Forged

by Jacquelyn Frank

  And sure enough, she found him out cold on the kitchen floor, right in front of her refrigerator. Apparently fever had not ruined his appetite and he had come in search of something to eat. There were jars of things like pickles and olives on the floor near him, all of which seemed to be empty. She found herself praying he didn’t throw up later. That wasn’t going to be a pretty experience for either of them.

  Anyway, in the here and now she had an unconscious behemoth lying on the floor and she had the pleasure of trying to figure out how to get him up and back in the bed … preferably without his usual groping and fondling and kissing.

  Katrina tried to keep from acknowledging the warm, gooey heat that swirled around inside her as she remembered the kissing and fondling with no small amount of craving for more. A craving that she quickly stomped down inside herself. She had enough to worry about without tripping off into fantasyland. He was a stranger. A stranger. There was nothing about any of this that should engender trust in him, never mind the comfort level she required before considering becoming intimate with him. And she didn’t want to become intimate with him. Not him or anybody, but especially not him. The guy was a Neanderthal for Pete’s sake. He kept pawing at her and trying to … to screw her ever chance he got. And it was very clear he was an old hand at tumbling “wench”-like persons.

  With a sigh, Katrina went back to the bedroom. She took the opportunity to change out the soiled bedding, shoving it all immediately into the washer and dumping a hefty amount of bleach in the dispenser. It might damage the quilt, but so would blood. She had to take her chances.

  As for herself, she had showered and changed her clothing before heading to Dr. Sloan’s, but she had been covered in blood herself at one point. So much for universal precautions. If he had blood-borne anything, she would definitely be exposed. She suddenly felt a twinge of fear. What if that strange stonelike condition were catching?

  She shook that off. Partly because she simply couldn’t deal with the idea. She began another debate in her head, weary already from so much thinking, realizing she was tired because by then she would have already been tucked into bed. It was this nearly panicked rapid thinking that she had happily left behind when she’d left her life as a PA in Manhattan General Hospital. It was this kind of stress that had caused her to lose her hair, develop an ulcer, and gestate a major case of anxiety, her whole existence about being on edge for the next thing that walked through the door … even when she wasn’t working.

  Who would have thought she’d be dragging this kind of stress through her own front door years later, ulcer healed, anxiety at bay, and hair, thankfully, regrown. But she wasn’t interested in reverting to her previous state so she needed to relieve herself of this potentially high stress environment as quickly as possible. But … what if it were catching? Oh God! She’d potentially exposed Dr. Sloan to it!

  “Okay, don’t panic. Don’t panic,” she muttered to herself rapidly. He’s snowed in along with everyone else. No one is going to come into contact with him. The odds of anyone else being as stupid and reckless as she had been by driving down the mountain were extremely nonexistent.

  She hoped.

  She tried not to think about it as she stripped out of her wet, snow-saturated jeans and wriggled into her favorite pair of heather-blue sweatpants. The house had warmed considerably in her absence, what with the fire and all, so she traded her sweater for a T-shirt that said NEW YORK FUCKIN’ CITY! on it. It always made her smile for some reason. True, she’d never had the guts to wear it in public, her conscience paining her that some small child somewhere might be able to read it and repeat it. But she loved the idea of it. The idea of being brave enough and bold enough to don it in the first place.

  But it was not even a blip on her self-conscious radar as she hurried into the kitchen and kneeled beside her own personal feverish giant. She touched his skin and, as expected, he was burning up. Actually, she needn’t have touched his skin at all. He was radiating heat like a furnace and she could feel it all against the front of her body.

  Before doing anything else, she carefully capped and moved the empty jars around him to the kitchen counter. “Oh man!” she whined. “You ate all my pepperoncini!” How the hell does someone eat a whole jar of the fiery pickled peppers? They were a favorite of hers, but in small doses. She knew the jar had been nearly full because she’d just opened it two nights earlier, eating a small pile of peppers with her pizza. “Hey, does this mean you picked a peck of pickled peppers?” she joked to her unconscious patient, snickering through her nose as she lightened her mood a little.

