by A C Warneke
Unable to remove the hospital gown, inconveniently tied in the back, she could still see the bruises that covered her body, including some that felt like they were bone deep. What the hell happened to her?
Winded, she leaned against the bed, letting her eyes close for a moment while she tried to get her bearings and figure out what to do next. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a lot of time: the sun was setting and she had to join with Vaughn one more time before the sun rose. But she had to remember….
She had been sitting in the backseat of the taxi, nervous and excited and scared. The driver had tried to start up a conversation but it was impossible for her to concentrate on what he was saying, let alone try to reply coherently. That was when she saw a group of gray-green imps, their smiles impossibly wide as they jauntily waved at her from the side of the road. She slammed her hand against the window, a silent 'no' on her lips as the taxi came to a stop at the red light.
Unfortunately, the car behind then failed to stop, forcing the taxi into the middle of the intersection, into oncoming traffic. She didn’t know what hit them, just that she had been tossed around like a rag doll and then everything went black.
Now she was in the hospital. Briefly she wondered why none of her family was there but there was no time to worry about it because she had to get to Vaughn.
Taking a breath to steady her shaking, aching body, she opened her eyes and took a tentative step towards the wardrobe, hoping to find her clothes. Annoyingly, the wardrobe was empty and she only had the hospital gown. With a sigh, she realized it would have to do. Besides, it wasn’t like it would matter once she got to the castle where she’d be able to put on some of her clothes. She glanced around the sterile room one last time to see if there was anything of hers she needed to take. There wasn’t.
Slowly, painfully, she made her way out of the hospital, briefly curious as to why no one stopped her or asked her where she was going. In fact, nobody seemed to notice her at all, which was odd because she was obviously a patient. Dismissing the bizarre behavior of the hospital staff, she walked out through the main entrance. It was maybe a mile, mile and a half, to the castle and at the rate she was walking, she was never going to make it before the sun rose.
It didn’t matter; she had to try. Taking a deep breath and trying to ignore the pain – and the cold – she started off towards downtown. Each step was agonizingly slow and she couldn’t seem to get enough air into her bound lungs, making her wheeze as she trudged along in bare feet. She managed to make it to the sidewalk that ran in front of the hospital before a car pulled up. The passenger side window rolled down and the driver leaned across the seat, “Do you need a ride?”
Melanie looked up and saw Omari smiling at her and she could have wept with relief and gratitude. Without any second thoughts, she opened the door and climbed into the blessedly warm car. “Thank God you found me, Omari. I need to get to the castle immediately.”
“Of course I found you. I shielded you when you made your escape.” His smile never faltered but his eyes darkened with sympathy when he added, “But I’m sorry, Melanie; you’re too late. Your gargoyle is stone.”
She shook her head, denying his words. “I’m not late, I can’t be! Look! The sun is still up and if you would only drive I could make it in time.”
“It’s been a week,” he said gently, his voice heavy with compassion.
Her mind rejected the truth of his words and her body screamed in protest. Her lungs couldn’t get enough air, her heart couldn’t keep a steady rhythm and her head felt stuffed with cotton. “That’s impossible! If I’ve been in the hospital for a week my family would have come for me. It’s only been a couple of hours.”
Omari looked at her with sympathy, popping a single eyebrow at her ridiculousness. “Your arm is already in a cast.”
“My family,” she protested again.
“They are unaware of your situation,” he informed her. “They believe you have taken a trip with your gargoyle, remember?”
She closed her eyes as the last conversation she had with her family flooded her memories. After Ferris had left her bedroom, she had had an epiphany: Vaughn was her destiny. As ridiculous as it sounded, she knew it to be true and so she had rushed to get dressed, pulling on a comfortable sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. Racing downstairs before her family had left for the day, she stood in the doorway of the kitchen, “I’m going with him.”
