The Avatars: Beginnings
(A short Story)
Lisa Blackwood
The Avatars: Beginnings
Lisa Blackwood
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Lisa Blackwood
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, and characters are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actually persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
Beginnings (A Short Story)
Stone’s Kiss (Excerpt)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Beginnings
Surrounded by darkness, deep in the heart of his enemy’s territory, the gargoyle braced his wings against the breeze sweeping down the onyx-tiled corridor. High above, cobwebs swirled among the shadows obscuring the vaulted ceiling. With a nudge of magic, lacy tendrils of gloom floated down, settling over his shoulders and wings like a thick autumn fog. While a cloak of darkness might hide him for a short time, the wet heat of blood seeping down his side would soon tempt him to embrace the healing sleep of stone. Here in this place death would come swift and brutal.
He had to push onward. He couldn’t give up—something far more precious than his own life was at risk.
No more than eight summers old, the child slept soundly in his arms, her weight a reassurance. With her cloud of black hair and eyelashes dark against pale skin, the Sorceress looked peaceful, innocent—at odds with this place of darkness. Her safety came first. He couldn’t fail her. Not again.
Sounds of panting and the muted rasp of claws on stone echoed from the direction he’d just come. An undulating wail of a Death Hound filled the stale air. Its harsh call reverberated along his wings.
Another cry answered the first, rising and falling in the distance. He bolted from the shadows, seeking the breeze’s source. The sharp click of his talons striking stone tiles drowned out noise of pursuit. Urged by instinct, he ran until the corridor forked. He veered right. A pale light bloomed in the distance. Shadows gave way to a gray misty haze. At the end of the tunnel, a line of vast windows opened onto a balcony. He readjusted his hold on the young Sorceress and sprinted toward freedom.
Outside, wind buffeted at his furrowed wings and howled in his ears, but his attention riveted on the Veil between the Realms. It shimmered a hundred paces in front of him, silvery mists promising escape. A vast expanse of empty air stretched between the balcony and the outer edge of the Veil. Worry itched between his shoulder blades. His wings twitched with tension. Casting a glance over his shoulder, he studied the way he’d come. For now only a few shadows and lonely statues guarded the way, but it wouldn’t be long before Death Hounds caught him.
He bowed his muzzle until he caught her familiar scent. She calmed him—the other half of his soul. He would know her anywhere. So many lives they’d shared, hunting down evil in all its forms. Bumping his muzzle against her cheek, he whined and licked at her face. A sharp flavor coated his tongue.
He jerked back with a snort. Wrong. Her taste was wrong. Harsh fear, cold like the first killing frost, flowed through his soul. He licked at her again, the bitter essence confirming his suspicions. She was tainted, evil so deeply embedded within her it welled up from below her skin.
His eyes track back toward the shimmering Veil as his stomach tightened into a knot. He could escape through the veil, safe from its life destroying magic, but she was tainted. He clamped his wings to his back and tightened his arms around her smaller form. If he’d been mature, he could have protected her from the ravages of the mist. But, newly born, he lacked the raw power needed to shield even himself.
Had he saved her from imprisonment only to have the Veil strip the life from her now?
A sizeable weight slammed into his back, overbalancing him. Teeth savaged the flesh of his right shoulder. With a howl of pain, he released the child, and twisted, catching his attacker under the jaw. The beast yelped and rolled.
Before he could recover, another streak of ginger and black colored fur blurred across his line of sight. With a flash of teeth, a smaller Death Hound bitch was snapping at his throat. He lunged. His teeth sank into her thick ruff. Altering his grip, he slammed the hound into the underside of the balcony’s stone railing. Stone chips and white powder dusted the air.
Blood coated one side of the hound’s wide head. She flexed her broad shoulders, freeing herself from the rubble. A snarl exposed steel gray teeth.
When she came at him again, he raked the hound’s belly with his hind feet. Without the hardness of maturity, his talons didn’t penetrate the thick fur. The beast sunk her teeth into the meat of his thigh. He grunted in pain and bashed the creature in the side of the head with one fist. Desperation lent strength to his weary muscles, and he disengaged the hound.
A second beast leapt on his back. It clawed and bit at his wings as it sought a firmer hold on his exposed neck. He snaked his tail around the beast’s middle. With a snarling effort, he heaved it into the first creature. Both beasts slid through the hole in the stone railing. Surprised yelps slowly faded into the abyss beyond his range of vision.
His heavy panting rasped louder than the roar of the wind to his own ears. Ignoring the throb of new injuries, he scooped the child into his arms.
After catching his breath, he leapt onto the balcony’s outer stone wall and dug his claws into the surface. Balancing there, he looked out towards the misty wall of the Veil. It stretched as far as he could see in either direction. The winds whipped past him, constant in its attempts to scour him from the side of the tower. He wrapped his tail around the railing and closed his eyes, praying the Divine Ones would give his Sorceress strength enough to survive the Veil.
The baying of more Death Hounds decided him. Wings extended to their fullest, he launched from the balcony, hurtling toward the mists. Even braced for a second trip through the Veil didn’t lessen the surprise when he hit its outer border. Syrupy mists slowed his flight, sticking to him like burning honey. He pumped his wings harder, desperate for speed. Magic plucked at him, shredding his personal shields.
The first tendril of mist touched the child. Her eyes snapped open. Body ridged, she arched her back and sucked in a deep, gasping breath. Her cry of anguish sliced through him, stabbing into his soul. She screamed as fast as she could draw breath.
Please, he begged of the Divine Ones. Please let her survive this. I can do whatever I must to mend what was done to her, just let her live.
