“I’d go to that funeral,” Mason said with a conspiratorial smile. “I hate to say it, but it’s no more than Adriane deserves.” His usual reserve had vanished, and he seemed far less uptight than normal. I liked the new him. I hoped he stuck around and let the old him wander off into oblivion.
“Your treatment at the hands of your aunt was unforgivable,” Ethan said, his voice deeper than I’d expected. “I’ve come to take you home—to your real home—where you can be properly cared for.”
Wow. Condescending much? “No thanks,” I said and then focused on Mason because that was sure to be annoying. “Who are the rest of my guests?”
“This is Hannah Wyler Symms, your cousin by way of—”
“Hi,” I said, interrupting. I didn’t care about her parents. I wouldn’t know who they were. The woman had long brown hair that was pulled up behind her head. I figured she was probably in her thirties, with tanned skin and a mouth that was used to smiling.
“Hi,” she replied and held out her hand. “Welcome back to the family.”
I shook her hand and appreciated her firm grip.
“She does not belong to your family,” Ethan declared arrogantly.
I turned to look at him. “And just who do you think I belong to?”
If he’d had any sense of self preservation, he would have realized that I wasn’t going to put up with anybody claiming me. I belonged to myself and only myself.
“You were contracted to the Osterraven line. You are a member of my family.”
Mason made a choking sound that might have been a laugh. I could feel Damon growing icy cold beside me, and if looks could kill, dear old dad would already be six feet under.
I tipped my head as I looked at Ethan. “No,” I said and turned my back on him again. I swore I heard him gnash his teeth. Clearly people didn’t ignore him.
“And you are?” I said to another man who looked a little bit like a cross between Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford. In other words, he was really pretty. In fact, they all were.
I glanced at Damon, who was still glaring at Philip. “You people sure grow them pretty. Or is that a selection criteria for contracts too?”
“Pretty?” He glanced at me in surprise.
“Look around. Everybody in the room could be a model. Well, except for me, unless I’m modeling for Horror Movie Today.”
“You’re beautiful,” Damon said, sounding offended that I would question that.
“Relax, Tarzan. I don’t have self-esteem issues.”
“Doesn’t mean you get to insult yourself in front of me,” he said, his indignation adorable.
“All right. I’ll insult other people if that makes you happy.”
He snorted as I turned back to Clint Redford.
“Sorry about that. You are very handsome, as are the two of you.” I looked at the other two men. One of them was about my age, lanky, with long blond hair caught up in a ponytail and a foxy face. The other looked like him but older, with short hair.
“Thank you,” the first man said solemnly.
I couldn’t tell if he had a great poker face or a bad sense of humor.
“I’m Kenneth Silverthorn.”
“What brings you here?”
“I accompanied Ethan.”
“Let me guess—you’re his contracts attorney.”
Now he smiled. “I’m afraid so.”
“It’s too bad you came all this way for nothing.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say it’s for nothing. I’m rather enjoying myself. At the very least, I have the admiration of a pretty young woman.”
“Yeah, I’m looking hot today,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I can tell you’re trouble.”
I looked at the elder of the last two men. “And who would you be? Bodyguards? Personal fluffers?”
The younger one just about choked on the last. I grinned.
“I’m afraid we requested to join this expedition to get to the bottom of my son’s involvement in this situation.” The elder one frowned with obvious worry.
“Son?”
“Benjamin. You used his account to send your e-mail to the PS. I’m Soren Sharpentier, and this is Marco, Benjamin’s cousin.”
I grinned and reached out to shake both their hands. “Oh! So very nice to meet you. Ben is a terrific kid, and we’ve become good friends. He’s very sweet.”
A look of relief ran over Soren’s face, and his gaze darted past me to my parents. There was probably some sort of power thing going on here. I thought of Garrett’s complaints about the drop in his family’s status. It looked like his family wasn’t the only one who feared my two families. Having known Ethan for all of a couple of minutes, I could understand why. The man was obviously arrogant and controlling.
“Well,” I said, turning around. “It’s nice to meet you all, but I’m afraid I’ve got some business to take care of right now. Mason? Will you come with us please?”
I headed out the glass doors onto the patio. I stopped a second to glance up at the gargoyles and took a deep breath. God, I hoped that their mates were inside the Wall. I hoped Mason and Damon would know how to free them if they were bound in magic.
“What’s going on?” Mason asked quietly as we pattered down the steps to the lawn and headed toward the Wall. Behind us, I could hear the others following. I didn’t particularly care, unless they tried to interfere in this rescue.
“We think the female gargoyles are hidden inside the climbing wall.”
Mason considered that information then nodded. “It’s definitely possible, though the magic containing them would have to be very strong to prevent the males from sensing them.”
“Think she rocked that kind of power?”
He nodded. “It’s quite possible. Or she had help.”
I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. Good because that meant we would find the missing gargoyle females. Bad because freeing them might prove very difficult. But then, Mason had freed the males. With all three of us pooling our power, we should be able to manage this. I said so.
“I hope so,” Mason said, but his voice carried a note of uncertainty.
