She wasn’t certain what she heard first, the chanting or the screaming. In the end, it didn’t matter. They both came to her with unsettling clarity, and they both meant the same things—pain, death, evil.
Ivy struggled against the experience, but her “gift” had her firmly in its grasp, and it had no intention of letting go.
The voices chanted in a language she didn’t recognize. She couldn’t even be certain it was a language, because she couldn’t distinguish any words at all. It sounded as if someone had built a coded speech out of nails on chalkboards, microphone feedback, and the sound of breaking bones. It made the hair on her neck—hell, the hair everywhere—stand on end and sent her stomach pitching and rolling in her abdomen. It was, she realized, what the Darkness sounded like.
She didn’t need a translation. Whatever was being said had only one purpose, to cause pain and terror as it built a giant cone of Dark energy at the center of the assembled nocturnis.
Once Ivy realized that, her mind switched its focus to the screams, and those she recognized easily. Martin.
It didn’t matter that she hadn’t spent more than a few hours in his presence, didn’t matter that she’d never heard anyone scream like that, full of so much terror and agony that they no longer sounded human. It didn’t even matter that he had been a traitor to the Guild and all the people she had worked so hard to save. None of that mattered, because no living creature ever deserved to suffer the way Martin was suffering.
“No! Master, please! I have served you faithfully! Nooooo!”
The chanting never ceased, never so much as hiccupped, but a low hissing voice began to slither underneath it. It made Ivy freeze and the urge to run, to run far, far away, filled her, but she couldn’t move. Her body was trapped by the power of her “vision,” and she couldn’t move a muscle.
“And you continue to serve us,” the voice mocked. “Your blood serves us as it stains these stones your forefathers laid down. Your pain and your terror serve us as they echo under the seat of our enemy. Your soul will serve us when we rip it from your body and feast in the presence of their impotent Light.”
More screams, terrible screams, and sobbing. Even in her paralyzed state, Ivy had to fight to swallow the bile that rose in her throat. She knew those sounds would haunt her for years to come.
“Scream, human,” the voice ordered, glee underlining its viperous tone. “Scream and beg and feed our power. Help us draw the Guardian to the home of his wretched kind that his blood may free our final Brother! Scream!”
Ivy had no words for the sounds that came next. She didn’t want words, not for the horrible, wet rending sound, nor for the inhuman shriek of agony that followed it.
Nor for the outraged bellow that echoed inside her head as she sat bolt upright in the pitch-black bedroom, the pale sheets sliding away from her sweaty skin.
“Ghrem!”
Beside her, Baen jackknifed into a sitting position and reached for her. “Amare! Ivy, what is the matter?”
“The others.” She clutched at him with fingers that shook so hard, she almost couldn’t make them grip, no matter how badly she needed to cling to his strength. “Get the others. I just heard something. Something bad. We need to hurry.”
The Guardian wasted no time asking questions. Whether he heard the truth in her words or read the terror and panic on her face, it didn’t matter. He immediately left the bed and grabbed some clothes, bundling her into an oversized T-shirt and a pair of sweats, moving her arms and legs like a doll to get her dressed. He spared another two seconds to yank on his own discarded jeans before scooping her up into his arms and shouldering his way out of their bedroom.
He strode down the hallway lined with bedroom doors and bellowed loud enough to wake the dead. “Kees! Ash! Dag! Everyone wake! Spar! Knox! To arms!”
The huge old house began to thump and rattle as bodies tumbled from beds and doors flew open. Huge, broad-shouldered men and rumpled women began to appear, looking alarmed but alert.
“What has happened?”
“What is it? What is going on?”
“Yo, where’s the fire, Hudson?”
Rose stepped out of her room, tying the belt of an old-fashioned smoking jacket she wore as a robe. “Baen, what is this about?”
“Ivy heard something. Something significant. She says we all need to hear it.”
The woman looked from Baen to Ivy, who lay curled against his chest, shivering and traumatized. She tried to show with her eyes how important this was, because she couldn’t speak. Her teeth were chattering too hard. She felt as if she stood naked on a glacier during a blizzard. Never in her life had she felt chilled like this, like her bones had been constructed of ice and were freezing her from the inside out.
Rose must have sensed something, because she gave a brisk nod and waved for everyone to head toward the stairs. “We will meet in the blue room. You go down. I will make certain everyone is awake and get them to assemble. Go on now. And if someone wishes to make coffee, that would be appreciated.”