After a time, the child quieted, unconscious—not dead, but he still didn’t relax. The journey through the Veil felt like a lifetime. With each powerful wing beat, he fought the swirling currents of magic within the Veil, but made little headway. Terror uncoiled in his middle. The Sorceress would never survive the trip back to his Realm. It was taking too long. He changed his course and flew with the current. Faster and faster the magic swirled around him. The current drew him along until the outer edge of the Mortal Realm’s Veil appeared in front of him. He sensed the deadness beyond—the Mortal Realm’s lack of magic. Seeing no other escape, he closed his eyes and prayed.
With a heave, the magic spat him and his small burden out into the Mortal Realm. Cold, thin air shocked his body. His wings collapsed. Panicked, he flailed, trying to find which way was up. A single moon shone in the night sky. He oriented himself and levelled out his erratic flight enough he didn’t spiral out of control.
Gliding, too exhausted to maintain his height, he drifted lower. Below him a well tended road with a line painted down its center vanished off into the distance. On either side, a row of smooth wooden poles, like trees stripped of their branches, lined the too-perfect road. Wires suspended between the dead-tree-poles swayed in the wind. He angled away from the odd road and whatever might travel upon it.
Below him the land changed. A long narrow lake, ringed with white ice, now cut across the landscape. The lake’s dark center rippled with its own drama. Cries of panic and the splash of water caught his attention. He glided lower until he skimmed above the snow-covered trees skirting the lake. The sounds of struggle grew weaker. Above those sounds, a desperate chant rose up from below.
Out in the water, a small boy clung to a sheet of ice. On shore a young woman worked on the body of a girl, trying to push water from dead lungs. Voice hoarse with grief, the woman chanted a healing song. The song resonated in his soul, familiar. But she sang it wrong, and this land lacked the magic required to perform such a spell. Besides, the tether holding the girl’s soul to her body had already faded away, breaking the link of flesh and spirit.
Landing at the edge of the lake, he summoned shadows for concealment. This small, mortal drama didn’t need more panic. Shifting the Sorceress, he took the strain off his injured shoulder, and then looked around, seeking shelter from the cold. He approached a stand of evergreens when a pale figure glided into his midst and looked straight at him. His magic didn’t work against the dead, and the ghost of a young girl watched him with sad eyes. She looked from him to the lakeshore and back again.
The ghost’s pale skin and dark hair reminded him of the child he held. It could have been the Sorceress wanting to say good-bye to him, dead before they had even gifted each other with names in this life. He shuddered and mantled his wings to shroud himself from the ghost’s sad gaze. He glanced down at the warm, living child in his arms. Reluctantly, he placed her on the ground, sheltered by the branches of an evergreen. When he looked back to the ghost, she tilted her head to one side and gave him a questioning looked. He nodded.
A beautiful smile crossed the ghost’s face and she glided out of the trees, leading him back to her grieving family.
He skirted around the younger woman, her eyes still vacant as she rocked the girl’s body in her arms. The ghost’s mother? There was nothing he could do for the woman—he feared her mind was broken.
At the edge of the winter-locked water, an old woman continued to cast a long rope out across the frozen surface. She chanted a spell with each toss, her face serene with concentration. The boy made a frantic grab at the rope and lost his grip on the ice. He slipped into the water.
Exhaustion beat at the gargoyle. His wounds continued to seep life-blood and magic, weakening him until even his wings quivered, but he dropped to all fours, and loped into the frigid water. The cold tore a growl from his throat.
He swam to the spot he’d last seen the boy, then he dove, beating his wings to reach the bottom of the lake. Underneath, the surface was as dark as a moonless night, but he sensed the heat from the boy’s body and swam towards it. He gripped the slight body in his arms, and then pushed off from the bottom, kicking and swishing his tail until he broke the surface.
He snorted water from his nose. Hot breath clouded in front of his face. After he tossed the boy’s body on to the ice, he scrambled at the slick surface with his claws until he hauled himself out of the water. His legs shook and lungs burned, but he clamped his teeth into the boy’s hood and dragged him off the ice.
The youngling’s chest no longer rose or fell, but his heart still fluttered feebly. The gargoyle fed more of his waning magic into the boy, urging the heart to beat while he pushed water from small lungs. A racking cough and a deep breath, followed by more retching told him he’d succeeded. He barely noticed. His skin was hardening—not from the cold—but from the need to sleep and heal before death claimed him. He forced himself to walk to where he’d left the Sorceress.
She still slept—but at least her life force was stronger. He could rest peacefully, knowing he’d saved her.
The old woman scoured up the bravery to address him. “You’re a Gargoyle.”
Her words were strange, a language he did not know, so he took their meaning from her mind.
He nodded—exhaustion had stolen his words. Picking up the Sorceress, he licked her face. She mumbled in her sleep, words too slurred for him to understand. He gathered his fading magic and placed a weaving around the child’s mind so she would forget. Forget him, and their long history. Forget whatever task the evil possessing her would urge her to complete—to forget even herself.
With that done, he turned his attention back to the old woman.
The woman tilted her head to look up at him. Grief shone in her eyes, but she was composed as she held the boy close to her body. “This is what the Coven’s dream meant. Death and life mixed together in one terrible and wonderful night. Forgive us, old one. We did not expect one of your Kin to ever cross into our world again.” She bowed.
He did not understand most of what she thought, but he sensed she was not one of evil intent. This woman was the best he could do for his young Sorceress.
“Protect the child. Raise her as your own.” He hoped she would understand and not panic. “She will be a great worker of magic, even in this realm with its dwindling magic. Raise her, guide her, teach her the difference between the paths of light and dark, but tell her nothing of magic, or of me. Her mind is damaged from the journey through the Veil. It’s best if she remembers nothing of her past for now. When I’m strong, I will awaken. In this realm it may take many seasons before I’m healed enough to awaken on my own.”
