Praise for
D. B. Reynolds’s Stone Warriors...
The Stone Warriors: Damian
“I have to admit, I really didn’t think I would like this new series as much as I love the ViA series . . . boy was I WRONG!! I loved the storyline, the camaraderie, the bantering, the humor, and most especially Damian!!!! He is a Warrior God as he continually and hilariously likes to remind Casey.”
—Dorsey, Swept Away by Romance
“Witty banter, tons of action, and sizzling chemistry are woven into an engaging and compelling plot that sets the tone for what promises to be a fantastic new series by this talented and very clever author.”
—Karla, Swept Away by Romance
The Stone Warriors: Kato
Kato was well woven together and connected various aspects of Grace’s life to Kato and to Nick and Damian. I appreciate how each story builds upon the other and the teaser at the end to Gabriel’s story. . . . Dude! I kept trying to flip pages to read more. I cannot wait to see what happens there either! I highly recommend this series to paranormal romance lovers. Don’t delay in picking this one up.
—The Book Chick
Kato is fast-paced, action-packed, humorous at times, and Kato is very sexy! Long after reading Kato, you’ll have a new DBR hero to lust after along with all her vampires, warriors, and shifters! Naturally, we get some action with Nick, Damian (he is truly a God, I love him!!), and Casey. It was fun catching up with one of my favorite couples and of course, Nick’s presence is always appreciated! As usual, we are treated to one of DBR’s teasing signature endings, and I must say I’m excitedly looking forward to meeting our next Stone Warrior, Gabriel, and his leading lady Hana.
—Dorsey, Swept Away by Romance
D.B. Reynolds
VAMPIRES IN AMERICA
Raphael
Jabril
Rajmund
Sophia
Duncan
Lucas
Aden
Vincent
Vampires in America: The Vampire Wars
Deception
Christian
Lucifer
The Cyn and Raphael Novellas
Betrayed
Hunted
Unforgiven
Compelled
Relentless
Vampires in Europe
Quinn
The Stone Warriors
The Stone Warriors: Damian
The Stone Warriors: Kato
The Stone Warriors: Gabriel
Gabriel
The Stone Warriors: Book 3
by
D. B. Reynolds
ImaJinn Books
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.
ImaJinn Books
PO BOX 300921
Memphis, TN 38130
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-898-1
Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-890-5
ImaJinn Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.
Copyright © 2018 by D. B. Reynolds
Published in the United States of America.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
ImaJinn Books was founded by Linda Kichline.
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Cover design: Debra Dixon
Interior design: Hank Smith
Photo/Art credits:
Man (manipulated) © Halayalex | Dreamstime.com
Background (manipulated) © Unholyvault | Dreamstime.com
Baroque illustration (manipulated) © Rainbowchaser | Dreamstime.com
:Egsw:01:
The Stone Warriors
IT WAS A TIME when gods walked the earth, when armies fought not for bits of land, but for the very existence of humanity. On such a battlefield, five formidable warriors stood against an evil greater than any the earth had ever seen. But evil is not an honorable foe. Betrayed by someone they trusted, the warriors were cursed, one by one, tossed into the maelstrom of time, imprisoned in stone, their freedom resting on nearly impossible conditions. Alone of the five, their leader, the sorcerer Nicodemus, was left free. His curse? To know that his fellow warriors remained trapped forever out of his reach, condemned to an eternity of searching for their stone prisons and the keys to their freedom.
Gabriel
URBAN GABRIEL HALLDOR, a berserker on the battlefield, a monster who drinks his enemy’s blood and wears his flesh like the finest cloth . . . you shall remain locked in stone until a woman’s tears shall soak into your skin, and her pleas for safety reach you in the chaos of battle.
Prologue
Nagano, Japan, present day
HANA RAN ALONG the elegant curves of the garden pathway, driven by the staccato sound of gunfire and the wave of heat and wind that struck as the first explosions roared behind her. Fighting for balance, she gripped the graceful handrail of the stone stairs, taking the final steps in a single bound. Tears blinded her to the beauty of her grandfather’s meticulously tended plants, the cordite stink overwhelming the rich smell of black soil. Memories threatened of her own fingers digging in this dirt, of her grandfather’s scratchy voice teaching, always teaching. Telling her of her birthright, her gift.
That gift seemed more of a curse as she ran for her life, obeying her grandfather’s final order, leaving him to his fate along with so many others. Was any gift worth such a price? Was she worth such a sacrifice?
But still she ran. Because that’s what he’d trained her to do. Obey. Learn. Conquer. In the end, she would triumph. It was the only thing that kept her going. Belief in her grandfather’s wisdom, in the knowledge that in the end, his death would be avenged when their enemy lay dead at her feet.