Four pairs of eyes stared at her and her heart was racing in her chest but she knew that she was doing the right thing. Smiling broadly, she hugged her father, her mother, and Jenna before turning to Ferris and hugging her just a little longer, a little tighter. “I don’t know when I will be able to call, but I promise that I will find a way to keep in touch.”
“Melanie,” Jenna gasped, tears flooding her eyes. “Don’t do this.”
“I love him, Jenna,” Melanie explained. “I have to do this.”
“Fuck,” Melanie swore as she returned to the present. With a scowl, she asked, “But the hospital would have called them….”
Omari was shaking his head, “They would have if you had I.D.”
“My purse….”
“Your SUV.”
“Shit!” She fumed, remembering throwing her purse in the backseat of the SUV. Knowing Jenner, he probably never even bothered to look in the backseat so who knew how long it was going to be before her family realized she didn’t have her purse and everything that it held, before they realized she was missing. How long would it have been before her family discovered she was hurt and in the hospital?
“You’re not wearing the pendant,” Omari said, interrupting her self-incriminating thoughts.
“What?” she asked, looking at him as if he was speaking a foreign language.
“The pendant,” he repeated, motioning towards her chest.
With a frown, she glanced down and pressed her hand over the spot where the necklace once lay. “No, of course not, I gave it to Ferris because I wasn’t going to need it anymore.”
“Foolish girl,” Omari chuckled, shaking his head in disbelief. “You were meant to keep it on until the ritual was complete.”
“But I didn’t need it anymore,” she reiterated.
“It would have prevented any injuries that you received,” he told her. “You would have made it to your gargoyle in time.”
Her heart caught in her throat and she had to swallow a few times before she asked, “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”
“No,” he answered easily. “It was the imps….”
“Fucking imps,” she growled, repeating Rhys’s favorite phrase.
“They really do like you,” he chuckled.
“Yes, I can tell,” she said sarcastically. “They’ve only been trying to kill me for a month. Hell, they almost succeeded with this last bit of misfortune.”
“They wanted to keep you human,” he shrugged. “As it is, you got off relatively easy.”
She huffed out a sound of disbelief, crossing her arms over her chest and wincing when she bounced her broken arm over her busted rib. Omari glanced at her, “You’re alive, aren’t you?”
Okay, so there was that but what good did it do her when Vaughn was stone? When she remembered that he wasn’t going to be there anymore, despair clawed at her and she wanted to scream. She rested her head against the cool window, no longer feeling anything but pain.
The car pulled up in front of the building, giving her about twenty minutes before the sun was to set. Sluggishly, she opened the car door and got out. Before she got very far, Omari grabbed her elbow above the cast, bringing her to a stop. She looked at him blankly as he said, “I’ll see you soon.”
With those cryptic words, she was standing inside of the building, wondering briefly how she had gotten there so quickly. It didn’t matter because she had a date with a gargoyle.
Her body was really feeling the effects of her injuries and she was sure she wasn’t doing them any good by being up and about. She didn’t
care and as she made her way to the elevator bay, she was oblivious to the curious and dark stares coming her way. Part of her wanted to turn around and go back home because she didn’t want to see what had become of Vaughn. The other part, the larger part, had to see him, to be with him no matter what his form.
The elevator ride was uneventful, depositing her on the fourteenth floor without incident. But when she tried to open the door to get to the roof, she found it locked. No matter how hard she struggled with it, it wouldn’t budge. It didn’t help that her left arm was in a cast and her grip was weaker than usual. With a snarl of frustration, she returned to her rooms, surprised to find the door unlocked and the apartment number removed.
Once she got inside, she understood: her room was in the process of being converted into large bathroom with a huge hot tub where her tiny kitchen used to be and a sauna where her bed had been. All of her things were in boxes. Upon closer inspection, she saw that her parents’ address was written on each one; they were going to mail her stuff to her old house. Well, at least her family would have known something was wrong and would have come for her. If she had waited a few days, she would have woken up to the love of her family.