“You saved my grandson….while you couldn’t save my granddaughter, I’m in your debt. Thank you. I shall raise and protect this little one in her place.”
“Your granddaughter is there.” He pointed to where the small ghost hovered by the trees. She was already fading. Soon she would make her journey to the Spirit Realm.  “I still have power enough so you can say goodbye.” He held out his blood smeared talons to the old woman. She wiped some off his talon at the same time the ghost appeared at his side. The blood misted away when the ghost touched him. Under the glow of moonlight, the ghost grew solid once more. He regarded the grandmother.  “You have until the first grey light of dawn, and then the magic in my blood will fade and your loved one will pass on. Find a fire to warm the boy or he will make the journey with the girl.”
“My humblest thanks, Lord Gargoyle. Our home is near,” the old woman said, grief a raw edge in her tone. She gestured him forward. “Come, you are safe with us. I prepared a place for you in my garden as my dream advised.”
He followed, his mind already closing in upon its self. As his body shut down, his heart rate slowed, blood became sluggish in his veins. Stumbling through shadows, he encountered a well-tended garden surrounding a cottage. At its center, two small rings of standing stones circled a large flat pedestal. So exposed. It wouldn’t have been his first choice for a long stone sleep, but his body gave him no alternative. He made it to the pedestal and managed to perch upon its snow covered surface. His thoughts strayed to the Sorceress a final time. Finding this family, the grandmother’s mention of a dream—it was too convenient.
Fear stirred in his heart, but there was nothing else he could do. The last of his heat bled from him, hardening his skin to stone. Darkness claimed him.
Read on for a excerpt for Stone’s Kiss (The Avatars Book 1)
A Dark Fate
As a child, a near-drowning accident stole Lillian’s old life. Her new life began the moment she awoke at the foot of a brooding, stone gargoyle.
Years later, Lillian still finds comfort in Gregory, her gargoyle, never guessing he is more than cold stone until demonic creatures called the Riven attack. Gregory senses her terror and wakes from his healing sleep.
After the battle, Lillian learns the humans she thought were her family are a powerful coven of witches at war with the Riven. Lillian is something more than human, a powerful worker of magic, an Avatar to the gods. Gregory has been her protector for many lifetimes, but troubles in their homeland forced him to flee with her to the human world. And it wasn’t an accident which stole her memories—it was Gregory. He suspects Lillian is host to an infant demon, one capable of evil greater than the Riven.
Despite everything, Lillian fears she’s falling in love with her guardian. While she might be able to defeat the Riven with Gregory’s help, she doesn’t know if her fragile new love can survive the evil growing in her own soul.
Chapter 1
“He’s stone.”
Lillian smoothed the oiled rag down the length of her grandmother’s broadsword.
“Just a statue,” she muttered to the empty kitchen. “Stone, nothing more.”
The microwave’s clock glowed pale green in the dim light. She deliberately avoided focusing on the time and returned to sweeping the rag across the blade with a harried motion. “I don’t . . .”
Love him?
Was she really going to say that?
Oh God, yes she was.
Tension built behind her eyes and little flashes sparked in her vision, promising one hell of a headache in the making. She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. It didn’t help.
Rich, warm coffee scent reached her a few seconds before the sound of gurgling announced the coffeemaker was finished. Lillian welcomed the distraction. After a few more swipes of the rag, she set the sword aside.
Polishing her grandmother’s entire sword collection had seemed like a suitable task when she’d jerked awake from a nightmare at some ungodly hour near dawn and couldn’t get back to sleep. Normally nightmares and insomnia didn’t plague her, but there was something new—a restlessness which reared its head every night just as the stars faded and the first pink tinted the sky with a hint of dawn. Only one thing calmed the restlessness—sitting with him, her stone gargoyle.
But she couldn’t spend every moment sitting in her glade with a glorified garden ornament. To prevent herself seeking a statue’s company, she slipped into the bathroom instead of the direction her heart craved.
She splashed cold water on her face for several moments. When she worked up the nerve to look in the mirror, a woman with dark circles under her eyes looked back. Even the golden light of dawn didn’t make her look any less haggard. All the signs pointed at the same problem—the inability to sleep, polishing her grandmother’s sword collection in the middle of the night, wanting to spend hour after hour with a stone statue under the shadow of her favorite tree, a growing dependence on coffee—yep, she’d lost her mind.
Back in the kitchen, the solitude registered heavier now that her hands weren’t busy. Mechanically, she wandered over to the coffee pot and filled the largest mug she could find.
She was just putting the cream back in the fridge when she noticed one of her grandmother’s dog-eared romances sitting on top, half-hidden under a pile of junk mail.
Taking a sip of her coffee, she eyed the romance. It was one of those hormones-take-notice, blush-inducing covers, complete with drops of water cascading down the hero’s picture-perfect chest. Gran always claimed a little escapism never hurt anyone. With a grin, Lillian tucked the paperback under her arm. As an afterthought, she scooped up her cell phone on her way to the back door.
Outside, air crisp with a hint of last night’s fog greeted her nose. She loved when the fog was beginning to burn away in the sun. Clean, fresh—it was one of her favorite scents. Gravel crunched under her shoes as she walked the twisting garden path. A cedar maze with ten-foot-tall walls stretched out before her.
A few feet ahead, a tan-and-brown blur, its tail pointed to the sky, streaked across the gravel path and darted between the green cedar walls. As she followed the resident chipmunk deeper into the living corridors, her earlier worries fell away.
Reaching the maze’s middle, she came to a small clearing ringed by upright waist-high stones. At its center, a juvenile Redwood grew strong and proud, dwarfing its surroundings. Ten feet from the tree’s trunk a stone statue lurked, partially concealed by dense shadows.
