Hard Breaker

by Christine Warren

  “Hush,” Wynne scolded. “Let her talk.”

  Knox jerked his chin. “Say what you must, female. The quicker you tell your tale, the quicker you tell us where to find our brother.”

  Beside Ivy, Baen grunted his agreement.

  It turned out to be a hell of a tale.

  Rose repeated what she’d already told Ivy and Baen, about the Order’s early strikes against the Guild and the gradual winnowing down of their numbers.

  Wynn nodded through most of it. “We pieced a lot of that together, thanks to Ella. She’s a research wizard. But it doesn’t explain why your groups here never responded to anything we’ve put out to try to reach other survivors. You must have known we were looking for people like you.”

  “Yes,” Rose acknowledged, “but we discussed it and we felt it was important to wait before we revealed ourselves.”

  “Why? We could have helped you. Or we could have funneled survivors your way, like Ivy’s been doing.”

  “We have—no, I have followed your actions with great interest,” the Frenchwoman said. “I have seen the media reports of the incidents in your area, and those of us skilled with computers have kept abreast of the tidbits you have sprinkled around the Deep Web. I know that each time a new Guardian has woken, you have all gathered together to meet him.”

  “Exactly. We help each other. We would have helped you, too.”

  Rose shook her head. “You have put yourselves in danger. Each time more of you gather in a single place, you present a bigger target to the Order. You did not even seem deterred by the knowledge that the Seven had begun to break free of their prisons. The minute you heard the rumors, you should have done everything you could to conceal your existence from them. And instead, I read about the so-called riots in Boston. You all gathered in one place and faced one of the Seven in a human disguise. You were lucky none of you was destroyed!”

  “You call it luck; I call it skill and superior strategy. How well has ‘concealing your existence’ worked for you guys?” Kylie asked pointedly.

  Rose frowned. “We are still here.”

  “But you said you had lost three groups early on after you went into hiding, so that’s still not a hundred percent safe, is it?”

  “It is safer than setting out a beacon that invites nocturnis to your doorstep.”

  “I like to think of us as the Darkness Motel,” Kylie quipped. “Evil steps in, but it don’t step out.”

  Wynn spoke up before Rose could reply. “Uh, I think we’re getting a little off track here. You said your survivors here didn’t want to reveal yourselves too soon. What exactly were you waiting for?”

  The second man Rose had introduced to the group leaned forward from his seat beside her to address them for the first time. “Before all of this began, I joined the Guild as a teenager apprenticed to my great-uncle Francisco,” Thiago said. He spoke perfect English with a light accent that painted his words with shades of Spain. “Tio Kiko specialized in magical history and lore. He was fascinated by the tales of the founders of the Guild and the very earliest of our kind. He spent his days and nights buried in dusty old books, learning about and even practicing some of the older spells he found recorded in the archives, things no one else had bothered with for centuries. Even millennia.”

  “How is that relevant?” Knox asked gruffly.

  “Those of us at the Maison have developed a theory,” Rose said. “We have seen what has happened when small groups of us have tried to take on the Order these days, now that they have freed several of their Masters. Even when there are survivors, such as yourselves, no one has yet managed to stop the nocturnis from accomplishing their goals.”

  “Freeing the Seven and then destroying the world.”

  Ivy shot Thiago a sour look. He really needed to say it out loud? She was pretty sure everyone in this room knew where they stood at the moment.

  “There were four Guardians in Boston, no?” Rose asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. “Four! And still the Demon escaped, strengthened by the deaths there and in Dublin. No one might like to admit it, but if we continue on as we are, fighting as we have been fighting, we have no chance against the Darkness, not once the last of the Seven has been released.”

  Kylie grimaced. “I really hope this isn’t where you guys just say, ‘Sorry, it’s hopeless. Nice knowing you. We have some lovely parting gifts in the back.’ I’m not ready to check out yet. No offense.”

  “No, but this is where Thiago and his uncle’s work with the Guild’s lore becomes relevant, as you requested.”

