Hell wanted to corrupt him for being ensnared in the first place. Because of Tris’s innate goodness, the heavenly host fought the implications of that. She was the middle man, seemingly the bad guy on the surface, though secretly on his side.
“I’m so sorry, my love.”
The woman in front of Izzy had given up on turning around each time Izzy made a sound, but Izzy felt that woman’s attention with fine-tuned senses that were gearing up.
If you only knew...she thought.
If you knew about me, and what I could do, there’d be no room for concern.
Like some kind of supernatural seductress, she had ensnared Tristan with sex, wanting a replacement for her position on the gallery, desiring to be free.
Tris had volunteered to take her place. She had been granted freedom from her stone cocoon. But by then it was too late for her to move on. She was hopelessly and completely in love.
And the angels...
The angels got wind of Tris’s personal sacrifice, as they always did when issues of sacrifice came up. Someone of the winged persuasion decided this particular trade had to be studied more closely. The question at hand, Izzy supposed, was whether sacrificing one’s self for a sinner counted in the big scheme of things.
She, of course, was that sinner.
If Tris had released a problem child back into the world by taking her place–after several rounds of feverish sexual escapades atop holy Notre Dame–did this warrant guaranteeing him an e-ticket to the clouds? Heaven might have had to admit that Tris was no saint in this case, really, and more like a sucker.
Obviously, this decision was a tough one. Though time marched on, no declaration on the matter had arrived. Heaven was dragging its feet. Hell was impatiently waiting, too, though Izzy thought that was greedy. After all, the Dark Side had gained a Recruiter in the process, which in the long run made matters even worse for Tris. She was now a sinner, times ten.
Oh...
Izzy wrinkled her nose. Her sweater was emitting an acrid odor of burnt wool. Better hurry now and get into the open air, away from the crowd. Her credentials were starting to show. Her anxiousness to reach the gallery was threatening to rip apart her carefully maintained disguise. This year, she was an attractive, thirty-year-old blonde on the outside, and the picturesque image was beginning to fade.
Izzy hesitated between steps. She lifted her chin, acknowledging a subtle shift in the atmosphere.
Tris was stirring.
He would be aware of her now.
The building was starting to tremble, as if an earthquake was about to blow through. Two sides of the afterlife were about to meet right here, where Hell was a frequent visitor, repeatedly trespassing on sacred ground. The clash of the two opposing sides made for the cathedral’s palpable unease. Too much war, for too long, tended to break anything down.
“Neither Heaven or Hell will be glad to see me tonight, Tris. They will see through this disguise quickly enough.”
It was quite possible, Izzy supposed as her heart boomed in her chest, that the man who would appear on that gallery after the sun went down had the better deal in the end.
Tristan’s conscience was clear. Heaven surely would take him home eventually, even though Hell insisted that somebody had to stay here when it was all over.
Until then, all Tristan had to do for most of the days of the year was to sleep, entombed, and wait for his brief shot at life, and freedom.
Bless his stubborn hide, Tristan was very good at waiting. While she, on the other hand, had never considered patience a virtue.
CHAPTER THREE
Cold wind.
Can’t shake it off.
Can’t turn my head.
Tristan couldn’t blink his eyes, swallow, or gag. His arms wouldn’t work. Neither would his legs.
Heart is racing.
He heard its beat echo, as though he stood in a stone cavern burrowed deep in the earth. He should know about this, and what was going on, he thought, but his mind seemed painfully sluggish.
Nothing was wrong with his hearing though. He heard voices, laughter, footsteps. Wind whistled through rafters. Horns beeped in the distance. Underneath those sounds lay a rumbling hum, slowly building in intensity.
Tristan soaked up the familiar noises. Breathing was easier if he didn’t panic. He wasn’t actually suffocating.
“James. Look at this. You can see the entire city from here.”
The voice came from beside him, and continued.
“What a view. I didn’t realize Paris was so big.”
Another voice. “I can see our hotel. There’s the awning.”
“What’s that white thing on the hill in the distance?”
“No idea. Let’s find it in the guide book.”
“Did you see this? The roof is lined with monsters. They’re all over the place. Ugly suckers. I wonder why a cathedral would want monsters on its roof? Wouldn’t a church prefer something angelic and pretty?”
“Some of these creatures are gargoyles. See the picture in the book? They’re the ones on the edge with open mouths for rain to flow through. Gargoyles are fancy granite waterspouts that make gurgling sounds when the rain gushes out.”
“What about these others? The really spooky guys?”
Tristan felt a further acceleration of his pulse that suggested the conversation beside him might be important somehow.
“They’re called grotesques.”
“No kidding. They are grotesque. Quite shocking, actually. What else does the book say?”
“Let me see. The word grotesque, as it applies to creatures made of stone, is a combination of Middle French and Old Italian. First known usage was in 1561, and it’s a synonym for monster, or monstrosity.”
“They got that right.”
“Grotesques can be purely ornamental decorations, but they can also scare off harmful evil spirits.”
“Yes, well they’re scaring the hell out of me.”
“These big ones are modeled from piecing together parts of different animals, and are called chimeras. Gargoyles and chimeras can come alive at night in order to protect the lives of humans entrusted to them. But they have to return to their places before the sun comes up.”
