.
Drum’s last coherent thought was that he was happy to accept this woman’s help. In fact, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to manage without it.
Chapter Fifteen
The next three days crawled by like a narcoleptic turtle. If he hadn’t had the pub to keep him busy and Ash to keep him distracted, Drum figured he’d have lost his mind by the end of the third hour. Kylie Kramer turned out not to be the sort of neurotic technology addict who checked her e-mail every thirty seconds and responded to each message as it arrived. Damn her.
Maeve stopped answering his calls after the seventh time he dialed her number. She got tired of explaining that the world didn’t revolve around his demands, that people took vacations, and that very well-known people often got behind in responding to large quantities of incoming mail. He knew all that, recognized it as a perfect example of calm and rational thought, but he still wanted to tie her shoelaces together every time she said it. Which was probably why she stopped answering
.
By Monday evening even Ash had begun snarling at him with preemptive threats every time he opened his mouth while looking in her direction. Maybe she was right about that whole Xanax suggestion, though he still found himself unwilling to let her administer it via the route she wanted. That wasn’t his brand of kink.
She had accompanied him down to the tap, and occupied the far corner stool while he stood behind the bar filling orders and building pints. It was a quiet evening, as Mondays usually were, especially since his kitchen operated only for lunch. He spent a good deal of time turning to speak to the Guardian, only to be warned off with a discreet flash of fang. He had worn his way down to her last nerve, and given how easy it would be for her to knock him into a coma with that slap Maeve had taught her, he found himself retreating several times an hour.
And bribing her with cider. It turned out that her distaste for alcohol only extended to Guinness. She liked a pint of Bulmers well enough, though she nursed it through most of the night.
It was after seven, and the pub sat almost empty but for a handful of regulars scattered about the place. He looked up from drying glassware when the door opened and a couple of strangers stepped inside. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ash stiffen, and he drew himself up warily.
“Evening.” He nodded to the newcomers, a man a couple of inches shorter than him but bulky with muscle and a tiny, dark-haired sprite of a woman less than half her companion’s size.
They stepped up to the bar, and it was the woman who offered him a smile and a greeting. “Hi. Things are certainly looking better after a few hours of sleep.” She had pretty dark eyes and an obvious American accent. “Transatlantic flights are the worst. I’m dying for some caffeine. Can I get a Coke? With what you would consider ridiculous amounts of ice, please?”
Drum glanced at the man hovering behind her, but he had his eyes fixed on Ash. He had the battered face of a boxer and little more than a stubble of hair covering his head. The expression on his face didn’t offer many clues to his thoughts, but Drum would be willing to bet on confusion mixed with hostility. The hostility made his eyes narrow and his hand reach for the sap that rested under the bar. His fingers had just closed over the grip when Ash’s voice cut through the rising tension.
“Brother.” She nodded at the burly man, leaving Drum confused. Someone without family shouldn’t be calling anyone brother, and her tone remained cool and wary. She pointed her chin at the petite American. “Is she your Warden?”
It took a moment for her meaning to sink in. When it finally hit him, Drum felt as if he’d taken a blow from his own weapon. He had been expecting a suspicious e-mail, not an impromptu and in-person visitation.
The small woman turned toward Ash and lifted her eyebrows. “Well, I was going to take a minute and work up to asking if there was a Michael Drummond here,” she said, “but it sounds like you are the one I should be talking to. I’m Kylie Kramer, but you don’t much look like any of the Guardians I’ve ever met.”
“Because she is not.” When the muscled mute finally broke his silence he did it in a voice that sounded like gravel doused in whiskey and dragged backward through a smoke-filled midnight. It also sounded like he had just rejected Ash’s claim of being a Guardian.
Drum’s fingers tightened again around the sap. He narrowed his eyes at the stranger. So did Ash.
“You deny what I am?” she asked.
“I know only that you are female, and since the dawn of our kind only males have been summoned.”
He opened his mouth to defend Ash’s honor, but Kylie spoke before he could get a word out.
“Boy, are you lucky Wynn isn’t here when you make a comment like that,” she said, snickering. “She might hex something you consider important. You guys calm down. It’s not like we can ask her to show us the real her out in public like this.”
Her words made Drum realize that they had been speaking about a rather sensitive topic in front of several local regulars. He’d rather not find himself trying to explain the concept of Guardians and Demons to some half-langered neighborhood gossips. Luckily, when he swept his gaze around the room, no one appeared to be paying them much attention. A couple of glances shifted their way at the sound of an American accent, but no one seemed interested in the actual words.
He thought back for moment, reviewing the conversation, and was struck to notice that no one had said anything worth paying attention to. Words like “Warden” and “Guardian” now had very specific meanings for him, but for the rest of the world they simply meant people employed to watch over someone or something. Pretty dull stuff when you dispensed with the capital letters and the forces of evil.
