Valor (A Greystone Novel)

by Taylor Longford

  Chapter One

  I stood at the living room window and watched the cold, winter skies. The clouds were banked across the horizon like dirty gray cotton, blotting out the sun. An inch of crusty snow clung to the branches of the evergreen trees that surrounded MacKenzie's home and a smattering of white flakes made their way toward the ground but they didn't seem too serious about getting where they were going. The overcast skies reminded me of Scotland and the years I spent trapped in the dark shadows of a harpy's aerie. Fortunately, cloudy days are rare in Colorado.

  As I tilted a cup of hot chocolate to my lips, my reflection caught my eye. It might sound bizarre, but I couldn't get used to how old I looked. I was born a year before my cousin, Defiance, so I should have been about nineteen. But before the harpies trapped us between those walls in York, I'd already spent two years in my stone form. And since gargoyles don't age when they're stone, that made me about seventeen.

  I looked about thirty.

  Okay, that was probably an exaggeration but I definitely looked older than the rest of the pack. Maybe it was the two inches of white that tipped the ends of my shoulder-length black hair. Maybe it was the hard lines that carved either side of my mouth. Maybe it was just the worn color in my green eyes. Even the gold flecks that floated on my irises failed to add any spark to my features.

  My life hadn't exactly been easy.

  I didn't like the direction my thoughts were taking so I refocused my attention on the scene outside the window. A foot of snow had fallen on Christmas Eve and I'd volunteered to shovel the driveway along with the rest of my family, but MacKenzie called a guy with a plow on the front of his truck and he had the driveway cleared in no time. You can't beat the twenty-first century for getting things done.

  I took another sip from the heavy cup. Chocolate was another great thing about the modern world. It almost made our eight-hundred-year dormancy worthwhile. Cocoa hadn't reached Europe in our time and we'd never tasted it before. Things were pretty rustic back in the thirteenth century.

  Despite the hot drink and the bulky gray hoodie I wore, a shiver gripped my spine. Normally, a gargoyle doesn't get cold. Our wings, wrapped around our upper bodies like a black leather vest, keep us warm in the winter without getting too hot in the summer. Unfortunately, I'd lost my wings when I was about sixteen.

  Turning away from the window, I glanced at the decorated tree standing in the corner. We'd celebrated Christmas three days earlier and the tree looked a little lonely without the colorful presents stacked beneath its branches. Like it had suddenly lost all its friends. I was wearing my new powder blue belt with a pair of black jeans. The belt was a gift from MacKenzie, along with a hardback copy of Great Expectations. As well as these treasures, each of us had received a gift card from MacKenzie's mother on Christmas day.

  Most of my cousins and brothers planned to use their cards to buy more clothes. I presently owned three new pairs of jeans and a hand-me-down pair that had belonged to Mac's brother before he left for college. I also had five T-shirts folded up in my drawer. To me, this seemed like plenty of clothing so I was saving my money for a guitar.

  But kids these days have closets full of clothes. And Havoc was doing his best to catch up. My brother had invested in a lot more clothing than the rest of us and usually picked out bright colors the likes of which we'd never seen in the thirteenth century.

  I flicked my gaze at him. His bronze hair spilled over his shoulders and half way down his back in long, twisting coils. MacKenzie called them dreadlocks. I called them a tangled mess. Havoc's hair had a lot of curl in it but it didn't look like the modern dreads I'd seen on teenagers in Denver. His hair had a metallic glint that made it much shinier.

  As I watched Havoc in the dark leather chair, he turned a lump of pine in his hands, his knife peeling away small curls of wood. Sadly, the ungainly block looked unlikely to ever become a hunting bow or anything else we could sell to support ourselves. "What are you making?" I asked before taking another sip of chocolate.

  "Clogs," he answered without looking at me.

  A low burst of laughter echoed in my chest. "What are you gonna do with clogs?"

  "Dance," he answered simply, but there was a glint of humor in his pale green eyes when he lifted his gaze to mine.

