by Cate Corvin
A tear leaked from the corner of my eye. He brushed it away gently and leaned in to kiss my cheek, then my forehead, the tip of my nose, and finally my lips.
I couldn’t feel it.
“A heart of gold for a heart of stone. You don’t want to speculate on impossibilities, but I can make your impossibility a reality. From this night on, you can stand between those you protect and death. You will be equal to all that threatens harm to your loved ones.”
Oh god. Oh god, he was going to make me... one of them. I knew what was coming next. Another hot tear trickled from my eye. I wished Gio would hear the sounds and come save me, but I instinctively knew he wouldn’t.
“It’ll be over quickly.”
Fuck you, Damien Viridios.
I closed my eyes as he brought the scalpel to my chest. I heard the wet sounds, feeling nothing but a faint pressure on my torso the entire time, but in spite of my impotent terror, I opened my eyes again when I felt a tug.
My heart was in his hands. It was a wet, red thing, pulsing frantically in his palms like a bird. I gazed at the organ with disbelief. My heart.
Was in his hands.
He put it aside, placing it on a metal tray, and picked up something else, something pulsing with a deep crimson light that put my lifeblood to shame, even through my darkening vision.
The Ruby stoneheart.
My heaving breath caught in my throat as the crystals growing from the heart caught the light and sparkled.
His hands moved towards my chest, cradling the stoneheart like it was precious, even though everything was fading to black at the edges. I was dying. My heart was cut out like so much trash, an inessential organ pushed aside to make room for the stone invader. This was the end.
My panic eclipsed everything. I heard a scrape, more wet noises as Damien pushed through my blood and bone and muscle, and then the pressure left.
My chest felt heavy, like a stone was weighing on my chest, because one was weighing there now. It was all I could do to drag in shallow breaths, desperately clinging to consciousness.
I lost the fight. One moment I was battling for air, the next I was opening my eyes again. Damien and the steel tray were gone, and the horizon outside the broad windows was stained with the first faint rays of sunrise.
Everything hurt. I raised a hand, touched my breasts and felt dried blood flaking away. There was no wound, just smooth skin under my fingertips.
But the weight in my chest hadn’t vanished, and the beat was slow and barely discernable. The pain moved through me, with me, like jagged strands of crystal growing through my veins.
I had to get out of here.
My body responded weakly, but I pushed myself off the bed. It was a mess of sex and gore, rumpled sheets stained with blood. How much had I lost while my chest was wide open?
I got to my feet, leaving my dress on the floor. There was no sign of Damien, but my mind was working frantically. Gio, the Onyx bodyguard, would still be outside the doors, but Damien told me what this place was.
A vault. Not only to hold unsuspecting humans to be operated on, but one that could stop gargoyles from getting in.
Or out.
I stumbled to the bedroom door, throwing it open and leaning on the frame as I steadied myself. Pain spiked downwards through my abdomen and the tendons in my hips, a creeping agony that threatened to send me to my knees.
“Help.” My voice was hoarse. “Please help.”
It was a long shot, but my prayers were answered within seconds. The dark, handsome gargoyle came into view at the end of the hall, but he picked up the pace when he took in my wild hair, stiff with dried blood, the coating on my skin.
Gio’s black eyes flared when he took me in, despite the gore. “You need to lay down. The change isn’t complete.”
“I need clothes. Please.” I pointed to my dress, letting my hand droop like it was weak. It was anything but. The pain was intense, but that arm felt powerful, sleek, smooth. “I’m still dizzy. I don’t want to be naked.”
Gio’s hard expression softened as he took me in. “I know it’s a lot to take in, but it’s a gift, I promise.”
Whatever you say, Onyx. Just get inside.
“Please.”
He stepped into the room, his sleek wings brushing the door frame with a sound like glass over metal.
As soon as he bent to pick up my dress, I slipped outside the door, slammed it shut, and flipped up the control panel on the wall. A single red button made my next move pretty damn obvious.
