by Judith Post
Gorgons & Gargoyles
The Ally & Dante Novellas
Flesh & Stone
Gargoyle, Missing
Samual Meets His Match
A Natural Affinity
Pack Problems – NEW!
by
Judith Post
Copyright 2014
For Summit City Scribes,
my writers' group
Flesh & Stone
The First Ally & Dante Novella
A Lunch Hour Read
by
Judith Post
Copyright 2012
To Ann Staadt, who shared her dream of gargoyles & churches with me
And told me to write the story
Chapter 1
Ally walked as fast and as far from the restaurant’s parking lot as possible. Rattled. Everything had happened too fast. Why had the warlock attacked her? Is this what happened to Stheno? Her sister hadn’t survived.
Ally’s flowing skirt flapped around her ankles. Her snug, white shirt glowed in the street lamps. Why hadn’t she worn black? She wanted to disappear in the evening shadows. She needed distance between her and the body. She tried to walk flat-footed, so that her sandals slapped less on the cement sidewalk. She’d been tempted to wear something other than her usual attire. Now she was glad she hadn’t. She could shift back and forth with no damage, except for the undies. Damn. She was wearing her sexy blacks. Now, they were only scraps.
She shook her head. The mind was an odd thing. Who cared about undies when she’d nearly died?
A group of patrons walked out the restaurant’s front door, their laughter billowing toward her. They turned to find their cars. She heard them gasp at the body sprawled in the lot. Her bad luck. If he’d been a vampire, he’d be dust. Warlocks weren’t disposable.
She glanced across the street. People mingled at a sidewalk café. They hadn’t picked up on the nearby drama. Ally crossed to look at the menu taped to the café’s window, trying to blend with them. She glanced through the specials of the day—mushroom-filled ravioli in a brown-butter sauce, chicken club pizza, and sausage rolls. She peeked back at the group gathered around the corpse. A woman pressed her body into a male’s, shielding her face from the grisly scene. A man had his cell phone pressed to his ear. Still no screams or fussing. She moved on. She turned the corner and heaved a sigh of relief. Her heart rate slowed, its beat more steady. A close call. Someone could have seen her.
To her right, the Botanical Gardens took up the next block. The huge cathedral loomed across from it—both closed, the street empty. Ally gazed skyward, fighting for calm. Deep breaths, she told herself. All she’d wanted was a night out, a little fun. Was that too much to ask? She’d lived a quiet life, never bothered anyone, but Stheno had lived in a cave, damn it, and someone had found her.
Tears stung her eyes, as usual, when she thought of Stheno. It was so unfair! They didn’t deserve to be punished. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and took in the three-quarter moon, then spied Orion. She’d met the handsome giant once…before his body was placed among the stars…and before she was changed.
She grunted. Changed. That put a nice spin on it. But she tried not to call herself cursed anymore. She tried to be positive.
Ally was about to turn to the left, to make her way closer to the city, when a stone gargoyle carved on the far corner of the church’s roof caught her attention. Larger than usual, almost life-sized. Two more adorned two other corners, each different than the other. The last corner sat empty. She frowned. She was sure there were always four of them. Weren’t there?
Sirens wailed on Jefferson Street, and her nerves jangled to life. She turned and hurried toward the court house and more restaurants, more people to lose herself in. What would the cops say when they found a warlock, facedown, with dozens of puncture wounds on his face and upper body, deep gouges where her claws had slashed, and signs of the poison that shut down his system? The bastard got exactly what he deserved. But how could they know that? Did she leave any evidence behind? DNA? What would hers look like?
She stepped under a striped awning at a jewelry shop on Calhoun Street. With her acute hearing, she could pick up things a few blocks away if she concentrated. A car door opened and closed. Footsteps paced the parking lot. “This one’s different from the one over there,” a cop said.
The one over there? Ally strained to hear more. Two bodies? She’d only killed one.
A second set of footsteps moved from one side of the lot to the other. “This guy’s naked, probably a Were of some kind. Shifted back while he was dying. Someone snapped his neck.”
“Not so easy to do with a Were,” the first cop said.
“And this guy…” His partner paused. “Lord, I’m glad I’m not him.”
“So what does that? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Darts?” his friend asked. “Giant, poisonous mosquitoes?”
“And the scratches? Look at the size of those claw marks, almost ripped him in half.”
“A bear?”
The cop laughed. “You’d think someone would notice that. If it were a Were, though….and shifted back….”
“What’s the deal anyway?” the partner asked. “The para don’t usually kill each other.”
“Sure, they do. There’s good and bad them, and there’s good and bad us. I just don’t know which is which. Are we looking at dead friends or dead foes?”
“Beats the hell out of me. I’m just glad they take care of their own. You need to let Dante know what happened.”
Dante? Did Summit City have a paranormal squad of crime fighters? And where would this Dante put her—as friend or fiend? Ally didn’t want to find out. She turned and kept walking. She didn’t stop until she reached the rooms she rented farther down the street, across from the city/county building and above a pawn shop.
