Ash woke early, before his father, and before the sun. The tail end of a nightmare bled away, to leave him sweating in tangled bedding, heart beating too fast, too hard. His stomach was a mess, nerves knotting his insides until he felt like he’d swallowed a twisted ball of twine. In the bed next to his, he could see the steady rise and fall of his dad’s chest, and although the sound of gentle breathing should have been soothing after his dreams, instead it sounded like an accusation.
His dad could have died yesterday. That was the simple truth of it. He knew Deacon could have died already a hundred, two hundred, five hundred times over in his lifetime; a Scion of the sentinels lived a hard life, after all. But now Ash was old enough to make a difference.
Would things have played out differently if he’d been there yesterday? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Maybe the trolls would have attacked anyway — his dad would still have been left injured and unconscious in a parking lot, and John Shepherd would still be dead. Maybe Ash would have been as much use as he had been on the night of his mom’s death, when all he’d been able to do was struggle pointlessly against the ropes that bound him, and cry like a baby.
He slipped a hand under his t-shirt, fingers finding the hard corners of his First Communion cross. He moved his hand down his side, feeling for the old rope scars he’d carried since the nightmare attack in the auto repair shop three years ago. He’d been useless. Worse than useless, an extra weight for his dad to worry about even as he tried to defend Ash’s mom from Shade’s half-demons.
Ash realized he was holding his breath, his chest tight and painful. He remembered the panic attack he’d had at the Chapterhouse, and forced himself to breathe. In and out, counting one, and two, and three, over and over. He let his mom’s death slide free, painting over it in fresh layers of memories from last summer, from the night he’d saved Del. Well, technically they’d saved each other, over and over. But he wasn’t useless. He had a purpose. And if he couldn’t protect his dad, then he’d do his best to keep Del safe.
His breathing evened out, and the knot in his stomach loosened a little. He twitched the curtains open and watched dawn spread across the sky. By the time it was light and his dad began to stir, he was calm.
He showered and got dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved white polo shirt. “Do I look okay?” he asked his dad.
Deacon smiled. “Almost. You just need a couple of finishing touches. Remember, you’re here not just as a sentinel, but as the Heart Bearer’s protector, and a knight of the Guild. And they’re old-fashioned at Court. Put your body armor on.”
“Seriously?”
“Absolutely. Look, I’m putting mine on, too.”
Ash unpacked his brand new tactical vest and slid it on, admiring the perfect fit and the smooth finish. He brushed a hand over the stylized wings and shrugged away the uncertainty as his dad adjusted the straps.
“There. All grown up,” Deacon teased. “Your mom would have been proud. Now this.” He held out a parcel.
Ash took it, puzzled. His dad was trying not to laugh at his face as he opened it and found a white, knee-length surcoat with the crossed keys of Saint Peter, the Guild’s symbol.
“Seriously,” Ash said once again, this time his voice flat in dismay.
“It’s traditional. I brought mine, too.” Deacon shook his own surcoat out and put it on. His was the faded yellow-white of old cotton, with the sentinel logo stitched in gold thread across the front. Once he’d strapped his sword belt on over it, it actually looked… all right.
“You look kind of cool, in a nerdy sort of way,” he informed his dad. He put on his own surcoat and then, following Deacon’s lead, strapped his grandfather’s sword belt around his waist. Then he turned to face the full-length mirror on the wall.
He looked different. Older, more sure of himself. He straightened his back, hand resting lightly on the pommel of his sword. He looked like someone who actually got things done, not someone who stood by helplessly watching other people get hurt or die.
He caught his dad’s gaze in the mirror. Deacon’s eyes were suspiciously bright. “You look good, son,” he said softly. He clasped a hand to Ash’s shoulder, smiling.
Ash gestured at the sword at his waist. “I thought you said weapons weren’t allowed at Court?”
