The Greystone Bundle (Books 1-4)

by Taylor Longford

I turned my blunt stare on Defiance, defying him to do the same.

  "I'll flip for Courage and Force," Defiance sighed. I could tell he wasn't keen on the idea of challenging the decision, either. He pinned me with a sharp look. "But in future, this should be brought up before the voting begins. Not after a decision has been reached."

  "Fine," I muttered, rolling my shoulders in a defensive gesture. I felt pretty much like the bad guy and imagine my defiant scowl only helped to complete the appearance.

  The vote stood at two against Mim and four in favor. A tie would go against her. In order for me to win, both of Defiance's coins had to land with the eagle facing upward. He flipped the first quarter and it landed on the table showing the bird.

  I was getting there.

  His second coin glinted in the air, landed on its edge and rolled into the middle of the table before tilting over with a ringing sound. Unfortunately for me, it was heads. Just as unfortunately, Mim would soon know everything there was to know about gargoyles.

  MacKenzie was so excited that she stumped around the table and hugged everyone…including me. "You won't regret this," she assured me as she held me at arm's length.

  I nodded, trying to be a good sport, my feelings a mixture of relief and dread. On one hand, I was glad MacKenzie was happy and it would be nice when Mim didn't think we were monsters anymore. On the other hand, I wasn't looking forward to the day she learned about our wings. "When will you tell her?" I asked.

  "As soon as she gets back from Tulsa."

  I nodded again. Mim and her mother had traveled to Oklahoma for Christmas. She was expected back on the weekend and tomorrow was Saturday. I had two days at the most to prepare for the worst.

  "As long as we're all here, maybe we should discuss our housing situation," Victor suggested.

  "That's a good idea," MacKenzie agreed, sinking down into her chair again.

  Last week, while MacKenzie's mother and stepfather had been home for Christmas, the pack had stayed at the mansion the harpy had broken in to when she kidnapped Valor. We'd repaired the damage she'd caused earlier in the month and it seemed like the best place to hang out since we knew how to get in. Apparently, the mansion was the summer home of some guy with money but we couldn't count on him staying gone forever. There was always a chance he might decide to make a winter visit to his home in the mountains.

  Yesterday, MacKenzie's parents had left for a two-week vacation in England. They'd invited Mac to go with them but she isn't too fond of her stepfather so she stayed home, which was probably a good thing since I don't know how Valor would have managed without her. He'd have worried himself sick if they'd been separated.

  Anyhow, as soon as her folks left, we moved back into our rooms in her house. But when her mother returned at the end of her holiday, she wouldn't be traveling as much as she had in the past. That meant we needed to find a new place to stay.

  "We could sell some more of your coins," MacKenzie suggested. "And you could look for a nearby rental."

  "How much money would we need?" Valor questioned apprehensively.

  "With a deposit and the last month's rent on a place big enough for you guys, you'll need at least three thousand dollars to start with."

  That would mean selling three more of our old silver coins. We still had a good pile but eventually we were going to run out. Before that happened, we hoped to build our online business, selling handmade hunting bows.

  "Then you'll need another thousand every month," MacKenzie added. Tentatively, she checked my face. "Mim's mother has talked about renting out her basement before. That would be a lot more reasonable than trying to rent an entire house."

  I turned a groan into a sigh. MacKenzie just did not get where I was coming from. Maybe I had to accept the fact that Mim would soon know about us, but that didn't mean I had to like it. I sure as hell wasn't ready to move in with a girl who didn't trust me.

  "I don't think that's a good idea," Victor stepped in to help me dodge that bullet. "Is there somewhere else we could go?"

  "I'll pick up a local newspaper the next time we're out so we can check the ads," MacKenzie answered. "Pine Grove is too small and too far from the city for renters to advertise on the Internet."

  As the others got up from the table and moved off, MacKenzie caught my eye. "Time for our session," she announced. "You ready?"

  I smothered another sigh. I knew she was just trying to help but sometimes I get tired of everyone always being so helpful. "Just let me get my book," I answered, and made a detour upstairs to the room I shared with Havoc.

