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, just 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.”
The deep voice came from a lot farther above her head than Baen’s familiar rumble. Ivy looked up and up and finally craned her neck to get a glimpse of the one Guardian she had not met. “Huh, you must be Ghrem, right?”
The huge warrior smiled. He had beautiful chiseled features, like some kind of male model. You know, the kind made out of stone and with wings and fangs and stuff. At his side, Rose leaned against him, looking tiny and exhausted and fragile. She wore a smile broad enough to light half of Paris.
“You are correct, Ivy,” Ghrem said. “And I owe you thanks for what you helped my Rose do here tonight. You and the other Wardens saved an enormous number of lives—mine, your own, and the rest of the world’s among them.”
“Oh, it was nothing.” Ivy tried waving away his words and nearly smacked herself in the face. She snorted. “Sorry, I guess I’m a little punch-drunk.”
“Un petit peu.” Rose smirked.
“No apologies. You wielded a great deal of power tonight. It will have drained you. You must rest and replenish your strength. Thiago and Aldous are arranging to transport everyone back to the manor house. They should have vehicles here shortly.”
Baen shook his head. “I can fly us there easily.”
Ivy thumped him. “I could have died tonight, and now you’re threatening to kill me? How is that right?”
Ghrem chuckled. “I take it your little mate does not like to fly, brother?”
“Flying is fine,” Ivy protested. “It’s why God invented airplanes. Aerial kidnapping without safety equipment conforming to FAA regulations is another thing entirely.”
“Fine.” Baen huffed. “You had a difficult night. We will ride in the van.”
“Thank you.” Ivy smiled and brushed her lips over his cheek. “I did have a difficult night. I suppose I should say it was nothing, but like I said before, that was one spell I don’t want to have to repeat.”
“You will never have to,” Ghrem assured her. “I meant that. Thiago tells us that the binding on the Demons can be kept intact provided a smaller, much smaller, spell is cast once each decade to shore up the defenses. If the Guild had performed the proper maintenance over the past centuries, the experiences we have all shared would never have happened.”
“See? This is why I insist on maintaining all my own equipment.” Kylie’s voice carried through the room ahead of her. She strolled toward them with her protective Guardian hovering over her. “Never trust someone else to do a job when you know you should be doing it yourself. It only leads to grief.”
“Or an uncomfortable brush with Armageddon,” Wynn added.
She and Knox had followed, and Ivy could see the other Guardians and their mates gathering around the spot where Baen still sat on the floor, cradling her in his lap. Somehow, having that many powerful beings staring down at her made her a little uncomfortable. Especially now that she’d seen firsthand what they all could do when motivated.
She scrambled to her feet but allowed herself to lean against her mate when he joined her. Her gaze flitted around the lopsided circle of Guardians and Wardens. “So, I guess we kinda saved the world, huh? What do you suppose we do for an encore?”
Chuckles greeted her, but Kylie was the only one who took the question seriously. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I could really go for tacos. What do you say, Rose? Do you have any decent Mexican places in Paris?”
The woman blinked in surprise. “Er, I am not certain. Perhaps you would settle for something else?”
“No snails,” the hacker warned.
“Pas du tout. Not at this hour. I was thinking … pizza? We can bring some back to the manor with us and save everyone from having to cook.”
Kylie pursed her lips and nodded. “I could do pizza. With champagne. After all, when in France, right?”
Baen smiled. “I would say that we definitely have something to celebrate. Wouldn’t you?” He leaned down to brush a kiss across his mate’s lips.
Ivy quirked a brow. “Good triumphs over evil?”
The Guardian glanced around them. Ivy followed his gaze, realizing what he was really seeing—a group of warriors and humans who had begun as strangers and now become friends.
No, more than that. Family.
Seven matched pairs, male to female, Guardian to Warden, heart to heart. Stone figures brought to life, then given a free future by the mates who loved them. Now that she considered it, Ivy figured that made for a pretty good story.
“Good triumphed,” Baen agreed, smiling at their family before turning back to meet Ivy’s smiling gaze. “But more importantly, love conquered all.”
Her smile turned into a grin, and she stretched up into his kiss.
“Oh, yeah,” she murmured against her mate’s lips. “I’ll drink to that.”