He exited the gardens and encountered a stone home, large and spacious but surprisingly empty of people. He wondered where the servants were, and the guards. There should have been some defenses guarding this house, yet he detected nothing.
After one more probe of the house and surrounding lawn, he tightened his hold on his lady and entered the stone cottage by a back entrance. As a precaution, he placed a ward around the entire structure and keyed it so only he could pass. Then as an added measure, he mentally scanned the area immediately around the building. Still no one.
With the house as safe as he could make it, he turned his attention to the inside of the dwelling. A stone-tiled floor stretched out under his talons. He made a soft clicking sound with each step. A large table of polished wood sat at room’s center, and a counter stretched around two sides of the room in an L shape. The table held a loaf of freshly baked bread and a basket of sweet-smelling fruit. It lacked a hearth, but if he were to guess, this was a kitchen of some sort.
He laid his burden upon the table. The rapid beat of her pulse worried him and her breathing was too shallow. Dropping into a deeper trance, he summoned his magic. At his silent command, the magic flowed out from his body. It was less than he’d hoped, lacking the wild turbulence he was accustomed to, but it would be enough to heal the Sorceress. It had to be. He bowed his head until his muzzle touched her breastbone and he breathed more power upon her.
Nothing happened. His magic didn’t even penetrate her skin. Panicked, he leapt upon the table and hunched closer, willing the power into her. She jerked awake, her chest heaving as if a nightmare suddenly gripped her. Her eyes focused on him and her expression softened in recognition.
A shaky hand caressed his muzzle, then reached back into his mane, circling his neck. Still she didn’t take what he offered, power she desperately needed. He bumped her face with his muzzle and licked at her skin, but was careful not to sip the smallest drop of her dryad blood for fear of losing his concentration. She moved, her arms tightening around his shoulders as she nuzzled the underside of his jaw. Her fingers grasped his shoulders and clung there a moment before sliding down one arm, grazing the slashes from one of the dire wolves. Gentle fingertips paused in their downward descent and reversed, gliding back over the broken skin. Light caresses turned to a savage prod, and he grunted more in surprise than pain, but her hand dropped away in the next moment.
Slowed by his shock, his reflexes didn’t spur him into action until her bloody fingers were halfway to her lips. She no longer looked at him. Instead her gaze riveted to the bright smear on her fingers. Before they reached her lips, he snatched her wrist. She cried in frustration, struggling weakly before falling back against the table, her energy spent.
Trying and failing to understand her bizarre behavior, he reared away from her. He dropped to all fours and began to pace with his wings mantled, tail whipping with agitation. He froze at what his mind tried to tell him. She craved his blood, hungered for its power like a mate would. Yet they were not mates. They could never be mates.
Sacrilege.
A soft sound, followed by a watery gasp dragged him back to the table. She was paler than before, grey, and her breath came in a death’s rattle. Gathering her into his arms, he carried her over to a corner and sat with his back braced against a wall, her slight form resting in his lap. She was so light, so fragile. What if he could share blood without forging mating ties? If there was even the slightest chance, he had to try. He slid her hand closer to the warm dampness he could feel making its sluggish way down his arm, but her fingers didn’t tighten upon the wound as they had before. She was too weak even for that.
His talons rested cool against his breastbone. Then, uncaring of the consequences or that he was breaking one of the sacred laws binding them, he dragged the point of one talon down his chest a finger’s length. With his other hand, he lifted her head to the wound. He could live as an oathbreaker. He didn’t think his sanity would survive her death again so soon.
Eyes still closed, she shivered in his arms and inhaled a deep breath. Then, following the coppery scent to the wound, she sealed her lips over his blood-dampened flesh. At the first lap of her tongue, his concentration shattered like mist before a strong wind. Magic surged and flowed into her. She drank his magic along with his blood, growing stronger with each heartbeat.
His little dryad pressed against him, becoming more demanding in her feeding. Ecstasy threatened to destroy his discipline. The soft caress of her fingers feathered along his abdomen as she stirred in his arms. Her gentle touch shocked him to his core, rousing instincts better left to slumber. Fire settled in his groin. He groaned, then cursed his response. His horns racked the wall behind, sending white dust and bits of debris raining down upon them both. He tightened his arms around her, wanting her closer while at the same time trying not to crush the life from her. His tail coiled around her leg as if it had a life of its own. It seemed endless, the pleasure-pain of her feeding on his power. Yet it was over too quickly. With one last lick along the length of the wound, she tilted her head back and looked at him. A half-smile graced her lips, and then she tucked her head against his shoulder. A few moments later, her breathing evened out as she drifted into sleep.
Rest was far from his thoughts with his lungs working like a great billows and his pulse thundering in his ears. He called on what remained of his discipline and fell into another trance to order his body’s rhythms to calm—it would last moments, at best.
Once he was calm again, he opened his eyes and checked her wounds. They were healed. All that remained was a faint pink scar. She may have been healed, but her dryad blood still called to him, its coppery sap-sweet scent enticing him down a dark and forbidden path. He shook himself, fighting deeply rooted instincts. He stood and deposited her back on the table.
