Hard Breaker

by Christine Warren

  It was the politest version of “go to hell” Ivy had ever had directed her way.

  No, that wasn’t fair, she told herself and forced her hands to unclench from the fists she hadn’t realized she had made. Nothing in his tone or his posture indicated he felt any hostility over her reaction. Her overreaction. He had merely offered an explanation to counter her anger. Her fairly inappropriate anger.

  Okay, Ivy. Time to step back and take a deep breath here. Then get a grip. The middle of a sticky situation is not the time to get distracted by emotion and bogged down in things that don’t matter. It’s the time to figure a way out of it. So, get busy.

  Her inner voice was right. Closing her eyes, she took stock of her racing heartbeat, her trembling fingers, and the knot that had formed in the pit of her stomach—all signs of an adrenaline overdose. She had let the stress-induced hormone take over her thinking, and she knew from experience that reactions like that didn’t do anyone any good. She needed to get rational quick and switch to plan B.

  One more deep breath, and she opened her eyes to meet the Guardian’s—Baen, he had said his name was—curious gaze.

  “You’re right. Sorry,” she said, resettling her shoulders and subtly shaking some of the tension from her arms. “Getting out of there was the most important thing. Now we just need to regroup and figure out where to go from here.”

  His expression hardened, suddenly looking a lot more like real carved granite. “My mind is still sorting through the return of my memories, but already I know that the Darkness is stirring and that this threat is larger than any my kind has faced in many centuries. We must contact the Guild and warn them, and then we must locate my brothers and root out whatever plan the Order has put into action this time.”

  Man, if he only knew the half of it …

  “Yeah, about that,” Ivy began.

  Beside them, Martin stirred and gave a low moan.

  Damn it. First things first.

  “Warden?” Baen prompted, ignoring the waking man.

  “My name is Ivy,” she told him. “You might as well use it. As for everything else, I’ll fill you in with as much as I know, but first we need to get someplace more secure than some random London rooftop. Those demons before pretty much came out of nowhere. I’d been watching, and until they appeared, the coast was looking clear, which means more could do the same thing and pop up any minute.”

  “Do you have a suggestion?”

  Ivy started to shake her head, and then hesitated. She already knew that getting to France tonight was out of the question, but taking Martin and the Guardian back to her uncle’s house in Little Naughton didn’t feel like an option. First off, in the little village, their presence would stand out like a plague sore, and secondly, everyone there knew who she was. She really had thought tonight’s mission was operating completely under the radar of the Order, but after the demon attack, she could no longer be so sure. Maybe she’d been identified, and if so, that also ruled out where she’d been staying in London—her cousin Jamie’s flat in Marylebone.

  Another option occurred to her, though, one that might be safe for the simple reason that the worst had already happened there.

  “Yeah, I do,” she finally said with a nod. “There’s a flat in Camden. I think we’d be fairly safe there. You know, all things considered. I’d say we can take the tube, but…” She ran her gaze over his hulking, horned, winged, clawed, generally inhuman form. “Ah … I’m not sure you wouldn’t cause a riot.”

  Baen followed her glance. “You refer to my appearance standing out among the humans in a public place.”

  “Maybe a little.” She held up her thumb and finger half an inch apart.

  “This may be true, but I believe your kind would be equally curious about the reason why even a fellow human would be transporting an unconscious man on your transport system.”

  Ivy glanced at Martin, who had slipped back into oblivion. Maybe Baen had a point.

  “Besides, I can take us to our destination much faster and with little chance of being seen. You will simply guide me where I need to go.”

  Her expression turned sour. “You mean you want to fly us over half of London like a low-budget airline. The kind that doesn’t even have seats on the planes. Or, you know, planes.”

  “You doubt your safety with me?”

  The Guardian looked so insulted that Ivy had to bite back a laugh. Apparently, the legends about his kind’s sense of honor had not been exaggerated. If anything, it sounded like Uncle George’s stories might have underplayed the situation.