It took another ten minutes to get everyone together. Ivy spent it in Baen’s lap. He had claimed a well-padded love seat, settling her atop his thighs and wrapping her in the soft chenille blanket Fil found draped over a chair in the corner. Ella had rushed off to make coffee and dragged Wynn along with her, so by the time the stragglers appeared and chose seats of their own, the two women were passing out cups of the strong brew.
Baen doctored a mug with cream and sugar and helped it to her lips. She sipped gratefully, still shaking too hard to hold anything for herself. She supposed it must be shock putting her in this state, but it didn’t much matter what she called it.
Hell, it didn’t much matter what she felt. What mattered was what she had heard and what it revealed about their enemy.
“Ivy,” Rose prodded gently. “Can you tell us what you heard? What has put you in such a panic?”
It took another mouthful of coffee, several deep breaths, and the tightening of Baen’s arms around her before Ivy could manage to speak. And even then, she sounded like Katharine Hepburn with the worst of her tremors.
“I heard the Order. A ritual, I think,” she said, leaning heavily against Baen’s chest and grateful for his warmth. “I never see anything, so all I can tell you is what I heard.”
Rose nodded and made a gesture of encouragement.
“There was chanting, from a lot of voices. Dozens, at least. So many. They used a language I’ve never heard before. At least, I’m assuming it was a language. It sounded more like … chaos.” The memory made her shudder. “It had a definite rhythm, and it kept getting faster and faster, like they were building up to something.”
“Oh, I do not like the sound of that,” Fil murmured from the sofa opposite.
The Warden had no idea.
Ivy continued. “I also heard screaming. A person screaming,” she clarified. She looked up at Baen, then her gaze searched out Ash and Drum, the only others who shared the connection. “It was Martin. I’m sure of it.”
Ash cursed. Drum didn’t look much happier.
“Martin?” Rose frowned. “That was the Warden you were meant to send here, no? The one who betrayed you to the nocturnis.”
“Yes. They apparently decided to return the favor. They were—” Ivy broke off. She had to swallow hard against the bile that rose at the memory. “They tortured him. To raise power, I think. That was the purpose of the ritual. They tortured him and then they killed him.”
“Human sacrifice?” Wynn looked sickened, but not surprised. “That would certainly raise a good bit of energy, and not a drop of it untainted.”
Knox squeezed his Warden’s hand. “What did they need so much power for?”
Ivy shifted uncomfortably. She knew what she had heard, and she knew what her instincts told her, but she couldn’t be certain what the others would think when she told them. Would they believe her, or would they decide she had too little evidence to support her assertions?
Baen gave her a gentle cuddle and nodded when she met his gaze. His support and encouragement made her shove aside her doubts and just pour it out. Until she did, no one would take action; they would have no reason to.
“I think they used it to pull Ghrem out of the between. A voice said something that implied it, and just before I came out of it, I thought I heard him shout. One of those Guardian roars.” She met Rose’s shocked gaze and tried to convey both sorrow and sincerity. “Like I said, I couldn’t see him or anything else, but I’m certain that was what happened.”
“But why?” Rose asked, sounding confused and frightened and verging on panic. “Why should they pull him into our realm again? They were safer while he was busy in the between.”
Ivy braced herself to deliver the news she really, really wished she didn’t have to pass along. “That voice I heard said something. About that. It said his blood would free their final brother.”
“Mon Dieu! Non!”
The quiet French plea was drowned under an explosion of rage and denial. The Guardians looked ready to charge the gates of hell, and the Wardens looked horrified.
Ivy searched out Wynn’s gaze. The witch hadn’t been a Warden the longest, but she’d been using magic her whole life, and she understood how it worked better than any of the rest. She could work it better than any of them, too.
“Do you think that could be possible?” Ivy asked her. “Could the Order believe that using a Guardian as a sacrifice could finally break down the strongest prison and let the last Demon go free? Would they even try it?”
“They would try anything,” Wynn replied. “They’ve killed teenagers, crippled the Guild, and destroyed entire villages to get this far. If they could get their hands on a Guardian, they would absolutely try to sacrifice him to raise the power needed to open the last prison. No question.”
“But would it work?” Drum asked.
“I am very, very afraid that it might,” the witch said grimly.
“But I thought you guys were immortal,” Kylie said. “I mean, I know that doesn’t mean invulnerable, but I’ve seen you get hacked at with weapons, blasted with spells, even attacked by minor demons. It would have to take a special kind of weapon for the Order to think they even had a chance of taking one of you out.”
