Stone's Kiss

by Lisa Blackwood

  STONE’S KISS

  By

  Lisa Blackwood

  Copyright

  *****

  STONE’S KISS

  Copyright November 2011

  *****

  Copyright 2011 by Lisa Smeaton

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, and characters are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actually persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any print or electronic form without author’s permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the aurhor’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  COVER ART BY Suzannah Safi

  EDITED BY Faith Carroll

  A Dark Fate

  As a child, a near–drowning accident stole Lillian’s old life. Her new life began the moment she awoke at the foot of a brooding, stone gargoyle.

  Years later, Lillian still finds comfort in Gregory, her gargoyle, never guessing he is more than cold stone until demonic creatures called the Riven attack. Gregory senses her terror and wakes from his healing sleep.

  After the battle, Lillian learns the humans she thought were her family are a powerful coven of witches at war with the Riven. Lillian is something more than human, a powerful worker of magic, an Avatar to the gods. Gregory has been her protector for many lifetimes, but troubles in their homeland forced him to flee with her to the human world. And it wasn’t an accident which stole her memories—it was Gregory. He suspects Lillian is host to an infant demon, one capable of evil greater than the Riven.

  Despite everything, Lillian fears she’s falling in love with her guardian. While she might be able to defeat the Riven with Gregory’s help, she doesn’t know if her fragile new love can survive the evil growing in her own soul…

  Chapter One

  “He’s stone.”

  Lillian smoothed the oiled rag down the length of her grandmother’s broadsword.

  “Just a statue,” she muttered to the empty kitchen. “Stone, nothing more.”

  The microwave’s clock glowed pale green in the dim light. She deliberately avoided focusing on the time and returned to sweeping the rag across the blade with a harried motion. “I don’t …”

  Love him?

  Was she really going to say that?

  Oh God, yes she was.

  Tension built behind her eyes and little flashes sparked in her vision, promising one hell of a headache it the making. She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. It didn’t help.

  Rich, warm coffee scent reached her a few seconds before the sound of gurgling announced the coffee maker was finished. Lillian welcomed the distraction. After a few more swipes of the rag, she set the sword aside.

  Polishing her grandmother’s entire sword collection had seemed like a suitable task when she’d awoken from a nightmare at some ungodly hour near dawn and couldn’t get back to sleep. Normally nightmares and insomnia didn’t plague her, but there was something new—a restlessness which reared its head every night just as the stars faded and the first pink tinted the sky with a hint of dawn. Only one thing calmed the restlessness—sitting with him, her stone gargoyle.

  But she couldn’t spend every moment sitting in her glade with a glorified garden ornament. To prevent herself seeking a statue’s company, she slipped into the bathroom instead of the direction her heart craved.

  She splashed cold water on her face for several moments. When she worked up the nerve to look in the mirror, a woman with dark circles under her eyes looked back. Even the golden light of dawn didn’t make her look any less haggard. All the signs pointed at the same problem—the inability to sleep, polishing her grandmother’s sword collection in the middle of the night, wanting to spend hour after hour with a stone statue under the shadow of her favorite tree, a growing dependence on coffee—yep, she’d lost her mind.

  Back in the kitchen, the solitude registered heavier now that her hands weren’t busy. Mechanically, she wandered over to the coffee pot and filled the largest mug she could find.

  She was just putting the cream back in the fridge when she noticed one of her grandmother’s dog–eared romances sitting on top, half–hidden under a pile of junk mail.

  Taking a sip of her coffee, she eyed the romance. It was one of those hormones–take–notice, blush–inducing covers, complete with drops of water cascading down the hero’s picture–perfect chest. Gran always claimed a little escapism never hurt anyone. With a grin, she tucked the paperback under her arm. As an afterthought, she scooped up her cell phone on her way to the back door.

  Outside, air crisp with a hint of last night’s fog greeted her nose. She loved when the fog was beginning to burn away in the sun. Clean, fresh—it was one of her favorite scents. Gravel crunched under her shoes as she walked the twisting garden path. A cedar maze with ten–foot–tall walls stretched out before her.

  A few feet ahead, a tan–and–brown blur, its tail pointed to the sky, streaked across the gravel path and darted between the green cedar walls. As she followed the resident chipmunk deeper into the living corridors, her earlier worries fell away.

  Reaching the maze’s middle, she came to a small clearing ringed by upright waist–high stones. At its center, a juvenile Redwood grew strong and proud, dwarfing its surroundings. Ten feet from the tree’s trunk a stone statue lurked, partially concealed by dense shadows.

  He crouched over his stone perch with a knee resting on the pedestal and his wings mantled around him like a vast cloak. While his one hand rested on his raised knee, his other arm gripped his side in a rather odd position for a sculpture. It saddened her a little, for there was a narrowness about his squinted eyes and a crease of his brow that hinted at pain. Interestingly, he didn’t look beaten. His shoulders were broad, head proud, legs corded with muscle, strength and majesty in his every line.

  “Hello, old friend.” She looked up into his face with its burly muzzle and curving fangs. His muzzle merged flawlessly into wide cheek bones. Large eyes were hooded by a broad forehead, and crowning his head were two massive spiraling horns like an African Waterbuck’s. A thick mane of hair flowed in a stony river midway down his back.