With a sigh, she mindlessly wandered into Vaughn’s kitchen and found a knife before returning to her apartment and cutting open one of the boxes. She was not going to run around in a hospital gown a moment longer. If she had had any functioning brain cells earlier, she would have realized that a hospital gown was completely inappropriate for anywhere other than a private hospital room since her ass had been hanging out the entire time. She briefly wondered why Omari hadn’t said anything, if he even noticed. He was such a strange man.
In the third box she found something easy to wear, something she could put on without too much trouble: a pair of sweat pants and an over-sized sweat shirt. Unable to untie the gown, she used the knife to slash the ties, letting the blasted thing slide off her arms. She didn’t bother with a bra. Even if she had found one, she didn’t think she would have been able to maneuver her body into it.
Standing naked, she looked at herself in the large mirror that hung where the refrigerator had been. Her body resembled Frankenstein’s monster, long lines of black stitches marched across her stomach, her arms, her thighs. The glass must have shattered and sliced her up. If she had thought her face was colorful, it was nothing compared to the mottled colors of her skin. No wonder why she was in so much pain: she was a walking, deep-tissue bruise.
Even so, she managed to get the loose fitting clothes on, wincing only a little each time she hit a cut or bruise. But how was she going to get up on the roof? She could wait until she heard Armand and/or Rhys in their suite of rooms but she had the strong feeling they would be less than pleased to see her, let alone help her. Putting her hands on her hips, she walked over to the window and did a double take. There was a ladder leaning against the wall, one that was tall enough to get her to the roof. All she had to do was overcome her debilitating fear of heights and figure out how to climb it with a battered and bruised body.
No problem.
Taking a shaky breath, as deep as her wrapped ribs would allow, she got onto the balcony and stared up at the ladder. “Okay, don’t look down, just don’t look down.”
She was trembling before she even touched the ladder and her heart was beating too fast and she was taking too many breaths but she wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Her palms were slick with perspiration and she had to concentrate each time she grabbed another rung. By the time she reached the top, tears were streaming down her cheeks and her hair was sticking to her face and she had to collapse on the ground to regroup, catch her breath.
She still had another minute or two before the sun disappeared completely so there was enough time to… to what? She didn’t want to think, she didn’t want to see him unmoving and cold. Maybe it had all been a dream and when she opened her eyes, the sun would set and he would be there smiling down at her. Her face wouldn’t be cut up and swollen and she’d be able to smile back without re-splitting her lip.
The thought made her lips curve slightly and she winced when the split opened once again. Squeezing her eyes shut, she bit back a cry and she knew that it was time to see him. Rolling over onto her right side, she pushed herself up, grunting at the effort it took. She should have looked at her hospital chart to see if they had prescribed any pain killers. Oh, well, she could take a couple of aspirins when she got home.
Where was home?
Okay, it was time. Slowly, she turned around and saw that he was facing away from her, that he was staring east towards the sunrise. Could he see? Could he feel?
She took a step towards him and staggered, her body refusing to cooperate. Everything hurt now: her face, her arm, her ribs. Her heart. If she could just touch him she’d be able to breathe again. She took another halting step and another until she found a rhythm to move closer to Vaughn. Another step and she’d be able to reach out and….
Powerful hands clamped down on her shoulders halting her progress and drawing her attention to another excruciatingly sore spot. Biting back a scream that hovered on her lips, she stiffened as Armand growled, “Where do you think you’re going?”
A squeak emanated from the back of her throat but other than that she wasn’t able to make a sound. How could he expect her to talk when tears were clogging her throat? He made a sound of disgust and then shoved her forward, causing her to stagger forward into Vaughn’s back. She wanted to cry out as she pressed against Vaughn's cold, stone flesh.
Heedless of the two naked men behind her, she ran her right hand over Vaughn’s carved back, the bulky muscles so different from the sleek muscles of when he was human, so perfect and so frozen. It broke her heart all over to see him so motionless, so cold, and she wanted to wrap her arms around him, to take him into her body and warm him up.
