Using his rear claws, he shifted his grip on the demon’s minion and gave one sharp jerk, breaking its neck with careless ease. His hands caught the second man before he could drag the female more than an inch from his fallen cohort. One talon, long and sharp as a dagger, pierced the vulnerable human flesh, stopping its black heart. When the second nocturni dropped to the ground, the female let out a cry, swaying on her knees as if about to fall.
Swooping in, Dag caught her in his powerful grip, but this time he tempered his strength, careful to keep his claws from biting through cloth and into flesh. Two powerful beats of his wings lifted them high into the sky over a city glistening with light and movement. He needed to move away from here swiftly before the noise of the brief skirmish drew more humans to the site. His kind had been summoned into this world to battle the nocturnis and their demonic masters, but they attempted to remain unseen whenever possible.
He glanced around quickly, noting both familiar and unfamiliar landmarks below him. He knew not how long he had slept since his last waking, but he could see that many years had passed him by. The small settlement he remembered had been called a city by its inhabitants even then, but it had paled in comparison to the older and larger European capitals he had known. Now, though, it appeared to have grown into itself, stretching much farther than the boundaries in his memories.
It took a moment to orient himself, but he recognized the closest building as the home of his former Warden. He did not doubt that the man had by now passed into the next world, but at least by sighting it, Dag knew where he was. He had not been moved in more than three hundred years.
The trip to reach the rooftop of the four-story mansion of the Houghton family could barely be called a flight. He hovered a moment over his old landing spot before recoiling in disgust. The detritus and building debris he might have ignored, but the sharp, sulfurous stink of tar could not be borne. He needed another spot to land out of sight of humans, and quickly, judging by the rate at which the rigidity of shock and fear had begun to leach from his human burden. She would not remain quiescent long.
Dag glanced around, his gaze finding a familiar sight in the crowded skyline. A church spire rose into the night, the open archways of its belfry providing an easy entrance and exit as well as an excellent vantage point from which to observe those passing below. He could reach it in moments and slip himself and his human charge inside before the chances of being seen became too dangerous.
Changing direction with a twitch of his wings, he covered the distance of more than a mile in seconds. He had to draw up and hover for a moment in order to set the human female safely on the floor inside the bell tower, because his full wingspan would never fit through the arched openings. With his rear claws free, he dug them into the stone of the portal and perched long enough to furl the appendages before hopping in after her.
Half a second after her feet touched the floor, her bottom followed. Her grunt nearly echoed in the cavern of the church bell, but she made no other sound, just stared up at him with wide, dark eyes.
Dag returned her gaze, finally taking notice of how tiny the female actually was. Oh, he had known she weighed so little he had barely noticed as he lifted her from the ground and flew her to safety; but he was a warrior, strong and hardened by battle. He could have flown a military tank that short distance.
No, the human wasn’t simply light, she was little. He couldn’t remember the last time he had encountered a human so small unless it was a child. This female, though, appeared fully grown, with mature curves visible even through her heavy garments. Still, the top of her head had barely reached his collarbone before she collapsed, even though he stood among the shortest of his kind. He doubted the human could boast so much as five feet of height. He literally was twice her size, but somehow she didn’t appear to be afraid of him.
In fact, if he were forced to label the expression on her unexpectedly strong features, he would have to say she looked fascinated. She barely blinked, her gaze devouring him in long, thirsty gulps.
Those dark eyes dominated her face, wide and heavily lashed, tilted just the slightest bit at the corners. Her brows, too, were heavy, but gracefully arched and almost black against her fair skin. Her nose suited her face, strong and straight but not too large for femininity. It perched above a cupid’s bow of a mouth now half open in astonishment. Her chin dipped toward her chest, a rounded point that indicated a mischievous and determined nature.
Overall, her face gave the impression of a lively spirit and a strong will, the type of human who spoke definitely and often. Thankfully, for the moment she remained silent, but he wondered how long that would last.
He’d grown accustomed through the centuries to attracting human attention, but mostly those who saw him felt either revulsion or terror at his appearance. Of all his brethren, his natural form appeared the least like those they were summoned to protect. His short, thick legs and arched back made him as comfortable moving on four limbs as on two, and his flat nostrils, heavy brow, and forward-thrusting jaw gave him a bestial, almost apelike visage. Add in the wings, the fangs, and the razor-sharp talons, and humans either loathed him or feared him. Mostly, he cared not which way they leaned.
But this female didn’t try to scamper away the moment he gazed on her, and Dag found himself unsure of what that meant. How was he to act in a situation he had never before encountered?
He chose to glower, but then, he almost always chose to glower. Settling back on his heels, he pressed his knuckles against the floor between his feet and ruffled his wings just to remind her of what he was. What he could do to her if he decided to name her an enemy.
“Now, human, I have saved you from the Order’s attack dogs. You owe me a debt. To repay the value of your life, you will reveal to me if you are my Warden and what latest threat the Seven have brought from the Darkness. I am a Guardian, and I will do my duty to keep the Demons at bay.”