“And even if they had something like that, how do they think they’re going to control one of you?” Ella asked. “I’ve seen the odds some of you guys have taken on. You plow through nocturnis like they’re toy soldiers. Pulling Ghrem out of the between is one thing, but once they got ahold of him, it’s not like he wouldn’t be fighting his way out of there like a scene from an old Errol Flynn movie.”
It wasn’t the sheer number of voices that she recalled from her episode that Ivy thought of, it was the gleeful way the hissing voice had spoken of its plans. She offered the others an apologetic look. “I don’t think this was some kind of ‘seize the moment and see what happens’ thing. This was planned, carefully planned, well before tonight. If they had time to think about it, I’m pretty sure they had time to come up with a way to keep a single Guardian contained.”
“There are spells they could use.” The timid voice came from the corner of the room, sounding almost apologetic for being there. Aldous pushed his glasses up his nose and seemed to shrink a little when the others turned their focus on him. “Guardians are immune to magic, but when certain material barriers are magically reinforced, the reinforcement becomes intrinsic to the material itself, and therefore can serve to contain even a creature as strong as a Guardian. Or, so the sources claim.”
“And a weapon could be manufactured,” Thiago added.
The two Wardens had been Rose’s support system while her Guardian was absent and had helped to develop the plan to defeat the Darkness, so it was clear the Frenchwoman valued their opinion. She had invited them to join tonight’s meeting. Considering that they were also training the other Wardens in the house to fight with magic in the face of the Order, it made sense that she should keep up to date with the threat they all faced.
“What kind of weapon?”
Thiago shrugged. “The Seven are the natural enemies of the Guardians, therefore they have been adapted to inflict harm. If one of the Demons were to sacrifice a claw, perhaps, or a tooth, it could be fashioned into a blade as effective against a Guardian as one of steel is against an ordinary man.”
Oh, now that was good news, Ivy thought. She clung a little tighter to Baen and tried not to think about what the Order had planned. She already knew too much for her own comfort.
“Then what Ivy heard is possible?” Rose demanded.
“I am afraid so.” Aldous nodded.
Rose fell silent for a moment. Her chin dipped toward her chest, and she clasped her hands together in front of her as if in prayer. She drew several deep breaths before she looked back up at the Guardians and Wardens gathered around her, and her eyes glinted with fury and determination as she spoke.
“If that is the case, then we have no choice,” she said. “We will not leave one of our own in the hands of the filthy nocturnis. We will rescue Ghrem, and we will put a stop to the rise of the Darkness. N’est-ce pas?”
Her words might be polite, but Ivy heard the steel and fire behind them. She certainly wasn’t going to be the one to gainsay the mate of a threatened Guardian. Especially not one she had seen hurl fireballs the size of Volkswagens during their magical training sessions.
So, that just left one thing to do. In order to save the missing Guardian before he ended up sacrificed to the Darkness, they first had to find him.
Had anyone been listening when Ivy said she didn’t see anything in her visions? She hadn’t the faintest clue where the Order was hiding their captive. For all she knew, he was tied up in the underwater lair of a villain out of a bad James Bond movie.
Ghrem could be anywhere in the world right now. Now ask her again how they were going to find him?
* * *
The room full of people asked Ivy where to find the Order’s hiding place, the location where they kept Ghrem while they waited to spill his blood. It was the one advantage they had at the moment, that the nocturnis would not likely carry out the sacrificial ritual immediately. According to Aldous, they would wait for the next night when the moon went dark and the earth passed through the shadow of an ominous astrological object called a dark star. A thing of legend and cultic fascination, it provided what the little German called the perfect atmosphere for the raising of Dark energy. A great deal of such power would be necessary to rewrite the Seven.
Unfortunately, that meant they had only hours to locate Ghrem and bring down the Seven before it was too late. At the apex of the new moon, Aldous predicted, the priests of the Order would perform their ritual, kill Ghrem, and release Belgrethnakkar, bringing the Seven back together at last. The Guardians and the Wardens could not afford to let that happen.
Baen understood all that. He felt the same compulsion to destroy his enemy and rescue his fallen brother, but it didn’t make it any easier to deal with the way the others threw questions at his mate in rapid succession. They peppered her with demands, asking her to provide information she clearly didn’t think she had, and as she sat in his lap, shaking and retreating from the relentless barrage, he grew angrier and angrier with his friends.
