Hard to Handle--A Beauty and Beast Novel

by Christine Warren

  She should not exist.

  It was for those reasons, the wrongness of them, that Ash had allowed Maeve to persuade her to return to the pub. She hadn’t known what else to do, and that left her feeling both lost and infuriated. A Guardian never questioned what to do, but then again a Guardian never had to. As soon as he woke, his Warden stood before him and explained the threat he would face. Every Guardian knew this, and for every one before her, it had stayed true.

  So what had changed?

  Ash had a feeling that the answer to that question would solve more than one mystery. Too bad that she had no idea who to ask.

  Pressing her palms flat against the table, she centered herself and attempted to take stock of anything she did know. It wasn’t much, but it was the only place she had to start.

  She looked at Maeve. “Tell me of your vision. Describe it to me.”

  “Which one?”

  “I do not care. Any. One that does not ‘go up in flames.’”

  Maeve grimaced. “It still isn’t pretty.” She drew a deep breath. “I don’t see things all smoothly put together like a film. Things are more disjointed than that, more like looking at photographs one after the other, faster than you can imagine. But I know I see something headed toward Dublin. Or, that is what I did see. Now, I think it’s here.”

  “What is it?”

  “I haven’t any idea. It’s nothing I recognize, nothing I can describe. It’s just … blackness. It rolls in like a storm, but it’s not a cloud. It’s thicker and darker. And it’s oily.” She crossed her arms over her chest and pressed them tightly to her. “It’s just wrong. That’s the word for it. Just thinking of it turns my stomach.”

  Ash saw the way Drum’s expression tightened with concern as his sister spoke. He might be hostile toward her, but clearly he wished to protect his sibling. She felt a grudging spark of respect.

  “You see the Darkness,” she said, returning her focus to the other woman. “Your sickness is an appropriate response, for what you see is the embodiment—the source—of all that is evil. If you have seen it come to this city, then things are already worse than I had imagined.”

  “And what the hell have you imagined?” Drum demanded.

  She shrugged. “The usual. That the Order had grown too aggressive once more, that they had gathered a little power and sought to use it to weaken the defenses imprisoning the Seven.”

  “I think we need another definition,” Maeve said. “What do you mean by ‘the Order’?”

  “The Order of Eternal Darkness. They exist to serve the Seven. It is their mission to free their demonic Masters and to set them loose upon the human world. It was one of their number I fought briefly when you first saw me.”

  Drum made a choking sound. “Who the fuck would want to go and do a stupid thing like unleashing a horde of demons into the world?”

  Ash stared. Had he not heard her the first time? Or did the human possess a deficit of understanding? She made certain to repeat herself slowly. “The Order of Eternal Darkness.”

  He lifted two fingers in a V formation and accompanied the gesture with a rude expression. Ash might be new to this realm, but she had no trouble understanding his meaning.

  “I meant why would they want to do such a thing.”

  “They are devoted. They have sworn to serve the Demons, and the greatest wish of the Seven is to be returned to the human world so they might seize it for themselves.”

  “Earlier, you made it sound as if these Demons wanted to end the world.”

  “They do.”

  “I think that’s what’s tripping us up,” Maeve said. “After all, if the world ends, everyone dies. Including this Order.”

  Ash sighed. Human understanding was so limited. “The world cannot end as you understand the word, where life ceases to exist and a void takes its place. This is impossible, and rather arrogant of you. The earth and heavens do not go away if humans disappear. It is mainly the world as you know it that would stop. The members of the Order, whom we call the nocturnis, do not wish to die. They do not even wish especially that you die, for if you do, who will their Masters enslave and feed upon?”

  “Ew.” Maeve’s face wrinkled with disgust. “Maybe it would be better if the world did end as we understand the word. It sounds better than that.”

  Drum had grown visibly tenser the longer that Ash spoke. His hands lay on the table before him, fingers curled into white-knuckled fists. “So, you’re telling us that my sister has seen the end of the world.”

