Sorceress Awakening
Sorceress Awakening
A Gargoyle and Sorceress Novel: Book 1
By Lisa Blackwood
Sorceress Awakening © 2016 by Lisa Smeaton
Previously published as Stone’s Kiss
1
st
Ebook Edition November 2011
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, and
characters are the product of the author's imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actually persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or
distributed in any print or electronic form without author's permission. Please
do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation
of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Edited by Beth Balmanno
http://www.bythebookediting.com/
Cover Art Design
by Heather Senter
http://www.bookcoverartistry.com/
Other books
by
Lisa Blackwood
Gargoyle and
Sorceress (was the Avatars series)
Sorceress
Found
(A prequel short story)
Sorceress
Awakening
(was Stone’s Kiss)
Sorceress
Rising (was Stone’s Song)
Sorceress
Hunting (was Stone’s Divide)
Sorceress at
War (Forthcoming Fall 2016)
In
Deception’s Shadow
Maiden’s Wolf
Death’s Queen
City of Burning
Water (Forthcoming Fall 2017)
Ishtar’s Chosen
Blade’s Honor
(forthcoming)
A
Dark Fate
As a child, a near-drowning accident stole
Lillian’s old life. Her new life began the moment she awoke at the foot of a
brooding, stone gargoyle.
Years later, Lillian still finds comfort in
Gregory, her gargoyle, never guessing he is more than cold stone until demonic
creatures called the Riven attack. Gregory senses her terror and wakes from his
healing sleep.
After the battle, Lillian learns the humans she
thought were her family are a powerful coven of witches at war with the Riven.
Lillian is something more than human, a powerful worker of magic, an Avatar to
the gods. Gregory has been her protector for many lifetimes, but troubles in
their homeland forced him to flee with her to the human world. And it wasn’t an
accident which stole her memories—it was Gregory. He suspects Lillian is host
to an infant demon, one capable of evil greater than the Riven.
Despite everything, Lillian fears she’s falling
in love with her guardian. While she might be able to defeat the Riven with
Gregory’s help, she doesn’t know if her fragile new love can survive the evil
growing in her own soul.
1
Lillian smoothed the oiled rag down the
length of her grandmother’s broadsword and frowned at the newly polished blade.
“He’s stone. Just a damned statue,” she
muttered to the empty kitchen. “Stone, nothing more.”
The microwave’s clock glowed pale green in
the dim light. Not really wanting to know the exact time, she avoided focusing
on the digits and returned to sweeping the rag across the blade in a rhythmic motion.
“I don’t . . .”
Love him?
Was I really going to say that?
Oh God, yes.
Tension built behind her eyes and little
flashes sparked in her vision, promising one hell of a headache in the making.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. It didn’t help.
The scent of rich, warm coffee reached her
a few seconds before the sound of gurgling announced the coffeemaker was
finished. Lillian welcomed the distraction. After a few more swipes of the rag,
she set the sword aside.
Polishing her grandmother’s entire sword
collection had seemed like a suitable task when she’d jerked awake from a
nightmare at some ungodly hour before dawn and couldn’t get back to sleep.
Normally nightmares and insomnia didn’t plague her, but there was something
new—a restlessness which reared its head every night just as the stars faded
and the first pink tinted the sky with a hint of dawn. Only one thing calmed
the restlessness—sitting with
him
, her stone gargoyle.
But she couldn’t spend every moment sitting
in her glade with a glorified garden ornament. To prevent herself from seeking
a statue’s company, she slipped into the bathroom instead of the direction her
heart craved.
She splashed cold water on her face for
several moments. When she worked up the nerve to look in the mirror, a woman
with dark circles under her eyes stared back. Even the golden light of dawn
didn’t make her look any less haggard.
All the signs pointed to the same
problem—the inability to sleep, polishing her grandmother’s sword collection in
the middle of the night, wanting to spend hour after hour with a stone statue
under the shadow of her favorite tree, a growing dependence on coffee—yep,
she’d lost her mind.
Back in the kitchen, the solitude
registered heavier now that her hands weren’t busy. Mechanically, she wandered
over to the coffee pot and filled the largest mug she could find.
She was just putting the cream back when
she noticed one of her grandmother’s dog-eared romances sitting on top of the
fridge, half-hidden under a pile of junk mail.
Taking a sip of her coffee, she eyed the
romance. It was one of those hormones-take-notice, blush-inducing covers,
complete with drops of water cascading down the hero’s picture-perfect chest.
Gran always claimed a little escapism never hurt anyone. With a grin, Lillian
tucked the paperback under her arm. As an afterthought, she scooped up her cell
phone on her way to the back door.
