Gryphon of Glass Read online

  They had to change their strategy. Gwen could feel the pause button under her thumb as she wandered the room. The moment she released it, everything would jolt forward again, with the same momentum as before. She had to change that momentum, somehow.

  In a game, she’d be able to direct her avatars. In games where she controlled a lot of people, she could assign them tasks, set them a queue of commands to work through. How would she do that here?

  Stop thinking in a box, Gwen scolded herself. How would you do it in a game? She closed her eyes, thinking about how to queue up commands. There would be a menu…

  When she opened her eyes, she almost laughed again. Over every head was a status bar, her friends edged in green, her enemies in red. All she had to do was select a player and add to their actions list…or target the correct enemies, as if they were weapons she was controlling.

  Blat.

  No, she didn’t think she’d be able to manipulate the ridden humans.

  But when she tried with Daniella, the same thing happened. Blat.

  Free will, perhaps? What if she couldn’t affect anything at all?

  Gwen frowned. Okay, so what if it was a multi-player game? Maybe she couldn’t affect the other players, but she could...send them a text, coordinate things behind the screen? Could she suggest something? She stood in front of Daniella and concentrated. There was a man swinging a heavy club at her from behind. The first thing she’d have Daniella do was...duck.

  A sudden chatbox appeared above Daniella’s head, floating ridiculously in space over her. Duck! it said.

  It’s just my brain trying to make sense of what the magic is doing, Gwen reminded herself. It’s not really as literal as this.

  She circled the room, adding chatboxes to all of her friends with the first things she wanted them to do. She paused at Henrik, caught in mid-air as he dodged back from a swinging chain. His energy bars were dangerously low, with warning arrows.

  How do I fix that?

  Was there a backup power source she could apply? A healing potion? A bonus energy booster?

  Blat. Blat. Blat.

  Nope. Gwen looked up, suddenly curious to see whether she had her own energy bar.

  It wasn’t over her, it was over the space where she’d been standing, but sure enough, she was fully charged. And she wasn’t the critical one in this battle, the knights were the ones who had the ability to remove the superdours and defeat their enemies. She had to figure a way to transfer that energy from her, to Henrik.

  Ding.

  Her power bar went down, Henrik’s rose.

  Ding, ding, ding, ding! How much did she dare transfer? If she emptied herself, did it mean actual death? Was there a spare life tucked away in this crazy magic game? She had to assume that death was final, and there wasn’t a save point she could go back to.

  She emptied her power bar down to a single red tick with a dire warning arrow, filling Henrik’s to overfull, and called it good.

  Then she circled the room again, plotting strategy.

  Finally, chatboxes filled with directives, power siphoned to where it needed to be, Gwen felt like she was as ready as she was going to be. Heart in her throat, she closed her eyes and envisioned thumbing off the pause button.

  Blat.

  She cracked an eyelid.

  Had she trapped herself in some kind of timeless void by accident? She glanced up for her own power bar for some kind of clue…and remembered that it wasn’t above her.

  Oh, crap. Her power bar was back where her body had been, directly in the path of a bat that she wasn’t going to have time to avoid, once time had meaning again.

  Reluctantly, she put herself in back where she’d been and envisioned her thumb lifting slowly off the pause button.

  This was going to hurt.

  29

  Henrik felt a moment of cold certainty settle in his throat when he caught a glimpse of Gwen getting the sword stuck in the counter.

  They’d been caught by surprise, and were badly hampered by their desire not to hurt the vessels of the evil they were fighting. He could feel his energy waning, he was barely more than a distraction in this battle, while Trey and Rez could muster some effectiveness at least.

  Then, very suddenly, several things happened at once.

  All of his energy returned, not only as it had been, but unexpectedly more, like he was suddenly a creek filled with rushing water. He was power, he was—

  Bank left! Now!

  Gwen’s voice was loud in his ear, commanding and urgent.

