Chapter Nine
Will kept his eyes shut and sank into his thoughts. Since the moment Fort had shown them Helena’s image in the scrying bowl, he’d been trying to process what he’d seen. His chest felt too full, too tight, and his throat just a little too dry. She was exactly what he’d imagined. Was that possible?
“So… when she was created, she was made as if she’d had her whole life already. Not a baby, not born, just – an adult. And she’s been a warden all this time,” Liam said, bewildered.
Will opened his eyes and settled them on his cousin, who was pacing back and forth, clearly trying to process everything.
Liam stopped and met Will’s gaze, shaking his head. “You saw what I saw, Will. She’s had decades of practice and has more fight in her than every warden we’ve ever worked with combined.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Liam studied him for a moment, probably noticing what Will knew was there – his eyes were probably very vivid right about now. They got that way when he was emotional, just like Liam’s did. It was an unfortunate tell. But Liam was used to his cousin and he knew better than to mention something Will had no control over. So instead, he threw up his hands in frustration. “Okay, so then what’s the plan? What do we do when she resists? Because you and I both know she will. She’ll think we’re nuts. What warden with our kind of training wouldn’t think we were nuts when we traipsed right on up and told them they hadn’t really lived thirty-some years and they were really only made a few days ago as a gift for someone and that they were in danger and should come with us?”
Silence.
“She’ll kick the crap out of both of us,” Liam finished.
“I’m thinking,” Will said. And it was true. He’d been trying to wrap his head around it and create a plan of attack for the last hour.
Liam turned away in irritation, put his hands on his hips, and returned to pacing. His hiking boots left tracks of garden soil beneath their tread. When Fort had appeared, they’d just finished with another job, and had yet to change or shower.
Will watched his cousin with mounting trepidation. What the sentinel was asking of them basically amounted to a babysitting job, but the baby was an atom bomb. She could damn well protect herself. What was worse, the “creation” of Helena was complicated. She’d been made as a fully grown adult with an entire past, a family, and a history. She was a warden just like they were. It didn’t make sense time-wise, and when Will stopped to think about it, the time aspect of it in general felt strange. Familiar, almost.
Something niggled at him uncomfortably.
Liam was right. Helena Dawn was well trained and exceedingly skilled, with magnificent supernatural powers to boot. If the two of them showed up claiming to want to protect her, she was going to be dubious at best.
“Why can’t a sentinel just go and tell her what needs to be done so she’ll be expecting us? No surprises?”
“You weren’t paying attention,” said Will. “Fort went over that.” He realized that Fort had gone over that part after he’d shown the cousins Helena’s image, and knowing Liam, the warden had probably been way too buzzed and way too preoccupied with her beauty to be paying attention to what Fort was telling them at that point. So he reiterated. “He said Helena’s location is being protected. She’s being hidden from everyone but her own sentinel, and even he can only come when she calls him. It was a precaution put in place a long time ago to protect Helena from anyone else getting to her and using her as leverage against Cain.”
“So… I’m guessing she hasn’t called her sentinel lately. Or he surely would have told her what’s going on.”
Will shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably.”
He sighed and pushed away from the door frame he’d been leaning against to make his way further into the safe house library. The safe house was an equally warded location where Will and Liam lived day to day. Every warden had one, whether it was a hut in the tropics or an igloo in the ice or a cabin in the woods or a refurbished missile silo in Alvira, Pennsylvania like this one. Rumor had it that even the North Dakota Stanley Mickelsen Safeguard Complex in Nekoma was actually inhabited by a warden or group of wardens, despite the fact that it was technically owned by someone for agricultural farmland.
Will and Liam’s safe house was composed of four main rooms, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, an underground garage, and a cell for troublesome marks – or as Liam liked to refer to it, “the dungeon.” One of the main rooms was a gym. Another was a library.
“You know,” he said slowly as he made his way to one of the library’s book stacks and placed his hand on the wood to lean into it, “it’s only a matter of time before Cain finds someone who will help him.”
If the rumors were all true, and it was looking like they were, then Cain could get into people’s minds. It wouldn’t be long before he managed to find his way into someone’s head and work that person around to his side. If that person happened to be of a certain persuasion, such as a leadership position in one of the factions, then the Slate cousins would have a small army to deal with.
One or two men, even a handful, they could more than deal with. But an army of vampires? Demons? Fae?
Or dragons?
Probably not so much. If the bad guys managed to get to Helena, convince her to join Cain, or worse – simply force her to – then that would be that. Cain would be let loose on the world, and every warden’s job will have gotten that much harder.
Plus… there was Helena to consider.
And he did. Consider her, that was. A lot.
“All you’re doing is listing more problems Will, and no solutions,” accused Liam. He was probably starting to get a headache right about now; Will could detect the sharper points to the edges of his words and determined it had been about that long since he’d stopped drinking. The hangover bit was starting to set in.
A glance up confirmed his suspicions, as Liam was drinking water now, and pretty much guzzling it to get it into his system as quickly as possible. That was always the un-fun part. The pleasant effects of alcohol never lasted long enough. To Will, it just wasn’t worth the effort.
“I’m listening,” said Will jaggedly. His cousin was welcome to offer ideas if he wasn’t happy with what Will had to say.