I slammed it hard, setting off the panic alarm and smashing the console into a mess of cracked plastic and wires.
“Holy fuck,” I whispered, looking at my fist. Then looked away. There was an almost-glassy sheen to my skin, and I really didn’t have the mental capacity to process that at the moment.
“Zara!” The door shook as Gio smashed into it from the other side. “Open the door! You’re still in transition, it’s not safe!”
“No can do,” I muttered, and broke for the foyer. Every step was agony, but my body responded like a machine, bolting down the hall, past Guy, who looked shocked, and into the elevator just as iron doors slid shut, blocking off the penthouse.
I let out a breath. Just in the nick of time.
I hammered the ground floor button with just enough restraint not to destroy the panel of buttons and slumped against the wall of the elevator. My little escapade had cost me, pain spiking through my thighs and into my neck and shoulders. Whatever the stoneheart was doing to me, I was shaking now, barely able to stay upright.
The ride down seemed to take an eternity. As soon as the doors opened, I bolted into the ballroom, which was blessedly empty, and saw the glass doors to freedom.
I slipped on the marble floor and went down hard, smashing the tile with my knee. The pain was unreal, consuming everything.
Two thoughts kept me going. Get outside. Call Sawyer.
I forced myself up, gasping from the pain, and shoved through the doors. Glass sprayed outwards, tinkling around me like glittering rain.
The sun rose over the city, painting me in shades of rose and gold over the crimson still staining my skin. A woman walking a dog across the street gasped, her mouth falling open when she saw me, and I stumbled away. I needed Sawyer. He’d know what to do.
Another bolt of agony went through me, from the back of my head down to my heels. I fell sideways, sprawling in an alley. A puddle of cold, gritty water soaked into my hair.
Tears came again, hot against my chilly skin. Pain suffused every inch of my being, and the stoneheart in my chest was radiating tight, prickling torment.
I took a breath, failed to push myself up, slumped back into the puddle.
It was over.
The last thing I saw was a blurry figure bending over me before I gave in to the darkness.
Before the Fire
I sat on the couch, my knees tight together and my hands folded primly in my lap, but there was no way I was about to kowtow to him again. It was done. I was done.
Josh glared at me from the doorway to the kitchen. “Are you fucking serious, Zara?” He gripped the door frame with white-knuckled fingers.
I deliberately placed the small black box on the coffee table. It held the engagement ring he’d given me four months ago, a simple gold band with a small diamond.
“What, it wasn’t good enough? Need a bigger rock, bitch?” He was spitting now as he yelled, his face twisted up and deep red under his high-and-tight haircut.
“It’s not about the ring, Josh.” I stood up, hoping like hell that my hands weren’t shaking. “It’s about you and me. We can’t even manage a functional dating relationship. What makes you think getting married is going to fix that?”
Josh just stared at me, breathing heavily through flared nostrils. He looked like a bull that wanted to charge and gore me on its horns, barely restrained rage threatening to spill over and pulverize me at any moment.
To my surprise, he laughed,
but he didn’t look any less angry. Which made him so much more terrifying. “This is because of the new guy, isn’t it? You’re breaking it off so you can fuck him. You whore. You goddamn fucking slut.”
Sawyer Hawkins had just started at the precinct a few months ago. He’d made the mistake of being friendly to me.
I’d made the mistake of smiling at one of his jokes when Josh could see.
He’d come home that night, stinking of cheap beer, and smashed one of the bedside lamps on the wall over my head.
“This has nothing to do with the new guy.” I kept my voice level, deliberately not saying Sawyer’s name. If I did, if I mentioned him with any level of familiarity, Josh would go off again. “This has to do with you and me. I don’t want to marry you, and I’m leaving. Tonight. We’re not good for each other.”
God knew I’d tried. Josh Aberdeen had been sweet as cherry pie at first, but a few months after I’d moved in with him, I’d woken up one day and realized I only talked to my few civilian girlfriends on Tuesdays, because Josh didn’t like me ‘being on the phone all the time’. I no longer wore the color red, because he thought it made me look slutty. Eyeliner was a thing of the past. So were skirts.
