Locked in Stone

by Tory Michaels

The T’chan’s howl ratcheted up to a new, feverish height as he rolled to his feet, axe still clenched in his hand as he scanned the immediate vicinity for more dangers to Rose. The clashes in the house seemed to be fading, so perhaps, just maybe, they’d won this fight. At least for the moment.

  Lucifer, or whoever was coordinating this little attack, would certainly notice when the T’chan shut and likely send forces to retaliate.

  A man paused in the doorway, a baseball bat in his hands. Since the bat actually glowed, like Cal’s axe and Ang’s bow, he knew it was a blessed one, but who in God’s name used a baseball bat as their primary weapon? “What the heck, man?”

  He spared a quick glance at Rose, whose hands traced circles in the air, her mouth moving in silent refrain, though what the words were he couldn’t even begin to guess.

  The man’s grip on his bat tightened as he took in the sight until Ang rested a single hand on his arm. “Stand down, Gabe. He brought her,” she said, glancing back briefly at Rose again before staring steadily at the other Sentinel. “He’s one of us.”

  “Rose?” He asked the question but received no response.

  Upstairs came a final yowl and everything but the sound of the T’chan died around them. Rose didn’t so much as blink and he swallowed hard again. She was dealing with the T’chan in front of witnesses. How the hell could he protect her, keep her safe, if everyone and their dogs knew who she was? Sooner or later, someone would slip up and let the wrong person know.

  Cal stepped up to Rose, gaping unabashedly.

  Ang coughed and stared at him before shooing the other man out. “Gabe, go see if Dennis needs anything. Start some cleanup. Do something useful.” In Cal’s head, he heard her softly say, “I’ll keep him distracted, but I want an explanation, Cal.”

  Awww, shit. Yup, Ang knew what Rose was. What was he supposed to say?

  “But what about…”

  Ang shot the man a dirty look. It worked almost as well on Gabe as it did on Cal himself. Gabe blushed and stalked down the hall.

  She slammed the door and then hissed, “Are ya kiddin’ me, Cal? You found a Sacred Mother?”

  Telepaths suck.

  She sucked worse than most, being the most powerful one in North America. It made her a great paintball teammate because she could sense where the enemy team chose to hide, but not so much when it came to keeping things private. Damn it all.

  “Don’t worry, sugar. I won’t tell anyone. Not even Slave Driver,” she added as an afterthought. “He’s too busy anyway, dealing with his own problems.”

  Cal looked at the motionless Sacred Mother. She glowed with an eerie golden light. He ran a hand through his hair, trying to smooth the ever-present cowlick in back. “You can keep it from everyone, even from others like you?”

  “Naturally.” She didn’t look at all offended by the question as she waved her hand in front of Rose’s wide-open eyes without any sign of a response. “I don’t think she can hear us. She’s completely lost in that thing.”

  The omnipresent shriek of the T’chan raised in pitch to where he feared his ears might bleed.

  And then he knew blessed silence. Pure, unadulterated silence for a good five seconds before Rose slumped backward with a husky moan, her eyes rolling back in her head.

  For the second time in less than ten minutes, Cal found himself pinned under four-hundred plus pounds of solid body.

  At least Rose smelled better than the hellhound. A lot better.

  Chapter Eight

  Tip from Gargoyle Rose Johnson: Avoid flying into Cuba, no matter how high the delivery fee. The Americans and Cubans both are awfully gun-happy.

  Cal cursed under his breath, ignored the angel whack on his head, and tried to gently move Rose off of him. It wasn’t easy when dealing with a gargoyle. She might be smaller than Dennis and Vasiliu, but a full-grown gargoyle female still easily outweighed human females by a ratio of two and a half to one, most of it solid muscle.

  He heaved himself to his feet and looked around for somewhere to put her. He didn’t want her lying on the corpses or on the blood-saturated couch.

  At least the T’chan seemed to be closed. The room was blessedly silent. A point for the good guys!

  He rested his hand on her throat, checking for a pulse, though he was pretty sure she was alive. She was breathing and in his experience, neither the dead nor the undead breathed.

  Thankfully the hellhound wasn’t so lucky.

