And hadn’t five minutes of her company in the bell tower provided those answers already? His inner voice smirked. Dag ignored it.
The list of things he had chosen to ignore had grown impressively in the few hours since he had regained his awareness. He would ignore his strange fascination with the small human female who had spurred his awakening. He would ignore the oddity of a female Warden, the first in his many centuries of existence. He would ignore that each of his three woken brothers sported a female Warden whom they now claimed as mates.
Most of all, he would ignore the oldest legend of his kind, the one that told of a bond between a female of power and a Guardian like him that could free him from his endless pattern of sleeping and waking. A legend that offered him a life of his own, free to live according to his desires with a human female at his side to the end of his days.
Irrelevant.
Dag needed to focus on the matters at hand. After speaking to Knox and the witch Warden, Wynn, he understood what the low-level itch at the back of his neck signified. He could sense the threat from the Darkness rising, one greater than any he had faced before. In the past, he had woken to fight against the experimental pushes by the Seven, the subtle probes of their evil seeking a weakness in the prisons that contained them. When matters had become grave indeed, he had even fought beside one or another of his brothers, joining forces to defeat a stronger incursion. Never before had he known anything like this.
The thought of one of the Seven fully present on the human plane nearly staggered him. The last time such a thing had happened predated Dag’s summoning, but each Guardian who ever existed came into the world with the full knowledge of his race, each individual’s experiences cataloged and shared, almost like a hive memory. Each Guardian could access such knowledge at will, so he knew several of his brethren had died returning the Demon to its prison plane of existence. To know also that this time, the Guardians faced the added challenge of fighting without the full strength of the Wardens Guild behind them merely added to his concern.
His greatest worry, however, centered around Kylie herself. He understood that of the current female Wardens, only Wynn had previous knowledge of the Guild and its doings. From what she had told them, only she had any real experience in the practice of magic as well. However, Kylie not only lacked the training of a Guild Warden, she seemed surprised to hear her abilities classified as magic at all. How was such an innocent and unschooled human to face the concerted attack of a nocturni sect, let alone one of the Seven itself?
The answer, of course, was that she couldn’t. Dag would need to remain vigilant, ready to place himself between the female and any harm that might come to her. Unfortunately, he somehow already recognized that doing so might see him incurring an extra level of harm himself—the first from the evil attack, and the second from Kylie herself, enraged at being thrust aside and prevented from fighting her own battles. Already he had noticed her stubborn independence and her sharp tongue, one he would not mind taming, given the correct opportunity.
Dag stood beside her desk and picked up a small, fur-covered object for a closer examination. It appeared to be a child’s toy in the shape of a soft cat, pale gray with darker stripes. But when he picked it up, a recorded voice emerged from it and sang some sort of awkward lullaby. This was the female he was supposed to permit to stand beside him in battle?
What was it she had said several times over the course of the evening?
Oy vey.
*
A good five hours of sleep had been exactly what Kylie needed to face the day with renewed energy and a return of her normally optimistic attitude. Well, five hours of sleep and an ice-cold bottle of imported cola. Cane sugar and caffeine, baby—the breakfast of champions.
Especially when accompanied by a toasted onion bagel schmeared with a half-ton of creamy butter.
She had stumbled down from her rumpled bed, popped the top off her soda, and dropped her bagel in the toaster oven before her erstwhile houseguest made his first appearance. She wasn’t sure if he’d been lurking in the living room like the statue he had started out as, or had been inspecting the water seal in her basement. Either way, she had the kitchen to herself one moment, and the next, blam! Instant gargoyle.