“That sounds singularly uncomfortable,” he answered. “I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for understated sanction rather than a splashy Broadway extravaganza of absolution.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I simply thanked him.
“You’re quite welcome. I’m delighted I could help you, and trust you’ll find the process wasn’t quite as onerous as you believed it would be.”
It was over! I wasn’t proscribed anymore! No more tears of blood, no more horrible contacts to hide my eyes…no more being banned from the Guardians’ Guild.
My heart felt like it was made out of lead. “Is there a ladies’ room here?”
Terrin blinked in surprise. “Er…yes, just there. Second door on the left.”
“Thanks.” I bolted for the bathroom, intent on ridding myself of the contacts before my tears washed them away.
“Does she always feel the need to run to the restroom to celebrate good news?” I heard Terrin ask Rene.
“Eh. She is a woman, you know?”
I hurried to the mirror in the bathroom, carefully removing one contact. I half braced myself for the sight of a pale gray eye to peer back at me, but the eyeball that watched me so warily was one of a familiar hazel color.
The proscription had really and truly been lifted…but too late. I wasn’t a Guardian anymore.
I grabbed a box of tissues and ran for a stall to cry.
27
“Out of all the billions of people who inhabit this planet, Drake and Aisling have found each other and committed to share their lives together as husband and wife. They have begun their life journey together and have brought us here to celebrate this beautiful moment in that journey.”
I smiled at Drake. He squeezed the fingers of the hand he was holding.
“A good marriage is an entity that is made up of love, understanding, intimacy, and a generosity of spirit that allows you to put aside petty differences and care for each other no matter what the circumstances. Drake and Aisling have vowed to do just that, and have asked us here today to witness those vows.”
The voice of the odd little round man Paula had found willing to fit us into his schedule echoed loudly in the small, out-of-the-way chapel. It had taken her two weeks to arrange this wedding, and me almost as long to convince her to stay in England to attend it. Our numbers were a lot fewer than the first one—my cousins had long since returned home, as had David, whose job at an Oregon university demanded his attendance. Most of the green dragons who had gathered in England had also returned to their homes. But a few had shown up, as well as my friends.
So why, then, was a vague sense of alarm starting to prick my awareness?
“Drake and Aisling, before you I have placed three candles, one each to symbolize your separate selves, and one to symbolize your unity. Please light your separate candles and use them together to light the marriage candle, pledging as you do so to keep your union as bright as the flames of your candles.”
I wasn’t much for the rather dramatic flair the officiating man had, but obediently lit a candle, then used it to light a larger one with a golden heart embossed on it.
Next to me, Paula sniffled happily. “This is so beautiful!” she whispered.
I nodded, and used the opportunity to peek over my shoulder at the audience, wondering if I could pinpoint my sense of unease. Pál was in the front with his arm around Nora (they made such a cute couple). Rene sat next to them with a pretty, petite red-headed woman of indeterminate age whom he had introduced as his wife, Brigitte. István and Suzanne sat on the other front pew, alongside Gabriel and his bodyguards. Gabriel caught me peeking and grinned, his dimples flashing. I winked back, grateful he’d come despite knowing that Kostya would be here.
I was even more grateful that Kostya was on his best behavior. Relations between Drake and him had been strained for ten days, but finally, just before the wedding, the two of them cleared the air with a rip-roaring fight that left Drake with a broken nose, and Kostya with a limp that persisted for forty-eight hours. True, it didn’t end in a political reconciliation, but at least the two brothers were talking to each other again. I had confidence that with time, Drake would be able to make his brother see reason.
Jim stepped on my foot.
I returned my attention to the man as he went on about renewing our faith in each other and allowing the marriage to breathe with the air of love and support. I tried to pay attention to him, but the vague something was starting to take on a more alarming state. I ran down a mental checklist of everything I’d had to do and didn’t see what it was that would be causing this feeling.
“What token do you, Drake, offer Aisling as a sign of your commitment to her?”
