Hard Breaker

by Christine Warren

  Thiago spun toward the group, then turned back to their circle, his face grim. “Then we’ll just have to work faster than they do. Get ready.”

  Right, because it was supereasy to concentrate on casting an unfamiliar magic spell while your mate was fighting Demons, war was waging in the background, and the forces of Darkness were attempting to free the creature that would cause the end of the world faster than you could save it. Sure, no problem at all.

  A horrible shriek made Ivy jump. Her gaze flew toward the writhing, clashing maelstrom of battle between the Guardians and Demons in time to see Knox’s double-bladed weapon slice the head off an unfortunate creature that had probably once been a lawyer, or a banker, or some unsuspecting mid-level executive. The fleshy skull fell to the floor, cracking against the stone like a ripe melon just before the body crumpled after it.

  Unfortunately, the death of its human host meant little more than inconvenience to the Demon inside it. It poured out of the neck stump like a stream of black tar before taking shape from the corrupt ooze. It slithered and shimmied and bent itself into unnatural shapes and angles before settling into a form that burned itself into Ivy’s retinas.

  Short and squat, it achieved its appearance not by lacking height, but by being so huge that its wideness gave the appearance of stunted stature. Its upper limbs hung all out of proportion to the rest of it, dragging on the ground behind it so that its claws pointed up into the air like the spikes of an iron fence. Its head, long and narrow like a bleached cow skull dipped in crude oil, looked entirely out of place perched atop its broad shoulders with no hint of a neck in evidence. Probably to better support the weight of the enormous ram’s horns that curled alongside the spaces where a human’s ears would have been.

  Ivy didn’t see any ears, but then she didn’t look too closely. Just glimpsing the Demon’s true shape made her stomach lurch and her throat close and panic threaten to overwhelm her. Tearing her gaze away, she reminded herself what the others had told her. The fear didn’t come from her; it was generated by the Demon itself, a powerful magic it used to intimidate and paralyze its foes. If she refused to give in to it, its power would eventually weaken.

  She hoped it weakened fast.

  All at once, the Wardens’ circle snapped into place with a force and presence that Ivy could feel. It felt like a giant bubble had just enveloped her and the other Guardians’ mates, like a wall of cotton muffling the impact of the sights and sounds outside the magical enclosure. The sensation reminded her of the way it felt after an airplane took off, when her ears finally popped as the altitude leveled off, only in reverse. Instead of sounds becoming clearer, they had been dampened, and she and the six people around her were left simultaneously protected and isolated, cut off from the chaos that roiled around them.

  “Well, what do you say, guys?” Kylie piped up, bouncing on her toes. “Wanna save the world?”

  The hacker’s irrepressible confidence and boundless energy radiated off her in waves even larger than usual, and Ivy noted with surprise that it seemed to bounce off the interior of the circle. It ricocheted around them, gradually amping up the energy of the circle and filling the space with a commodity they could all use a lot more of—hope.

  Squaring her shoulders, Ivy met the brunette’s sparkling gaze and nodded decisively. “Yeah, that sounds like a plan. You guys ready?”

  Agreement flowed around the space.

  “Let’s do it.”

  “We got this.”

  “Maidens to the rescue?”

  Drum grumbled. “I’m really beginning to hate that legend, you understand.”

  The women laughed.

  “Hey,” Fil said, “I’m not all that happy with the inherent misogyny of the label either, and I’ve learned to live with it.”

  “You have the advantage of breasts.”

  The platinum-blonde glanced down at her chest. “You may have a point.”

  Laughter buoyed their spirits and strengthened Ivy’s resolve. Judging by the way the others adjusted their posture and drew back their shoulders, she guessed it had affected them the same way.

  Rose remained quiet and drawn, but even she lifted her chin as she raised a hand and pointed her palm toward Ella, who stood at the five o’clock position relative to the first Warden. “Are we ready, mes amis?”

  The resounding “yes” almost made her smile.

