For a minute there, Ivy thought she might be trapped in a cartoon, because it certainly looked as if Baen’s head was about to explode all over the dead Warden’s kitchen. The news of the Order’s recent activities clearly did not sit well with the Guardian.
Imagine that—a warrior all bent out of shape over the idea that his enemies were on the verge of routing his side before he’d ever gotten a chance to take the field. Who’da thunk?
“I must make contact with my brothers. Immediately.”
It took a minute for Ivy to figure out what Baen had said. She had to translate the words into English from the barely intelligible, animalistic snarl in which he’d actually uttered them.
“The other Guardians? Good luck.” She shook her head. “Do you think that every remaining member of the Guild hasn’t been searching for them from the first moment they realized what was going on? You guys are MIA. You were stationed in cities all over the world, from what anyone can remember, but only the archives recorded exactly where. And we’re pretty sure that your personal Wardens were the first ones the Order got rid of, making finding you next to impossible. Let alone summoning you.”
He locked that blazing gaze on her, the flames that had previously flickered in the black depths now roaring like an inferno, almost obscuring the dark. “I am here now. I also do not believe that none of my brothers would not have already woken in the face of such a grave threat.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, where are they, then?” Martin asked. He looked both belligerent and downtrodden, an odd combination, but each emotion suited what Ivy had seen of his character. He had shown himself to be both a wuss and a whiner. “If the Guardians are among us, they’re bloody well taking their time in sorting this mess out.”
As much as Ivy hated to agree with the man, he did have a point. “The remaining Guild in Paris have had no contact from any of you. Wouldn’t that be the first thing you did if you were summoned? Get in touch with other Wardens?”
“Were we summoned?” Baen countered. “Did either of you perform that ritual to waken me from my sleep?”
The question struck Ivy for the first time. In the face of the demonic attack, she had not stopped to think about where the Guardian had come from, let alone how he had gotten there. She had been too grateful for his rescue to worry about the hows and whys. But now that she thought about it, it made no sense. At least, not according to all the stories and legends her family had told her over the years.
The Guardians had not been created by the Guild. As far as anyone could tell, they had been created by the Light itself, but they had first been summoned by the Wardens in order to battle the Demons of the Darkness. When the enemy had been defeated, the Wardens had then placed them in a form of magical slumber until they might again be needed to defend humanity. So, in a way, the appearance and withdrawal of the stone warriors had always been under the control of the members of the Guild.
Personally, the idea had always struck Ivy as unfair, almost a form of slavery. Instead of allowing the Guardians to live in the world they defended, the Wardens kept them on a sort of magical leash, only allowing them brief periods of freedom during which they were expected to fight to save a population of beings to whom they had no real connection, either physical or emotional. Clearly, the Guardians were not human, but a separate species altogether, and since they did not live among humans, they had no chance to form any kind of emotional attachment to them. The Guild treated them like junkyard dogs in a way, isolating and ostracizing them, while still expecting loyalty and protection in the face of danger.
Talk about getting the short end of the stick. From what Ivy could tell, the Guardians got that short end poked right in their eyes.
Baen made a good point, though. Neither she nor Martin had performed the summoning spell that was supposedly required to draw a Guardian from sleep. She doubted either of them would have known how to go about it, even if they had wanted to. So, why was Baen not still sleeping atop that abandoned Gothic church in Croydon? His appearance and timely rescue should never have happened. It should have been impossible.
“No,” she finally said in answer to his question. “We didn’t wake you. Not deliberately, anyway. How did that happen? Has it ever happened before? Is there supposed to be some other way to wake a Guardian than using the Guild’s spell?”
She looked from Baen to Martin, but the Warden was shaking his head. “Not that I know of. Only personal Wardens are taught the spell to begin with, but according to the Guild, you have to perform it, and perform it properly, in order to wake one up.”
“Then you shouldn’t be here.” She looked at Baen, now truly confused.
“Yet here I am.” He spread his arms to indicate his presence. As if someone his size could be overlooked.
“So you think that if you woke without a direct summons from a Warden, others like you might have done the same thing?”
“Why not?”
Martin made a face. “Perhaps because it should have been impossible the first time, so the odds against it happening a second, let alone a third or a seventh, rank somewhere in the range of astronomical. Trust me, Wardens don’t have that kind of luck. Not these days.”
Ivy had to stifle the urge to slap the man. She’d had just about enough of his whinging. She ignored him and instead thought about the possibility for the first time.
