He could live as an oath breaker. He didn’t
think his sanity would survive her death again so soon.
Eyes still closed, she shivered in his arms
and inhaled a deep breath. Then, following the coppery scent to the wound, she
sealed her lips over his blood-dampened flesh. At the first lap of her tongue,
his concentration shattered like mist before a strong wind. Magic surged and
flowed into her. She drank his magic along with his blood, growing stronger
with each heartbeat.
His little dryad pressed against him,
becoming more demanding in her feeding. Ecstasy threatened to destroy his
discipline. The soft caress of her fingers feathered along his abdomen as she
stirred in his arms. Her gentle touch shocked him to his core, rousing
instincts better left to slumber. Fire settled in his groin. He groaned, then
cursed his response.
His horns racked the wall behind, sending
white dust and bits of debris raining down upon them both. He tightened his
arms around her, wanting her closer while at the same time trying not to crush
the life from her. His tail coiled around her left leg as if it had a life of
its own.
It seemed endless, the pleasure-pain of her
feeding on his power. Yet it was over too quickly. With one last lick along the
length of the wound, she tilted her head back and looked at him. A half-smile
graced her lips, and then she tucked her head against his shoulder. A few
moments later, her breathing evened out as she drifted into sleep.
Rest was far from his thoughts with his
lungs working like a great billows and his pulse thundering in his ears. He
called on what remained of his discipline and fell into another trance to order
his body’s rhythms to calm—it would last moments, at best.
Once he was calmer, he opened his eyes and
checked her wounds. They were healed. All that remained was a faint pink scar.
She may have been healed, but her dryad blood still called to him, its coppery
sap-sweet scent enticing him down a dark and forbidden path. He shook himself,
fighting deeply rooted instincts. Only after he’d won that internal battle was
he able to deposit her back on the table.
Leaving her side was difficult, but he
needed to get clean of her blood, her intoxicating scent. Now.
Sniffing the air, he scented water, but
couldn’t pinpoint the source at first. He paced around the room and continued
scenting. Then he heard the faint plop of water dripping onto an unyielding
surface somewhere above his present location.
With a huff, he sought of the source of
that sound, tossing his arm and wrist bands on the ground as he walked. His
knee-length loincloth landed on the carpet. Its beads rattled against each
other for a moment before falling silent.
Following the sound of water to its source,
he went up a wide set of stairs and down a short hall, at last entering a large
room. Beyond that room was another, smaller one. A silver spigot of some sort
dripped water into a white basin. On one wall a glass alcove took up a quarter
of the room. It smelled of soap and dampness.
Blessed relief.
A coppery taste coated Lillian’s tongue.
Her mouth was dry, gummy with old blood. She must have bitten her tongue, and
unless her mattress had suddenly turned to stone, she’d managed to knock
herself out and was lying flat on the floor. Of all the stupid things to do,
bashing her head hard enough to lose consciousness had to be one of the
clumsiest. She ran her hands out to her sides. Cool, polished woodgrain took
shape under her searching fingers. Interesting. None of the floors felt like
that. She cracked an eye open and peered to one side: the honey color of oak
met her vision. Kitchen table?
Yep. Kitchen table.
She’d somehow managed to knock herself out
and land on the table?
Not bloody likely.
She scoured her memory. A void blocked her
way. She panicked, fearing she’d lost her memories for the second time in her
life . . . but she remembered that, so her memory still functioned. Something
else then. Something so frightening her mind didn’t want to remember.
She could deal with frightening. Fear was
better than the nothingness of vanished memories. She scanned her surroundings.
The kitchen looked normal. She wasn’t sure what she sought, but nothing in this
room jogged her memory. Sitting up, a wave of dizziness swamped her. She curled
her fingers around the table edge in a death grip. The deep pounding of her
heart and the crackle of white noise hummed in her ears. She blinked once, and
again.
The room came into focus.
Okay, that’s
better.
I can do this
, she thought. Seeing no point in postponing
the inevitable, she jumped down from the table and wobbled around until her
legs remembered they had bones in them. It felt like she’d donated half her
blood to the blood bank. The thought of blood summoned an image of her grove,
her favorite tree dripping bloody gore onto the ground. Her mind shied away from
the vision.
She took in the room again, and noticed
something she’d missed before. A thick gold bracelet sat abandoned on the
floor. Bracelet was too small a word to describe the heavy chunk of gold and
jewels sitting on the tiles. She was reaching for it, her fingers poised to
curl around it, when she saw the blood smeared on the floor next to it.