  Speaking the first words of the ancient spell, Rose directed a stream of pure, pale energy from her palm to Ella’s. “By the Light and the power of Life and Birth, I bind the Darkness from human earth.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Baen felt the change in the atmosphere immediately, and knew the Wardens had begun their casting. Now, it was up to him and his brothers to contain the Demons within this chamber until the ancient spell bound them once more to their remote prisons.

  Easier said than done.

  Guardians had been created to defend the world from the Seven, but a very long time had passed since the Demons had been set free on earth. They seemed determined to enjoy their moment, fighting like the cornered animals they were to regain access to the billions of human souls on which they could feed.

  It didn’t help that not even a Guardian’s summoned weapon could kill one. Baen could hack and slash and stab and spear, his bardiche singing through the air and striking true with every attack, but the creatures made of Darkness could not be slain. Like the Light itself, Darkness was part of the fabric of the universe and could never be either created or destroyed. It could only be contained, which was why his mate and her comrades had to succeed with the spell they were attempting to cast.

  While the Guardians could not kill the Demons, the human hosts those creatures occupied possessed no such claims on immortality. The warriors cleaved through those easily, leaving the empty husks to fall to the chamber floor. Frankly, it was a mercy to the poor bastards. Their souls had long since been consumed by the evil possessing them, so there was no humanity left to mourn. Better to free the bodies from the indignity of what the Demons had made them do, and allow the memory of the people they had been to fill the hearts of those who had known them.

  As each disguise fell away, the true shapes of the Demons of Darkness emerged to face off against the Guardians. Hothgunal emerged first, forming from the black, putrid slime that flowed from the body Knox beheaded. Then Uhlthor and Shaab-na, the one a vision of a devil, part animal and part humanoid, and the other an insectlike nightmare with chitinous armor and multilensed eyes that glowed with the dirty coals of corruption.

  Dohlzhrek burst forth from the body Ash felled, splitting it like an overripe fruit and launching itself toward the ceiling with an earsplitting shriek. The Unquiet beat wings like rags stitched across bony frames, its vulturelike appearance only matched by the smell of decayed flesh that clung to it in a foul cloud of stench. Then Nazgahchuhl slithered forth, its giant, serpentine form hissing across the stones every time it moved.

  When the last body fell and Tloth emerged like a black-lacquered collection of blades bound to a central core of armored sentience, Baen shifted his grip on his bardiche and bared his fangs. These sideshow monsters would not be allowed to unite under his watch, and he would prove it.

  He roared out a challenge and unfurled his wings, beating the air with one heavy stroke, enough to launch him into the path of the hovering Dohlzhrek. The shaft of his weapon swung hard, the blade biting into the vulture’s leg and raising its shriek another decibel. The sound of pain and rage only fueled Baen’s battle frenzy, and he lashed out again. And again.

  The Demon struck back, darting forward to swipe at the Guardian with the serrated edge of its wicked beak. As he spun out of the way, Baen’s gaze swept over the hooded figures of the Order priests, and it didn’t take more than that brief glimpse to understand what they were up to.

  “The priests!” he shouted to alert his brethren. “They complete the summoning.”

  “But Ghrem!” Kees bellowed back, ju
st in time for them to watch the final Demon-blooded chain fall away from their final brother’s limbs.

  Baen held his breath. The Guardian had lain so still beneath those chains that he feared they might have arrived too late to save him. The fact that the priests had moved to complete the summoning ritual without returning to the altar on which he lay only added to that worry.

  But now, as the last binding withdrew, it was as if a spell had been lifted, and Baen supposed that it had. Ghrem’s eyes flew open and the huge warrior leaped to his feet atop the stone surface. Throwing back his head, he let loose a battle cry that reverberated through every inch of the Guild’s underground stronghold, and then he launched himself into the fray.

