Hard Breaker

by Christine Warren

  Under her anorak and tight jeans, a custom-made dagger rode in a sheath at the small of her back. And oddly enough, she knew how to use it. Over the last several months, she hadn’t had much choice but to learn, until these days, it felt so comfortable, she almost forgot it was there.

  Until moments like this, that is, when the hair on the back of her neck began to stand up and her senses put her on high alert.

  “Bollocks,” she muttered. Faking another giggle, she turned playfully into Martin’s side and pretended to bury her face in his shoulder. In reality, she used the opportunity to take a look at the area behind them. She had felt confident that there had been no nocturnis in the pub with them who might try to follow, but she should have paid a bit more attention to Teddy and his band of happy hooligans. Three of them had exited the bar after Ivy and Martin and now trailed sixty or seventy feet behind them.

  Normally, Ivy would have considered such an event no more than a slight bother, but something about their posture niggled at the back of her mind. The aggression she would have expected, but for some reason their stance struck her as more menacing than it ought to be.

  Damn it, they didn’t have time for this shit. Or even if they did, Ivy just didn’t have the patience. Even worse, she knew they were coming up on the narrow cross street they would have to traverse to get to the tube. She’d researched the route. The cross street was largely home to a few small businesses that would have closed down by six o’clock, a couple of daytime shops, at least one vacant building, and a church that had been abandoned a few years ago due to lack of funds available to repair a roof with more holes than tiles remaining. It was a quiet block, and quiet meant fewer people, which meant more opportunity for Teddy et al. to try something stupid.

  “What’s wrong?” Martin asked nervously as she turned back and casually picked up the pace of their walk. “What’s the matter? Is it nocturnis? Have they found me?”

  The last question emerged on a squeak, and Ivy winced. She laughed loudly to cover up his blunder. “Oh, you!” she cried, then lowered her voice. “No, Martin. And you need to stay calm. How about you tell me more about yourself? What’s your main talent? I don’t think you told me that.”

  By talent, she was referring to the magical ability that made up the most basic requirement of becoming a Warden. All members of the Guild needed to possess a talent—demonstrating the ability to wield magic—in order to be considered for admission. With luck, Martin’s would have some utility in a fight.

  “What? Talent? Oh, er, I’m a dowser. Water dowser. Why?”

  Oh, yeah, because a nice, deep aquifer was just what they needed right now.

  “No reason,” she gritted out, fingers itching for the hilt of her knife. “No reason at all.”

  Which was when she glanced over her shoulder and saw a dark shadow coalesce around Teddy and his friends. A shadow that swirled and twisted and then seemed to disappear. Inside the three men.

  Shit.

  “What is it? What’s wrong.”

  There went the panic again, creeping back into Martin’s voice at the least opportune of moments. Impatient, Ivy shook her head and urged him to walk a little faster. Not that it was likely to do them much good. “Nothing. Let’s just concentrate on getting to the station, shall we?”

  She could hear her accent beginning to fray at the edges, her natural American pronunciation creeping in here and there, but right now that counted as the least of their worries. Much higher on the list was the fact that they were being followed down a now deserted street by three large, loutish men who hadn’t liked her to begin with and who now appeared to have fallen under demonic influence if not outright possession.

  You know, one of these days one of her plans was going to have to go utterly smoothly, right? Just the law of large numbers made it inevitable, didn’t it? Well, today would have been a really good day for that to happen.

  Instinct had her increasing her pace yet again until she found herself half a step from jogging down the pavement, tugging Martin along by her side.

  “Hang on, then,” he protested, pulling against her grip and trying to actually slow her pace. The idiot. “If nothing’s wrong, why are you suddenly running?”

  “I think that’s down to us, mate,” a voice snarled, closer behind them than it should have been. Their pursuers had moved fast, faster than normal.

  Faster than was natural.