  Henrik obeyed out of instinct, spreading his wings wider than they had yet been and yanking himself left just as a chain sizzled through the air where he’d been.

  Focus, Henrik! Fly wide and get back around to Trey and Rez. It takes three of you at once to keep the superdours from the victims and they ooze back in if you leave them too long, you have to get them herded together and do them all at once. I’ve got everything in place, you just have to follow the plan!

  Her voice in his head assured him that Gwen must be safe, though he could not see her, so Henrik streaked across the warehouse to where Trey and Rez were both shaking their heads in surprise and amazement.

  They roared in greeting as he completed his sweep and landed between them.

  He was his full, glorious size once again. Gwen had done it! His amazing, clever key.

  Instructions, in Gwen’s steady, sensible voice unrolled in his inner ear, and he could see that Trey and Rez were receiving the same instructions.

  In unison, they scattered to the corners of the room, confusing and disorienting their enemy. The keys were in motion as well, giving up their positions of defense to draw them all together in the center of the cleared space. Evenly spaced around them, at Gwen’s crisp orders, the knights attacked in unison. Trey lay down a spray of his fire, too thin to be effective on its own, but Rez bowed his head and gave a jolt of his blue healing magic. The two together were enough to drive the superdours from their hosts, but Henrik knew that as soon as the pressure they were exerting was released, the humans would be possessed once again. Henrik reached down into the leylines that were vibrating all around them and cast a ward spell.

  To his pleasure, the magic answered, flowing effortlessly out of him over the humans, forming a glowing dome that sizzled in his magic-sight.

  The shadow forms of the ill-named superdours shivered back, gathering in the corners of the room.

  Now, they just had to shrivel them into nothing with their combined powers. Henrik stepped forward, reveling in the feeling of his powerful body and full size as his shieldmates flanked him.

  He almost didn’t notice the crackle of a portal at first.

  “Robin!” Daniella cried. “Robin is back!”

  But it wasn’t Robin, and the bleak who stepped through was not friendly. It had a black sword, the mirror of the one that had menaced Socks.

  For a moment of horror, Henrik thought that it was a portal to their home world, that the invasion was already in place. How did their calendar work? Had they grossly misjudged the strength of the veil? But the bleak was alone, and although the portal remained open behind it, snapping with energy, no one else came through it. It looked like a green jungle behind it.

  It was only a small respite.

  The bleak said, in its voice of oil and despair,“You may think this is a victory because you saved a few humans, but I assure you it is not. We already have the broken crown, and our time is drawing near. Come! Come my children!”

  It turned as if to lead the dours back through the portal.

  Like water, the cornered superdours rose onto their not-quite-feet and slithered and oozed around the edges of the room. Henrik could feel the energy of the whole room change and cool, and he felt hot fury rise up in his chest in response.

  He was not going to leave the bleak to escape unscathed with its evil army. Not while he had a drop of power in him. He reared up and spread his wings. He didn’t have Gwen’s words in his head
any longer, but he could still feel the power that she had given him.

  Before Trey or Rez could react, he was charging forward.

  There wasn’t room for actual flight, but a powerful leap closed the space between them and Henrik was pouncing and weaving a spell and shrieking all at once.

  The superdours shivered and the bleak looked up at Henrik’s attack in surprise and dismay before it shivered into smoke—just as Henrik’s counterspell closed the portal, slicing it—and the sword it was holding—in half.

  The superdours howled and broke down, demoralized, as Trey hit half of them with his flame and Rez stampeded straight into the fray, blue light flickering from his striking hooves. Henrik, reaching into his remaining power reserves, spun another spell like a web of glowing strands that settled over the shades and trapped them together as he squeezed his will onto them.

  They screamed and slithered, but his net was too tight to escape, and with his shieldmates at his side, their own magic concentrated on the captured creatures, they slowly dissolved each of them into a puff of smoke and a pile of ash.

  Henrik did not note the silence in the room until Trey touched him with human hands, drawing him back from the constricted web of ash and memories.