  The chemical the Sentinels used on vampires might not work on a demon dog. As far as he knew, it hadn’t ever been tested on any full-blooded Otherworlder. For some reason neither Mr. Ray nor Lucifer seemed inclined to volunteer to be a guinea pig.

  Rose moaned, head shaking as her lips moved in undecipherable words. Her brow furrowed and her hips undulated. The movement bore a striking resemblance to…

  He spun around with a soft groan and stared blindly in Ang’s direction. Dear God, he knew what a woman sounded like as she reached orgasm. Heck, he’d contributed to more than a few in his lifetime. Unless he was very much mistaken, Rose might be mentally checked out, but her body was thoroughly enjoying itself.

  What a freakin’ waste.

  His fists clenched at his side as he tried not to think about ways he could find out how to make Rose move like that for him. She was his charge and Sentinels didn’t involve themselves in the sex lives of their charges.

  I call bullshit, the voice in his head murmured, sounding annoyingly like Lucas.

  Cal wasn’t going to go there. He had no right to have any physical interest in a gargoyle woman, much less a Sacred Mother.

  Without looking back at Rose, he called out, “Rose? Can you hear me?”

  Ang’s lips twitched as she looked at him, clearly aware of his thoughts. She didn’t comment, just yanked open the door. “I’ll get some people out on patrol. Hopefully we can head off any Twisted One response, and avoid them actually seeing Rose.”

  Yeah, because unfortunately, Cal had just realized something. Only Sacred Mothers could close T’chans. Which meant, by protecting the citizens of Orlando and helping delay the opening of the North American Rift by sealing this T’chan, Rose just announced her survival to every Twisted One on the continent and to the best of Cal’s knowledge, none of the other Sacred Mothers, old or young, were in the country. The Twisted Ones were going to go wild hunting for who’d closed the crack.

  The only saving grace to it was that any Sacred Mother could close a T’chan, not just the ones young enough to close the Rift. Hopefully, the Twisted Ones wouldn’t suspect one of the lost ones had shown up again.

  He tried to formulate at least a temporary plan to keep her safe. He couldn’t very well lock her up. Even if he wanted to, he somehow doubted she’d meekly sit in a sealed room and allow them all to keep her safe. Besides, where one T’chan opened, there were sure to be more, and since they didn’t have access to any other Sacred Mothers in the United States at the moment, Rose was responsible for closing them all.

  “Cal?” Rose whispered the word, her husky voice a needy purr in the near-darkness of the room.

  His core temperature rose. She doesn’t mean to sound like that. Not with me.

  But damn, he couldn’t help a fleeting wish that she would. If he heard that voice while lying next to her in bed, yeah. Neither of them would be sleeping or doing anything other than sating each other’s needs.

  “Hey there,” he said softly and settled onto the floor next to her. Her skin felt warm to the touch, and rough, as only a gargoyle’s could be. He tried to stifle his body’s reaction to her as she continued to writhe, her nipples blatantly jutting out under the thin material of her tank top.

  Born of angels, Cal. Born of angels.

  Damn he didn’t want to be half-angel right then. A half-demon probably wouldn’t think twice about taking advantage. But no, he was a good guy.

  Hell, he was a freakin’ saint to look without touching.

  Sweat broke out across his fore
head, every instinct in him reminding him that he was in fact a man and she was easily the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen. He wanted to…

  “Did we get it closed?”

  He was inordinately proud of himself for sounding completely calm, cool, and in control when he responded. “We didn’t close it. You did. Don’t you remember doing it?”

  …

  Rose blinked, slowly fluttering her eyes open. Cal’s blurry face swam into view. Little shockwaves of pleasure reverberated through her body and she bit back a moan. Hopefully he didn’t notice. Men were clueless, right? Because, so help her, he might be a Sentinel, but it would take almost nothing to get her to leap at him, pin him to the ground, and…

  Get a grip, Rose. Go back to sleep, hormones.

  “I’m not sure. I remember the light, stepping into the light. I actually had to be in it to close it. I remember saying something.”