She wanted him to wake up.
“Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage?” Armand growled, fury emanating from him. She could feel him pacing behind her, back and forth in shorter and shorter strides as he fought against slamming his fist against something. Possibly her. Probably her.
“I tried getting here on time,” she said softly, unable to tear her gaze from Vaughn’s broad, stone back. Moistening her lips, feeling the cut with her tongue, she rasped, “Please tell me it isn’t too late. Tell me there’s something I can do to get him back.”
Turning her head, she looked at him with glossy eyes, “Please, Armand, tell me there’s a way I can get him back.”
Armand sucked in a harsh breath as he saw her face. He probably wouldn't recognize her if he saw her in the street because she knew how she looked. Abnormal color was splashed across her cheek bones, her chin, her forehead; black stitches curved along her eyebrow; her lip was swollen and bleeding and her nose had been broken, giving her two black eyes. Taking a step forward, he ran a finger lightly along her less bruised cheek. “What happened?”
Ignoring him, she turned back to Vaughn and pressed her forehead against his back as a tear slid down her cheek. Her strength was nearly gone and it was getting more and more difficult to remain standing. Unthinkingly, she climbed onto the ledge and into his lap, barely aware of Armand reaching for her as if she were going to jump.
Wrapping her good arm around Vaughn’s thick waist, she rested her head against his chest, at the curve of his neck. Closing her eyes, she knew that she would stay there until she became stone as well, until she was a part of him and he was no longer frozen in stone.
The statue shifted and she flinched, the briefest flare of hope dying just as suddenly when she realized his brothers were turning Vaughn around, until he was facing the roof instead of the world. Armand slid his arms beneath her but she tightened her hold on Vaughn, refusing to be moved and glaring at the black-haired man who meant to take her away from Vaughn.
“You’re trembling,” he murmured, stepping back and putting his hands in the air to show her he wasn’t going to do anything she
didn’t want. She scarcely noticed that a robe now covered his nudity. Rhys was standing next to him and he was also covered, concern etched across his brow.
“I h…hate h…heights,” she stammered, not realizing how paralyzed with fear she was until she was no longer dangling over the edge of the building. Closing her eyes, she snuggled further into Vaughn’s stone body. If she pretended hard enough, she could almost imagine she could feel warmth coming from him.
“Shouldn’t you be in a hospital?” Rhys asked softly.
“Why?” she asked, trying to find a comfortable position where stone wasn’t pressing against a cracked rib, or a broken arm, or a bruised shoulder. “I just got out of one.”
"You look as if a light breeze could knock you over," Armand crooned, concern melting the hard, crusty shell and exposing his soft, squishy center. She was too lost in her own misery to fully appreciate it. “What the hell happened?”
“Car accident,” she mumbled, her brows furrowing as she fidgeted. Her lips pressed together and the color faded from her face as she kept knocking against a sore spot on her body. God, her entire body was sore….
“Jesus, Melanie,” Armand growled, ignoring her protests as he carefully slid his arms beneath her body. “You need to get inside.”
“I can’t leave him,” she objected, unable to struggle out of his strong arms. “If I hadn’t removed the necklace, I would have been here on time and he wouldn’t be stone now. He wouldn’t have to wait for me to die to wake up.”
“You actually planned on completing the ritual,” Armand whispered in awe, staring down at her and seeing her as if for the first time.
“Yes, of course,” she scowled. “Of course I was. Please let me stay with him.”
“You need some rest,” Armand contradicted. “Sleep and when I feel you are strong enough to stand on your own you can come back up.”
He was so demanding but she was too tired to argue. “You’ll let me see him?”
“Yes,” Armand murmured, taking her into their living quarters, into Vaughn’s room. He gently laid her on the bed. “I’m sorry, Melanie. I didn’t think you loved him enough.”
