They did need a larger car—actually, several vans—but only because the Guardians could safely carry no more than one or two Wardens at a time for the short flight back to Paris. Ivy volunteered to drive, but Baen would have none of it. The big galoot refused to let her out of his sight for a minute, let alone most of an hour.
Which was why when she got to the French capital late the following evening, she needed a moment on solid land to remember how to work her legs again. She didn’t care what Baen said. She was not going to get used to that kind of flying. Not ever. She wanted a seat, a flight attendant, and a little rolling cart of free soda. Jumbo airliner, watch her come.
The nocturnis, on the other hand, were welcome to look in an entirely different direction. Move it along, she thought as she stuck close to Baen’s side. Nothing to see here.
They had landed on a (another) rooftop in a maneuver with which Ivy was becoming uncomfortably (and reluctantly) familiar. This one gave them a view of the rubble-strewn lot that was all that remained of the former Guild headquarters. The other six Guardians occupied similar positions on the surrounding streets. For the moment, they waited and watched, timing the moment when they would make their appearance as party crashers at the Order’s little soiree.
Providing, of course, that the waiting didn’t kill her, Ivy reflected sourly. Patience had never numbered among her virtues, and she already felt as if she’d been waiting for the signal to move forward since they had hammered out their plan in the wee hours of the morning.
No one had left the blue room until after sunrise, the group using the hours in between to discuss exactly how they would get into the Guild’s secret basement. Now that they suspected the place was crawling with nocturnis and whatever inhuman minions they had decided to conjure up that day, it seemed wise not to just burst in with guns blazing. Chances were, a full frontal assault was exactly what the Order would be expecting.
Luckily, their little Rebel Alliance had two advantages working in their favor. First, Aldous had actually visited the hidden rooms once, at least the ones closest to the entrance, and as a certifiable Guild geek, he had researched the rumors and the few known facts about them. All that had enabled the German to draw up a reasonably accurate floor plan of the space. So at least they knew they wouldn’t get lost, or waste all their time trying to fight their way through to a glorified storage room. Because that would just be awkward.
Their second advantage was Drum. Although he had spent a lot of years like Ivy, ignoring his gift or dismissing it as having little value, he had recently learned its true strategic importance. Drum could locate things. He could focus on an object or a person and track them down using the magic of his talent, basically homing in on them as if they wore a GPS tracking device. According to Ash, he was more reliable than a bloodhound and only snored half as loud.
Drum had shot his mate a look that promised retribution, but then accepted an article of clothing Rose said had belonged to Ghrem and had used it to focus on the missing Guardian. Several tense moments later, the Irish publican had been able to confirm that Ghrem was indeed in Paris, he was definitely someplace underground, and he was absolutely being guarded by a heavy force of cultists.
It hadn’t exactly been good news, but it had let them know what they were walking into and that at least they were looking in the right place. As reconnaissance went, you couldn’t beat that.
Of course, just because everyone knew where they were going and what to do once they got there didn’t mean they could just rush in yelling “Banzai!” (Or, as Kylie had suggested, “Bonsai! Little trees!”) No, they had to be smart about this, and that meant working according to a multistage plan.
Part one had involved the logistics of simply getting everyone to Paris from Maison Formidable. Rose’s little Renault carried four, maximum, and it helped if all of those individuals had small frames and close relationships. The manor boasted a spacious estate car and a compact van, which helped, but they had still been forced to call in favors from friends, relatives, and trusted neighbors in order to transport thirty-seven volunteers to the field of battle. Or in this case, a safe house in a neighboring arrondissement. Arrivals had been staggered throughout the day, so that by early evening, the Guardians had been the last of the pieces to settle into place.
Cue the waiting. All. The. Waiting.
While Ivy tried to keep her muscles from atrophying on that rooftop, several skilled Wardens were busy down below implementing phase two. Using magic to conceal their presence, those volunteers were searching the ruins for the concealed entrance to the basement. They would also use the opportunity to clear out any traps the Order might have laid and to dispatch any nocturni guards left aboveground.
The third stage of the plan was the most dangerous, and Ivy had been both surprised and touched when she had witnessed half a dozen Wardens in hiding step forward as volunteers. Their job would be to descend into the secret rooms ahead of the others and form a clear path for the Guardians and the rest of the Wardens.
According to Aldous, the rooms beneath the Guild’s headquarters had been arranged along a central axis. The stairs opened into an entry chamber from which two short halls led to medium-sized rooms to the left and the right. From those, another set of short halls led to two more rooms, before the final set of matching corridors converged into a large anteroom capable of holding a hundred nocturnis. Beyond that lay the final chamber, a vast, high-ceilinged space with plenty of room for a Guardian to spread his wings.