Kostya, standing at Drake’s side, handed him a platinum ring. I smiled at the sight of it. Drake had told me that gold on my finger would be too distracting and opted to have our rings made of the less attractive (to dragons, anyway) metal.
“Do you, Drake, take Aisling to be your wife? Do you pledge to honor and respect her, and to live in fidelity and love with her from this day for—”
“Excuse me,” I interrupted, turning to Drake. “Something’s wrong.”
“Aisling!” Paula moaned. “Not again!”
A normal man might point out that what was wrong was a woman interrupting her own long-awaited wedding, but Drake was head and shoulders above normal. Instead of asking silly questions, he simply asked me, “Dangerous?”
“I think so. There’s something here that isn’t right.”
Instantly Pál and István were at his side. “Take Aisling’s family and the mortals out the side entrance,” he told Pál. “István, check the street. Kostya—”
“I’ll have a look around the chapel,” he said, suiting action to word.
The sudden breakup of the dragons had Gabriel hurrying up. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Drake filled him in while I turned to the guests and, with an apologetic smile, said in a loud voice, “I seem to have the worst luck with weddings. I’m very sorry to have to do this, but there seems to be a problem with the chapel, and I’m afraid we’re going to have to evacuate it. Quickly. We’ll regroup outside until we know the problem is fixed.”
“Aisling, this is the limit, this is the very limit,” Paula said, jerking away from where Pál was trying to move her. “You will go back in front of that minister and you will let him marry you, or so help me, I’ll…I’ll…well, I don’t know what I’ll do, but it won’t be pleasant!”
I hated to do it, I really did, but I didn’t have time to reason with her. I swung open the door in my mind and gave her a huge mental push. “Paula, you need to leave the building now. It’s nothing but a gas leak, but it’s dangerous to stay here. You must help the others get out quickly and stay out until we say it’s safe to return.”
“Oh, my!” she gasped, looking somewhat stunned. “A gas leak is dangerous! People! Quickly! We must leave immediately!”
She hurried off to herd people out the door.
“I’m going to end up frying her brain one day if I keep doing that,” I said under my breath.
Jim heard me. “Think anyone would notice?”
I ignored it as Rene caught my eye. “Can I do anything?”
“No. Just get your wife out and make sure no one comes back in.”
He nodded and gave my hand a little squeeze before dashing off to grab his wife and follow the last few people leaving.
“Aisling? What is it?”
Nora’s voice was quiet but calming. I turned around to find her, but with my enhanced vision turned on, I wasn’t so much seeing people as seeing their elemental parts. “I’m not sure. Do you feel something?”
She was silent a moment, then nodded. “It’s very faint, but yes, there is something here that is imbued with evil.”
“Jim?” The demon’s warm head pushed under my hand. “Where is it, Jim?”
“Can’t tell. I wasn’t sure there was anything until you started
wigging out.”
I walked blindly down the center aisle of the chapel, searching in the corners and niches for signs of something that wasn’t right.
“Here!” Gabriel emerged from one of the back rooms and shouted out his findings. “I think it’s a bomb!”
“Get her out of the building,” Drake told his brother, who started toward me at a run, but I knew in a flash that he wasn’t going to make it in time.
Everything seemed to slow down, like time itself had telescoped as I flung myself sideways onto Nora, knocking her down onto a wooden pew. An explosion tore through the building with a vengeance, the scream of metal an almost human sound, followed by a concussive blast as the windows shattered. Shards of glass and wood and bits of stone rained down upon us, but to my relief, when I looked up the bulk of the building was still intact, with only the far end having been blown to smithereens.
Drake shouting my name relieved my paramount worry.
“We’re here,” I yelled, coughing at the dust that resulted from the wall of the nave being destroyed. “Nora, are you all right?”
“I think so. Yes. Dear god, who would bomb a church?”
“Are you hurt?” Drake yelled, pulling a large piece of the baptismal font off of someone.
“No, we’re OK.”