  Ash looked at him, searching his expression. Either he no longer cared if she could read his emotions, or he had lost all ability to hide them. Rage, fear, and frustration had etched themselves into the lines that bracketed his eyes and his mouth, turning his blue eyes stormy. The urge to lie to him surprised her. It would offer no more than false comfort.

  And Guardians did not lie.

  She answered with the truth. The stark whole of it. “Yes.”

  Drum cursed in Irish, the syllables at once coarse and lyrical. His sister went pale as fog.

  “But it isn’t certain,” Maeve said, a tremor in her voice. “I told you that. There are still other possibilities.”

  “And are any of them full of puppies and clover?” her brother asked.

  Maeve pressed her lips together and shook her head.

  “Did you imagine any of them could be? Given that your sister has seen that the blackness is already here.” Ash felt a tingle in her hands, her fingers aching to wrap themselves around the shaft of her battle-axe. She existed for battle, and to sit offering explanations like a teacher to her pupils made her tense and restless. “There is no question that we have to fight. The only question is when.”

  “I think I would add how, where, what, and who,” Drum said. “It might not bother you, but I would feel like a right idiot to be swinging my fists at a shapeless black cloud.”

  Ash had not expected that humans would be so literal. She could only assume that he did it to annoy her. Searching for patience, she opened her mouth to explain how the Seven used the nocturni to do their bidding, but something interrupted.

  Something small and black that traveled in packs and stank of rot and sulfur.

  Hhissih. Five of them. They burst through the door she had followed Drum through earlier, and scuttled toward them. Claws clicked and clacked over the wooden floorboards, and the few lights Drum had flipped on when they entered seem to dissolve the instant the beams hit their slimy, fur-covered flesh.

  At last. Something to fight.

  Blinking back into her natural form, Ash reached for her axe and smiled. Time to go to work.

  Chapter Four

  Really? Someone really thought that Drum hadn’t seen enough weird shite tonight? Oh, but he begged to differ.

  Weird didn’t even begin to describe the things that had hacked their way through the bottom of his door and into his precious pub. They were the size of small dogs, but no corgi he’d seen had ever looked—let alone smelled—like these beasts.

  Like a furry oil slick, each creature appeared to be covered in hair long enough to obscure its feet, however many it might have. Yet each one seemed to glisten, as if encased in a slimy, chitinous shell. How something could look like a mammal and an insect at the same time, Drum had no idea, but the things managed it.

  They sounded like insects, with their scurrying clicks across the floor. Even the way they moved was entomic, reminding him of cockroaches or beetles or scorpions. All the nasty things a sane person preferred remain outdoors.

  He especially preferred that, given that these things appeared to view him and his sister as dinner.

  Maeve screamed and scrambled up onto the table. She never had done well with bugs. His primitive instincts urged Drum to follow, but his pride and his protective streak told him to fight. Of course, neither of those latter emotions had the decency to offer him a weapon to fight with.

  He picked up a chair and brandished it before him, like a ch
arade player miming a clue for “lion tamer.” He imagined he looked like an idiot, but beggars and choosers and all that.

  Just before the first of the little monsters reached him, he found himself pushed aside by the smack of the gargoyle’s giant wing. He ended with a mouthful of downy fur-feathers, and the attacking creature with a steel spike pinning its skull to the floor.

  The gorgeous woman Maeve had led back to the pub had disappeared. In her place stood the monster from the abbey, all gray skin, sharp fangs, and talons like daggers. She looked fierce, like a warrior. Not princess, but queen. Her wings were half spread, crowded by the limited space, and in one hand she clutched a battle-axe. The weapon featured a shaft more than three feet in length, tipped with the lethal metal point. On the other end, the axe head was wide and heavy, and curved gracefully along each side of the double-sided blade. Behind her, her tail flicked and twitched like an angry cat’s.

  Ash pulled her weapon free and swung it around in front of her, sending a second black creature sailing against the far wall. From boogeyman to cannonball in one easy step.

