“No, no, no. I don’t know what you are or what’s going on.” He fumbled the door open and turned as I rose to go after him. “Stay here, I’m blocking the door. I’ll get you when it’s light.” The door slammed shut just as I reached it.
Chapter 9
“Come on, Alric, I said I was sorry,” I said as I pounded one more time on the metal door. “Just let me out.”
I’d passed out moments after he’d left the night before. And while it was fuzzy, I did unfortunately remember what I’d done. I had no idea why I’d done it. Not even an inkling. Contrary to some of my friends’ beliefs, I wasn’t that desperate.
But there had been something else as well. Like something else had taken me over. I saw what I was doing, and at some level was shocked. But at another far deeper and untouchable level—it felt right. And whatever it was scared the hell out of both Alric and me. I, however, was just going to pretend it didn’t happen and move on.
And I really wanted to get out of this room. Bad enough that I was apologizing to him for an action he’d provoked.
I told him I couldn’t drink whisky.
“Damn you, let me out.” So much for apologizing. I’d tried that. Now maybe some belligerence was in order. I leaned forward to pound some more on the door when it swung open, and I found myself tumbling into some very nice, well-muscled arms.
They didn’t belong to Alric.
“Taryn, this is Marcos, he’s from Lernia,” Alric said from behind his tall, dark, and handsome friend. Who was still holding me. “He’s a new archeologist, but he knows the area. He can get you out.”
I looked up into my rescuer’s face and drew in a deep unintended breath. He was stunning. Alric was a looker, don’t get me wrong, but Marcos looked like one of those kept men the high-end ladies wore on their arms like the newest handbags. His deep brown eyes were warm and inviting and were highlighted with a ring of gold. Thick black hair pushed back from his brow and gathered at his neck in a tail. And unlike Alric’s dyed black hair, his was full of life, clearly nothing artificial involved in making that deep color. Sun-kissed brown skin accented the high cheekbones and kissable lips.
Alric’s cough made me realize I still hadn’t moved.
“Sorry, he’s kept me locked up all night.” I shook my head and wondered if the whisky was still affecting me, or I just really had libido problems. I reluctantly pulled myself free of the vision’s arms and steadied myself with what was probably an idiotic grin.
“There is no need to express your sorrow, lovely one.” Marcos took my hand and kissed it. “It is my regret that I did not meet you sooner.”
“Lovely.” This time just a hiss escaped past Alric’s clenched teeth. “You’re sorry, he’s sorry, we’ll all be sorry if you two don’t go. Now.”
“I’m—”
“Don’t say it, just go,” Alric cut me off and freed my hand from Marcos’ grasp. But he dropped my hand immediately as if he’d grabbed a hot pan. “She has got to get out of here, unseen. Quickly.”
Marcos cocked his head, an unspoken question on his full lips.
“Yes, you’ll get a bonus. Now move. There are people here you don’t want to meet.”
“Come, my lovely one. He may be uncouth, but his plans are not without merit. We must go quickly.” Reclaiming my hand, he tucked it into his arm and turned toward a thin trail in the jungle behind him.
I turned back to Alric, not sure what to say or do after the previous night. He was just turning away so he didn’t see me. But besides concern at our getting away, there was something else on his handsome face. Something that looked an awful lot like fear. A second later he had vanished into the jungle, not even a broken plant to mark his passing.
Going after him and pounding on him until I got some answers seemed like a good idea. But I needed to get out of here before the guards, or worse, found me, and Marcos was very attractive. I didn’t feel like I had last night, but there was no way not to react to this man.
He beamed at me as he unerringly made his way through thick jungle. It would have taken me days to find this route. “Now, my companion stated that you yourself are a digger? They never had such lovely diggers in my home town.”
Even though the line was cheesy, I found myself laughing regardless. There was enough charm in Marcos to more than make up for Alric’s sour ways.
“So how do you know Alric?” I took a deep breath. My rescuer even smelled nice; woodsy but filled with exotic spices. How had I missed him? Alric said he was new but clearly he’d been around long enough. He easily led us through a trail thin enough to have been made by mice.
“Ah,” he turned so that his eyes watched my face, “he and I both wanted the same thing.” His smile could only be called a brothel smile, not even bedroom smile—it was far too carnal for that.
“We both were after an artifact, a small gargoyle of little value, but a valuable history. Alas, it appears to have gone missing.” He ducked down as a branch I hadn’t even seen missed his head by inches.
I started to say something when he froze, his hair lifting lightly in the wind as he listened for something I couldn’t hear. A tattoo on his neck told me why he could hear it and I couldn’t. Even though I was part fae, a dryad way back on my mother’s side, his tattoo indicated he was gypsy. Gypsies bred themselves for powers. He could probably out-hear, out-see, out-run, and out-last me. That thought had promise. But not now. Something had taken his attention.
“What is it?” I kept my voice low but his actions and stillness raised the hairs on my arms. I didn’t want to be caught by the guards, however, I would throw myself at them if the choice was them or that syclarion.
