The Greystone Bundle (Books 1-4)

by Taylor Longford

  "Maybe," she said stoically, more like a battlefield companion than a girlfriend. But that's what I love about Whitney. She's so frickin' brave. "But he'll fix your wing and keep silent about what you are."

  I stared at her, thinking she was crazy if she believed that. "Why would he do that?"

  "Because he'll finally understand how you got up to Guanella Pass to help me."

  Okay. Okay, that made sense. I took several quick breaths. Maybe her father would fix my wing. And maybe he'd keep my secret. But he sure as hell wasn't going to let me see Whitney again. Not when he realized what a risk I was to his daughter's safety. I crossed my arms over my chest. "I'm not willing to make the trade," I muttered and turned my face toward the side window. "I'd rather saw the damn thing off than never see you again."

  "What do you mean?" she challenged me like she was offended, although I suspected it was just an act. "You said you'd wait for me. I'll be eighteen in two years. Is that too long to wait?"

  "No," I muttered, even though I was pretty sure two years would feel like a friggin' eternity. "But what if your father moves your family out of Colorado when he knows what I am?"

  "I'll come back," she claimed in a matter-of-fact voice. "I'll come back and find you and make sure you're still waiting for me."

  "I'll be waiting," I growled.

  "Then what's the problem?"

  I turned my head and searched her face. "The problem is that I'm in love with you, Whitney." It felt so good to tell her, to say those words. So I said it again. "I'm in love with you. And my instincts command me to be near you, to protect you. And even if my instincts weren't involved, it would kill me if I couldn't be with you."

  Her eyes misted over with a wash of emotion but she shook it off and lifted her chin. "I love you too, Defiance. But I need more than your love. I need your trust just like you needed mine back on Guanella pass. Back in that motel room in Georgetown. And you're going to do this. You're going to do this for me. To prove that you trust me, my judgment, and my family."

  It wasn't that simple and I tried to explain. "I'm not just risking myself with this decision, Whitney. I'm risking my entire family."

  "I already checked with your brothers," she announced like she was ready for that argument. "They agreed I should take you to my father." Reaching out, she stroked her hand gently across the crippled spine. "I want him to make you whole again. I want him to make you beautiful again."

  I gave her a fierce look. There were more important things at stake than my looks.

  "I want you to fly again. Like you did in Idaho Springs. You were…awesome."

  Damn. If I had a weak spot, she'd found it. It would be hard to give up flying. If we were forced to take the wing off, it's not like someone could sew me a new one, like the wings Mim had made for Dare. There'd be nothing to hang them on!

  "And you know how I am. I want my boyfriend to be perfect."

  "Your boyfriend?" I echoed, surprised by my knee-jerk reaction. I liked the sound of that. I liked the idea of being Whitney's boyfriend. "This is so not a good idea," I muttered. But I pulled my wing as close to my body as possible and threw my jacket over it as we got out of the van and headed for the office door.

  It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. And keep in mind that I've faced monster harpies before. I've fought off a wolf pack with nothing but a long knife. I've been mauled by a wild mountain cat. I'm no stranger to danger and death. But facing Whitney's father was the scariest thing I'd ever done in my lifetime. Or at least, it felt that way at the time.

  Once inside the building with its neutral-colored walls, Whitney planted herself in the doorway to her father's small office. I leaned against the doorframe, positioning my open wing behind the wall as Dr. Anders looked up from his paperwork.

  "Daddy, we need your help," she said evenly.

  Not surprisingly, a dark storm gathered in her father's blue eyes as his gaze flicked toward me. "Don't tell me he hurt somebody, Whitney. Not after I gave him my trust."

  "No," she answered swiftly. "It's Defiance. He needs your help. He's…hurt."

  "What's the problem?" he asked, still looking skeptical but slightly relieved as he leaned back in his chair and ran a hand back through his thin hair. But he must have been puzzled. He could see me standing in the doorway with my arms crossed over my chest. There didn't appear to be much wrong with me.