  The three remaining monsters hesitated before regrouping in what seemed like a coordinated attack. They rushed forward as one, darting aside at the last second to avoid Ash’s axe and focus on Drum instead.

  Wasn’t he a lucky boy?

  He swung the chair like a club, bringing the edge of a leg straight down onto a hissing mass of putrid ick. He didn’t know how he had missed it at first, but these things stunk. They smelled like rotten eggs and red meat left out in the sun, like garbage and death. Bile rose in his throat, and he had to hold his breath in order to choke it back.

  The gargoyle fought as if she didn’t notice, as if the things were pretty as a poppet and smelled like summer roses. Well, hopefully she didn’t go bashing in the heads of dolls and flowers, but still. The stench didn’t appear to bother her. She breathed easily, her mouth open and smiling, as she dispatched two monsters with efficient grace.

  The one pinned by Drum’s chair continued to struggle, squirming and writhing and emitting a high-pitched squeal, like nails on a blackboard being run through an underlubricated food blender.

  Cursing, Drum stomped his boot heel into the middle of the thing’s back, pinning it in place. Then he lifted the chair, and used it to beat the creature until it went silent. It took longer than he expected, even when he put his back into his swings. Apparently, even evil had a survival instinct.

  When he finally looked up and met Ash’s gaze, he was breathing hard and pumping adrenaline. “Well, that was fun,” he bit out. “Care to tell me who else might come visiting?”

  Ash lowered her axe, bits of stinking, black something dripping from the blades. She shook her head. “I cannot tell you. The hhissih took me by surprise. I do not know why they would strike here. They are attracted to dark magic, but they are stupid, mindless creatures. Usually they must be sent to attack a human. They lack the intelligence to do so on their own.”

  “Intelligence didn’t seem to matter when they were trying to gnaw through my leg.” Drum probably sounded like he blamed her for this mess, but that was only because he did. Or mostly. “What about the little shite who ran off after throwing a fireball at our heads? Could he have sent them after us?”

  Ash appeared to consider that. “I suppose he could have, though I cannot see the point. He would know the hhissih pose no threat to me, and why would he seek to harm you? You would mean nothing to him.”

  “Please, enough flattery.”

  Maeve hadn’t moved from atop the table where she had waited out the attack, but now she sank down to sit cross-legged on its clean, but battered surface. Her hands shook as she tucked them close beneath her arms. “Hhissih?” she repeated. “Is that what they were?”

  Ash nodded, producing a cloth from somewhere inside her tunic and using it to clean the gore from her weapon.

  Drum dropped the cracked and battered chair and slumped into another. “If they were an example of what Maeve saw headed our way, I can’t say I’m excited for round two.”

  “The hhissih were nothing,” Ash scoffed. “They are to the Darkness as an ant is to the veteran of a thousand combats. Nothing of consequence. Something to be crushed under one’s boot.”

  Drum wiggled his toes and looked down at his feet. Dammit, that black shite covered his left boot. And this was his favorite pair, too. He looked up and caught Ash’s gaze. “I didn’t enjoy being taken by surprise. Next time, I’d prefer to be a bit better prepared, and I think that means we need a plan.” He raised one eyebrow in the gesture his mother found endearing and his sisters called infuriating. “Suggestions?”

  Ash shrugged and put her axe away. Literally. She set it to one side, and it disappeared, as if she’d put it in her pocket, but that pocket just happened to be in some other dimension. Handy, that. “I know no more of the current situation than either of you. A Warden should have greeted me and apprised me of my immediate task.”

  Maeve looked up. “Well, if this Warden fellow didn’t come to you, why don’t you go to him?”

  “I cannot. I have never before visited this realm. I know his name, given to me by my fallen brother, but that is all. I do not know where to find him. Nor even where to look.”

  Something in that statement appeared to perk Maeve right up. It took Drum a second to follow her train of thought, and when he got there, he groaned. “Maeve, no.”

  “But Drum, you heard what she said. She’s lost something. You could help her.”

  Of course. His baby sister only used his nickname when she was trying to butter him up. “You don’t know that. A person isn’t a bloody set of car keys.”

