“Protect the child. Raise her as your own.”
He hoped she would understand and not panic.
“She will be a great worker of magic, even in this realm with its dwindling
magic. Raise her, guide her, teach her the difference between the paths of
light and dark, but tell her nothing of magic, or of me. Her mind is damaged
from the journey through the Veil. It’s best if she remembers nothing of her
past for now. When I’m strong, I will awaken. In this realm it may take many
seasons before I’m healed enough to awaken on my own.”
“
You
saved my grandson….while you couldn’t save my granddaughter, I’m in your debt.
I shall raise and protect this little one in her place.”
“Your granddaughter is there.”
He pointed to where the small ghost hovered by
the trees. She was already fading. Soon she would make her journey to the
Spirit Realm. “
I still have power enough so you can say goodbye.”
He brought his talons to one of his seeping
wounds and then held out the blood smeared digits to the old woman. She wiped
some off his talon at the same time the ghost appeared at his side. The blood
misted away when the ghost touched it.
Under the glow of moonlight, the ghost grew
solid once more.
He regarded the grandmother. “
You have until
the first gray light of dawn, and then the magic in my blood will fade and your
loved one will pass on. Find a fire to warm the boy or he will make the journey
with the girl.”
“My humblest thanks, Lord Gargoyle. Our home is
near,” the old woman said, grief a raw edge in her tone. She gestured him
forward. “Come, you are safe with us. I prepared a place for you in my garden
as my dream advised.”
He followed, his mind already closing in upon
its self. As his body shut down, his heart rate slowed, blood became sluggish
in his veins.
Stumbling through shadows, he encountered a
well-tended garden surrounding a cottage. At its center, two small rings of
standing stones circled a large flat pedestal. So exposed. It wouldn’t have
been his first choice for a long stone sleep, but his body gave him no
alternative.
He made it to the pedestal and managed to perch
upon its snow covered surface. His thoughts strayed to the Sorceress a final
time. Finding this family, the grandmother’s mention of a dream—it was too
convenient.
Fear stirred in his heart, but there was nothing
else he could do. The last of his heat bled from him, hardening his skin to
stone.
Darkness claimed him.
* *
*
Continue reading for sample chapters of Sorceress Awakening, book
one of the Gargoyle and Sorceress novels. Sorceress Awakening takes place
twelve years after the prequel story Sorceress Found.
Lillian smoothed the oiled rag down the
length of her grandmother’s broadsword and frowned at its 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.
The shortest among the group, the man who
had first waved at Lillian, stepped toward her. Dressed in a well-tailored
business suit, his appearance spoke of money, yet his shaggy, gray-peppered
brown hair was at odds with his otherwise trim appearance. Other than that, he
would have been an unmemorable fellow—from a distance.
Up close, she could detect the lie.
Hostility radiated off him in waves.
“You may call me Alexander.” The short man smiled,
but the cold glint in his eyes canceled out any friendliness which might have
been there. “My associates will not harm you if you come with us. I have a few
questions for you.” He gestured for his people to give her room. All but two of
them moved.
The remaining two, a woman with dark hair
similar to Lillian’s own and a big man with a six o’clock shadow, turned their
unblinking gazes to the shorter man. Alexander narrowed his eyes and said
something too low for Lillian to hear.
The man in need of a shave backed off, but
the woman showed her reluctance by the way she changed her stance without
giving ground to Alexander’s command. She turned her feral eyes upon Lillian
and tilted her head to sniff at the air.
Too frigging weird. Time to leave. “I don’t
know who you are, but I think there’s been a misunderstanding. Perhaps I can
help you find your way back to the road.” Lillian rushed the words together in
her hurry. “The gardens can be confusing.”
“I assure you, there has been no mistake. I
can smell your power.”
I can smell your power?
With luck she could ditch them in the maze.
A breeze picked up and whipped her hair
into her face. While she’d fought to clear her vision, she realized she’d
missed something. The others looked past her, deeper into the maze, in the
direction the breeze had come. The woman with dark hair and feral eyes backed
away with a hiss.
First singly, and then in twos and threes,
the others retreated from the green cedar walls. Lillian didn’t know what was
hiding in the maze, but it couldn’t be much worse than this group of menacing
strangers. Even if they hadn’t blocked her path back to the house, instinct
demanded she run into the concealing greenery.
She bolted into the maze’s entrance and ran
as if monsters out of her darkest nightmare were giving chase. The first branch
of the maze loomed in front of her. She darted to the right. Two more sharp
turns and she was well into the complex maze.
