A half ton of happy, wiggly Gregory seemed a whole lot less dangerous than an eight-foot winged killing machine.
“Mmm, Gregory, I love you, but get your big ass off me before you break some part of me I’m really fond of, like my spine.”
With one last lick, Gregory shifted his weight.
Well, well, he actually listened, she noted with growing interest. What other commands might he obey?
With an over exaggerated slowness, she got up and brushed off the specks of loam and leaf mould covering her body. Her stalling tactic gave her a moment to think. A quick glance down confirmed the medallion still hadn’t reacted to her blood in any discernible way.
She was out of options, but at least she’d managed to lure Gregory away from the siren. Frowning, she rolled her eyes in his direction where he quivered at attention like a dog at point, his barely contained exuberance palpable in the air around him.
Lillian amended her earlier thought. She’d managed to extract him physically, but in spirit, the essential Gregory was still missing, or more likely, buried under layers of enchantment.
It seemed fundamentally wrong that someone as powerful as her protector could be compromised so quickly and thoroughly by a song.
“Oh, Gregory, I know you’re still in there somewhere. I hope you can hear me and understand. I’m not sure how I’m going to free you from that over-evolved fish, but I will.”
She’d stick with her earlier plan to try and keep him away from the siren as long as possible. Her mad run had bought them a little time. It would take them a good couple hours to run back the way they’d come, longer if Gregory was content to walk.
She was certain his order would have been to bring her back, but perhaps she could even stall for more time.
Sweat glistened on her body, her muscles were certainly feeling the exercise, but she could manage a trot. There was, however, a growing hollowness in her middle. Maybe she could convince Gregory into hunting, thereby creating more time before he forced her back to the siren.
Sadly, she had no way to know how long it would take Gregory to overcome the siren’s power on his own, if he even could, which, with every hour that crept by, she was beginning to believe might not even be possible.
“Any chance a girl could stop and get a bite to eat?”
In answer he flicked an ear at her.
Could he even understand what she was saying? She began to doubt he could reason even that much on his own. His actions were by rote, like a sleepwalker’s.
“Oh, please fight it, Gregory. I need you.” Shamed to hear her voice shake, she squared her shoulders and said in a stronger voice, “We all need you.”
She was unaware she’d been crying until Gregory brushed away the evidence with one large thumb. Pressing her cheek into his palm, she started to cry harder. Then before she knew what he was doing, he scooped her up. Her world tilted strangely, and she suddenly found herself upside down over his shoulder, one of his steel-like arms clamped across her thighs, preventing her from kicking free. Simultaneously, his mobile tail curled around her shoulders, pinning her wings to her back before she’d thought to use them in some way to free herself.
She was working herself up to deliver a solid bite to Gregory’s vulnerable side when she felt the coldly familiar chill of his magic flowing across her skin.
“Oh, for the love of dog.” Lillian cursed under her breath. “Now what?”
From her inverted vantage point, she could only peer around Gregory’s muscular hip to see him weaving magic into something. Her lack of knowledge reared up and bit her in the ass again.
Whatever spell he wove rose up out of the ground, pale and ethereal, for all the world looking like thick fog. It spiraled around two tree trunks, climbing them until the silvery fog was above head height and then the two spires shot delicate filaments toward each other, forming a web before Lillian’s bewildered eyes.
“Gregory, what is that? What are you doing?”
No answer, though he did pat the back of her leg, which may have been an attempt at reassurance. Lillian perked up. That was a reaction to her question.
“Gregory.” Lillian called softly, then changed tactics. “Durnathyane, My Hunting Shadow. You don’t have to do this, you don’t have to listen to Tethys.”
Lillian hoped calling him by his name from his last life would jog some rationality back into his head. He did pause his spell work and twisted his neck to meet her gaze at the awkward angle and Lillian’s heart jumped with hope, but then he shook his head with a snort and returned to his spell.
Following the direction of his gaze, she saw the spell was now a vaguely door-shaped object. Her fears were confirmed a moment later as the entire construction flashed a blinding white. Still blinking grey spots from her vision, her other senses came to the fore to fill in the details.
The scent of cedar reached her nose. More telling, though, was the distinctive fragrance of tropical water lilies Gran had planted in the small stream that flowed past Lillian’s hamadryad.
Her vision cleared, confirming what her nose and ears had already told her.
Gregory’s spell was some kind of doorway, and on the other side, the siren waited patiently.
“Don’t do this. Tethys is dangerous.”
“Yes.”
Lillian froze, surprised Gregory answered her.
“But not to us,” he continued as he walked toward the strange spell-woven door hovering in the air. “She has offered to help us fight our enemies. She will stand with us against the Lady of Battles.”
“She lies to gain control over your power.”
Gregory sighed and then shifted her off his shoulder and set her down so she was facing him, her back to the flickering door.
“I have always been able to detect lies. The siren has spoken only the truth to me. She will aid your hamadryad in destroying the demon seed within it, and then you will be free to take up the mantle of Mother’s Sorceress once more. All will be as it should.”
