Ivory Guard (27 page)
Authors: Natalie Herzer
THE END
Love
“Love doesn’t make you fall.
It gives you wings on good days, so you still feel their comfortable weight at your back as you grit your teeth and fight through the bad ones
. Love – I mean real, everyday love – is a choice. Love is you choosing someone, despite it all, every day, every year.”
-
Lillian
Hi guys,
Thank you for reading
Ivory Guard
. I hope you enjoyed the story. The Ivory Guard and especially Becca will soon be back for more, since Satan isn’t all that excited about a do-gooder witch on the loose. Until then I propose a peace-offering. A few clicks/pages ahead you’ll find the first chapter of
Facing Shadows
, my upcoming novel and book 3 in my urban-fantasy series
The Patroness
.
As always, you can help me and other readers an awful lot by leaving a review on
Amazon
or
Goodreads
.
Thanks for your time.
Happy reading,
Natalie
Book 1 in the Patroness Series from
NATALIE HERZER
*
Maiwenn Cadic doesn’t have a quiet and normal life. Being the Patroness of Paris is a full time job but unfortunately it doesn’t pay the bills and so Maiwenn tries her best to make a living as a down-on-her luck private eye for odd cases.
When five shapeshifters end up dead she needs the help of The Council’s assassin Kylian ‘The Killer’ Tremaine – a typical shapeshifter who doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer and seems to see everything female as a damsel in distress - which Maiwenn is really not.
Together they will not only have to trust each other and overcome obstacles in the form of a trigger-happy bounty hunter and a hungry rogue in order to solve the murder before more bodies pile up…
Book 2 in the Patroness Series from
NATALIE HERZER
*
The Turn is a few weeks ahead and the world seems to be literally coming apart at the seams - natural disasters and weird phenomena keep everyone on edge.
An unusually high number of missing persons is thought to be just another side effect but is making Maiwenn nervous.
When all fingers point to the Queen of the Undead, Maiwenn is once again forced to join forces with Kylian, new leader of the Paris shapeshifter pack.
Sharp-tongued and sharp-fanged conflicts follow....
ONE
Paris, France
December 2012
Below me Paris was a sea of colorful jewels shimmering with moonlight and pulsing with life, even more so these days when there was the scent of fear and throb of anticipation mixing in the air. I stood on the rooftop of the Notre Dame cathedral and frowned, trying to remember how I had gotten here. And when the hell had night settled?
Stone crunched behind me and I whirled around to face two familiar gargoyles. Little
yodas, though gray and winged. Even though alive and breathing they were still creatures of stone, their movements reminding me of fluid cement. Every time I saw them our meetings ended… weird, not exactly bad for me, but nothing really good came out of it either.
Their childlike and yet somehow mean voices drifted to me in their sing-song way of speaking in riddles with end rhymes. And as if that wasn’t confusing enough, one gargoyle was always finishing the sentence of the other.
“The time has come
and
there remains only but one.
The Turn will open up the gates.
Their guardians will seal the races’ fate.
Remember, the agreed oath was made.
Fail and with your life it will be paid.”
Before I could react everything around me faded to gray and like a strong
wind another, familiar voice called me. “Maiwenn?”
It pulled me away.
“Maiwenn!”
I woke with a start. Though, actually I hadn’t been sleeping to begin with. What the hell? Frowning in confusion and feeling a little disoriented I looked around me. I was back in the kitchen of the Paris shapeshifter pack living in the
Bois des Vincennes
, a little forest on the outskirts of the city. Daylight flooded through windows behind which snow was softly falling and starting to cover the ground in a fluffy, light blanket.
“Did you fall asleep?” Pauline asked me, a puzzled smile on her face.
No. “Guess so.”
But what
had
I been doing? Daydreaming? Or having a vision? Whatever it had been I was sure it was a reminder sent by the gargoyles. As if to confirm it, the breeze whispered words the gargoyles had said to me half a year ago. Only for me to hear.
“Not only protection but also guidance he’ll need,
so if you accept, the vow with blood you have to feed!”
I had accepted the bargain and given my blood in exchange for information on a serial killer. Looking down, I traced the inside of my wrist. No markings showed. But as soon as the Turn hit that would change and I would finally know who it was the gargoyles had wanted me to protect with my life.
Any minute now.
“You got the root?” Pauline asked, pulling me out of my head once again.