  The Spaniard nodded. “Rose is correct that we cannot win this war with what amounts to conventional weaponry. You will excuse the crude metaphor, but what we require is a nuclear option.”

  “I really hope you don’t mean that literally, because I’m pretty sure the IAEA monitors Craigslist for sales involving yellow cake uranium,” Kylie said, shaking her head.

  Thiago smiled. “No, not literally. I don’t think even a nuclear weapon could destroy the Seven.”

  “Can anything?” Wynn asked. “Not that I’m the expert, but I thought the Seven couldn’t be destroyed at all. Ever. That was why they were split up and imprisoned separately the last time they tried this.”

  “Exactly, but what do we really know about the last time this happened?”

  The witch tilted her head, her brow furrowing. “The last time all Seven Demons were free? They tried to unite in order to give form to the Darkness. The Guild summoned the first Guardians, who defeated them and banished them to other planes, where they were imprisoned until today. That’s the story we’ve all heard. Are you saying it’s not true?”

  “I am only saying that it is not very complete. Exactly how were those Guardians able to defeat the Seven? It was, after all, a very long time before America invented the nuclear bomb.”

  Ivy set aside her empty cup. “You know, that’s a really good point. How did it happen?”

  Thiago grinned and snapped his fingers. “Magic.”

  Rose stepped in. “Thiago has a sense of drama, but I believe he is correct. The last time the Darkness posed this great a threat to our world was not the first time the Guardians appeared; it was the first time they refused to answer the summons of the Wardens.”

  “The Guardians and the Maidens,” Wynn said, her voice taking on a tone of wonder. “You’re talking about the time from that legend, aren’t you? That was when it took seven women of power to summon the Guardians back.”

  “Yes,” Thiago said. “But my uncle and I believe that the Maidens in the story did not just stop at awakening their Guardians. A few versions of the story say they fought beside them, and you all know how Wardens fight—not with swords and shields, but with magic.”

  Okay, now Ivy felt really lost. “The Guardians and the Maidens? Is that some kind of Grimms’ fairy tale, because I don’t remember a Disney version hitting the big screen.”

  Wynn and Kylie looked at Ivy, at each other, at Baen, and then back at their own Guardians. The three warriors chose that moment to look particularly stone-faced.

  The witch opened her mouth, coughed, and squirmed a little in her seat. “Has Baen not told you about this yet?”

  Okay, Ivy had thought Wynn seemed like a sweet person, but she was about to change that w in her personal description to a b if the woman didn’t spill. “Would I be asking if he had?”

  “Right. Okay.” Wynn glanced back and forth between Baen and Ivy until Ivy was ready to throw her cup at the other woman’s face. Luckily for everyone, Wynn gave in and started talking. “Um, it’s a legend from the days of the first Guardians. According to the story, after they were originally summoned and had defeated the Darkness, the Wardens used magic to lock the Guardians in their stone forms so that they would be ready the next time they were needed. And that’s what they did each time the Darkness threatened—they summoned the Guardians, then put them to sleep as stone statues. It worked out well for the Guild, because, well, it was convenient
.”

  “But for the Guardians, it sucked the big one,” Kylie broke in. “I mean, can you imagine being trapped in a big hunk of rock and only let out when someone needed you to do their killing for them? Those early Wardens treated the Guardians worse than dogs. Shtunks.”

  Had the internationally known computer genius and programming guru just cursed out a group of long-dead members of the Guild in Yiddish? Had Ivy heard that right? Because as a native New Yorker, she usually recognized the Yiddish when someone started flinging it. Everyone else seemed to take it in stride.

  “Which is why, eventually, the Guardians stopped answering when they were summoned,” Wynn said, picking up the threads of the story. “The Guild performed the spells and called the Guardians, but they refused to wake. They had grown tired of fighting for a cause that wasn’t theirs.”

  “And of being treated like drek.”

  “After all, they were not human, and the time they spent battling the Darkness never allowed them to grow close to the people they were protecting. Then, as soon as they won, they were sent back to sleep. They had no connection to the human world, so they stopped caring whether or not it was destroyed by the Darkness.”