He needed to get clean of her blood, her intoxicating scent. Now.
Sniffing the air, he scented water, but couldn’t pinpoint the source at first. He paced around the room and continued scenting. Then he heard the faint plop of water dripping onto an unyielding surface. He headed in that direction, tossing his arm and wrist bands on the ground as he walked. His knee-length loincloth landed on the carpet. Its beads rattled against each other for a moment before falling silent.
Following the sound of water to its source, he entered a large room. A silver spigot of some sort dripped water into a white basin. On one wall a glass alcove took up a quarter of the room. It smelled of soap and dampness.
Blessed relief.
Chapter Four
A coppery taste coated Lillian’s tongue. Her mouth was dry, gummy with old blood. She must have bitten her tongue, and unless her mattress had suddenly turned to stone, she’d managed to knock herself out and was lying flat on the floor. Of all the stupid things to do, bashing her head hard enough to lose consciousness had to be one of the clumsiest. She ran her hands out to her sides. Cool, polished woodgrain took shape under her searching fingers. Interesting. None of the floors felt like that. She cracked an eye open and peered to one side: the honey colour of oak met her vision. Kitchen table?
Yep. Kitchen table.
She’d somehow managed to knock herself out and land on the table?
Not likely.
She scoured her memory. A void blocked her way. She panicked, fearing she’d lost her memories for the second time in her life . . . but she remembered that, so her memory still functioned. Something else then. Something so frightening her mind didn’t want to remember.
She could deal with frightening. Fear was better than the nothingness of vanished memories. She scanned her surroundings. The kitchen looked normal. She wasn’t sure what she sought, but nothing in this room jogged her memory. Sitting up, a wave of dizziness swamped her. She curled her fingers around the table edge in a death grip. The deep pounding of her heart and the crackle of white noise hummed in her ears. She blinked once, and again.
The room came into focus. Okay, that’s better. I can
do this, she thought. No point postponing the inevitable. She jumped down from the table and wobbled around until her legs remembered they had bones in them. It felt like she’d donated half her blood to the blood bank. The thought of blood summoned an image of her grove, her favourite tree dripping bloody gore onto the ground. Her mind shied away from the vision.
She took in the room again, and noticed something she’d missed before. A thick gold bracelet sat abandoned on the floor. Bracelet was too small a word to describe the heavy chunk of gold and jewels sitting on the tiles. She was reaching for it, her fingers poised to curl around it, when she saw the blood smeared on the floor next to it.
More blood marred the bracelet, staining some of the intricate knotwork along its one side. Her eyes swung back to the smudges on the floor. There were others, farther apart, and they headed toward the living room.
Those smudges, they couldn’t be tracks. Not unless a velociraptor walked the earth again and it happened to come into her kitchen, following the scent of good baking.
Yet there they were: tracks the size of a small dinosaur, blood smeared and marching off into the depths of her house.
Out. She had to get out. Maybe then the nightmare would end. She eased her way across the kitchen floor, careful of squeaky floorboards and the groans of an old house. She didn’t want to face what had made those tracks. Now that she had a goal, reaching the back door as quietly as possible, she could control the panic lurking at the edges of her mind.
The doorknob turned under her hand. As she pulled open the door, it loosed a groan fit for a haunted house on All Hallows Eve. She threw herself through the doorway and slammed square into . . . nothing? Her breath escaped in a grunt.
Stunned, she pulled back and rubbed her shoulder. Luckily, the abused shoulder, and not her face, had taken the brunt of the impact. She ran her hands across the entrance and saw a nebulous, multihued blue light swirling around her fingertips where they made contact with the barrier. It was not unlike the oily surface of a soap bubble, with its cascade of colours.
Words solidified in her mind.
Ward. A spell for protection.
Where the hell did that bit of information come from? Her newly acquired knowledge was scarier than the blue ward-thingy.
On a hunch, she checked the windows and found them blocked by more of the strange substance. She braced her hands against it and pushed. Nothing. She might as well have tried pushing through concrete.
Looking out beyond the pale barrier blocking the window, she could see her maze in the distance. Scattered lumps dotted the lawn, some in plain view while others remained partially hidden by the garden’s tall, ornamental grasses. Bodies. She swallowed hard and looked again to be certain. No, body parts.
The barrier her mind had erected to protect itself from the traumatic memories vanished, and everything from that afternoon flooded back. She’d been attacked by monstrous wolfmen, feral cat-like women, and sallow-skinned creatures with hunger in their eyes. She remembered a power flooding her, and then joy at the feel of the stone warming and softening under her hands. The fog of mixed-up memories ended.
Fear fluttered in her stomach and her breath hitched up a notch. Nothing she remembered clarified how she had come to find herself on the kitchen table with a strange blue light preventing escape. With another glance at the bodies in the garden, her idea of possible escape in that direction lost some of its luster, especially since there might be more than just bodies out there.
Backtracking, she returned to the kitchen table and paced around it twice, and then came back to the tracks. None of the attacking monsters could have made tracks like those. But there was one particular stone fellow she’d sat with every day since childhood, and his feet were large and ended in talons.
