“Come,” Gran said. “The others are
waiting.”
Lillian returned to herself with a blush. A
large group of complete strangers had gathered around. The gargoyle’s
invisibility magic was an interesting power and one she would have put to use
about now.
She ducked her head, and when Gregory
trailed after Gran, Lillian followed. She didn’t have much choice. Gregory
hadn’t released her hand. She was so focused on not stepping in puddles or
doing something else to embarrass herself, she missed when the crowd of
strangers broke up into smaller groups. They all headed toward the vast
crouched shadow of the abandoned sawmill.
“Is it safe?” Lillian asked. That wasn’t
the real question she wanted to ask, but she didn’t know how to put into words
the sensation of cold fear hovering just below her heart.
“The mill? Yes, of course.” Gran gestured
at the building. “We’ve done some work to the inside, but nothing that would
show on the outside. We don’t want questions.”
Lillian nodded absently. The drumming she’d
heard as they neared was stronger now. Heavy and primal, it called to her.
Gregory released her hand and fell a step behind.
Doors on giant tracks slid open at their
approach. Two men waited on either side of the entrance. Calling them door men
seemed wrong. Each had the intensity of a bouncer mixed with the lean muscle of
a ballet dancer or a martial artist. Whatever they were, they gave off
strength, training, and menace.
Lillian glanced behind to ask Gregory if he
felt whatever hovered in the air around the two men, but her gargoyle had vanished.
She turned her mind inward. Magic answered her summons, vibrating in her lungs
and the pit of her stomach. A moment later she found Gregory. He’d not gone
far. When he finished circling the two men, he returned to her side, still
invisible.
Gran took the lead, her long robes trailing
behind her, quarterstaff held vertical like a walking stick instead of a
weapon. Lillian still found the image of her grandmother carrying a
quarterstaff a strange one. She’d dreamed last night, weird dreams about shadows
lurching among moonlit trees, her grandmother swinging the quarterstaff,
battling something in the shadows. Looking back at the last two days, it was no
wonder she dreamed of strange, frightening things.
Lillian followed in Gran’s shadow as she
entered the old mill. A short trip through a narrow hallway led to another set
of doors. These ones opened onto a landing that overlooked the old mill’s main
work floor. Gran marched down the stairs leading away from the landing. Lillian
lengthened her strides to match the swift pace.
They were crossing through the sawmill’s
old offices when she ‘felt’ the gargoyle drift away from her side a second
time. Scouting, no doubt. He didn’t go far; she could still feel him with the
strange sense that hummed in the pit of her stomach. They’d come to the end of
the row of offices and faced a wall of windows, the glass clouded with dirt and
faded with age. The pulsing was louder here, pressing against her eardrums. She
closed her eyes, feeling the rhythm with her breastbone and in the soles of her
feet.
She broke away from her grandmother and the
rest of the group and paced over to the nearest windowsill. Her heart hammered
in time to the pulse of the drums. Like the slow disbelief of watching a car
wreck, curiosity drew her forward. Condensation fogged the glass. She wiped it
away. The glass was cold against her fingertips. She glimpsed white crystals
and bright flecks of blue as they drifted by the window before it fogged over
again.
Snow? Inside a building?
Using the corner of her shawl, she cleared
the window of fog and dirt. Then blinked. No. Not snow. Tiny flecks of light
swirled through the air, drifting up from a whirlpool of magic below her. There
were dancers moving amid the magic—and they were not human.
Down at ground level, massive wolves,
white-furred elk, small black ponies, and hounds with brown hides and tawny-colored
ears shared the space with hundreds of people. They moved in time to the beat,
driven in frantic circles by the pulse of the drums. A whirlpool created of
living bodies. They spun and whirled, caught in the tidal pull of the circle
dance.