“If any other Guardians have woken, my contacts haven’t mentioned it,” she said. “I don’t think that’s the kind of thing they would have kept to themselves, either. Not only could everyone on our side use the morale boost that kind of news would have given us, but I’m pretty sure that putting the word out would make the best use of the network when it came to finding more of you. And I know the Guild has been looking. It’s the main task everyone we’ve gotten to safety has been put to work on. The survivors know perfectly well that without the Guardians, the world is pretty much screwed.”
“We’re screwed anyway.”
“My God, would you shut up?” Ivy rounded on Martin with a furious glare. “You are not helping, you whiny bastard. If you can’t contribute anything positive to the conversation, you can feel free to leave.”
The man went white. “Y-you’re kicking me out? But—but what if there are more demons out there? Or nocturnis?”
She rolled her eyes. “I meant you could leave the room.” As appealing as the idea of washing her hands of the Warden was, her conscience wouldn’t let her throw him to the wolves. More’s the pity. “There’s an entire empty house here, including three bedrooms upstairs. Why don’t you go and try to get some sleep, or something?”
His expression of panic faded, and his features settled back into their lines of discontent. “Fine. I know when I’m not wanted.”
Ivy and Baen watched him shove away from the table and stalk out of the kitchen. A moment later, his footsteps sounded on the stairs to the second floor.
“Clearly, he does not,” Baen rumbled, “or he would have made himself scarce some time ago.”
Ivy snorted, but she actually felt some of the tension leave her muscles without Martin around to throw in his two cents. “I’m sure he’s just reacting badly to the fear and stress. He can’t be that bad normally, right?”
Baen looked doubtful, but said nothing.
She refocused on the interrupted conversation. “Anyway, I am pretty certain that if there are other Guardians currently awake and moving around, the contacts I have in France aren’t aware of it. Neither are the ones in Scotland, Spain, or the Channel Islands. So how could we find out either way?”
The Guardian eyed her for a moment. He must have calmed down a bit from the shock of her news, because his eyes no longer looked the same as they had in his gargoylelike form. Now, they appeared entirely human, though she didn’t think she had ever seen a brown so deep before. Only a ring of dark amber around his pupils kept the iris from blending entirely into the black.
“It would be helpful if you had received the proper training,” he said after a moment.
“Training?” It took a moment for her to catch on. “You mean Guild training? I told you, I’m not a Warden.”
“And I told you, you are mine.”
The words sent a jolt through her, one that had very little to do with the shock of being called a Warden. Butterflies jigged in her belly, and an inappropriate flush of heat filled her.
“My Warden,” he added a moment later. His gaze had heated, though. At least, she thought it had. The amber around his pupils suddenly bore a stark resemblance to the fire that burned behind his gargoyle’s black eyes.
Or was she imagining things? Could she really be attracted to a creature who wasn’t even human? No matter how well he pretended. Something about it seemed … inappropriate.
In fact, when she thought about it, even his human form was out of her league. He could have passed for an actor, or a male model, with his perfect, chiseled features and athlete’s body. Take his shirt off and point a camera at him, and he’d look perfectly at home on the set of a blockbuster superhero action movie. She, on the other hand, looked entirely average. Her coloring might be striking, and she had gotten to be in very good shape while working to save Wardens from the Order, but her features were nothing special. Her nose was a shade too big for her face, her mouth a shade too small. It had a nice enough shape, but her lips weren’t plump, and her front teeth overlapped just a bit when she smiled. She also had freckles. Lots of freckles. In an age of airbrushed skin perfection, she stood out like polka-dotted cotton in a sea of peach-toned silk.
Besides, they each had more important things to worry about than whether or not they found the other attractive. Things like … hm, the end of the world, maybe?
Ivy cleared her throat and tried to focus back on the conversation. “Right. Your Warden. I’m still not sure I believe that. It doesn’t make any sense. Not only don’t I have any training at serving a Guardian, I don’t have any training at all. I have no official association with the Guild whatsoever. Never inducted, never tested, never met anyone who was a member, outside of Jamie and Uncle George. Not until all this started happening. I don’t see how it’s possible that I could be a Warden and somehow just get overlooked for twenty-six years.”
“The Guardians have never concerned ourselves with the inner workings of the Guild,” Baen dismissed. “I cannot say why they would not have brought you into the fold, but it is clear that you were meant to be there. You have magic, much stronger magic than the male Warden, not to mention a character better suited for defending against the machinations of the Order than that weakling.”