  “Are they gone for good?” Gwen asked behind him, “or did they just dissolve in that way they do?”

  “They are gone,” Trey said confidently.

  Henrik turned and shifted in one move to find that Gwen was leaning heavily between Daniella and Heather. There was blood on the side of her face.

  “My key!” he said in agony. “Are you hurt?”

  “No more than you’d expect from a baseball bat to the head,” Gwen said flippantly. “I was able to distract him with voices in his head questioning his manhood, so it wasn’t as solid a hit as it could have been.”

  Henrik swept her up into his arms as gently as he could manage and clung to her desperately. “My key,” he murmured into her short hair.

  “I wasn’t sure any of it would work,” she said dazedly. “But it was all I could do.”

  “Should we take her to a doctor?” Daniella asked anxiously.

  “Excuse me?”

  Henrik had managed to forget about the warded humans. He hastily dropped the ward.

  “Gas leak!” Heather said at once, as loud as she could. “There’s a gas leak! That’s why you’re all feeling so woozy and disoriented! You should get into the fresh air!”

  Trey and Rez began herding the humans out into the winter night.

  “What am I doing here?”

  “Is it snowing?”

  “Where are we?”

  “What happened to the shop?”

  “Oh geez,” Gwen groaned. “We’re going to have to explain this to Ansel again.”

  30

  Ansel took the news of another battle in his second hand shop with much more grace than Gwen would have managed. Most of the glassware that they had laboriously wrapped for storage had been broken in the battle, and many of the shelves had been smashed. “You can help me with the insurance paperwork,” he said with resignation. “And buy me a case of beer. And someone else can make dinner tonight. And also, we should open a bottle of wine.”

  Fabio made slow nervous laps and Vesta leapt up into an unclaimed chair, shivering anxiously. Socks made one foray into the room, decided it was too crowded for her tastes, and left with her tail up.

  The broken tip of the sword that had remained behind on their side of the portal had drained of its black color, but Henrik took no chances with it, laying a sparkling yellow light over it that faded away to nothing. He explained that it was a ward and also started to cast a protection on the whole house, but then stopped in confusion. “It’s already warded,” he said in surprise.

  “Robin?” Trey guessed.

  “Yes,” Henrik said, his eyes closed. “I think so. It is a circle, and it did not include the corner of the garage where the sword was resting. Probably it would have never activated if it had been hung with the others.”

  Gwen was sitting on the living room couch wrapped in an afghan, barely able to hear their conversation. When she tried to struggle out of the blanket that Henrik had wrapped her in, she found it unexpectedly complicated. Henrik returned with a frown while she was trying to find an end.

  “I’m not hurt that bad,” she said, still struggling for freedom. “Rez said I was fine and used his sparkly unicorn magic. Look, symmetrical pupils! He said so!”

  Henrik kissed between her eyes and tucked the blanket around her more firmly.

  “You gave me all of your power,” he chided her. “You should never have done that.”

  “I had no idea what I was doing,” Gwen said with a tired chuckle. The couch deflected as Henrik sat down and she sagged armlessly into his side. “I think I can do a better job next time. I wasn’t sure how much it would take, and I didn’t want to skimp. If I hadn’t gotten clobbered in the head, I think that I’d have been able to recharge and feed the power to you more continuously like the others do.”

  “It was a worthy sally,” Trey said admiringly. “Your directions were quite clear and turned the tide of the battle swiftly.”

  “You were an admirable director,” Rez agreed, laying one hand over his chest and bowing his head.

  Gwen squirmed, as much as she could with the blanket pinning her. “It wasn’t that much.”

  “How did you do it?” Daniella wanted to know, bringing in wineglasses on a tray. “None for you,” she chided Gwen, who pouted and subsided into her cocoon. “We have sparkling cider for the head injury.”