He crouched over his stone perch with a knee resting on the pedestal and his wings mantled around him like a vast cloak. While his one hand rested on his raised knee, his other arm gripped his side in a rather odd position for a sculpture. It saddened her a little, for there was a narrowness about his squinted eyes and a crease of his brow that hinted at pain. Interestingly, he didn’t look beaten. His shoulders were broad, head proud, legs corded with muscle, strength and majesty in his every line.
“Hello, old friend.” She looked up into his face with its burly muzzle and curving fangs. His muzzle merged flawlessly into wide cheek bones. Large eyes were hooded by a broad forehead. Crowning his head were two massive spiraling horns like an African Waterbuck’s. A thick mane of hair flowed in a stony river midway down his back.
The gargoyle was one of her first childhood memories. At the age of eight, after a near-drowning accident stole her memories, she’d been drawn to the stone statue as if he was pivotal to her survival. She’d always assumed her strange need to be near him was a result of her childhood trauma. Now she wasn’t so sure.
She brushed a few spider webs and tree needles from his pedestal. Then, like she’d done since childhood, she climbed up the pedestal to settle upon the gargoyle’s knee. While he was a little cold and hard, he still made a good chair. She opened the book and leaned back against his arm.
* * *
Lillian jerked awake to the dual sounds of the cell phone chirping and her book crunching against the gravel. Her heel slipped off the edge of the pedestal, and with a desperate grab at a stone arm, she managed not to join her book on the ground.
“Insomnia . . . going to break my neck . . . my own damn fault.”
She grumbled while she climbed down and hunched over to pick up her book and the now silent cell phone. Straightening, she realized the sun was well on its way to the opposite horizon. She’d slept half the afternoon away. So much for the work she’d planned to get done. She flipped open the phone and listened to the voice mail.
“Sorry, sis,” the voice of her brother said, made tinny by the cell phone’s bad reception. “The flight’s been delayed again, imagine that. Anyway, I’ll wait here. The flight’s expected in shortly after 11:30 tonight. See you way later. Bye.”
Well, at least the delay would give her a chance to hang the sword collection back on the wall, vacuum, and get the rest of the house in order.
* * *
With a final pat of the maze’s cedar walls, she exited her sanctuary. Three steps later she skidded to a halt. A stranger dressed in a gray business suit strolled along the garden path to her left. Hands clasped behind his back, he studied perennials on either side of him.
Occasionally, patrons from her family’s spa would wander over into the private gardens, but the spa was closed, undergoing renovations. Besides, this man looked out of place. Alarm hummed through her veins. Sweat trickled down her spine. Her stomach quivered worse than if she’d come face to face with a mother bear.
Lillian eased back toward the walls of the maze just as the lone man raised a hand in greeting. The gesture was normal enough. She relaxed a bit and waited for him. He’d almost reached her side when she heard the crunch of many feet on gravel coming from the path to her right. She whirled around. More strangers emerged from around the big ground-sweeping magnolia. There were nine of them: five men and four women. And all of them stalked forward with the smooth grace of predators. They arranged themselves in a semicircle in front of her. Lillian backed up, but there was nowhere to run. Panic beat at her insides. The maze which had always sheltered her from childhood fears wouldn’t keep her safe from real danger.
Chapter 2
The shortest among the group, the man who had first waved at Lillian, stepped toward her. Dressed in a well-tailored business suit, his appearance spoke of money, yet his shaggy gray-peppered brown hair was at odds with his otherwise trim appearance. Other than that, he would have been an unmemorable fellow—from a distance.
Up close, she could detect the lie. Hostility radiated off him in waves.
“You may call me Alexander.” The short man smiled, but the cold glint in his eyes canceled out any friendliness which might have been there. “My associates will not harm you if you come with us and answer some questions.” He gestured for his people to give her room. All but two of them moved.
The remaining two, a woman with dark hair similar to Lillian’s own and a big man with a six o’clock shadow, turned their unblinking gazes to the shorter man. Alexander narrowed his eyes and said something too low for Lillian to hear. The man in need of a shave backed off, but the woman showed her reluctance by the way she changed her stance without giving ground to Alexander’s command. She turned her feral eyes upon Lillian and tilted her head to sniff at the air.
Too frigging weird. Time to leave. “I don’t know who you are, but I think there’s been a misunderstanding. Perhaps I can help you find your way back to the road.” Lillian rushed the words together in her hurry. “The gardens can be confusing.”
“I assure you, there has been no mistake. I can smell your power.”
I can smell your power? With luck she could ditch them in the maze.
A breeze picked up and whipped her hair into her face. While she’d fought to clear her vision, she realized she’d missed something. The others looked past her, deeper into the maze, in the direction the breeze had come. The woman with dark hair and feral eyes backed away with a hiss.
First singly, and then in twos and threes, the others retreated from the green cedar walls. Lillian didn’t know what was hiding in the maze, but it couldn’t be much worse than this group of strangers. Even if they hadn’t blocked her path back to the house, instincts demanded she run into the concealing greenery.
She bolted into the maze’s entrance and ran as if monsters out of her darkest nightmare gave chase. The first branch of the maze loomed in front of her. She darted to the right. Two more sharp turns, and she was well into the complex maze. The others hunted her, crashing through the narrow rows. By the sounds of snapping branches and swearing, someone was trying to go through the walls instead of around them.
She was halfway to the center before the noise of pursuit started to fade. If fate was kind, her pursuers were now hopelessly lost. Her slight advantage would only last until she emerged on the other side, but it might be enough to escape into the forest. And the lengthening shadows of dusk would give her an advantage in her home forest. If she got that far. When she emerged into the center of the maze, she ran past the first ring of stones. She was under the shadow of her Redwood by the time a figure raced from another opening. She froze behind the tree. The man didn’t see her and ran toward the path leading out of the maze.
