Guardian Glass Read online

  I looked back at the Pixies and sighed. “I wish you could talk properly,” I said, to the one who was looking warily at me, like a child who’d been kicked too often. She looked to be a teenager, perfectly proportioned, even though she was barely larger than my middle finger. The appearance was deceiving. The vast majority of Pixies were barely brighter than the average dog. They might talk to humans, but often it was a case of the human hearing what they wanted to hear, rather than what the Pixie was saying. It was really nothing more than barks and other animal noises. I sometimes think that that’s why hunters trap and kill them. They’re just too like us, yet disturbing on so many levels, to be allowed to live. “Can you say anything?”

  She just looked at me. Pixies are innocent creatures. She probably had been born out in the countryside – probably somewhere outside the country, where the laws are laxer and money talks louder than morality – before she’d been captured and stuck in a cage. She might not have been treated as her appearance suggested, but even so, there had been nothing good in her life since she’d been caged. Pixies just don’t last long in captivity, even in the most civilised zoos. They want to be free. She probably didn’t even have the reasoning to understand what had happened to her…and what would have happened, without my intervention.

  I picked up the cage and dumped it in my bag as well. They probably wouldn’t enjoy the trip, but it was the best solution, at least until I could get them home and release them. They would probably enjoy my garden, or perhaps I should try to send them back home instead. I heard them calling out as the cage fell into the container, but they should be fine. I hardened my heart and looked around the room one final time. There was nothing else that seemed worth the effort of keeping.

  There was one other thing I had to do before I left. I took off my shirt, wrapped it around my hand, and carefully pulled the knife out of Maxwell’s body. The knife still felt cold to the touch, but it seemed a friendlier feeling than before, as if it was prepared to switch to my side. It was possible, but I pushed any temptation to experiment aside. The knife could be examined back at the Circle. If we’d seen something like it before, we would perhaps be able to track down the maker. It might even lead us to Maxwell’s murderer.

  I left the body behind as I returned to the lab…and the zombie. I wasn't surprised in the least to encounter the zombie shambling across the floor, hunting for brains. The spells that had held it in place and quelled its endless hunger would have broken when Maxwell died. It was in terrible shape, even for a Zombie; it could barely crawl. Even so, it was terrifying; the living dead may shamble along, moaning as they move, but they never stop. You can damage them, or outrun them, but sooner or later the zombie will catch up with you. They never get tired and they never give up. Destroy the legs and it will move on its arms. Destroy the arms as well and it will try to crawl along on its belly. I was present when a crack army team engaged the first zombie outbreak…and lost. They just hadn’t prepared for the threat. Nowadays, teams go hunting with flamethrowers and heavy swords.

  “Burn,” I hissed. A roaring wave of flame enveloped the Zombie. It even seemed to push through the flames – zombies don’t feel pain, or any other emotion – until it burned down to ash. I kept the flames roaring until I was sure that I had wiped out all traces of the Zombie plague. The most common way for someone to become a Zombie is to be bitten by another Zombie, but accidentally swallowing some of their bodies or breathing in the dust could – sometimes – lead to death and reanimation. We’d been lucky. If the first outbreaks hadn’t been contained quickly, we might all have become nothing, but decaying corpses shambling around the world.

  The beast was dead, but I checked where it had been carefully before heading up the stairs. It hadn’t been apparent before – score one for Maxwell’s wards, or perhaps his knowledge of chemistry – but there was a faint rank in the air, a smell of madness and helpless rage. Whatever Maxwell had done to bind it to his service, it had done nothing for the creature’s rage and hatred of humanity. I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover another such creature lurking in the shadows, but it had been alone. Perhaps it was the only one of its kind.

  I felt a moment’s pity as I walked back up the stairs, back towards the library. There were hundreds of creatures that had remained in Faerie, like flies trapped in amber, while the world moved on behind them. A thousand years on Earth could be a day in Faerie; they were alone, the rest of their kind having long-since died out. The dinosaurs, at least, existed in enough numbers to rebuild a viable population, but the same couldn’t be said for the other creatures. When the Faerie had fled their homelands, they had condemned many of the smaller creatures to death.

  The library was just ahead of me, but I sensed a flicker of magic and followed it, allowing it to lead me into a storeroom. It was not only bolted and secured with a heavy padlock – which was mainly for show – but guarded by several very unpleasant spells as well. I guessed, just from a preliminary check, that they were actually configured to trigger off a self-destruct spell – or perhaps a bomb - if they were simply brushed aside. There was a sloppiness about the work that seemed unlike Maxwell. I had to concentrate to pick them, one by one, but when the door opened, I saw…

  “My God,” I breathed. The rumours about Maxwell hadn’t told the half of it. The room was packed with hundreds of different products, mostly from magical animals. I had no time for a survey, but there were dragon-skins, unicorn horn powder and even the head of a medusa, thankfully turned away from the door. There were people who used them as guards. They were actually quite effective if you knew a good anti-petrifaction spell. “How many creatures died to make this pile?”