The others hunted her, crashing through the
narrow rows. By the sounds of snapping branches and swearing, someone was
trying to go through the walls instead of around them.
She was nearly halfway to the center before
the noise of pursuit started to fade. If fate was kind, her pursuers were now
hopelessly lost. Her slight advantage would only last until she emerged on the
other side, but it might be enough to escape into the forest. And the
lengthening shadows of dusk would give her an advantage in her home forest. If
she got that far.
When she emerged in the center of the maze,
she ran past the first ring of stones. She was under the shadow of her redwood
by the time a figure raced from another opening. She froze behind the tree. The
man didn’t see her and ran toward the path leading out of the maze.
Damn, he’d be ahead of her now. She hugged
the tree trunk while she caught her breath. This wasn’t going well.
Think,
think, think.
A movement at the east entrance betrayed
another man a moment before he walked into the clearing. He sniffed at the air
as he jogged up to the first ring of stones. His eyes locked on her tree. A
smile slowly spread across his face.
He reached the first stone and rested his
hand on it. With a yowl, he jerked back. Smoke rose up from the stone like
grease dripping onto the coals of a barbecue. While
that
was an unusual
sight, she didn’t have time to dwell on it.
Survival first, weird shit later.
More strangers appeared, spit out by the
maze. No one else tried to enter the perimeter of the waist-high ring of
stones, even though there was plenty of room between each stone to pass without
touching them. A tense silence engulfed the clearing.
Alexander entered last, unhurried. With his
head tilted to one side, he looked from her to the redwood and back again.
“I’d thought the ones with strength like
yours had gone extinct centuries ago,” he said, as if his words explained
everything. After another half dozen steps, he stopped outside the ring of
stones. He frowned at them a moment. “Not that it matters. It’s your magic I
want. You have two choices: surrender your magic, or swear allegiance to serve
my lords.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,
but that handy circle of stones seems to keep you away. Unless you plan on
camping out here for the next few days, I think you better move on.” She didn’t
believe for a minute they’d actually do what she advised, and she doubted
telling them to screw-off would have much of an effect, but maybe if she kept
them talking she’d eventually wake up from this nightmare.
He smiled, a charming curve of lips, then
he tilted his head in the direction of the house and his merriment vanished.
“That’s a grand house, and these gardens, they’re rather large for just you to
take care of. If I wait, I imagine your family will come home soon. Your
husband and children, perhaps?” His expression took on a faraway look as if he
were thinking about something else. “Or am I wrong? You have the ageless look
of all dryads, but perhaps you’re actually very young, newly come to your
powers. Is that why I’ve never sensed you? No matter. I’m sure you have loved
ones and they’ll be along shortly.”
Lillian couldn’t hide in the shadow of the
tree forever. As he’d said, her family would return home and be captured by
these freaks. Clearly, Alexander wanted something from her. Her magic, he’d
said. She didn’t know what he was smoking, but she wasn’t buying. Even seeing
the stone smoke when the other man touched it could have been a trick. However,
that didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous.
“I am patient up to a point,” Alexander
said. “If you make me go through these stones to get you, my patience will run
out before I reach you. Your choice.”
She shook her head. He frowned and his
eyebrows scrunched together. Without another word, he focused on the stone
standing nearest to him and began a chant low in his throat. Placing one hand
upon its surface, he grimaced as power arced, its blue light lancing out from
one stone to the next in line. Unseen until now, a dome of energy encircled her
and her tree.
“This can’t be happening,” she whispered.
But it was.
Whatever the small man was doing weakened
the dome. Where before the dome had appeared a solid blue, its coloration was
now patchy and frayed. A fissure formed along the base of the stone he touched,
the finest of cracks. She didn’t want to know what would happen when it gave way.
Behind Alexander, a disturbance in the
ranks distracted her and she missed the exact moment the stone shattered.
Shards flew in all directions, damaging the other stones and cutting down
meadow grasses and prairie flowers like a sickle. Agony bloomed to life along
her hip. More along her waist.
She should have been safe hiding behind the
tree’s trunk, yet some of the stone shrapnel must have hit her. Blood, hot and
sticky, dampened her t-shirt and the waist of her jeans. Seconds later, the
burning sensation turned numb. A deep cold started to throb in her side, as if
her life was being sucked away by the wound.
She stumbled over a root and slammed her
shoulder on one of the redwood’s ground-sweeping branches. Teetering against
it, she gathered herself, then ducked under the branch to see what was going
on. Instinct guided her eyes up the tree. Two thin, blade-like fragments of
stone were embedded in the side of the tree’s trunk.