  An instant later, something hit Ivy from the side, hard. The impact sent her staggering into the alley that opened up between two buildings at the side of the street. She stumbled into heavy darkness, away from the abandoned Gothic church across the way, away from the sight of anyone else who might wander onto the nearby pavement. To her credit, though, she managed to maintain her grip on Martin in spite of that, so she pulled him into the shadows beside her.

  Perfect. Now they could be in deep shit together.

  The hit had come as a surprise, but the three shapes rapidly closing in behind her, driving her and Martin deeper into the alley, did not. Ivy’s hand had moved at the first moment of contact with her attacker, fingers closing around the hilt of her dagger and tugging it out of concealment in a smooth, practiced motion. Now, she held it in front of her as she used her grip on her companion to swing him out of the way behind her, placing him between her and the brick building wall.

  “Ooh, you’ve brought along a toy, have you?” Teddy asked, grinning as he stalked forward, herding them away from the street and the potential of being seen by passersby. “Want to play, then, do you, luvie? I like a good game now and then.”

  Ivy flicked her gaze among the three looming figures. She recognized all of them from the group gathered around the bar earlier, the ones who had witnessed Teddy hitting on her and her subsequent rejection of him. They had laughed at the time and gone right back to drinking, already half-pissed when the whole thing began. Was it too much for her to hope that she had been mistaken? That this was just a garden-variety assault and maybe potential rape fueled by alcohol and wounded machismo? Because frankly, that would be a relief compared to the alternative.

  “Yeh, we like to play,” the second lad hissed as he stepped forward until Ivy could see his face in the dim light of the alleyway. “We especially like to play with his sort.” He bared his teeth, and his eyes lit up with malice.

  And Ivy didn’t mean that metaphorically. His eyes actually lit up. As in, started glowing. With a sick, rusty-red light that reminded her of old blood and dried scabs. Very attractive.

  And very much indicative of demonic influence.

  Yay. She’d been right. It wasn’t really her these three were after. They wanted Martin. They wanted the Warden.

  Well, they weren’t going to get him. Not until they got past her.

  “I’m ready to go, boys.” She took a step forward and flashed a toothy smile of her own. “And you know the rules. White makes the first move.”

  Ivy struck with a feint toward Teddy, who stood closest to her, directly ahead. When instinct had him leaping back out of the way of her blade, she spun backward to her left and landed a heel-first kick directly to the sternum of hissy boy. He grunted and stumbled back in surprise, but bachelor number three was already on the move. He closed in on Ivy from the left and grabbed her around her upper body, effectively pinning her biceps to her sides. She’d been expecting the move and countered by thrusting the dagger in a short, upward dig that buried it deep in number three’s thigh.

  “Go, Martin!” she shouted above Three’s scream. “Get to the station! Lost Luggage under your name! Now!”

  All of her attackers howled in protest. Three’s cry was still tinged with pain. It gave her a warm surge of satisfaction, even though it rendered her nearly deaf in her left ear, the one closest to his mouth. Jerking the knife back, she freed it from the man’s leg and went limp in his grip, relaxing her muscles until she slid straight out of his arms to the floor of the alley.

  Even as she hit the cobbles, she was alr
eady moving. She braced one hand, shifted her weight, and swung one leg around, aiming a heavy kick at the knee of the grabby Three’s wounded leg. He crumpled with a heavy grunt.

  Teddy and number two rushed in to take his place, converging on Ivy before she could manage a glimpse to see if Martin had followed her directions. If he hadn’t, he was either dumber than he looked, or part possum and his nervous system had shut down from fear. Neither option would keep him alive, though, and as skilled as she had become in hand-to-hand combat after her years of self-defense classes back in New York and her training since taking on her rescue work in England, one human woman against three demonically influenced men didn’t offer her very good odds.

  Chances were she wouldn’t leave this alley under her own power. Hell, she’d be lucky if she didn’t leave it in a coroner’s van. Which meant Martin had better be halfway down the steps to the tube already.

  She ducked away from a swipe of Teddy’s outstretched hand, trying not to get distracted by the way the skin of his fingertips had split to allow the emergence of glistening black claws that dripped some sort of dark, stinking fluid. The smell of decayed flesh and filthy swamp water suddenly filled the alley, and Ivy had to fight back the urge to gag.