It was the same promise the siren had given Lillian, and perhaps there wasn’t a lie in the offer. And it was the one thing in all the Realms which would tempt Gregory.
He placed his hands on her shoulders and guided her toward the doorway. If it came to a contest of physical or magical strength, Gregory would win.
That only left her with cold, logical reason. “Please listen. I know what she offers is what we ultimately want, but why did you wait to agree until after you awoke from stone? By what she told me, you had already turned down her offer while you still rested in stone. Why was that? What was it about her offer that gave you pause? It’s important.”
Gregory halted his advance toward the doorway, a frown line forming between his brows and his ears swung forward in question.
She met his gaze and saw a hint of the old Gregory there.
He blinked.
“Gregory, bring your beloved to me where she will be safe from the Riven.” The siren’s voice floated through the doorway and slid across Lillian’s senses like a mother’s soothing caress. Her earlier worries seemed unimportant.
Distantly, with only a mild concern, she saw lines of power crawl across Gregory’s skin.
He snarled. “I am not yours to command, siren.”
His angry words slid past the warmth cocooning Lillian and she blinked as if waking from sleep.
What? Lillian gave herself a shake.
Gregory. The siren.
It dawned on Lillian the siren had had to release her in order to turn her full powers back upon Gregory.
Tethys began to sing, and Lillian felt herself going under a second time even though this enchantment wasn’t focused on her. Cold power shimmered along Gregory’s skin as he summoned defensive magic. His skin took on the rough seeming of stone.
Tethys sang and runes blazed to life along his skin, preventing him from resuming his stone form.
Gregory roared in anger and pain, lashing out with magic. The wave of magic was unfocused a
nd shot over the siren’s head, though she’d hunched lower in the water.
The wave continued past the siren to sheer through one wall of the cedar maze. Its momentum carried the magic, and its destructive force, beyond Lillian’s field of view from this side of the doorway.
Having expanded so much power in one shot weakened Gregory, and he slumped down onto his knees, panting with his head bowed.
Desperately wanting to help, Lillian crouched next to him and flared her wings, mantling them around Gregory in a vain attempt to shield him from the siren’s song.
But of course, her action did nothing to prevent Gregory’s enslavement.
Helpless to do anything, Lillian could only watch in despair as he fell under Tethys’s song a second time.
Her gut tightened. This was a mild version of what the Lady of Battles wanted to do to them. Maybe Tethys would be the kinder mistress. The warm fog was back, soothing, coercing.
“Lillian,” a voice called from behind, the words dark and rich, the tone deep and beautiful, so like Gregory’s, and yet not.
Swaying, Lillian found herself hovering at the threshold of the magic doorway, Gregory at her side. She didn’t even remember standing up, but she was at the doorway, ready to take the last few steps to accept the siren’s offer.
Curiosity flared briefly, but died as the siren’s song swelled to match the dark beauty of the second voice.
“Lillian! I did not sire you so you could become a slave.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The medallion around Lillian’s neck heated to the point of pain, and then with a wave of scorching magic racing across her skin, she was herself again, Tethys’ voice weaving nothing more than a beautiful song. Shadows to her left shivered and a gargoyle similar in build to Gregory appeared before her startled eyes.
With a gasp, Lillian stepped away from both the doorway and the newcomer. Her hurried backpedaling nearly had her running over a smaller body behind her.
The delicate female sidestepped in time.
Lillian whirled to face this second newcomer while she tried to determine if there were others with these two, or if they had come alone.
That they were a threat was all too certain.
She’d seen them four months before at a distance when Gregory had first discovered the demon seed within her and had tried to dig it out with less than favorable results. That time Lillian had only a glimpse of the dryad and gargoyle standing before her now, but she’d known whom they were even then. They had been a part of the first eight years of her life, a time that was nothing more than a blank void, except for a few details filled in by others and what she herself had uncovered. But she knew them on a visceral level nonetheless.
Her birth parents.
The amulet Gran had given her with the cryptic message ‘smear three drops of your blood upon the amulet and it will summon your last allies’ now became clear.
It all made sense—why Gran had been reluctant to give it to her, and the command to use it as a last resort.
Well, this was as last resort as it got. She needed to know one thing first however, and she modulated her voice to be heard over Tethys’s song, which she noted seemed not to affect her at all now that the medallion was hot to the touch, nor did the song seem to influence Lillian’s parents. Handy trick that.
“If you’ve come to aid me for my own sake, I thank you. But if you come only on the Lady of Battles’ order, then leave me to my fate. I will know if you lie.” Her voice came out strong, almost like she was in command of the situation, though her words were completely false bravado, she couldn’t detect lies as well as Gregory. And even he might have trouble gauging her parents. If they had been double-crossing the Lady of Battles for the better part of twenty years, they were masters at twisting the truth.
“We knew we could never sit by and allow the Lady of Battles to destroy you,” Lillian’s mother spoke for both of them.
A loud growl crested above the siren’s song.
Gregory.
She jerked her attention back to her beloved in time to see him launch himself at her father. Her mother danced nimbly out of the way and dragged Lillian stumbling along behind as both males rolled past in a biting, snarling ball of winged fury.
