Earth Warden (8 page)

His teeth flashed white in a grin at her surprised look. “What, you think I’d get caught anywhere without an escape route?”

He tsked as he pulled his jacket on, covering most of the weapons, then bent down and scooped her bag up to throw it toward her. It landed on the bed and bounced slightly. “Come on, we’re leaving. Now.”

“You always this bossy?” she complained as she shoved her feet into her shoes. As much as she was arguing, she wasn’t slow to follow him as he headed for the small bathroom. There was no way she wanted to be left on her own in here when those Wardens got in.

She scuttled through the doorway to find Hawk opening the window. The impossibly small window.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.” Why had she not noticed last night how small it was? There was no way she’d fit through it, never mind Hawk. He was easily twice her size.

He caught her look and grinned again. Lyssa blew out a breath of frustration. Damn the man, he actually seemed to be enjoying himself here. “There’s a technique to it. Watch.”

There was indeed a technique to it, but if asked later she wouldn't have been able to say what. First off, all her attention was hijacked by the sight of Hawk's firm, toned butt waving in the air in front of her, and then she was too busy being pushed and pulled about as he literally pulled her through the window to join him on the metal fire escape outside.

“Come on, we don't have much time before they realize,” he said, his voice the merest whisper in her ear. “And I want to be long gone before they do.”

She nodded and followed him down the steps, trying to be as quiet as she could. But whereas Hawk's footsteps were nearly silent—the man himself little more than a dark shadow moving in front of her—hers sounded as if a herd of tap-dancing elephants were clattering down the steps.

In front of her, Hawk paused and sighed, the curve of his jaw visible as he looked over his shoulder. “Can you
be
any louder?” he asked, exasperation clear in his voice.

“It's not my fault,” Lyssa whispered back, feeling herself go hot with embarrassment. So she wasn't the most graceful of women, on top of everything else she didn't need that pointing out as well. “These steps are noisy.”

“Sure, the steps. Right.”

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, you know?”

“So people keep telling me,” he replied, his teeth flashing in an unrepentant grin. “Still doesn’t explain how you can be half the size of me and make twi—”

“Here! Over here, they’re on the fire escape!”

A shout sounded behind them as they reached the bottom of the steps. She gasped, her breath catching as fear raced through her again.

“Move. Now.” Hawk grabbed the back of her jacket and hauled her along at a dead run beside him. It was all Lyssa could do to keep her feet under her as he dodged and weaved between the cars in the parking lot, heading for the industrial buildings on the other side as fireballs exploded around them.

They ducked down the side of an all-terrain vehicle to dodge one, only to have another hit the truck head on. She screamed and ducked as it exploded, glass flying everywhere. They weren’t going to get out of this. There were too many Wardens and, fast as Hawk might be, there was no way they could dodge everything. Sooner or later someone would get lucky, and they’d be a double order of crispy duck.

“You have to leave me,” she told him, yelling over the sound of another explosion as they scuttled between the cars, bending low to stay out of the line of fire. “They only want me. You can get out of here.”

Hawk turned, fury in his eyes as he grabbed her and pulled her close. “Listen to me. I am
not
going to leave you. No one dies on my watch, understand?” He glared at her until she nodded, her heart in her throat and eyes wide.

“Good.” He relented a little, releasing his hold and smoothed down the bunched fabric at the neck of her jacket.

“We just need to get into that estate there. If I can get them to come at me one on one, in a bottleneck, there’s no way they can take us.” He nodded toward the nearest alley. Between two factory buildings it was covered over and, from the butts decorating the ground, used by the workforce smokers. “On three, make for that, I’ll be right behind you. Okay?”

Lyssa nodded her head, locking her fear away. She could do this, she
had
to do this. There was no other option. She had to trust they would get out of this, had to trust Hawk would get them out.

Flicking a glance sideways, she studied the man crouched at her side. He wore a determined frown, his sharp eyes noting the positions of the Wardens around them. She didn’t bother; she already knew they would be arranged. Like all magic, there was a pattern to these things, and they would set themselves up in the best configuration to channel the witching through the ley-lines.

