Heart of Stone by Christine Warren Page B

this realm.”
    “So you fight the demons and banish them. The Wardens keep watch and call you when they slip away from wherever they go in the meantime. You wake up and banish them again, and it’s some kind of never-ending cycle?”
    “Put simply, yes.”
    “So how do they keep finding their way back here? Can’t you banish them permanently?”
    “They are powerful. And cunning. And there are those who would seek to aid in their return.”
    Ella felt her eyes widen. “Humans?”
    Kees nodded.
    She shook her head and tried to wrap her mind around that concept. Were there really human beings out there who would want the ultimate evil to be unleashed into the world? Okay, she told herself, dumb question. Of course there were. But why on earth would anyone want to do that? Who would want to do that?
    “Just like the Guardians are served by the Guild of Wardens, the Darkness draws to it servants of its own. They are known as the Order of Eternal Darkness. We call them the nocturnis .”
    “And these are humans who … what? Aid and abet the Seven demons?”
    “They serve the Darkness in any way they can. They attempt to summon the Seven forth from their prisons, and if they succeed, they work to feed the demons and make them stronger. Ultimately, they hope to free all Seven at once and see them unite once more into the Darkness.”
    “I don’t understand. Why try to help something that has no purpose other than to wipe out life as we know it? I mean, eventually it’s going to run out of innocent people to kill and turn on its own allies, right? Isn’t that the definition of pure evil?”
    Kees shrugged, his expression stony. In more ways than one. “They seek power, and they naïvely believe that the Darkness will give it to them. For a time, they may be correct, but ultimately, even they will be consumed.”
    “Well, duh.”
    The gargoyle’s mouth quirked.
    Ella took a moment to think. When they first took their seats, she had expected Kees to explain what the energy they both sensed in the gallery of his Warden’s house had meant. She hadn’t been expecting a more in-depth lecture on what he and his Warden had been created to protect against.
    But she was coming to understand that the gargoyle was a supremely logical creature. If he believed this was what she needed to know first, he had a very good reason for drawing that conclusion.
    “Are you trying to tell me that that stuff, the icky stuff I sensed in the gallery earlier … Did that stuff mean this Order of Eternal Darkness had been inside Gregory’s house?”
    Kees fixed his black gaze on her, his expression grave. “That ‘stuff’ was magic, but Dark magic, the kind used by the nocturnis and their masters.”
    Ella shuddered. And here she’d been afraid of her own magic all these years. Compared to that nasty, black ooze, her own uncontrolled surges of blue-white energy seemed like fresh water in contrast to sewer sludge.
    “Do you think the Order—the nocturnis .” She corrected herself. “Do you think they killed your Warden?”
    “I am certain of it.”
    She wrapped her arms around herself and bit her lip. The expression on the gargoyle’s face had barely shifted since he resumed this form, but Ella could see tension and anger in the banked flames in his eyes.
    “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry he’s dead, and not just because he can’t help answer all those questions you wanted to ask him. Were you … close?”
    His huge head shook side to side. “We met and spoke only once, at the ritual where he took up the mantle of his father’s position as Warden. Since then, there has been no grave threat. I slept uninterrupted until now. But that I knew him only slightly is of no consequence. He was mine.”
    Ella heard steel behind the words, or maybe it was stone. Either way, she knew Kees would find justice for his fallen comrade. She found herself wanting that for Kees. Maybe if she concentrated on what she wanted