“Enough!” he barked when he saw the way Ivy’s eyes had begun to glisten with moisture. He knew how badly they all wanted to find Ghrem, but he would not have his mate reduced to tears to accomplish it. “You give her no room to breathe, let alone to search her mind for your answers. If you cannot behave responsibly, you can all keep your mouths shut.”
Ivy sagged against him, her gratitude obvious as silence descended on the tense group. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice tight. “I wish I could tell you where he is, but I didn’t see it. I didn’t see anything. I never do. That’s why I told you I don’t have a talent worth mentioning. You’d get as much out of some well-planned eavesdropping as you get out of me. Believe me, I want to find him as badly as you do. After what they did to Martin…”
She lapsed into silence, shuddering. The expression of pain she wore and the way she bit hard into her lower lip showed how much the memory of what she’d heard haunted her. Baen could not resist gathering her close and rocking her with comforting motions.
“Hush, amare,” he murmured. “Never say your talent is useless. Without you, we would not know what the Order has planned for us. You have given us a chance to stop them before it is too late. That is not only worth mentioning, it is invaluable.”
Rose agreed. “Baen is right, Ivy. We should apologize for the way we just treated you. Our worry and the pressure of time is our only excuse, but it is a poor one. You have already done us all a great favor.”
Ivy scoffed. “By showing you what you have to look forward to? I wouldn’t exactly call that a favor, myself.”
“Stop, little one,” Baen ordered. “Push aside your doubts and your worries and focus on me. Can you do that? I want to try something.”
She turned those gray eyes on him and frowned, but she was already nodding her agreement. “Try what?”
“Seeing things is not the only way to gather information. I think if only one of us asks the questions, you might be able to recall something from what you heard to give us some clues. Will you try for me?”
The corner of her mouth kicked up. “I’d try anything for you.”
He felt his heart swell and had to force himself to focus. “Thank you, amare. Now, close your eyes and listen to my voice. Can you try to remember the first thing you heard earlier? Was it the chanting?”
Ivy leaned back against his arm and let her eyelids drift shut. He saw the way she shifted her attention inward with a small frown that drew a tiny crease between her brows. He ignored the way it made him want to trace the soft skin with his fingertip.
“The chanting and the screaming,” she said, her mouth tightening. “I heard both at the same time.”
“What did it sound like? Not what they said, but the environment. Could you hear anything in the background? Traffic outside, planes overhead, mechanical noises of any kind.”
Her frown deepened as she concentrated on her memories. After a moment, she slowly shook her head. “None of that. It sounded … cut off. Isolated. Like it was separate from everything. Secret. The voices drowned everything else out. Except for the screams.”
“Good girl. What about acoustical qualities? Was there an echo? A reverberation, like in a cavern or a concert hall?”
“No echo.” She paused. “And not exactly a reverberation. Oh, hell, this is so not my field of expertise.” Her eyes popped open, and she stared unhappily at him. “I don’t know acoustics, Baen. All I know are words, but I do remember what the voice said to Martin, and a few of its phrases struck me as odd. Tell me if you feel the same.”
Baen listened as Ivy did her best to re-create the threats and taunts of the hissing voice that had spoken to the doomed Martin. He stiffened to hear the way the voice spoke of “stones your forefathers laid” and the “seat of the enemy.” The wording gave him an uneasy feeling.
Apparently, he wasn’t the only one. As soon as Ivy mentioned the idea of feeding on Martin’s soul “in the presence of the Light,” Aldous jumped to his feet and cried out as if he’d just been goosed with a cattle prod.
“It can’t be!” The German gasped. “They could not have desecrated our most sacred rooms that way. Light forbid it.”
“What are you talking about?” Ivy demanded. “Did that crap mean something to you? Because if it did, you need to tell us. Now.”
Aldous wrung his hands and looked like someone had just kicked his puppy. His voice shook when he tried to answer her question. “You are very certain you heard those particular words? ‘In the presence of the Light’?”
“I’m positive.”
The little man whimpered and looked at Rose. “I fear that the Order has befouled our very home, Fräulein. The stones laid by our forefathers are the stones of the Guild headquarters in Paris. And calling it the seat of their enemy only confirms this. The nocturnis have gathered at our stronghold in order to destroy us! They mock us with bringing Darkness to the heart of a place that was built to serve the Light.”
Ella pounced on that possibility. “That can’t be right. The headquarters was completely destroyed in the attack two years ago. Rose, you said you were there, and I know you’ve been to the site since then. Is there enough of the building left to hold rituals in, let alone to hide a captive Guardian?”