Damn, he’d be ahead of her now. She hugged the tree trunk while she caught her breath. This wasn’t going well. Think, think, think.
A movement at the east entrance betrayed another man a moment before he walked into the clearing. He sniffed at the air as he jogged up to the first ring of stones. His eyes locked on her tree. A smile slowly spread across his face.
He reached the first stone and rested his hand on it. With a yowl, he jerked back. Smoke rose up from the stone like grease dripping onto the coals of a barbecue. While that was an unusual sight, she didn’t have time to dwell on it. Survival first, weird stuff later. More strangers appeared, spat out by the maze. No one else tried to enter the perimeter of the waist-high ring of stones, even though there was plenty of room between each stone to pass without touching them. A tense silence engulfed the clearing.
Alexander entered last, unhurried. With his head tilted to one side, he looked from her to the Redwood and back again.
“I’d thought the ones with strength like yours had gone extinct centuries ago,” he said, as if his words explained everything. After another half dozen steps, he stopped outside the ring of stones. He frowned at them a moment. “Not that it matters; it’s your magic I want. You have two choices, surrender your magic, or swear allegiance to serve my lords.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but that handy circle of stones seems to keep you away. Unless you plan on camping out here for the next few days, I think you better move on.” She didn’t believe for a minute they’d actually do what she advised, but if she kept them talking, maybe she’d eventually wake up.
He smiled, a charming curve of lips, then he tilted his head in the direction of the house and his merriment vanished. “That’s a grand house, and these gardens, they’re rather large for just you to take care of. If I wait, I imagine your family will come home soon. Your husband and children, perhaps?” His expression took on a faraway look as if he thought about something else. “Or am I wrong? You have the ageless look of all dryads, but perhaps you’re actually very young, newly come to your powers. Is that why I’ve never sensed you? No matter. I’m sure you have loved ones and they’ll be along shortly.”
Lillian couldn’t hide in the shadow of a tree forever. As he’d said, her family would return home and be captured by these freaks. It would be her fault. Clearly, Alexander wanted something from her. Her magic, he’d said. No way was she believing him. Even seeing the stone smoke when the other man touched it could have been a trick.
“I am patient up to a point,” Alexander said. “If you make me go through these stones to get you, my patience will run out before I reach you. Your choice.”
She shook her head. He frowned and his eyebrows scrunched together. Without another word, he focused on the stone standing nearest to him and began a chant low in his throat. Placing one hand upon its surface, he grimaced as power arced, its blue light lancing out from one stone to the next in line. Unseen until now, a dome of energy encircled her and her tree.
“This can’t be happening,” she whispered.
But it was.
Whatever the small man was doing weakened the dome. Where before the dome had appeared a solid blue, its coloration was now patchy and frayed. A fissure formed along the base of the stone he touched, the finest of cracks. She didn’t want to know what would happen when it gave way.
Behind Alexander, a disturbance in the ranks distracted her and she missed the exact moment the stone shattered. Shards flew in all directions, damaging the other stones and cutting down garden shrubs and flowers like a sickle. Agony bloomed to life along her hip. More along her waist. She should have been safe hiding behind the tree’s trunk, yet some of the stone shrapnel must have hit her. Blood, hot and sticky, dampened her t-shirt and the waist of her jeans. Seconds later the burning sensation turned numb. A deep cold started to throb in her side, as if her life was being sucked away by the wound.
She stumbled over a root and slammed her shoulder on one of the Redwood’s ground-sweeping branches. Teetering against it, she gathered herself, then ducked under the branch to see what was going on. Instinct guided her eyes up the tree. Two thin blade-like fragments of stone were embedded in the side of the tree’s trunk.
Pink liquid dripped off the fragments and dropped onto the ground below. More ran down the trunk. Astonished, she touched the liquid: it was slick like sap, but smelt coppery. Tree sap mixed with blood? Another rivulet flowed down the trunk and coated her fingers.
Her legs grew rubbery. Numbness crept up from the wounds, seeping through her blood and across her thoughts. Screams and snarls interrupted the numbness. Had some of the other creatures been caught by the exploding stones?
“Your life blood is watering the dirt and leaf litter. Such a waste of magic,” Alexander mused.
What? Can’t I bleed to death in peace? Lillian twisted toward Alexander and winced as pain stabbed through her hip. The little man stood a few feet away, admiring the tree, his head tilted to look up at its top, thirty-five feet above his head. He walked around its circumference, studying it from different angles.
Resting against the tree took some of the weight off her injured leg. She eased one hand above her head. Sliding her fingers along the bark, she sought the rivulets of liquid and used them to guide her to the first stone fragment. Her fingers closed on a cold, sharp object. She clawed at it with her nails, dragging it from the wood.
Agony burned in her hip. She embraced the pain. It was better than the cold sucking sensation of having her life leeched out her injury. Her fingers worked at the second piece of stone. Alexander finished skirting the tree and came to face her again. With a grunt, she flung the second shard. Sap-blood flew in a splattering arc.
Her aim was true and the blood-coated stone collided with Alexander. He screamed in agony, a tone of glass-shattering quality. She winced. Hopefully such an unholy sound signaled a mortal injury.
The fragment was embedded in his neck where an artery should have been. The stone smoked and hissed. Other drops of her tree’s blood had eaten away at his skin, like she’d tossed acid upon him. A human would have hit the ground, dead by now. She didn’t know what he was, but he wasn’t human.
The creature collapsed to his knees, but continued to smile at her. Oh, he was in pain, she could see it in his pinched expression: the white skin, drawn tight across his face, the slight grayish hue of his complexion. But it was the sharp fangs when he hissed at her which gave him away. A vampire? Impossible. But what else could he be?