  "Are you sure you remember how?" Victor chuckled from the couch, where he was working on a slender piece of wood with a lot more hunting-bow potential.

  "Aye," Havoc grunted. "I'm a clogging fiend. You don't forget things like that. It's like riding a bicycle."

  "But you can't ride a bicycle," I pointed out on a snicker. There was an old bike leaning against the wall in MacKenzie's garage but none of us had tried it out yet. The narrow, two-wheeled contraption didn't look like it would work very well in the snow.

  "I'll have to work on that," he admitted, and flashed a grin up at me.

  "And do you think your talent for clogging will help you fit into the twenty-first century?" Defiance challenged my younger brother as he stepped from the entry and leaned his shoulder against the wall.

  "I doubt Havoc will ever fit in anywhere," Victor teased, his hair glinting different shades of gold in the light that spilled from the tall lamp in the corner.

  "Not in those red jeans," I agreed.

  "They're not red. They're burgundy," Havoc informed us as he glanced down at his knees. "And it turns out there are some clogging clubs in the Denver area. I found some online with MacKenzie's help."

  "And do the members actually dance with huge wooden boats on their feet?" Defiance snorted. His pale blond hair was pulled back at the nape and not a single strand moved when he shook his head.

  Havoc shrugged. "Not yet," he admitted. "But when they see my clogs I'm sure they'll all want a pair."

  "Good luck with that," Defiance snickered, his chipped tooth adding an element of danger to his angular features.

  "I expect Whitney will like them just fine," Havoc inserted slyly.

  Havoc knew that Defiance had a thing for Whitney, who's one of MacKenzie's close friends even though she's just about the polar opposite of Mac. While MacKenzie is full of fire and emotion, Whitney's kinda cool and offhand like nothing gets her excited. And evidently she's had plenty of boyfriends, which might be due to her long blond hair and equally long tanned legs.

  Even though Whitney isn't quite as nice as MacKenzie—and not nearly as nice as Mim—I guess I can understand Defiance's interest in her. Being not-quite-as-nice isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, if the girls were ever attacked by a harpy and each of them had a knife, Whitney's the only one who could make it count. I don't think either Mim or MacKenzie could kill a fly.

  So, you've gotta admire a girl who could hold her own in a fight. And some guys like girls who are a little tough. They like the challenge. They like to bring out the tenderness in a girl like that. True, Defiance was two years older than Whitney but he could always spend his nights in his stone form and let her catch up to him.

  Defiance pinned my brother with a sharp look. "You just leave Whitney out of this," he muttered.

  As Havoc hid a smirk, MacKenzie's high-pitched squeal echoed in the kitchen.

  "If you don't stop carrying me around, my legs will shrivel up and fall off," she giggled. She'd graduated from crutches and was wearing what she called a walking cast on her broken ankle. But she didn't get much walking in when Valor was around. He used any excuse he could think of to pick her up.

  After a slight pause, MacKenzie's feet thumped lightly against the floor. "I don't believe you," Valor answered with a low laugh. "But I'm putting you down just to be safe. 'Cause I really like your legs."

  More muffled giggling followed and I assumed Val got in at least one kiss before MacKenzie started stumping around in the kitchen. Sometimes I feel sorry for Mac. It's hard to have any privacy in a house full of gargoyles.

  I heard a kitchen drawer slide open then MacKenzie's uneven pace started up again, going thump-step, thump-step as she moved into the
tiled entry between the dining room and the living room. Her wolfhound, Hooligan, slipped past her like a silent gray ghost, the top of his head brushing my fingers as he moved by me and settled down on the living room carpet. In the entry, MacKenzie stopped and lifted a silver butter knife up to her eye level.

  Apparently, she wanted to call a pack meeting.

  When the clans got together in our time, it was customary for the warriors to lay down their weapons before talks began. We still follow that tradition and when one of us calls a meeting, we start by placing our knives on the dining room table. As a member of the pack, MacKenzie can call a meeting whenever she wants to. Technically, she doesn't need a knife. But she didn't know that.