“You don’t understand,” Aldous continued before Rose could respond. “They are not in the building; they are beneath it. The first Wardens used magic to dig a stronghold under the site of the headquarters and built a series of rooms deep under the ground. They were meant to be used as a refuge in the case of a direct attack by the Order, and in the early years of the Guild, it was said that the Inner Council used them for important rituals. Those rooms were the site where the Guardian summonings used to take place, and they say that the central room featured a mural inlaid with magic and precious stones. It was supposed to depict the servants of the Light and to have been created by one of the Maidens. The work itself was known as The Light, and if the Order is within its presence, then they are in that room!”
Baen turned to Rose. “Could these underground rooms have survived the blast? Is it possible that the nocturnis returned there after they destroyed the building and have been orchestrating their evil from under our very noses?”
“The site was fenced off for safety reasons, so I have not walked through it, but I saw no signs that the foundation was compromised.” The Frenchwoman looked pained. “I think it is very possible a secret cellar might have remained intact. If the area giving access to it also survived, or was suitable for excavation…” She shrugged. “Oui. It might be the case.”
Curses in a number of different languages exploded into the room. Kylie’s Yiddish and Fil’s Lithuanian added color to the mostly dead languages the Guardians seemed to prefer. Baen certainly found himself giving his Latin a workout.
“I guess that means we’re going to Paris,” Wynn said calmly, but with steel underlying her tone. “It doesn’t matter if they’re using our space, or even if they’ve decorated every single wall with smeared blood and severed heads. We know where they are, so we go after them. We’re not leaving Ghrem in their hands, and we’re not letting the Darkness win. Am I right?”
“You’re right.” Drum agreed. “Though I do hope you’re wrong about the severed heads.”
The Wardens shared a brief smile, but what pleased Baen was seeing how every head in the room nodded in agreement. Guardians and Wardens all appeared united in their determination to strike back at the Darkness and banish it from this world permanently.
Thiago stepped forward, his dark features set in lines of resolve. “I have showed every Warden here the spell we will need to defeat the Demons and return them to their prisons. I had hoped we would have more time to practice together, but you all know what you must do. I am confident you will do it well.”
“Wait. Is that all the spell is going to do?” Dag demanded. “It only sends the Demons back to the same places from which they already escaped? How does that help us? They have proven those prisons will not hold them forever. What happens the next time they begin entertaining ambitions?”
“The problem did not lie with the prisons themselves,” Thiago said. “It was the fault of the Guild. They grew complacent in the millennia since the Darkness was banished. They forgot that even the strongest wards need to be maintained. They failed to renew the energy in the magic that sealed the prisons. Believe me, the new Guild will not be so lax.”
Baen was glad to hear it. He only intended to fight this battle once.
He also saw the way the Wardens greeted Thiago’s declaration. It had a proprietary ring, as if the Spaniard expected to have a definite say in the reconstruction of the Wardens’ Guild. Based on the strength of the other Wardens in the room, Baen was betting the man would face some stiff competition when it came to deciding who would run things in the future. If they were lucky, it would create a better and stronger organization for all of them.
“So that’s the plan, then?” Kylie asked, rising to her feet and bouncing up and down on her toes. The tiny human rarely kept still. Even while she was seated, one foot beat a rapid rhythm against the air in front of the settee. “We storm the castle—er, basement—we wave our magic hands, and we bippity-boppity-boo the Demons into the Detention Dimension?”
Baen blinked. Sometimes it took him a few minutes to translate Kylie’s irreverent and slang-laden speech into English he could understand. This was one of those times.
After he’d digested the question, he nodded cautiously. “Yes, I believe that is the plan.”
“Hm. And what about the whole bunch of chanters Ivy here heard doing that ritual? I mean, we’ve all gotten our feet wet with fighting off nocturnis when we’ve had to, but it sounds like when we go in there, we’re gonna be seriously outnumbered. Not to mention that we Wardens are going to be distracted while casting the big spell. How are we supposed to do that while we have a battalion of pissed-off whack jobs trying to turn us into latkes?”
Thiago interjected. “We will bring the other Wardens, the ones who have sheltered here. I will gather volunteers. I am certain most of them will wish to join the fight. They will handle the nocturnis while the seven Wardens bound to Guardians cast the spell.”
“Most of them, huh?” Kylie pursed her lips and turned to face Rose. “In that case, I think you’re going to need a bigger car.”