That sort of praise could go to a girl’s head if she let it, but the reference to her “magic” helped her stay grounded. She didn’t find anything particularly magical in the ability to listen helplessly while terrible things happened to other people. It didn’t do anyone any good, and it only made her feel like a failure. There had been plenty of times during her life when she’d considered it a hell of a long way from a blessing. The ability to cast a spell or even physically manipulate energy, those would have been useful. Maybe with a talent like that, she could have actually helped someone. That would have counted as magic.
“I don’t have any magic,” she said, her tone dismissive to match her feelings. “You’re seeing something that isn’t there.”
“I do not think so. Do you not possess abilities that other humans do not?”
“That’s not magic. Some people have certain psychic talents in this world. It makes us freaks, but it doesn’t make us Wardens.”
“Your answer is yes, then,” he said, looking smug. “You do have abilities.”
“Ability,” she corrected. She still felt loath to admit it, especially when he seemed to view it as something positive. “And not a very useful one at that.”
“What is it?”
Ivy grimaced. He would have to make her get into specifics. “I hear things sometimes,” she admitted reluctantly. “Things that are happening in other places. I don’t see them, or anything. They aren’t like visions. There’s no vision involved at all, and I only hear them while they’re happening. Simultaneously. I don’t get to listen in ahead of time and warn anybody, because they’re not predictions. They don’t do anyone any good at all. Least of all me.”
“And you do not consider this magical?”
“How is it magic to know when someone is frightened or furious or heartbroken or in pain and not be able to do anything about it?” The memory of lying in the dark, listening while something tore her uncle and cousin into pieces came flooding back and she had to swallow hard against both the grief and the sickness it inspired. Sometimes she believed she would still be hearing those noises when she was a little old lady in a rocking chair. They hadn’t strayed far from her mind since the moment she first heard them.
“How is it not?” Baen asked. “You seem to have a mistaken impression as to what magic is. Perhaps this comes from your lack of training from the Guild. In any event, magic is merely the deliberate use of energy to accomplish things that may or may not be accomplished otherwise.”
“Yeah, and like I said, my ability has never accomplished doodly-squat.”
“Do not be obtuse. Hearing those events is the accomplishment. That is how your mind has been manipulating energy for years now. The fact that it has been doing so with no conscious effort on your part merely speaks to your innate power. Of course you have been unable to make use of your abilities; you have never been instructed in how to do so. But clearly the ability to manipulate energy is within you. You just need to learn how to channel your own instincts.”
Huh?
Ivy had to look down at her feet to make sure they still had contact with the floor. She felt as if she’d just been bowled over like a ninepin. If the Guardian was right, the entire world was about to tilt on its access. Everything she had ever believed would go up in smoke, because it meant that she might actually have to take him seriously about her potential to become a Warden.
And that stirred up a bunch more questions, ones it actually hurt her to think about. If Ivy had always been meant to be a Warden, why had the Guild never made contact with her. Why had her own family not told her? Had Uncle George never seen it? That seemed impossible, given he had known her for twenty-five years and Baen had spotted it in less than that number of minutes.
Or even worse, had her uncle known and deliberately kept the information from her? That thought hit like a fist to the solar plexus; it knocked the wind from her. He had known, her whole family had known, how badly some of her “episodes” affected her. There had been times when the sounds of someone else’s grief or agony had literally knocked her to the floor with empathic backlash, times when she had sobbed her eyes out at her inability to help or even comfort those whose tragedies she overheard. Uncle George had seen at least one event with his own eyes, and he had never told her that a little bit of training might not only make it easier to bear, but might actually give her the power to take action.
How could he have done that to her?
Shaking, Ivy pushed out of her chair and began to pace the narrow kitchen floor. “That’s—I don’t—I’m not sure I believe that.” She finally got the words out, but it took some pushing and stuttering and headshaking along the way. “I’m not sure I want to believe that.”
“Does that matter? Truth is. It exists separately from belief and independent of it.”
“Yeah, can we not get all deep and philosophical right now? I think I’ve got more than enough on my plate at the moment without having to contemplate the nature of reality.”
He fell cooperatively silent, but she could still feel his gaze on her as she moved back and forth across the tile. Part of her wondered whether he could see inside her with that burning stare of his, but she dismissed the thought. Not only did it make her stomach do weird flips, but since he hadn’t run away screaming, it seemed unlikely. No one seeing the mess of turmoil and exhaustion under her controlled exterior would have wanted to stick around, let alone think she could be of any use to anyone.
