Entwined Realms Volume One

by Danielle Monsch

  No. That was not what mature, adult women thought when taking care of an injured male. That response was more in line with pubescent males who hid the girlie mags they stole from their dads under their mattresses. She was above such thoughts.

  She grabbed a towel and laid it across his pelvis. Eyes on his face, she reached under the towel to lay her hands at his waist, his skin as warm as a human as it was as a gargoyle. She inched fabric down, slow and gentle in deference to wounds both known and yet undiscovered.

  The whole process to remove Terak’s pants took less than a minute, and at the end of it she was breathing as heavily as she did after running a 5K.

  She cleared her throat, embarrassment warring with the crazy, inappropriate thoughts that had somehow become embedded in her brain this last week. She was taking care of him, and that was why she was running her hands over his legs. There were a few scrapes and bruises, but his legs were fine. Well, not fine like that. No, wait, they were…

  She rapped her forehead a few times. This was ridiculous when she was even a stuttering fool within her own brain.

  A little more washing, a few more bandages, and a patched-up, human-looking gargoyle was now in her bed. “When you wake up, we are having a serious talk. Like about gargoyle emergency contacts, and this whole turning human thing.”

  If he was awake he wasn’t admitting to it. His eyes stayed closed and his breathing stayed even.

  Her warrior.

  Without her bidding a smile curled in the corner of her mouth. Yeah, he was. He had been amazing, ferocious and unstoppable. He took on those orcs without hesitation, all to protect her.

  She leaned back against the wall and slid down until her butt hit the floor. She could still see him from this angle, that human face displaying no signs of distress.

  What did she have to do now? Car was taken care of, and the list of questions she was going to be asking Olivia tomorrow could be made later. Olivia knew people. When had she started knowing people, people who could fix a car filled with orc parts and not blink?

  Later. Much, much later.

  Blood. Maybe cleaning up any blood trail would be a good idea, yes?

  Thirty minutes later, any signs she had hauled a bleeding guy around were taken care of, thankfully without any neighbors catching her in the middle of clean-up duty. The sheets and towels would need to be trashed, but other than that no worries.

  Terak was still resting when she went to check on him. His breathing was easier and his color better than it had been when she left.

  Pulling one of the bandages away from his chest she looked, then looked again, doing a double-take. “Oh holy hell.”

  He said no hospital and it wasn’t him being a stubborn male. He was healing on his own. What had been a good-sized gash was now half the depth and width it had been when she had cleaned it.

  It wasn’t that she had misjudged the severity of his wounds at the park. It was that they had already begun to heal in the time that it took to get to the apartment.

  Huh. So gargoyles could shift into human form, and they healed in no time flat. Handy gifts, those.

  Larissa kneeled down beside him and smoothed his hair back from his forehead. The human hair was finer than the coarse gargoyle strands, but it was the same deep black. No fever, just warm, perfect skin. “Do you think next time you can share the important info that will keep me from worrying before you faint?” No answer, but his breaths were deep and regular without a hint of pain in them. She sighed. “You’re lucky you saved my life today, or you’d be in for a serious talking to.”

  As she stood, splotches of red on her once blue T-shirt caught her eye. Oh, ew. Blood and sweat and dirt and who knew what else were all down the front of her clothing. And her hair was still damp with sweat. And her legs had stuff streaked on them that she didn’t even want to identify.

  Terak was still sleeping comfortably. A quick shower wouldn’t hurt.

  The hot water pounded her from above, working into sore muscles in a painfully pleasurable way. She had entered academia and not followed her dad and brothers into law enforcement for a reason. She was not cut out for all this physical stuff.

  After tossing on some comfy pajamas and giving her hair a quick towel dry, she went back to the bedroom, where Terak had flipped over and was now on his stomach, his face at the edge of the bed and his arm hanging over the side of the mattress.

  He had been so frightening and alien that first night, a monster who had grabbed her against her will. Now here he was, undeniably human, and there was such a strong physical resemblance between man and gargoyle that it seemed ridiculous she’d ever thought gargoyles were scary-looking.

  Larissa smoothed the blankets over him since he was in danger of losing the towel with his maneuverings. Would he be embarrassed waking up without his pants? An embarrassed Terak – now that expression would be worth checking out.

  She left the room and headed for the balcony. She never asked about the schedule on who watched over her when, so she didn’t know when the next gargoyle would arrive. After five minutes of doing the arm-waving trick and no one showing up, she went back inside.

  Someone would figure it out eventually, and it wasn’t like Terak was in danger anymore.

  She entered the living room, glancing at the clock. Dinnertime. Her stomach let out a low roar that would be highly embarrassing if anyone else would have been around to hear it.

  Well, she was hungry, and everything that could be done was done. No sense starving while she waited.

  The television caught her eye as she wandered to the kitchen. Sigh. It would be nice to have a television that worked, and she needed to make a note to call a repairman tomorrow.

  What was being reported on? Was the city in panic? How was her dad going to respond to the news that the wards were broken?