  "This is the problem," I grunted and moved into the opening while sliding my jacket away from my wing.

  Dr. Anders' eyes went wide and he moved slowly to his feet. "What the hell?" he breathed. "Wings?"

  "It's broken," I told him. "Do you think you could help me set it?"

  "But. Where did you get this?" he sputtered. "Is it some kind of…genetic defect?"

  I grimaced. "I wouldn't exactly call my wings a genetic defect. They're more of an advantage."

  Our eyes locked and he held my gaze for several seconds before he finally nodded. Then he grabbed my elbow and steered me down the hall into a room with a large brown mattress covered with a thin sheet of paper. A bunch of heavy machinery hung above the bed. "Were you born this way?"

  "Yes," I answered and opened my other wing so he could see how they were supposed to work. "I was born a gargoyle, a somewhat ancient breed that has just about disappeared from the earth."

  "Gargoyle! Are you serious?"

  "Dead serious," I answered and stretched out on the bed.

  Dr. Anders swung the equipment into place. "Then why haven't I heard about living gargoyles before? Why haven't there been sightings reported in the gossip sheets? Every other breed is in there, splashed across the front page. Yeti. Sasquatch. Aliens."

  "Most of the gargoyle race died out a long time ago. My pack and I have been dormant for the last eight hundred years. We just came back to life four months ago."

  "Why isn't there some sort of historical record?" he argued. "Why haven't your bones been unearthed by archeologists?"

  "Our bones are light. Like a bird's," I explained. "They decompose swiftly."

  He frowned as he stared at my crippled wing. "Okay, one more question. What do I need to know to fix this?"

  "A gargoyle's broken bone will knit in twenty-four hours. So it has to be set before then. And this bone was broken about three or four hours ago."

  He nodded again. "Let's take some x-rays and get to work, then. I'm going to step from the room and turn this thing on. Stay here and don't move."

  Whitney sent me an encouraging smile over her father's shoulder as he herded her out of the room. And they were back before I could wonder what would happen next.

  "That's it?" I asked, stunned.

  "That's it," Dr. Anders chuckled, obviously amused by my naivety. "You can sit up now."

  So I rolled up into a sitting position on the edge of the bed while he studied a screen a few feet away. It looked like a picture of my insides—my bones. Naturally, I'd heard of x-rays before but it was pretty exciting to finally see one.

  "It looks like a spiral fracture," he explained, pointing to the ghostly image of the spine on my wing.

  I nodded as I gazed at the black and white picture. "My cousin tried to set it but the muscle is keeping it from aligning properly. It looks like you'll have to cut the muscle then pull the bones together."

  He winced. "That's going to hurt. You'll need something for the pain."

  I rubbed a hand over my mouth and shook my head. "That might not be a good idea. I need to be able to feel the bone when it aligns. I'll know when it's properly seated. I'll feel it. I can manage some pain between now and then."

  The doctor looked doubtful.

  "It'll feel better when it's set," I assured him. "But I'm not sure what to do after that. We won't be able to use a splint. Do you have something we can use as a clamp to hold the bone in place for a day or two?"

  He stroked his chin and studied the x-ray thoughtfully. "I think I can make a plaster cast that will work."

  I heard a low chime of lau
ghter across the room and turned a questioning look on Whitney. Her eyes sparkled. "You two are so cute together, talking medical stuff."

  I shared a surprised look with her father who shrugged and said, "You do seem to know a lot about this…medical stuff."

  "I'm the healer for my pack," I explained with a slow smile. "But all of my knowledge is eight hundred years old. I imagine you've made a few advances since then."

  "A few," he agreed wryly. "Maybe you should consider a career in the medical field so you can catch up."

  I didn't tell him that I also had a strong background in killing. I just said, "That might be hard to do without any ID."

  Silently, he nodded his agreement. "Anyhow, one of those recent advances you mentioned includes muscle relaxants."

  "Muscle relaxants?" I questioned him.

  "Uh-huh. We can use them to unwind that muscle in your spine so we don't have to cut it."