Outside, the air, crisp with a hint of last
night’s fog, greeted her nose. She loved when the fog was beginning to burn
away in the sun. Clean, fresh—it was one of her favorite scents. Gravel
crunched under her shoes as she walked the twisting garden path. A cedar maze
with twelve-foot-tall walls stretched out before her.
A few feet ahead, a tan-and-brown blur
streaked across the gravel path, its tail pointed to the sky, and darted
between the green cedar walls. As she followed the resident chipmunk deeper
into the living corridors, her earlier worries fell away.
Reaching the maze’s middle, she came to a
small clearing ringed by upright waist-high stones. At its center, a juvenile redwood
grew strong and proud, dwarfing its surroundings. Ten feet from the tree’s
trunk, a stone statue lurked, partially concealed by dense shadows.
He crouched over his stone perch with a
knee resting on the pedestal and his wings mantled around him like a vast
cloak. While his one hand rested on his raised knee, his other arm gripped his
side in a rather odd position for a sculpture. It saddened her a little, for
there was a narrowness about his squinted eyes and a crease in his brow that
hinted at pain. Interestingly, he didn’t look beaten. His shoulders were broad,
head proud, legs corded with muscle, strength and majesty in his every line.
“Hello, old friend.” She looked up into his
face, with its burly muzzle and curving fangs. His muzzle merged flawlessly
into wide cheekbones. Large eyes were hooded by a broad forehead. Crowning his
head were two massive horns that curved back and up like an African
Waterbuck’s. A thick mane of hair flowed in a stony river midway down his back.
The gargoyle was one of her first childhood
memories. At the age of eight, after a near-drowning accident stole her
memories, she’d been drawn to the stone statue as if he was pivotal to her
survival. She’d always assumed her strange need to be near him was a result of
her childhood trauma. Now she wasn’t so sure.
She brushed a few spider webs and tree
needles from his pedestal. Then, like she’d done since childhood, she climbed
up the pedestal to settle upon the gargoyle’s knee. While he was a little cold
and hard, he still made a good chair. She opened the book and leaned back
against his arm.
* * *
Lillian jerked awake to the dual sounds of her
cell phone chirping and her book crunching against the gravel. Her heel slipped
off the edge of the pedestal, and with a desperate grab at a stone arm, she avoided
joining her book on the ground.
“Insomnia . . . going to break my neck . .
. my own damn fault.”
She grumbled while she climbed down and
hunched over to pick up her book and the now silent cell phone. Straightening,
she realized she’d slept half the morning away. So much for the work she’d
planned to get done. She tapped the phone and listened to the voicemail.
“Sorry, sis.” Her brother’s voice was tinny
because of the cell phone’s bad reception. “Our flight was delayed again,
imagine that. Gran says she trusts you to hold down the fort and that our call
has absolutely nothing to do with her worries about how the contractors are
likely running roughshod over you. Heck, personally, I think the spa could be
twice as big.” There was a surprised sounding grunt and then Jason’s voice
became muffled on the message. It sounded like there may have been a fight for
possession of the phone. Then, laughter in his voice, he came back on. “Gran
says not to kill yourself cleaning house. Anyway, see you way later. Bye.”
Shaking her head at her family’s
eccentricities, she supposed everyone thought their family odd. But surely,
Lillian’s was stranger than most. Well, at least the delay would give her a
chance to hang the sword collection back on the wall and get the rest of the
house in order before Gran and Jason returned.
* * *
With a final pat of the maze’s cedar walls,
she exited her sanctuary. Three steps later, she skidded to a halt. A stranger
dressed in a gray business suit strolled along the garden path to her left.
Hands clasped behind his back, he studied the perennials on either side of him.
Occasionally, patrons from her family’s spa
would wander over into the private gardens, but the spa was closed, undergoing
renovations. Besides, this man looked out of place. Alarm hummed through her
veins and sweat began trickling down her spine.
Lillian eased back toward the walls of the
maze just as the lone man raised a hand in greeting. The gesture was normal
enough. She relaxed a bit and waited for him.
He’d almost reached her side when she heard
the crunch of many feet on gravel coming from the path to her right.
She whirled around as more strangers
emerged from around a big, ground-sweeping magnolia. There were nine of them:
five men and four women. She didn’t know who they were or what they wanted, but
every last one of them stalked forward with the smooth grace of predators as they
arranged themselves in a semicircle in front of her.
Lillian backed up, but there was nowhere to
run except into the green leafy corridors behind her.
The maze which had always sheltered her
from childhood fears wouldn’t keep her safe from real danger.