  Her voice sounded like crap. Had she screamed? She swallowed, her throat and mouth dry; her limbs had all the strength and firmness of cooked Ramen noodles.

  Cal’s face solidified above her. He patted her gently, worry etched into his expression. Rose squeezed her eyes shut, trying to concentrate on the surge that blasted through her body just before everything detonated in one humdinger of a freaking orgasm. Strange, Latin-esque words and subtle hand gestures carried no more reality than remnants of a dream.

  “Are you going to, uh, be okay?”

  She struggled to sit up. His strong arm came around her back and helped her upright. The contact sent a fresh surge of need through her, reigniting the nerve endings just beginning to calm down again. Jesus, I’ve lost it if just a simple touch turns me on.

  Oh, God, was she going into her first Breeding Heat? She’d never been driven, but she remembered hearing Aunt Leona and Anyuka talk about it one night when they thought she was off on the roof of the house.

  No, couldn’t be. No maniacal, non-stop itching. So it was all the T’chan’s doing. It had to be.

  Seeing nowhere else to lean, she curled against Cal’s warm body. She was grateful for the strength he exuded, and yet at the same time, resented herself for even a moment’s weakness in front of a Sentinel.

  Damn it, he just kept being there at exactly the right time.

  When the world stopped spinning around her, she opened her eyes again and breathed a soft sigh of relief. Everything remained in place. No vile red glow or spitting sparks of Otherworldly energy remained.

  All in all, much better—if one didn’t take into account that she was rapidly concluding her hormones had woken up for the first time in her life, leaving her with an attraction to a blasted Sentinel.

  “Rose?”

  “Huh?” Oh, right, I should pay attention.

  She wasn’t the type to ever lust over a man—her Gerard Butler in just-about-anything-he’d-ever-done crush notwithstanding—but something about Cal got to her. Maybe it was the fact that she’d attacked him and he hadn’t hit back, just held his own. Or that he kept bloody protecting her! Which was his job and he was fairly good at it when he wasn’t being pulled by conflicting responsibilities, damn it.

  “I’ll be fine.” She curled her fingers into the material of his pants, carefully not shredding anything with her claws. “I think the energy from the T’chan got to me. I’ve never felt anything like it before.”

  That was for damned sure, and she would let the Twisted Ones rip her wings off before she’d admit just how the T’chan got to her. As the power and light of the crack enveloped her, the wail driving inside her brain, wave after wave of heat and pressure had coalesced in her body and taken on a wickedly sexual connotation. It had probably ruined her for self-satisfaction forever.

  Yeah, she wasn’t gonna tell Cal or anyone else that she’d fainted from the sheer bliss of the moment.

  Finally. Perks to the tail. Not very convenient, but wowser. At least gargoyles got some sort of compensation for closing the T’chans.

  Rose shook herself free of the fading haze and met Cal’s confused gaze with only a bit of a blush creeping over her cheeks. She kept up her fervent prayers he wouldn’t notice the little tremors still shaking her body from remnants of the moment.

  “So, what do we do now? If we’re done with this crack, are there likely to be others? Or is this like a warning shot across the bow?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, sooner or later. Do you think you can do it again if you had to? Lucas’ll probably be sending for a couple of the older Sacred Mothers, now that the T’chans have started here.”

  Sign me up! The hellhound attack hadn’t been fun, but Cal had handled that quite nicely during her distraction. She was up to another round or six with the T’chans. Add the hot, overly protective man next to her…

  Wait, no, stop. Not hot. Robin. Not hot.

  Except, God above, he really was. It was a temporary madness, brought on by the T’chan that was all.

  “I’ll manage.” Pushing reluctantly away from Cal’s strength, she rolled her shoulders and stood. Her body rapidly cooled, deprived of its external heat source. “So, now what?”

  Cal scrubbed at his face, suddenly looking quite weary and she almost wanted to comfort him. Almost.

  Very untypical for her to comfort anyone

  “I have to check in with Lucas and then find out what Dennis did with Jonas.”

  “Jonas?” She told him what Dennis had told her about getting the man to the car. “Okay, what exactly is the deal with him. He’s alive, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah, Jonas isn’t exactly still with us. It’s complicated, but we’ll have to put him down. His soul’s gone.” More bitterness crept into his tone.