“Most weapons aren’t. But, traditionally, knights may carry ceremonial swords. That includes sentinels on duty, which means you, Ash. You’ll carry a sword while you’re here, and stay by Del’s side. Well, except for tonight. There’s a complete weapons ban for the ball. Again, that’s traditional, since the gala is supposed to be the grand gesture of peace before discussions commence.” Deacon grinned. “Also, a sword looks weird with a tux.”
Ash nodded, a little shy of his dad in his Court garb.
Deacon gave an amused snort. “Stop looking so impressed. It’s still me, kid. Come on, let’s go and knock at the girls’ room and escort them to breakfast.”
***
Ash thought he’d be embarrassed to walk around the Court looking like an extra from a Renaissance faire. But there were plenty of people walking around in strange gear. There were other sentinels in their own knightly outfits, including one guy from Kansas clanking around in full chain mail. There were witches in ceremonial robes, and vampires with short velvet cloaks in different colors, the High Blood Council’s coat of arms embroidered on the collar.
Not everyone was dressed up; some people were still wandering around in casual clothes. Deacon informed Ash and Del on the way down to breakfast that by the next day, everyone would be dressed formally in one way or another. Today, Alex was in a surcoat identical to Ash’s, Redemption at his side — Alexander of York instead of Brother Alexander. Dan was in his rarely-used priest’s clothing, clerical collar and all — his own brand of armor.
Del and Camille were sharp and dressy despite their “civilian” getup. Camille, recovered from her ordeal, was in a pale blue skirt and jacket combo, hair pinned back in a complicated twist of some sort, and looking like a high-schooler at her first job interview. Del was wearing tailored trousers and a pale green knitted top, the same color as her new aura. She’d shown it to Ash after she’d bought it; the idea was to draw attention to the change in her preternatural status. But all Ash could think about was how pretty the color looked on her.
***
After breakfast, Dan led Ash and Del to the library. It was a beautiful space, two stories high.
“There are three more floors of archives and rare volumes underground,” Dan told them, “but you’ll need to ask a librarian for help with those. Those are limited access areas.” He parked them at a workstation and hurried off, muttering something about a meeting.
Ash sat down, settling his sword awkwardly. It was going to take a while to get used to the feel of it at his hip. “So,” he said, “where do we start?”
Del took a crumpled piece of notepaper from her pocket and flattened it out. Ash peered at it. “Rowan of Maidensfall,” he read. “What is that?”
“A place,” she said. “I looked it up last night. It’s what they call a ‘lost settlement,’ a medieval village that was abandoned and buried by time. It’s in Yorkshire, in England.” She pulled it up on the computer screen. “See? It dates back to Roman times, but had been deserted and left to fall to ruin by the early thirteen hundreds.”
“Isn’t that when the Black Plague hit Europe?”
“No. I mean, yes, but this was just before the plague. Who knows why people moved away? We have a bunch of ghost towns right here in the US. Most of them just failed and died out, right? Anyway, it says here that the site around Maidensfall is supposed to be haunted. There are a whole bunch of legends and superstitions. The land belongs to the government, it’s in a big park of some sort.”
She jabbed a finger at the computer screen. “I think that’s where Rowan came from, whoever she was.”
Ash picked up the notepaper and turned it over. He frowned at the handwriting. “Del, who gave you this
?”
“I found it last night. Someone pushed it under my door. Someone who knows about this.” She gestured at her arm.
“So you’re saying a stranger gave you this. Anonymously. Del, this is crazy. Why should any of this be true?”
“Because it feels right. Because I went to sleep and woke up feeling rough woolen skirts around my legs and the cold of an unheated cottage, even though I was in bed under a giant comforter. Because I’ve been hearing the words ‘A Maiden for Maidensfall’ running through my head since this morning.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, Del. I can’t say I understand, even a little.” And he didn’t. He’d never had visions of things. He didn’t get her obsession with this Rowan person, whoever she had been. He was supposed to be descended from angels, but his sentinel feet were planted firmly on this earth. The past was the past, right? What use was it, looking for answers that far back, when there was so much to do here, in the present? Del looked distraught, though, so he relented. “I don’t think we should trust this note. But I guess it won’t hurt to look into it. Let’s check the library catalogue and see if they have anything on ‘Rowan of Maidensfall’.”