  Speaking of Dad, why wasn’t her phone ringing off the hook? As soon as an orc invasion was reported, her father should have made a beeline to the apartment and proceeded to try to grab her up and bring her home.

  Strange. Maybe not the strangest incident of the day, but strange.

  She made a turkey on rye. It was nice to do something as normal as make food after the last few hours. Normal was severely underrated, and if her life ever went back to normal, she would never take it for granted again.

  Normal was not a gargoyle who had the ability to shift into human form.

  Human.

  It had been so crazy today she hadn’t considered how important this was, but this… this was big. How the zombies and orcs had gotten past the wards was still a question, but this ability was probably the way gargoyles were able to enter the city and pass the wards that guarded it – presuming the other gargoyles had this same ability. Only a human was supposed to be able to walk past them, and right now Terak was certainly human, at least on the outside.

  Think of the implications. So many spells, especially protection spells, relied on that one designator. Human. An enemy who could bypass them at will, especially a race as powerful as the gargoyles – that would scare a whole lot of people.

  Alone and unarmed, Terak had fought a band of orcs. He had been hurt, and yes, she helped, but none of that changed the fact he alone killed over a dozen of some of the most feared fighters in this world.

  Gargoyles were not to be underestimated.

  A hard knock sounded against the door.

  Chapter Twelve

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  Surprise visitors had to be bad news. Terak…

  Several loud thumps sounded in a row, as though the person on the other side were hitting the door with the side of their fist. “Ris, open up. Now.”

  Michael, using his patented I’m the eldest and with Dad gone I’m in charge voice.

  Her brother the cop, who never came over without calling first.

  As tempting as not opening that door was, that wasn’t an option. Michael would kick it down in a heartbeat – any of the family would. And if she objected in any way, shape, o
r form or threatened parts of their anatomy, she would be met with a shrug and an insincere apology, and left with the full knowledge they would do it again if they felt it necessary.

  With no other choice unless she wanted this to become a full-scale incident, she opened the door. “Michael, what are you doing here?”

  He walked in before she had a chance to fully block the entrance or voice an excuse on why this was not a good time to visit, which translated meant he was not going to be leaving until whatever had brought him over was wrapped up to his satisfaction.

  She shut the door with a quiet click. Michael wasn’t yelling – not yet, at least – and it would be best to do everything possible to keep things quiet and prevent Terak from waking up during their little family chat.

  Overprotective gargoyle versus overprotective big brother. That was a match-up she had no interest in seeing anytime soon.

  Michael’s eyes wandered her apartment, not in casual interest but in a hard sweep, searching out any hidden secret or concealed clue.

  He was looking at her place with cop’s eyes, and there went any hope that this was a friendly visit.

  He’d never used the sweep on her before. He once joked this was the only place he could relax and not be a cop. Something had sent him here.

  So what did he know, and how did he know it? If he knew she was at the park, where were the drawn weapons, and where were the other brothers and her father? And why wasn’t he asking about the gargoyle sighted in the park? And if he was here only because there was an orc attack in the city, why wasn’t he ushering her out of the apartment and straight to Dad’s?

  Nothing was adding up. This needed to be played casual, at least until she had a better idea of what her brother knew. “Michael, what are you doing here?”

  “You went to the park today?” It was question and statement mixed together, a tactic used by cops where they were asking you a question, but in the words it was implied they already knew what was going on.

  Keep up the confusion act. “Actually, I did. I went running this morning.”

  His voice was curt, not letting her sentence die before he asked the next question. “Did you see anything while there?”

  “Yeah, lots of trees and two men ogling this one woman who was wearing red running lingerie.”

  “Anything else?”

  In their usual conversations, now would be the time she would get annoyed with her big brother and start acting huffy. Crossing her arms and cocking her hip to one side, she added a touch of annoyance into her tone. “What’s this about?”

  Michael’s eyes were cold and calculating. In that gaze, he was weighing whatever he knew in his head against what he had seen from her today.

  Her brother was deciding if he could trust her. He was deciding if she was his baby sister, or if she was responsible for a wrong he needed to set right.

  Damn, this hurt. And the worst of it was, he was right. He was right to question her and act as though she was some bum he grabbed from the street, because right now, right this minute, for the first time in her life, she was lying to him. Not a fib, not a stall for more time, but a lie.

  A big lie. A lie over something that mattered.

  End this now.

  Maybe that would be best. This situation was spiraling out of control. If today proved anything, it was that the zombie incident was not a mistake. Something was hunting her for whatever reason. What were the choices? Have a gargoyle sleeping under her bed all her life?

  End this now. Confess everything and throw herself on Dad’s mercy, then come up with a plan on where to go from here. He’d be mad as hell, no doubt about it, but that didn’t change the fact they would do anything to protect her.

  And Terak?

  What would they do to Terak?

  What would they do to the gargoyle who had been protecting her all this time, the being she had begun to call her friend? He fought and bled for her. He laughed with her. He snarked at her.

  He called her brave and she knew, to the center of her soul she knew, he meant it.