  MacKenzie hadn't believed us when we first told her she was a witch. And because of her doubts, she wasn't able to access her magic. 'Course that only made it more difficult to convince her she had any special powers. But when that harpy kidnapped Valor, MacKenzie's powers finally kicked in. They allowed her to scry for Valor and find where the harpy had taken him. And now that MacKenzie believed in her magic, she was determined to cure me.

  She knew that witches could sometimes heal people who were sick or injured. But the wounds on my knuckles were old and layered with thick scar tissue. I didn't think any amount of magic in the world was going to bring back my barbs. I tried to tell myself that losing my barbs wasn't all bad—at least I wasn't a harpy-magnet anymore.

  Harpies crave our venom like nothing else. When it's in their bloodstream, they become more like gargoyles. The rough rock they're made of changes to the same fine-grained stone that we're made of. It makes them virtually indestructible, and that sucks. There's nothing worse than a harpy that's impossible to kill. I suppose they become less ugly too, once they've taken the venom. But it's hard to tell, because they're so evil inside, that's all we gargoyles can see.

  Perhaps the biggest drawback in losing my barbs was my inability to mark my girlfriend with my rune—assuming I ever got a girlfriend. When a gargoyle meets the girl he loves, he's driven by instinct to tattoo his rune on her arm and mark her as his own. Since the venom is poisonous, this can be extremely dangerous.

  At any rate, I convinced MacKenzie to try out her skills on my hands before tackling my wings, which I knew for certain was a hopeless cause. I didn't have the heart to tell her my wings weren't going to grow back. The leather was torn away from the spines and you can't heal what's not there.

  With Great Expectations under my arm, I returned to the dining room on the main level. I took a chair next to MacKenzie and opened my book then flattened my hands on the pine tabletop.

  Mac picked up the short rod of oak she'd bought at the local hardware store. It might not seem like it, but the wood is important. It's the source of a witch's magic. Live trees are best—preferably oak—but any old piece of pine will do in a pinch and even dried leaves can be used for simple spells.

  With the oak rod closed in her fist, MacKenzie rubbed her knuckles over the top of my hand while chanting her spell in a singsong voice.

  As I watched MacKenzie's brows crease in concentration, I couldn't help but smile. Val had convinced her that her spells were supposed to rhyme and our MacKenzie's no poet.

  "Power of Oak. Power of Wood. Work your magic to make things good. Work your power to heal these scars. Heal the flesh and bring back Dare's barbs."

  "I don't think barbs rhymes with scars," I pointed out dryly.

  MacKenzie cracked one eye open and glared at me from beneath her dark lashes.

  "Maybe you should rub your phone over my knuckles instead of the wood," I teased, only half joking. There was no doubt that MacKenzie had a lot of potential as a witch. That was a definite for anyone with such red hair. But her most impressive magic to date had been performed with the help of her cell phone. It wasn't until she turned on her phone that she was able to find Valor after he was kidnapped. Her travel app scryed his location.

  MacKenzie opened both eyes and glowered at me. "You're ruining my concentration," she growled. "Now be quiet."

  Hiding a smirk, I returned to my book. I was only on page ten and had
a lot of work ahead of me. I was beginning to understand that it's a lot easier to listen to a book being read out loud than it is to read it yourself. Great Expectations is a long story with some big words, and they can't all be sounded out. At least, not easily. It's almost like you just have to memorize some of the words, and hope you run into them again one day.

  A few slow paragraphs later, MacKenzie interrupted my reading. "Do you feel anything?" she asked.

  Today's session was the same as all the others. I felt nothing. "I'm sorry, MacKenzie."

  Her brow creased into deeper furrows. "Maybe we should move outside and try the spell with some live wood."

  By "live wood", she meant the trees growing on her three-acre lot. I eyed the frigid skies framed by the dining room windows. "Maybe we could wait until spring," I suggested. "Or at least until the sun comes out."