  He could have been Spar’s dark twin with black-feathered wings and features like a fallen angel. He stood tall with lean, powerful muscles and claws not just on his fingertips, but emerging like hidden blades from his wrists as well. He used them like a set of deadly stilettos, calling no other weapon to his hand. Ghrem fought as one nearly vanquished but now reinvigorated by the taste of freedom.

  The priests’ chanting grew louder, the frenzy of their magic raising their voices and increasing the speed of their rhythm until the hideous words of their Dark language ran together in an endless screeching cacophony. The urgency of their summoning was obvious, and as the pressure in the room began to build, Baen felt the first taste of fear that it might succeed. That Belgrethnakkar might be freed and the Darkness united over them all.

  From across the room, a blindingly bright blue-white light began to fill the space, fighting with the oppressive energy raised by the Order to claim the space in the ritual chamber. Even as he turned to see, Baen witnessed the passing of power between Drum and his Ivy, the stream of energy hitting her outstretched palm and making her gasp at the impact.

  “We seal this world from evil’s grasp, its power confined, its Dark outcast.”

  His mate took in the energy, her red head tipped back as she adjusted to the power filling her, and a second later she refocused. Her chin came down, her spine straightened, and she looked back at the Wardens surrounding her, her gray eyes literally glowing with the Light inside her.

  “Baen!”

  The warning shout from Dag made him duck just in time to avoid one of Tloth’s blades in his heart. Cursing himself for becoming distracted, he parried the next blow and hooked the enemy’s spear with his bardiche, tearing it away and throwing it aside. The Demon howled as if a limb had been removed, which it had, managing to make the sound in the absence of anything resembling vocal chords, or even a mouth.

  “Guardians!”

  The next shout came from a human, from Aldous, who cowered behind the now empty altar, his arms covering his head as he tried to make himself as small as possible. And Baen could see why.

  In the center of the gathered nocturni priests, the fabric of reality had begun to thin, the precursor to a tear between the planes. Once the rift opened, the last of the Seven would be able to step through, and the Darkness would be united again.

  They had to stop it.

  Baen rushed the Demon standing between him and the Order’s mages, sending the creature flying toward one of his brothers. Trusting the other Guardian to cover his back, he launched himself toward the priests.

  BAEN! NO!

  Ivy’s voice yanked him to a stop, shocking him for more than one reason. First, because it cut through the rage and urgency he felt to stop the priests before they could unleash the Cursed One, the final component of the Darkness; and second, because at the same time he heard it, his mate was speaking other words entirely.

  Startled, he glanced her way to be certain. She met his gaze, her own eyes pleading with him to listen to her even as she performed her part of the complex spell the Wardens were casting. She had absorbed the energy sent to her by Drum, who had taken it from Kylie, who had received it in her turn after Wynn and Fil and Ella. The magic had passed through each Warden, amplifying as they all added their own power to the mix. And now Ivy focused and sent the stream on back to Rose, completing the circuit and closing the form of the seven-pointed star.

  “By the Law of Light, bound art thee!”

  Confused and desperate, Baen turned back toward the priests. He didn’t know what Ivy was trying to tell him, but he couldn’t allow the last Demon to escape from its prison. That was what they had all been fighting against this whole time. It was what this war was all about. He had to stop it, and hopefully they would all live long enough for Ivy to explain to him what that pleading glance had meant.

  “Baen! Guardian, stop!” Thiago leaped in front of him and tried to shove him aside like an American football tackle. “You have to let it come! The Seventh must be released!”

  The words nearly sent Baen reeling, hitting him harder than the puny human’s physical assault. He could see a pinprick disruption in the air where reality had stretched thin, and he knew he had only seconds left to stop Belgrethnakkar from stepping into the human world.

  “Traitor!” he snarled, attempting to thrust the Spaniard aside. “Get out of my way!”

  But Thiago clung like a limpet, a barnacle on the Guardian’s tree-trunk leg. “No! You don’t understand, but I was afraid of this. The spell won’t work unless they’re all on the same plane. If the Seventh does not come through now, the other six cannot be banished! I swear, it is truth. ¡Para la Luz, lo juro!”

