โ Scribed by Brook, Meljean
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Novice Guardian Jake Hawkins has a power that could help Alice Grey out of her deal with a demon. But in helping her, he never expects to fall in love. Now fleeing for their lives, theyre about to discover a secret that will change their universe forever.
Meljean was raised in the middle of the woods, and hid under her blankets at night with fairy tales, comic books, and romances. She left the forest and went on a misguided tour through the world of accounting, banking, and a (very) brief teaching career before focusing on her first loves, reading and writing--and she realized that monsters, superheroes, and happily-ever-afters are easily found between the covers, as well as under them, so she set out to make her own. Meljean lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and daughter.
Moments after terrifying himself with memories of blood-splattered foliage and a splintered bamboo cage, Jake Hawkins opened his eyes and realized he had no idea where the hell he'd teleported.
At least it wasn't Hell. Though chances were, he'd end up in that realm sooner or later. Until he got his Gift under control, only dumb luck prevented him from taking a swim in the Lake of Fire. Or worse, landing on a warmongering demon horde.
Backstroking through burning lava was a damn good alternative to being skewered by a thousand swordsor kept alive so the demons could play a gleeful game of Torture the Guardian.
Fun for everyone but him.
But his dumb luck had held for one more jump, and instead of screaming Below, Jake was standing at the edge of a sheer cliff on the side of an arid, rock-studded mountain. A waxing crescent moon was settling behind the sand dunes on the horizon; early evening stars shot holes through the sky.
Not Hell, but he wasn't in Caelum, eitheralthough the Guardian realm with its white marble and never-setting sun was almost as empty of people. No fires flickered in the foothills; no human odors floated in the air.
And there was no one to see Jake form his wings and step over the cliff.
Wind sifted through his white feathers, and Jake resisted the urge to look at his satellite positioning device. He'd been taking these unexpected jaunts since discovering his Gift; unfamiliar geography had become a challenge. If he used his GPS receiver to figure out his location, he'd failed.
But this place almost had him beat. The low-growing prickly scrub and the distant stretch of desert could be anywhere in North Africa or the Middle East. The recent sunset and mountain range narrowed it to Tunisia, Morocco, or Algeria; but as one of three Guardians who could teleport, Jake needed to learn how to identify a specific region within seconds.
He needed to be able to go where he intended, too.
A Gift ain't nothing but knowledge and willpower. Drifter, his mentor, had tossed out that not-so-helpful advice ten minutes before, when Jake had been trying to teleport from Drifter's home in Seattle to the Archives building in Caelum.
Jake shook his head, circled back toward the cliff. Ignorance wasn't his problem. He wasn't spineless, either. He'd known where Caelum was, and he'd wanted to visit the Archivesbut he'd still had to scare himself shitless in order to make the jump.
He'd also been praying he wouldn't run into the Black Widow. An image of the archivist's cold, disapproving stare had filled his mind just before he'd teleported.
So he hadn't focused hard enough; his Gift had picked up on his reluctance and landed him here. Wherever here
Hot diggety damn.
With a snap of his wings, he drew up vertical and stared at the wall of stone.
A temple had been carved into the face of the cliff.
And he was catching flies. Jake closed his mouth, vanished his wings. The drop and knee-jarring thud against the ground shook away the last of his surprise.
No way could something like this have remained undiscovered, not for the length of time the architecture suggested. The portico of columns was unmistakably Greek. The pediment and entablature recalled the Parthenon'sonly lacking the ornamental sculptures.
The interior extended farther back into the mountain than even his Guardian sight could determine.
He'd seen rock-cut buildings before. Petra, in Jordanthough those were of sandstone. The Hindu caves at Ellora were granite, like this was; but they were far more ornate, and completely excavated from the surrounding mountainside.
With a quick mental touch, Jake pulled the GPS receiver from his hammerspace. Screw failureand, for now, the Archives.
He was in Kebili, a sparsely populated governorate in southwestern Tunisia. After marking the coordinates, Jake vanished the device back into his mental storage. He couldn't contain his awe and excitement as easily.
But only a fool rushed into something like this. He opened his psychic senses. Nothing. No unusual sounds, either. Insects, the small squeaking of a shrew or rodent, his own heartbeat.
