The Greystone Bundle (Books 1-4)

by Taylor Longford

  Reaching for the taps, he filled the sink with warm water. Silently, I watched as he soaked a facecloth in the water, squeezed it out then turned to me. Moving between my knees, he gently stroked the warm, wet cloth across my face. It felt so good. Soothing and reviving. I don't know why it felt so wonderful. Maybe it was because I'd done it so many times for him. Feeling some of my bruised confidence sliding back into place, I watched his face as he worked.

  "I'm sorry," he said tightly.

  "What for?" I asked, surprised by his apology.

  "I should have been there."

  I tilted my head and looked at him, realizing that his gargoyle instincts were probably on overdrive. He had a strong, natural need to protect. And even though we weren't exactly friends, I was part of his household and he felt like he'd failed to look after me. I caught his face in my hands and made him look at me. "It was my fault," I murmured. "I should have taken you with me."

  "I thought I wasn't invited," he growled.

  "Turns out they weren't checking invitations," I told him softly, ignoring my guilty conscience. Then to reinforce him, I added, "You were brilliant. Thanks for coming and getting me. Thanks for rescuing me. You got there just in time."

  The hard line of his broad shoulders relaxed slightly so I guess I said the right thing. I think maybe I'd fulfilled his protective urges, if that makes any sense. For several seconds I held his face while his gaze slowly lowered to my mouth, his eyelashes thick and dark against his sun-bronzed skin.

  As if on cue, my phone rang. I was inclined to ignore it but Reason stepped away and I pried it from my pocket. "Are you okay?" Levi asked, all out of breath, like he'd just run a marathon.

  I slipped off the counter and stepped through the bathroom doorway, into the main room. "I'm fine."

  "I just heard about what happened," he said, his tone anguished. "I'm sorry. We didn't even know that guy in the bathroom. There were a lot of people at the party that we didn't know very well."

  I laughed it off. "It wasn't your fault. To be honest, the whole thing was kind of embarrassing so we don't have to talk about it."

  "Okay," he answered. "I'm glad your roommate was there, even though he is kind of hard on…buildings. Uh, doors and windows and stuff like that."

  "Tell me about it. You're lucky he didn't come down through the ceiling," I sighed.

  "Is he on steroids or something?"

  "No, not steroids," I snickered as I leaned over and pulled out the hide-a-bed.

  "Because he tore that door off its hinges, Elaina."

  "It's an old house, Levi."

  "Yeah, but…"

  "He…does have anger management issues," I admitted and threw myself onto the bed while Reason walked by and gave me a frown that said he disagreed with my opinion of his temperament.

  "I thought so. He's not dangerous is he? I mean, you're safe with him aren't you?"

  I lowered my voice. "He'd never let anything happen to me."

  "So, are you like really into him?"

  I looked up and got locked in Reason's studying gaze. "I don't know," I answered. "Maybe."

  More than that, I wasn't willing to admit.

  We might have gone to Pine Grove for the rest of the weekend, if it hadn't been for the weather. But it was snowing when we woke up on Saturday morning. In fact, it snowed a foot across most of the state. MacKenzie reported eighteen inches at her place. So, we stayed in Boulder.

  And while I was slurping down my dose of diluted venom that morning, I decided to call off the war. The one where I was trying to make Reason change his mind about marking me. Don't ask me why, but all of a sudden I didn't want to convince him we were a bad match anymore. After a week of taking his venom, I was up to about a teaspoon a day and I was starting to look forward to belonging to him and to being a part of his life, his family.

  And I'd begun to wonder if those harpies were right about the powers of gargoyle venom. If maybe the blue stuff did make you more beautiful. I mean, Reason's entire pack was beautiful and now that I'd started taking it, I could have sworn that it was having an effect on me. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I hardly recognized myself. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating. I still looked like me. But it was a better and improved me. I was prettier. And I figured after another week of taking Reason's venom, I'd be ready for a modeling career. Seriously.