Like the spokes of a galaxy, columns of
dancers bunched closer together at the core before drifting farther apart at
the edges. Those lithe figures at the center were so tightly packed together,
Lillian couldn’t see their features, only the pale glow of magic which
surrounded them. Their swift movements sheared the magic from their bodies,
freeing it to drift up like wind-blown snow.
The wild power touched Lillian on a level
she didn’t understand, frightening her with its seductive call.
Follow,
instinct demanded.
Surrender. Become part of the dance.
Running her hands along the wall, her
fingers sought a way through.
“You might try the door,” Gran said as she
pointed to a doorway a few feet ahead of where Lillian stood.
Lillian lurched into motion, intoxicated by
the power. She grabbed the doorframe while she surveyed the metal stairway
leading down. She hugged the railing, hoping to steady herself long enough to
get control of the rioting emotions swirling through her heart.
The gargoyle came to Lillian, pressing his
body against her back. Peace, love, protection, serenity—his calming and
soothing emotions swamped her, flooding into her mind from where they touched.
‘I
will keep you safe,’
he said in his silent way. She loved him for it in
that moment. No fear. No questions. Just unequivocal acceptance.
Her boot heels clicked against the metal
stairs—she’d possessed enough common sense to leave the matching slippers the
dryads had made at home, instead choosing a tall sturdy pair of boots that
would protect her lower legs from the abuses of the forest. She concentrated on
the sound of her boots’ heavy tread. It helped to ground her scattered
thoughts.
Caught up in the power of the dance,
individuals swept past her and Gregory without noticing the newcomers. A
strange force tried to pull Lillian toward the center of the vast room. When it
couldn’t physically drag her closer, it seeped into her body. The hair on her
arms rose. She shivered at the invasion. The foreign magic flowed through her
blood, and then it receded. As it fled, it took some of her magic with it. She
resisted. It tugged harder at her soul. Panicking, she summoned power of her
own. With claws of magic, she struck out at the threat and shredded the
filaments trying to steal her magic.
The vortex at room’s center shuddered. The
tide of power shifted, snapping from the center of the room toward where she
stood. Dancers lost their rhythm. Drums faltered. The room erupted into chaos.
Cries of alarm and growls of challenge resounded through the air as more people
stilled in their dance. Weapons appeared in hands as the crowd gathered itself,
and as one being, it turned to look at her. Some gazes were fearful, others hostile
and a few curious.
Lillian’s nerve broke. She whirled back to
the stairs, ready to flee, but Gregory in his gargoyle form materialized on the
stairs a step above her. He stopped her with ease, his wings blocking escape. A
muscular arm wrapped around her shoulders and turned her to face the crowd.
Silence claimed the room.
Shock replaced fear on many faces. They
weren’t looking at her. They stared at the gargoyle overshadowing her with his
greater bulk. A memory flashed across her mind, of the unicorn in human shape
when he’d first beheld the gargoyle: a look of shock and wonder, followed by desperate
hunger.
She prayed they weren’t about to get torn
apart by a mob disparate for magic.
“We must fix what we broke,” Gregory
whispered into her mind through the touch of his hands on her arms. “This was a
ceremony of sharing. Had I known what we were walking into, I might have
approached this differently.”
“I screwed up, didn’t I?” She glanced over
her shoulder. Looking at him was better than facing the mob.
“No. How could you know the magic would try
to gather some of your power and share it with this world?” He pushed her from
behind, guiding her back toward the crowd. “Now we shall fix what went wrong
and make the magic stronger than it was before.
“I don’t know how.”
“Follow my lead and embrace your instincts.
They are there, buried under layers of my protection. Look and you will find
them. I will keep you safe.”
She doubted herself, but trusted him, so
when the crowd parted down the middle to let him pass, she followed close at
his heels. He took a long and twisting way to the center of the room, herding
the crowd back into motion. They moved for him, with him, following his subtle
gestures.
