by A C Warneke
“Check on him for me?” she implored weakly, her lips fluttering closed once more.
Knowing how stubborn she could be, he reluctantly agreed to check on the dragon who was most likely dead or dying. Sitting back, he gingerly peeled her shirt up, exposing the red and weeping dragon tattoo. Much to his surprise, Fray was still alive. He was struggling, yes, but he was very much alive. The gleam in his eyes as he glared up at Marick suggested the beast was going to remain alive and save Ferris in the process. If only sheer determination was enough to save her.
Of course, Fray could use some help and Marick was more than willing to do everything in his power to see Ferris through this, starting with giving her his blood. It was only the beginning and he knew things were going to get much worse before she got better but she would get better. She had to because she was still there.
Running his finger over the dragon, over Ferris’s smooth skin, Marick had to take a moment and clear his throat before he could speak, “Your dragon is just peachy, love. He looks eager to leap off your skin and kick my ass.”
“I wouldn’t stop him,” she murmured with a crooked, half-smile. Her smile faded and the rest of the color fled from her face as pain exploded across her features. Squeezing her eyes shut, she let out a silent scream as her back arched off the bed and her skin rippled beneath his touch.
Without any more hesitations, Marick willed a blade into existence and cradled Ferris’s limp hand in his palm, carefully carving a line into her palm. Next, he pulled up his sleeve and made a thin cut in one of his palms as well. Taking a breath, he kept his eyes on her face as he pressed the cuts together, feeling his blood seep into her body. Closing his eyes in ecstasy, he became one with the girl he loved, knowing that without her bond to Fray, his blood would have instantly burned through all of her cells and killed her just as quickly.
He could only hope everything worked out like it was supposed to work out.
“How are you feeling?” he asked when she finally opened her eyes nearly an hour later. Tenderly, he brushed her damp hair from her face, knowing that the blood he gave her helped but it wasn’t enough. The child that grew in her womb was stubborn and powerful and all he could do was pray.
“You know, Marick,” she gasped, barely able to keep her eyes open. “If you really wanted to help, you could come over here and let me rip off your freaking balls.”
“Ah, sweetheart,” Marick murmured with a lazy grin, sitting on the edge of the bed, his testicles safely out of her reach. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t help in the least.”
“It would make me feel better,” she returned, her chest barely rising and falling with each labored breath she took.
He chuckled at her stubbornness, hoping she didn't simply vanish. "You know, if we were to make love…."
"No," she bit out.
"If we were to make love," he repeated, ignoring her glaring eyes. "It would make you feel better faster. You wouldn't needlessly suffer."
Her lips curved into a wry smile but she didn’t open her eyes, “I think that’s what caused my suffering in the first place. Perhaps you should keep your dick in your pants around me.”
He choked out an unexpected laugh, "Ferris…."
"I'll struggle through, Marick," she said with finality, her blue-green eyes burning with determination.
Her distended belly rippled and Ferris gasped, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. She wasn’t very far along, just over six weeks, but she already had a rounded belly because she had lost so much weight everywhere else. With each day that passed she could feel herself growing weaker and weaker, fading from the mortal coil. She knew Ajreis was frantic with worry, begging her to accept the idiot Marick's offer and get better. Fray’s pleadings were silent but just as heartfelt and just as pointless. The dragon’s strength seemed to increase at the same rate that she was slipping away and nothing Fray did helped. Nothing Marick was doing helped, either.
She was so tempted to give in, have sex with him, but her heart truly belonged to Armand. As long as there was a chance for her to be with the love of her life she wasn’t going to screw it up even worse by sleeping with the gorgeous Marick a second time. It didn’t matter that Armand was trapped in stone because if she survived this she now had the extended life she had been hoping for. She was going to be there when he woke, come Hell or high water, and she wasn't going to throw her second chance away to feel a little better.