“Stay back there,” he ordered.
I pulled bits of wood and rock off Nora, helping her to sit up. Her hair was white with dust, her glasses broken and hanging askew.
“I have a pretty good idea that we have some dragons to thank for that. Jim?”
“Right here.”
“You OK?”
“No. I don’t seem to be able to feel my back legs. And it’s…it’s kinda hard to breathe.”
I crawled out of the shelter of the pews to find Jim lying in the aisle, one of the wooden benches that lined the nave broken on top of it.
“Oh, no,” I cried, half crawling over to where it lay. “Don’t move. We’ll get a vet. Oh, dear god, there’s so much blood! Drake! Jim’s hurt!”
With an effort, Jim lifted its head and turned its eyes toward me, fear stark in their depths. “Ash, I don’t feel so good. You think I broke my form?”
“I don’t know,” I told it, cradling its head and brushing grit from its face. “But if you did, we’ll get you another one just as nice.”
“I don’t think there is another one this nice. I’d like to save it if I could.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do. Nora, can you see my bag anywhere? We need to call the vet’s office and let them know we’ll be bringing Jim in.”
Nora picked her way across the debris to me, blood seeping from a couple of cuts on her arms. She started to search the area, froze, then spun around and faced where the nave used to be. The twisted metal and wood and stone were now reduced to nothing more than a gaping hole that spread from the floor up part of a back wall. Tipene and Gabriel were carrying Maata, smeared with blood and dust, to the nearest pew. Drake shouted orders to Kostya and István, the dragons calling back and forth as they investigated the ruined part of the chapel.
“Ash?” Jim’s breathing was raspy and labored. “Don’t tell anyone, but I think I’m a little bit scared. You’re not going to leave me, are you?”
“No, I won’t leave you,” I told it, my tears making little wet marks on its filthy coat. “You don’t have to be scared. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
“Aisling, we have a problem,” Nora said quietly, still staring toward the nave.
Jim hiccuped a couple of times, its eyes rolling back in its head.
Anguish overwhelmed me as I watched him fight. I knew in my head that it was a demon, not a dog, but my heart told me that my friend was dying before my eyes.
“Noooo!” I wailed, as its body twitched, then went limp. “Goddamn it Jim, I order you to not die!”
“Aisling, you must come with me.”
Nora’s voice pierced my sobbing as I clutched Jim’s head, bawling into its neck.
“Jim’s dead,” I managed to get out, my body racked with grief so profound, I thought it would consume me.
“Aisling!” A sharp stinging blow to my face brought me out of the grief for a moment. I stared at Nora in stark disbelief. “Jim isn’t dead. It can’t die. You can summon it again once it picks a new form. Aisling, think! Jim is a demon! They cannot die! Its body is broken, that’s all.”
I looked down at the furry black form and saw the truth of what she was saying. The body wasn’t all of Jim…it was the outer shell, nothing more.
“We must go. Drake! Do not go in there! Something terrible has happened,” Nora urged.
“Jim is going to be so pissed,” I said slowly, allowing Nora to pull me to my feet. As I spoke the words, rage filled me, rage at whoever would do something so heinous as to arrange for a bomb to go off where innocent people and demons could be harmed.
Fire broke out around me.
“Come,” Nora said, taking my hand and urging me down the aisle toward the gaping hole. “We are needed.”
Her words penetrated the dense fog of my fury. I stumbled down the aisle after her, mentally squelching the fires I had inadvertently lit. “Needed? How?”
“Can’t you feel it?” she asked, skirting where Gabriel was working over Maata.
“Is she going to be OK?” I asked him, cringing at the sight of Maata’s injuries.
“Yes. Dragons are strong,” he said, giving me a weak smile. “Maata is the strongest of us all.”
I nodded and followed after Nora as she skirted a pile of debris and stepped over what remained of a mostly destroyed wall.
“What are you doing here?” Drake asked, crouched at the hole in the floor. He was clearly planning on jumping down into it. “I told you to stay back where it was safe.”