This was the Guild’s ritual room, and the one bearing the mural known as The Light. It was where the Order would be gathered and where Ghrem was being held.
It was also the space in which six of the most powerful and corrupt creatures of the Darkness would be gathered, each one capable of destroying cities all on its own. It was where Ivy and the six other Wardens would have to cast a spell that hadn’t been performed since the days of the Roman Empire, with nothing standing between them and death but the Guardians who had sworn to protect them.
But, you know, no pressure.
Part of Ivy wanted to buckle under the pressure of her own fear, to just race in, metaphorical and magical guns blazing, and get this whole thing over with. Baen and his siblings had no doubt about their ability to fight through any resistance the cult might put up, but to do so would only alert the nocturnis and other things deeper inside the chambers to their presence. They needed the element of surprise to pull off their plan, or to at least keep Ghrem alive long enough to be rescued.
After the way was clear, the remainder of their little army would file inside, splitting themselves between the two paths to the main chamber. They guessed there would be guards gathered in the anteroom, but hopefully the Wardens’ tactic of coming at them from both sides would help to foment confusion in their ranks.
Once the battle began there, the Demons and the high priests of the Order would know what was coming, and they would be prepared to fight. The bulk of the Wardens would remain to do battle in the antechamber, while the Guardians, the seven Wardens, and the most powerful of the remaining volunteers would head straight into the ritual chamber where the real war would be waged.
Ivy, Ella, Fil, Wynn, Kylie, Drum, and Rose would take up their positions and begin casting the spell to bind the Darkness. Thiago, Aldous, and a few other handpicked Guild members would set up in a defensive formation around them and keep them safe from the priests and any other minor or moderate threats, while the Guardians would keep the Demons from killing them all.
That was the plan anyway, but Ivy had heard that battle plans rarely lasted beyond the first shot fired. She only hoped that if this one went to hell, it at least took the Demons with it.
She sat at Baen’s feet and tried not to brood over what could go wrong for what felt like hours. Finally, just when she was pushing away an image of her own blood being used to paint moustaches on all the figures in the famous mural down there, Baen shifted.
“That is the signal,” he murmured, bending low so she could hear his quiet words. “Now they will move below. It will not be much longer now.”
Pushing to her feet, Ivy shook her arms and legs to get the blood flowing again and tried to stay out of sight. “Not long” wasn’t an exact measurement of time, and she had discovered recently that Guardians had a very different concept of time than humans, anyway. She figured it had something to do with being immortal, but what seemed to feel like a minute or two to Baen felt more like ice ages to her. She needed to be ready when he said go, but she also needed not to be spotted before it was their turn to move.
Once again, she found herself waiting, shivering in the cold night air. She estimated it must be near midnight by now, but even in this quiet neighborhood, lights still shone and an occasional pedestrian or vehicle passed by on the nearby cross streets. The clever magic users among the volunteers had thought ahead and placed a spell on this block to turn away anyone who might otherwise pass by. Nothing dangerous, they had assured Ivy, just a strong compulsion that they really, really wanted to be someplace else in a hurry. So far, it seemed to be working.
An eternity later, Baen rose from his crouch. “That is the main group heading below. Get ready.”
Why he bothered with the warning, she would never understand. She barely had time to register his words before he was scooping her up and throwing them off the side of the building. She clenched her teeth so hard to contain her instinctive scream that she had to tell herself to get her butt to the dentist as soon as this was all over. If she lived through it, she was going to need some serious repair work to counteract all that grinding.
They had barely touched down before Baen was hustling her though a yawning opening in the dirt, halfway concealed by part of a collapsed wall. Ivy eased in warily and down the stone stairs into darkness.
It wasn’t completely pitch-black, but a few seconds were required for her eyes to adjust enough to realize that. Once they had, she could make out a faint glow coming from two different areas at opposite sides of the entry chamber’s rear wall. While this room remained unlit, those glows promised some form of lighting deeper in the warren of rooms. She swallowed a tight ball of relief. A person didn’t have to be afraid of the dark to not like the idea of a demon using it to sneak up behind her.
Baen didn’t let her linger in the entrance. He urged her forward, steering her toward the right-hand glow with a hand against her back.
“We go this way,” he murmured in a tone lower than a whisper. Even with him bending close, she had to strain to hear him. “I will go in front. Stay close to me, and keep your guard up. If we are attacked, get down and keep yourself safe. Understand?”
Ivy gave a sharp nod, which seemed to be all he was waiting for. Baen stepped forward and eased through the doorway while more and more of their allies streamed into the entrance chamber behind them. Call her a coward, but Ivy found the backup reassuring. For now, at least.
