by E A Price
“Brenda…”
“Please!”
Chris grunted and rubbed his eyes.
“Okay, given that I had no idea you were in my town, whoever found you must have been hanging around for a while
“Unless Holling told whoever it was,” said Kylie as she slumped into a chair.
Chris frowned. “Holling is involved in this?”
“Holling tried to take Luc prisoner.”
“But…”
“Long story; explain later.”
Chris looked at Annis. “Didn’t you say Ric ran out of here because he thought Brenda was in trouble?”
Her eyes lowered. “Yes, that is correct. He was very agitated when he thought she was in danger.”
Brenda’s cheeks turned bright red as scrutinizing gazes were turned in her direction. They probably knew why he was so upset. She could feel her face burn, particularly the parts of it Ric had kissed. She felt like she had a neon sigh over her head declaring she had made out with a gargoyle. Kylie looked sympathetic. Luc looked knowing. Chris was stunned – hit with an oncoming freighter train stunned.
But he managed to compose himself, and he coughed, whether it was to hide his embarrassment or hers she wasn’t sure. “We’ll return to that later. So whoever did this must have been watching you, so they must have been seen around town. Anything unusual happen recently?”
“Chloe!” exclaimed Brenda. The bitch!
“Amalric accidentally met a human in the woods,” explained Luc. “She knew of our existence.” Every muscle in his body was tensing, and given the loud thumps as his tail whacked against the floor, Brenda guessed he hadn’t been particularly thrilled when Ric told him that tidbit of information.
“And she gave him the cellular phone,” piped up Annis, feeling a little bolder than usual for some reason. “The false news that Brenda was in danger was communicated by that phone.”
“Yes, and we’ve been checking up on her,” said Kylie. “She told Ric that she was staying in a B&B, but I checked all the B&Bs and asked around town…”
“You asked Myrna,” interjected Chris.
“Yes, she’s quicker at spreading information than the internet. No one’s heard of this Chloe.”
“Well, she was in town last Saturday,” grumbled Brenda. “I bumped into her – I just thought she was a tourist.”
“Maybe she’s involved in this,” said Chris.
“But how does that help us?”
“You got a computer?” he asked Kylie.
“Yes, absolutely, let me grab my laptop. Ignore the claw marks. Some of us get a little angry when it freezes up.”
“That was not my fault,” muttered Luc.
Everyone watched with interest as Chris tapped at the keys. He was silent for thirty seconds until Brenda couldn’t stand the clickety-clack anymore. She wasn’t the only one. Baby Wolfe wriggled and burbled in his mother’s arms while the huge male gargoyles shifted and flicked their wings.
“What are you doing?”
Chris kept his eyes glued to the screen. “Checking out the town cameras. Why do you think we have no crime here anymore? We catch everyone.”
Brenda frowned. “The town has cameras?”
“Yeah, I persuaded the council digital cameras were a good investment.”
“How’d you manage that?” asked Kylie peering over his shoulder.
“Well, Martha is a council member and she… ah…”
“Fancies the pants off you, got it.”
Red dusted his cheeks, and Brenda tried to withhold her snigger.
“I can check on the cameras online, wherever I am. Last Saturday, here we go.”
Chris let out an oomph as everyone pressed against him, trying to get a look.
“That her?” asked Chris as he caught a still of a woman helping Brenda collect her belongings.
“Yes.” Angular bitch. She knew she was trouble. She knew she hated her. If only she could actually be happy about that.
Chris stilled the feed and caught a shot of the license plate of her car. “Okay, let’s run the plate.”
He did, and it was a dead end. He groaned.
Luc was becoming more and more lost by the moment as he squinted at the screen. “What is wrong?”
“That’s just a shell company.”
“They sell shells?” repeated Luc.
Kylie patted his shoulder. “No, babe, it’s a fake company.”
Chris searched to see who it was owned by, and then who that one was owned by, and then who that one was owned by. It went on for a while.
“MLF Security,” he said finally.
Brenda rolled her eyes. “Well, that still tells us nothing. I’ve never heard of them.”
“I can’t find anything about the company, no website, no information about people who work there – either it’s another fake company, or maybe they’re doing something they shouldn’t. But, I may know someone who can give us a few answers.”
*
Ric growled as a female was thrust into his cell. Not just any female – a gargoyle. There were more gargoyles! They had more gargoyles! The thought elated him until he realized they must all be prisoners, too.
“Who are you?” he murmured as he looked her up and down. She was on the small side for a female, barely larger than Annis, who was tiny for a female. Not that there was anything wrong with that, he had belatedly come to realize. Brenda was on the small size, and sometimes wonderful things came in small packages. Truly wonderful. Brenda may be small, but she had luscious curves, with perfect soft breasts just the right size to suckle, and a rear that was just made for his hands…
The female scowled at him, and he shook himself out of his daydream. “Twenty-Six.”
“Twenty-Six?” he repeated. “Twenty-Six what?”
The female rolled her eyes exaggeratedly and tapped her clawed foot on the ground. “That’s my name, numbnuts.”