And there seemed to be a lot of those about here. She frowned and held her hand over the ground, palm down, as she concentrated. She was a null, yes, but she’d always been sensitive to magic. She knew where to set a circle for the best draw on the witching, or for maximum protection, she just couldn’t power the damn things.

She yelped as the power rose, sharp and immediate to bite at her fingers like an over-eager terrier. “Bloody hell!”

“What? What’s the matter? Are you hurt?” Instantly Hawk was by her side, his face anxious as he checked her over.

A chuckle startled out of her as she slapped his hands away. “
Gettoffme
I’m fine you big lummox. Just got a belt from a ley-line. They’re strong around here, never felt one that powerful before.”

She frowned, shaking the last of the sting out of her fingers. She looked up and smiled. It was a reassuring smile, or tried to be. They were both rumpled, stressed, and running for their lives. So why did the look of worry in his eyes strike her to the core?

“I’m fine, so come on. We need to move before they manage to barbeque us properly.”

Hawk smiled. Not an expression she’d seen before. At least, not this one where his eyes were warm with something she didn’t want to name, and the tiny creases in the corners of his eyes crinkled. He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “So we should...three.”

He launched himself into movement, hauling her to her feet and shoving her ahead of him. She squeaked once but then saved her breath for running, hearing Hawk pounding concrete behind her as she raced for the alleyway. Fire erupted around them as the Wardens shouted their battle cries and did their level best to make sure neither Lyssa nor the Warrior behind her made it to their objective alive.

“Keep going,” Hawk yelled as she thundered into the alleyway and started to slow. “Far as you can.”

There was the sound of steel being drawn behind her, and she risked a glance over her shoulder. Hawk stood in the center of the alleyway, blades in both his hands as he prepared to take on the Wardens who followed them. From the grim look on his face, she almost felt sorry for them. Almost. Her lungs burned as she burst out the end of the alley and into a small courtyard between the buildings.

She wasn’t alone.

Her eyes widened as she skidded to a halt in front of another group of Wardens. But these weren’t Wardens in training. No, these Wardens were something far more powerful and dangerous. These wore the plain clothes of the Haven-master’s personal guard and, in the middle of them stood the Master himself.

“Hello, Lyssa. A merry little dance you’ve led us, haven’t you?”

Chapter Nine

“Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me.”

Lyssa's voice was full of disbelief as she looked about the semi-circle facing her. Forget the group behind her that Hawk was valiantly fending off—or making mincemeat of if the sounds coming from the alley were any indication—the real danger was right here in front of her.

Her gaze flicked along the line of silent, grey-shrouded figures. Again, she had a name to go with every face. But these weren't kids. These weren't Second Sigil wardens with their eyes on the elaborate triple swirl of mastery. These were full-on battle-Wardens. Masters in their own right but in service to the Haven-master—the guy who led the whole magical shooting match in this area.

The fear trickling down her spine slowed to an icy crawl. She couldn't out-run them—there was nowhere left to run. She couldn't fight them—the null against the Masters? A snort escaped her. She was mad to even consider it as an option.

And even Hawk's weaponry would be useless against them, she realized as the warrior emerged from the alleyway at a run, skidding to a halt exactly as she had done.

“You've gotta...”

“...be kidding me.” She finished the sentence for him, unable to help the small smile pulling at the corners of her lips. “Yeah, we did that part already.”

Hawk wasn't even half as amused as she was though, his face grim as he stepped in front of her and raised the blades in his hands.

“Can't you lot take a fucking hint and back off?” he snarled. “I'll take on all of you if I have to, and carve you up into chunks even your mothers wouldn't recognize.”

“Ahh, the valiant Warrior and the last piece in the puzzle,” the figure in red drawled. His voice was smug and condescending, the tone making Lyssa's flesh want to crawl off her bones and go hide somewhere safe.

Pulling the deep hood back from his face, he smiled at them. If anything, that made things worse. A kindly looking man, he could have been anyone's uncle, father, or even grandfather—if not for that smile.