  The juice in the jar sloshed around as it joined the others on the counter. Six in all. But none of the new additions to her shopping list were anything of great nutritional value. She realized he would have been forced to resort to it because she didn’t have very much in the way of fresh food in her fridge. She was content with frozen meals and bowls of cereal. Although cereal appeared to be off the menu since he’d drunk down just about all of her milk.

  “No worries. I have powdered. Not the same,” she chattered to her rude and thoughtless guest, “but good enough. And I have duplicates of everything in the garage pantries. Be prepared, that’s my motto. And a good one, too, when you tend to get snowed in a lot in these parts.”

  Of course it had more to do with her OCD than it did with genuine preparedness, but she wasn’t going to needle herself with that detail.

  After about five minutes of trying to wedge him out from between the counter and the refrigerator, enough to close the refrigerator door, she gave up and realized she was never going to move him unless he woke up to help her. And if all her jostling, shoving, and grunting hadn’t stirred him, then she wasn’t sure she knew what would. She had smelling salts, but she was afraid if she put ammonia under his nose he would wake up and swat her away, sending her crashing into a wall or something equally as painful. She eyed the fridge and her houseguest alternately for a moment when a brilliant idea came to mind.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ahnvil felt as though he were on fire. He was trapped, locked down in this horrifying fire that couldn’t kill him, but burned him straight to the bone over and over again. But something was creeping into his agony, something faint at first, then stronger and stronger, enough to distract him even from his eternal torment.

  Then he realized what it was.

  Food. Cooking food. Suddenly the fire abated and he realized just how hungry he was. Starving even. Had those who had put him in the fire also been starving him? He couldn’t seem to remember. Was this yet another torture he was going to suffer?

  No! He would not let them win. He would not let them trap him and hold him anymore! Never again! And he would kill anything that got in his way!

  The big beast in Kat’s kitchen came to with a bloodcurdling roar of what could only be taken as rage. It frightened her so much that she dropped her cooking fork in the heavy cast-iron skillet she was using and ran out of immediate reach. For good measure she leapt up on a countertop, as if he were a mouse or something she could avoid by removing herself from contact with the floor.

  He roared again and rolled to his hands and knees, lashing out at the nearest object, her refrigerator door, and nearly ripping it from its hinges. Hey, she thought that’s stainless steel. Don’t hurt it. She certainly didn’t have the nerve to say it out loud. She didn’t even have the nerve to think it with volume.

  After a few seconds he seemed to orient himself and he was able to stagger to his feet.

  Ta-da! Her idea had worked! Score one for Team Kat! Again, she was proud of herself, but not enough to say so with, like, spoken words or visible emotions. She was trying too hard not to be noticeable. She was small. Small enough to go unnoticed if she played her cards right. When his back was fully to her she pulled her legs up and balled herself on top of the counter.

  Ahnvil was barely aware of where he was. He had no interest in the details. Not really. He wanted the thing they had been
tormenting him with. Now that he was free, he would have it even if he had to kill an army to get it.

  But there was no army, he realize a moment later. All there was was a skillet on an open flame, a steak of massive proportions sizzling away inside it. Heedless of anything but his goal, he ripped the pan from the fire, with one hand and grabbed the steak with the other. He was eating it a moment later, ripping into it with huge gnawing bites, barely giving himself a moment to taste it before he was swallowing it down. It had to be the most delicious thing he had ever eaten in all of his life. He realized it was probably just perception, but just the same, it tasted like ambrosia.