Ric blinked at the insult. She was certainly… different for a female gargoyle. Perhaps she had spent a lot of time with humans. Not necessarily a bad thing. She was assimilating with human society.
“I am Amalric; you may call me Ric.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Was it his imagination, or was there a slight hint of sarcasm in her voice? It did not matter. Knowing there were more of his kind alive was the important thing. Whether they were unpleasant and made Ric want to challenge them to a fight to beat out their obnoxiousness was a secondary matter.
“What is going on here?”
“This is called a meet and greet, a getting to know you.”
“No, what is happening here in this place? What do they want to do with us?”
He noticed that the female was not in chains like him. Perhaps she was not a strong gargoyle. Annis was not either. She probably could not hold her own against a male human. He heard Brenda’s voice in his head. Not that this diminished her in any way. Not, at all. Lord, he missed Brenda’s disapproving voice. He’d even take her teasing at that moment. He was one lovesick, puppy-like gargoyle.
Completely unconcerned, like it was the most natural thing in the world, Twenty-Six declared, “Mate us.”
Time virtually stopped for Ric. Perhaps he should have considered it as a possibility when Adler was spewing out his garbage about continuing the gargoyle race. But Ric couldn’t have been more surprised than if she’d said dress up in clown costumes and tickle each other with feathers.
“Mate us?!” he roared. “What in Hades does that mean?”
The female sighed theatrically. She did not appear to do anything subtly.
“Have sex, screw, do the nasty, create little gargoyles – do you want me to go on? Because I can you know. Knock boots, hump, get it on…”
“No, no chance, no way, absolutely not!” His thoughts turned to Brenda, and he growled.
She didn’t seem put out by his reaction. More bored than anything. “If we don’t, they’ll hurt you.”
Ric flicked his tail. “How
many others are there?”
She shrugged. “There were others when I was a kid. They used to make us play together. By which I mean they used to make us solve puzzles and shit like that competing against each other to see who was the fastest. But I heard they all died.”
“Died? What on earth are they trying to do?”
“Duh! Mate us, have you been listening?” She muttered something about idiot males.
“But why?”
“I guess to create super babies or something, or maybe there are some really freaky people out there who want to adopt gargoyle babies. How should I know? They don’t exactly keep me in the loop of their nefarious plans. I’m lucky if they even let me watch TV. Although they don’t let me watch Sex and the City anymore. They thought it was giving me an attitude problem.”
Imagine that thought Ric. “How long have you been here? When did they wake you?”
“What are you talking about?” she snapped. Her wings ruffled with increasing agitation.
“When did they wake you from your sleep?”
“Sleep? What the hell are you twittering about? I was born here.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Agent Melissa Sanchez sighed. She was going to die under a pile of paperwork
Agents Mulder and Scully never had this problem. It was non-stop excitement week after week for them. But no, rather than unusual and interesting cases, the special division of the Portland FBI seemed to deal solely with interviewing crazies who claimed to have seen UFOs or Bigfoot – of which there seemed to be a neverending supply. Some were on drugs, some couldn’t tell a helicopter from a UFO, and others used a UFO sighting to liven up their boring lives. And she had to file a report for every single crackpot who came forward.
She wasn’t really a cynic, but then she wasn’t really a believer. She was literally the only person willing to work in her department, so she had to be both Mulder and Scully rolled into one.
Melissa leaned over her desk, peering at a photo of what was supposed to be Bigfoot. Odd how he was always blurry in all his pictures. Must be some kind of conspiracy involving camera manufacturers. This photo looked more like a guy in a fur coat. Which was much more likely.
Her phone rang. “Sanchez,” she muttered into the receiver, squinting at the photo.
“Melissa?”
She sat up, banging her head on her file cabinet. Her office really was tiny.
“Chris? How are you?”
She smiled automatically. Chris had that effect on women. They had briefly dated but remained good friends. She imagined he managed to stay friends with all his exes. No woman could stay mad at him for long. Melissa didn’t usually go gaga over men, but Chris was a dreamboat inside and out.
“I’m sorry just to call you up like this, but I need a favor.”
“Oh?” She didn’t let that diminish her excitement.
“Yeah, and I’m kind of in a rush – I’m sorry to put you on the spot.”
“You know I’m going to say yes.” She was such a pushover for a cute butt and a sexy voice. “But next time you’re in Portland, you owe me dinner.”
She bit her lip waiting for his response. They had broken up because of work commitments, but now that she found her biological clock booming at her, and her career stagnating, she was starting to think maybe that had been a mistake. While Chris had been married in the intervening years, she had remained painfully single. Of course, given the way Chris had lost his wife, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing.
He chuckled. “Sure. We can catch up as friends.”
“Yep, friends.” She sighed, but couldn’t feel too annoyed. Chris was devastated after his wife died and last she heard he was still mourning her. She had to admire that kind of devotion.
“So what’s the favor?”
*
“We need to get out of here,” rumbled Ric. “How can you have been born here?”
“The normal way I guess.”
“But your parents, how were they even alive?”
Twenty-Six was becoming increasingly irritated by his questions and her tail started swishing back and forth. “I don’t remember them; I’ve just always been here. For all I know I was just a test tube baby. Dr. Adler ain’t exactly the fuzzy sharing type.”
