Guardian (The Protectors Series) Read Free Page A

restarted, but he wasn’t breathing properly.
    “Bag him,” Stefan ordered. At least the heartbeat held, though it was far from steady.
    Edie applied the bag mask and pumped air into Javy’s lungs.
    Stefan looked over his shoulder at Tasha. “Tell Josh to go.”
    He barely felt the helo lift off. “Hang in there,” he told his friend.
    The helo was fast, but would it be fast enough? As Edie started an IV, Stefan melded his magic with Javy’s, doing all he could to keep his friend connected to his body. Still, Stefan couldn’t help remembering more was at stake than one mage’s life.
    The Void demons didn’t have a portal to this world. Or so the mages hoped. However, given the ghouls’ recent improvements in strategy, it seemed obvious they were communicating with Void demons. But how could they do that without a portal?
    Maybe the demons have evolved . Mages had. Why shouldn’t their enemies?
    Because stopping them was hard enough without their gaining new powers. They’d never given up easily. Odds were they’d try again to open a portal and bring plague, terror, and death to Earth.
    If that happened, the world was seriously and totally fucked.
    *  *  *
    Three hours after landing, Stefan stuffed his bloody surgical gown and gloves into the disposal bin. Javy had survived. Now all they could do was wait. At least magic could speed healing, and Stefan’s competent staff would take over that part.
    He glanced at the wall clock. Was it only one thirty in the afternoon? His mind might still be keyed up, but his body felt as though he’d put in a full day’s work.
    He’d called Javy’s wife, Karen, and caught her en route from their north Georgia home. When she arrived, she would want an update, so no use trying to rest. He couldn’t anyway, not after surgery.
    Instead, he wandered up to his office and through the door marked dr. stefan harper, chief physician. The anteroom was empty. His assistant was out, probably at lunch.
    Visitors didn’t see this part of the building. They were restricted to an area rigged to look like a paranormal research lab. The Georgia Institute for Paranormal Research was the cover identity for the mages’ Collegium, the headquarters for the Southeastern U.S. Shire. And wouldn’t there be hell to pay if Mundanes ever learned about that?
    The witch hunts of the seventeenth century, the Burning Times, had graphically demonstrated the lethal folly of letting Mundanes know about mages. Only a small, almost minuscule, few could be trusted with the truth. Open practice of magic was dangerous, and not only to magekind.
    As Stefan had more reason than most to know.
    Even after eighteen years, he still sometimes jolted awake seeing Krista’s pale, dead face. She’d trusted the wrong person, and the situation had blown up in everyone’s faces. Her family and Stefan’s had had to move, and the Northwest Collegium’s memory wipe of the guy she’d unwisely trusted had taken a bit more than intended, despite the mage doctor’s best efforts. Mack, the Mundane bass player in the little band they’d all started together, had lost his music, his math, his hopes for the future. And Krista…hadn’t been able to live with all that.
    As the grief stabbed Stefan’s heart anew, he rubbed his hands over his face. She’d been his best friend, and he’d failed her. If only he’d found her in time.
    He shoved the memory aside and sat at his desk, punching the button for voicemail. Nothing much interesting there, a couple of speaking invitations, an offer to cowrite a paper.
    “Stefan,” the fourth message began in the Wayfarer County sheriff’s familiar, gravelly tone. “It’s Dan Burton. We got an odd murder case here, could use some help. Deceased is missing a lot of blood and has an unknown toxin in what’s left of it.”
    Now, that was intriguing. Stefan focused as the sheriff continued, “Cathy Lamb at GBI recommended you to consult on this, and you work well with my staff. If