“Now that’s some spooky shit.”
“There’s more. The book says that chimeras can also sometimes be evil creatures that have been frozen in stone, and that they can earn their release and be allowed to enter Heaven after laboring long enough in the service of God.”
“Well, that’s confusing. Are they good guys or bad guys? They’re all scary. It’s a good thing this gallery closes in a few minutes. I’d hate to be here after dark to find out if any of that stuff is true. The sheer number of monsters here is disturbing.”
“Take my picture by this one, Mark. He’s one of the largest, and scariest. His face reminds me of a devil.”
“Okay. Ready? Smile...”
“Hey, Miss, can you take a photo with both of us in it? Would you mind?”
Tristan’s insides began to shake. Streaks of pain shot through his shoulders as he felt a presence he recognized. The hum in his head got louder. He could almost move his arms.
“Did you see this guy, lady?” one of the voices said. “Would you want to meet him after dark? Creepy, huh? Oh, thanks. Just press on the button on the top of the camera, and hold it down for a couple seconds.”
A hand rested on Tristan’s leg. Although the sensation rattled his bones, he couldn’t brush that hand off or see who had made the touch. Turning his head was still impossible. His insides were queasy.
“Would you like a picture with it, too?”
“No,” a woman’s deep, husky voice replied. “I think not.”
Tristan’s heart jumped. A tingling sensation dripped down his spine. He knew that voice.
He wanted to say something. Why couldn’t he speak?
He didn’t know where he was. Swear to God, he had no idea.
Panic set in. He started to ch
oke.
The shadowy presence he’d felt came closer. Yes, he knew this shadow. He recognized its smell, and its feel. He had long ago experienced this shadow’s hot breath on his cheek.
With the remembrance came another round of pain.
“I’m here, Tris,” the throaty voice whispered to him. “It’s almost time. Minutes now. Remember as you start to thaw that I’m waiting, and that I won’t leave you. You can see me now if you look hard enough, and if you focus. The sun is going down.”
Tris.
That was his name. Part of it, anyway. Hearing it spoken by this female caused an interior ribbon of fire to spread one inch at a time. As the heat moved through him, it consumed the numbness, leaving a terrible defrosting sting and an awareness of muscles that hadn’t been flexed in awhile.
A familiar fragrance floated to him. In its complex scent lay nothing he could name, and yet it excited him, and lured him closer to an understanding about what was going on.
A presence, a voice, and a familiar scent...
Doing as the voice suggested without much of a struggle, Tristan opened his eyes.
*
“Yes. I’m here,” Izzy said anxiously. “Hang on and listen. I have to leave while they get all the tourists off the gallery, but I won’t go far, and I’ll come back for you. Do you understand? I will be back.”
She watched Tristan’s dark eyes blink from behind the mask of immovable stone. The eeriness of the sight broke her blackened heart.
“The stone isn’t part of you,” Izzy explained. “It’s only a magical casing. Stay calm if you can. I swear you’ll be free of this soon.”
The cathedral’s personnel were doing a final sweep, ushering the tourists back into the building in time to get them safely down the steep, winding staircase before dark. She was the only one left on the gallery, and they hadn’t yet seen her. They never seemed to count the people coming and going to figure out if anyone might be missing. And anyway, who in their right mind would want to spend the night in this place, with its ghosts and monsters about to breathe?
With a graceful jump in no way suggestive of the term Homo sapiens, Izzy leaped onto the iron guard rail and hopped over it. Rounding the corner of the building on a narrow ledge, she pressed herself close to the wall, into the lengthening shadows pooling there.
She waited for the sound of the big door closing, not yet ready to shed her disguise and assume a form that would have made her invisible to human eyes. She didn’t want to face Tristan that way.
With the bare skin of her face, hands, and what showed of her legs beneath her skirt, shivering in the cool rush of wind that met her, Izzy gazed out over the area far below her perch. The cathedral square was clearing out. Tiny lights in the plaza were winking on.
She turned her face, coveting the wind that made her recall the days before heat ruled her existence. She missed wind and blue skies and walking in the open as a human. But what good did remembering do? There was no going back to those times.
Besides, she’d soon use her heat to get Tristan moving after his body’s long, motionless hiatus. Her heat would calm him when and if the boys with halos finally touched down with their long overdue decision.
She just had to keep talking. Tris wouldn’t recognize this year’s incarnation; the fair hair, tanned face, slim body. Changing back to a formerly used shape, even the one from last year, was impossible. Accessing her original mortal features was an even bigger impossibility, since she could no longer remember the details of what she had looked like before all this started.
Each separate disguise was set once she’d adopted it, and clung to her until it eventually melted away, burning off to reveal the Izzy that now lay beneath the human-looking personas. After years of living in the shadows and fanning the furious flames of another layer of the fabric of the world, there wasn’t much human left in her. Only the eyes, the voice.
And what remained of her heart.
The door to the gallery closed with a groan of swollen wood. Izzy listened for the sliding of the massive iron bolt that was no doubt meant to keep the things on the gallery from getting out, rather than preventing anyone from coming here.