He held his pose for an instant, then suddenly came to life, flinging me off the trail as he dragged both of us into thick brush. My clothing was already battered from my previous adventures. A few more tumbles and I might be reverting to the old ways and running around starkers.
“We must not say a thing. I believe we are followed.” His voice was low in my ear, warm breath chasing away the chill of moments before. What the hell was wrong with me? First I attack Alric, and now I want to jump some guy I just met?
I adjusted myself so he wasn’t pressing on me. “What do you think it is?”
“I am not sure, but it was not far behind us.” Was it my imagination or was he trying to cover me again?
I moved over a bit more. I’m not a prude, but I’m not getting hot and heavy with someone I just met, especially a gypsy. Along with being very powerful, they weren’t usually the most trustworthy people—at least not to outsiders.
“Look, I—”
He cut my whisper off with a hand across my mouth. His dark eyes deepened as he peered out of the bush we were hiding in.
An instant later the sound of footsteps could be heard. Sounds like thick claws digging through dirt came with them.
I swallowed and tried to look through the bushes without moving. Only a few bipedal things had claws in this world, most of them not good.
The shape was vague, but definitely draconian. Which meant a syclarion in half-dragon form, stocky with a draconian head and long tail, but upright like a man. Syclarions could appear in three forms; human, half-dragon, and full dragon. While full dragon size was big enough to scare any normal person, they were less than a quarter of the size real dragons had been rumored to be. I’d seen the shadow of the first one when he flew overhead, this one was smaller, even in full change he wouldn’t be as big as the one that flew overhead before. Dark silver scales glinted as it froze near our position. With a very human shake of its head, the creature walked on.
I looked closer at my protector. He was shaking like a leaf. Great protection.
I peeled his hand off my mouth. “Um, Marcos? I think we can leave now.”
“What…oh yes, come, my lovely one. I will protect you as we leave this jungle.”
I was already on my feet and dusting myself off when he finally scrambled to his feet. He might be easy on
the eyes, but fierce this guy was not.
“Look, just get me past the guards, and I can find my own way home.”
“But I have been commissioned to escort you.”
This time I cut him off with my hand. “Save it. I don’t need an escort, or whatever other services you might be offering. Just get me past the fence.”
A confused light filled his golden brown eyes. “But we’re past the fence. You were already past it when I was brought to you.”
What? Alric had managed to get us past the fence? Or most likely he had an underground route. Which would explain why he found me so fast when I’d sent Leaf out for help.
Leaf.
“Just who sent you to come rescue me?” I’d assumed it was Alric grabbing one of his cronies for a job, but maybe I’d been wrong.
“Your most wonderful friend Harlan paid for my services.”
I stopped in my tracks. So Leaf had made it to Harlan, and he’d sent a gigolo? “Just what were the services?”
The brothel smile returned. “Why to escort you home and make sure you were relaxed. He explained that you’d had a rough day.”
“So you’re not a digger at all?” I was going to kill Harlan.
“Oh no, I am that. And I am very good in the jungle,” he said as he stepped over a log, then held out his hand to help me over. I ignored the hand. “I just have had various occupations in the past.” Marcos resumed walking, nodding his head for me to follow.
“I don’t want to know. Look, whatever Harlan asked you to do, just forget it. Get me out of here, then take off.” It was bad enough when my friends set me up on dates, but to send someone like Marcos after me was just too much. Even for Harlan.
I stalked past Marcos so I didn’t see his face, but his sigh was clear. Then it changed. An instant later he was running past me.
“Dead body!” Was all I heard before he vanished down the trail.
I dove into a clump of bushes right off the trail and prayed that no one else had heard him. While it was all well and good that we weren’t behind the fence anymore, I had no doubt that this was still not a good place to be. If I didn’t think so before, the syclarion and dead body comment from Marcos would have done it for me.
After a few minutes the regular jungle forest sounds returned, and I let the tension out of my shoulders and scrambled out of the plant-life. Marcos had only been a few feet behind me when he saw the body, so I shouldn’t have to go far.
The logical part of me said just keep going down the trail he’d been on and get the hell out of here, but logic was never my strong point. My need to know almost always beat logic into a small puddle on the ground.
Keeping my steps as soft as possible, I backtracked, peering closely into the brush on both sides. Had the syclarion murdered someone right before we saw it? A chill dripped down my back. I admitted it to no one, usually not even myself, but one of the reasons I’d chosen to live in Beccia was that no syclarions called it home. The creatures disturbed me far beyond a healthy fear of powerful and deadly beings.
I saw the body just as I was about to turn back around. It was a good ten feet from the trail and judging by the bones sticking out through the leaves, it wasn’t a recent kill. I slowed down, and stayed to the right of the trail. I really wanted to make sure no one was going to sneak up on me. But the sound of squab monkeys and the larger leaf birds told me no predators were around.
With a deep sigh—and again reminding myself that curiosity wasn’t a good thing—I crept forward. The body was humanoid, but not a pure human. At least seven feet tall and the arms looked to be almost as long as the legs. That information I could tell from my stopping place of five feet away. If I wanted to know anything else I’d have to move closer.
I couldn’t smell death, and that was good. It was an old body, maybe dug up accidentally by someone looking for treasures on the ruins’ edge.