She slowed her headlong rush, taking time to listen, to be certain she was alone before whispering words of magic that let her walk through a seemingly impenetrable hedge and enter the secret place known only to her grandfather and. . . . She choked back a sob. She was the only one who knew of this place now. Her grandfather, the one constant of her childhood, the only person who’d ever truly cared about her, was gone. She fell to her knees then, crying silent tears, aware that her enemies would already be searching for her, and that there would be at least one with magical talent among them. None who reached the level of sorcerer, perhaps. In these modern times, with magic so scarce in the world, sorcerers were too rare to risk on a dangerous assault like this, even the weak ones. But at least one magic sensitive would be included, because that was the only sure way they could track her. It might take them a while, but they would find this hidden garden, and they would destroy it to get to her. Because of who she was, what she was, and what she could do.
She was no sorcerer, not even much of a magic-user, but she did have a talent. She was an amplifier of magic. Her grandfather had done his best to conceal what she was from others, but he’d privately speculated that Hana could as much as double the magical strength of a powerful sorcerer. Any sorcerer would kill to control her and her talent. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just any sorcerer who was after her. It was Sotiris, on
e of the most powerful and dangerous sorcerers in the world, one who’d been welcomed at her great-grandfather’s estate for decades. Sotiris was a ruthless man, but then, her great-grandfather had been such a man, too. It wasn’t kindness that had propelled him to the highest ranks of the Yakuza. But it hadn’t been crime that had drawn him to Sotiris, either. It was magic. The kind that surrounded the statue his ancestor had unearthed decades before.
Her great-grandfather’s own magical talent had been minor, but it was enough to convince him there was something unusual about the statue hidden deep in the expansive gardens of the estate. And so, he’d courted Sotiris, talking to him of many things, slipping in the occasional casual inquiry of his true interest. Hana didn’t know all the details, but Sotiris was vain enough to have bragged late one night of the masterful curse he’d cast long ago in a time that was far removed from this one. He’d laughed as he’d described the twisted curses and the solutions necessary to break them, all designed to be as unlikely as possible to come about, to ensure that his enemies were punished for eternity. He wasn’t stupid enough to have given away the exact oaths or events, but he’d said enough that Hana’s great-grandfather had been convinced his garden statue was one of Sotiris’s warriors. He’d carefully recorded everything he’d learned from those conversations, and those records had been passed down from father to son, until it was her grandfather who welcomed Sotiris as a guest in his home, continuing the hunt for more specifics in his quest to free the trapped warrior who now resided in a secret part of the garden, magically warded against discovery.
Sotiris’s visits had continued until Hana had happened to cross paths with him. She’d been thirteen years old and just past puberty, on a visit home from boarding school. Since “home” had always meant her grandfather’s estate, she’d taken the armed men and tight security for granted, not realizing until she was much older what they meant. Her grandfather wasn’t a rich banker or merchant. He was a powerful member of the Yakuza, just as his father and grandfather had been. But even that knowledge hadn’t changed her love for him. On the day that she’d met Sotiris, she’d all but danced up the stairs, excited as always to be home. Dashing into the house, she’d nearly knocked over a gaijin friend of her grandfather’s, a man she recognized from his previous visits, though they’d never actually never met. She’d apologized and turned away when the stranger had called her back. Mindful of the courtesy due a visitor, she’d turned . . . and for the first time had known true fear. Her heart had shriveled in her chest, and she’d struggled to breathe. There’d been such avarice in the gaijin’s eyes, such hunger. She’d thrown propriety to the winds, made some excuse, and walked away as fast as she could, running once she was out of his sight.
She’d told her grandfather about the encounter later, apologizing for any insult she might have offered his guest. But she’d also told him the reason she’d run, and from that day, Sotiris had never again been welcome. He’d still courted her grandfather, still called, and occasionally visited, because Grandfather had believed in knowing one’s enemies. But he’d been exquisitely careful to schedule those visits when Hana was away from the estate.
She’d never forgotten that chance meeting, never forgotten the lesson she’d learned in those few minutes—that the face of evil wasn’t the nightmarish ghoul of myth. He was handsome and urbane, and unfailingly polite.
Until he ran out of patience and sent men to take what her grandfather wouldn’t give willingly.
Bolstered by her grandfather’s courage and determined not to waste his life or the lives of the others who’d died to save her, she stared up at the statue who was hidden behind the magically protected hedge. His name was Urban Gabriel Halldor. And he was hers. When she’d been nineteen and just returned home for the holidays from the university she attended in the United States, her grandfather had gathered Hana and her twin brothers—two years older than she and a waste of oxygen— and brought them to this place. Her stupid brothers had run true to form, mocking the warrior’s fierce expression, laughing at his fangs, and calling him a monster.
They’d been banished forever after that, found wanting by this secret place, their thoughts wiped. But Hana had been visiting this garden since she was a child. She’d looked up at the giant warrior her idiot brothers had mocked and seen only her Gabriel. He might appear more demon than angel, but she knew his heart, and it was pure.
Grief, suffocating and deep, swamped her at the memory of her grandfather’s proud smile on that day. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I don’t know what to do, Gabriel,” she said in a hoarse whisper.