After he proposed and I said yes, he started going to the gym with me and watched me obsessively, checking to see if I looked at other men. I’d managed to develop extremely selective blinders, seeing only equipment, never making eye contact with anyone.
He’d pulled some strings, got us assigned as partners. At first, I’d thought it was because we could work well together, that he was looking out for me. Then I realized it was just another yoke on my shoulders, a way for him to constantly monitor me. Nobody else would’ve believed he was like this at home, because he was all sweetness and adoring fiancé around them, just like he’d been when we were alone in the beginning. He’d joke all day, talk to his buddies, pull his shifts like a good cop. Then he’d come home and unleash hell on me.
Laughing at the new guy’s jokes was the final nail in my coffin.
I’d puked my guts out that morning, realizing just how far down the rabbit hole I’d fallen. Josh was a toxic cloud hanging over my life, and I wasn’t about to hitch myself to him and live the rest of my life under his shadow.
I felt like I was going to be sick again now. Statistics ran through the back of my head in an unwelcome, ever-present monologue, presenting me with the cold, hard facts; that the majority of women were murdered by their partners in domestic disputes, that if I didn’t leave now, I stood only the barest chance of walking out of here whole.
I was as vulnerable as anyone, and I loathed the feeling.
How many women’s hands had I held as they broke down crying as they told me how they’d gotten their bruises? Broken their bones? How much blood had I seen? And how many had I been too late to help?
Not for the first time, bitter jealousy burned at me when I thought of the invulnerability of gargoyles. Of being so hard a fist would break against my skin. Of being bulletproof, so I wouldn’t fear a man who slept with a handgun on his nightstand, terrified of the night something I did would “force” him to use it against me.
But that was impossible, and if I stayed, I knew Josh would kill me one day.
Josh laughed again, shaking his head. He took a deep breath, flexed his hands on the wall. “Come on, Zara. Put the ring back on, let’s get some ice cream and a movie, and just chill tonight. You’re having a bad day, that’s all. No reason to throw a tantrum.” His voice was soothing and pleasant, just like it had been when I’d come home from a bad day when we first started dating.
This was how he got me. Somewhere deep inside that twisted head of his, he flipped a switch from violent fury to calm sweetness. It was a horrifying mockery of Jekyll and Hyde.
I steeled myself. “No. I said I’m done, and I mean it. I’ll pay my half of the bills for the month, but you’ll need to find a roommate or cover them yourself after that.”
The only silver lining to the situation was that I’d already shoved all my clothes in duffel bags and my prized possessions in boxes in the back of my car. Whatever was left here was nothing that couldn’t be replaced.
Josh’s switch flipped again.
“PUT THE FUCKING RING BACK ON, ZARA!” He screamed it, veins bulging in his forehead, turning almost violet. Spit flew from his mouth. He whirled out of the kitchen and swung, burying his fist deep in the wall with a crack that seemed to shake the ground.
I steeled myself and moved out of the living room towards the door. This was it.
“All this to get Hawkins’ dick in your mouth? Or have you been eyeing those fucking gargoyles again? Is that why you’re doing this?” He ripped his fist out of the wall, showering white dust across the carpet as he advanced on me. “I’ll give you one chance to make it up, bitch. One chance. Put the ring on and get on your fucking knees, and all is forgiven. I won’t break your boytoy’s fucking face open if you can do that, baby.”
My stomach lurched, acid climbing up the back of my throat. I could protest my innocence all I wanted, but it wouldn’t penetrate his twisted version of reality. “Goodbye, Josh.” I felt behind me, gripping the cold metal handle of the door.
His lips drew back over his teeth. He looked inhuman, bellowing as his fist plunged towards me. I saw it like time had slowed down, the scarred knuckles barreling towards my face, and ducked my head aside.