“Do you accept our offer of aid, daughter?” her dryad mother asked as she calmly watched the two males continue to inflict damage on each other. “We are running out of time.”
Lillian started toward the two, concern driving her forward even when she knew she wasn’t ready for a fight in gargoyle form, not like the one she was witnessing. The two fighters would break apart, then with lightning fast moves come together again in a fury of slashing, biting, and lethal kicking. Even their tails and wings were weapons. Both fighters already had an alarming number of bloody welts covering their skin.
“Do something. They are going to kill each other.”
“Kill each other? Perhaps, but not for days. They’re both hard-headed gargoyles and at the moment fairly well matched.” The dryad made a gesture to the two males. “Normally, your other half could finish your father with ease, but Gregory has had a hard time of it recently, yes?”
The heat from the medallion increased, forcing Lillian to clasp its chain and hold it away from her skin.
“Exactly.” Her mother nodded at the medallion and then inclined her head in the direction of the siren. “There lays the true danger. The medallions are reaching the limit of their ability to protect us.”
At her words, Lillian noticed her mother was also wearing one of the medallions. Had her father been wearing one?
More importantly, could one help Gregory?
“Time to exchange greetings with the siren,” her mother said and motioned Lillian forward, back toward the door in the air. When they were almost to the threshold, her mother pulled ahead and gave a formal bow, like something from a long ago court, or two martial artists facing each other. Her skirts swirled around her, made of some glorious burgundy and black fabric.
Lillian blinked, then a second time to be certain, but yes, her mother had just plucked a bit of black off the skirt.
As she straightened, she spun the bit of glassy black shadow in her fingers, readjusting her hold on the shard and then flinging it almost faster than Lillian’s gargoyle-enhanced vision could track. The bit of black, a tiny little throwing knife, she realized, flew through the air. Unwaveringly, it hit its mark and buried itself inches deep in Tethys’ throat.
Her song cut off mid-note as she gagged on blood and the solid bit of blackness lodged in her vocal cords. Clawing at the knife, the siren bent over and retched blood as she dug it out.
“That will not slow her for long,” her mother said as she dragged Lillian away from the doorway. Seconds later, a blast of power streaked through the magic construction, lashing out at the empty space they’d stood in only a moment ago.
“Now,” her mother called.
Another gargoyle emerged from the shadows near where Gregory still fought with her father. Instinctively, she drew breath to call a warning to Gregory, but her father sprang away before she could, his momentum carrying him in front of the doorway. Gregory followed close on his tail.
And the third gargoyle struck with a blast of magic. It slammed into Gregory and tossed him right through the doorway and halfway to where the siren still thrashed in the stream. Gregory rolled, his arms, wings and tail all trying to slow his momentum; however, it was one of the stone rings circling her glade which finally stopped him. Lillian winced at the impact that shattered stone.
Looking beyond Gregory to where Tethys struggled, Lillian saw her lips moving, but only blood came out. Oh, she would have been screaming orders to her other slaves, but without her voice to command them, the other Fae stood waiting, blank as sleepwalkers.
Concern for Gregory drew her eyes back to his hunched form. He remained still for several moments, and Lillian’s traitorous feet were already moving her toward him. With a grunt and shake, he righted hi
mself and then bolted back into motion.
Lillian’s mother flicked more of the black shards, but her aim wasn’t for Gregory. They collided with the magic doorway, sinking deep into its border. She continued to throw more shards into the weaving until it bristled with them. Then with a high pitched whine, the magic holding the threshold open collapsed, taking the door and its view of the center of the maze with it.
Gregory vanished still on the other side, trapped there with the siren. Lillian felt hollow inside. She’d allowed her parents to betray him.
She’d betrayed Gregory, her protector, the other half of her soul.
As if unaware of Lillian’s inner turmoil, her mother brushed her hands clean of whatever residual magic might coat them and then turned to Lillian. “We must strategize how to capture and hold your gargoyle long enough to free him from the siren’s power, but we need to move first before Gregory returns. It will not take him long to build another threshold to this place. He will be desperate to find you.”
“I haven’t yet decided whether you’re any better than Tethys. It seems everyone wants to use us, or own us, or possess us.” Lillian left unsaid the uncharitable thought, that that seemed the natural order of things for avatars of the gods. She and Gregory were, in point of fact, tools owned by the Divine Ones. Gregory might word it slightly differently without a hint of censure, but he’d never tried to hide the fact either. “I’ll listen to you, but I make no promises. If you so much as try to force my hand, I’ll take my chances with Tethys.”
Lillian’s father approached, a great dark shadow, but lacking the comfort of Gregory’s presence. This gargoyle, father though he might be to her, was a complete stranger. Thus suspect until proven an ally.
Her father’s body language was all open curiosity, and she was certain he wanted to come closer for a hug, or maybe a sniff? She hadn’t a clue how family relations might work among gargoyles.
Sorceress Rising (A Gargoyle and Sorceress Tale Book 2) Page 17
