She turned to stride out of the kitchen, the scrape of chair legs across tile telling her the Guardian had obeyed her summons (no pun intended). He followed her down the short hall to the town house’s front room where a desk in the corner supported a small desktop computer. Ivy settled herself into the chair in front of it and booted up the system. When she glanced over at Baen, she found him examining the surroundings with a slight frown.
“What’s wrong?”
He looked back at her. “You said that the human who lived here was a Warden, but that he is among those who were killed by the Order?”
“Yes. So?”
“I did not think that a dwelling of this sort would remain untouched after its owner’s death. Should someone else not be living here now? Do we not run the risk of discovery by remaining here?”
“Oh, that. Yeah, that’s why I chose this place,” she said, only half paying attention to the questions. She was relieved to see Adam Harris had not bothered to put a password on his desktop. “Normally, you’d be right, but this guy’s disappearance was one of the first things I looked into when I got to England and got involved in the missing Wardens. Harris—the owner of this place—had no next of kin and he was a bit of a recluse. He worked from home, paid all of his bills by electronic transfer from his bank, and he was only in his late thirties. I guess he hadn’t seen the need to write a will yet, so no one was set up to inherit the house. As long as the money in his accounts holds out, no one is going to turn off the power or come looking into buying the building.”
She pulled up an Internet search engine and directed it to her online mail server, the one she used for her work with the Warden relocation network. “We won’t be staying past morning, so for now, we’re fine.”
If by fine, she meant exhausted, strung out, and running on pure adrenaline, which at the moment she was. But they were at least safe from immediate discovery. Baen merely grunted, which she decided to take for an indication that he trusted her.
Hey, it had been a long day. She was ready to take what she could get.
Her fingers stumbled a little over the keyboard as she first sent a message to Paris. She’d already sent Paul a brief coded text message (little more than one word) to let him know Martin wouldn’t arrive. Later, she’d get him a more detailed summary of what had happened. But for now, she wanted to go straight to the person who had the most immediate contact with the Wardens’ safe house—the contact she knew as Asile, the French word for “asylum.”
The delete key got a hefty workout, but after a couple of minutes, she had drafted a carefully worded, deliberately obscure message that should alert Asile that a Guardian had surfaced in London and wanted to join up against the Darkness. That would take care of getting word out to the assembled Wardens in Paris. Now the question was where to make a similar announcement on the Net that would attract the attention of the right parties (namely, other awoken Guardians) without bringing the collective might of the Order down on their heads.
No pressure or anything.
“You know, it would be a heck of a lot easier to make this brilliant idea of yours work if I knew more about computers,” she grumbled, scowling at the monitor while she chewed on her thumbnail. “I’m a technical writer, not a hacker. Or a criminal mastermind. I don’t troll the Dark Net looking to score plutonium so I can make my own nukes. I don’t even know how to get to the Dark Net.”
Baen had given up prowling about the room and had come to stand behind her chair. Because looming was always the way to make someone more comfortable. “I do not know what you refer to, but I believe there are places in this electronic world where humans post advertisements for others they wish to meet or for things they wish to acquire. Are there not?”
She rolled her eyes. “You want me to set up a profile for you on LuvMatch dot com? I’m not sure you’re going to wind up with exactly the sort of response you’re looking for with that tactic.”
Her fingers froze over the keys and her eyes narrowed as his words really sank in. “Oh, holy crap,” she muttered to herself as she began typing furiously. “It can’t possibly be that obvious, can it? There’s no way.”
A Web site popped up on the monitor, blocks of columned text with the occasional bold heading. It was Spartan and inelegant and ridiculously familiar.
“What is this?” Baen leaned over her shoulder to peer at the screen.
Ivy snorted out a laugh. “Welcome to Craigslist, Guardian. If you want people all over the world to see what you have to offer, this is the place to show it to them. Shall we see if anyone’s out there waiting to snap you up?”
She had her head tilted back so she could see his face, a slightly goofy smile born of a mix of exhaustion and elation curving her lips when he looked down. Maybe it was because of seeing his features upside down, or maybe it was a hallucination born from lack of sleep, but for a moment, Ivy could have sworn the fire flared back into his gaze as he studied her features. Her smile faded, and she told herself that it was only in her imagination that the flames brightened as he watched her lips move into a more uncertain expression.
“Absolutely,” he finally rumbled, his voice quiet. Something about the deep, gravelly pitch rattled her, rolling around low in her belly. The sensation bore a vague resemblance to her earlier butterflies, except this one was accompanied by a surge of warmth that raced in the opposite direction from her blushing cheeks.
“What shall we say?”
Ivy jerked her head forward and fixed her wide-eyed gaze on the computer monitor. A jolt of adrenaline temporarily wiped away the strain of fatigue. “Uh, um, what about something like this?”
Her fingers flew as she composed a posting that said nothing specific, yet would be read by someone familiar with the Guild and the Guardians as highly significant. It helped that she had just written something very similar to Asile, and she borrowed heavily from that message.