  And while Reason spent the weekend drawing more portraits of his family, I continued with my harpy sketches, which became progressively darker. I don't know why I was so obsessed with the idea of harpies but I couldn't get them out of my mind, or my art.

  On Sunday afternoon, I put down my pencil and turned to Reason who was working beside me on the counter. "Where do harpies come from?"

  He looked startled. "What do you mean? They come from the same place I came from. Thirteenth century Europe."

  "That's not what I mean. I mean how are they born? Do they hatch from eggs?"

  "Why would you think that?" he asked without looking at me, his pencil moving in tight circles as he added shading to his sketch of Victor.

  "Because they have wings. Birds have wings and they lay eggs."

  "Do bats come from eggs?" he asked cynically.

  I had to think about that one. Bats were like rats with wings.

  "Harpies are mammals," he told me. "They bear their young just like bats…and humans for that matter."

  "How many young do they have at a time?" I asked, wondering if they came by the dozen, like mice and rats.

  "They're usually born in sets of two."

  "Do harpies mate for life? Does the male help to raise the young?" I asked, thinking of the various mammals that helped to raise their offspring. When Reason didn't answer, I went on to my next question. "How big are the males?"

  "There are no male harpies," he muttered after a substantial pause.

  That was hard to believe. I lifted my head and checked his face but he was busy studying his work like he'd suddenly discovered the route to Eldorado hidden on the paper in front of him. "Are harpies…asexual?" I asked tentatively, thinking that the creatures actually looked more male than female so asexual wasn't out of the question.

  "Asexual?" he asked without giving me so much as a glance. "What's that?"

  Good question. Hard to answer. "Um, let's put it this way. Some creatures can procreate without doing the whole male-female thing. But it's pretty rare."

  "Let's go for a walk," he suggested suddenly, throwing down his pencil and stretching his hands behind his head. "It's getting stuffy in here."

  I thought it was strange how he seemed to be avoiding my question, but I was happy to get outside and take a walk. It had quit snowing and the sun was out. The air was fresh and crisp and I didn't give much more thought to the way he'd evaded my questions. And a few days later, I had other things to worry about.

  Reason had been attracting a lot of attention in Drawing class, right from day one. That just increased with every picture he drew of his good-looking family. Most of the girls would rush through their assignments so they could spend the last ten minutes of class gathered around his table, watching him and acting like he was the next Andy Warhol. With so much going on around him, the professor couldn't help but notice him, which wasn't necessarily a good thing. If she realized he wasn't enrolled in the class, she'd probably ask him to leave.

  But that's not what happened. Instead Professor Ingemar seemed as taken with Reason and his art as the rest of the females in the class. Seriously, I thought she was going to offer to buy one of his pieces. Yeah, the guy had talent and his sketches of the pack were incredible but I couldn't help suspect that his extreme good looks had something to do with the professor's swift acceptance of him in her class. He might not have gotten away with it if the instructor was a guy.

  But I wasn't sure he could get away with it forever, so I was a little nervous when the professor asked him to stay behind after class on Tuesday. I hung around at my table, pretending to rearrange things in my bag bu
t Professor Ingemar cleared her throat and informed me that she wanted to "speak privately with my friend". So, I sulked out of the room and waited anxiously on the other side of the door, watching the clock and hoping she didn't make us late for European History.

  With about two minutes to spare, Reason strode from the room with his drawing pad under his arm. His brow was furrowed in a slight frown as we hurried across campus to our next class, and I had to jog to keep up with the stretch of his long legs.

  "What's up?" I asked him breathlessly. "What did Professor Ingemar want with you?"

  He gave me a sideways glance. "Evidently, what I'm doing is called auditing."

  "Uh, yeah," I agreed, feeling a little guilty for not covering the subject with him beforehand. "You could call it that. It's like attending class without paying but you don't get any credit at the end of the semester."

  "She said that auditing is generally frowned upon," he clipped out like he wasn't too happy.

  "Yeah, if they catch you they get kinda frowny. Is she gonna kick you out?"