Once inside, she studied her reflection in the hall mirror. She used to look worse after a battle, but she’d learned from experience. Chopped her dark hair—short curls stuck out like corkscrews, but weren’t nearly as bad as the mass of tangles she used to deal with. Her dark eyes looked a bit pinched at the corners. Worry did that. But her shirt had stretched and returned to its original shape, bless the miracle of Spandex, and the bottom hem of her long skirt was barely rumpled where her tail had pushed past it. Nothing anyone would notice. And her sandals….well, you couldn’t win them all. Her long, curved nails had ruined another pair.
Nuts. She usually wore her cheap ones, but tonight had been special. She was meeting someone. A sexy, lanky, funny someone….who never showed up.
Wait. She stared hard at her reflection. Her heart gave a painful twist. That was coincidence, right? It wasn’t a setup? Jason couldn’t possibly know about her, what she was. Could he?
Chapter 2
Ally didn’t sleep well. Thoughts scrambled around inside her skull. Stheno’s image flitted in and out of her mind.
“There’s no place to run,” her dead sister intoned. “I hid in a cave, on an island, and they still found me.”
Her parents’ faces chased her through stark dreamscapes. Blast them both. They could help her, if they chose to, but they considered her an embarrassment and wiped their hands of her from the beginning. Stheno, too, even though her sister had done nothing wrong either. The goddess Athena had shown more mercy than her mother and father.
She finally gave up and stared at the ceiling, trying to think things through.
She’d lived in Summit City for thirty years now, trying to blend in, be invisible. The city was big enough—close to 300,000—for her to disappear into the masses, but small enough that it wasn’t a hotbed for supernaturals. There wasn’t enough night life to attract vampire
s, too many farmers with hunting rifles to make Weres feel safe, and too many churches to appeal to most witches. But every city had its share of Others.
She didn’t have to worry about money, thank Zeus. Athena blessed her artistry. In this century, she worked with pottery—dishes, bowls, and casseroles—an offshoot of her addiction to foodTV. In the 1700s, she never stepped close to a stove or sink. That’s what servants were for. Now, she had so many cookbooks, they filled one wall of her tiny library.
Food is what brought Ally and Jason together. They signed up for a cooking class at a local restaurant, were paired up to make appetizers, and enjoyed each others’ company enough to keep seeing each other.
At least, that’s what she’d thought at the time. What did she really know about Jason? He sold real estate. He traveled a lot. He was over six feet tall, had blond hair and blue eyes and a razor-sharp sense of humor. And he smelled good.
Ally sighed. She told herself to return to sleep, but noticed her ceiling had a small web of cracks in its plaster. Like a spider’s web. Then a bird called from outside her window. Damn. She could stay in bed all day if she wanted to. Pressing her eyes tight, she willed sleep to return to her. Another bird chimed in. Not gonna happen. She glanced at her bedside clock. Seven a.m. Weren’t there any birds that stayed out late, then slept in?
She yanked off the sheet and went to start coffee. The aroma of fresh-brewed java wafted through the kitchen. Her sense of smell was even better than her hearing. Sometimes good—when she could distinguish one spice from another in a dish. Sometimes bad--like on trash pick-up days. She knew the scent of magic, the tang of shape shifters, and the coppery odor of vampires. Jason was none of those. But was he human?
She popped two slices of sourdough bread into the toaster. While she waited to butter them, her thoughts returned to Jason. She assumed he doused himself with some wonderful cologne that cost a fortune, but what if the scent she identified with him was his own? What would that make him? Something she’d never sniffed before.
A sudden chill rippled up and down her arms. She rubbed them to soothe herself. Then she laughed. What was wrong with her? A guy stood her up at a restaurant and when she left, a warlock attacked her. That didn’t mean her no-show date must be behind it. She could kick Jason to the curb for not being decent enough to cancel on her—he hadn’t even phoned to apologize—but that didn’t necessarily mean he was some evil supernatural intent on ridding the world of her. Did it?
She’d lived too long to believe in coincidence.
Her cell phone rang. She checked caller I.D.—Jason. She took a quick bite of toast and a sip of coffee before she flipped her phone open. “Hello?”
The man’s voice could melt chocolate. “Ally, I’m calling to humble myself. I got called away on a job, took the red-eye to New York, and I won’t be back in town for a few more days. I meant to call you but things got too rushed. Did you wait at the restaurant very long before you gave up on me?”
“Long enough.” Was he surprised that she answered her phone, had survived last night’s battle? If he was, he didn’t show it.
“Can you forgive me?”
She hesitated. If she said no, and he was behind the attack, he’d just hire more supernaturals to do his dirty work. If she said yes, was there a bigger risk? Or could she take the advantage by keeping an eye on him?
“That’s a long pause.” His tone grew intimate, playful. The man was awfully sure of himself. If he was a man.
“I need to think about it.”
“Hmmm, I like that. No pushover. I won’t pressure you. At least, you didn’t cuss me out and hang up on me. I’ll call again tonight.”
She flipped her phone shut. She wasn’t one to trust easily. She had her reasons—a list of them. She’d proceed with caution for a long time before she let her guard down again.