  Yeah, that made sense, Ivy thought. She wondered how she would feel if she was put in that position, of having to risk her life to defend something she didn’t even understand, let alone really care for. That wasn’t the role of a Guardian; it was the role of a mercenary, but unlike mercenaries, those first Guardians weren’t even getting paid. They had literally been fighting for nothing, not freedom, not their own people, not even a paycheck. No wonder they had finally decided the Guild could go screw itself. Ivy would have done the same thing, and probably a lot sooner.

  Wynn continued. “But the Darkness wasn’t going anywhere, and without the Guardians, humanity was in danger of being destroyed, so a woman came forward. She wasn’t a member of the Guild, but she was a woman of power. In other words, she had talent and the ability to use magic. So she should have been in the Guild, if they weren’t such sexist jerks.”

  Knox reached down to squeeze his Warden’s shoulder. “Wynn,” he said in his deep, gravelly voice, but it was a tender sound, more amused than censorious.

  “Sorry.” The witch blushed a little. “I might still have some … issues around that. Anyway, the woman came to the Guardians, knelt at the feet of one of the statues and prayed. She told it about her family and her friends, about the best qualities of humanity. She begged the Guardian to wake and to fight for them, to help her save her people from the Darkness. And he did. She gave him a reason to return to this plane, and more women of power followed her example. Each of the seven Guardians was woken by one of the Maidens, as they became known, and when the Darkness was defeated, the Guardians refused to return to sleep. They claimed the Maidens as their mates, and struck a bargain with the Guild. Once a Guardian found a mate, he would retire from battle and another Guardian would be summoned to take his place. The former Guardian would remain among the humans, giving up his immortality and his ability to shift back to his natural shape, but gaining a mate and the chance to experience a full life.”

  Huh, it almost did sound like a Disney story, Ivy decided.

  “But the ‘Maiden’ title is just a word,” Kylie threw in, her grin turning cheeky. “You know, we’re not literally maidens. As if.”

  Ivy’s eyes widened. She’d thought she was just listening to a story. She hadn’t been searching for subtextual implications. “Wait a second. Are you saying it’s more than just a legend? Do you really think that you’re the reason the Guardians are awake again?”

  Wynn and Kylie nodded, but, you know, Ivy figured they probably both drank the same flavor of Kool-Aid. When Rose nodded as well, Ivy shook her head. “Um, okay, you guys need to have another think about that, because what you’re doing is implying that I’m one of these … these … Maiden people, too, and I am really sure that I’m not. I’m not a woman of power. You’re like the millionth people I’ve had to tell in the last forty-eight hours, but I have no magical power, I wouldn’t know how to cast a spell if you tied it to a fishing line, and what other people keep calling my ‘talent’ is a useless waste of time and energy.”

  She paused to draw a deep breath and stamp down a wave of panic. It laughed and took on tsunamilike proportions. “And I am definitely not anyone’s idea of a mate. Period.”

  That’s when Baen snarled something in that dead language of his and Ivy tripped over her own feet to fall kicking and screaming down the rabbit hole.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The real problem with Wonderland, Ivy quickly decided, is that while nothing—absolutely nothing—made any sense, everything still looked exactly the same. It just wasn’t fair.

  And neither was having three Guardians and five Wardens all ganging up on her to insist that she was the one who wasn’t thinking logically. All she needed was a hatter, a dormouse, and a white rabbit. But even without them, she was ready to stand up and shout “Eat me!” at the top of her damned lungs.

  And yet, here came Baen, ignoring the rest of them chattering away in the background. He stepped forward to kneel in front of her chair, blocking most of the room from her sight. Ivy drew her knees to her chest and shrank back into the cushion, because damn it, she didn’t even know who to trust anymore. Baen was a Guardian, which meant he had to know that stupid legend. Did he believe in it, too? Did he think they were some sort of fated pair of mates, like characters from a sci-fi television show? Had he thought that all along? Because as far as Ivy was concerned, that was the kind of thing it was important to share with the girl you were fucking. Preferably before the fucking started, when she might still be thinking clearly.

