Stone Cold Lover Read Online Free PDF Page B

prison.”
    “I trust you succeeded, for I was never called to aid you. Were any of the others?”
    “Of course not. I handled it myself, as I was charged to do.” Fil watched as Spar’s expression grew even more fierce. “What is the meaning of this, brother? Why have both of us awoken together? Why have I awoken at all? I cannot feel the presence of one of the Seven. The Darkness poses no immediate threat of escape from its shackles. So what is going on?”
    “That’s what I’d like to know.” Fil stepped forward and laid her hand over Spar’s, directing the camera until it captured both of their images. “I don’t care who explains it to me, El, you or your pal there, but I definitely want to know what’s going on and why my new reality has to stretch to include talking statues and terms like the Darkness, with a capital D .”
    “It’s a really long story.”
    Fil glanced at the clock on her phone and raised an eyebrow. “Well, El, it’s two twenty-seven in the morning, and I seem to be sitting the middle of a provincial park with a creature out of a book of fairy tales, so quite frankly I can’t think of anyplace else I need to be at the moment. Start talking.”
    *   *   *
    Spar watched the human female—Fil, her friend had called her, though he found the masculine name ridiculous—as she listened to her friend relate the story of his kind. He found her face fascinating. Each of her thoughts passed over it in succession. Perhaps it was the purity of her features that made them so easy to read, for she had the finely drawn look of a Madonna: small, straight nose, clear brow, rounded cheeks, and a mouth like Cupid’s bow. Her skin could pass for porcelain in the faint illumination of her mobile phone, and her wide green eyes bore a fringe of lashes a hundred shades darker than her pale-blond hair. She looked like walking innocence. Of course, Spar acknowledged to himself, when she opened her mouth she sounded like something entirely different.
    He studied her while the one called Ella repeated a familiar tale. Thousands of years ago in the face of great evil, a group of powerful magic users—mages—banded together to summon forth a power capable of defeating the demons who formed the Darkness. Seven immortal warriors were called, one for each of the demons they would combat, and the mages named them the Guardians, because their purpose was to guard humanity from the servants of evil.
    The mages quickly learned, however, that the Seven demons of the Darkness could not be entirely destroyed. They were formed from the Dark itself, and so would exist forever in the same way that the Light would exist forever. In order to contain them, they were separated from one another to prevent them from feeding on one another’s power, and each was banished to a desolate plane where they were imprisoned.
    Knowing of the potential for the Seven to return, the mages made the decision to remain united and form the Guild of Wardens in order to monitor the ongoing threat from the Darkness. They gathered and shared knowledge of the enemy, assisted the Guardians with tools and support needed to battle, and monitored the activities of humans seduced or enslaved by Dark powers. The Wardens bore the ultimate responsibility for alerting the Guardians when they needed to rise and face a renewed threat, and they also acted to send the warriors back to sleep when the threat was vanquished. Even during those periods of slumber, the Guild remained vigilant against the forces of the Darkness.
    “That’s the way it’s supposed to work,” Ella concluded, “but Kees and I have discovered a problem. A big one.”
    “We believe the nocturnis have developed a new strategy,” Kees explained. “Ella and I discovered that over a year ago, a fire destroyed the headquarters of the Guild of Wardens in Paris. Twenty-three of the members, including most of the inner council, died in the blaze.”
    Shock tore Spar’s attention from