“Easy, don’t panic.” The older man’s voice
exuded calm, and had the grandmother not stepped out around him and taken the
defensive position, Gregory would have assumed this male was the leader. Not
so, judging by the older woman’s body language. She held her quarterstaff
horizontal before her, her arms relaxed.
“Gran, what’s going on?” Lillian sounded
bewildered.
The old woman cleared her throat. “Lillian,
it will be alright. I’ll explain everything.”
All the while the old woman talked with
Lillian, her sharp eyes searched the shadows where Gregory stood.
He scented her summoning magic. Like wood
smoke, it tickled his nose with its pleasant, warm odor. The runes on the staff
faded for a moment as her eyes took on an unfocused look. After a moment, her gaze
sharpened and she scanned the area to either side of him, then above his head.
She smiled.
Interesting. She’d found him by seeking the
void her magic couldn’t penetrate. Clever woman. His estimate of her crept up
another notch.
“Lillian, I know this is very strange and
you have a lot of questions”—the old woman didn’t look away from Gregory’s
direction while she calmed Lillian—“but I need you to focus for me now.” The
old woman put force behind her words. “I need you to tell me what happened. Are
you aware there is another creature here?”
Lillian stopped worrying at his ward, her
expression transforming from annoyance to uncertainty as she realized he might
have tricked her in some way. He smelled her rising fear.
“I was cornered by strangers. They weren’t
human. They hunted me.” She paused, likely trapped in her recent memories. “I
ran, hoping to lose them in the maze, but they found me by scent. Something
there stopped them, a power in the stones. But the pale man named Alexander did
something to the ring of stones and they erupted. Shrapnel flew in all directions.
I was hit . . . I heard your voice telling me to wake the gargoyle. I tried,
but I’d lost so much blood, and my tree was bleeding. I felt death coming.” The
flood of words issuing from Lillian choked off. She drew a shaking breath.
Gregory’s wings unfurled with the urge to
comfort. Lillian’s need almost swayed him from his mission. Instead, he used
the distraction to stalk the group.
“Lillian, it’s alright. Tell us the rest.”
The old woman’s voice soothed like the night breeze, calming, reassuring. It
nearly swayed Gregory into answering the woman himself. With a shake, he broke
away from the older woman’s subtle spell.
Lillian continued in a daze. “I was dying.
All I could think was I must reach the gargoyle. And I did. He . . . he came
alive. I felt the stone warm under my hand. I thought my soul was leaving my
body.” Her voice shook. “I blacked out the moment I touched him. Later, I awoke
on the kitchen table.”
Following the long shadows cast by the tree
trunks, Gregory circled the small group and came up behind the grandmother.
When he stood on two legs again, he exhaled across the back of her neck. She
stiffened, but no other sign betrayed her fear. He grinned, his lips curling
back from his muzzle with humor, pleased she’d not seen him move. The woman’s
scent was clean, free of evil’s taint. Good. He would not need to kill her.
“I know it’s unnerving that only Lillian
can see the gargoyle, but let him get your scent,” the older woman said, her
words a blunt order. “Do nothing he will perceive as a threat to Lillian.”
Gregory moved on to the middle-aged man
next. As he scented along the human’s arm, the man flinched. Gregory continued
until he was certain he could detect no evil upon the man. The one called Jason
chose that moment to shift his quarterstaff from one hand to the other in a
nervous fashion.
“Shit. Are we going to stand here all
afternoon until he decides to eat us?”
“Jason, hold your tongue,” the grandmother
said.
“This really bites—”
“Jason, be quiet!” Lillian shouted from her
position on the porch. “And listen to Gran for once.”
The male held his position next to the
vehicle, but his sour expression said he wasn’t happy about it.
“I swear, if the invisible beastie sniffs
my crotch, I’m—” The male bit off his sentence as Gregory exhaled a lungful of
air across the human’s forehead, blowing his fine brown hair straight back. The
human jumped away with a yelp. There was no darkness upon this one either, so
Gregory left him to dance in place. The human whirled one way and then the
other, flapping his arms like a startled goose.