  Before she could comment, a soft bark came from the living room. Gliding to his feet, Hooligan lifted his huge head and pricked up his ears. Well, as much as a wolfhound can prick up his ears. They're pretty floppy. Like an unraveled skein of loose silk. He gave another low bark and MacKenzie turned her face toward her dog. "What is it?" she murmured.

  I tilted my head and listened. The sound of an engine rumbled through the forest as a vehicle started up the long driveway toward the house. I knew the low, mechanical growl of that slow-moving van. It was the same one that had delivered me to MacKenzie's home two months earlier. "It's the shipping company," I announced as I pushed back my chair and got to my feet.

  MacKenzie jumped up and joined me at the window just as the blue and white delivery van trundled around the bend and headed up the straight stretch toward the garage. Her sigh of relief matched my own.

  Reason had finally returned home.

  Chapter Three

  Our relief might have been a little premature. Reason wasn't in the clear yet. When the buyer had returned his purchase for a refund, he'd included a cryptic message. He complained that he'd received an ugly relic instead of a beautiful sculpture. We couldn't figure out what he meant since Rees looked great when we closed him inside the wooden packing crate and shipped him off to Texas. But we were worried about our second-in-command and we couldn't help wondering what had happened to make the buyer call him a "relic".

  Like I mentioned before, MacKenzie had been tracking Reason's progress online and we were expecting the delivery within the next twenty-four hours but we were all too nervous to talk about it. Despite that, we were all on the lookout for the shipping van.

  Hooligan was the first to hear it but Victor was the first to react. He set aside the bow he was sanding and strode through the house toward garage. The rest of us followed with MacKenzie's cast setting the pace a little slower than I'd have liked. But we couldn't just leave her behind and I didn't think Valor would be too happy if I threw her over my shoulder and started running. He's a little possessive when it comes to MacKenzie.

  Hooligan caught up to Victor as he threw open the garage doors and the rest of us made our way across the concrete slab. Out on the snow-packed driveway, the driver swung down from his vehicle and gave Hooligan a tentative look. MacKenzie's dog is big but relatively harmless—as long as you're not a harpy or an ax murderer—but Havoc locked his hand in the dog's collar to humor the guy.

  Once he was sure the wolfhound couldn't reach him, the driver strolled around to the back of the vehicle and opened the doors like he had all the time in the world. I could see that Victor was itching to tell the guy to move his ass and I couldn't help but sympathize with him. I'd have felt the same way if it were my brother being delivered in a crate.

  Using a dolly, the driver wheeled the tall wooden box over the bumpy old snow into the empty garage bay. As the crate shifted, we could hear Reason's heavy stone form banging loosely against the sides. That wasn't a good sign. He should have been balanced on his feet.

  Victor started working on the packing crate before the driver was back inside the van. Narrow strips of steel banded the tall box and we wasted a few minutes searching for something that would cut through the metal. But at last, two flat wooden panels were lying on the garage floor and one side of the crate was open. We all stepped toward Victor as Reason tilted into his arms. A frown of concern darkened Victor's brow as the rest of us helped catch Reason and lowered him to the floor.

  "Gently," Victor commanded, which wasn't really necessary since we're pretty much indestructible in our stone forms. But we all understood Victor's apprehension as we eased his brother downward. When we stepped away from the statue, the twisted shape rocked on the concrete floor for a few seconds before stilling.

  While Victor crouched beside his brother, MacKenzie checked Valor's face. "What's…wrong with him?" she whispered.

  I deep crease formed between Val's dark eyebrows and he shook his head in a helpless gesture. "I don't know."

  I gazed down at Reason. His hair swirled around his head in thick clumps. It almost looked as if he'd been freeze-framed at the center of a windstorm. The long shorts he'd worn when he was shipped from England billowed in places while the thick wool lay plastered to his thighs in other places. One of his wings was folded against his body hiding his arm; the other arm and wing stretched upward as if reaching for help. His right knee almost touched his chest. His other leg and foot pointed downward like a ballet dancer.

  But it was the look in Reason's eyes that put an uneasy flicker down my spine. Deep blue in life, his flinty gray gaze stared upward in panic. Reason had never been short on courage and it was an expression I'd never seen on his face before.