They passed through the first short corridor, the dim glow growing brighter as they moved. It provided the perfect way for their eyes to adjust so that they weren’t blinded when they stepped into the first of the two middle rooms, which was lit by a series of torches lining the walls.
When they entered, they found Ash and Drum waiting for them.
“The first group is waiting in the next chamber,” Ash said, using the same low voice as Baen. Ivy found herself reading the Guardian’s lips as much as listening to her words. “Once we join them, we’ll all converge on the anteroom. Let the volunteers do the fighting. Our jobs are to get through to the ritual chamber and keep the Wardens safe long enough to cast their spell. Through and through, understand?”
“I’ll be right behind you.” Drum grinned. “Probably ducking and using your wing as a shield.”
Good idea, Ivy thought. Since about four of her could fit behind either of Baen’s broad wings, she figured he probably wouldn’t even notice she was back there.
Baen nodded at the female Guardian. “On your count, Ash.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
They moved through the room into the next corridor. Ivy tried not to notice the motionless bodies slumped along the walls, or the way the volunteer Wardens had begun stacking them out of the way like cordwood.
She also tried not to notice that there were a lot fewer of them than they had expected. Somehow, she didn’t find that at all reassuring. Instead of convincing her that the enemy had fewer numbers than her “vision” had led her to believe, she had the sinking feeling that it only meant they hadn’t yet reached the real center of resistance.
Ivy found herself clenching her fists as they walked so that she wouldn’t reach out and grab onto the edge of Baen’s furled wing or the back of his kiltlike garment. She refused to be a hindrance in case he needed to move swiftly to fight. And besides, she reminded herself, she had confidence that nothing on earth could get through him to get to her. If she also counted the Wardens filing down the hall behind her with Fil and Spar hot on their heels, she didn’t even have to watch her own back. She was as safe as it was possible to be in the circumstances.
Really, she just had to stop thinking about those circumstances.
The groups paused again briefly in the second chamber. By now, their numbers had swelled to a good couple of dozen bodies, which seemed to fill the confined space. The first wave of volunteer Wardens had been waiting for them here, and Ivy was happy to see that no one was missing and none looked seriously injured. Whatever resistance they had encountered up to this point had been minimal.
Once again, that failed to reassure her.
Joining the dozen first Wardens’ unit, Ash, Drum, Ivy, and Baen all pushed into the space, with Spar and Felicity edged in at the rear. No one spoke this time, all too aware of the anteroom awaiting them at the end of one last short hall. Instead, Ash used hand signals to remind everyone of the formation they were to use—Wardens first to clear the path, with the Guardians and their mates at the rear ready to plow straight through to the ritual chamber.
Ivy drew in a deep breath and held it for a moment. Her stomach overflowed with butterflies, and she swore she could feel her heart racing double time in her chest. She pressed a hand to her sternum and forced the air back out of her lungs.
You’re a Warden now, she reminded herself, and even Wynn said you can throw a pretty mean sonic blast with magic if you need to. But Baen will be there to protect you, the volunteers will have your back, and all you have to do is cast one little spell. You’ve got this.
One spell that would hopefully save the world and change the course of the future. No big.
A series of nods responded to Ash’s signals, and the group shifted as each member moved into place. At another gesture from the female Guardian, they all faced the final corridor and moved quietly forward.
The quiet didn’t last long. The moment the first Warden stepped into the antechamber, all hell, Hades, Tartarus, and Niflheim broke loose. If Pandora’s box had sat on a nearby shelf, Ivy felt pretty sure that would have cracked open, too.
Dozens of nocturnis swarmed around the chamber. As soon as the Wardens appeared, they shrieked in outrage and began throwing magic like spitballs. Ivy thought she saw more than one cast a summoning circle to conjure up some demonic assistance, but she didn’t have time to look more closely. Baen, Ash, and Spar were already hustling her and the other mates through the crowd of bodies, sending anything that got too close flying into the nearest wall. Thiago had his handpicked volunteers following closely in their wake.
They ran though the entrance into the ritual chamber, hurling themselves into peril at a dead sprint. What greeted them there turned Ivy’s blood to pure ice.
The seven robed priests were bad enough. With their heavy black garments and deep hoods drawn up to conceal their faces, they looked like extras from an occult horror movie. Complete with the wet stains that glistened along their sleeves. Oddly enough, though, the nocturnis barely registered in comparison to the other six figures gathered in the defiled sanctuary.
They used to be people, Ivy thought. She guessed. What else could they be? They wore human shapes and human faces and human bodies, wore them like clothing. Humanity hung off of them like cheap, off-the-rack suits that no one had bothered to tailor. Not even along the hems and cuffs. The bodies of people, of human beings, made ill-fitting costumes on whatever lay beneath.