But Liam just shot him a withering look. So Will straightened and said, “She will never agree to join Cain. She’s a warden. Not to mention, she’s her own person.” He shook his head, absolutely convinced. “She knows better.”
“He doesn’t have to convince her to want to join him,” Liam countered. “He just has to get into someone long enough to issue her a threat. You were right the first time.”
“And that’s the crux of it,” came a third voice.
The two turned to find a tall, middle-aged man standing on the metal silo walkway that wound around the top of the main entry point of the underground facility. The entire building was warded against the creatures of the different realms – vampires, werewolves, dragons, warlocks, and so forth. But this particular man had always managed to find a way past them.
Darryl the once-warlock and now-dead warlock perched atop the walkway banister on the second floor above the at-home gym that connected to the library, and smiled down at them. He was leaning casually on his forearms against the railing, his hands folded neatly. He looked like he’d been there for some time, just as calm as can be. The only thing giving away his emotion at all was the fact that his eyes, normally a light and slightly too-white blue, were red as fire.
“Darryl,” growled Liam. Liam hated the man. But like any warden, he only killed when hired to, unless in self defense. And Darryl knew better than to press that kind of button. Twice.
He was a very smart re-animated warlock. That was why when he died, he was brought back by the warlocks of his coven in the first place.
“And in full monster mode,” Will added as he contemplated Darryl’s red eyes. They meant he was aroused, and not in a good way. It meant his power was fluctuating dangerously. In other words, he was pissed off. He always hid it well, managing to keep his temper well under his thumb. But the potential was there.
Will thought fast, measuring the distance to weapons and spells located throughout the room, but his heart wasn’t in it. They’d dealt with this particular trespasser so many times in the past, the cousins were now torn between a grudging familiarity and their bone-deep, hard-bred need to destroy rogue evil.
Darryl Maelstrom, the now undead warlock, had been one of their marks for betraying other warlocks years ago. But in true warlock form, he’d cut the cousins a deal when they’d needed it most, and had resurrected one of them when he’d been killed during a job. Later… Darryl appeared out of nowhere in the nick of time to save the other before he surely would have been killed as well.
The cousins had a habit of digging the deepest holes for themselves. And Darryl Maelstrom had a habit of filling those holes back in.
A few years after that, Maelstrom bit the dust anyway at the hands of a pissed off witch. But his knowledge of the dark arts was too valuable to be rid of entirely, and he’d come back, resurrected by a few resourceful warlocks who relied on his shrewd mind for the business end of warlock magic and weren’t in the mood to see their finances go bye-bye.
Now Will and even Liam had to admit that it was probably a good thing the warlock’s life had been spared by them. He’d more than made up for it. He seemed to always be there, on the sidelines, showing up when things looked most bleak. Will was wondering if one of those times was now.
Darryl took a slow, deep breath, pushing himself off the railing to reveal unthreateningly empty hands. “Not here to fight, boys,” he said plainly. “We have a mutual interest.” He began making his way down the stairs, and Will glanced at his cousin.
Liam met his gaze, confirming that they’d both hatched a silent plan of attack, just in case. They’d had years of practice.
“You can stop making googly eyes at one another,” said Darryl without looking up as he stepped down onto the landing and slid his hands into his pockets. “As I said, I’m not here to fight.”
He was dressed as usual in all black. His short brown hair was perfectly neat, his suit was perfectly tailored, and his black wool trench coat was finely fit. He wasn’t model handsome, but he oozed charisma and he looked powerful. In this warlock’s case, it wasn’t an illusion. Before he’d finally been offed by the witch, he’d managed to amass a small fortune by selling his services as a connoisseur of dark magic. He was good at magic, but he was also good at business, and that was basically the definition of power in this day and age.
Will watched him carefully as the enigmatic man made his way through the home gym in the first room, looking entirely at odds in his dark finery against a backdrop of bench press machines and free weights. Darryl continued up the connecting stairs to the second room and moved to the table at the center of the library, where he pulled out the same chair Fort had been sitting in earlier. He sat down, and Will caught the slightest whiff of him.
Death and pine trees.
Apparently Darryl’s heart was so cold, and his magic so thoroughly nasty, when he’d been brought back by the other warlocks, something had gone wrong with the resurrection spell. He hadn’t come back complete. Instead, he was what Will would call ninety percent alive – and ten percent dead. Because of this, there was a pallor to Darryl’s skin that no amount of makeup could hide or cover up. It was beyond pale, and just the tiniest bit green, as if he were always a little queasy. In short he was a walking, talking rotting man, and at times he smelled like one too.
Knowing Darryl and his resourceful nature, Will would guess the warlock had tried everything he could think of to cover up that scent. In the end, he’d resorted to stuffing the pockets of his clothing with automobile air fresheners. Today’s scent was apparently pine tree.
As far as anyone knew, Darryl’s case was the first and only of its kind. The world’s first zombie, so to speak.
Will peered at him and asked, “What is our common interest, Darryl?”
He knew the answer long before he’d asked the question, but Darryl wanted to be asked and wouldn’t divulge the information until he was satiated.
The warlock grinned. “Why, Helena Dawn, of course.”