  Victor dropped to one knee and clamped his hand on his forearm. Under that vice-like grip, the veins in his arm stood out in stark relief. "What should we do?" he asked, his voice strained but quiet.

  We were already unnerved by the look in Reason's eyes. It didn't help to see Victor fight for composure. Defiance was the first to offer Victor an answer. "Let's take Reason inside and get out of this cold garage," he suggested.

  Like a bunch of pallbearers, we hefted Reason up to our shoulders and carried him to the family room. We figured he was probably safer there than in the other rooms on the main level since it couldn't be seen from the front door. Victor led the way and had the dark wicker sofa turned toward the window by the time we got there. With Reason balanced on the sofa and the glass-topped coffee table supporting his outstretched wing, Victor spun around to open the blinds on the bay windows.

  "No!" MacKenzie blurted and reached for his hand. It was a cloudy day and there was no danger of sunlight pouring through the windows right away but I knew what she was thinking. Although Reason must have been alive when he made the change to stone, he could have been badly injured. And MacKenzie realized that his life might end as soon as the sun touched him.

  "But we have to wake him up," Victor insisted as he frowned at her fingers locked around his wrist.

  "I…think we should wait," MacKenzie argued. She looked around at the rest of us for support.

  "Wait for what?" he challenged her, but he didn't pull on the drawstring that lifted the blinds.

  She dropped her hands to her sides. "Until…we know what we're dealing with."

  When Victor gave her a questioning look, Valor spoke up. "If Reason was in trouble when he turned to stone, then we need to know what's going on so we can be prepared to help him when he wakes up."

  "We wouldn't want him to wake up, only to have him die," Defiance pointed out darkly as he propped his shoulder against the wall beside the window.

  "Die?" Victor echoed and shot a stunned look at Defiance. "What are you guys talking about?"

  Havoc rested a hand on Victor's shoulder. "Don't panic," he soothed.

  "I'm not panicking," Victor insisted impatiently, jerking away. "I just think you guys are being way dramatic."

  Havoc tried again. "If Reason was choking when he turned to stone then we'd want to know it, wouldn't we? So we could be prepared do that Heinrich maneuver thing and save him."
r />   "Heimlich," I said.

  "What?" Havoc asked as he slanted his gaze toward me.

  "It's the Heimlich maneuver," I explained as I looked around at the others. "Not Heinrich. Nobody named Heinrich invented a maneuver."

  "Technically, a Heinrich could have invented some sort of maneuver," he argued stubbornly.

  "That's true," I conceded. "But—"

  "Can we focus on Reason?" Victor interrupted us with a sudden growl. "And while we're at it, maybe you can explain how Reason could have been choking when he was supposed to stay in his stone form until he was shipped back to us."

  "That was the plan," I answered as I leaned back on the window seat. "But it's clear that he didn't stay in his stone form. And we need to know what we're dealing with before we let the sun reach him."

  "How are we going to figure out what we're dealing with?" he challenged me.

  MacKenzie chewed on her bottom lip and passed a worried glance over Reason's rigid form on the sofa. "We don't know, right now."

  "Is there some kind of phone app for this situation?" Victor asked after a tense pause. "One that tells you what's wrong with you instead of where you are?"

  Victor was probably hoping for more than a phone app. He was probably hoping for some kinda modern technology that could be combined with MacKenzie's magic to help his brother.

  "Maybe," she allowed, though she didn't sound too optimistic.

  "Maybe he's been spelled by a witch," Defiance suggested.

  "That seems unlikely," Valor argued in a low voice. He pointed out that any modern witch would be like MacKenzie and she probably wouldn't know about her powers. "And even if there was a witch out there who had accessed her powers, why would she attack Reason?"

  "Maybe she's working with a harpy," I growled.

  MacKenzie lifted her hand in an impatient gesture as she gazed down at Hooligan who stood guard beside the sofa. "There can't be very many harpies in the United States."

  "We've already run into one," I persisted, referring to the harpy that had attacked Valor and MacKenzie. "That means there could be more."