  Once the steak was almost halfway gone, he began to look furtively around himself, prepared every minute to fight off whatever army lay in wait. He was aware the steak was probably just bait to trap him again, but he didn’t care. He would deal with trouble when it came and not a moment before. He’d never been the worrying sort. He’d make a goal and see it through to its end. He saw no sense in worrying about outcomes or anything else for that matter. Life was straightforward. Good or bad. War or peace. Free or slave. Fight or die. Simple. As simple as he was. Flesh or stone. Simple.

  It only took him a moment to notice the wee fey lass curled up in an intimidated ball on a counter across the way from him. He looked over his shoulder to see what she was so afraid of, but he saw only the stove and the refrigerator. Items in a kitchen. He was in a kitchen.

  That gave him pause. He swept his eyes over the vast room, with its open area on one side that led out into a sprawling living area with tremendous floor-to-ceiling windows all along the central wall of it. And that led him to fixate on the wild white and gray storm swirling on the other side of it. He pulled in a moment, checking his internal clock. Daylight. It ought to be daylight. But it wasn’t. The storm. It was blotting out the sun. It relieved him to know that. It meant he could move about freely without worrying about the touch of the sun turning him.

  His attention went back to the little fey thing. It occurred to him then that she must be afraid of him. It almost made him laugh. He was a protector of all things good and innocent, not a beast to be feared. Why would she …?

  Then he stopped and looked at himself. Really looked at himself. He was towering over her in her kitchen—he had to assume it was hers—naked and fierce and eating her food—he had to assume it was hers—like an animal. There were no enemies. There was no prison.

  Not then. There had been, but he had broken free of that prison. Again, he checked his internal clock. Three days. He’d been three days and nights without his touchstone. Who knew how much longer he had before the unthinkable would happen?

  He slowly put the pan down on the nearest surface and flexed his burned hand a bit, feeling it for the first time, only just then realizing he’d burned himself in his haste to obtain her food. He straightened his stance and, though he tried, he couldn’t make himself give up the steak he was gnawing on. It was almost gone in any event. It wasn’t likely she’d want it back. He held out a placating hand.

  “You’ve no reason tae be afraid,” he said with a swallow of the divine beef. If there was one thing that could be said of his kind, it was that they loved their food. And with good cause. They burned caloric energy three times as fast as humans did and therefore had to replenish just as quickly. Next to their freedom, food was the thing most Gargoyles coveted at any given moment. Freedom and food. In that order.

  “Y-you killed my refrigerator. I-I’d say that gives me reason.”

  Damn, he thought as he looked at the damaged piece of equipment. He swallowed the last of his steak and reached to maneuver the wobbly door. It shut, but not with any certainty that protected the food within it … what little there was of it. She barely had a bite in there, he realized as he immediately found himself looking for more food to satisfy his appetite. Then again, as tiny as she was, she probably didn’t eat all that much.

  He turned back to her. “I’m truly sorry for that, I am. I wasn’t in my right mind. Where am I? What is this place?” Then he moved and a blinding, fiery pain came over him, nearly bringing him to his knees. If not for the counter near him he would have fallen straight to the floor with the sudden unexpectedness of it. And quick as that, like the dart of a bee to a flower, she was off the counter and working herself under one of his arms as though to hold him upright. It made him chuckle in spite of the wave of pain. Did she think a wee thing such as herself could help a man of his size by doing that?

  “You’re injured,” she said with haste and, he had to admit, obviousness.

  “I can see that,” he said dryly. He didn’t bother to ask her what had happened. He knew well enough. He had broken free of that devil’s prison with the help of another brave lass …

  Ahnvil shoved away any thoughts of that escape and the woman who had made it possible. He would access his feelings about it later. Right now he had someone else’s feelings to consider. “Come, get away,” he said, shoving her away from him and looking around at the windows hastily as if his pursuers were right beyond the glass. They might well be, and then he would have brought hell down on this innocent woman and maybe she too would end up … dead.

  “Stop it,” she said, stubbornly dodging his efforts to put her aside. She was up against his uninjured side quick as a flash. “You need to lie down and rest. You’re going to be here awhile,” she said, nodding toward the storm outside. “So you may as well relax and take the time to rest. If you’ll let me get you to bed I’ll make you another steak,” she tempted him.