Concentrating on the matter at hand I went over to the gas stove to stand beside the faerie, who was stirring a potion in a brass pan, and added more of the valerian root I had been preparing before my… well, whatever that had been with the gargoyles.
Pauline was a German faerie with delicate, lavender wings, my roommate and best
friend and was helping me make a special tea that would help the younger shapeshifters in Paris’ pack to better deal with the nervous energy floating all around us due to the imminent Turn. That was the second batch we were brewing. They had some trouble reining in their beasts with all the excitement, and a shifter going mad and rogue was the last thing we needed right now.
Grabbing a jar from the kitchen table and popping the lid, I sprinkled some more St John’s
wort into the brew. Then Pauline stopped stirring so I could blow on the liquid, which instantly erupted in a teal flame as if I’d flambéed it. In a magical sense I kind of had.
Just as the flames were dying Viviane came in with a gush of cold air that was probably responsible for her rose colored cheeks.
“Is the tea ready? They kind of need it.” She leaned against the counter, fanning herself. “And I could use it, too. God, those shifters…They don’t hurt the eyes but certainly my heart.”
“A heart that belongs to another,” I reminded her.
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’ve gone blind.”
A smile on my lips I looked out the window to the clearing that was the shifter’s backyard and where now more than a hundred half naked shapeshifters stood, prepared to change forms as soon as the magic hit.
Most of the males were clad only in sweatpants, leaving their strong chests and feet bare, and their eyes glinted with the fierce beast inside of them. Yep, quite a yummy sight to behold.
“Well, that’s what you get when you’re so adamant on wanting to live through the Turn here instead of at home, on our rooftop.”
“We talked about this Maiwenn.”
Talked about it, my ass.
First my tutor and roommate had betrayed me by agreeing with Kylian, the leader of the shifter pack, that it was safer to be in the Bois de Vincennes for the Turn behind my back, and then they had ganged up on me and told me to move my behind into Kylian’s woods. Pauline kept on and on about wanting to be together with her boyfriend Ben when the magic hit, so I would have gone just to make her stop. However, they lost no time and pulled out the big guns anyway: Mathieu. My little brother by heart was part human, part shapeshifter and part something else entirely – and we had no clue as to what – so the Turn was especially scary for him. Of course, I wanted to be there for him and I would have gone to Kylian’s Furry Village without any convincing needed just to be near Mathieu, but by that point it had been kinda funny to watch them all talking their heads off and so I had taken my sweet time with agreeing.
I nodded my head seriously, but there was a twinkle of mischief in my smiling eyes that Viviane easily caught on, “Yeah, sure we
talked
about it.”
“You aren’t still mad about that, are you?”
Smiling reassuringly at her I shook my head. “No.”
However, I knew the main reason they wanted me to be in these woods, surrounded by my strongest ally who had over hundreds of shifters behind his back and would fight beside me no matter what.
My aunt. The woman who wanted me dead.
Morgan le Fay was a Celtic goddess that had made my mother’s and especially my father’s life a hell with her poisonous jealousy and greed for more. Her machinations had ended with her son killing my father and therefore forcing my mother to escape her home, pregnant. No one had known about the child she carried and that probably had saved her life. After a rather unpleasant encounter with my cousin Mordred, Morgan’s son who had recognized me, I had expected nothing less than the bastard running straight to mummy. I hadn’t reckoned with her impatience, expecting her to wait for the Turn to attack me directly. But she had sent the Wild Hunt into my city instead. She had even added a little surprise by forcing my father’s dead soul to lead the Wild Hunt. Yeah, I had to admit that had been a nice, wicked twist, which had lead me to killing myself rather than letting anybody else get hurt.
Someone had saved me though, someone besides my father and Kylian had been there and had decided my time wasn’t up yet. It gave me the creeps, since it meant that that someone was at least one step above the crazy bitch goddess who wanted me dead and in consequence very, very powerful. No one seemed to know who the guy had been or where he had disappeared to, and I didn’t like that one bit. He might have saved my life, but for all I knew and with my non-existing luck he might have done it only so he could take it himself.
But even though I knew nothing about the new player in the game, Morgan stayed my most immediate concern. She had taken me by surprise, or rather her impatience had, and I wouldn’t let her have the advantage over me again. If Morgan had waited until the Turn, until her powers were back full force, she could have succeeded with her plan. But I guess Viviane, the Lady of the Lake was right by saying that Morgan’s arrogance and impatience would be her downfall. I knew my aunt would come for me again. I knew she might even use the panic and confusion that was sure to rise after the Turn to get to me. However, there was one thing everybody seemed to forget. Morgan wouldn’t be the only one who would get her full powers back once the curtain dropped, I would too. And I was sure the blood of my godly father running through my veins would come in handy.