If anything, the female went even more still. She seemed almost to stop breathing, and her dark eyes opened so far the whites shone in the dim moonlight. Her jaw fell another full inch, a look of utter shock suffusing her features.
“Warden?” she repeated in that unexpected rasp. “The Order, the Seven, the Darkness, a Guardian.” She shook her head and scrambled suddenly to her knees, leaning forward to stare at him intently. “How do you know those terms? What do they mean to you?”
Dag felt his brows knit together as he stared down at the tiny human. “They mean everything. I am a Guardian of the Light, sworn to protect your world from the evil of the Seven Demons of the Darkness, and if you do not know this, then you cannot be my Warden. But if you are not, then tell me how I was summoned from my sleeping?”
“Sure, sure, absolutely. Just as soon as you tell me which rabbit hole I fell down, because all of a sudden I have the feeling that I am very late to the party.”
Chapter Two
Dos lebn iz nit mer vi a kholem—ober vek nikh mit oyf.
Life is no more than a dream—but don’t wake me up.
Kylie pinched herself hard enough to leave a bruise, but nothing changed. She still knelt in the bell tower of some ancient Boston church, and she’d gotten there by being flown in by a creature out of a Disney cartoon series.
Flown. As in picked up in a set of wickedly sharp talons, lifted clear off the ground, and carried through the air without the benefit of a cramped seat, an air-pressurized cabin, and a minuscule bag of complimentary pretzels.
If this turned out to be some kind of weird, mugging-induced hallucination, and she was really in a hospital bed somewhere having herself a nice little coma, she was going to be hella disappointed.
This was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to her!
You know, provided it was actually happening.
She shifted forward, easing an inch closer to the giant, inhuman creature that filled her vision, and winced when her muscles protested. She definitely felt like she’d just been attacked, and wou
ldn’t she be pain-free if she were in a coma? If not, it sounded grossly unfair, so she was going to assume she was alive and the sight in front of her was real.
She wanted so badly to reach out and touch him, just to prove it. Her fingers actually twitched as she struggled to control the impulse.
“You speak nonsense, human. I saw no hole,” the creature intoned, its voice so deep she felt it almost more than she heard it. It vibrated through the planks underneath her and up through her body like an earthquake. “You appeared to fall as a result of the nocturnis’ attack, not because of some misstep.”
Huh. Well, this was certainly proving to be an articulate monster, she decided with a blink, and that had to be more evidence on the side of reality. After all, given her tendency to abuse two languages—English and Yiddish—equally, why would her mind conjure up a figment of her imagination who spoke more precisely than she ever did?
And really, where would she have gotten the idea of being carried off from a random attack in a park by a living gargoyle? Even the statue she’d walked past hadn’t looked like this. The gray stone of the carving had been weathered beyond belief, the features and details of the original nearly worn away by time and the elements. It looked more like a misshapen blob of natural limestone and not at all like this chiseled, three-dimensional work of Gothic art. When had she acquired the skill to think up a sculpture this vivid?
He looked like he should be perched atop a spire at Notre Dame. With his stony gray skin, animalistic features, and enormous batlike wings sprouting from his back, he defined the cultural image of a gargoyle. He sat crouched in front of her, and considering she’d bet that he topped out around seven feet when standing erect, she couldn’t complain about his decision not to loom over her.
If her bubbeh had taught her better manners, she’d have thanked him. Well, okay, if the manner lessons had stuck with her, because heaven knew her grandmother had tried.
Muscles bulged and rippled every time the creature so much as drew breath. Muscles on top of muscles, so that he radiated the kind of power that could rend limbs from bodies or uproot ancient oak trees. He probably couldn’t open a door without ripping the thing from its hinges, yet he had carried Kylie with care, not so much as pricking through her coat with the claws that looked like they came from some kind of predatory dinosaur.
Maybe that was why, when she looked at what should have struck her as a monster, she felt no fear. Fascination, curiosity, even awe, but no fear. So either she instinctively trusted the thing not to hurt her, or she was just seriously out of her mind. Even on her best day, that was a tough call.
Then her memory stirred, reminding her of the first words he had spoken to her, the words that had sounded eerily familiar. She’d read those words in Bran’s notes, but what did they have to do with this impossible being? The tingling under her skin told her there had to be a connection. Nothing this unbelievable could be chalked up to pure coincidence, right?
She refocused on his words and watched him closely. “Okay. You used that word again. That ‘nocturnal’ word. What does it mean?”
“Nocturnis?”
She nodded.
“The nocturnis are the enemy,” he growled, making the floorboards vibrate again. “They unite as the Order of Eternal Darkness, serving the Seven in their never-ending attempts to return to this world and seize it for their own.”
The bell in Kylie’s head went DING!DING!DING! and she shivered as if a cold wind passed through her. Neither reaction had anything to do with the bell next to her or the night air surrounding her, or from the fact that a living gargoyle stood between her and the only way down from the tower, a hatch above a narrow stairway. No, this was all from the pieces of an unknown puzzle suddenly beginning to come together. A few more, and she might even have a frame laid out to start filling in the picture of Bran’s secrets.
“And the Seven are … what?” she prompted.