  The sight of the small, wide blade with its round tip would have made me chuckle except that I knew what she was going to ask for…and I planned to fight her.

  She headed into the dining room while the rest of us reached for the knives on our belts and followed. The little butter knife looked small and dainty next to the long, fighting blades we tossed onto the middle of the table.

  While the rest of us got seated, Victor leaned back in his chair and smiled at MacKenzie. As the oldest gargoyle, and the leader of the pack, it was his responsibility to start the meeting. "I can't say we haven't all been expecting this m'dear."

  MacKenzie nodded seriously, her rowdy mass of hair sweeping her shoulders like polished copper. "You all know that Mim is my best friend. Unfortunately, since my injury, she's been avoiding me."

  "She's been avoiding us," I stated bluntly.

  MacKenzie gave me a steady look. "She thinks you guys are somehow responsible for what happened to me. For my broken ankle."

  A snort of contempt slid past my lips and I set my empty cup down with a sharp bang.

  She ignored me and continued. "I promised never to tell anyone about you guys being gargoyles. And I've done that. But I'm asking you to let me share your secret with my best friend. I'm certain we can trust Mim. I know she'll never tell anyone about you."

  I made sure I got my two-cents in before anyone else could offer an opinion. "I'm against the idea. The fact that Mim could misjudge us so completely makes me feel like she lacks any intuition at all. I can't understand how anyone could think we were capable of harming you."

  Valor cleared his throat. "You should be able to understand it, Dare. Mim's a lot like us. She's only being loyal. As MacKenzie's best friend, she's compelled to warn her against anything that might endanger her."

  "We'd do the same," Havoc agreed as he stretched his arms over his head and locked his hands behind his neck.

  "We'd know the difference between a friend and a threat," I muttered.

  "That's not fair," Valor argued. Impatiently, he flicked his black hair out of his eyes. "Mim doesn't have our keen senses."

  MacKenzie nodded her head vigorously. "We're only human, Dare. When Valor first got here, I thought he was a thief. I thought he'd misled me and was trying to rob me."

  "But you knew enough not to be afraid of him," I argued immediately.

  "I wasn't afraid of him," she admitted. "But I did misjudge him."

  "That was different," Defiance pointed out, his gray eyes narrowing on the determined redhead. "The box Valor arrived in was empty the morning after you met him and you thought the sculpture your stepfather sent had been stolen. Valor was the most likely suspect. You were dealing with a situation that couldn't be easily explained."

  I leaned forward and pinned her with a stony look. "And we've given Mim an explanation."

  "We've given her a story," MacKenzie shot back, her eyes fierce as her hand tightened into a fist on the table. "And Mim can sense a lie a mile away, especially coming from me. She knows me too well."

  Victor tilted his head as he considered MacKenzie. "She can…sense a lie?"

  MacKenzie shrugged. "Well, she always seems to know when I'm not telling the truth. Maybe it's the gypsy blood that her mom claims to have."

  "Gypsy blood?" Havoc questioned, and shared a look with the rest of us. "What's a gypsy?"

  MacKenzie seemed surprised. "You've never heard of gypsies? I thought they'd been around forever. Maybe they didn't reach Europe until after the thirteenth century. They were known for their second sight and a lot of gypsy women made a living telling fortunes."

  I slouched back in my chair. "Well, just offhand, I'd say Mim's second sight needs glasses."

  MacKenzie opened her mouth again but I cut her off before she could make her next point.

  "Just how unperceptive can a person be?" I demanded, my voice rising as my emotions got the better of me. This was the one thing I could not understand. We would move heaven and earth to protect MacKenzie. How could Mim be so totally off the page?

  MacKenzie could see she wasn't getting anywhere with me so she turned her appeal on the others. "I just know that Mim's the best person I've ever met. She's honest and trustworthy and she'll protect your secret. But if we continue to keep her in the dark, there'll always be this suspicion and mistrust standing between us and keeping us apart."