And right there Ivy realized her fatal mistake—she had allowed herself to think the word “exhaustion,” and like a Pavlovian response, acknowledging the existence of the weight of her own tiredness brought it crashing down on top of her head. How long had it been since she had gotten some sleep? Not last night, not with planning this evening’s adventure down to the last cocked-up detail.
What time was it, anyway?
She searched the room until she spotted the display on the microwave oven. It was just after midnight. Not horribly late in the grand scheme of things, but to Ivy it felt like the wee hours of the morning. She rubbed her eyes and tried to focus. What had she been saying?
“Right. Magic, Wardens, talents. Me,” she muttered, mostly to herself. “Let’s just set that aside for the moment and focus on priorities. What’s priority number one at this moment, given the circumstances we’re in?”
Baen replied as if she had directed the question to him. “We must locate the rest of my brethren. If any of the Seven already move among the mortals of this realm as you believe, then all of us may be required to ensure we can banish them once more.”
“And now we’re just repeating the same conversation,” she snapped. “I already told you, if any other Guardian is awake, I haven’t heard of it, and neither has anyone I know. So what do you suggest we do to find them? Start knocking on doors? I’ll take the house on the left, you try the one on the right?”
“Once again you use sarcasm to express a negative reaction. I must assume this is the case, because such an action would be futile and waste precious time.”
Ivy stopped pacing and faced him, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at him through eyes she had to imagine were narrow and bloodshot by now. “You have a better suggestion, then? Brilliant. Let’s hear it.”
This time he ignored the sting of sarcasm in her voice and simply answered her challenge. “First, you must alert the Guild’s survivors of my presence. This will give them renewed faith in our presence and inspire their continued search.”
“Yeah, obviously the Guild needs to know,” she grumbled. “I wasn’t planning to keep you a secret from them. But that still doesn’t get us any closer to the other Guardians.”
“Second,” Baen continued, as if she had not interrupted, “you must indicate my presence in London in a public forum. Guardians monitor such things whenever we are able so that we can connect to face threats requiring greater strength than a single one of us can muster.”
Announce it in a public forum? What did he expect her to do? she wondered. Produce a television commercial? Stand in the middle of Piccadilly Circus and hand out flyers? “Sorry, but we’re all out of town criers at the moment. Do you think smoke signals would work in a pinch? And yes, I’m being sarcastic,” she snapped as soon as she saw his mouth open. “Sue me. It’s how I react to stress.”
“I can see that,” he said, his deep voice even but somehow tinged with amusement. At her expense, of course. “But I did not intend to suggest such primitive methods. We must reach the greatest possible audience in the smallest possible time. The situation is urgent. You must use your electronic machines to speak with people all over the world in the same instant.”
She blinked, her brows furrowing as she tried to translate his archaic speech to modern technology. “Electronic machines? You mean computers? You want me to spread you all over the Internet?”
“Yes, the Internet. Forgive me. While I may know the concepts, sometime it takes longer to process the language of what I receive when it comes to new knowledge.”
“What are you talking about? What knowledge that you receive? And if you’ve been asleep for a few hundred years, what do you know about computers and the Internet?”
“I know of their existence,” he said firmly. “A Guardian’s slumber is not like that of a human. We retain a certain awareness even as we sleep. In addition, we share our knowledge among ourselves. When one Guardian learns of a significant change in the world, he adds it to the understanding of all of us. It is a trick we use to compensate for the passage of time between our wakings.”
Okay, that sounded pretty cool. Ivy imagined it would go a long way to coping with the twenty-first century after falling asleep in the seventeenth if you could just download a summary of everything that had changed in that time from a sort of hive mind.
Not that she was comparing the Guardians to bees, mind you. Or, you know, the Borg.
Then the true implications of his revelation hit her. “Wait. But computers have only been in everyday use for the last thirty or forty years, and the Internet for, like, twenty. So that would mean a Guardian would have to have been awake during that time for you to know about all that. Right?”
Baen nodded. “Exactly. Therefore, at least one of my brethren is out there now, waiting to be found. Someone will be aware of it and will be attempting to make contact just as I am. We merely need to achieve an intersection of those attempts.”
“Still easier said than done,” Ivy warned, but at least she could see the possibility now. “I guess it’s worth a try, though. Come on.”