Baen leaned closer as he read the draft, his chest brushing up against her shoulder in a move that made her wonder if it was entirely accidental. Either way, it made her fight hard against a shiver of awareness. In the back of her mind, she realized that she had expected him to be cold for some reason, maybe because of the stone he resembled in his natural form, but she’d been wrong. The Guardian radiated heat, a heat she wanted to lean into and absorb through direct skin-to-skin contact.
Down, girl.
Oh, bollocks. She was losing her bloody mind here. She needed to get a grip.
Ivy cleared her throat and tried to subtly scoot herself out of accidental touching range. Because that was all it could be, she assured herself—entirely accidental. “So, uh, what do you think? Will this work?”
“There is only one way to know for certain,” Baen said, straightening. “Allow others to read this message and hope that among them, we can find my brothers.”
“Okay, then.” Ivy clicked the button to post the ad and let out a sigh. The act seemed to drain the last of her energy, and she almost swayed on her feet when she stood up from the desk chair. “Now all we can do is wait, and I plan to wait while I’m unconscious. I really, really, really need to get some sleep.”
She felt the Guardian rake his gaze over her, taking in her red and swollen eyes, her pale skin, and the subtle tremor in her arms and legs. “You have allowed yourself to become too exhausted,” he growled. “This is unacceptable. Where do you plan to rest this night?”
“Uh, duh. Of course I’m exhausted.” She glared at him. “In case you didn’t notice, there were a lot of things I had to get done tonight. Did I hallucinate that you watched me do most of them? And where the heck do you think I’m sleeping? Like I told Martin, there are three bedrooms upstairs. I’m kind of assuming he’s only using one of them. I’ll take the second, and you can use the third.”
Before she had more than the first few words out, Baen had reached out and swept her off her feet. Literally. It wasn’t terribly romantic, given he had just scolded her for something she hadn’t been able to avoid and she was in the process of chewing him out over that, but it happened nonetheless. When she mentioned the bedroom situation, he turned toward the hall and the stairs to the second floor. Carrying her. Like a toddler having a tantrum over nap time.
Bad analogy, though, because Ivy wanted nothing more just then than a soft mattress and her warm blankie. Automatically she took a deep breath, gearing herself up to protest being manhandled, when a voice in her head demanded to know what was wrong with her. The Guardian wasn’t hurting her, and him carrying her would save her from expending energy she didn’t have to drag her drooping behind up a flight of stairs and down another hall to the place where she could finally get some sleep. Why shouldn’t she let him?
“I have no need of more sleep,” Baen said. The words vibrated from his chest in a way she could actually feel as he cradled her against him. It felt almost like the purring of a really gigantic cat. She kind of liked it. “I have had my fill over the past few centuries. I will keep watch while you and the other Warden rest.”
Ivy didn’t realize her eyes had closed until they flew open at the feel of being set down on a bed and covered with a thick duvet. She had missed most of the trip, her body giving out on her with the need to sleep. Now, the Guardian leaned over her, his face only inches from hers. Without her permission, her hand lifted from beneath the heavy cover and reached up to press her palm against his cheek. His skin felt at once both smooth and rough, like polished marble warmed by the sun and rough granite weathered by wind and rain.
Or maybe that was just evening stubble. Whatever. Either way, it made her fingertips tingle.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, a tiny little chirping tried to tell her to stop! Back away! Run for her life! Avoid all entanglements! But Ivy was too tired to listen. Her eyes drifted shut again, and her lips curved in a small smile.
“G’night, Guardian.”
She slurred the words, already half asleep. But that didn’t prevent her from feeling the very distinct pressure of warm male lips pressed to hers for a lingering moment.
“Good night, little Warden.” The deep, familiar voice caressed her as she drifted into oblivion. “Rest well. And dream of me.”
* * *
As tempted as he was to remain at her side and watch her sleep, Baen rose from his seat on the side of Ivy’s bed and forced himself to leave the room. The sight of her warm and relaxed in slumber tempted him on a level he had never before experienced, and that in itself was something that called for careful consideration.
A Guardian was not supposed to form an attachment to any particular human. His kind existed in order to protect humanity as a whole, not to single out individuals for special favor. Never before in his long centuries of existence had he even considered anything different, but meeting the small female named Ivy had turned his entire world on its head.
He padded down the stairs to the ground floor, his steps naturally silent even in his human guise, which had begun to chafe and bind like a set of clothes one size too small. He itched to return to his natural form, but such a confined space would barely accommodate his body, let alone his massive wings, so he would have to tough it out for a while longer.
Might as well take advantage, he thought, and threw himself down backward onto the sofa in the modest living room. Couldn’t do that while wearing his wings.
Baen stared up at the ceiling and tried to sort through the huge amount of information that had crashed down upon him since his waking. The fact that Ivy kept intruding into his thoughts didn’t help, but it did add to the evidence that had begun to pile up to indicate that this waking would turn out to be something very different from the ones in his past. Something strange was afoot here.