If she survived, which was still iffy. If she stayed perfectly still then the millions of phantom ants that crawled over her skin wouldn’t all sink their mandibles into her tender skin. Her kidneys were swollen to the size of watermelons and she was pretty sure her liver was liquefied and her lungs were made of glass. Everything hurt and she doubted sex with anyone could help. Even the thought of sex made her shudder because that would involve movement and breathing.
God, it was getting so hard to think. Her brain felt like it was on the edge of exploding, a billion needles poking into it, scrambling it up and dispersing her thoughts before she could hold onto them and figure them out. The only real thing was Armand but he wasn’t there. He had vanished in a wisp of smoke and she had lost his trail.
“Ferris,” Marick whispered, his lips next to her head, his spicy breath warming the cool shell of her ear, luring her back to her body. She didn’t want to go because her body hurt too much. “I’m going to make it easier for you to accept me.”
With a half-smile on her white lips, her eyes still closed, she shook her head, “Nothing you can do… is that honeysuckle I smell? It is spring already? I told you, Ajreis, I don’t want to go to school today. The people there are awful and I’m miserable. No, they torment me even more if you’re there, telling me I’m a freak for having an imaginary friend at my age. Of course I know you’re real but they can’t see you, can they? Yes, Armand will listen, he always listens, but I hate burdening him with my problems. He’s so strong and protective but he’s a gargoyle, it’s what he’s supposed to do.”
“Ferris, my love,” a heartbreakingly familiar voice crooned. Her body twitched and she fought against the nothingness to open her eyes, to stir herself from the stupor that was clouding her mind. Tenderly brushing his thumb over her lip, her cheek, he begged, “Open your eyes, love.”
After a concerted effort, she finally opened her eyes and blinked. Slowly, she blinked again and again, unable to believe what she was seeing. Tears welled in her eyes as a brilliant smile curved her lips. With a great deal of determination, she raised her shaky limbs up to embrace him. “Armand.”
Without hesitation, he went into her embrace, breathing words of love against her throat, “I’m right here, love, I’m right here.”
She held onto him like a lifeline, ignoring the little voice in the back of her head that was screaming at her that it wasn’t right, that Armand wasn’t Armand. It didn’t matter because for the first time in five years she was able to breathe. She was so tired of fighting and now she no longer had to fight. She was back in Armand’s arms, she was with her destiny. Everything was going to work out.
Chapter 13
The War Rages On
It was different this time. Armand shouldn’t have had such vivid sensations, awareness, while he was frozen but he swore he knew the moment Ferris was near. It was impossible because he had given his nights to Felicity but somehow, someway, he was painfully aware of the girl he had to forget.
He could feel her growing older, every heartbeat another heartbeat closer to the end. When he awoke she was going to be old, with withered skin and sunken eyes and he would love her until the very end. It was going to kill him if she fell in love with someone else but he couldn’t imagine Ferris growing old without a dozen children surrounding her. She had too much love to squander away waiting for him, hoping for the impossible.
Time was different as well, at times going so slow he was sure thousands of years had passed and at other times disappearing as soon as the moment came. It seemed as if time moved the qu
ickest when Ferris crawled into his stone arms and pressed her ear against his heart, searching for a heartbeat that beat too slow for her to hear. He cursed his stone body because he couldn’t wrap his arms around her and comfort her, he couldn’t whisper in her ear and thank her for everything she did for him.
She made a frozen gargoyle love again.
He was going to watch over her children and her children’s children until the end of time. It was the least he could do. If necessary, he would guide them through the pitfalls of living in a world that no longer needed gargoyles. Maybe he would find his place as well, as a protector to the descendants of Ferris.
There had been a time when gargoyles had a purpose, protecting the humans that would never remember them moments later, and he knew his place. He made love to many, many women, gifting each of his temporary lovers a measure of protection even if he didn’t recall their names or faces. It was what gargoyles did but then along came Ferris, burrowing beneath his walls when she wasn’t a threat and then becoming this intoxicating woman who was nothing but a threat.