Gregory dropped to all fours and started
toward the last human, who had backed some distance away from the vehicle. When
pale blue eyes followed the motion of his strides, Gregory realized this man
could see him.
He mantled his wings and allowed the wind
to catch at the membranes until they unfurled. Destructive magic bled between
the membranes in a blue-white sheet in obvious threat. Still the blond-haired
human showed no fear. Instead, his features were frozen in a look of awed disbelief.
Slowly, his look altered as it changed to belief, and then subtle hope.
The breeze shifted, carrying the stranger’s
scent. Clean, like spring’s return after a long winter, a hint of loam and wild
forests. This was no human.
He paced closer and studied this new
creature while he circled. Ah, he recognized what the man was now. Another
surprise in an unusual day, but he had greater concerns, like when the Riven
would return to threaten his lady again.
Dismissing the other immortal, Gregory
turned back toward the old woman. The scent of crushed grass and the sounds of
footfalls coming up behind him served as his only warning. Had the blond-haired
male cared to tread more quietly, he might have succeeded in disguising his
approach. Gregory turned to confront his opponent and the smaller immortal
collided with his chest. The man’s ribs cracked at the impact.
Driven by his crazed need, the injury
didn’t faze the smaller male. He smashed a fist into the scratch marks on
Gregory’s upper arm. The smaller male grunted and cradled his fist against his
chest, but whatever pain the injury caused was quickly forgotten when he
spotted the dark smudge coating his damaged hand—gargoyle blood. The
blond-haired male’s expression changed to one of rapture.
Gregory growled, more in annoyance than
pain. He licked at his wound before any other magic-starved beast decided
attacking a gargoyle was a good idea. A minor wave of weakness shivered down
his wings as the other male began siphoning magic through the link of Gregory’s
blood.
“I’m sorry,” the male said. “So many years
surrounded by death. Death coming closer with each turning of the seasons. I
couldn’t continue like this.”
“You might have asked.”
“And you might have said no.”
The gargoyle couldn’t fault him for his
reasoning. In this magic-starved land, he might not have wished to waste magic
on someone he didn’t know when Lillian might have need of it at any moment. But
now he couldn’t stop the other from feeding without killing him.
“How long have you been trapped in this
form?”
“Centuries.”
Gregory, about to award the other with a
suitable punishment for the theft of his blood and magic, decided anything he
thought up would pale in comparison to what the other male had just done to
himself. Besides, it might prove useful to have another immortal to help guard
the Sorceress. There couldn’t be many other immortals he could trust in this
strange land.
“It will hurt to shed your human form. Your body won’t
remember its true shape after all this time.”
“I don’t care,” the smaller male whispered
between clenched teeth. “If I live, I shall never again allow a woman to
bewitch me into another form.”
The gargoyle snorted. That promise wasn’t
likely to live long, knowing what he did about this one’s kind.
“This is going
to hurt. Perhaps more than you realize. Many lives ago, when my lady was born
into a dragon body, I spent much of that life as a dragon since shapeshifting
wasn’t one of her gifts. As I recall, when I periodically returned to my true
form, it was exceedingly painful.”
“Thanks,” the stranger hissed. “Might I
learn the name of the gargoyle who is returning me to my true form?”
He remembered Lillian’s wicked smile, and
hesitated a moment before answering the stranger. “My Mistress named me Gregory
Livingstone.”
“Gregory . . . Livingstone? Seriously?
That’s not a name, that’s a walking pun.” The other’s laugh was cut short by a
gasp as a wave of pain rolled across his features. “Poor bastard, what did you
do to piss her off?”
If the stranger would have said more,
Gregory never knew. The body of the smaller male began to glow. A pale light
hovered above his skin, like a thick mist. Then his bones began to grow and
shift under his too-tight skin. It split and his moans turned to screams. In an
act of mercy the fool probably didn’t deserve, Gregory placed his talons on the
male’s forehead and commanded him to sleep. The smaller male lost consciousness
a moment later. Quiet returned to the yard and he turned to seek his lady.