  The gargoyle was one of her first childhood memories. At the age of eight, after a near–drowning accident stole her memories, she’d been drawn to the stone statue as if he was pivotal to her survival. She always assumed her strange need to be near him was a result of her childhood trauma. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  She brushed a few spider webs and tree needles from his pedestal. Then, like she’d done since childhood, she climbed up the pedestal to settle upon the gargoyle’s knee. While he was a little cold and hard, he still made a good chair. She opened the book and leaned back against his arm.

  ****

  Lillian jerked awake to the dual sounds of the cell phone chirping and her book crunching against the gravel. Her heel slipped off the edge of the pedestal, and with a desperate grab at a stone arm, she managed not to join her book on the ground.

  “Insomnia … going to break my neck … my own damn fault.”

  She grumbled while she climbed down and hunched over to pick up her book and the now silent cell phone. Straightening, she realized the sun was well on its way to the opposite horizon. She’d slept half the afternoon away. So much for the work she’d planned to get done. She flipped open the phone and listened to the voice mail.

  “Sorry, sis,” the voice of her brother said, made tinny by the cell phone’s bad reception. “The flight’s been delayed again, imagine that. Anyway, I’ll wait here. The flight’s expected in shortly after 4:00. See you way later. Bye.”
>
  Well, at least the delay would give her a chance to hang the sword collection back on the wall, vacuum, and get the rest of the house in order.

  ****

  With a final pat of the maze’s cedar walls, she exited her sanctuary. Three steps later she skidded to a halt. A stranger dressed in a gray business suit strolled along the garden path to her left. Hands clasped behind his back, he studied perennials on either side of him.

  Occasionally, patrons from her family’s spa would wander over into the private gardens, but the spa was closed, undergoing renovations. Besides, this man looked out of place. Alarm hummed through her veins. Sweat trickled down her spine. Her stomach quivered worse than if she’d come face to face with a mother bear.

  Lillian eased back toward the walls of the maze just as the lone man raised a hand in greeting. The gesture was normal enough. She relaxed a bit and waited for him. He’d almost reached her side when she heard the crunch of many feet on gravel coming from the path to her right. She whirled around. More strangers emerged from around the big ground–sweeping magnolia. There were nine of them: five men and four women. And all of them stalked forward with the smooth grace of predators. They arranged themselves in a semicircle in front of her. Panic beat at her insides. Lillian backed up, but there was nowhere to run. The maze which had always sheltered her from childhood fears wouldn’t keep her safe from real danger.

  Chapter Two

  The shortest among the group, the man who had first waved at Lillian, stepped toward her. Dressed in a well–tailored business suit, his appearance spoke of money, yet his shaggy gray–peppered brown hair was at odds with his otherwise trim appearance. Other than that, he would have been an unmemorable fellow—from a distance.

  Up close, she could detect the lie. Hostility radiated off him in waves.

  “You may call me Alexander.” The short man smiled, but the cold glint in his eyes canceled out any friendliness which might have been there. “My associates will not harm you if you come with us and answer some questions.” He gestured for his people to give her room. All but two of them moved.

  The remaining two, a woman with dark hair similar to Lillian’s own and a big man with a six o’clock shadow, turned their unblinking gazes to the shorter man. Alexander narrowed his eyes and said something too low for Lillian to hear. The man in need of a shave backed off, but the woman showed her reluctance by the way she changed her stance without giving ground to Alexander’s command. She turned her feral eyes upon Lillian and tilted her head to sniff at the air.

  Too frigging weird. Time to leave. “I don’t know who you are, but I think there’s been a misunderstanding. Perhaps I can help you find your way back to the road,” Lillian said, and rushed the words together in her hurry. “The gardens can be confusing.”

  “I assure you, there has been no mistake. I can smell your power.”

  I can smell your power? With luck she could ditch them in the maze.

  A breeze picked up and whipped her hair into her face. While she’d fought to clear her vision, she realized she’d missed something. The others looked past her, deeper into the maze, in the direction the breeze had come. The woman with dark hair and feral eyes backed away with a hiss.

  First singly, and then in twos and threes, the others retreated from the green cedar walls. Lillian didn’t know what was hiding in the maze, but it couldn’t be much worse than this group of strangers. Even if they hadn’t blocked her path back to the house, instincts demanded she run into the concealing greenery.

  She bolted into the maze’s entrance and ran as if monsters out of her darkest nightmare gave chase. The first branch of the maze loomed in front of her. She darted to the right. Two more sharp turns, and she was well into the complex maze. The others hunted her, crashing through the narrow rows. By the sounds of snapping branches and swearing, someone was trying to go through the walls instead of around them.

  She was nearly halfway to the center before the noise of pursuit started to fade. If fate was kind, her pursuers were now hopelessly lost. Her slight advantage would only last until she emerged on the other side, but it might be enough to escape into the forest. The lengthening shadows of dusk might give her an advantage in her home forest. If she got that far. When she emerged into the center of the maze, she ran past the first ring of stones. She was under the shadow of her Redwood by the time a figure raced from another opening. She froze behind the tree. The man didn’t see her and ran toward the path leading out of the maze.