A smile that was all wrong. It didn't reach his eyes, or at the least, it wasn't amusement or kindness that lit them. It was something darker and more dangerous. Something oily and unpalatable, evil even, which made her feel as if she needed a month-long shower just from him looking at her.

“Good to know I'm not losing my touch. You can put those toys down, young man. I assure you, crude blades will have no effect on us.”

Hawk snarled. Within a heartbeat, he had a throwing knife in his hand, the movement so quick it made Lyssa blink. “We'll see about that.”

The knife shot through the air, right on target to hit the red-robed master. Lyssa caught her breath, hardly daring to believe what Hawk had done, and hardly daring to hope it would work. It couldn't be that easy, surely?

It wasn't. With a small hand gesture reminiscent of a Jedi Knight, the Haven-master deflected the dagger, and it clattered noisily to the ground a few feet away.

“Brave, but stupid, as Warriors have always tended to be. Luckily your numbers are easily controlled by selective breeding. A dying race now, thankfully. There are much easier ways to deal with the darkness than merely hacking at it with metal sticks.” His lips curled into a sneer.

As far back as she could remember, he’d preached about the dangers of the Warriors, refusing to allow them into the Haven even though the old pacts granted them the right of sanctuary...and that of Hospitality, a ritual where Haven women would seek out visiting Warriors, hoping to conceive a child with greater magic running through their veins.

Hawk didn’t bat an eyelid. Another blade appeared in his hand from the multitude about his person. This one, though, hummed with power, the wards across it blazing in the early morning light.

Lyssa frowned and looked at him with new eyes. She’d watched him take the things off, then kit up again this morning, and she hadn’t noticed the magic about them before. And she should have. The weaponry he carried was packing a hell of a magical punch, the wards blazing like fairground illuminations if she looked in the right place.

“Perhaps you guys could clear something up for me?” Hawk asked in a calm voice—as though they weren’t staring down their deaths in the half-dozen, grey-shrouded forms.

“Of course. A dying man should always be granted a last request.” The Haven-master’s voice was magnanimous, and why shouldn’t it be? He’d won after all. Hawk and Lyssa were trapped with no place to go, the remnants of the Second Sigil group crowding into the courtyard behind them and cutting off any escape.

Lyssa flicked them a fear-filled glance but they didn’t move. In fact, they didn’t even look at her but stared straight ahead with blank expressions. The frown between her brows deepened. What the hell was going on here? It was almost as though they were zombies, incapable of independent thought.

“You want to tell me why you’re trying to kill a female Earth Warden? You see, in my experience, Havens normally want that sort of magical firepower around.”

Silence filled the courtyard for a second. Hawk’s expression was expectant as he looked at the figure in red with an eyebrow half raised in question.

Lyssa turned to him, confusion running through her body. Earth Wardens were usually...female.

“E-earth Warden? Me?” Her tone was incredulous as she looked between the two, forgetting for a moment the danger they were in.

“I wondered how long it would be before you worked that one out. Yes, my child, you’re an Earth Warden, just like Daddy Dearest. Which is why I had to kill you both. Only
you
wouldn’t fucking die,” the master snarled, his genial face contorting with anger and allowing them a glimpse of the monster inside. “We had it all set up, had you and your parents surrounded, but your father did something I didn’t expect. He used his and your mother’s death to shield you, a ward so powerful I haven’t been able to break it. Until now.”

He grinned and motioned around them at the assembled figures. “Months of work to corrupt them—controlling wards, binding wards—so that when the planets were aligned just right and your father’s ward began to weaken, I’d be ready. Ready to send you to join your
darling
parents in the afterlife.”

Lyssa stared at the master, her mouth agape. Her...an Earth Warden? She shook her head. “But I’m a null...always have been.”

“No, we told you that because we couldn’t break the ward your father put on you. And it was easier to have you think you were a null because, frankly, I didn’t want you coming into power without supervision.”

Lyssa raised an eyebrow, but Hawk beat her to the question. “So what would have happened if she had broken the ward and come into power?”