  “No. Of course not. But humans don’t just—” She broke off when she saw his expression turn stonier and stonier. He was really good at that. Quelle shocker. “You know what? Fine. We’ll play Stork-and-Baby-Delivery. Just don’t head for the stratosphere, okay? Try and keep the fall survivable for me.”

  “I would not drop you.” He snarled. “And to avoid being seen, we must stay above the city lights. Or are you no longer concerned with UFO sightings?”

  “Fine. I’ll keep my eyes closed.” She gritted the words out from between clenched teeth, wondering if it was better to punch the Guardian now so that he didn’t drop her from surprise when she decked him mid-flight. It wasn’t like she could hurt him, not with her best moves. She could pack every ounce of power she had into a kick right to his face and it would probably feel to him like a fly had landed on his nose.

  Stony bastard.

  Baen nodded and turned away as if that settled everything, so he didn’t see the glare she aimed at him. He simply scooped Martin up into one brawny arm and then turned back to her with an air of expectancy.

  Ivy stepped close and let him lift her as well. Unlike Martin, though, she made sure to wrap her arms around Baen’s neck in a good grip of her own. She had no intention of falling, no matter how secure he thought his grasp was.

  She also had no intention of noticing the way his hard muscles and ripped body felt pressed so close against her own.

  Bloody hormones.

  “Just be careful, big guy,” she told him, resisting the urge to wrap her legs around his hips for good measure. You know, to get a better hold. Against falling. Really.

  “Do not worry, human. It has been centuries since I killed an innocent human. Technically.”

  Ivy bit back a scream as the Guardian launched himself into the sky with the speed of a bullet.

  Jerk.

  Chapter Five

  Baen touched down on the rooftop indicated by his Warden and set her gently beside him. She had ceased to tremble with nerves some minutes ago and had even sounded delighted with her view of the city when she finally opened her eyes to identify their destination.

  Before that, she had remained silent during their brief trip, which had given him his first chance to wonder at their situation. Something felt very off. It had little to do with Ivy or Martin themselves, but rather the circumstances bringing all three of them together. He could tell that Martin was indeed a Warden, as he possessed a definite signature of magical ability, faint though it was, and he bore every indication of being trained by the Guild; but Baen did not understand why Ivy insisted that she was not a Warden as well.

  Her power easily eclipsed Martin’s, and she had been the one in charge when he found them in the alley. That had been obvious. While Martin had retreated to the back of the alley in the face of the demonic attack and contributed to the fight by losing hold of his last meal, Ivy had fought their attackers head-on, with every ounce of strength and determination she possessed. Only one of those reactions suited the position of Warden in Baen’s mind. The other spoke too loudly of cowardice and ill preparation for a dangerous situation.

  Of everything, the danger was the part of the picture of which Baen felt most certain. He had woken into a cloud of Darkness. He could feel it polluting the atmosphere of the human world, and he knew the threat posed by the Order was stronger than he had ever before experienced. He only wished he had woken sooner.
As it was, he would need to get himself up to speed as quickly as possible, and he would need the help of both these Wardens to manage that.

  “Is he still passed out?” Ivy asked, her voice tipping him out of his own thoughts.

  “Again more than ‘still,’” Baen answered, glancing down at Martin’s limp form. He stirred once, then immediately passed out again. “I do not think he enjoys heights.”

  “Gee, I wonder why. Could it have something to do with the fear of falling from them and landing on a nice, hard patch of concrete? Why would something like that bother a person?”

  “I may not be human, but I recognize the normal human responses to stress. You use sarcasm in order to express your feelings of irritation. Does this make you feel better?” he asked, curious.

  She just glared at him. “Come on. Let’s get inside. Can you manage Martin?”

  In answer, Baen merely shifted the Warden to a one-armed grip and gestured for Ivy to lead the way. She shook her head.