He spun in a leisurely circle and the
motion unfurled his wings. The glow of power spread out around him, flaring in
the breeze created by his wings. Stomping his feet in a slow, sideways motion,
he began to move. His tail lashed in time to some unheard rhythm and drums took
up the beat as magic pulsed in the air.
Lillian swayed, uncertain. But Gregory
gestured and called to her with power. Entranced, she took a half-step toward
him, then another. The magic in the room gathered, starting to spin into a
vortex once more. Order slowly defeated chaos, and both crowd and magic moved
to Gregory’s silent commands.
Unable to help herself, she followed as
willingly as the others. She closed her eyes, and guided by sound and the magic
pulsing in her blood, she began to dance a softer counterpoint to his rhythm.
Swaying and whirling around him in loose circles, moving in the opposite
direction to him, she summoned a second larger ring of magic around the vortex.
He increased the pace of his dance as the inner ring shrunk down upon itself.
She danced just beyond the outer expanse of his wings. All the women in the
room, beast and human shaped, echoed her motion.
Then the males took up Gregory’s rhythm,
and followed his lead. Moving in opposite directions, the alternate rings of
dancers spun past each other, driven beyond exhaustion or reason by the rising
current of magic.
She danced so close she could feel the heat
of Gregory’s body, but they never quite touched. He danced in the same manner,
echoing her courtship, following her every movement until the rhythm of the
drums carried him away from her again, only to return that much closer with
each turn. Like a pair of binary stars, they orbited each other—glowing
brighter as they expended magic.
When the rhythm of the dance brushed their
bodies together, she reached out to him, learning his thoughts, communicating
like he did. A sense of purpose, pride in her abilities and that she trusted
him, flowed from his mind to hers. There was heat as well. She accepted it.
Desire simply became part of the dance.
Magic reached a fever pitch within her.
Unable to resist any longer, she stroked the warm silk of his wing membranes,
delighting in the way his wings quivered. When he turned to her, his fierce
gargoyle features had vanished, replaced by human ones. Yet, he still possessed
wings, like he was caught between the two forms. Somehow she’d caused his
change, perhaps against his will, but she wasn’t sure if she cared. Her
fingertips trailed across his chest, over firm muscle and the slight ridge of
his ribs. He caught her hand, stopping its exploring.
“Naughty dryad,” he scolded, but his
accompanying thoughts lacked anger. “This is not part of this dance.”
She watched him through her lashes as the
magic increased another notch. It washed the last rational thoughts from her
mind. He’d said to embrace instinct. She did.
“Then this isn’t part of the dance either.”
She leaned against him, rising to stand on her toes so she could lace her
fingers behind his head. He leaned down at her adamant tugging. After a slight
hesitation, their lips brushed together. She wasn’t sure which of them had
closed the last short span, but she’d hoped it had been him. His lips were warm
and hard under hers. After a few of her gentle nips, he returned her raw
enthusiasm with a breath-stealing passion. With the heat of his body pressed
against hers, she didn’t think, simply enjoyed the feel of his smooth skin
sliding against hers.
His hand dropped to rest on her hip. Even
though he was human, a growl rolled from his chest, shaking her breastbone. He
dragged her closer. Sliding a hand down her thigh, he found the slit in her
dress. His warm fingers settled in the hollow behind her knee, then urged her
thigh up over his hip. She could feel the heat of him through the thin barrier
of her clothing. When their bare skin brushed against each other, she closed
her eyes and shivered at the most delicious sensation.
Shrouding wings cloaked her, hiding them
from view. His lips broke away from hers to trail along the length of her neck.
She arched her back and gripped him harder as he nibbled his way lower. Breath
hissed between her lips. At the sound, another growl escaped him. His one hand
covered her breast and flicked the nipple through the fabric of her dress. She
bit back a groan of pleasure and buried her face against his hair.
Between brushes of his lips along her
throat, he mumbled words too low to hear clearly. One sounded like “forbidden.”
After a few moments he broke away, panting softly. He lowered her to the ground
with reluctance in every line of his body.