The breeze of its passage touched my cheek, and another cataclysmic crack echoed in my ears as he smashed his knuckles right through the wall and into the stud. Blood sprayed back over his hand.
He looked shocked, for some reason. Maybe surprised that he’d finally tried to hit me instead of an inanimate object. It’d only been a matter of time.
I felt that familiar fear again, that Zara Sterling would cease to exist, becoming nothing but another nameless statistic as Josh moved on to a new victim.
I threw the door open and stumbled into the hall as he swore. I was shaking uncontrollably, half walking, half running, his shouted obscenities spilling into the corridor behind me. No one opened their doors, and the sounds of his shouting faded, drowned out by my own rasping breaths and the pounding of my heart in my ears.
As soon as I hit the stairway, my chest felt a little lighter. I was leaving that part of my life behind, and Josh with it. Still, a sliver of fear remained that I couldn’t quite conquer, and I did what it told me to do.
I ran.
Chapter Four
The next time I opened my eyes in a panic, the lights were bright and clinical.
I looked up at a white ceiling, lying on something hard and ice cold, with two unfamiliar faces bent over me.
“There she is.” A fullblood gargoyle, with the deep red-brown glassy horns of the Order of Garnet, was to my right. He wore a white coat. “It’s just as I said, Jennings. She’s been given a stoneheart. Looks like it took well to its new host.”
The human to my left was older, with a pinched look to his face. “Nevertheless, it’s our job to be certain. I’ll shred the paperwork, she’s all yours.”
“Where am I?” I rasped, bracing for the struggle to sit up.
Instead, I sat up smoothly, my shoulders straight even though I hadn’t even given my body the command to actually move yet.
Bits and pieces of last night came flashing back. Rolling in Damien’s arms. The utter terror when I saw the flash of a scalpel. My heart fluttering in his bloody palms.
The ruby gleam of a stoneheart as he held it over my gaping chest. Passing out in a cold puddle.
I clutched a white sheet to my chest, drawing in a ragged breath. Then a familiar face came into focus, the sun parting the clouds, even though he looked like a hot mess and was clearly enraged.
Sawyer got up from a metal folding chair, crossing the room to take my hand. He leaned in close to my ear, close enough that I felt his lips on my strangely sensitive skin, and his voice vibrated with emotion. “I’m going to kill you for this later, Zara.”
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I knew he wouldn’t. There was fear under that anger, in the way he clutched my hand like a lifeline.
“You’re in the city morgue,” the Garnet told me. “They brought you here first, since you were covered in blood, but under the Stone Accords, no one is allowed to declare you legally dead until we’re sure you’re not one of us. I’m a doctor from House Khadara, by the way. I’m here to ensure you’ve successfully acclimated. This… situation is a bit of an unusual one. Humans blessed with stonehearts are given every care to ensure the transplant is a success, but you were found outside in an alley…”
The big male stared at me, clearly awaiting an answer.
“I ran.” I cleared my throat, and the next time I spoke, my voice sounded like mine but… perfected, somehow. Like tones of smooth glass overlaid my own voice. “I had no idea that I was going to be given a stoneheart, and I thought…”
Truthfully, I had no idea what I’d thought. I had still been drunk on wine and sex, and waking up paralyzed by a gargoyle with a scalpel had scared the ever-living daylights out of me. I knew, rationally, that people usually didn’t die from a stoneheart transplant when it was performed correctly.
But try being rational when you’ve seen your very own heart pumping away fruitlessly in someone else’s palm.
The next time I saw Damien Viridios, I was going to annihilate him into fine green rubble.
“Ouch,” Sawyer muttered, and I realized I was squeezing his hand too tight.
My god, I was a gargoyle. I wasn’t a fullblood, but I was strong enough to pulverize his bones. Just the thought sent a burble of laughter to my lips and he looked at me with concern, like I might be going crazy.
Maybe I was. Damien had literally ripped my heart out, but in doing so, he’d answered all my long-lost bitter hopes and prayers, and made me the next best thing to invincible.