Stone Guardian (24 page)

“I agree. I’ll talk to my superiors and see if I can bring my people into it.” He took a strand of her hair, curling it around his finger and pulling slightly, like he did when she was little. “We’ll figure this out. I’ll pick you up tonight and we’ll see what this Fallon has to say.”

“You’ll pick up me and Terak.”

“Terak? That’s the guy’s name?” Michael’s mouth thinned and turned down. “You sure you still want him if I’m with you?”

I can’t do this without Terak.
The response almost leapt from her throat before she tamped it down. Probably best not to go into that minefield with her brother. It was an area she wasn’t sure how to handle yet, so discussion with siblings – all of whom had less than enthusiastic responses to any male who had ever gotten close to her – was strictly a no-go. “It would feel weird if I didn’t bring him with me, like a betrayal. He’s been through every step with me.”

“When I meet this guy, I’m going to shake his hand and thank him for taking care of you.”

“Aww, Michael, that’s so sweet-”

“And then I’m beating the crap out of him for being naked in your apartment.”

Men were stupid. It was all she could come up with most days. Change of subject. “What time are you going to pick us up?”

“Seven.”

“We’ll be ready.”

He leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “Love you, baby sister. No matter what else, you have to remember that.”

“I always know that.”

When Michael was gone she went to the balcony and did her patented wave and dance, which had always worked in the past to get Terak’s attention.

No Terak. Not then and not for the next several minutes.

The image of that little silver ball popped up. Yes, thank gods Terak had the foresight to get it. Going into the bedroom and opening the top drawer of her nightstand, the silver ball was where she left it, safely stored in a velvet bag in the corner.

Alright, hold it tight and start speaking in your head.
Terak. Terak, I need you. Can you hear me? Fallon wants to meet with us tonight, and I need you here
.

Thirty minutes later she had a pounding headache and not heard a word from her erstwhile gargoyle.

The next two hours were spent between going to the balcony and trying to use the silver ball, but Terak never arrived at her side.

This couldn’t be about the kiss, could it?

Did he hate himself?

Did he hate her?

Maybe he felt guilt. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t in love with his fiancé. The fact was he was engaged to marry one woman while he kissed another. She wouldn’t like him if he was the type of male who thought so little of his promises and responsibilities.

Whatever the reason, he wasn’t here, and Michael was arriving in five minutes for their meeting with the Guild.

This meeting had to happen. Working with the Guild was her best bet of finding out the information needed. She wasn’t going to let necromancers use her to destroy this world, and she needed to protect her kids and anyone else close to her the necromancers might use to get to her.

Terak would hate that she left without him, but there was no choice.

It was time for her to step up.

Michael arrived at seven sharp. A smile plastered on her face and her hands stuffed into the pockets of her slacks to hide the shaking, she said with all the false confidence she could muster, “Let’s go meet with the Guild.”

Michael drove to the town hall, parking in the back. There were no other cars around, and all the lights had somehow stopped functioning, making the parking lot pitch black. Nice touch.

“This way,” Michael said, guiding her toward the emergency exit. No alarms went off as they opened the door. He led her to the elevators, going to the fourth floor where all meeting rooms were placed. Three doors down he opened a door to a meeting room without any windows.

Fallon and Laire were waiting, tonight’s outfit of choice for the mage a lime-green catsuit. Maybe she was colorblind. Or someone who really hated her bought all her outfits.

Fallon nodded at them. “Thank you for coming. Did your bodyguard decide to take the night off?”

Larissa might want a truce with the Guild, but that didn’t mean she was going to become best buds and tell them everything. “Terak has other duties, as you well know. Besides, considering how
tense
conversations can become, I thought it might be best to leave him out of it.”

Fallon nodded at the explanation. “I hear you. That’s fine by me. In fact, it makes my life lots easier.”

Warning bells went off at Fallon’s words and the smug way she held herself.
This was a mistake.
She shouldn’t have come here without Terak. “Tell me what you wanted to, and then I need to go.”