Viviane’s lovely but hoarse voice pulled me back out of my thoughts. “Besides, I’m fairly certain the sight would have been equally heart-stopping once the magic hits, but in a less pleasurable way.”
Pauline snorted. “Humans might know about us now, might know what’s out there, but that’s only in theory. So… looking at humans panicking due to theory turning into first-hand experience or at a bunch of handsome, half-naked shifters? Hmmm, let me think.”
“Well, if you put it that way…,” I grinned.
The Council, an institution established to govern the magical community, had come out of hiding only a few mon
ths ago and had tried its best to prepare the human population and their governments for what was to come ever since.
The reversal of Earth’s magnetic field was referred to as The Turn, and would result in the opening of the gates between realms – and it would hit any minute now. Basically it meant that magic would flood our world once again turning it upside down. This global shift happened rather regularly – roughly every thirteen hundred years or so – but sometimes also very unexpectedly. So it came as no surprise that magical creatures like faeries, vampires and shapeshifters lived right next door to ignorant humans; some had stayed out of free will, others had been left without a choice. Those creatures, of course, didn’t stay celibate all those centuries and mingled with the humans instead, passing on magic through the blood. Even if it
was just a drop, in your grandma or son or the nerd next door, it was enough. Therefore not knowing who would change into what magical creature as soon as the magic hit was our biggest problem – and not knowing how the people would handle it.
The human governments tried their best, which of course meant an increasing number of
heavy armed police and army patrols roaming the streets. Personally, I thought having those wannabe Rambos turn into panicked stuff of legends was bad enough as it is. But add them holding machine guns in their hands and the picture really wasn’t pretty and reassuring in the least. Nevertheless, I really hoped the Council, humans and basically everyone out there could keep down the panic and therefore the number of deaths today.
Philippe floated into the house. And when I say floated I kind of meant that literally. Philippe was Mathieu’s best friend and a ghost, a life-sized ‘love and peace’ cliché from the sixties. “They are getting a little restless outside. Kylian wanted me to get a heads-up on the potion making.”
I looked at him. “Tell him we’re nearly done.”
He was paler than usual and it troubled me. When I had asked him about it, he had tried to calm me down by telling me it was the magic. Two weeks ago magic had started to leak through the gates between realms, quickly turning into a constant trickle that was gaining strength now like a river after snowmelt. Only a drop of it had felt like a freight train slamming into me. Since there was no reason why Philippe would be lying, I wasn’t sure why my gut told me something was off – and that didn’t calm me at all. My gut was good, I trusted it. So I couldn’t help but be worried.
“I really want to get it over with. This waiting around is killing me,” Pauline remarked and I couldn’t help but agree with her.
Though we were magical creatures and could wield power, some more and others less, we weren’t used to magic surrounding us like that and so it was a strange and yet familiar, hot buzz in our blood. My body was vibrating with it, ready to explode and coiled tight with tension that was almost painful by now and I knew the others didn’t fare any better.
“No one likes it, even Mother Earth doesn’t,” Viviane remarked.
I only grunted in agreement. Yeah, the climate hadn’t been exactly kind with us the last month. Everything was amplified, from heat to cold, flood to draught, and all kinds of natural disasters – storms, earthquakes, tsunami, you name it – announced the coming change.
I started pouring a small sip of the strong potion into several thermos flasks standing at the ready on the table, while Pauline watered it down, filling them up with regular tea. “Hopefully this will help us all settle down a bit.”
Viviane took the first tray to carry it outside. The moment I opened my mouth to argue, she flipped me off in her own way – by chastising me. “Wanna make me feel like an old grandma who can’t even carry a goddamn tray? Girl, not long ago I could wipe the floor with your ass, don’t you forget that! And wait till I have my magic back and I might just show you that I still can.”
Guessed that fell under no good deed goes unpunished and all that. “
Oui, Madame
.”
Pauline snickered.
Then the earth trembled and groaned, such a deep, hurting sound, as if it was a living thing. The house shook and everything that was inside. Through the window I could see the wind kick up, the force of it whipping at the trees, bending them. Branches that didn’t stand a chance became lethal missiles.