  “What? But, I saw him breathing? He’s not a dog. You can’t just ‘put him down’.” How did a body continue living without its soul?

  “It has to be done. It’s a mercy to the body. Otherwise it’ll be hooked up to machines until it dies of natural causes at some point. The soul is completely destroyed and there’s no coming back from that.” Frustrated rage simmered just below the surface, based on the way his fists clenched and he kept grinding his teeth.

  She frowned, then in hopes of getting him to abandon this general doom and gloom attitude, she yanked him to his feet. “Go, talk to Lucas. Let’s not make any decisions. Maybe…maybe there’s something that can be done.” Thanks to her mom’s witchy ways, she knew occasionally a body could be used even if there was no soul in it, but somehow she suspected the Sentinels didn’t approve of zombies.

  Neither did she, technically, but she wasn’t about to just write off a person, even if she didn’t know them personally. There must be something that could be done for him.

  She patted Cal’s arm, not sure what else to do for him. He stood there, that lost expression on his face, for a moment or two longer, and then he straightened up. “Right. Let’s get this place cleaned up and try to figure out how the people here tie in to the Twisted One plans. Lucifer would have chosen them for a reason. The house gave him a private location for the sacrifice. No sign of a struggle, so they went willingly.”

  Despite his refreshed determination, she still sensed a deep well of sorrow in him and Rose dug her talons into her palm. She wouldn’t give in to the instinct to hold and comfort him. He didn’t seem to want any comfort, and it would be totally lame and out of character for her anyway. She wasn’t the nurturing type, especially when she didn’t give a damn about Cal or any other Sentinel. Right?

  Even though, she knew that somehow she did.

  The Sentinels were nothing like Gwen had told her. Rose didn’t know what to believe anymore, but for the first time in her life, she’d found the people she was truly meant to be with, her own kind. And she intended to stick with them until or unless they gave her a reason not to.

  As Cal marched from the room, her sensitive hearing picked up his muttered, “Yet again, I failed to protect someone who needed me.”

  Despite suspecting she wasn’t supposed to have heard it, the soft a
dmission nearly broke her heart for the warrior and she swallowed against the unwelcome wave of sympathy.

  …

  Cal closed his eyes and tried to rest as Rose drove them back toward Atlanta. The sun was up, had been for more than an hour now. The tepid, early-spring light didn’t chase away the chill that had settled over him since the battle. He’d lost focus on his main goal of keeping the Sacred Mother safe when he went after Jonas, and then he hadn’t even managed to save the man.

  Ang and Gabriel had taken the sacrificed couple to some undisclosed location and would call in an anonymous tip later in the day. The cops would find a corny-looking sacrificial scene, including pentagram, black candles, and all the crap humans believed they needed to make a deal with the devil.

  Rose had arranged Jonas’s body into the back of the SUV, covering him with a stolen coat. Cal knew it didn’t really matter what they did with the body since there was no return for Jonas now, but when he’d tried again to emphasize the need to put the body to rest, she’d nearly ripped his head off. He didn’t want to risk further damaging their newly formed connection by insisting she desist from a pointless exercise in compassion.

  At least Tom had finally come out of hiding. He’d retreated into the charm on Cal’s watch before they left Atlanta. The ghost had emerged as the Sentinels cleaned house, and run invisible circuits around the vicinity, turning up two incoming patrols of pissed-off Twisted Ones and vamps.

  He floated above Jonas’s body. If he’d been solid, he would have been sitting on the man. “Totally creepy, letting his remains keep living. You know that, right?”

  Cal didn’t answer because Rose spoke for the first time in thirty minutes.

  “You look like crap, Cal. No offense or anything, but you do. Maybe you should sleep on the drive back to Atlanta.” She snuck a quick, pointed glower at him, and then returned her attention to the highway.

  “I want to,” he grunted irritably. He wanted to rest, but regret kept him awake.

  His entire body felt like it had been shoved through a pasta maker multiple times. Fighting the Demon Gatherers had drained him, and then battling the hellhound had just compounded the exhaustion.