  "Are you serious?" I asked.

  "Dead serious," he answered on another low chuckle.

  So I swallowed a couple of small blue pellets and waited for them to take effect while Whitney hopped up beside me on the bed and held my hand. And after like half an hour, Dr. Anders went to work setting my bone, which was much easier when my muscle wasn't fighting it. Under the doctor's firm hands, the bone slid into place and aligned almost immediately.

  He used a long medical clamp to hold the bone in place then covered the spine with some sticky wet clothes and what looked like white mortar. Whitney helped out like a proper battlefield nurse. And an hour later, the plaster had dried and I was ready to go. So I stood up and used one hand to drape my jacket back over my wing and extended my other one to shake Dr. Anders' hand.

  But he cleared his throat and told Whitney he'd like to talk to me privately for a minute. She cast an anxious look back over her shoulder as she stepped from the room and closed the heavy wooden door. I felt just as anxious. If her father had questions for me that he didn't want his daughter to hear, they were probably going to be hard to answer.

  Her father got right down to business. "So Whitney was telling the truth when she said you didn't go skiing with her last weekend."

  "Whitney would never lie to you," I told him quietly. "I flew up to Guanella Pass."

  "In the blizzard?"

  I nodded.

  "How did you find her? How did you know that she'd turned off I-70?"

  "Just a gut feeling," I hedged, which wasn't exactly a lie. But he didn't need to know about Mac and her magic. And I had no right to share her secrets. "I knew the highway was at a standstill and suspected Whitney wouldn't sit there in traffic if she could find another way home. You know how she is."

  "I know how she is," he agreed while a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.

  "I got lucky," I admitted. "The car was buried. There was only like two inches of antenna sticking out of the snow."

  His reaction was revealed by the slight tremor in his hand. "Thank you," he said.

  "You're welcome," I answered quietly. But it seemed like a good time for me to ask for his silence on the whole gargoyle issue. "I'm hoping you'll keep all of this to yourself. The wings and everything. For the sake of my family."

  "Of course," he answered then fell silent for a few seconds like he was searching for words. Eventually he asked, "Defiance, what happened to the girls? MacKenzie and Mim?"

  These were the questions I'd been dreading. These were the questions I had to answer truthfully, even though it probably meant he wouldn't let me see Whitney again. Not if he was smart. So I took a deep breath and got started. "There are monsters out there. Harpies. Old enemies. Like us, they've been dormant for hundreds of years. But now that we're back, they're back too, seeking us out and coming after us again. One of them got between Valor and MacKenzie; it's dead now. Another one tried to separate Dare and Mim. She poisoned herself in an attempt to save him."

  "Poisoned herself?" he questioned.

  I made a fist and extended my barbs. "She crushed her fingers against his barbs. Dare cut off her fingers to save her life."

  His eyes bulged. "Those hand-fang things are deadly?"

  I sighed and nodded. "A human can build up an immunity to the poison by drinking gradually increasing amounts mixed with water. If Whitney's going to hang around with us, she should probably start as soon as possible."

  He didn't seem to like that idea very much and I held my breath, waiting to see what he would say next.

  His expression was pained. "Unfortunately, I don't think I can forbid her to see the guy who saved her life up on Guanella Pass. And probably saved her again, when he pulled a horse off her."

  "We can start the process here in your office so that you can monitor her response and make sure she's safe," I suggested. "But MacKenzie, Mim and Reason's Elaina have all gone before her without any adverse reactions."

  He blew out a long sigh, his gaze focusing on the wall across the room for several seconds before returning to me. "What can you tell me about these monsters?" he asked in a low voice.

  I shook my head and held his gaze. "You don't want to know."

  "That bad?"

  "If I told you everything, you'd never let me see Whitney again, despite what you just said. And I'm hoping you won't separate us."

  "Would it work if I tried?" he asked as he shrugged out of his white medical jacket.

  "Yes," I answered right away. "For about two years."

  He hung the jacket up on the coat tree in the corner of his office. "And when she turns eighteen?"