  Worse, some of the items had clearly come from humans. I saw blood, and skin, and bone, and even brain matter, all taken from unwilling donors and turned into spell components. I couldn’t understand it. Why had Maxwell needed so much?

  I turned, shaking my head, and walked into the library. It had been ransacked. For a moment, I thought I’d walked into the wrong room, but it was clearly the room I’d been in before. Someone had gone though it very quickly, taking hundreds of books, even some that I would have considered worthless. The book I’d seen on the table, the spellbook like the one I’d seen at the school, was gone. So were all of the magical texts I’d seen. Even the gothic horror novels had been stolen.

  “Shit,” I muttered. The woman who’d killed Maxwell, I decided, must have teleported up to the library and taken the books while I was dealing with the Zombie. There was no way to know for sure, of course, but I suspected that that was probably the answer. No one else would have known about Maxwell’s death. I scanned the house again – I’d clearly missed her the first time – but sensed nothing. She might have gone, or she might be hiding under a glamour like mine. “I wonder if…”

  My thought cut off as another spike of magic flickered through the house. The wards were shifting and changing. For a moment, I thought that they were finally collapsing after Maxwell’s death, but it seemed different. I studied the flickering shifts of magic and frowned. The wards seemed to be altering, but to do what? It struck me in a moment of sudden insight. The wards were starting to take on physical form and attack the house!

  “Move,” I swore at myself. The magical field just kept growing stronger, pressing down at me…and the whole house. I didn’t dare teleport, so I ran towards the door, even though I knew I would have to crack the wards again in their new form. The entire house shook, as if a troll were knocking and he wanted in bad, and I stumbled, crashing against the wall. A picture frame, a strange drawing of one of the first encounters between humanity and the supernatural creatures, fell off the wall and landed far too close to my head. I pushed myself away from the wall, feeling oddly seasick as the shaking grew stronger, and kept running. The entire house was shaking now; I heard the windows, one by one, shattering into glass shards.

  I laughed, despite the growing danger. I’d chosen the name because of how transparent
glass was – its already halfway to invisibility – but the shattering windows were reminding me of the downside. I dodged a chunk of plaster falling from the ceiling, followed by a stream of lights that burst on the carpet and started fires, and hit the stairs. They were shaking madly themselves, but I took them as fast as I could, somehow keeping my footing. The smell of burning followed me as I raced down into the main hall, already half-blocked by chunks of debris and Maxwell’s ghastly collection of pictures, but I was able to keep moving. Another wave of magic crashed through the house, weakening the supporting beams, and I realised that the house was coming down around my ears. I hit the main door, opened it, and ran out towards the wards. They were gone.

  “What?” I said, surprised. I didn’t want to stay any closer to the house than I had to, but I couldn’t run out blindly into the garden until I’d checked for surprises. When I looked, I realised that the wards hadn’t vanished, but they’d turned their attention to wrecking the house. They were no longer concerned with keeping out intruders. I couldn’t understand, at first, where the power was coming from, but Maxwell had probably set up a reserve in his own house. I could have done the same myself.

  I ran as a final spasm ran through the house. I heard it crashing down behind me, falling into a pile of debris, which rapidly caught fire and started to burn. There were unnatural colours in the flames, hints of green and blue and other colours for which humanity has no name, suggesting that all of the magical components were burning to ash. I took one look and kept running. I didn’t want to be anywhere near that cache when it exploded – as it might.

  “Well, fuck me,” I said, after I’d reached a safe distance. It was hard to breathe for giggles. “What the fuck was all that about?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Eat, Drink and be Merry, for tomorrow you might catch some disgusting skin disease.

  -Blackadder

  There was nothing left of Maxwell’s house now, but a pile of smouldering embers.

  I stayed and watched for an hour, taking the risk of being out alone in the darkness, just to see if anyone else turned up to watch the fireworks. The Fire Department, in olden days, would have arrived in a hurry, but now no one would risk their lives in the darkness, not unless they were assured of some very competent protection. It was just another sign of how magic was affecting the country, and indeed the world. No one would come out to watch the fire, let alone fight it. If there were people watching from the other houses, I saw nothing of them.

  “Good God,” I muttered. I’d expected the discharge of magic to attract other supernatural creatures to the area, but none appeared to have showed up. It wasn't a bad thing – darkness is when most supernatural creatures are most active – but it was a chance to get a look at some of the stranger creatures. The ones we knew little about generally held that status because anyone who saw them never reported back. “What was he doing?”

  I found myself running through the facts again. A woman had hired him to find her items used, mainly, for magical potions and various kinds of spells. Most of those items were about as illegal as child pornography and would ensure that anyone caught with having them would be thrown into jail and left to rot. She’d wanted quantities so high, far more than any conceivable purpose would require, that even Maxwell had been tested…and, finally, she’d murdered him. Who was the woman?