  We slipped into two seats at the back of the lecture hall and continued our conversation in low voices while waiting for the History professor to show up. "Nay," he whispered. "She wants to try to set up some kind of special scholarship for me."

  For a few seconds, I just stared, gobsmacked as Havoc would say. "Are you serious?" I finally squeaked.

  "Well, I think she is," he countered.

  "That would be unbelievably fantastic," I told him, almost jumping out of my seat in an uncontrollable urge to give him a hug. But the professor turned up just then and I had to quash the impulse. So, we talked about it some more at the end of the day, on the way back to the apartment. Not that Reason volunteered any information. I had to pump him for every little detail.

  He looked thoughtful as he walked down the sidewalk with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. "She said it would be a department scholarship funded by the teachers so it doesn't have to go through the administers."

  "Administration," I corrected him, thinking that was good since it meant nobody would ask him for ID.

  "Part of the scholarship would involve work-study and she wants to set up a meeting for me with some of the other professors in the department. I'm supposed to take my latest drawings."

  "When are you going to meet with them?"

  "I don't know," he mumbled, looking uncommitted.

  "What do you mean, you don't know?" I exclaimed, starting to get suspicious. "Reason, you have to do this."

  He hunched his shoulders and continued down the sidewalk while I hurried to keep up. "I'm not in Boulder to study art, Elaina. I'm here to watch you and find my kin."

  Honestly, he was so self-sacrificing. I tugged on the sleeve of his leather jacket to slow him down. "Well, I don't see why you can't do all that and get an art degree at the same time."

  "Who'd watch you while I was at work-study?"

  "You could handcuff me to the bed," I suggested helpfully.

  He didn't even smile. "It would interfere with my other responsibilities," he argued. "I should be building bows with the rest of my family to help support the pack. Instead, they're supporting me."

  "But the work-study part of the scholarship would give you some cash so that you wouldn't need as much help from your family," I argued swiftly. "And if you can sell some of your art…"

  "How much do you think I could get for one of my sketches?" he asked, like maybe he was beginning to consider the idea.

  "I dunno, but with Professor Ingemar's backing, you might get five or six hundred. How much to do you guys get for a bow?"

  "About seven-fifty," he murmured, still not looking convinced.

  He was so stubborn. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. "Honestly, Reason, if you don't do this I will SO…not cooperate with you anymore."

  "You've been cooperating?" he snarked, and gave me a sour look.

  "I can be worse," I threatened, searching around for something else I could hold over his head. "A lot worse. If you don't do this, I…I won't let you mark me."

  That seemed to do the trick. His shoulders sagged an inch and he stopped on the sidewalk. "Okay," he gave in with a dissatisfied growl. "I'll go to the department meeting."

  That was more like it. "So, when's the meeting?" I asked happily.

  "Tomorrow night at eight."

  Yesss! Feeling pumped over my victory, I dragged Reason into a trendy little coffee shop on the way home. There are a ton of them in Boulder. So many that you'd think coffee was vital for human life…or at least human reproduction. I slid into the booth facing the shop's windows and was surprised when Reason slipped in beside me instead of across from me. The side of his thigh snugged up against mine and started off that haywire thing we had going, but this time I didn't run from it. Instead, I basked in it, letting the jittery, warm sensation tear through my system and run wild. It was distracting though, and the waitress had been standing at our table for several seconds before I managed to pull myself together enough place my order. In my defense, Reason seemed to have overlooked her presence as well.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Of course, it was dark at eight o'clock the next night and that meant Reason couldn't walk to his meeting in case a harpy was out there, so I drove him over to the Arts Center and dropped him off. "I'll come back for you in an hour," I promised.

  "Sounds good," he answered. "Be careful."

  "I will," I told him, planning to park close to the house and hurry straight up the stairs to the apartment even though I wasn't really harpy bait or anything like that. And according to Levi, that missing high school girl had suddenly turned up a few days earlier so maybe she was just a runaway after all. And maybe there was no real reason to worry about various assorted bad guys skulking around Boulder. "Good luck," I told him, wanting to give him a hug but not nearly brave enough.

