Free Guardian: Darkness Rising by Melanie Houtman Page A

dungeon – where any necessary changes to the way the
Master’s body had been put away had been made.
    The stone would temporarily be able to pass
through the barrier that kept all Dark Magic inside the four stone
walls of the cell, which meant James had to go first.
    He was the one that carried the stone, and
would be the one to place it on the Master’s brooch – exactly the
way Mari had explained how to do it.
    The Master’s instructions had been
oddly specific – Mari hadn’t noticed how specific they actually
were until she’d recited them to James. That stone must’ve been
very important to the Master somehow.
    James, however, was more worried
about the consequences this would have; the Spirits reassured him
that the Master would be powerless when he’d be resurrected – but
now the time had come to do it, James felt as if he’d rushed his
plan – he should’ve thought it through. Antonio was right; this was
a bad idea – but there was no going back now.
    James walked forward toward the Master’s now
opened coffin, and placed the stone inside the small, silver mould
on Master’s brooch that exactly matched the stone’s shape. The
stone was now exactly above the Master’s heart – it’d only be a
matter of time until he’d wake up; weak, chained, and ready to be
killed.
    But his awakening went different than anyone
who was present in that cell would’ve expected. Dark fog seemed to
float around the cell for a moment, and the stone got a bright red
glow as it reacted to the newfound heartbeat.
    As he sat up inside the coffin,
the Master grinned a vampire smile at the redhead who’d just
resurrected him. He spoke with the same spine-chilling voice as if
he’d never stopped speaking
    “ Oh, James, you shouldn’t have
done that.”
    That was the only sentence to
escape the Master’s lips before he did the same – with a single
wave of his hand, the Master evaporated in black smoke – leaving
James behind in the cell that had been designed to keep the Master
detained, his face pale and his eyes shocked.

 
    Whatever it
Takes
    “ Mum?”
    James had left three children
behind. Bella had left behind one. Theo, Ian and Emma were missing
a brother and a father – Mia was missing a brother and a
mother.
    As promised, the kids had spent time with each
other during the days their parents were gone – although Jaqueline
and Jacob, Daisy’s older sister and brother, couldn’t be there, as
they were in college.
    The four kids didn’t like to sit inside, but
the weather had left them with no other option, as on the morning
the Guardians had left it had begun raining, and the thick drops of
water still hadn’t stopped falling.
    And now, they were sitting in the living room
of the Riverdale house, curled up on the couch and watching TV. For
the first time in a day, Emma had finally opened her
mouth.
    “ Yes, Emma?” Anna answered her
daughter.
    Emma looked up, directing her blue eyes at her
mother. “What was it like when you were a teenager, when Dad
‘disappeared’ for the first time?”
    Anna let out a small chuckle. She knew that
question would come, but that still didn’t mean she knew how to
answer it. “That’s... quite the question, Emma,” she said. “It was
mostly... difficult.”
    “ Difficult as in how?” Ian asked.
“Not knowing where he was?”
    Anna nodded. “I did know where he was,”
she told her son. “In fact, after aunt Samira, I was the first one
your father told about his concerns. I was the one who made the
suggestion of the fairytale being a reality.” She paused and let
out a sad chuckle. “I never expected it to be true, though. It
seemed impossible at the time.”
    Ian and Theo looked at each other;
their parents true were something special. Of course their parents
hadn’t believed at first – but then, when they suddenly found
themselves in neck-deep, they had to. A feeling similar to what the teenagers were
feeling right now, and what Ian assumed Luke and