  Even if they didn’t do anything to him, coming clean to Michael would mean the end of her relationship with Terak.

  They would force her to let him go.

  Michael’s eyes were still indecisive.

  Larissa raised her eyebrows at him. “Well, I’m waiting. What has you coming over here in such a snit? Couldn’t you at least call me first and warn me you had attitude to spare?”

  Michael relaxed, the signal that he had put his suspicions aside. He put his hand out to her, something between his fingers that he was giving her. It was her driver’s license. “Did I leave this at Dad’s?”

  “It was found today at the park. There was an incident and I happened to notice it near the scene.”

  So that’s what had started this. “What happened at the park?” No, I’m not going to move back and live with Dad. No, I don’t care if there was an orc attack…

  He shook his head. “Sorry, I can’t give any details of an ongoing inves…Ris, you all right?”

  It was a good thing she tripped and fell to the floor, otherwise Michael couldn’t have missed the shock that had streaked through her body and had to be evident on her face, and he would have known she’d been lying earlier.

  The zombies had disintegrated – at least, that’s what she assumed was the reason the earlier attack was undetected. But the orcs? That was destruction on a large scale, and their bodies didn’t disintegrate. They were in large heaps, bloody and broken bodies littering a little-used section of a public park. That couldn’t be hidden.

  Could it?

  And if someone did have the ability to hide it? Who? And why would they?

  What the hell was Michael part of?

  She needed answers, but right now Michael needed to leave. There was still another large male she had to take care of. She picked herself off the floor and used her palms to dust off her legs. “One of these days I’ll become graceful, you’ll see,” she said, picking the threads of a long-running family joke.

  Michael fell into the rhythm. “The day that happens is the day I’ll trust you with my computer.”

  “You’d be lucky if I broke that thing. There’s old technology, and then there is technology that has seniors laughing at you for owning it.” She walked into the kitchen and picked up her sandwich. “Well it was nice seeing you, and thanks for bringing back my ID. If that’s all, I’m kind of busy. I’ll see you this weekend.”

  He didn’t take the hint, which was the usual for Michael. While he was no longer in full cop-mode, speculation was still clear on his face. “What are you busy with?”

  Why couldn’t her family be the type that avoided each other except the holidays? “Michael, quit treating me like a kid. I’m allowed to have a life and I don’t have to run every decision by you.”

  “Who gave you that wrong information?” His eyes narrowed. “What are you hiding from me?”

  A noise brought both of their gazes to the door of her bedroom.

  Terak appeared in the doorway, the towel around his waist the only covering over his naked body.

  Chapter Thirteen

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  Warm honeysuckle drifted around him, tease and temptation. Just like her, sweet and comforting and sensual, she was able to ease his tension with a touch of her hand or have him hard and wanting with a glance of those eyes.

  She had been delectable, her long legs bare and the sunlight exposing the multiple hues of blond in her hair.

  A coppery tang worked its way past the honeysuckle. No, this should never touch her. It was his duty to protect her from necromancers, and from orcs…

  Late afternoon sunlight filtered through his eyelids as he cracked them. Slow and steady, he forced his eyes open.

  He was on a bed. Blue walls surrounded him, and on top of the furniture were feminine bottles and potions.

  Larissa’s bedroom.

  Images were creeping back, the fuzziness of sleep giving way to t
he clarity of memory. Orcs were often allies of the necromancers but they were not slaves. If they were there on behalf of the same masters as the zombies, the necromancers must have agreed to a very high price.

  Also, they were able to pass the wards, a situation that was very different from the zombies getting into the city. Zombies were once human. It would take powerful magic to confuse the wards enough to let the zombies through, but it was not outside the abilities of a master necromancer.

  Orcs, though – orcs should have been impossible.

  If the wards were completely useless, Larissa was in greater danger than ever, and a new plan for her protection needed to be drawn up.

  But what? She would not agree to stay at the keep until the danger had passed. Indeed, he used that very suggestion to sway her away from the Guild.

  And that was if she was still willing to let him guard her, now that she knew…

  She knew!

  He jerked from the bed, his half-healed injuries tearing anew at the sudden movement.

  She knew. No.

  No.

  Had any of his Clan appeared? No, no one was to be here until the middle of the night. None would have come and seen him… human.

  On unsteady legs he went to the bathroom. In the mirror was undeniable evidence, the face that of a human male. Larissa knew that he could shift into a human form.

  From their earliest history, there was only one absolute rule held by his race – if any outsider discovered that gargoyles could shift, the outsider was to be executed at once.

  His clawless hands fisted against the white tile of the sink. He would be dead if she had not entered the battle. Instead of running for safety she had appeared to aid him in battle, as fierce as any goddess of war. She had taken him home, cared for him, nursed him. And he was to repay that with death?

  No, no harm would ever come to his little human. She would never be hurt, even if he had to battle his own Clan for her life.

  But the Clan’s secrets must be protected. How could he ensure that?

  Rubbing his hand over his face, he pushed back from the mirror.