  The presence of Pixie Dust in the room where Cecelia had been kidnapped suggested that the two cases were connected, but how? It struck me in a blinding flash – I should have seen it much sooner. Maxwell and the woman had stepped out of a pocket dimension, perhaps the Hole in the Wall? It was the only pocket dimension that wasn't connected to a specific location on Earth; could they use it to sidestep Vincent Faye’s wards? It should have been impossible, but…what the hell had she done to the beast? I had faced many kinds of magic in my career and I’d never faced anything like that.

  I opened my pocket, pulled out my cell phone, and called Dolly. It was still very early in the morning – the witching hour – but I knew she’d be awake. Dolly was once a promising sorceress when she’d been younger, but then she’d made a dreadful mistake during a ritual and now she cannot sleep, at all. She seems fine, most of the time, but during the night she feels so tired she can barely move, but sleep will never come. She has a reputation as a nymphomaniac, yet what choice does she have left to her? She needs company during those dark hours.

  “Hi, Dolls,” I said, when she answered. She sounded bleary, as always, during the night. I knew that she would welcome intrusion, unless she was with her latest conquest. She’s a good person, but how could anyone stand her sleepless nights? We had had an affair once, but it hadn’t lasted, even if we had broken on good terms. “Can you do something for me?”

  “It might cost you,” Dolly said. She might have been flirting, or she might not. It was so hard to tell through her voice. “The boss has been worried about you after everything that went down in New York. The whole world and his brother saw that dragon coming to your aid.”

  “I know,” I said. It thought of visiting her was tempting, but it wouldn’t be fair on her. I needed to sleep myself and…well, most of her relationships ended because few men could stay awake permanently during the night. “What did he say about it?”

  “I don’t know for certain,” Dolly admitted. “That tight-faced shrew keeps a firm grip on his private musings, so I don’t know, but rumour has it that he seems torn between calling you and demanding an explanation, or leaving you to run on your own still further.” She paused. “Should I tell him you called, by the way?”

  I hesitated. “Only if he asks,” I said, finally. I didn’t want Dolly to get into trouble, but I didn’t want Wilkinson to know everything, yet. There was no longer any point in calling a forensic team to Maxwell’s house. “Listen. I need a favour from you.”

  “Anything,” Dolly said. “What can I do for you?”

  Several things came to mind, including a very interesting trick she could do with her tongue at a vital moment, but I pushed it aside. “I want you to do me a complete financial breakdown on Vincent Faye,” I said. I should have dealt with it earlier, but I’d left it while I concentrated on breaking into Maxwell’s house. “I want to know everything about him, including just what he owns and just how much money he actually has.”

  The thought hadn’t crossed my mind earlier, but Faye was perhaps one of the richest men in America and certainly the richest magic-user. He could have paid Maxwell out of pocket change and never noticed the loss…and so, I suspected, could his family. I didn’t want to think about it, but what if he had fostered Aylia on me to get her to keep an eye on me? If so, he might already know about everything we’d done, from the visit to Faerie to the creature in New York. I was fairly sure that Aylia hadn’t had an opportunity to send a message, but Faye was on the cutting edge of new magical developments. He could have developed something new for communication.

  But why would he kidnap his own daughter?

  “Ah,” Dolly said, in the tone of someone who has discovered a secret motivation hiding behind a lie. “You want to know how much Aylia will inherit, right?”

  “No,” I said, annoyed. Dolly had no claim on me, any more than I had a claim on her. I might not have been wealthy, certainly not as wealthy as Vincent Faye, but if I resigned tomorrow I’d be comfortable for the rest of my life. “What brought that on?”

  “You’re being mentioned in the society pages,” Dolly said. I swore. The glamour that surrounded me should have been enough to prevent that from happening. “You should see the headlines. GUARDIAN TO WED FAYE HEIR is the least of them. That little…incident down in New York really caught their attention. They’re even saying that a dragon blessed the match!”

  I swore out loud. “There’s nothing going on between us,” I said. It wasn't quite a lie. We hadn’t even discussed going to bed together, let alone getting married. Wilkinson was not going to be pleased – Guardians were supposed to try and sta
y out of the media – and the other Guardians would never let me forget it. Cowboy might have been quietly encouraging the whole media frenzy just to distract attention from other events in New York. “How quickly can you get that information to me?”

  “Give me a couple of days for a complete breakdown,” Dolly said, after a moment. “I can probably get you an outline in a few hours if you’re desperate. How much do you want?”

  “Everything,” I said. “Please just give me a call when you’ve found everything you can.”

  I closed the cell phone with a feeling of satisfaction. Brother Andrew had mentioned rumours about Vincent Faye and I had to follow them up, completely off the reservation. Wilkinson had said it himself. Faye had too many friends in Washington for an official investigation, even by the IRS. Hell, the man paid more taxes than most businesses in the first place. If there was a motive for kidnapping Cecilia – and, so far, no one had demanded a ransom – it probably lay with one of his enemies, although perhaps not Maxwell. His body had probably been vaporised.