Del flashed him a grateful smile and they settled down to work.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Ben
They left for the Catskills on Friday morning, aiming at reaching the nondescript motel that Lix had programmed into Ben’s phone by lunchtime. Raze rode up front, Gareth stretched out asleep on the back seat of the SUV. Lix and May were in the other car.
Raze craned her neck, checking on Gareth. “He looks so pale. Are we sure he should be doing this?”
Ben cranked up the heat a little to keep Gareth warm, shoving up his own sleeves to the elbow. “Of course he shouldn’t. He should be resting, getting the last of the venom out of his system.” Ben glanced over at her. “But he’s a pigheaded idiot who never knows when to quit. Thinks he’s responsible for us. For me and Lix, especially.”
“Like a big brother?”
“Pretty much.” Ben stopped talking, listening to the polished voice of the GPS as it gave directions. He could feel Raze watching him, studying him, her regard heavy but not uncomfortable. “Everything okay?” he asked.
“I was looking at your tattoos. What do they mean? Is that, I don’t know, Sanskrit or something? It doesn’t look like Chinese, or anything else I’ve seen.”
“They’re not words, they’re wards. Spelled wards.”
“To keep you safe? Sorry if I’m being nosy. It’s just, I’m not used to working with witches. I’ve never had much contact with your sort before.”
“That’s okay, it’s not like it’s a big secret or anything.”
Gareth stirred on the backseat, mumbling something in his sleep. Raze shifted around to check on him, but he was already quiet again, the pain stuff the healer had given him evidently doing its job. She turned back, settling in her seat. “So, the wards?”
“Each one does a different thing. The one nearest my wrist, for example, can give me a boost in strength for a short period of time. There’s a health ward further up, that’s a useful one.”
“They sound pretty cool. Do the others use them, too?”
“No.” He hesitated, on the brink of saying more, but uncertain of how far he wanted to go. He gritted his teeth and waited for the inevitable barrage of questions. But none came. Raze was still watching him, he could feel it, even though he kept his eyes glued to the road ahead. However, she didn’t press. He wondered what her wolf senses were picking up — he knew that werewolves were supposed to be able to scent certain things. Did he smell of fear? Of anger, or perhaps pain? He didn’t even know himself; he didn’t like to think too much about the ward tattoos; they brought up a lot of conflicting feelings.
The silence grew, weighing down on Ben. Flashes of memory: the private backroom at Celie’s tattoo parlor, the pricking of his skin, the smell of blood and sweat. A silence as thick and cloying as this one, as she sank her spellwork in along with her ink. He dragged himself out of the past. Not explaining to Raze… This was stupid. There was nothing to stop her from asking someone else. And who knew how much they’d tell her about him?
“I don’t really like talking about them,” he blurted out. “The tattoos.”
“Ben.” Her voice was gentle. “You don’t have to tell me. You don’t owe me an explanation, you know?”
“No, I… I want to. It’s just—” He broke off, searching for the right words. “When I got them done, I was in a dark place. But I was also done feeling vulnerable, and the wards made me feel safe. So I guess talking about them kind of takes me back.”
“You don’t need to explain any of that. I don’t need to know why you did them. I was just curious about how they work.”
Ben took a deep breath. The nuts and bolts of the thing? That he could tell her. That was safe enough, right? “Okay, so the way it works is, to activate one of these you need to feed it some of your magic. Not too much; it’s not like it will drain me. That would be pretty pointless. And in exchange, you get to tap into a type of magic you can’t usually command. Like health magic, if you’re not a healer.”
Healer. Gabi’s smile came to mind, and Ben pushed the image away. He hadn’t known Gabriel at the time, and he couldn’t think about him now. He had to focus on his job; he didn’t have time for the storm of feelings he was doing his best to hold at bay.
“That sounds pretty amazing,” said Raze. “So what’s the catch? I mean, there has to be a catch, otherwise every witch around would have ward tattoos, right?”