  Oh, yeah. She’d say this officially went beyond the realm of demonic influence. Hell, this went beyond possession. Somehow, demons had not just taken over these men’s bodies, they had used the energy of the human bodies to allow them to fully manifest into the human world.

  In case anyone wondered, that was a really, really bad thing. Something Ivy wouldn’t have thought possible six months ago.

  But then again, six months ago, the world hadn’t quite started coming to an end yet. Today, anything was possible.

  With that cheery thought filling her mind, she swung her dagger in a wide arc that managed to catch opponent number two in the side, opening up a wound that audibly sizzled and began to ooze something much darker and slimier than blood. It didn’t smell like blood, either. The ichor reeked of the same foulness that hung around the venom dripping from Teddy’s claws.

  Seriously, it was becoming a real challenge not to puke. What she wouldn’t give for a nice, stiff breeze right about then to dissipate some of the stink.

  Two—Thing Two, Ivy decided to call him—hissed, his corrupt red gaze flicking between her and her blade with manic hatred. It made her smile in spite of the nausea.

  “What’s the matter, pumpkin?” she taunted him. “Aren’t you a fan of blessed and consecrated silver? Me, I just adore the stuff.”

  She demonstrated those feelings with another quick slash of her arm, a motion that sliced through the jacket and shirt Teddy wore and into the flesh of his shoulder. She wasn’t particularly aiming for the brachial plexus nerve or a major artery, but she wasn’t going to cry if he started to bleed out or lost the use of his arm.

  He screamed, but Ivy just continued her stroke and caught Thing Two across the cheek, just millimeters away from his left eye. Hm, close call, that. What a shame.

  “Bitch!” the demon howled.

  Ivy blew him a kiss. “Aw, love you, too, snookums.”

  Her mother had always told her that her smart mouth would get her into trouble one day. Somehow Ivy didn’t think this particular trouble was what she’d had in mind. You know, the whole “ripped apart by demons in a deserted alley” thing. Dorothy probably hadn’t seen that one coming.

  One would hope.

  By now, Thing Three was back on his feet, and Ivy knew she was seriously fucked. Three against one. Three demons against one, with no backup on the way. Working alone was one of the keys to protecting the Wardens people like her assisted. Now, it looked like she was going to die alone.

  “Sorry, Uncle George,” she muttered, putting her back to the alley wall and keeping her gaze on the man-shaped creatures in front of her. They had realized her predicament just as clearly as she had, and now they were toying with her, watching her with evil, hungry gazes. Not the kind of hunger that would scare most women alone in an alley, but the kind of hunger that scared American turkeys in the middle of November.

  “Sorry, Jamie,” Ivy added. “But on the bright side, looks like I’ll be seeing you both again soon.”

  Thing Two snapped its jaws at her, jaws that it then unhinged to make room for the second row of pointed teeth that appeared to be growing behind the first, human set.

  “Very, very soon.”

  Holding her dagger in front of her and carefully balancing her weight on the balls of her feet, Ivy prepared to die fighting.

  Oddly enough, that’s not what happened.

  One minute, she stared down the face of the Grim Reaper and the next, reality went sideways. Instead of the front of three demons clearly prepared to feast on her living flesh, she felt a rush of cool air, heard a pavement-shaking roar, and found herself staring into a wide barrier the color of dark, aged granite.

  She blinked, then shook her head and blinked again. The view didn’t change. Gradually her brain caught up with her corneas, and she realized that what had looked like a barrier of solid stone was actually a pair of wings. Huge wings, each easily twelve or thirteen feet from base to tip, leathery and membranous like a bat’s.

  And they were attached to the broadest, most muscular back she had ever seen. A back that could only conceivably belong to one of two things:

  A dragon.

  Or a Guardian.

  Chapter Three

  The first rush of breath filled his lungs and went to his head like the strongest liquor, making Baen momentarily dizzy with the intoxicating sensation of awareness. He hadn’t felt anything like it in three hundred years.