Ivy prayed—quickly, silently, and fervently—that she never had to see the true nature of that evil. She had enough material already to fuel her nightmares for the rest of her life, and the excitement had barely begun.
There was a moment of brittle silence. Shock hadn’t caused it. No one in the room looked surprised to see anyone else. No, this had more to do with the way two groups of predators faced off before a fight to the death, assessing each other’s strengths and weaknesses, looking for the tender, unarmored vulnerability that would bring down a foe with one swift strike.
Please God and the Light, let the good guys be the ones to make that strike.
A battle cry shook the walls and ceilings of stone, and the Guardians surged forward like the tidal bore of an oncoming tsunami. The inhuman figures leaped to meet them, and the battle for humanity commenced in the underground heart of the Wardens’ Guild.
“Quickly!” Thiago pushed the groups of mates and Wardens toward a clear space in front of the infamous mural. The curved walls of the alcove in which it had been painted formed the guide for part of a large circle. “Get to your places! We must hurry!”
Ivy darted to the wall, planting herself at the center of the huge artwork, not daring to waste a moment to examine it. She had the impression of rich color and brightness that almost glowed before she turned her back to it to face the rest of the chamber.
The other Wardens filed in around the space, arranging themselves according to Thiago’s instructions. Each mate stood at a designated point like seven spokes in a wheel, but in reality they were forming the seven points of a star, a septagram. The rest of the group staggered themselves outside the star to form a magic circle of protection while the spell was cast.
They had reviewed this a dozen times in preparation for this moment, but their practice sessions hadn’t included what would happen when Rose caught sight of the raised stone table at the other end of the room. No one could have prepared the woman for the sight of the bloody form bound to its surface.
“Ghrem!” Rose shrieked and flung herself forward. She would have immediately raced to his side, uncaring of the spell, the Demons, or anything else on the face of the earth, but Thiago stepped into her path and stopped her.
It took three of them. Three Wardens grabbed hold of the desperate Frenchwoman and restrained her while she fought like an enraged lioness to go to her mate’s side.
“Rose, stop!” Thiago shouted at her, shaking her roughly to get her attention. “Rose! The others will get to Ghrem, I promise, but you have another duty. You have to cast this spell. If you do not, we all die, Ghrem included. The world will die, Rose, and all your mate’s valor will have been in vain. Is that what you want?”
Ivy’s heart ached as she watched the other woman go from fighting dervish to sobbing heap the moment the words penetrated her shell of fear and desperation. Ivy imagined herself in Rose’s place, and knew she would have behaved no differently. If faced with the choice of saving the world or saving Baen, she would have hesitated, because what use was the world to her now without her mate? Only the knowledge of what Baen himself would have urged her to do could have forced Ivy to remember her responsibilities. It was the only thing that could sway Rose.
Unfortunately, the delay gave the nocturni priests an opportunity to strike. Two of them split off from the others and rushed the group of Wardens, flinging blasts of sickly, rust-colored magic at their targets. Ivy noticed right away that the women were the ones the priests focused on, and she moved instinctively to defend herself.
Stretching her arms out in front of her, she pressed her palms forward and breathed the words Wynn had taught her. “Tontru alradi!”
A wave of concussive force shot outward and blasted the approaching figures off their feet. It also knocked two unsuspecting Wardens into the wall of the chamber. The witch had been right—Ivy really needed to work on her focus.
Thiago shoved Rose back into her place with a squeeze of encouragement and then raced to urge the fallen Wardens back on their feet. “Hurry!”
Ivy felt adrenaline flooding into her veins, the urgency of the moment almost overwhelming her ability to concentrate. She deliberately kept her eyes off Baen and the other Guardians locked in furious battle with the human-hosted demons, because she knew that if she watched, her fear for her mate would make doing her job impossible, the same way it had threatened to derail Rose.
Instead, she watched Aldous sneaking around the edge of the room toward the altar table to free Ghrem. The small, studious man had prepared for his task by cramming information related to methods that could be used to imprison a Guardian, so if anyone had a chance to free the bound behemoth, it was Aldous. Ivy just prayed he could manage it before the priests spotted him.
She glanced in their direction and found herself shocked to see them paying no apparent attention to the melee taking place just a few feet away. Nor did they seem concerned with what the Wardens had gathered before the mural to do. In fact, they looked like they were beginning another one of their foul chants, their hands pressed together and their focus turned toward the empty space at the center of their group.
Realization hit her like a sledgehammer to the forebrain. She knew exactly what was going on over there, and it was really, really, so. Not. Good.
“They’re completing their summoning!” she cried, uncaring whether or not she interrupted the circle of Wardens around her as they constructed a magical barrier against further attack. “They must be using the energy of our attack and the battle for fuel. They’re trying to free number Seven!”
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.”