Guardians Inc.:Thundersword (Guardians Incorporated #2) by Julian Rosado-Machain Page B

receive an answer; those who try and visit their Keep in Ireland are turned away, and those who try something more than talk disappear.”
    Thomas turned back toward the balcony and a shiver ran down his spine. His heart pounded in his chest as he saw the two silhouettes looking up.
    Directly at him.
    “That's what you get,” Elise elbowed him. “Stop looking at them; they know you're watching.”
    Thomas looked away, “Can we go now?” he asked. The Emerald Knights had given him the creeps.
    “Not just yet,” Elise told him. “Minister Idar made me promise you'd watch this. Look at the entrance.”
    Thomas looked down and saw ten ministers, with Minister Idar at the front of the line, walking toward the central podium. As they approached it, everyone moved to their seats.
    Idar and the other ministers climbed up the stairs to the revolving center and took their seats, leaving the central chair empty. On one side of the chair was Idar, then a horse, a sheep, a pig, and a duck faun. On the other side of the chair were a camel, a goat, a cat, a donkey, and a cow faun. Everyone took their places. Thomas noticed that none of them carried an Azure Legion pendant.
    Idar picked up a gavel and struck three times on a wooden disk. All chatter died out, and all fauns rose from their seats, their heads turning toward the center aisle.
    A figure clad in flowing black robes entered through the door and walked steadily toward her seat. Her feathers weren't white, but matted brown, and her tail was covered with the flowing robe. All heads followed her movements as she climbed the stairs and reached her place of honor in the central chair. She sat down and lifted some papers from her desk with her hands, which, like in all avian fauns, were in the middle of her wings. After a couple of seconds, she nodded at Idar, and after taking an inquisitorial look at the assembly she nodded her head. In unison all ministers sat down on their chairs.
    “That is High Minister Chelyua of the Ochran-Threr,” Elise said.
    Thomas had to accept that he had never seen such a dignified chicken. He had really screwed up by chuckling about her.
          Elise tapped him in the shoulder. “Now we can go.”
          “And the Azure Guard will follow you,” a wheezing voice said from behind, startling them.
          Bolswaithe immediately jumped and grabbed the newcomer. He forcefully pushed him against the wall and placed an arm against his chest. Thomas could only see the man's hands as they grasped at Bolswaithe's arms.
    “There...” the voice was familiar. It paused between words and extended the “s” sound a little bit. “There's no need for violence.”
          “How did you find us?” Bolswaithe demanded. “How did you evade my sensors?”
          Thomas had seen those pointy fingers and those molded nails in his library station. It was the man who had approached with a request for an unnamable book. He was the same man  depicted in the Book of Beasts six centuries ago. It had been Thomas’s first week at work in the library.
          The man had created quite a stir when he had shown up in the library. To this day there was no explanation as to how he had crossed through the Magical and technological security measures of the Mansion and especially the library. The man had been after one of the most forbidding books, Mysteries of the Worm, almost as famous as the Necronomicon and equally dangerous as they contained knowledge of how to summon the Wraith.
          This man had been working with Tasha for a long time and Thomas was sure that he was in great part responsible for Tasha's undoing.
          He was wearing a black, coarse trench coat ragged at the edges and patched with thick strands of leather in more than one place.
          “I go where I'm needed,” the Man in the Trench Coat said through gritted teeth. He ran one long-nailed hand over his bald head, leaving a greasy dark residue that