  “We need to go down the fire escape on the outside of the building, and it’s still early enough that in this neighborhood, there’s a decent chance of being seen,” she informed him. “I don’t suppose you can do anything to, uh, stand out a little less, is there? I mean, you can’t, like, fold the wings up any smaller, can you?”

  “Ah, you wish to be cautious and to ‘blend in’ to the area?” He thought she might have rolled her eyes before nodding in reply, but the gesture was quick. He thought it best not to waste time in an argument—not when he planned to spend much of the remaining night requiring her to answer his questions—so he ignored it.

  He set Martin down at his feet, then stepped back to give himself a little room. With a quick thought and a mental rearrangement of his inherent magic, Baen reshaped himself into a small, human-seeming version of himself. His features retained their same basic shape, but smoothed out the most drastic lines and angles. His horns shrank down and disappeared, his wings melted away into his muscles, his claws retracted into human fingernails, and his skin thinned and turned a shade of light tan that looked drastically different from its natural gray tone. He shrank several inches, both in height and in breadth, now standing only a few inches over six feet with a proportional reduction in his musculature.

  He even used the information in his communal knowledge bank to generate for himself a suitably human set of clothing, consisting of worn denim jeans, a dark-colored shirt, and a pair of sturdy boots. After a quick look at his human companions, he added a jacket over the top in concession to the air he guessed their species might consider chilly.

  “Is this better?” he asked Ivy.

  For a moment, she simply stared at him, her eyes wide and her lips slightly parted. She looked almost stupefied.

  “Warden?” he prompted after a moment. Then, when she didn’t respond, “Ivy?”

  She jumped. “Huh? What? Oh. Oh, uh, yeah,” she mumbled, turning away and shoving her hands into her pockets. “Yeah, that’s fine. Thanks. The, uh, the stairs are this way.”

  Ivy crossed to the rear corner of the roof where a set of curved safety rails stood up over the top of the wall. Using both arms this time, Baen lifted Martin and followed, carefully descending the ladder to a small landing where the system changed to a set of steep iron stairs. At the bottom, the female drew a heavy set of keys from her pocket and unlocked a door painted a bright but chipping shade of blue.

  “In here,” she said, stepping over the threshold into an unlit kitchen. Baen crossed behind her and deposited his unconscious passenger in a straight-backed chair, even as the flick of a switch illuminated the room around them. Martin shifted and moaned, but neither of them paid him any attention.

  “Do you live here?” Baen asked, looking around the cramped space. He couldn’t picture her easily in these surroundings. The cabinets had been painted white, but looked more gray than anything else. Dingy. The cheap material of the countertop had chipped along the edges, and while the place looked tidy—no dirty dishes or used pots and pans piled up—dust covered most of the surfaces and an air of unkempt neglect hung over it.

  It came from more than the dust and the smudged windows, too. He noticed no personal touches in the space, no plants on the windowsill, no pictures on the walls. Not even a whimsical canister to enliven the stark anonymity of the place. It didn’t suit the citrus-scented Warden called Ivy in the least.

  “No. Wouldn’t want to be tracked there,” she said, turning to grab a dented teakettle off the stove. She rinsed it inside and out before filling it with clean water and setting it back on the burner she quickly lit. “Or take the chance of someone waiting for us there, either. This place belonged to another Warden. I figured it was probably safe because he’s already dead. No reason for the Order to come back and kill him again.”

  “Dead? And you believe the nocturnis bear the responsibility.” The news did not shock Baen, but it did renew his determination to get a firm handle on the current situation. Certainly the Guild of Wardens and the Order of Eternal Darkness had been at odds for millennia, but rarely did they manage to slaughter each other without bringing about swift and decisive conflicts that restored the balance between them.

  Ivy shot him a sour look before she began opening and closing cupboards. Her intent became clear when she paused and pulled down several heavy mugs and a squat brown teapot. “Of course they do. For this guy, and for all the others.”