Or it was a recently dead body with spells on it so it wouldn’t be easily detected.
While the sides of my brain argued, my feet took tiny steps closer. The body was that of a young giant, from his size probably no more than 80 years of age. The body didn’t look that old for all the flesh that had been lost. More like someone had tried to hide it in a vat of tanner’s acid.
Sweat dripped down my back even though there was still a tinge of frost in the air.
Perallan had a red-headed giant digger before I came along, a dwarf-giant, small enough to fit comfortably in ruins that had ten-foot-high ceilings. He’d gone missing, supposedly off to join a band of pirates, a few months before my previous patron died and Perallan brought me on to work his dig.
My mouth went dry as I moved closer. I had to be sure before I said anything to anyone.
The clothing was burnt through, but from the remains it looked like standard digger wear. And the few tufts of hair were faded red.
Chapter 10
A rustle behind me made me jump up and forward. Only a strong sense of self-preservation kept me from falling into the decomposing body.
I spun toward my attacker.
Only to have three bright blurs of color slam into the side of my head.
“Damn it!” I compensated for the impact of the faeries and forced myself to overbalance away from the rotting corpse. Getting the faeries to stop their recent habit of slamming into me was going to be a priority once my life got back to normal.
“What are you three doing here?” I had dropped to one knee, but my three freeloaders were still on my head. “Get off.” I waved my hands to try to dislodge them but only Crusty let go. And that was just to fly toward the body.
“Is very dead.” Her voice had about the same sound it had when she was out of beer. She buzzed over the body, but I noticed she wouldn’t get much lower than a few feet above the ground. Faeries weren’t squeamish, as a species, or at least the three members of the species I’d had living with me, they were the most anti-squeamish beings around.
So why wasn’t she buzzing lower? And the other two were still chittering to themselves as they hung onto my hair.
“Why don’t you two go join her?” I pulled Garbage Blossom free of my hair and reached around to try and grab Leaf. Neither seemed happy about my request, but after a few moments of pulling them away from me they both joined Crusty. None of them went lower than Crusty had been.
In my years of dealing with faeries, I’d learned it was always better to wait until they were ready to tell you what they felt you needed to know. Asking them what was going on could be confusing or worse. But at the same time, waiting around a suddenly surfacing corpse in the jungle wasn’t a grand idea either.
I moved toward the body, pulling back when all three zipped in front of me and fluttered their wings to push me back.
“What?” I let a bit of irritation slip into my voice.
“No going near very dead, very dead is protected.” Garbage took charge, folding her arms as if she was scolding a young child. “Protection is trap.” As if that said it all. Faery was a complex and twisted language that no other species could speak. Unfortunately many of their concepts and words didn’t make the leap to the common language.
“What kind of trap, Garbage? Will we explode?”
The other two giggled, but Garbage frowned and folded her arms tighter. “No being silly, protection traps make trouble. No boom.”
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. After all I’d been through in the last few days I really didn’t need to be playing ‘guess the fatal trap’ with a four-inch-tall faery.
“What is the trap, Garbage?” I opened my eyes to find a tiny orange head inches in front of my nose. She pulled back when I opened my eyes, but not far.
“Is trap to catch stupid people, stupid animals. You touch body, go through trap lining, trap grabs you.” She shrugged her tiny overall-clad shoulders. “You very dead too.”
I wasn’t going to get anywhere trying for more details, and if Garbage said it was something that could kill us, I had to be
lieve her. As close as any of them could be, Garbage was the brains of the bunch. But even my little party animal Crusty stayed hovering well above the body.
Time to clear out. “I want you three to remember as much as you can about the body. Everything you can, right?” The faeries had good, albeit short term, memories. At least when they were sober. “We need to tell Covey, but you have to remember it all.”
Garbage gave me a serious nod, satisfied that I wasn’t going to run forward into the trap. Then all three did elaborate fly-bys over the body. After a few minutes they came back, but didn’t slam into me this time.
“Is good, we go now,” Crusty chirped as she drifted down to my shoulder.
They stayed quiet the rest of the way out, which fortunately wasn’t nearly as far away as I’d feared. I thought about asking the faeries if they’d seen Marcos, but I needed them to focus on that body long enough to talk to Covey. Maybe I’d ask Karys about him. She knew most all of the handsome men around town.
I’d never been this far east in the jungle before, but coming out I recognized Mhegen’s tannery so I had a good idea where I was. Thank the gods and goddesses that Mhegen was fastidious about her odor spells—I only saw the tannery, I didn’t smell it.
My stomach took that moment to remind me it hadn’t had breakfast, nor for that matter the previous day’s dinner or lunch.
The distraction about my stomach’s empty condition almost cost me my little assistants. I looked up just as Crusty began to lift off my shoulder, her tiny golden eyes locked onto something in the alley next to the tannery. Grabbing her, I cocked my head and gave her my best glare. With a smile only the truly deranged or very young can get away with she patted my arm and settled down. The other two hadn’t noticed.
The Glass Gargoyle (The Lost Ancients Book 1) Page 8