She finished her breakfast and took a quick shower. Pulling on her long skirt and spandex shirt, she padded to the airing porch at the back of her apartment. It was surrounded by windows. In the winter, it was cold. On a day like today—spring in the Midwest—she used it as her art studio. She turned on her pottery wheel and lost herself in work.
It was close to noon when her stomach growled. She looked at her watch, surprised. She always lost track of time when she shaped clay. She didn’t want to bother making lunch, so slid her feet into beat-up sandals and headed outside. No worries. She lived smack dab in the center of everything. The city-county building across from her apartment housed enough cops, that if someone attacked her during the day, there’d be so many witnesses and guns drawn, she wouldn’t have to change to protect herself.
Ally decided she was in the mood for Chinese, so headed to the same block as the Irish restaurant she’d been at last night. As she turned the corner, she glanced up at the cathedral’s roofline. And the fourth gargoyle sat on its corner.
She frowned. Now wait a minute…. She stared at the stone carving. Wings folded in back. A tall, muscular body hunched into a sitting position. A patrician face. The statue sat, unmoving. What the heck? Why wasn’t it there last night?
A man bumped her shoulder, trying to get past her. “Sorry….” He didn’t sound sorry, just annoyed. She was blocking traffic.
She sighed and moved on. With her Mongolian Beef in its little, white cardboard box, she stopped to stare at the cathedral one more time on her way home. She counted. All four gargoyles guarded their posts.
Chapter 3
The first bouquet of flowers arrived early afternoon—a dozen white roses with a tiny white flag attached to a florist’s green stake near the forefront. Cute, but it made Ally think this gambit had gotten Jason out of trouble with some other female before. She inhaled the sweet scent. The roses were too beautiful to pitch, even though that would serve him right, so she put them on one of the deep window casements in her dining alcove.
An hour later, a dozen pink roses came. These had a small plastic heart, breaking in two, nestled among their blooms. She placed that bouquet on the next casement.
When the doorbell rang at four, she cussed under her breath and wiped her clay-streaked hands on a paper towel. The delivery man bore a dozen, salmon-colored roses with a big, plastic question mark in their center. She smacked those next to the white roses, started to return to her work, then looked quickly back at them.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. She could have broken the glass vase when she slammed it down. It wasn’t the fault of the roses she was getting annoyed. Jason was trying too hard. He didn’t know her that well. She preferred small gestures to showy ones.
At five, she had to stop her pottery wheel again. This time, she yanked the door open and growled, “This had better be the last one.”
The delivery man checked his schedule. “You have two more.” He handed her a dozen red roses with a huge, red heart with a smiley face in the center.
“Cancel them. Don’t come here again. If you can’t cancel, give them to someone else.”
“But….”
“I have perfect aim. How fast can you dodge something thrown at your head?”
The man winced. “You won’t see me again.”
“Good.” She slammed the door, but gently placed the bouquet by the pink roses.
Then she turned on her pottery wheel and finished the deep, clay dish she was making. When all of the pieces were in the kiln, she started cleaning up, ready to relax for the evening.
Jason called later that night. Adele’s voice drifted from the stereo, and Ally turned down the music to hear better. She was in the kitchen, sipping red wine while she sautéed fresh spinach and a thick slab of salmon.
“The once an hour thing was too much, wasn’t it?” His tone implied he was smiling.
“It must have worked for you before. I’m not that girl.”
“I’ve noticed. You’re almost as prickly as the roses.”
“Not prickly. Independent. There’s a difference.”
“I’m getting home tomorrow night. Can I
make up for the dinner I didn’t provide for you?”
The devil you know, Ally reminded herself. “Why not? But you’re on probation. Just so you know.”
He laughed. “I’ve been warned. I’ll turn on the charm and be properly humbled.”
“The charm, you have in spades. The humble, you’ll have to work on.”
His laugh sounded genuine. “It’s a date then. Seven at Lester’s?”
“The place that specializes in martinis? It’s expensive.” And close to Headwaters Park, endless walking trails, and a big, dim parking lot. A shiver slithered up and down her spine.
“Money is no object when I’m groveling.”
She had money too. It didn’t impress her. But she was curious to see what would happen when she showed up at the restaurant to meet him. If she was under attack, she’d rather know it. It wasn’t her style to dodge and hide. Stheno had hidden, and she was dead, her head a trophy for whoever killed her.
“Okay, see you at eight.” After she hung up, she finished her supper, slid into her mangled sandals (just in case), and left her apartment. Time to scout out the area. Lester’s was within walking distance. So was the park. She was circling the block when she heard movement and whirled around to catch her stalker. No one there. She sniffed, but the wind was blowing from the wrong direction, shooing any scent away from her.
She was on her way back toward Calhoun Street when she heard movement again. This time, she looked up. A shadow darted from one rooftop to another. She picked up her pace and reached the cathedral before he did. No fourth gargoyle. For that matter, no third gargoyle either. The church was down to the two that sat on the front corners.
Hands on hips, she stood, glaring. She’d heard rumors about gargoyles, but had never met one. Could Jason be a gargoyle?