Admittedly, after the first time he had made love to Ferris he had panicked. There were so many things wrong with what he did, what he felt, he had to flee, hoping to find solace in London, with his gargoyle brothers there. He wasn’t proud that he had, in essence, run away, but what he had experienced with Ferris had been… it had been transcendental. Staying with her would have changed everything and he wasn’t prepared for it. Hell, he wasn’t prepared for her.
Yet she was never far from his thoughts, plaguing him at all hours until he thought he would go mad. While prowling the streets of London one night, he came across a hidden door along the gallery of shops. With a wry smile, he stepped through the door, wondering what treasures he would find in the unexpected gift from the Fates. As he looked around the eclectic room, he had to smile because the shop reminded of his father’s magical trinket shops.
He wound his way through the labyrinth aisles, barely paying attention to the variety of magical paraphernalia on the shelves. Something was guiding him and the moment he saw the golden egg he understood: the pocket dragon was meant to be found by him. Laying his hand on the shining orb, he closed his eyes and saw the dragon on Ferris’s shoulder as she smiled beneath the sun.
Opening his eyes and ending the vision, he slowly moved his hand away from the treasure, the gift he was going to get for Ferris. He hadn’t lied when he told her the dragon was very rare and wanted to be hers but he hadn’t told her everything. If the headstrong girl had ever learned about the dragon bond she would have pursued it relentlessly, getting destroyed by the dragon's fire in the process.
His fifth night in London he sat sprawled on the roof with his London brothers, Artaire, Bar, and Rowan, as well as one of his Greek brothers, Leander, and a French Brother, Etienne. The six of them drank copious amounts of wine and discussed the world in which they now lived. Leander didn’t care for he embraced everything with an exuberance that was exhausting. Etienne was more prosaic, figuring he’d adapt because there was nothing else to do. As long as he had good wine and beautiful women he didn’t care that the rest of the world was in free fall. His London brothers didn’t give a damn one way or the other, already bored with the whole situation.
It wasn’t until nearly dawn that he brought up the subject of Ferris, after he was sufficiently drunk enough to dive into that can of worms. It had taken a lot of wine to unleash the madness that was known as Ferris but he had come to London because he needed his brothers’ advice. The window of opportunity was very narrow and by the time he opened his mouth he could already feel the effects of the alcohol wearing off.
“There’s this girl,” he slurred, staring at the bottle he held in his hands, as if it would have the answer he was looking for. His brothers guffawed and he smiled slightly, “She’s too young for me but I can’t stop thinking about her.”
“Fuck her,” Artaire mumbled, taking another swig of wine. Flipping his blue-black hair over his shoulder, he pointed the bottle at Armand and continued, “Get her out of your system.”
“I did,” Armand admitted, smiling inwardly at the memory of how sweet it had been to bring her to orgasm, to bury himself in her luscious body, to lose himself in her arms. Shaking his head to clear it of her, he shrugged, “But it’s the most damnable thing: she’s not out of my system.”
Rowan with the red hair snorted, a loose smile curving his lips, “Then stay with us until the girl figures out you don’t want her.”
“I do want her,” Armand pathetically admitted, feeling the heat of a blush steal into his cheeks. He was just grateful that it was too dark for his brothers to see him embarrass himself like a schoolgirl with her first taste of puppy love. “She’s like a drug. I want more but she is the very last thing I should have, for so many reasons.”
“Give her your nights, Armand,” Leander advised matter-of-factly. It wasn’t really a surprise since his Greek brothers routinely gave up their nights for women, reveling in the flesh and relishing their time in stone. It made no sense to Armand but he wasn’t Greek. The black-haired, black-eyed Leander let out a long sigh of pleasure, “Enjoy her for a month and when she rejects your gift you sleep and when you awake you can celebrate your new powers. If she accepts,” he smiled with dark amusement. “Well, that is a risk you must take.”