  Damn, he’d be ahead of her now. She hugged the tree trunk while she caught her breath. This wasn’t going well. Think, think, think.

  A movement at the east entrance betrayed another man a moment before he walked into the clearing. He sniffed at the air as he jogged up to the first ring of stones. His eyes locked on her tree. A smile slowly spread across his face.

  He reached the first stone and rested his hand on it. With a yowl, he jerked back. Smoke rose up from the stone like grease dripping onto the coals of a barbecue. While that was an unusual sight, she didn’t have time to dwell on it. Survival first, weird stuff later.

  More strangers appeared, spat out by the maze. No one else tried to enter the perimeter of the waist–high ring of stones, even though there was plenty of room between each stone to pass without touching them. A tense silence engulfed the clearing.

  Alexander entered last, unhurried. With his head tilted to one side, he looked from her to the Redwood and back again.

  “I’d thought the ones with strength like yours had gone extinct centuries ago,” he said, as if his words explained everything. After another half dozen steps, he stopped outside the ring of stones. He frowned at them a moment. “Not that it matters; it’s your magic I want. You have two choices, surrender your magic, or swear allegiance to serve my lords.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but that handy circle of stones seems to keep you away. Unless you plan on camping out here for the next few days, I think you better move on.” She didn’t believe for a minute they’d actually do what she advised, but if she kept them talking, maybe she’d eventually wake up.

  He smiled, a charming curve of lips, then he tilted his head in the direction of the house and his merriment vanished. “That’s a grand house, and these gardens, they’re rather large for just you to take care of. If I wait, I imagine your family will come home soon. Your husband and children, perhaps?” His expression took on a faraway look as if he thought about something else. “Or am I wrong? You have the ageless look of all dryads, but perhaps you’re actually very young, newly come to your powers. Is that why I’ve never sensed you? No matter. I’m sure you have loved ones and they’ll be along shortly.”

  Lillian couldn’t hide in the shadow of a tree forever. As he’d said, her family would return home and be captured by these freaks. It would be her fault. Clearly, Alexander wanted something from her. Her magic, he’d said. No way was she believing him. Even seeing the stone smoke when the other man touched it could have been a trick.

  “I am patient up to a point,” Alexander said. “If you make me go through these stones to get you, my patience will run out before I reach you. Your choice.”

  She shook her head. He frowned and his eyebrows scrunched together. Without another word, he focused on the stone standing nearest to him. Placing one hand upon its surface, he grimaced and began a chant low in his throat: power arced, blue light lancing out from one stone to the next in line. Unseen until now, a dome of energy encircled her and her tree.

  “This can’t be happening,” she whispered.

  But it was.

  Whatever the small man was doing weakened the dome. Where before the dome had appeared a solid blue, its coloration was now patchy and frayed. A fissure formed along the base of the stone he touched, the finest of cracks. She didn’t want to know what would happen when it gave way.

  Behind Alexander, a disturbance in the ranks distracted her and she missed the exact moment the stone shattered. Shar
ds flew in all directions, damaging the other stones and cutting down garden shrubs and flowers like a sickle. Agony bloomed to life along her hip. More along her waist. She should have been safe hiding behind the tree’s trunk, yet some of the stone shrapnel must have hit her. Blood, hot and sticky, dampened her t–shirt and the waist of her jeans. Seconds later the burning sensation turned numb. A deep cold started to throb in her side, as if her life was being sucked away by the wound.

  She stumbled over a root and slammed her shoulder on one of the Redwood’s ground–sweeping branches. Teetering against it, she gathered herself, then ducked under the branch to see what was going on. Instinct guided her eyes up the tree. Two thin blade–like fragments of stone were embedded in the side of the tree’s trunk.

  Pink liquid dripped off the fragments and dropped onto the ground below. More ran down the trunk. Astonished, she touched the liquid: it was slick like sap, but smelt coppery. Tree sap mixed with blood? Another rivulet flowed down the trunk and coated her fingers.

  Her legs grew rubbery. Numbness crept up from the wounds, seeping through her blood and across her thoughts. Screams and snarls interrupted the numbness. Had some of the other creatures been caught by the exploding stones?

  “Your life blood is watering the dirt and leaf litter. Such a waste of magic,” Alexander mused.

  What? Can’t I bleed to death in peace? Lillian twisted toward Alexander and winced as pain stabbed through her hip. The little man stood a few feet away, admiring the tree, his head tilted to look up at its top, thirty–five feet above his head. He walked around its circumference, studying it from different angles.

  Resting against the tree took some of the weight off her injured leg. She eased one hand above her head. Sliding her fingers along the bark, she sought the rivulets of liquid and used them to guide her to the first stone fragment. Her fingers closed on a cold, sharp object. She clawed at it with her nails, dragging it from the wood.

  Agony burned in her hip. She embraced the pain. It was better than the cold sucking sensation of having her life leeched out her injury. Her fingers worked at the second piece of stone. Alexander finished skirting the tree and came to face her again. With a grunt, she flung the second shard. Sap–blood flew in a splattering arc.