  He leaned over the console and touched his lips to my cheek. "Thanks," he said.

  The warmth of his mouth lingered on my skin after he got out of the car. I rubbed my fingers across my cheek and watched his back for a few moments as he strode briskly toward the building with his sketchpad under his arm. I was so excited for him, and felt that I'd been instrumental in making him take this step. It made me feel really good about myself.

  Back at the apartment, I checked myself out in the mirror over the bathroom sink, wondering if I had enough going for me to make Reason like me. The venom was definitely working for me, giving my skin a transparent glow and thickening my dark lashes. Of course, my eyes were a big plus but my chest leaned toward the minus side of the equation. Tonight, my hair looked a little flat and I wanted to look nice when I picked up Reason later on, so I decided to take a quick shower. I didn't have time to waste so I was in and out in a flash and five minutes after I started, I was standing in front of the bathroom counter dressed in a maroon T-shirt that just covered my panties.

  Humming a tune by the Kings of Leon, I grabbed a towel and rubbed it over my head while trying to decide which of my jeans were clean enough to wear. My favorite pair needed to be washed. I'd worn them to Levi's party, and I didn't want to smell like a smoky brewhouse when I picked up Reason.

  A second later I dropped the towel, startled by an explosion of noise that crashed into the room. Before I had a chance to figure out what was going on, something yanked on my hair, hard. So hard that my feet left the floor. In the mirror, I saw a huge fist knotted in my dark hair. The fist was attached to a thick arm that had broken through the window, leaving thin plates of glass scattered on the bathroom floor.

  Too late, I realized that even though a harpy was too big to get in through the bathroom window, I wasn't too big to go out. Naturally, I fought my exit as hard as I could, grabbing the taps on the sink, then the towel bar below the window, and screaming for help. But help was a long way off, even if you counted Levi and his roommates downstairs. A jagged piece of glass sliced down the back of my leg as I went through the window, then I was gon
e.

  The harpy whisked into the night sky and I went with her, hanging from my hair and screaming in pain. It felt like my entire scalp was going to rip from my head. Survival instincts kicked in and I reached up to grab the monster's feet in an attempt to reduce some of the weight dangling from my hair. But right about then, the harpy let go of me. In shock, I plummeted several feet, thinking it was all over. But before I hit the ground, the monster's sharp talons dug into my shoulders and pierced my skin. Blood leaked from the holes she'd made just above my collarbones, dampening my T-shirt. But the good news was, I wasn't falling anymore.

  My brain was pretty much numb with shock and fear but I wondered what she wanted with me. I mean, Rees and I had done a reasonably good job of pretending we didn't like each other so she shouldn't have thought that she could use me against him to make him give her his venom. I craned my head around to look at her, surprised to discover she wasn't wearing anything. I hadn't noticed her lack of clothing when she crashed into my apartment the last time, because her wings were wrapped around her body. But she was naked. Which was way gross. "Why are you doing this?" I shouted up at the she-thing.

  She cocked her good eye in my direction. "Revenge," she croaked.

  Revenge? That didn't sound good. "R-Revenge?" I stuttered in the freezing night air.

  The harpy's face got ugly and—keep in mind—it wasn't a lovely thing to start with. "Think you can blind Motschka, little black spider girl? Think Motschka will do nothing?"

  Spider? Where'd she get that? Yeah, I was skinny—maybe even spindly—and I had dark hair. But a spider? "Wh-What are you going to do with me?" I asked, looking down at the ground below where the houses were beginning to look like game pieces on a monopoly board and the cars were like large ants with glowing eyes.

  She gave me a shake and leered down at me but she didn't answer. Stroking her wings against the frigid winter air, she spiraled upward, higher and higher, the temperature dropping as she climbed, my teeth chattering, my bare skin freezing. I looked around, hoping for a miracle, hoping for the sudden appearance of Reason, which wasn't very likely. We were west of the city, now, above the forested foothills. I could actually see the Arts Center where I'd dropped off Reason thirty minutes ago. It was miles away.