Lillian watched him with an expression of
horror, like he’d expect to see if he’d eaten her beloved brother. He didn’t
know what he’d done to earn such a look. He glanced over his shoulder to the
body laying a few feet from where he stood. It continued its change, and was
quite hideous to behold. Surely not. She must realize this wasn’t his fault.
The fool had stolen his blood. It was out of his hands.
Her look of horror changed to one of rage .
. . oh, perhaps she did believe him responsible. Stupid, magic-starved
unicorns. Unfortunately, killing this one would be a waste of magic so he let
the equine continue to drink from the well of his power.
“Jason, no!” The old woman’s warning wasn’t
necessary. Jason’s progress was reminiscent of a wounded deer crashing through
thick undergrowth. Gregory whirled around, realizing as he did the human could
see him and was heading directly toward him. He was weaker than he thought if
the unicorn had already drank enough of his magic that he couldn’t hide himself
in shadow. Seconds later, the human was upon him, swinging a quarterstaff, and
Gregory didn’t have time to worry.
Jason swept the quarterstaff at Gregory’s
legs, forcing him to leap out of the way. While still in the air, he snapped
his tail around the human’s quarterstaff. With an abrupt heave, he tugged the
human off balance. Jason cursed. In an agile move, the human twisted in midair
and landed a kick to Gregory’s ribs. Then the youngling released his hold on
the quarterstaff and lunged away.
“There was no evil within him,” Jason
cried. “He was my friend.” Drawing his knife, he continued to circle.
Gregory rubbed at his abused ribs and
tracked the human with narrowed eyes. So far he’d been gentle on this human
because the Sorceress would be angry if he damaged her brother, but he was
starting to care less about niceties as his annoyance of this strange land and
its people grew. First, he’d been attacked by the creatures of darkness, then
by a crazed unicorn, and now a cocky human child challenged him. This was an
odd realm.
Jason came at him again.
“Enough!” Gregory snarled. He grabbed the
human by the shoulders and lifted him into the air. He jerked the dagger from
Jason’s hand and flung it away. Then, uncaring if he clawed the fool of a human
to shreds, Gregory roughly turned him until he was suspended upside down above
where the unicorn rested, exhausted from the change, but whole.
“
Not
—
my
—
doing
.”
Gregory punctuated each word by shaking the human. “He stole my magic. To stop
him would have killed him. He did this to himself. But if you continue, I will
damage you. Mortal, do you understand me?”
“Yes,” Jason moaned.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” He sounded weaker. “I think I’m
going to be sick.”
Gregory deposited the human on the ground
next to his unicorn friend. They were both crazy. It might be contagious.
Turning, he ran into Lillian. She glanced beyond him to the unicorn, concern
drawing her eyebrows together.
“What did you do to him, and why?”
“I did nothing. He stole my blood so he
could return to his true form. Did you not know your brother’s friend was a
unicorn?”
She mouthed his words, and then shook her
head, looking lost. Her skin was paler than before, and he worried shock was
setting in. His suspicions were confirmed when she started to shiver. He pulled
her closer until her smaller frame was a solid line against his side, and then
wrapped a wing around her shoulders. She leaned into his warmth and didn’t look
up at her grandmother’s approach.
“Forgive my grandson and his friend,
ancient one,” Lillian’s grandmother said. An elegant bow accompanied her formal
greeting. “You may call me Vivian, and as you can guess by the evil you’ve
already discovered, these have been trying years for everyone. But let there be
peace between us, and let us share food and histories. There are dangers which
must be explained.”
He didn’t miss how she glanced worriedly at
Lillian, but he didn’t question her further. There would be time for inquiries
later. For now, he was more concern about Lillian. She was so small, fragile
even, and she’d been so close to death when he’d first woke, no wonder she was
now on the edge of shock. She’d suffered much trauma in the last day. There was
also her hamadryad tree to think of, but the tree was safe for now. He’d see to
her healing tomorrow.