More blood marred the bracelet, staining
some of the intricate knotwork along its one side. Her eyes swung back to the
smudges on the floor. There were others, farther apart, and they headed toward
the living room. It was too odd. Those smudges, they couldn’t be tracks. Not
unless a velociraptor walked the earth again and it happened to come into her
kitchen, following the scent of good baking.
Yet there they were: tracks the size of a
small dinosaur, blood smeared and marching off into the depths of her house.
Out. She had to get out. Maybe then the
nightmare would end. She eased her way across the kitchen floor, careful of
squeaky floorboards and the groans of an old house. She didn’t want to face
what had made those tracks. Now that she had a goal, reaching the back door as
quietly as possible, she could control the panic lurking at the edges of her
mind.
The doorknob turned under her hand. As she
pulled open the door, it loosed a groan fit for a haunted house on All Hallows
Eve. She threw herself through the doorway and slammed square into . . .
nothing? Her breath escaped in a grunt.
Stunned, she stumbled back and rubbed her
shoulder.
Luckily, the abused shoulder, and not her
face, had taken the brunt of the impact. She ran her hands across the entrance
and saw a nebulous, multihued blue light swirling around her fingertips where
they made contact with the barrier. It was not unlike the oily surface of a
soap bubble, with its cascade of colors.
Words solidified in her mind.
Ward. A spell for protection.
Where the hell did that bit of
information come from?
Her newly acquired knowledge was scarier
than the blue ward-thingy.
On a hunch, she checked the windows and found
them blocked by more of the strange substance. She braced her hands against it
and pushed. Nothing. She might as well have tried pushing through concrete.
Looking out beyond the pale barrier blocking the window, she could see her maze
in the distance. Scattered lumps dotted the lawn, some in plain view while
others remained partially hidden by the garden’s tall, ornamental grasses.
Bodies. She swallowed hard and looked again to be certain. No, body parts.
The barrier her mind had erected to protect
itself from the traumatic memories vanished, and everything from that afternoon
flooded back. She’d been attacked by monstrous wolfmen, feral cat-like women,
and sallow-skinned creatures with hunger in their eyes. She remembered a power
flooding her, and then joy at the feel of the stone warming and softening under
her hands. The fog of mixed-up memories ended.
Fear fluttered in her stomach and her
breath hitched up a notch. Nothing she remembered clarified how she had come to
find herself on the kitchen table with a strange blue light preventing escape.
With another glance at the bodies in the garden, her idea of possible escape in
that direction lost some of its luster, especially since there might be more
than just bodies out there.
Backtracking, she returned to the kitchen
table and paced around it twice, and then came back to the tracks. None of the
attacking monsters could have made tracks like those. But there was one
particular stone fellow she’d sat with every day since childhood, and his feet
were large and ended in talons. If her gargoyle had come alive, he might make
tracks such as these.
Her heart lurched at that thought, but it
wasn’t in fear. After a brief moment of euphoria, her rational mind told her
she probably didn’t want to come face to face with whatever creature was still
standing after the battle.
Occupied by thoughts of escape and what
those prints could mean, she jerked at the soft rumble of the water heater as
it started up in the laundry room just off the kitchen. She hadn’t at first heard
the sounds of someone taking a shower upstairs, but now that she listened, she
could hear the faint sound of water in the pipes.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that she was
locked in her own home with a bunch of dead bodies laying out back, the gardens
reduced to a warzone, her grove violated, and blood and God-knows-what tracked
all over her grandmother’s antique carpets, the last monster standing had
apparently come in and made himself at home.
Lillian frowned and squared her shoulders.
She could hide somewhere, whimpering in fear until whatever was in the house
found her and dragged her from her hiding place, or she could arm herself and
face the threat head-on.
* * *
With the hilt of her fencing sword a solid
reassurance in her hand, she retraced her steps until she came to the living
room and the curving stairway that led up to the second floor. Discarded pieces
of jewelry and the occasional smudge of blood marked the path the creature had
taken. She cleared the stairs and turned down one dark hall. The first bathroom
on the second floor was silent and empty. That left one other. She entered her
bedroom, intent on her master bathroom.
The door was ajar, a curl of steam drifted
out across the floor. Inside, the bathroom was dark and so full of steam she couldn’t
see anything. The monster didn’t know how to turn on a light switch, but could
figure out a shower? She pondered that a moment. Perhaps it didn’t need light.
Just her luck. The damned monster probably had night vision.
She eased into a defensive stance as she
reached in and flicked on the light. The room was flooded with yellow light and
her breath caught. Her sword’s tip clanked against the tiled floor in her
shock. She jerked it back up into position until the point hovered at shoulder
level.