She closed her eyes.
Minutes now until showtime. She had to get Tristan moving before the chaos began.
Jumping the railing, Izzy ditched her shoes and raced to Tristan’s side. Facing the giant stone tomb of a beast that hid a man inside it, she laid a hand on the stone, directly above the place where Tristan’s heart would be beating, and whispered a reversal of the words that had sealed him here, and would now break him free.
“Anilnathrac dosthaldienvay.”
The stone didn’t crack or fall to pieces because none of the chimeras and gargoyles on the gallery was truly composed of chiseled rock. They were rocklike semblances fashioned by powerful magic.
“Tris,” she whispered, feeling the turbulence signifying that a few of the other monstrous shapes were also waking. “I call you forth. Listen to me, my love, and be free.”
The stone around Tristan began to soften beneath her hand, which remained on his chest. The sky over her head filled with the sound of beating wings. Gargoyles on the rooftop sputtered without rain in their mouths.
“Both sides are coming, Tris,” Izzy said more forcefully. “We will lose our advantage if we don’t hurry.”
His dark eyes blinked, then met with hers. Izzy felt the stab of a sizzling lightning bolt pierce her, not caused by another entity getting close, but by the sheer power of the connection she and Tristan shared with each other.
Tris felt this, too. She could have sworn his stone mouth cracked a grin. His eyes shone like polished marble because he had finally remembered why he was here, and what he had to do.
Responding to her voice and the look of desperation in her eyes, Tristan willed himself into existence in the narrow space between walls. His stone façade faded away as if it had been nothing more than her imagination.
He stood on wobbly legs, restless and naked. Tristan’s soulful eyes stared into hers as if seeking answers there.
God, how she loved him.
The chin-length black hair falling to curtain his angular cheeks ruffled slightly in the sigh of her heated breath. His features were even and exceptional, his expression gentle and earnest.
Physically, Tristan was the epitome of every woman’s dream, from his height to his mounds of sculpted muscle that never diminished or atrophied by his nearly continual motionless state. He was damn near perfect.
His broad shoulders and expansive chest accentuated his narrow waist. The thinnest trickle of masculine hair brought her gaze to his impeccably taut stomach. Thoughts about his hips, what those hips could do, as well as what sometimes lay stiffening beneath them, were nearly as seductive as the light in his eyes. Tristan was a fierce, ardent lover; talented, way too competent, and possessed of endless sexual stamina.
She loved that he wasn’t shy about his nakedness, and stood beside her comfortably unconcerned. Tris. Strong, yet tender. Forceful, and caring. It was all there in one amazing package.
His was a soul worth fighting for. That’s why she had been doing so for nearly a hundred years.
She wanted more time just to look at him. She wanted time to be with him. But others were already coming in for the kill, in a game that got tougher every year. Teeth and talons were readying for a taste of Tristan, the human who had exchanged places with a doomed soul so long ago, and had therefore become doomed, in turn.
Unfair or not, Izzy could feel those talons closing in.
CHAPTER FOUR
Tristan tried out his voice. “Izzy?”
The woman threw her arms around him. “Yes.”
His mind flooded with images as her warmth caressed him. “I like this one,” he said, encircling her thin body with his arms, and coughing to clear his throat.
“I knew you would, Tris. You’ve always been a sucker for blondes.”
Touching Izzy was an exotic tacti
le sensation. After so much time spent in sensory stasis, every one of his cells was starved for feeling. The softness of the golden hair that fell to Izzy’s shoulders in cascading waves tickled his cheek, and made his gut clench in reaction. The feel of her body in his arms, with its slender hips and firm breasts pressed to his chest, caused a riot of internal pleasure.
He drew in a breath, inhaling a mixture of scents so unique he couldn’t separate out the individual components. His lover’s scent rarely varied. To him, she smelled like sex, promise, and musky feminine allure. He stood there, holding her close, stunned by the intensity of the moment and content to breathe her in.
“How are you, Izzy?” he whispered with his mouth in her hair.
“No time for a chat, Tris. It’s business as usual.”
She didn’t back that up by showing any desire to move. He wouldn’t have released her if she had.
“Who’s here first?” he asked, running both hands over her hips and down the sides of her fabric covered thighs, wanting to get inside her clothes, desiring to be lost inside Izzy’s lush private places, though his own body still trembled.
“The harp pluckers,” she said with an audible gasp as he cupped her backside and dragged her closer to him.
“Have their wings gotten bigger or something? They have so much further to go than the others,” he said.
She shook her head. “The monsters on the gallery have forgotten how to breathe. Each time they awaken, it takes them longer to get the hang of things. But they’re here, listening, readying, sharpening their nails.”
Tristan’s heart gave a quick, powerful thump. As if the sun had risen before its time, the area blazed with a beam of intense white light. Ducking away from it, Tristan pulled Izzy down to a crouch. The celestial search light meant that angels were indeed hovering. Everyone was here.
“Is the door bolted?” he asked, edging sideways.
“When has a bolt ever stopped us?” his beautiful companion replied, her chest rattling as she inhaled light particles that were noticeably detrimental to her health. Izzy, these days, was a creature of the night.
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