Armand’s heart faltered in his chest and his stomach tightened painfully at the thought. She would be a fool to accept his gift and he would be a fool to offer it. Upon pain of torture he would never admit the doubts that had immediately plagued him when he had given up his nights to Katrina, with eyes he could have sworn were nearly turquoise. She had been young and sweet and terribly, terribly naïve. Superficially, Ferris shared the same traits, though perhaps slightly less naïve. Smiling to himself, remembering his days and nights with her, he added that Ferris wasn’t nearly as sweet, either. He had relished every hot and sweaty moment they shared.
With a grunt, he drank some more wine, hoping to feel the numb euphoria of inebriation, wishing he had never brought her up in the first place, wishing he wasn’t so lost that he needed his brothers’ counsel.
“You’re all fools,” Etienne snorted, his blond head gleaming in the low light of the moon. The terrifyingly beautiful jaguar gargoyle was passionate and pragmatic, an interesting combination that made for some interesting philosophical conversations over several bottles of wine. “Give another woman your nights knowing she will reject you. This way you do not have to risk either rejection or acceptance and it will all be under your control. Your heart will remain whole.”
He had immediately dismissed that suggestion and yet the more he thought about it the more the third option made the most sense. Ferris deserved so much more than what he had to offer. He was a cold, hard gargoyle and not some romantic hero. A few days before the new moon he returned to the city, watching Ferris as she went about her day, the smiles she bestowed upon the people in her life. Being so close to her caused his chest to ache but he knew that he had chosen to do the right thing. It would kill him when she finally realized he wasn’t the man she envisioned for all of those years.
He reconnected with Felicity, a lover he hadn’t seen in nine or ten years. Felicity, tall and lithe with her smooth, pale skin and dark amber eyes, was a kinky, sensuous beauty who looked forward to a night of sex, especially after everything she had been through. He had hoped she would erase the memory of Ferris. She hadn’t. If anything, it crystallized how different it had been with Ferris than with every other woman he had been with and that scared the shit out of him.
Recklessly, he gave her his nights, separating his mind from his body as he performed the ritual, imagining Ferris the entire time. Perhaps that was why he was still connected to the beautiful Ferris even though he had given his nights to Felicity. It was also why he hadn’t told Ferris Felicity’s name since it would have made his foolish betrayal that much worse.
As soon as the sun rose, he thanked her and
wished her a good life, disgusted with himself by what he had done. Desperate to escape the madman he had become, he had promised himself that he would stay away until the month was over and Ferris was forever beyond his reach. He found a bar and tried to drown his thoughts but of course that didn’t work, not with how quickly gargoyles metabolized alcohol. The liquor also had the infuriating benefit of making him even more desperate for Ferris, the girl he promised to save from herself. Wild trolls couldn’t have kept him from returning to Ferris and spending the month in the sun with her.
Gods, she was everything a gargoyle could want, generous and passionate in all that she did. She made him laugh, she made him… damn it, she made him happy. Every moment he spent with her made him even more perturbed because he had thrown his chance away without giving it a second thought. No, it was worse than that. He had actively searched out a way to get rid of her. His brothers would have been justified in taking a chisel to him.
Every moment in his frozen state he could feel her as she curled her body against his, seeking his warmth when he had none to offer. The bond with Felicity was breaking as she passed away from this life and he was going to be waking soon. He was terrified of the end, of waking up and being too late to see Ferris one last time.
As his time frozen in stone drew to an end, he was growing increasingly aware of her, the curve of her breast as it pressed against his stone chest, the soft puff of her breath as she breathed against his neck. Hell, he could even smell her, the sweet sunshine warm scent of her filling his senses until he thought he would go mad with longing.
Dread filled his entire body as it began to come back to life, the tingling along his nerve endings as blood began to flow through his veins once more. He didn’t mind the pain, it was the least he deserved. What he dreaded was seeing Ferris and knowing they had such a short amount of time left to spend with one another. She was going to be old and not for the first time he wished time would slow down so he could remain frozen forever if it meant Ferris would live. He was going to miss her madly when she was gone.