“Sorry, not going to happen.”

“What the-” Michael’s voice cut-off and Larissa turned. The shadow man from that first night was emerging from the wall, at least his torso was, the rest of his body still hidden behind the wall. He wrapped his arms around Michael and pulled, taking Michael…

…through the wall.

“Michael!”

She ran to the wall and beat on it, but it was as solid as it should be. “Michael!”

“He’s safe, I promise,” and Fallon was there in front of her. Larissa shrank back, but that solid wall was behind her, not allowing any more movement. “Sorry, Teach. You need to come with us now. The time of pussy-footing around you is over.”

Laire’s voice popped up. “Is that what pussy-footing means? Why was I thinking it was something sexual?”

“Just read from the scroll.” Fallon sounded like an annoyed teacher during last period instead of someone in the midst of kidnapping.

Laire huffed, but brought out a parchment sheet. Larissa recognized it from pictures in her lecture books. A magic scroll, which gave a magic user the ability to cast spells they normally couldn’t. There were several conditions to be able to use one, not the least of which was the magic user had to be a powerful caster – the book said only ten percent of casters were powerful enough to make any use of scrolls.

“What are you going to do to me?” Larissa hated that she couldn’t keep the tremor entirely out of her voice.

“You are going unconscious. This is the easiest way,” and even as Fallon explained, Laire’s voice was chanting in some strange language, a mixture of smooth vowels and guttural consonants.

Laire finished.

Nothing happened.

“Laire,” and Fallon’s annoyed voice was now ratcheted up several notches.

Laire was looking at the scroll with confusion plain on the heavily made-up face. “I have never had a scroll not work before. It’s a beginner spell – there should be no way they could mess it up.”

Larissa made a break for it, running past the women, but as she stepped out the door someone picked her up, giving her body a hard squeeze. Even as she struggled a blindfold was placed over her eyes and ropes wrapped around her body.

“Hard way it is.”

It was an interrogation room – big and white, with a long table and two chairs in the middle, a couple spare bulbs hanging overhead, and one wall consisting of what was undoubtedly a two-way mirror.

Larissa sat on one of those chairs, looking toward the mirror. She wasn’t going to throw anything, not until she had a living, breathing target. Those mirrors were notoriously hard to break.

In moments Fallon and Laire walked into the room. Well, more accurate was Fallon had a warrior’s glide, her balance on the balls of her feet in preparation for an attack at any time. Laire was wearing six-inch stilettos and was doing a fast shuffle to keep up.

They made it to about the middle of the room. Fallon never so much as glanced at the mirror as she turned to lean her back against it, her gaze on Larissa. Laire was the opposite, leaning close to fix her make-up and put a very shiny gloss on her lips.

“My brother?” she asked. That’s right. Keep it cool. She could do that.

“He’s perfectly fine,” Fallon answered. “He’s back at his home right now without so much as a hair out of place, though
very
pissed over what happened. He’s calling his commanding officers even now.”

Several moments of silence followed. “
Why?
” So much for playing it cool. The word exploded out of Larissa, unable to be held back at the sight of her kidnappers. “Why am I here? Why did you kidnap me? You said we were meeting to talk, and I
trusted
you.”

“Told you we should have waited for Aislynn,” said the tiny mage to Fallon, still looking in the mirror.

Fallon’s jaw tightened. She probably wasn’t the one often engaged in diplomacy, and the peeved look on her face told everything needed about how she felt being put in that position. “Larissa, this is necessary. You are in a lot of danger and we had no other way to keep you safe.”

“Don’t try to sell me that crap. You’re mad that I didn’t play your game, and you decided to change the rules.”

“It was necessary,” Fallon repeated. Her sword kept peeking out from behind her hair, a deadly reminder of what this woman could do. Well, she might be counting on that to help her out, but fat chance. This woman’s intimidation tactics weren’t working today.

Larissa put as much scorn in her voice as she could. “Keep telling yourself that if it helps you sleep at night, though I can’t imagine anything could.”

