Sleep called, wooing her into darkness. All she wanted was to answer that summons, but that old power within her insisted otherwise. She lifted her head and gazed at the gargoyle.
Her attention drifted to the strange symbols on his chest. She reached out with one blood-covered hand and touched a symbol. A flash of light seared her retinas, and her hand fused to the stone as it turned hot all around her.
She screamed in pain and terror. Both her body and the stone now glowed with a blue light.
Power danced and pulsed between them. A wave grew, about to crest. She screamed again, instinctively knowing she would be consumed if she didn’t direct it in some way.
Ancient memories sparked to life and flooded words and thoughts into her mind. With nothing else to do, she screamed the words.
“Dark Watcher, immortal servant of the Light, with my power I summon you to wake. With my will, I do claim you. Hear me and awake. Evil walks the land. Your Sorceress has need.”
At her cry, the turbulent power surged into the stone.
Darkness crept across her vision, stealing the sights of the world from her until only the gray-edged image of the brooding stone gargoyle remained.
Under her hands, the statue’s surface warmed and softened. The shadow of vast wings moved up and away as his muzzle dipped toward her face. Before fear gripped her, a warm, wet tongue brushed her cheek. A moment later, she collapsed forward against his chest.
This day isn’t going anything like I thought it would. Vacuum. Dust the china. Polish Gran’s sword collection. Get attacked by mythological creatures. Die in the arms of a gargoyle. Nope, Lillian mused in the last few moments of consciousness before darkness swept in from all sides. Totally didn’t see this coming when I got up this morning.
Chapter 2
A Few Hours Earlier
“He’s just a damned statue,” Lillian muttered to the empty kitchen as she smoothed an oiled rag down the length of her grandmother’s broadsword one final time. Setting the cloth aside, she frowned at the newly polished blade. “He’s 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...”
Need him?
That was a lie, though, wasn’t it?
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. Usually, nightmares and insomnia didn’t plague her, but there was something new—a restlessness that 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.
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.
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 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, air crisp with a hint of last night’s fog greeted her nose. 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. 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 Dawn 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 wings mantled around him like a 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 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.
Lillian had always assumed her strange need to be near him was a result of her childhood trauma.
She brushed a few spider webs and tree needles from his pedestal. Then, as she’d done since childhood, she climbed up the stand to settle upon the gargoyle’s knee. While he was a little cold and hard, he still made a good chair.
Lillian opened the book and leaned back against his arm.
SHE JERKED AWAKE TO the sound of 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.
Straightening, she realized she’d slept half the morning away.
“I suppose I should get back to work. Gran will be home soon,” she told the stone gargoyle and patted his knee. “Goodbye, my old friend.”
She’d only just exited the maze when she skidded to a halt. A pale-skinned stranger dressed in a gray business suit strolled along the garden path to her left. With his 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 resort was closed, undergoing renovations. Besides, this man looked out of place. The longer she studied him, the more out-of-place he seemed.
Unfamiliar instincts blazed to life so suddenly she found herself coming to attention as 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 berated herself for being foolish, and then 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 them, but
they stalked forward with the smooth grace of predators and arranged themselves in a semi-circle in front of her.
Her earlier sense of alarm returned tenfold.
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.
Chapter 3
THE SHORTEST AMONG the group, the man who had first waved at Lillian, stepped toward her. Dressed as he was in a well-tailored business suit, the man’s appearance spoke of money. Yet his shaggy, gray-peppered brown hair was at odds with his otherwise tidy 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 that might have been there. “My associates will not harm you if you come with us willingly. 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 a short, stocky build, and a ginger-haired 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.”
“There has been no mistake. I can smell your power,” Alexander said.
Lillian’s one eyebrow arched at his words. I can smell your power? Seriously?
With luck, she could ditch the crazies in the maze.
A breeze picked up and whipped her hair into her face. In the brief moments it took to tame her hair, she realized she’d missed something. The others now looked past her, deeper into the maze, in the direction from which the breeze had come. The woman with the 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 nightmares 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 intricate maze.
The others hunted her, crashing through the narrow rows not far behind her. 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 noises 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 continued across the small glade, heading 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 flash of 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.
Fuck! She wished she had one of her hunting bows. It was swiftly escalating into a ‘shoot first, deal with the police later’ kind of situation.
The man reached the first stone and rested his hand on it.
With a yowl, he jerked back. Smoke rose 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, spat 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 cross without so much as brushing against them.
A tense silence engulfed the clearing.
Alexander entered last, his steps 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 it 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 our cause.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but that handy circle of stones seems to be keeping you at bay. Unless you plan on camping out here for the next few days, I think you’d better move on.” She didn’t believe for a minute they’d do what she advised and doubted telling them to screw off would have much of an effect either, 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. 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 before? 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. Clearly Alexander wanted something from her. Her magic, he’d said. She didn’t know what he was smoking, but it had to be some bad shit.
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, annoyance pinching his features. 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 muttered.
But it was.
Whatever he was doing weakened the dome. Where at first 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 as they drew back from the stone ring 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 scythe.
Agony bloomed to life along her right 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 one leg 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 smelled 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.
“Your lifeblood is watering the dirt and leaf litter. Such a waste of magic,” Alexander mused.
What? Can’t I bleed to death in peace? It probably won’t even take that long.
At least that was Lillian’s guess going by the amount of blood soaking her top and one leg of her jeans. But Alexander was in a hurry and wasn’t going to allow her to die peacefully.
She also doubted she was going to die the normal kind of horrible death people sometimes inflicted upon each other.
No, Alexander wanted her magic.
Magic of all things.
Well, that was going to be difficult, wasn’t it?
Magic didn’t exist.
The way the small ring of standing stones had flared with blue, crackling light had to have been a trick.
Lillian peered around the redwood’s trunk at Alexander only to wince as pain stabbed through her side.
Fuck. She pressed one hand against her side. The pressure only made the wound throb like a bitch. Fuck everything.
Alexander stood a few feet away, admiring the tree she was sheltering under, his head tilted to look up at its top, thirty-five feet above them. He walked around the redwood’s circumference, studying it from different angles, seeking her exact location among the dense foliage of the lower branches.
The Complete Gargoyle and Sorceress Boxset (Books 1-9) Page 2