Another blonde male and a muscular female joined Alexander. While they were seeing to his wounds, Lillian took a step forward. Her sight blurred strangely and she swayed. Instead of the carnage of the glade, Lillian’s grandmother stood before her, eyes closed and face serene.
Gran’s hands moved in a precise, intricate pattern as she chanted low in her throat. There was a soft-edged quality about her grandmother; she looked faded, like an unfocused old picture. Her grandmother wasn’t really there.
“Lillian, get to the gargoyle,” her grandmother said, her voice echoing as if from a long way away. “Use your blood.”
Lillian shook her head, trying to clear her vision. She slumped against the tree. A low-hanging branch offered support. She wanted to believe she was hearing her grandmother’s voice. Obeying her commands sounded like a good idea. Lillian gauged the distance from her tree to the gargoyle’s statue: a few feet, ten maybe, fifteen at the most. Ten feet or ten miles, it didn’t really matter. She doubted she could walk more than two steps before she fell on her face. But her grandmother needed her to get to the gargoyle statue. Maybe it was another kind of protection like the stone circle had been, a stronger one.
Could it be so simple? Could killing these creatures be as easy as getting to the statue and triggering some protection? She needed to try. She was already dead. She was losing too much blood to live, but perhaps she could still protect her family.
Gathering her will, she straightened and held the second stone fragment like a knife. Doggedly, she lurched toward the statue. The ground seemed more uneven than she remembered. She tripped over a stone, and fell to her knees. She forced herself back up. There was someone in her path: a blurry blob with a cloud of dark hair around it. The strange feral woman she’d first noticed outside the maze stood between Lillian and her goal. Anger stirred to life. How dare these monsters come into her home and threaten to kill her and her family.
A sense of something powerful and old flowed through her body, guiding her movements. She surged to her feet, the stone fragment held low against her good thigh. Lillian darted forward, the land around her a blur. Her opponent was moving far too slowly. One more step, and then snapping her arm up and forward, Lillian buried the stone shard in the woman’s stomach. Her opponent’s mouth fell open, gasping in shock.
Growling, the woman clawed at the stone fragment. Lillian sidestepped her enemy. Three steps from her destination something slammed into her. Claws ripped into her back. Kicking desperately, Lillian dragged herself out from under the crazed woman. With a last desperate strength, she crawled up the pedestal and over the gargoyle’s stone leg. Protected on three sides by his body and wings, she collapsed forward onto his lap. She wanted to close her eyes and know no more pain or suffering—to know the peace of cold stone.
Again those strange instincts stirred within her. All she could think to call it was power, old power, deep and familiar. Her body tingled. Was this what dying was like? Was this her soul preparing to leave? Such a strange sensation. It didn’t seem right, dying like this. A useless death. Never to know why her world had been turned on its head.
Sleep called, wooing her into darkness. All she wanted to do was answer that summons, but that old power within her insisted otherwise. She lifted her head and gazed at the gargoyle. There was something different. Her eyes focused on a mark upon his chest. Someone had painted a symbol on her gargoyle. A small part of her mind took affront to that. Why deface a statue? Her mind fuzzed in and out of focus. Her grandmother wanted her to . . . wake the gargoyle?
Her attention drifted back to the strange symbol on his chest. On closer inspection it glowed, and it wasn’t painted on his chest like she’d thought, but hovered an inch above it. She reached out with her blood-covered hand and probed the symbol. Her hand passed through the symbol and touched the cold stone behind it. A flash of light, and it was like she’d touched a high-voltage wire. Her hand fused to the stone as it turned hot all around her. She screamed. Her body and the stone now glowed with a blue light. Power danced and pulsed between them. A wave grew, about to crest. She screamed, knowing she would be consumed if she didn’t direct it in some way.
Ancient memories sparked to life and flooded words and thoughts into her mind. With nothing else to do, she screamed the words.
“I trust to the Mother’s choice. Dark Watcher, immortal servant of the Light, with my power I summon you to wake. With my will I do claim you. Hear me and awake. Evil walks the land. I have need.” Darkness crept across her vision, stealing the sights of the world from her until only the gray-edged image of the brooding stone gargoyle remained.
At her cry the power surged into the stone. It softened under her hands. The shadow of his wings moved up and away as his muzzle dipped down. A warm, wet tongue brushed her cheek.
She collapsed forward against his warmth.
Chapter 3
Stone no longer, he answered his lady’s call. The dark world came alive around him as his senses awoke one by one. The thump of many hearts hummed in his ears. One fluttered rapid and weaker than the rest, on the edge of death. He inhaled a deep breath.
Air tainted with blood and death-scent filled his lungs.
A warm weight slumped across his lap.
Blood covered him is a sticky coating.
He opened his eyes for the first time in many years as his mind slowly sorted order from the chaos of his senses. A woman lay sprawled across his lap. Surprise melted away as cold dread stole across his soul. She laid still, her pale skin gray-tinted. A sheen of sweat covered her face. The only color was the bright splash of her blood.
His lady’s blood. Horror clamped his stomach and unleashed a churning void in his middle. He dragged in another great lungful of air, the lingering scent of her desperation and fear strong on the back of his tongue. With each beat of his heart, blood and burning fury rushed through his veins. Pointing his muzzle at the nearest enemy, he roared. But it didn’t expel all the hate and helpless rage trapped within. Again and again, he howled out his agony until it echoed across the width of the glade in a deafening wave.
Rage destroyed reason. Muscles tensed for battle as talons sprang from his fingertips. He gathered his lady into his arms and fed her power while he straightened from his crouch to face his enemies. At the sight of them cowering away, another low rumble built within him. His lips curled back from his teeth, the need to rend and destroy overwhelming.