  Or, you know, at all.

  “Little one,” he murmured, his voice quiet, just for the two of them. He seemed to understand that she curled in on herself because now wasn’t the time for a snuggle, so he didn’t reach for her. Instead, he braced his hands on the arms of her chair and simply fixed her with that dark, burning stare. “There is no need for fear. I would never do anything to harm you. Do you not know that?”

  Ivy scoffed. “Turns out there’s a whole lot of things I don’t know, doesn’t it, Baen? After all, I didn’t know about this story you all seem to have memorized. And I sure as hell didn’t know there was a possibility you were looking at me like some sort of bloody magical mail-order bride. What the hell is up with that?”

  His mouth tightened a little at the corners, but his gaze remained calm and level on hers. “I told you as soon as we met that you were my Warden, Ivy. I knew that if I had not been summoned awake by a member of the Guild, the only other explanation had to be you.”

  “You told me I was your Warden, sure, and that was hard enough to believe, but I’m pretty damned certain the words ‘fated,’ ‘legend,’ ‘maiden,’ and frickin’ ‘mate’ never passed your secretive, stony lips, buddy.”

  “We have not exactly been blessed with an abundance of peaceful moments together, little one. Or did you want me to shout it at you while I fought the ukobahk? Or maybe during the car chase earlier tonight? After all, Rose was driving, so I did not have to worry about my actions causing us to crash.”

  She narrowed her eyes and curled her lip at him. She might not have fangs, but she could damn well still snarl with the best of them. “Don’t pull that ‘we were in danger’ crap with me. Were we in danger last night when you were pounding me into the mattress? Or what about for all those hours before we met Rose this evening? You couldn’t find thirty seconds during one of those times to mention, ‘Hey, Ivy, by the way, I think you’re my destined mate. Just FYI?’”

  “You believe this is only taking thirty seconds?”

  Her palm itched to smack him like a volleyball, but she resisted. Barely. Mostly because right then, she didn’t want to touch him. At all.

  He must have read her fury in her expression, because he sighed and bowed his head a little. She could see the tension in his
shoulders and neck, and she hoped his head was killing him. It would serve him right.

  “I apologize,” he said. “That was unfair of me. I understand that you are upset, and you have the right to feel that way.”

  “Gee, how magnanimous of you to grant me permission to feel my feelings. You’re just a big ol’ softy, aren’t you?”

  His eye twitched at that one, but at least he wasn’t dumb enough to point out that she had resorted to sarcasm. Apparently, he wanted to keep his balls intact and unflattened.

  “I am willing to accept the blame for the shock you are feeling.” He spoke slowly and evenly with a degree of control that made it clear he had to work at it. “It must be a challenge to take in news of this kind without warning, but please do not think that any of what has happened was ever intended to hurt you, amare.”

  Ivy didn’t know what that meant, but she recognized it as a pet name. As long as it didn’t translate as “little one,” she might be able to let it slide.

  Her stomach felt all twisted and uncertain, and she really didn’t know what to think anymore. Part of her got what Baen was trying to tell her. They had been kind of preoccupied pretty much since the first moment they met. Even when they hadn’t been in the middle of running for their lives—or being driven for them—they had still needed to be careful and wary and watchful for the next thing that would jump out from behind a corner to attack them. So, yes, finding a time to drop this kind of news probably hadn’t been (a) easy, or (b) at the top of his to-do list, but that didn’t make it any easier to take.

  It wasn’t the sort of thing a girl wanted to hear when she was trying harder than she had ever expected to not have her head torn off by a bunch of angry demons and demon worshippers. And it certainly wasn’t the sort of thing she expected to hear after an acquaintance of approximately two days. Or, even worse, after ten minutes, if Baen was serious about having figured it out right from the start. Who fell in love with someone after ten minutes? People might talk about love at first sight, but that was a bigger fairy tale than the one Wynn had just told her. It simply didn’t happen.