“The Seven Demons of the Darkness.” The gargoyle’s jaw worked, clicking his fangs together ominously. His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “Your ignorance of such things betrays you as an ordinary human, not a member of the Guild, but I do not have time to waste. If my slumber was disturbed, it can only mean that the Seven are stirring. I must find my Warden and assess the current threat.”
He shifted as if to turn away from her. Kylie felt a surge of panic and reached for him. No way could she let this creature slip away from her, not after he’d come this close to answering so many of her questions.
“Wait!”
He ignored her, moving into the open archway and ruffling his wings in preparation for flight.
Hauling in a breath, Kylie took a gamble and hoped like hell she wasn’t tangling herself up in a lie when she called after him. “What if I told you that I knew a Warden, and that I have information he was collecting on the guys you’re talking about? What if I could get you even more?”
The creature hesitated and turned his head to gaze back at her over his shoulder. He didn’t step down from the ledge, but he settled his wings once more against his back. “How did you come by such information, human? If you claim ignorance of so much more.”
Kylie pushed to her feet and wrapped her arms around her torso. She told herself she felt cold, not vulnerable. “I said I had information, not that I understood it. I didn’t know my friend was one—a Warden—until you mentioned them, and I guess I can’t promise he was, but I can tell you for certain that he had a whole bunch of information gathered on all the things you just mentioned. Wardens, Guardians, nocturnis, demons. The whole shebang. I’ve been going through it for months without being able to figure it all out. Maybe you’d have better luck.”
Now he did step back into the bell tower, but his expression and his whole demeanor had changed. For the first time, Kylie could see the ferocity of his shape and feel the menace in his hard, dark gaze. The black depth glittered in the night, seemingly backlit by a thousand tiny flames.
“How did you get this information, human?” he repeated, his lips curling back to expose long, gleaming white fangs.
She actually took a step back. Her. The girl voted most likely to spit in a golem’s eye. “It came from a friend, like I said.”
“And he simply gave you, an ordinary human, access to such powerful secrets?”
The low rumble of his voice sounded like an approaching storm. New Englander she might be, but Kylie had a sudden vision of tornados tearing across the horizon. She shook her head and retreated another step. “No, he didn’t. But when he died, I took a look.”
That provoked a snarl. “How did he die?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to find out.”
“Explain.”
He stopped moving forward, but considering he had her backed into the corner of the belfry a good four stories in the air, she figured he’d gotten her right where he wanted her.
She swallowed against the lump in her throat. “Bran Powe was my closest friend. A year and a half ago, he disappeared. Just vanished. No one knew what had happened to him, not me, not his family, not the police. No one.”
Her hands shook as she told the story, but her heart had stopped fighting to beat its way out of her chest as she remembered how she’d gotten into all of this. When she remembered why.
“No one heard anything for a full year, and trust me, we were looking. Then, six months ago, I got a call from his sister. She told me he was dead, that his body had been found and that there were no signs of foul play. She tried to tell me that he must have had a heart condition that no one knew about, that his death had been tragic, but natural.”
“You do not believe that.”
“I don’t.”
He still watched her intently, but the snarl had faded, and his fangs no longer looked like they were five seconds from ripping her throat out. Hey, look at that. She really did remember how to breathe!
“I didn’t even before I saw his notes,” she continued, “which is why I looked into them
in the first place. I don’t know what I thought I’d find, but I figured maybe he’d gotten himself mixed up in something ugly, drugs or gambling or something. I never figured him for the type, but what else was I supposed to think? Demons and secret societies of superheroes somehow never even crossed my mind before I started digging. And then, I wondered if maybe he’d just … lost it.”
“Lost it?”
“Went a little crazy.” She felt bad saying it out loud, but she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t entertained the thought. The Bran she remembered had been as sane as the next person, but the impression left by his ramblings had made her wonder. He’d mentioned things that sane people just didn’t mention. Who had computer files full of strategies to avert demonic apocalypse?
Of course, at that very moment Kylie was standing in a bell tower talking about those very same things with a creature she was pretty sure should not have existed, so who was crazy now?
The gargoyle scowled and Kylie reminded herself that if he hadn’t killed her yet, she was probably safe. Maybe. “Most humans don’t spend a lot of time thinking about demons, let alone collecting all sorts of information on them and how they and their minions want to take over the world. So I worried a little. So sue me.”
“Most humans live in ignorance.”
The sentiment might be harsh, but Kylie could see some of the tension ease from his muscles, and she hoped that signaled he no longer intended to rip her head off her shoulders. She was kind of attached to it. Before she could really relax, though, the creature shifted closer and drew a deep breath.
Was he smelling her?
Kylie bit her lip against the urge to voice that question. Too soon, she told herself. Remember not to antagonize the monster. At least, not until he gets to know me better. By then, it will just happen naturally.
She held herself still while he appeared to mull over whatever he had discerned from his sniff.
“If you do not serve the Guild,” he finally ventured, “and you have no stench of the Darkness in you, how is it that you smell of magic?”
Rocked by Love (Gargoyles Series) Page 2