“Do you even know anything about gargoyles? About who we really are?”
“I know what I am,” she said pointedly. “I don’t care who you are. An hour ago I was told I had a new playmate, so here we are on our very first play date.”
“You know nothing of gargoyle history.”
She sighed. “Who gives a crap? Why would I care about history? If I’m good, they bring me magazines to read. If I don’t rile the guards, I get a chocolate bar and a pat on the head like a good little gargoyle. And yay, on Tuesdays I get tacos.”
“You should not be so blasé on this subject. You are a prisoner.”
“And now so are you.”
“You should be fighting to get away from them. You are a warrior; you should not submit to these people.”
“Submit?” she hissed. “You think I always just roll over for them? You stay here as long as I have, you go through what I’ve been through and then you tell me how easy it is to hold out. Now, do you wanna mate or not?”
“What?” He’d been propositioned by females before, but this was the first time that he was shocked by it.
“Do you want to have sex? That’s what they want.” She waved at the mirror.
“Hell, no.” There was only one female for him, and she wasn’t the unpleasant creature scowling at him.
She didn’t appear bothered in the least by his rejection. “Suit yourself, they’d prefer we mate, but they can get what they want by other methods.”
He let a few visions of that float his way and reflexively covered his man parts. “We need to get out of here.”
“Good luck with that, I’ve been trying for years, and it’s probably not a good idea to announce your plan to escape while they’re watching your every move.”
“Yes, well, maybe tonight’s our lucky night.”
“Doesn’t seem like yours has been very lucky so far.”
*
Chris snapped his phone shut. “MLF Security is owned by Howard Blackthorne.”
Kylie wrinkled her nose. “That rich guy who owns half of Portland?”
“What does that tell us?” snapped Brenda. “How does that get us any closer to finding Ric?”
“Well, apparently the FBI has Blackthorne under surveillance, they think he’s laundering money, but he doesn’t seem to do anything suspicious. The security business looks legit to them – they provide bodyguards to famous people. Sanchez doesn’t know why any of his people would be here, though.”
“MLF?” murmured Luc. “Morgan Le Fay.”
Kylie frowned. “It could stand for anything.”
“It means Morgan Le Fay,” snarled Luc. “He is a descendant of our enemies. The family Blackthorne.”
The other gargoyles added their own snarls.
“Maybe we should talk to him before we jump to any conclusions,” said Kylie.
Chris shook his head. “According to Sanchez, he’s currently in New York – can you fly that fast?”
“No,” growled Luc.
“And I doubt he’ll submit to a shakedown over the phone. But there is someone else we can ask. Look familiar?”
Chris held up his phone displaying an arrest photo of Chloe.
“Sanchez found her; she has a record. Beat up her boyfriend, tried to cut his throat with a glass bottle.”
“Shocker,” muttered Brenda.
“She has an apartment in Portland. I’ll go talk to her.”
“No, I will,” declared Luc.
Chris paused. “It’s better if I approach her, but… there’s always room for a Plan B.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chloe entered Ric’s cell carrying a tray of what appeared to be brown mush
She grinned. “Din dins!”<
br />
Ric lumbered off his slab, wincing slightly. Definitely at his injuries. It wasn’t because the slab was cold and uncomfortable and he was becoming accustomed to the softness and luxury of human furnishings. No, he could care less about that. The couch at home was not the most heavenly thing on earth after Brenda’s kisses.
“Good boy!”
He kept his face suitably blank as Chloe tried to bait him. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t react. She wasn’t worth it. He was thoroughly surprised at his actual calmness at her betrayal. The old Amalric would have gone berserk. Sure, he was annoyed, but her actual actions didn’t hurt him. But then he was preoccupied - he worried for Brenda, missing Brenda, wishing he was with Brenda – he had a one-track mind at that moment. Not to mention some of his other organs that were also focused on Brenda.
Besides, he had more important things to do.
Ric gave her a dead-eyed stare and her cheek twitched.
“Still the strong, silent type?”
He shrugged.
“Not for long. Once Dr. Adler starts his tests, we won’t be able to stop you from screaming.” She took a step towards him. “I can’t wait.”
His disinterest was starting to infuriate her. He’d noticed the flashes of anger before when they met, and she pretended to be his friend. He’d thought nothing of it. Other than them, she had been sweet – all an act no doubt. But short fuses were nothing; they were a way of life for most gargoyles. Of course, now he realized just how much she hated him, how hard it was for her to maintain her temper around him. The thought should have saddened him, but it didn’t. He truly did not care. She was the epitome of everything that was wrong with humans. While Brenda was the epitome of everything that was right.
“Hungry?” she asked, tipping the food onto the floor with a cackle.
Still, he did not reply, and her face tightened.
“Those tasers give you brain damage? Answer me you fucker!”
He started turning away from her, and she made the mistake of stepping towards him, into his circle of movement. Quick as a flash, he had her in a choke hold. She scrabbled and clawed at his arm as security guards, and Adler swarmed into the room. They trained tasers on him, but if they shot him, he could easily snap her neck.