  Victor finally spoke up. "We all love Mim, m'dear. But we must be extremely careful who we include in our circle of friends. The smaller the circle, the better it is for all of us. Normally, I'd advise against adding Mim."

  I watched MacKenzie's shoulders slump.

  "But if ever there was an exception to test my resolve, it would be Mim." He looked around at the rest of us before his aqua gaze stopped at me. I knew Victor was interested in Mim and had been since the first day he'd met her. I felt like he was warning me that if I didn't want her, he'd have her and gladly. "She's probably the nicest person I've come across in my lifetime. She radiates goodness."

  I stared back at him, refusing to give an inch. "Goodness doesn't equal wisdom," I growled, borrowing an argument that Defiance had used a few months earlier when we were voting to admit MacKenzie into the pack.

  "Mim's not dumb," MacKenzie huffed. "She's at the top of our class."

  "That's not what Dare meant," Defiance backed me up. "Some of the best, most honest people would have trouble telling the lies necessary to keep our secret. Even when they try to hide the truth, it just spills out unintentionally because they're so used to being honest. It's…their nature."

  Valor turned his head and smirked at MacKenzie. "Evidently, you don't have that problem."

  "It's not as easy as it looks," she insisted. But a guilty smile curved the edges of her mouth as she punched his arm.

  "Any other arguments?" Victor queried, and searched our faces.

  "Just one more," Val spoke up as he rubbed his biceps for MacKenzie's benefit; she likes to think she's tough. "MacKenzie's our hostess. We're living in her house, using her car and counting on her to help us get by in this modern world. With everything she's done for us, we owe her this favor."

  I expected an emotional argument like this from Valor since MacKenzie is his girlfriend. 'Course it didn't help that he was right. We couldn't have made it in the twenty-first century without Mac's help.

  When nobody added anything else, Victor said, "I guess it's time to vote."

  I dug in my pocket for a quarter. A few weeks earlier, MacKenzie had convinced us that our ancient coins were too valuable to carry around in our pockets. We couldn't spend the coins anywhere and could only sell them online to get their current value in cash so we'd turned our old coins over to her and she'd replaced them with modern ones.

  MacKenzie wasted no time placing a quarter on the tabletop with the head facing upward. "I vote heads that we include Mim in your secret," she announced.

  Valor immediately slid his coin beside hers. I glanced at the head on the quarter, not surprised that he'd voted with his girlfriend.

  "I vote heads, too," Havoc announced, which wasn't exactly a huge shock either. Havoc hates to be against anything. He just wants to get along with everyone. So my youngest brother surprised me when he explained his decision. "I just worry that Mim's suspicions might do us mor
e harm than letting her in on our secret. She thinks we caused MacKenzie's injuries and that could draw a lot of attention our way. A lot of negative attention."

  Great. Now they were making logical arguments as well as emotional ones. But I thought I could count on Defiance to take my side. "I vote the bird," I growled, and tossed my quarter onto the table.

  "You mean tails," Havoc corrected me with a snicker as he rocked his chair onto its back legs.

  "If there was a tail on the coin, I'd vote tails," I muttered. "But there's only a bird."

  Defiance guided his coin onto the table beside mine. "I'm sorry, MacKenzie, but I vote the bird as well. It might be different if Mim lived in this house or lived close by or even if we knew her better. But I'm not ready to let her know about us."

  At that point, there were three votes for Mim and two against her. We all watched Victor to see what he would do. If he voted against Mim then the decision would be tied and I'd have my way. If not…well, that would just make things more complicated.

  Victor turned the coin between his fingers and I realized I was holding my breath with my teeth clamped together in my jaw. I hadn't volunteered all of the reasons that I didn't want Mim to know about us. I hadn't told the pack how difficult it would be for me when she saw the others' wings then asked about mine. How hard it would be to answer her questions. Why I didn't have barbs or wings. What had happened to me.

  As Victor watched my face, I wondered if he could sense the conflict turning inside me. Maybe he could. Because his expression was apologetic when he put his coin on the table.

  It was heads.