Her rational mind had expected to find a
monster, and there was one. He filled her walk-in shower, and the massive
shower still wasn’t big enough for the entire gargoyle. His wings arched across
the length and width of the large bathroom, and his tail sent water droplets
spraying across the room as it lashed back and forth, its blade-tipped end
twitching like an agitated cat’s.
One wing arched back and gave her a view of
the rest of the gargoyle. His head brushed the ceiling and his horns clinked
against the small tiles when he moved. With eyes partially squeezed shut
against the sudden intrusion of bright light, he turned his muzzle in her
direction and flared his nostrils, drawing in a deep breath. She had the
distinct impression he tasted the air, and by the way he snorted like a horse
and shook his head, she didn’t think he liked the smell.
When his muzzle dipped down, his eyes
locked on the sword she held, and he turned fully toward her. At least with him
eying the sword so intently, he might not notice the vivid shade of scarlet
she’d just turned. Had there been any doubt in her mind about his gender, it
vanished in a heartbeat. Male. Lacking in modesty.
He had muscles most men would envy. Then
she reminded herself he also had a tail, wings, horns, and talons. Still, even
in all his otherness, he was majestic. Scary as hell, but lovely as a predator.
Fear was absent and she should have worried
for her sanity, but somehow it all seemed right. The gargoyle was a prominent
part of her childhood. He had always been home to her.
And ‘home’ was presently extracting himself
from the shower. When he stepped out, he straightened.
The bathroom shrunk.
Mercy, he was still hunched over.
He was massive. Over eight feet of gargoyle
crowded her master bath. She couldn’t beat
that
in a fight. Her sword’s
point dipped again, but she didn’t lift it back into a defensive position. One
solid hit and he’d put her through a wall. Heck, he could probably snap her
blade in two with a thought. At least the sword’s weight stopped her hands from
shaking.
“Hello,” she said. Her voice came out
faint, hollow sounding. She cleared her throat, unable to stop the nervous
reaction. “I’m Lillian.”
How intelligent.
At least her voice sounded
stronger.
He cocked his head, his jackal-like ears
sweeping forward from the depths of his wiry mane. She hadn’t noticed his ears
earlier. They’d blended into his ebony mane and the crown of bone that formed
the base of his two large horns.
He expelled the breath he’d been holding
and took another. His nostrils pinched shut.
Good lord, she must smell worse than she
thought.
His talons clinked against the tiles as he
took another step forward. She backed away until she slammed into the
doorframe. A squeak escaped past her lips. He snatched a clean bath sheet off the
rack and snapped it open with a flick before she could think to run at his
sudden move. No matter which way he tugged, tucked, or arranged it, the towel
wouldn’t reach around his muscular girth.
With a deep rumble, he grabbed a second
bath sheet. Tied together, the two sheets proved large enough to fit around his
waist and haunches. But he still didn’t seem happy with the arrangement.
Constricted by the material, his tail flicked like a downed power line,
offering a new threat to modesty. It occurred to her shock-slowed brain that
all the poor creature wanted was some privacy. A blush burned across her cheeks
a second time.
She was backing out of the room when a
flowing language issued from his mouth. Deep, beautiful, smooth like the wind
in a forest, it reminded her of night’s shadows and the lull of beckoning
sleep. He repeated himself, or she thought he might have. She couldn’t be sure
because she didn’t know what he’d said the first time, and it became no clearer
on the second try.
He was gesturing at her now. She nodded and
pointed to herself. “Lillian.”
“Lillian,” he repeated in a clear, deep
voice. He pointed behind him.
She followed where he pointed.
The
shower?
Shrugging, she pointed at it and said, “Shower.”
He nodded his head, pleased. “Lillian,
shower.” Then he ducked under the doorframe and marched away, leaving her in
the steam-filled room with the shower still running.
Too shocked to follow, she stood gaping
like an idiot. Her first conversation with her gargoyle. Something she’d
dreamed about as a child. It finally had happened. Two words. He’d told her she
reeked in two words.
* * *
Freshly showered and now dressed in a clean
T-shirt and jeans, Lillian stood over the pile of her discarded clothes and
frowned at the evidence that proved she hadn’t imagined the last few hours. She
poked the bloodied and shredded clothes with a bare toe.
No hope of ever
getting them clean enough to warrant mending.
The mess of ruined fabric
landed in the garbage with a wet sound. She washed her hands again.
Hopefully, she smelled better to a
gargoyle’s delicate nose.
During her bath, she’d washed away the
remainder of her fear. How could she fear anyone who looked as ridiculous as he
had, jammed into the shower with wings and tail jutting out, horns scraping the
ceiling? Besides, she was still alive. If he’d wanted her dead, he’d had plenty
of opportunity. Instead he’d told her she reeked and fled the room as fast as
he could.