“Do you think Marco is single?” I asked Damon as we walked around the Wall, looking for an access point.
“I have no intention of sharing you,” was his hot response.
“Right back at you. Oh, and I’d get over any ideas of birthing contracts if you want to be with me. But I’m not sure the girls would forgive me if I didn’t mention Marco to them. In fact....”
I pulled out my phone and texted Stacey, Jen, and Lorraine: Family reunion at the Wicked Bitch’s house, plus some pretty male scenery. May have found the gargoyles’ mates.
I hit send and pocketed my cell.
“What’s going on?” Hannah asked as my visitors came inside the cage. She looked around at the water cannons and the cage. “What an odd place.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said. “We’re trying to see if we can find a hidden entrance. Seems Aunty Mommy forced the gargoyles on the house to offer an eternal blood binding by threatening their mates. Then she hid the females, and the males can’t sense them.”
From the look on her face and everybody else’s, this was a stunning and horrifying revelation.
“She also spelled the males so they couldn’t transform unless the place was threatened and required defense,” Mason added as he came around from the rear of the Wall. “Entirely despicable. We released them from the transformation-blocking spell, and Beck believes that the females might be hidden inside this monstrosity.” He gestured toward the Wall.
“No sign of a door, though,” Damon said as he returned from circling the Wall.
“Let’s knock a hole in it, then,” I said.
“Too risky,” Soren said, clearly understanding better than I did the nature of the magic Aunty Mommy had used.
Marco, Kenneth, and even Ethan nodded agreement. Daddy Dearest looked angry, the kind you get when someone gets bullied
“So what do we do?”
“We work from the outside in and dismantle the spells,” Elena said, speaking up for the first time. “I’m familiar with the way Adriane worked magic. I should be able to help tear apart this ... evil.”
“You have no idea,” I said under my breath. She couldn’t tear down the memories of me on that wall.
Damon slid an arm around me and pulled me close. From the harsh set of his jaw, he was probably thinking the same thing. The trouble was, Aunty Mommy was already dead and there was no way to kill her any deader. A shame, really.
“You don’t know how to raise the dead, do you?” I asked hopefully.
“She’s cremated. There’s nothing to raise, even if I could, which I can’t, so don’t get any crazy ideas,” Damon said.
“A zombie cockroach army....” I said thoughtfully.
“You watch too many horror movies.”
“I don’t watch enough, actually.”
“Focus.”
Elena was formulating a plan with the others. It sounded like a bunch of nonsense, but then, they were all trained with magic and I was a total newbie.
“Are you going to be pissed when you can’t help get inside?” Damon asked.
Duh. “Yes.”
“You going to throw a tantrum over it?”
I whirled to face him. “Excuse me? Did you just say tantrum? Do you want me to kick you in the balls?”
He grinned and I realized he was pushing my buttons on purpose.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “You’re suicidal, aren’t you?”
“I just want you to remember that you’ve got plenty of help here for the magic. That’s not going to be the problem. Female gargoyles are exponentially more dangerous than the males. They are the protectors of the young, the defenders of the home warren. The males go to war and offer services in the world. They serve in other people’s wars. But the females fight personal battles, and this is going to be very, very personal. They’ve been separated from their mates and calves for years.”
“Wait a minute. Where are the gargoyle children all this time if not here?” My stomach plummeted into my shoes. “Oh my God. You don’t think the Wicked Bitch destroyed them, do you?”
“Given all you’ve told me and what I’ve seen, I wouldn’t put it past her. But I’m praying she didn’t get the chance because if she did, then the females are going to attack mercilessly, and the males will be blood bound to defend us.”
Oh, fuck. “Mason!” I sprinted over to him, pulling him aside. “Did you learn anything in the room? Anything about the gargoyles at all?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“So no mention of their children?”
“Their calves? No.”
I plowed my fingers through my hair, yanking on it. “Shit.”
“Do you want to wait? See if we can find out something about the calves?” Damon had followed me over.
I didn’t even hesitate. “No. That would be cruel, and maybe their kids were never involved. Maybe they’re safe somewhere.”
“Then it’s all going to come down to you.”
I frowned at Damon. “Why do you say that?”
“The gargoyle males knew you. There’s a chance the females do too. They have a stronger ability to sense beyond themselves and may recognize that your aunt was your enemy also. You can build on that. The rest of us have no chance to reach them. They’ll see us as the ordinary rank and file—same as your aunt—and they won’t trust us. The trouble is, you may not get a chance to talk before they try to kill you.”
“I guess I’d better talk fast, then.” I looked at Mason. “Will you need to do another spell like the one you used to free the males?”
“I don’t know. It depends on how they’re being held.”
“We’re ready,” Elena said, coming up to stand beside me. “Rebecca, Mr. Matrovani, will you be taking part?”
“Call me Beck and no, I won’t,” I said.
“I will,” Damon said.
“You should withdraw to outside the fence,” Elena said to me. “It’ll be safer there for the time being.”
The woman who had given birth to me had a kind of faraway look to her eyes, like part of her was somewhere else. She turned to her brother.