Go to Gabriel, Hana-chan. To safety. Her grandfather’s words echoed in her head. His last words. He wouldn’t have chosen them lightly. She wiped away her tears. Grandfather had been a scholar of magic, like his father and grandfather before him, and that was one of the first lessons he’d ever taught her. Words had power. Especially when it came to curses and the magic it took to break them. He’d always told her that Gabriel had been cursed, and that someday, fate would craft the right combination of people and events to free him and bring him back to life. And now she was risking everything on the belief that it was true. Because words had power.
Reaching up, her hand still wet with tears, she wrapped her fingers around one of Gabriel’s muscled calves and leaned back to stare up at his powerful visage. Did he stare back at her? She’d always thought so.
“Safety,” she said, repeating what her grandfather had told her. And then she stood to face her warrior, to demand he respond. “It’s time, Urban Gabriel Halldor. Come back to the world, to me. You’re the only safety I know,” she added, choking back a fresh wave of loss.
Nothing but silence met her plea, and her head dropped in despair. She spun when the first thunderous crack split the night, certain that she’d been found, that her enemies were upon her. In that moment, she pulled her blade, not to fight them off—there were far too many for that—but to end her own life, to deny them their prize. She looked down, pleased to see that her hand was steady, that her. . . . She frowned. Her bare arm was coated in gray powder, her fingers gritty on the hilt of her blade.
“Hold your blade, Hana. Himura-san did not send you to me to die.”
Chapter One
GABRIEL FOUGHT TO free the rest of his body, feeling every piece, every ounce of stone as it loosened and fell away from his head, his chest, his arms and legs. Air touched his skin for the first time in hundreds of years, maybe thousands. He had no way of measuring the passage of time after he’d been trapped by Sotiris’s curse. He knew only that more than two centuries had passed since he’d been unearthed from a volcanic cave by Hana’s grandfather’s grandfather and brought to rest in the Himura gardens. Not this garden, where magic seeded the very earth, but a garden. One with trees and sunlight, with birds singing, men arguing, and lovers trysting. It had been a great boon and enough, for a time, but now . . .
Now Hana had freed him. He’d known from the moment he’d first seen her, the moment she’d seen him, truly seen him, in a way that no one else had since his imprisonment, that she would be the one to break the curse. Her grandfather had known it, too. Himura-san had come to this place and spoken to Gabriel almost apologetically, explaining that he didn’t know when it would happen, or what events would bring it about, only that he knew it was Hana who would finally free him.
And Gabriel had been content to wait. Because it was Hana, and she was his. And now it had happened. He’d known only a crisis would bring her to say the necessary words, to weep enough tears to soak into the stone of his prison, but even he hadn’t imagined this. Himura-san was dead. Gabriel grieved the loss of his friend, for all that it was bittersweet because that same loss had brought about his freedom.
Another explosion thundered over the garden, causing tremors beneath his feet and shaking the impenetrable hedge that surrounded him. Sporadic gunfire followed, a last-ditch defense
by the loyal, but doomed, Himura soldiers. That was bad enough, but what followed was far worse. The stink of magic drifted through the air and over the hedge. Gabriel was no sorcerer, not like Nicodemus, under whose leadership he and his warrior brothers had fought. But one couldn’t spend decades on those ancient battlefields without knowing when magic was being used, and in this case, for what. Someone out there had cast a seeking spell.
Himura-san had warned him of this. They wanted Hana. Gabriel’s Hana.
“We have to go.” He reached down and scooped her up, her waist so delicate beneath his arm that he eased his touch for fear of hurting her.
She’d been staring at him in shock and a little fear, but she recovered quickly enough, slapping at his arm and saying, “I can walk, you know.”
“Yes, I know.” He smiled absently, not surprised by her reaction, or her fast recovery. He’d spent hours and weeks replaying every visit she’d ever made to his garden. He didn’t know which visits he’d loved the most—the ones where she’d been silent and meditative in martial exercises, flowing from form to form with a grace that was a gift to witness—or the times when she’d sit on the grass, leaning against his legs as she read to him, taking up the task from her grandfather and his grandfather. There’d been books, magazines, newspapers, and more recently the internet, which was far more wide-reaching in its scope, and sometimes puzzling to a man who’d been born in a time when ink and parchment had been rare and expensive. It had never mattered what Hana had read to him, however. It was the sound of her voice that had kept him sane, given him hope.
The first Himura, the one who’d brought Gabriel out of that cave, had been a sorcerer, albeit a minor one. But he’d had just enough magic to know what he’d found, and enough curiosity to search for the origins of the curse that had created Gabriel’s stone prison. He’d never found it, but he’d passed the task on to his descendants who’d discovered the purpose of the curse, along with the core of what it would take to free him. But curses were tricky things. There’d been no way to accelerate Gabriel’s freedom. It wasn’t as simple as bringing in any woman to weep and say the words. The eldest Himura had died, and his son after him and on down the line, each successive generation taking up the task of Gabriel’s safety and education, until finally a daughter had been born. A daughter who’d come to Gabriel’s garden and seen him in a way no one else had.
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