  Fast on the heels of that first inhalation, his living senses came shrieking back to life. The muffled impressions that had been all he could perceive during the long ages of sleep went instantly sharp, as if a hand had passed across the glass of a window and wiped away the fog of steam that obscured the view. He could hear, see, touch, and smell the world around him again, even taste the dust and rot of stale air in the abandoned place that surrounded him. He breathed it in and along with it came a trace of something fresh and sweet and entirely out of place. Something that reminded him of …

  Orange rinds.

  “What’s the matter, pumpkin?” A woman’s voice cut through the lingering traces of sleep, sharp with taunting sarcasm. “Aren’t you a fan of blessed and consecrated silver? Me, I just adore the stuff.”

  So did Baen, come to think of it, but that wasn’t important at the moment. The woman was in danger, the kind of danger he had been born to expunge from existence. Nothing else needed to be fought with a weapon dedicated to the Light.

  He was moving before his mind even finished registering her scent, let alone her words. Talons bit into heavy stone as he launched himself from his sleeping place nestled just beneath the apex of the church’s peaked and leaky roof. He dove down across the space of a deserted street, savoring for an instant the sensation of his wings spreading to catch his weight as they helped him land in an agile, predatory crouch. He had soared into a narrow alley between the orange-scented female and three demon-infested male humans who threatened her.

  All four of them made noises of shock, the demons at a higher pitch than the woman at his back, Baen noted with grim satisfaction. He also noticed the way the demons’ first instinct was to back warily away from him, and he curled his lip at their cowardice. These were lesser creatures of the Darkness, the kind he had battled and destroyed countless times over the centuries. They existed as mere thralls to the Seven, the scourge he truly existed to face. These offered him little real challenge.

  “Back. Away,” he growled, his long unused voice low and rough like the snarl of a huge animal, which was what he was. At least part of him. He knew it, and he used it to his advantage.

  He drew back his lips to expose the glinting length of razor-sharp fangs and let his long, curved talons click against the stone of the cobbles like the warning rattle of
a snake about to strike. A small shift of heavy muscle balanced him perfectly for combat, and the leathery skin of his wings rustled as they quivered like the flicking tail of an angry lion. Everything about him conveyed menace and power barely leashed.

  After all this time imprisoned in sleep, he really, really wanted to unleash it.

  The tallest of the demon males gave him the opportunity.

  It launched itself forward in a desperate surge, claws protruding from bloody stumps where human fingers used to be. It raked them at his face, aiming for his eyes, but Guardian skin in its natural form was almost as hard as the stone it resembled. The weapons failed to penetrate, but the attack had brought the creature too close. It survived for less than ten more seconds.

  Baen’s own claws were just as sharp as the demon’s, but the human body hosting the foul creature was infinitely more fragile. A hard thrust ripped through mortal flesh, broke bones, and allowed his fingers to close around the heart that maintained the vessel’s function. He ripped it out in a smooth, savage motion and watched the body collapse like a rag doll that had lost its stuffing.

  Immediately, he heard noises like someone vomiting coming from several feet farther down the alley, but he had no time to admonish the woman for moving from the protection of his back. He would just have to keep the demons too busy to turn on her.

  The two remaining creatures flew at him together, probably hoping to confuse him with simultaneous attacks. Did they think he had been summoned yesterday?

  He let them come, stretching his arms out to catch them in his huge hands and then using their own momentum to add to the force as he slammed them together. It didn’t really do them much damage, but it brought Baen a significant amount of satisfaction.

  It also distracted them momentarily. Lower demons like these were basically stupid, animalistic creatures who operated on the basest levels of instinct. Whatever threatened them or caused them pain, they would turn on, despite what their original mission might have been. And that was exactly what happened. They wasted valuable seconds swiping at each other following their collision, giving Baen the opportunity to alter his grip on them and quickly twist his wrists, breaking their necks with nearly simultaneous cracking sounds.