It all had begun with the manner of his waking. He had been correct in thinking that neither Ivy nor the cowardly Warden, Martin, had intentionally summoned him from slumber. That counted as oddity number one. Like them, he had always believed that nothing else could penetrate the magical sleep that held the Guardians in stasis between the times when their aid was needed to battle against the Demons of the Darkness. All the legends indicated this.
Well, all except one.
Baen stacked his hands behind his head and let his mind settle on that particular legend. He had never paid that one much attention in the past. After all, it had all happened so long ago, back at the very origins of his kind, that most Guardians, himself included, tended to dismiss it as folklore. A pretty tale, romantic and sweet, but not at all applicable to the Guardians who existed in Baen’s time.
The Guardians and the Maidens, the tale was called, during those few times when anyone bothered to mention it. According to the story, after the Guild had initially summoned the first seven Guardians and those warriors had completed their task by ridding the human world of the threat from the Demons, they had been sent into their first slumber by the Wardens. That had been fine, but after they woke to battle the next threat, they received the same treatment, and the same after that.
And the same after that.
After a time, the first Guardians had lost any interest in protecting humanity. They had no connection to the people they defended, spent no time with them, knew little of their characters or their customs. Eventually, a time came when the Wardens summoned the Guardians to defend them from a new threat, but the Guardians did not wake. They failed to respond to the humans’ need, and it looked as if the mortal world would fall to the Darkness.
The Guild had despaired. Until one day, a woman of power—one who had magic of her own—appeared and ignored the Wardens’ attempts to dismiss her. She knew the danger to humanity was great and that the Guardians represented the only hope for her people to survive. So she knelt at the foot of the statue of a Guardian and she prayed for him to awaken and defend her. The Wardens scoffed and berated her, but her pleas worked. The Guardian responded to her as if to a summons and woke from his magical slumber. He claimed the woman as his Warden and his mate and once again took up arms against the Darkness.
One by one, more women of power appeared and woke the Guardians, becoming their helpers and their mates. The supernatural warriors defeated the forces of Darkness, but once the threat was vanquished, they refused to return to sleep and be parted from their mates. Instead, they remained among the humans, giving up their immortality to live out their days with their partners. New Guardians were summoned, and the legends recorded that any who came after retained the right to find a human mate and forfeit their position to remain at her side.
Among the Guardians who came after them, the story took on the status of a fairy tale—something to be told and retold, passed down across generations, but unlikely to ever actually happen. Baen had never even considered the possibility.
Until he had smelled the sharp, sweet tang of citrus and seen a tiny human female take a stand against three minor demons and fight like a Valkyrie, despite the near inevitability of defeat. She had captured his attention, to be certain. Ivy fascinated him, and he found that implication … disturbing.
His mind skittered away from the M-word. He had no proof of the legend of the Maidens, and he had certainly never wasted his time contemplating the repercussions of its veracity. He couldn’t afford to waste time now, either. Instead of worrying about his reaction to Ivy—strong and unexpected though it might be—he should worry over how exactly he had woken from his sleep.
Clearly there had been no summoning, and he harbored no illusions that Ivy had paused in that alley while cornered by three demons to pray for the intervention of a Guardian. There had to be something else behind his waking, a sort of magic he had never before encountered.
He made a sound of disgust and shifted his position on the battered sofa. He lifted his feet to balance his lower legs on the arm of the piece of furniture to compensate for it being too short to encompass his entire frame. Yet another inconvenience of the human realm. Even in his disguise, this place was not designed to accommodate him.
Perhaps Ivy was, though.
Groaning, he cursed his thoughts for drifting even as her image appeared in his mind’s eye. He wished he had seen her in sunlight instead of the dark alley and then the dim, artificial lights inside this dwelling. As keen as his night vision might be for shapes and details, it could not show him the true color of her pale skin or long, straight hair. Those things could only be appreciated in the day, and morning still had hours before its arrival.
Until then, he would just have to experience frustration. It built within him, only accentuated by the memory of that single, chaste kiss.
He shouldn’t have done it. Baen knew perfectly well it had been a mistake, knew it even before it happened, but he had been helpless to resist. She had felt so tempting in his arms, small and delicate and soft in spite of her obvious strength. The excuse of carrying her up the stairs had not lasted long enough, and he had placed her on the narrow bed with great reluctance. His instincts had urged him to hold on to her, or better yet, to stretch out beside her and cradle her close while she slept.
When he thought of it in those terms, a brief kiss seemed like a reasonable consolation prize.
Perhaps it would count as such if it didn’t haunt him now, the feeling of her soft lips, her sleepy warmth, the faint taste of flowery hops and sweet malt mingling with bitter tea on her lips. Her scent had filled his head, bright and mouthwatering, and now he could not get it out of his mind.
It was a good thing a Guardian needed so little sleep during his brief periods of wakefulness, Baen reflected, glowering up at the ceiling, because at the moment, he could not have rested had the fate of humanity depended upon it. His mind was too full of Ivy.
And Ivy’s bed was too empty of him.