If her gargoyle had come alive, he might make tracks such as these. Her heart lurched at that thought, but it wasn’t in fear. After a brief moment of euphoria, her rational mind told her she probably didn’t want to come face to face with whatever creature was still standing after the battle.
Occupied by thoughts of escape and what those prints could mean, she jerked at the soft rumble of the water heater as it started up in the laundry room just off the kitchen. She hadn’t at first heard the sounds of someone taking a shower upstairs, but now that she listened, she could hear the faint sound of water in the pipes.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that she was locked in her own home with a bunch of dead bodies laying out back, the gardens reduced to a warzone, her grove violated, and blood and God-knows-what tracked all over her grandmother’s antique carpets, the last monster standing had apparently come in and made himself at home.
Lillian frowned and squared her shoulders. She could hide somewhere, whimpering in fear until whatever was in the house found her and dragged her from her hiding place, or she could arm herself and face the threat head-on.
* * *
With the hilt of her fencing sword a solid reassurance in her hands, she retraced her steps until she came to the living room and the curving stairway that led up to the second floor. Discarded pieces of jewelry and the occasional smudge of blood marked the path the creature had taken. She cleared the stairs and turned down one dark hall. The first bathroom on the second floor was silent and empty. That left one other. She entered her bedroom, intent on her master bathroom.
The door was ajar, a curl of steam drifted out across the floor. Inside, the bathroom was dark and so full of steam she couldn’t see anything. The monster didn’t know how to turn on a light switch, but could figure out a shower?
She pondered that a moment. Perhaps it didn’t need light. Just her luck. The damned monster probably had night vision.
She eased into a defensive stance as she reached in and flicked on the light. The room was flooded with yellow light and her breath caught. Her sword’s tip clanked against the tiled floor in her shock. She jerked it back up into position until the point hovered at shoulder level.
Her rational mind had expected to find a monster, and there was one. He filled her walk-in shower, and the massive shower still wasn’t big enough for the entire gargoyle. His wings arched across the length and width of the large bathroom, and his tail sent water droplets spraying across the room as it lashed back and forth, its blade-tipped end twitching like an agitated cat’s.
One wing arched back and gave her a view of the rest of the gargoyle. His head brushed the ceiling and his horns clinked against the small tiles when he moved. With eyes partially squeezed shut against the sudden intrusion of bright light, he turned his muzzle in her direction and flared his nostrils, drawing in a deep breath. She had the distinct impression he tasted the air, and by the way he snorted like a horse and shook his head, she didn’t think he liked the smell.
His muzzle dipped down and his eyes locked on the sword she held. After a moment, he turned fully toward her. At least with him eying the sword so intently, he might not notice the vivid shade of scarlet she’d just turned. Had there been any doubt in her mind about his gender, it vanished in a heartbeat. Male. Lacking in modesty.
He had muscles most men would envy. Then she reminded herself he also had a tail, wings, horns, and talons. Still, even in all his otherness, he was majestic. Scary as hell, but lovely as a predator.
Fear was absent and she should have worried for her sanity, but somehow it all seemed right. The gargoyle was a prominent part of her childhood. He had always been home to her.
And “home” was presently extracting himself from the shower. When he stepped out, he straightened. The bathroom shrunk.
Mercy, he was still hunched over.
He was massive. Over eight feet of gargoyle crowded her master bath. She couldn’t beat that in a fight. Her sword’s point dipped again, but she didn’t lift it back into a defensive position. One solid hit and he’d put her through a wall. Heck, he could probably snap her blade in two with a thought. At least the sword’s weight stopped her hands from shaking.
“Hello,” she s
aid. Her voice came out faint, hollow sounding. She cleared her throat, unable to stop the nervous reaction. “I’m Lillian.” How intelligent. At least her voice sounded stronger.
He cocked his head, his jackal-like ears sweeping forward from the depths of his wiry mane. She hadn’t noticed his ears earlier. They’d blended into his ebony mane and the crown of bone that formed the base of his two large horns. He expelled the breath he’d been holding and took another. His nostrils pinched shut.
Good lord, she must smell worse than she thought.
His talons clinked against the tiles as he took another step forward. She backed away until she slammed into the doorframe. A squeak escaped past her lips. He snatched a clean bath sheet off the rack and snapped it open with a flick before she could think to run at his sudden move. No matter which way he tugged, tucked, or arranged it, the towel wouldn’t reach around his muscular girth. With a deep rumble, he grabbed a second bath sheet. Tied together, the two sheets proved large enough to fit around his waist and haunches. But he still didn’t seem happy with the arrangement. Constricted by the material, his tail flicked like a downed power line, offering a new threat to modesty. It occurred to her shock-slowed brain that all the poor creature wanted was some privacy. A blush burned across her cheeks a second time.
She was backing out of the room when a flowing language issued from his throat. Deep, beautiful, smooth like the wind in a forest, it reminded her of night’s shadows and the lull of beckoning sleep. He repeated himself, or she thought he might have. She couldn’t be sure because she didn’t know what he’d said the first time, and it became no clearer on the second try.
The Avatars Series: Books 1-3 Page 3