Pink liquid dripped off the fragments and
dropped onto the ground below. More ran down the trunk. Astonished, she touched
the liquid. It was slick like sap, but smelt coppery.
Tree sap mixed with blood?
Another rivulet flowed down the trunk and
coated her fingers.
Her legs grew rubbery. Numbness crept up
from the wounds, seeping through her blood and across her thoughts. Screams and
snarls interrupted the numbness. Had some of the other creatures been caught by
the exploding stones?
“Your life blood is watering the dirt and
leaf litter. Such a waste of magic,” Alexander mused.
What? Can’t I bleed to death in peace?
Lillian twisted toward Alexander and winced as pain stabbed through
her hip. The little man stood a few feet away, admiring the tree, his head
tilted to look up at its top, thirty-five feet above his head. He walked around
its circumference, studying it from different angles.
Resting against the tree took some of the
weight off her injured leg. She eased one hand above her head. Sliding her
fingers along the bark, she sought the rivulets of liquid and used them to
guide her to the first stone fragment. Her fingers closed on a cold, sharp
object. She clawed at it with her nails, dragging it from the wood.
Agony burned in her hip. She embraced the
pain. It was better than the cold sucking sensation of having her life leeched
out of her injury. Her fingers worked at the second piece of stone as Alexander
finished skirting the tree and came to face her.
With a grunt, she freed the second shard
and flung it with all her strength. Sap-blood flew in a splattering arc.
Her aim was true and the blood-coated stone
collided with Alexander. He screamed in agony, a tone of glass-shattering
quality. She winced. Hopefully such an unholy sound signaled a mortal injury.
The fragment was embedded in his neck where
an artery should have been. The stone smoked and hissed. Other drops of her
tree’s blood had eaten away at his skin, like she’d tossed acid upon him. A
human would have hit the ground, dead by now. She didn’t know what he was, but
he wasn’t human.
The creature collapsed to his knees but
continued to smile at her. Oh, he was in pain. She could see it in his pinched
expression: the white skin, drawn tight across his face, the slight grayish hue
of his complexion. But it was the sharp fangs when he hissed at her which gave
him away. A vampire? Impossible. There was no such thing. Yet what else could
he be?
Another blonde male and a muscular female
joined Alexander. While they were seeing to his wounds, Lillian took a step
forward. Her sight blurred strangely and she swayed. Instead of the carnage of
the glade, an image of Lillian’s grandmother stood before her, eyes closed and
face serene.
Gran’s hands moved in a precise, intricate
pattern as she chanted low in her throat. There was a soft-edged quality about
her. She looked faded, like an unfocused old picture. That’s when she knew her
grandmother wasn’t really there.
“Lillian, get to the gargoyle,” her
grandmother barked out the sharp command, her voice echoing as if from a long
way away, but she still heard the underlying fear. “Use your blood. Wake him.
You’re stronger than the Riven.”
Lillian shook her head, trying to clear her
vision. She slumped against the tree. A low-hanging branch offered support. She
wanted to believe she was hearing her grandmother’s voice. Obeying her commands
sounded like a good idea. Lillian gauged the distance from her tree to the
gargoyle’s statue: a few feet, ten maybe, fifteen at the most.
Ten feet or ten miles, it didn’t really
matter. She doubted she could walk more than two steps before she fell on her
face. But her grandmother needed her to get to the gargoyle statue. Maybe it
was another kind of protection like the stone circle had been.
Could it be so simple? Could killing these
creatures be as easy as getting to the statue and triggering some protection?
She needed to try. She was already dead.
She was losing too much blood to live, but perhaps she could still protect her
family.
Gathering her will, she straightened and
held the second stone fragment like a knife. Doggedly, she lurched toward the
statue. The ground seemed more uneven than she remembered. She tripped over a
stone, and fell to her knees.
As she forced herself back up, she saw
someone in her path: a blurry blob with a cloud of dark hair around it. The
strange, feral woman she’d first noticed outside the maze stood between Lillian
and her goal. Anger stirred to life.
How dare these monsters come into her home
and threaten to kill her and her family.
A sense of something powerful and old
flowed through her body, guiding her movements. She surged to her feet, the
stone fragment held low against her good thigh. Lillian darted forward, the
land around her a blur. Her opponent was moving far too slowly. One more step,
and then she snapped her arm up and forward, burying the stone shard in the
woman’s stomach. Her opponent’s mouth fell open, and she gasped in shock.
Growling, the woman clawed at the stone
fragment. Lillian sidestepped her enemy. Three steps from her destination, a
heavy weight slammed into her and claws ripped into her back.