  Ash looked from him to Maeve and back again. “I do not understand.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “My brother can find things.”

  Drum closed his eyes, pressed his lips together, and counted to ten. Meanwhile, his sister continued to dig a pit and push him toward the edge.

  “Talents pop up in our family in every generation,” Maeve said, beginning to relax in her enthusiasm. “Our mother has a way with green things. She grows her own herbs and can make something to cure you of almost anything. Our older sister, Sorcha, is a bit like her, but she has a touch of independent healing, as well. She studied to become a nurse-midwife. You already know that I can see things.”

  Ash nodded.

  “Well, so can Drum. Only the things he sees aren’t in the future, they’re happening right now. Not so much happening, actually, I don’t think. He sees literal things. As in objects.”

  “Exactly,” Drum said, “and a person is not a thing.”

  “No, but I don’t see how it’s so very different. You could at least try.”

  “It’s entirely different.”

  He believed his own words, Drum assured himself. Performing what he thought of as his “parlor trick” to find the missing mate to his sister’s favorite shoe was one thing; trying to locate a missing person was a trick he had never even contemplated, and he had no desire now to make the attempt.

  The way Ash had begun to eye him, therefore, made him feel as if the seat of his chair had turned into the eye of the cooktop. And someone had just turned the knob all the way to boil.

  “Drum,” Maeve wheedled, “you can’t say that if you don’t at least give it a go. You’ve got nothing to lose. What could it hurt?”

  Oh, so many things.

  The only thing Drum could see was hurt—hurting Maeve when he failed. Hurting himself if he succeeded. Right now, he enjoyed the luxury of seeing his ability as nothing more than that “trick” he had called it. He felt comfortable with that. It made no demands on him. But what Maeve suggested had the potential to open up a Pandora’s box of demands.

  Say he tried and succeeded in locating this Warden fellow for Ash. If he did that, he would know—for certain—that he could. What then? Every time he watched a news program, or read a newspaper, or logged on to Facebook, he would see a story ab
out another person whom no one could find. Except that maybe he could.

  He could try to keep it a secret. If he asked, sincerely, he could persuade Maeve to stay quiet. No one would know that Michael Drummond could find the missing. But he would know. And knowing, could he live with himself if he didn’t try? Every time. Every day. For the rest of his life.

  The thought closed around his stomach like a fist and squeezed. Hard. Mind racing, he stood and stalked to the bar to pour himself another shot of whiskey. He tossed it back, wishing the fire would burn not down to his stomach but up into his mind to flash those thoughts into ashes.

  No such luck. So much for being Irish.

  “Michael?”

  Drum kept his back to her. “Maeve…”

  “Does your sibling speak the truth?”

  The gargoyle’s voice—with his back to her, he could force himself to think of her that way, as a creature and not a woman—made his shoulders tense. Her tone was neutral, the question asked evenly, almost idly.

  “That’s a matter of perspective. Can I find things? Yes. I’m fairly good at it.”

  “Brilliant,” Maeve interjected.

  He turned to glare at her and leaned elbows back against the bar. He held a new glass of whiskey clutched in tense fingers. “But I have never found a person.”

  “You’ve never tried.”

  “Maeve, leave it.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  Ash cut in. “Your brother fears this.”

  Drum felt the blood rush upward to stain his neck and face. Her gaze pierced him, cut through his defenses, and saw much too much. Anger stirred in his belly. “Look, you—”

  “He is wise,” the Guardian finished. “Such a talent carries with it a great deal of responsibility. It is not to be shouldered lightly. I think few humans would be up to the task.”

  Drum went from offended to relieved to grateful and back to offended in the space of two heartbeats, but it wasn’t the whiskey making his head spin.

  “In other circumstances, I would not ask one of your kind to take on something like this,” Ash continued. “In this case, however, I fear I have little choice. At the moment, I am blind to the plans of my enemy, and that leaves me vulnerable. It leaves you vulnerable, and puts all of your race at risk. This is unacceptable.”