Laire, in the process of adding more eye shadow, spoke to Fallon then. “You aren’t helping the situation here.”

Fallon turned, narrowing her eyes. “I notice you aren’t speaking to her.”

“I’m smart enough to recognize my weaknesses. I don’t do that empathy shit. That’s Ais’ department.”

As if in answer to their words, the elf came through the door, followed by a man Larissa had not seen before. Overlong dark blond hair and deep-set yellow eyes, and a scar that ran from the bridge of his nose below his cheekbone to end somewhere under a close cropped beard. He wore blue jeans and an open flannel shirt over a t-shirt.

He came to sit in front of her. “I’m Wulver,” he said, smart enough not to offer his hand when his advance caused an involuntary flinch on her part. “I’m leader here.”

Fallon was still standing with her back to the mirror, not reacting to those words at all. Larissa pointed to her. “I thought that was her, the way she acts.”

He smiled but refused to be drawn in by her words. It was a nice smile, his teeth white and sharp.

Maybe a little too sharp.

No, no she was not going to ask. There was enough on her plate right now without wondering if the guy before her was a human or not.

Guess the human. That might make a neat game.

Well, he said he was boss. It gave her someone else to yell at. “Since you are in charge and not her, I’m assuming it was your order that brought me here?”

He nodded. His eyes did hold some compassion, but something in the set of his shoulders, the way he carried himself, all told that while he might be sorry she was so upset, he felt no remorse in grabbing her and bringing her here against her will. “Guilty. I’m sorry it was done this way, but with that last attack, we decided it was too dangerous for you to be free any longer.”

That was an interesting way to put it. “Who’s this
we
if you are the leader?”

Once again, he didn’t answer her question, the compassion in his eyes morphing into something harder. He said instead, “We want your stay to be enjoyable. Is there anything we can bring you?”

“A nail file.”

“Sure. Any nail polish? May I suggest red? It’s a personal thing, but I prefer when women stick with the classics.” He smiled again, and in that grin she saw the easy charm he possessed and could project when he wanted to. That might be the secret why he ran things, because in moments she was half under his spell, imprisonment be darned.

Enough of that. Charm wasn’t going to get her home. “How long are you going to keep me here?”

His grin faded, and her stomach sank to the soles of her feet. “You must understand how much danger you’re in-”

“How long?” she repeated.

He leaned back in the chair, trying to project nonchalance but failing. “Until you’ll be safe.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and directed against him her hardest stare, the one that kept even her most unruly student in line. It didn’t do anything to free her, but there was satisfaction in using it. “Meaning you’re keeping me here indefinitely, unless you know why I’ve been targeted and are only holding me here until you get your man – well, necromancer. Is that the case?”

“There are things going on-”

Screw this. She was here against her will, but she was here, and she was going to get some gods damn answers right
now
. “How are they going to use me to rip the realms apart?”

Wulver jerked, and she’d bet money he rarely looked as surprised as he did this moment. He turned back to look at Fallon. Her brows were lifted slightly, the lines of her face softened from their usual intensity. She gave a small shake of her head to Wulver.

He turned back to her. “You’ve learned a lot in a relatively short period of time.”

“Did you think I was sitting on my butt waiting for the zombies to eat my brains?”

Laire turned away from the mirror. “It’s not really true that zombies eat brains, it’s an urban legend…
mrph
.”

The impromptu lesson was finished when Fallon placed her hand over Laire’s mouth. Wanting to move the conversation forward before any possible explosion between the two could take place, Larissa said, “So why me?”

Wulver settled in the chair, the smile and charm fading as weariness settled over his features. He half opened his mouth before closing it, his gaze shifting away for a bare moment. His confusion was tangible. “We’ve searched and dug and researched and watched, but there is nothing about you that tells us what is going on.”

That was not telling her anything she didn’t already know. She pressed on. “Do you know how the spell works that the necromancers would use?”