The invaders fell back as they retreated to a safer distance. By the scents which permeated the meadow, his enemies were a mix of fae-bloods. A breeze picked up and blew the weakening essence of evil to his nostrils. Silent now, he curved his wings around his shoulders and cupped the escaping scent closer to him. He’d nearly missed it: the corruption of a demon-touched corpse. A vampire.
One of his lady’s attackers knew what he was, and the vampire had run to save its unlife. He lowered his lady to the ground with gentle care as he whispered spells to staunch the flow of blood. While he unfurled his wings he gathered power. Using his soul-link to the Spirit Realm, he tapped into the torrent of creative magic. The cold power from the Spirit Realm mixed with the warm air of the Mortal Realm, creating lift. Magic whirled around him like gale winds before a thunderstorm.
A fae-blood shapeshifter with a gaping hole in her stomach growled and started to back away from him while three of her comrades advanced. By her unmistakable wolf-musk scent, she was dire wolf. With the flick of his tail, he decapitated the female. Before her body toppled to the ground, he was moving. He swept out a talon-tipped hand, ripping out the throat of one of the males and gutted a third with a kick from his hind legs. He pushed the body over backwards, and lunged at the next creature within reach: a silver-skinned female with pointed ears. A snapped neck freed her soul from the anchor of her body.
He was winning, but there were too many to fight his way free, and half his attention was trained on his lady. She was losing her battle to live. Why was her magic not healing her as it should?
Another dire wolf female darted at him. His tail snaked up and speared her in the throat. He didn’t have time for a prolonged battle. This needed to end, now. He directed his magic at the encircling horde. Threads of power condensed in the air and the silvery wisps latched onto any warm-blooded creature near enough to touch. The scent of burning flesh filled the air and the screams of his enemies echoed in his ears.
Seeing he had devastated half their comrades, the other creatures vanished into the shadows of a surrounding maze. He curled his lips and caught their individual scents on his tongue, committing each to memory. When he had them all, he sent his magic to hunt them.
Back at his lady’s side, he lifted her into his arms, gathering her closer so he could share some of his heat. She was far paler than she should have been. Why wasn’t her magic healing her?
While she’d been injured by creatures of darkness, her injuries didn’t look great enough to cause this kind of weakness. For that matter, her attackers shouldn’t have been much of a threat. Even in the Mortal Realm she should have had power and instinct enough to destroy what he had dispatched with ease.
Detaching a portion of his consciousness from his body, he sent it into the woman lying senseless in his arms. Her power still drained away.
He checked the weavings he’d placed over her wounds, but they were holding. No power hemorrhaged from those points. Elsewhere then, but where? His consciousness stretched beyond his body, following the scent trail of magic back to its source. A tree. Two long gashes. Heartwood deep.
By the Light, his lady was a dryad!
Blood leaked down the tree’s majestic trunk and saturated the ground at its roots. Instinct jerked him into motion and he summoned wards to shield the wounds. The prickle of power danced along his skin a moment before he directed the spell. An insubstantial webbing spun out between his outstretched hands, like a delicate blue lattice. It adhered to the bark and sealed the wound, preventing further loss of the hamadryad’s blood.
A hamadryad in the Mortal Realm. Impossible. A dryad’s spirit tree required magic to grow.
Yet here his lady’s young hamadryad grew, defying everything he knew of magic. She must have had a small seedling with her when he’d rescued her from the Black Kingdom and brought her here.
Her soft moan brought him back to the present. It didn’t matter how her spirit tree came to be here. Here it grew, and here it bled its lifeblood upon the ground. He dropped to all fours and padded over to the tree. Circling, he sniffed at the ground until he pinpointed the area where the greatest concentration of magic saturated the loam. The scent of sap and blood triggered instincts and dragged him back to memories of his infancy.
He had first come to awareness hearing his mother’s deep slow heartbeat and the sounds of wind and lashing rain in her branches as he grew within the heart of her tree.
There was something here he needed.
Safe in his watery cocoon, deep inside his mother’s wooden heart, he’d grown strong.
Ah, yes.
Along with the food and water of the earth, he had absorbed his dryad mother’s memories.
There it was—the knowledge to heal his mistress. More of his memories returned, both recent and ancient. Heal her hamadryad and the dryad should live.
Tonight, the second time his lady had called him had been as chaotic as the first. Worse. Now she lay dying along with her tree. If her hamadryad had been older, he could have put her in the tree to rest and heal, but such an attempt in this magic-less place might kill the tree. He scrounged his mother’s memories for other healing methods. He needed to find another way, something that would work in this realm.
And quickly. The power was dissipating, sucked up by the earth like water on drought-cursed land. He dropped into a trance, and summoned his power for the delicate work of separating his mistress’s magic from the magic-starved land.
The greatest concentration of magic pooled just below the grass, in the layer where small fibrous roots sought food and water. With one hand pressed against her trunk and the other on the ground, he flexed his talons. After he absorbed the magic from the ground, he drew it up into his body, purified it and returned it to the spirit tree. He drained the small pool and reached deeper. His mind rushed down into the earth, probing for the smallest tendrils of power. He continued until the smallest scrap, every little fragment no matter how small, was returned to the hamadryad.
After he reinforced the wards on the hamadryad’s larger wounds, he healed the small punctures his talons had made. Those larger wounds would need intensive healing, but must wait for now. Mending the tree would be useless if—
No, he would not permit failure.
Returning to the prone dryad, he sat on his hunches and lifted her into his lap. He licked at her face. Feeling her skin’s clamminess and noting the shallow coloring, he knew he didn’t have long to prepare for healing.
But before he began the arduous task of healing her, he’d need to find a shelter more defendable than this maze. He repositioned the small dryad in his arms, and broke into a ground-eating stride. He navigated his way free of the leafy corridors and emerged into a lush garden. The serene shadows beckoned to him, offering a way to hide from the sun’s revealing rays, and he summoned a weaving of invisibility.