  "If she feels the same way about me, I'll make her mine."

  He turned and locked his gaze on my eyes. "What do you mean by that?"

  So I told him. And after that, we made a deal.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  As soon as my wing was healed enough to fold away, I headed back to work with a doctor's note from Whitney's father. Of course, I'd already talked to Peggy on the phone and promised to get back there as soon as I could. She was way happy to see me and gave me another one of her trademark hugs, which I was almost getting used to. But you should have seen her eyes when I introduced her to Victor, who had come with me in case we ran into Alexa. I thought they were going to fall out of her head. But Victor gets that a lot.

  And despite his extreme good looks, Victor's a natural authority figure so I thought Alexa might listen to him. It wasn't too late for her to turn her life around. And, out of the entire pack, Victor's the one she seems to have "set her hat for". In modern language, that means she seriously has the hots for him.

  I was glad I took him along because when Alexa showed up, Victor was a lot more patient with her than I would have been. His voice was gentle as he talked to her. "Everyone is given the power of one life to live, Alexa. You can use that power for good or you can use it for evil. We're asking you to make the right choice."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," she said in a syrupy voice that didn't exactly sound sincere.

  "I think you do," he answered with a calm smile.

  Her auburn hair tossed like an angry horse's tail. "And if I don't make this right choice you're talking about?"

  "You won't be welcome around here anymore," I cut in impatiently.

  "You can't stop me from coming down here to watch Tara ride," she insisted, getting all indignant.

  "Maybe not," I grunted. "But the owner of the stables can."

  A harsh laugh broke from her chest. "She's not going to do that!"

  I opened my hands and showed her the dry thorny seeds I'd picked up the last time I was in the park. "She will if I show her these burrs I found you putting beneath Romeo's saddle."

  "I never did that!" she shot back in an acid stream of words.

  "Really?" I growled. "Well, something made Romeo act up those two times in the arena. This is the best explanation I have right now. So I'm going with it."

  Her expression turned ugly. "You'd lie to keep me from coming here?"

  I leaned closer and ke
pt my voice low. "I'd do more than that to keep Whitney safe."

  Victor cut in and took over, his voice reasonable but his words sharp. "None of my family have lived what you'd call an easy life," he said sternly. "Where we came from, you had to be tough to survive. You saw the way Dare took out your friend, Ryan. You saw how Defiance dragged that horse off Whitney in the arena. And you might as well know that we'll do whatever it takes to protect what's ours."

  "Is that a threat?" she huffed, her green eyes narrowing in anger.

  Victor forced an easy smile onto his features. "Nay, lass. Only a warning."

  "Okay," she finally barked after several moments of tense silence. "You win this time." She cut a hot glare at me. "But you'd better get used to me, Defiance or Devon or whatever your name is this week. Because even if I don't come to the stables anymore, I'm going to be around. A lot."

  "It's Defiance," I called after her as she stalked away. I shared a wry look with Victor, not too convinced she'd choose the right path in life but relatively certain she'd avoid the stables. But I planned to be around to make sure that she did. "Is it my imagination, or is she getting…worse?" I asked Victor as I walked him out to the parking lot so he could start home.

  He shook his head. "It's not your imagination. And it's not exactly surprising."

  "Why's that?"

  "Because access to great power doesn't usually make people nicer. It tends to have the opposite effect."

  I nodded and watched him head up the slope to the park. So that was that and I was glad it was over. But a few minutes after I got back inside, Whitney walked into the stable, reminding me that I had another thing I needed to take care of before the day was over. Because I'd noticed that she'd been quiet lately. Granted, she's normally reserved but this was a different sort of quiet. I knew something was wrong. It was that connection we had going that told me so.

  Whenever I watched her from a distance she looked a little melancholy. But as soon as she caught my gaze, she'd clear her expression and adopt a mask of serene contentment. So I knew something was up but I wasn't sure what was going on. She almost looked sad. But Whitney doesn't do sad. She does cool. She does indifferent. And she even does a good rendition of white-hot anger. But never sad.