  Baen, please.

  And it wasn’t the begging Thiago who made Baen hesitate. It was the voice of his mate whispering again inside his head.

  That hesitation was all it took. The fabric of reality tore with a sharp hiss and a shape with no recognizable form oozed through onto the mortal plane.

  It was not meant for human eyes to see, nor the human mind to understand. Even a Guardian could look on it and not comprehend its true contaminating pestilence. It writhed like a ball of snakes, and roiled like thick, sentient fog. It moved with odd jerking motions, like a horror-film zombie, and left behind it a putrid blight that sizzled against the stone floor like acid. It was black and sickly green, like a gangrenous wound, and rusty brown like old, dried blood.

  It was made of Darkness, and where it traveled, Darkness followed.

  Around him, the other Demons shrieked and howled with triumph. They abandoned their battle against the Guardians and tried to converge on the Cursed form of Belgrethnakkar, but the Guardians refused to let them off so easily. They renewed their attacks, desperate to stave off the moment when all Seven pieces of the Darkness would unite and the world itself would fall into night.

  Of course, that would only happen if the Wardens allowed it.

  “Bound! Banished! Reviled! Dispelled! Banned from this plane and forever compelled!”

  Rose shouted the words, her voice rising above all the chaos of the Demons and the commotion of battle, echoing off the ceiling and walls of the underground chamber. The power she received from Ivy lit her up like a beacon and the completed star flared with a magical light so bright, that Baen had to look away from the blinding glow.

  “As we have willed, so mote it be!”

  In unison, each of the seven mated Wardens stomped a foot down on the stone floor beneath them and reality cracked again, but this time, it cracked in seven distinct places, one above each of the Seven Demons of the Darkness. The cracks exploded with pure white lights brighter than a thousand stars. Baen flung his arm across his eyes to shield them, but he could hear a noise like an eagle’s cry at the volume of a jet engine for an instant.

  Then.

  Silence.

  * * *

  Ivy passed out.

  It wasn’t very heroic, or even dignified, but apparently that was what happened when she performed a world-saving spell on approximately two hours of sleep and an empty stomach. She fainted. So, sue her.

  She wasn’t out long; at least, she didn’t think she was. She came to lying on the stone floor of the Guild’s underground ritual chamber with her hair tangled and
sweaty, her eyes burning and stinging, and her cheek tingling. That last bit, though, was easily explained. It was where a familiar hand kept lightly patting her in an attempt to wake her up.

  Well, to Baen, it was probably patting. To Ivy, it felt like a series of tiny, stinging slaps.

  “Ow,” she complained, her voice a hoarse rasp. “I call this mate abuse.”

  “Ivy?”

  He sounded half panicked, so she summoned the energy to force her eyes open and peer up at him. Her poor Guardian had gone pale as marble, his normally deep gray skin bleached by worry.

  “Are you all right?” he demanded, running his hands all over her, as if checking for broken bones or … she didn’t even know. Bullet holes? What exactly did he think had just happened?

  “I will be once you stop prodding me.” She tried to push herself into a sitting position, wincing when every single muscle in her body protested. Loudly. Who knew spell casting could provide the kind of full-body workout that called for a hot tub and a massage after?

  He helped her into the new position, but adjusted it by swinging her up into his lap. “You terrified me, amare. I turned to find you after the binding, and you were lying on the floor in a heap. I thought you were hurt.”

  “I’m fine,” she reassured him, trying to peer over his shoulder to look around the room. She saw no more disgusting inhuman creatures lurking in the shadows, only Guardians and Wardens and enough blood and carnage to make her wrinkle her nose in distaste. “Does this mean the spell worked?”

  Baen grunted. “It worked, but it knocked half of you unconscious and made the other half vomit as if they’d eaten bad shellfish.”

  Ivy winced. “Yeah, I’d rather not have to do that again, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “You will not have to.”