He exited the gardens and encountered a stone home, large and spacious but surprisingly empty of people. He wondered where the servants were, and the guards. There should have been some defenses guarding this house, yet he detected nothing.
After one more probe of the house and surrounding lawn, he tightened his hold on his lady and entered the stone cottage by a back entrance. As a precaution, he placed a ward around the entire structure and keyed it so only he could pass. Then as an added measure, he mentally scanned the area immediately around the building. Still no one.
The house as safe as he could make it, he turned his attention to the inside of the dwelling. A stone-tiled floor stretched out under his talons. He made a soft clicking sound with each step. A large table of polished wood sat at room’s center and a counter stretched around two sides of the room in an L shape. The table held a loaf of freshly baked bread and a basket of sweet-smelling fruit. It lacked a hearth, but if he was to guess, this was a kitchen of some sort.
He laid his burden upon the table. The rapid beat of her pulse worried him and her breathing was too shallow. Dropping into a deeper trance, he summoned his magic. At his silent command, the magic flowed out from his body. It was less than he’d hoped, lacking the wild turbulence he was accustomed to, but it would be enough to heal the Sorceress. It had to be. He bowed his head until his muzzle touched her breastbone and he breathed more power upon her.
Nothing happened. His magic didn’t even penetrate her skin. Panicked, he leapt upon the table and hunched closer, willing the power into her. She jerked awake, her chest heaving as if a nightmare suddenly gripped her. Her eyes focused on him and her expression softened in recognition.
A shaky hand caressed his muzzle, then reached back into his mane, circling his neck. Still she didn’t take what he offered, power she desperately needed. He bumped her face with his muzzle and licked at her skin, but was careful not to sip the smallest drop of her dryad blood for fear of losing his concentration. She moved; her arms tightened around his shoulders as she nuzzled the underside of his jaw. Her fingers grasped his shoulders and clung there a moment before sliding down one arm, grazing the slashes from one of the dire wolves. Gentle fingertips paused in their downward descend and reversed, gliding back over the broken skin. Light caresses turned to a savage prod and he grunted at the sharp pain, but her hand dropped away in the next moment.
Slowed by his shock, his reflexes didn’t spur him into action until her bloody fingers were halfway to her lips. She no longer looked at him. Instead her gaze riveted to the bright smear on her fingers. Before they reached her lips, he snatched her wrist. She cried in frustration, struggling weakly before falling back against the table, her energy spent.
Trying and failing to understand her bizarre behavior, he reared away from her. He dropped to all fours and began to pace with his wings mantled, tail whipping with agitation. He froze at what his mind tried to tell him. She craved his blood, hungered for its power like a mate would. They were not mates. They could never be mates.
Sacrilege.
A soft sound, followed by a watery gasp dragged him back to the table. She was paler than before, gray, and her breath came in a death’s rattle. Gathering her into his arms, he carried her over to a corner and sat with his back braced against a wall, her slight form resting in his lap. She was so light, so fragile. What if he could share blood without forging mating ties? If there was even the slightest chance he had to try. He slid her hand closer to the warm dampness he could feel making its sluggish way down his arm, but her fingers didn’t tighten upon the wound as they had before. She was too weak even for that.
His talons rested cool against his breastbone. Then uncaring of the consequences, or that he was breaking one of the sacred laws binding them, he dragged the point of one talon down his chest a finger’s length. With his other hand, he lifted her head to the wound. He could live as an oathbreaker. He didn’t think his sanity would survive her death again so soon.
Eyes still closed, she shivered in his arms and inhaled a deep breath. Then following the coppery scent to the wound, she sealed her lips over his blood-dampened flesh. At the first lap of her tongue, his concentration shattered like mist before a strong wind. Magic surged and flowed into her. She drank his magic along with his blood, growing stronger with each heartbeat.
His little dryad pressed against him, becoming more demanding in her feeding. Ecstasy threatened to destroy his discipline. The soft caress of her fingers feathered along his abdomen as she stirred in his arms. Her gentle touch shocked him to his core, rousing instincts better left to slumber. Fire settled in his groin. He groaned, then cursed his response. His horns racked the wall behind, sending white dust and bits of debris raining down upon them both. He tightened his arms around her, wanting her closer while at the same time trying not to crush the life from her. His tail coiled around her leg as if it had a life of its own. It seemed endless, the pleasure-pain of her feeding on his power. Yet it was over too quickly. With one last lick along the length of the wound, she tilted her head back and looked at him. A half-smile graced her lips, and then she tucked her head against his shoulder. A few moments later, her breathing evened out as she drifted into sleep.
Rest was far from his thoughts with his lungs working like a great billows and his pulse thundering in his ears. He called on what remained of his discipline and fell into another trance to order his body’s rhythms to calm—it would last moments at best.
Once he was calm again, he opened his eyes and checked her wounds. They were healed. All that remained was a faint pink scar. She may have been healed, but her dryad blood still called to him, its coppery sap-sweet scent enticing him down a dark and forbidden path. He shook himself, fighting deeply rooted instincts. He stood and deposited her back on the table.
He needed to get clean of her blood, her intoxicating scent. Now.
Sniffing the air, he scented water, but couldn’t pinpoint the source at first. He paced around the room, and continued scenting. Then he heard the faint plop of water dripping onto an unyielding surface. He headed in that direction, tossing his arm and wrist bands on the ground as he walked. His knee-length loincloth landed on the carpet. Its beads rattled against each other for a moment before falling silent.
Following the sound of water to its source, he entered a large room. A silver spigot of some sort dripped water into a white basin. On one wall a glass alcove took up a quarter of the room. It smelled of soap and dampness.
Blessed relief.