“In about thirty seconds, this church is going to be filled with imps, demons, and who knows what else,” Nora said, taking off her stained suit jacket.
His eyes widened as his gaze moved to me.
“Jim was crushed by one of the benches,” I told him, tears still sticky on my cheeks.
“You will get it back,” he said, before turning to Nora. “A portal has opened?”
“Yes. A very old one, by the feel of it. I will need Aisling to help me seal it.”
“It’s too dangerous. Kostya is down there now. He says there is an old crypt below the chapel.”
“I can’t do this alone,” Nora said, rummaging in her bag. She pulled out a small pink flashlight that she tucked into her shirt pocket before squatting on the edge of the hole.
“But…oh, god, Nora, there wasn’t time to tell you. I can’t help you,” I wailed, my heart breaking even more. “I wish to god I could, but I can’t!”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I know you’ve not sealed a portal on your own before, but—”
“No, it’s not that!” I looked at Drake, his lovely eyes blurred as my own filled with tears again. “I would help you if I could, but I’m not a Guardian anymore!”
“You’re what?” she asked, shaking her head abruptly. “We do not have time for this. There are only a few minutes before the seal on that portal is breached, and then all hell will break loose. Literally!”
“I disavowed being a Guardian!” I yelled, clutching her arm and shaking it so she’d understand. “That was the sacrifice that Bael demanded. Don’t you see? I’m not a Guardian anymore! I can’t help you!”
“Don’t be ridiculous! No one can make you stop being a Guardian. It’s something you’re born to do! Vows have nothing to do with it.”
I thought my head would explode with astonishment. “They…can’t? Then why would Bael—”
“He’s a demon lord,” she snapped, swinging her legs over the edge.
Drake jumped down into the hole. It was about twelve feet deep, but he called up for her to ease herself down to his grasp.
“But…”
“If you aren’t a Guardian, how did you know the bomb was here? You
sensed it long before I did, Aisling. You were born a Guardian, and you’ll be a Guardian to the end of your days. Now please, I do not have the abilities you have. You must help me!”
The truth washed over me in a cold wave, leaving me scrambling after her. Drake stood on a stone tomb, grabbing my legs as I slid myself down into the hole.
“I do not like this,” he said, helping me down off the tomb and onto a debris-covered floor.
“I have a torch,” Nora said. “This way, Aisling!”
I touched a small cut on his cheek. “I know. But I can’t leave Nora alone. I am a Guardian, after all.”
His fingers squeezed mine in acknowledgement as we followed the bobbing light. Kostya emerged from a side passage, taking up the rear.
“This is not a good situation,” he said.
“We will do the best we can,” Drake answered.
A feeling of dread seemed to leach off the walls and into my pores as we passed tomb after tomb, many of them partially broken, bones scattered across the floor. A faint glow of light pierced the darkness ahead, the weak circle from Nora’s flashlight jerking before it came to an abrupt stop.
“Oh, dear,” I heard her say.
Drake’s fingers tightened as he pulled me behind him. Kostya pushed his way past us both, his silhouette blocking most of the soft yellow light that seemed to pour out of a small doorway cut into the stone.
“Chuan Ren,” Kostya said, moving aside when Drake gave him a shove.
The name hung on the air for a moment. All my anger, all my frustration, all my sorrow and rage came back to me at the sight of the woman standing across a small room lit with portable camp lights.
She was behind this. She had killed Jim’s form. She had blown up a chapel full of innocent people in her attempt to destroy us. And she would not stop until she succeeded.
In the middle of the floor lay a circle created from dusty beige stone, its carvings so obliterated with time that they were almost impossible to make out, but I knew that what I was looking at was a sealed portal. But the seal on this one had been cracked, a piece of a stone lid from one of the tombs lying across it, no doubt knocked there by the force of the explosion above. A greenish black light glowed outward through the cracks, gaining strength with every passing second.