“There’s a catch.” He eyed her, wondering how much he could trust her with. But like he’d said, it wasn’t exactly a secret. She could find the information easily enough if she went digging. “For a start, it hurts. A lot. You can’t use regular tattoo ink. It has other ingredients mixed in with it, and it burns like crazy. You can’t use a machine, either; these were hand-inked with a needle. And the tattoos are bound to my blood. So I could feel each jab of the needle across my whole body.”
“Oh. Ugh. Yeah, that doesn’t sound fun.”
“It’s not. But the kicker was the payment. Part of my magic is now tied to the witch who tattooed me. It helps boost her own power, although that doesn’t affect me. Not on a day-to-day basis. But if she wanted to…”
With the right combination of spells, armed with the true intent to harm, Celie could rip his magic right out of his core and take it for herself. She wouldn’t, of course, otherwise every witch she’d ever tattooed would come raging, fearing for their own magic, and it would land her straight on the Covenant’s black list. But still, it was a risk. One that, alone and desperate, he’d been willing to take at the time.
He gave Raze a small smile. “Yeah, I was pretty young and stupid back then. I’m not sure I would have them done today. I met Gareth a couple of months later, you know? When he found out about them, he gave me hell for it.”
The calm voice of the GPS cut into the conversation. Take the next exit…
Ben focused on driving, and pretty soon he was pulling into a shabby parking lot, frozen mud showing through the patchy gravel. The motel had seen better days; it wasn’t exactly seedy, just tired and neglected. The sort of place no one would remember you, not from turning a willing blind eye, but from exhaustion and indifference.
He parked beside the other car. May had the back open and was rooting around in the luggage. She emerged victorious, a purple beanie in one gloved hand.
“It’s freezing here,” she said by way of greeting, as Ben clambered out of the SUV. She pulled the hat down low, to the top of her eyebrows. “Lix went to get keys and ask about food. I’m starving. You guys hungry?”
Raze joined her, pulling the hood of her sweatshirt tight around her face. “I could eat.”
Ben stuck his head into the car. “Gareth! Gar, wake up. We’re here.”
Gareth sat up slowly, wincing when he put weight on his injured arm by mistake. “Y
uck. I feel as if something died in my mouth. That potion stuff is foul. And the aftertaste goes on forever.” He got out of the car, swaying a little.
“Are you going to be okay tonight?” Ben asked. He rubbed one of his scabbed knuckles. “You don’t look great. Aren’t you pushing it?”
“And let you have all the fun?” Gareth gave a weak attempt at his usual cocky grin. It quickly faded when he saw Ben’s worried expression. “Look, Benjy, I’m not great, but I’m alive. I’m standing. You four can’t pull this off by yourselves. You need an outside man while you’re stuck in that freaky vault. And Lix can’t risk losing another of you to stand guard. She needs Raze to get in and out of the tower. She needs May to handle any warding. And you, kiddo, need to watch her back for me. Yeah, she can be a vicious little hellcat. But she’s our vicious little hellcat, and I’m not letting her go down.”
“All right. If you’re sure…”
Gareth gripped his shoulder and gave it a quick squeeze, the contact brief but warm, loosening a tight knot of worry that Ben hadn’t realized he was carrying around. It wasn’t gone; wouldn’t go away until this was all over and done with. But he felt better. He straightened up as Lix walked over to them.
She tossed him a key on a hard square of red plastic, the number twelve on the front in faded gold ink. “For you and Gareth. Let’s eat, and then everyone should get some rest before we move out. May, Raze, and I will be in the next room, thirteen.”
“Lucky thirteen,” May mumbled under her breath.
Lix heard her and laughed. “Better be! Now come on, there’s a diner just up the road, and I need something hot and drowning in gravy.”
***
They left the motel just after five in the evening, the winter dark wrapping them tight in a thief’s embrace. In their dark gray and black, Ben thought they looked like living shadows against the backdrop of cheap vinyl siding and rusting drainpipes as they climbed into the two SUVs.
Night Blade: Blade Hunt Chronicles Book Two Page 15