A light wind lifted and skimmed over his head, carrying grains of sand that settled on his scalp, rasped against his jeans, gathered at the neckline of his T-shirt. Each particle irritated his heightened nerves, distracting him. He scrubbed his hand over his buzz cut, brushing out the worst of the grit.
The forward chamber was a tall stone box, and hadn't escaped the desert wind. Sand lay thick on the floor, shifting beneath his feet.
And his weren't the only feet to have crossed it, Jake realized. Several sets of human footprints led toor fromthe inner chambers. The impressions had sunk deep in the soft sand, leaving the edges indistinct and making it impossible to determine size and direction.
No human scent lingered in the air. Either the footprints were well over a week old...or a human hadn't made them.
Jake performed another mental sweep, but knew it wouldn't be reliable. Any demon or Guardian knew how to conceal his presence, and dense stone could dull psychic probes.
The footprints were probably nothingbut he wouldn't go in unprepared.
He stored several pistols and swords in his hammerspace, but called in a crossbow. The grip was comfortable when the weapon appeared in his hand; he practiced with it often.
The prints vanished past the second chamber, where the corridor angled to the right and led to a narrow stairwell. It was too far inside for the wind to blow, and only a trace amount of sand lay scattered on the bare floor.
He jogged up the stairsthree hundred and fiftyand into another corridor, his weapon ready at his shoulder. There were dozens more chambers on this level, and each he passed was stripped to its square bones. A few had stone benches carved around the perimeter of the room; more had recesses cut into the walls like shelves. The ceilings were high and flat.
At the top of another long stairwell, the darkness, which had threatened with shadows in the corners of each chamber, became absolute.
Surprised, Jake stopped. Even on moonless, overcast nights and in closed rooms, objects were clear to his Guardian eyesight. He only needed the faintest illumination to see: star shine, refracted light, the tiny glow of an LED indicator.
But this was like closing his eyes and wrapping his head in a heavy black sackand it was the first time he'd seen true darkness since he'd done exactly that as a kid. He'd walked out to the middle of a Kansas cornfield, put on the hood, and stumbled around with his arms out
His short laugh echoed in the stone chamber, revealing its enormous size and pressing away the suffocating darkness. Fifty years had passed, and he'd thought of that cornfield often, but had forgotten how that particular adventure had ended: his granddad had snuck up behind and scared the piss out of him.
He'd screamed and took off running.
Jake shook his head, grinning. No wonder he'd tried to forget that part. His ten-year-old pride had been shredded.
His sixty-year-old pride withstood being scared all the timebut stumbling around here wouldn't get him very far.
He searched through his hammerspace, his mind skipping over each item. There'd be something he could use. He'd never bothered to store a flashlight; he'd never needed one.
Still didn't. The dim backlight from his cell phone lit the chamber like a carbide lamp.
It took a moment to register what he was seeing. The enormous chamber was terraced. A deep, rectangular pit had been carved into the floor of each level, with steps leading to the bottom. A colonnade surrounded the room; behind the rows of columns, giant arched entryways led east, west, north.
A bath, he realized. A Roman bath. Sculpted out of solid granite.
Inside a mountain.
Two or three thousand years ago, someone in Tunisia had been flippin' insane.
Jake lowered the crossbow to his side, tossed a coin out of his hammerspace. Heads, so he went east.
An antechamber lay past the bath. Jake stopped, blinking up at the arch leading outa line of symbols had been carved above it. Aside from the columns, the design of the temple, it was the first indication of a specific culture he'd seen.
But the symbols weren't Latin or Greek. He'd have recognized those. No, this reminded him of a script he'd only seen engraved in living flesh and used to cast spells.
A shiver ran up his spine. He turned and backed beneath the arch into the next chamber.
It d...
Tag : e Tor : ล ISBN : 9780425224533
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Brook's seductive and dangerous world of the Guardians now yields a secret that threatens the soul of a woman and the fate of the universe. Novice Guardian Jake Hawkins has a power that could help Alice Grey out of her deal with a demon. But in helping her, he never expects to fall in love. Original
Novice Guardian Jake Hawkins has a power that could help Alice Grey out of her deal with a demon. But in helping her, he never expects to fall in love. Now fleeing for their lives, they're about to discover a secret that will change their universe forever.