“Mason, you’re to maintain the anchor and be prepared to take point on a secondary spell. Mr. Matrovani, you’ll do the same. The rest of us will join you and anchor in rotation in the case we can’t detach once we’ve begun. Osterraven will take third point with Hannah, and then it will be my turn again.”
She carried herself with a kind of quiet confidence that said she was sure of her own skills and had no fear. I wished I didn’t have fear. I felt like I was swimming in it.
I gave Damon a quick kiss, well aware of my father’s disapproval, and then did as told, retreating outside the fence with Ajax. He’d been watching everyone with a quiet predatory stare, assessing and measuring. I wondered what conclusions he’d come to.
He sat between me and the fence, staring intently as everyone else began their spells. Damon and Mason had gone to the other side of the wall where I couldn’t see them. Osterraven was on the right side with Elena angled toward the left. Hannah, Marco, Kenneth, and Soren stood between them.
I didn’t hear it begin. Elena held her hands out to the sides, her palms angled toward the wall. She chanted something. The words grew louder, and more voices joined hers. Then she turned to the right and began a patterned walk, swaying as she went, her hands moving in graceful arcs and bends. The others followed her as she made the circuit, and though they chanted, they merely walked, their hands interlaced together and held to their chests as if they were all praying.
They made three circuits and then stopped. When they did, golden light flickered along the ground along their path. Elena continued to circle, weaving in and out of her companions, who now faced the Wall, their hands extending from their sides, palms pointed downward. Magic flowed from them down into the gold, and the circle grew brighter until I had to look away before my retinas burned.
I kept trying to sneak peeks through slit eyelids, but it was no good. Strangely, the light didn’t bother Ajax. He’d risen to his feet, watching the proceedings without any difficulty at all.
Electricity filled the air. It felt as if a giant storm were about to hit, complete with crazy lightning and a dozen tornados.
It was hard to breathe, the air was so thick. I felt a spiraling from inside the circle, a drawing inward, winding tighter and tighter. It pulled on my heart and muscles, the marrow of my bones. I stepped forward before I could stop myself. Then I took another step and another, until my face was pressed against the chain links of the fence and I couldn’t go any farther. I curled my fingers through the wire and tried to pull it apart. To my surprise, it tore like wet toilet paper.
I pushed through the opening and started walking again. Now I was staring at the glare of magic, and it no longer seemed so bright or painful. It called to me like sunlight on a warm ocean beach. Ajax pressed against my legs, keeping pace with me.
The closer I came to the Wall, the stronger the pull on me grew and the faster I needed to go. It wasn’t a slow build. Need slammed into me, and I catapulted forward. The molecules of my body separated, and I became smoke. I streamed through the building magic of the spell and then through the Wall and inside.
I couldn’t see. I wanted light and it came to me. Or rather the cloud of me began to glow. The gargoyle females had been stacked like cordwood on top of a thick rubber mat. Each was covered in a shell of plastic resin two inches thick. Layered inside the resin were patterns of wire, leaves, stones, and who knew what else.
The magic that drew me wound around the stacked females, continuing to tighten its pull. I flowed toward them. It didn’t occur to me to resist. I probably should have. Self-preservation is clearly not my strongest suit. Though I had escaped Garrett’s death curse and hiked miles for help, so it wasn’t my weakest suit either.
Following the flow of spooling magic felt right. I snorted inwardly. Because danger always feels dangerous, right? Yeah. It was too late for logic, though, because I’d committed and couldn’t pull free now.
I came to the spindle at the heart of the winding magic. It glowed with opal light. I wondered what this had to do with what the others were doing outside the Wall. I decided it didn’t matter and slid inside the spindle core.
I formed back into my own shape and hardened, though I wasn’t entirely solid. I was more like a ghost. I found myself in the center of a group of angry gargoyle females who weren’t altogether there either.
“Hi,” I said. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“We recognize your being. Who are you?” demanded one of the gargoyles. She was slender and graceful, with a face that reminded me of an Egyptian cat. Her ears thrust tall and tufted, her muzzle elongated and pointed. She had wicked talons like an eagle, and the fur on her head melded into feathers on her body. Her feet were lion paws. She didn’t look at all pleased to see me.
“You recognize me?”
“Your being,” she corrected. “You have often been near. We have tasted your blood, sweat, and tears. They have strengthened our prison.”
The news hit like a punch to the gut. I’d helped the Wicked Bitch keep them captive. The idea disgusted me beyond all reason. I didn’t have time to think about it. I needed to focus on getting them free. Telling them I was related to Aunty Mommy and why I was scrambling up the wall outside seemed like a really bad idea at the moment.
“That’s a long story,” I said. “Right now, we need to get you out of here. There are magic practitioners outside trying to dismantle the containment spells. What can I do?”
The gargoyle speaker wrinkled her nose, showing a scary mouthful of needle-sharp crystal teeth. “You can do nothing.”
“Fuck that. There has to be a way.”
She gave a chuff of bitter humor. “She who bound us reinforced the prison spells for years. Now only she can remove them.”
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