Ash’s verbal challenge pulled him back to the matter at hand.
“Would you truly require such a sight in order to recognize that which stands before you?” she asked.
“I don’t, and I’m the one who’s human.” Kylie tilted her head at her companion. “He doesn’t either, not really. He’s just confused. I would blame it on not getting all the rock out of his head, but I admit I have a couple questions myself. I kind of thought that you guys were always, well, guys.”
Ash relaxed just a little, but it was enough for Drum to notice. He brought his hand reluctantly back to the bar.
“Were I not a witness to my own existence, I might doubt as well, but I have no answers to give you. I know I am the first among my kind, but I do not know why or how I appeared as I am. I only know that I am here and that I share the memory and the purpose of all of my brothers.”
Both of the newcomers stared at her for the space of two heartbeats before the woman gave a brusque nod followed by another smile. “Good. In that case, how about you tell us your names and why I got a really unusual e-mail telling me to contact someone at this pub named Michael Drummond about a guy in a robe and earthquakes without any fault lines.”
Her companion grunted and lifted her onto the stool next to Ash before sliding into the one beside it. “Guinness,” he said. “Might be here a while.”
Drum grabbed a fresh pint glass and shook his head. The surly bastard had no idea.
* * *
They sat at the bar till closing and then adjourned to the flat upstairs. As they settled into their choices of seats, it wasn’t Ash and Drum who were still talking. As it turned out, their story so far couldn’t hold a candle to the adventures Kylie and Dag had already been through. It didn’t bode well for Dublin city.
Ash listened to every word with careful attention. She heard about the first stirring of a Guardian in this time when her brother Kees awoke on the West Coast of Canada and became the first of those to claim a female Warden, an art historian named Ella. Then Kylie told her about Spar and Felicity in Montréal, and Knox and Wynn in Chicago. Dag had been the last of the four, rising from sleep in Boston just that spring in time to fight a bloody battle against the Order. The same one covered in the news reports Maeve had unearthed online a few days earlier.
It enraged Ash to hear about the nocturni attacks on Ella, the deaths of the young men and women on a deserted island in the St. Lawrence River, and the measures required to release Wynn’s brother from the power of the Demon Uhlthor. It disturbed her to hear of the machinations of the Hierophant and the lives lost during the horrible events in Boston, which sounded a thousand times more chilling when related in the words of one who had fought through it. It made her want to do violence when she listened to the story of the destruction of Guild headquarters in Paris and the near annihilation of the ranks of Wardens, with hundreds dead and any survivors assumed to be in hiding.
But what really disturbed her, what made her spine tingle and her stomach tighten, was the news she had most desperately wished she would never hear. She wanted to utter a denial, but it took a single glance at Dag’s tight jaw and stony expression to convince her that her fears had been realized.
“Of course, we’re a hundred percent certain about Uhlthor, and almost that much about Shaab-Na,” Kylie
said, her voice quiet and grave. “They are both here and both have already gathered a significant amount of strength. Nazgahchuhl was being hosted inside the Hierophant, but between the energy they got in Boston and what they would have raised at the riots here in Dublin, we can’t be entirely certain it hasn’t regained its own form. In fact, we can’t swear the sacrifice wasn’t big enough to at least open the door for another.”
Ash felt bile rise in her throat. “Four.”
Dag shot his Warden a warning look. “That is uncertain. We tried to find evidence of a fourth Demon, but right now all we have are theories and speculation.”
“And if we’re going to speculate, my theory is that the fourth would be Hrathgunal, since it’s apparently pretty tight with Shaab-Na. You know, ‘The Unclean’ and ‘He Who Walks in Filth.’ They’ve got, like, a theme going.” Kylie rolled her eyes when Dag tried to shush her. “Come on. If we’re going to fill them in, we might as well tell them everything. So some of it is guesswork. So what? Unless the Order wants to give us a neatly bound copy of their manifesto, we’ll be doing a whole lot of guessing before this is over.”
“There is a difference between guessing and needlessly inciting panic.”
“I’m not so sure about panic being needless,” Drum muttered, slumping back against the sofa cushions. “Let’s not discount it out of hand.”
Kylie chuckled. “No. Dag and I disagree about the value of educated guesses, but he’s right that it’s not time to panic. Especially not now that we have you guys on our side. Ash makes five Guardians who aren’t stoned anymore, and you’re our fifth Warden. That equals ten of us against three, maybe four, of them. That’s not bad odds.”
“Those numbers only apply if you ignore that the three or four are Demons of the Darkness, and that they likely have thousands, if not tens of thousands, of nocturni servants to do their bidding.” Ash scowled. “Ten of us against an army of ten thousand led by the greatest evil this world has ever known sounds a little less pleasant, does it not?”
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