  “Rez miracled me,” Gwen protested. “Symmetrical pupils!” Her head didn’t exactly throb any more, but she still felt a headache lurking behind her eyes, so she didn’t argue much. “You know how I thought the only thing I was good at was karate? Well, I neglected the fact that I’m a pretty kick-ass game player. I didn’t figure that was worth anything, you know? But once I started to think about that, I could...sort of imagine everything around me in gaming terms and it all fell into place. Help, I’m stuck.”

  Henrik obligingly unwrapped her and propped her up so she could take her glass of cider.

  “It was very impressive,” Daniella said, passing out the other glasses.

  “And a little unnerving,” Heather admitted. “It was like being...texted in the brain.”

  “I liked having your words inside my head,” Henrik said. Gwen wondered if he didn’t sound a little smoldery and she started to take a sip of her cider.

  “No, no, we have to toast!” Daniella said.

  “Toast!” Trey agreed.

  “What does this have to do with crisp bread?” Henrik wanted to know.

  “A toast is a salute,” Rez explained. “We lift our drink and celebrate a win, respect a comrade, or express gratitude.”

  “The bleak said it wasn’t a victory,” Gwen remembered abruptly. “It said that they already had the broken crown.”

  She felt terrible as soon as she said it and the mood of the room abruptly dampened.

  “What does that mean?” Heather asked softly.

  Trey shook his head. “I don’t know. The crown fell long before we came into our power. Robin told us that the crown had ruled our world in peace and harmony for untold years before Cerad betrayed the kingdom and broke it, but he never told us exactly what happened to it.”

  Gwen unconsciously snuggled closer to Henrik’s side and saw Daniella and Heather both draw closer to their knights. Ansel, standing by himself, stared into his wineglass.

  “To the broken crown,” Rez suggested, raising his drink.

  “To Gwen, who really came through as a key!” Heather said, eager to brighten the room.

  “To Henrik,” Trey added. “Our shieldmate.”

  “To all of us,” Henrik protested, mimicking their toast.

  “To insurance,” Ansel said wryly.

  “To Robin,” Rez said mournfully, and everyone took a long sip of their drinks and thought
about the empty places that the fable usually filled.

  “To Tadra, and her key, may we meet them soon,” Daniella said belatedly, and they drank to that, too.

  They finished their wine and talked quietly about nothing while Heather made a quick dinner of spaghetti and garlic toast.

  The meal was cheerful and relieved. Henrik agreed that garlic toast was a marvelous improvement on regular toast.

  Afterwards, everyone crowded into the kitchen to help with the cleaning. When Gwen tried to get up and help, Henrik insisted that she sit, so she remained at the table in the dining room, listening to the quiet chatter from the kitchen. Fabio came in and made a circle of the room, but swiftly decided that Gwen had nothing worth begging for.

  Robin’s little chair and personal table were still set up on top of the dining room table. It was already December, somehow, and the veil between worlds would already be thinning. But they’d gotten rid of the superdours, and it would take time for the bleak to make a new army of them.

  Henrik came back into the dining room and knelt at her feet. “My Gwen,” he said adoringly.

  Gwen looked down at his soft curls and broad shoulders and pondered at how weird and how wonderful her life was. “I love you, Henrik,” she said quietly, and when he looked up at her with his golden eyes filled with affection and joy, she felt like her heart might overflow.

  Her life wasn’t at all what she’d feared when she first agreed to follow Robin through the portal; she wasn’t trapped with someone she was forced to feel things for. She was head over heels for this man because they were perfect for each other. Like two magnets. Like destiny. “You want to head upstairs a little early?” she suggested. “I’m pretty tired…”

  Mischief flashed in Henrik’s eyes. “I understand that you aren’t supposed to go to sleep with a head injury,” he said leadingly.

  “I wasn’t thinking about sleep,” Gwen whispered.

  Henrik rose to his feet and swept Gwen into his arms in one smooth motion. Gwen clung to him and laughed. “I can walk!” she protested. “I didn’t get hit in the legs!”