  Baen felt a growl rise in his chest. Reflex and instinct. Guardians existed to protect humanity, after all, and for all their magical talents, Wardens were still human beings. “What others?”

  The female opened her mouth, and judging by her expression, her intended response would have been sharp, but she caught herself before she uttered it. Her lips pressed together, and she took time for a deep breath.

  “Sorry,” she said. “You have just woken, and I shouldn’t expect you to know everything that’s going on. It’s just, now that you are awake, and we finally have a Guardian on our side again, it’s really hard not to expect you to just snap your fingers—or maybe flap your wings—and put everything back to normal again. But I suppose it’s too late for just one of you to be able to do that now. So, I’m sorry.”

  Baen dismissed her apology. It was unimportant, and he had been unoffended. “Explain to me what you mean. What is not normal? And what do you mean that you ‘finally have a Guardian on your side again’? My kind do not turn from humanity, let alone from the Wardens.”

  “She means we’ve been up shit creek while you lot have been catching up on your beauty sleep.”

  Martin’s voice made them both turn and note with surprise that the cowardly Warden had finally regained his senses and now sat slightly less slumped in his chair. He looked no happier than he did in the alley where the demon attack had occurred, but at least he could move under his own power again. That was helpful.

  “The Order has wiped the Guild off the bloody map,” Martin continued bitterly. “The Light knows how many of us are left, but it’s sure as hell not enough for us to stop whatever those bastards have planned. And I think we can all hazard a guess as to what they’ve got planned.”

  The Order only ever had one plan—to free the Seven from their prisons and allow them to unite to devour the human world with their evil. It was all very straightforward, really. Demonic and thoroughly malevolent, but straightforward. It was why the Guardians existed.

  One problem at a time, though. What had the cowardly Warden meant about the Guild being wiped out?

  When he asked, Ivy answered.

  “He’s right. We don’t really know how many Wardens are left,” she said, “but we do know that a great, great many of them are dead and most of the rest are still missing. That’s why I was trying to get Martin to France. We’re trying to send all the survivors we can find to somewhere near Paris. We have a kind of Underground Railroad set up to move them there undetected. I take care of the ones who come through London and get them across the Channel, an
d my contact there picks them up for the last leg of the trip, delivering them to another contact who operates out of the city. The Guild hall itself is gone, of course, but they’ve set up a kind of safe house that they’re turning into a new temporary headquarters. Only the people there know exactly what’s going on. We try to limit contact between stages of the trip so that if one operative is discovered he or she can’t tell the Order too much about anyone else.”

  Her mouth quirked in a wry grin. “It’s kind of like living in a spy movie, actually. I have a code name and everything. My contact in Coquelles knows me as Holly. Totally surreal.”

  “No wonder your accent is gone,” Martin said, eyeing her suspiciously. “You had it down really well, but now you sound American.”

  “I am,” she said. “Half anyway. My mum is English, and I was actually born in Oxford, but my dad is American and I grew up there.”

  “So why aren’t you operating in America? Why come to London?”

  Ivy turned away then and opened another cabinet to pull out a brightly colored paper box. From it, she pulled out a few tea bags and dropped them into the pot. “Long story. Now’s not the time.”

  “Right,” Martin agreed. “Now’s the time to figure out how the bloody hell those demons found me and how I’m supposed to get to France if they’re still looking for me.”

  Baen aimed a glare at the male, feeling a faint stirring of regret that his features in this form didn’t hold the same powers of intimidation that they did in his natural state. He’d like to scare some sense into the selfish coward. “No, now is the time for us to get a firm grasp on the situation and to decide on our next move.”

  “Which should be getting me to France,” the Warden insisted. “You heard her. The Order is trying to kill me—to kill everyone in the Guild. If they do manage to wipe all of us out, humanity is doomed. Who’s going to save them if there’s no one left to summon the Guardians, eh?”