  And damn it, he really wanted another steak. He was still famished and, he argued with himself, he couldn’t afford to be weakened by hunger. She had a point about the storm. Between that and the fact that it was daylight beyond the storm, it was very unlikely he had been followed. But that didn’t change the fact that time was running very short for him. Dangerously short. He didn’t have the time to spend on eating and convalescing.

  But that storm … that would hold him back. Especially wounded as he was.

  “How long?” he asked, nodding toward the windows as well. “When can you expect a lull?”

  “I don’t know. Not for at least twenty-four hours, I promise you that much. These storms are fierce and long here. It could last as long as two or three days. And then after that it will take a good deal of time before the plows can come through and allow us the ability to go anywhere. So you need to face the fact that you’re stuck here for a while. May as well rest, heal, and,” she made sure to add, “eat.”

  Her logic and her lures were inescapable. With a nod of assent he let her help him down the hall to a bedroom and a freshly made up bed. By the time they got there, he felt as weak as a newborn lamb and his legs were shaking with the effort of remaining upright. As they traveled she told him the story of how she had found him and what kind of state he was in. Fever. Likely infection. Wounded. All of which he could easily take care of … if not for the dangerous time constraint looming over his head. It was best to remain as he was, remain human and helpless, than it was to change to his stone self, a state where he would heal far more rapidly. But he had to play it safe. After three days away from his touchstone, he had to play it safe.

  She had him tucked in in a flash, her speed and strength pretty impressive. She pressed some pills on him and followed them up with water so fast that he had them swallowed and gone before he could even think about arguing with her. Then she gave him a pat on the hand.

  “Now if you think you can manage to stay here this time, I’ll go make you another steak. I’ll make you some sides as well if you can wait.”

  He seriously debated that for a moment. Then he said, “Make me two steaks and all the trimmings you can manage.” Then he thought to add, “Please.”

  Her eyes went wide. “That will be three steaks!” she said with no little shock and even a touch of being impressed.

  “Your point?” he countered, a hard look daring her to argue. He wanted that steak a
nd wasn’t in the mood to fight about it. But that look meant that he would … if necessary.

  “All right then,” she said, backing up carefully as if she were afraid to startle him. That was when he realized what a gruff ass he was being, and a sheepish sensation washed over him. It must have telegraphed to his expression because she hesitated.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just very hungry,” he said, all of his regret lacing the words. She had done so much for him, and he was being an ingrate.

  “It’s okay.” Considering his feverish state, she wanted to offer him something lighter to eat, but she didn’t have the nerve to do so. “I’ll be right back with your food. Please can you try to stay in bed this time?”

  “This time?” he echoed, lying back on his pillows and starting to look seriously worse for wear. He had done a lot these past fifteen minutes and it was clear it was more than his body could handle.

  “You keep coming out of bed. Last time it was to eat and the two before that it was to …” she trailed off, realizing he probably had no memory of the times before and if she was reading this slightly more civilized version of himself right, he was going to be mighty embarrassed by what he’d done. Maybe. She still wasn’t sure what he was made of.

  “It was tae what?” he demanded to know, sitting back up and narrowing those golden-amber eyes on her.

  “You’re feverish. It’s not important,” she dismissed turning back toward the threshold of the door. It was mere steps away and she’d be free of his overwhelming presence. Maybe she’d get lucky and he’d pass out from fever before she got back with his food.

  “ ’Tis important tae me,” he said, that hard voice demanding she do away with the niceties and get right down to the truth.

  “You keep”—she swallowed—“you keep trying to, um, fondle me.” She wasn’t going to point out that she’d been thoroughly fondled already. Perhaps he had a code of honor or something and learning that would upset him. She didn’t want to disturb him any more than he already was.