Ella jumped out of her chair, the wood scraping and squeaking against the tile floor. “No way. That’s crazy. You want to take the chance that some nocturnis bumps me off while I’m not looking, and Kees winds up dead? That’s just stupid. Or even worse, I forget to look both ways before I cross the street, and—wham!—I get hit by a damned car. Now not only does someone have to scrape me up off the pavement, but you’ve lost a Guardian just as war is about to break out. I’ve never heard anything so dumb! Kees is immortal. He told me so himself. If you link his life to mine, all you do is make him vulnerable at a time when no one can afford for that to happen. I won’t do it.”
She turned, whether to emphasize her point or to stalk from the room, Kees didn’t know. Frankly, he didn’t care. She was not getting away from him. All she had heard when Parsons proposed his plan was that the spell would make him closer to mortal, easier to kill. What Kees had heard was the opposite. If Parsons cast this spell, Ella would have all his strength and power to draw on. With her magic, that would make her a very dangerous opponent. In essence, it would make his little human much harder to kill.
Kees pulled Ella to his side and nodded at the Warden. “Do it.”
She promptly kicked him in the shin.
Once again, he felt no pain, but his female’s growing penchant for violence was something he thought they should maybe discuss. “What was that for?”
“Excuse me?” Her glare could have flayed the flesh from his bones. “What was that for? I don’t know, do you think it could maybe have had something to do with the fact that you don’t make decisions for me, you giant bat-winged jerk? Or how about that I just got finished saying no to something, and the last time I checked, I was the only person allowed to change that to a yes? Which there is no way I’m doing, by the way. You think I want to be bound to an arrogant, high-handed, dictatorial asshole who can’t even admit when something makes him feel good? Fat frickin’ chance, big guy. You can just bite me.”
Kees looked from his red-faced, narrow-eyed human to the Warden on the other side of the table, who had begun to appear very uncomfortable. “Leave us.”
“You know what, I’ll just pop upstairs and put some towels in the guest rooms,” Parsons babbled, already edging toward the door. “It’s too late for you to drive back to Vancouver before sunrise, so you’ll need to spend the night. I’ll just, ah, go get things ready. You two, um, make yourselves at home.”
He made his escape while Ella tried to stop him with empty words about there not being a problem and Parsons not putting himself to any trouble because she’d sooner spend the night in the rental car than under the same roof with Kees.
Not, of course, that she used his name. No, she made up some new ones for him. Some of which even took him by surprise. He hadn’t known his little human had such an extensive vocabulary. It was really quite impressive.
Once Parsons had disappeared, Kees gripped the still-ranting woman by the shoulders and shook her gently. “Quiet.”
She kicked his other shin. “Stop trying to dictate to me.”
“Very well. Will you please be quiet so that we may discuss this rationally?”
Surprisingly, Ella closed her mouth, though she continued to eye him with irritation and no small amount of suspicion. “If by discuss, you mean you’re going to order me to do whatever you say, then no. If you intend to treat me like a thinking, feeling, and logical human being, then feel free to try. I’ll let you know how you’re doing.”
By kicking him, presumably, but Kees knew better than to say that aloud.
Kees gathered his temper. Asking for a human to do as he wished was not an exercise he was accustomed to. It made him uncomfortable, but he’d seen Ella’s reaction to his usual tactics, and clearly he needed a new strategy.
“I would like for us to consider the Warden’s proposal,” he said, making an attempt to keep his voice calm and even. “Perhaps if we reviewed its advantages and disadvantages, we could come to some kind of an agreement that would satisfy us both.”
“I don’t see how.” She frowned up at him. “As far as I can tell, the risks just vastly outweigh the benefits. I get a little more juju, but you potentially get dead. That’s not a fair trade. I’ve been doing fine with what you’ve taught me. I don’t need this binding thing, and I’m not willing to put you at risk ‘just in case’ things go wrong and we end up facing the nocturnis before we’re ready. At that point, the last thing you’re going to need or want is me as a walking, talking Achilles’ heel.”
“I think the benefits are worth the risks. You have looked at this only in terms of what could go wrong, but consider the advantages that Parsons has offered us.”
“What, that I’d be less likely to blow myself up accidentally? I’m not worried. I’ve been doing fine so far.”
“No, that you would be able to draw on my power if the need arose. If we did face the nocturnis, you would need every bit of that power. They fill their order with magic-users in their own right, and the spells needed to defend against them require large amounts of energy. You might need more than you can access from the earth with the necessary speed. If the binding makes my power your power, it would be at your fingertips with no need to call it up from the Source.”
He had decided to focus on the easily imagined benefits the Warden had mentioned. At the moment, he didn’t think Ella would appreciate his argument that he needed to keep her safe almost as much as he needed to defeat the Order. Or worse, she might misinterpret the statement as a revelation of emotion. He felt no emotion to reveal.
Ella adopted a mulish expression and shrugged out of his grip. She crossed her arms over her chest and stepped back to put additional space between them. “I still don’t think that’s worth risking your life.”
“Not even if I am willing to take the risk? It is my life, after all. You should not make decisions about it anymore than I should make decisions about yours, correct?”
“Don’t try to throw my own words back at me, you jackass. That is so not the way to woo me over to the dark side.”
Kees sighed. “I simply wish to point out that if I am aware of the risks and I do not mind them, then they should not matter so much to you. I do not understand why you would object to any chances I might take with my own safety.”
She looked uncomfortable, and the index finger of her right hand tapped a restless rhythm where it was tucked snugly against her left bicep. “Oh, don’t you? Then you don’t mind if I take charge of my own safety and refuse to allow the spell.”
The thought made Kees’s gut tighten and he bit back a growl. Right. That had gotten him nowhere.
“I do not wish to see you hurt, of course,” he began again, “and knowing you are better able to defend yourself will make both of us safer, because I will not be distracted from a foe if I do not have to concern myself with you first. But more than that,” he plowed on, seeing her about to object, “the spell Parsons proposes is reciprocal. It will allow you to draw on my power, but it will also allow me to draw on yours.”
Ella’s mouth snapped shut, and she eyed him with obvious suspicion. “What do you mean?”
Her tone sounded sullen and hostile, but at least she had asked the question and not simply shot him down without thought. That was progress. Wasn’t it?
He hurried to explain. “I can allow you to draw on my power, but the bond will work both ways. You will also be able to augment my power with your own. I cannot describe to you how useful such a boon could be in the heat of battle. My kind relies on our strength and size to fight the enemy. Our magical blood offers us immunity to many of the nocturnis spells, but we cannot perform magic ourselves, so our ability to tap into the Source as you have learned to do is very limited. If we were bonded, you could send that energy to me if I began to tire. Far from costing me my life, a bond with you could save it, little human. You could save all of us.”
She let out a huff and turned away from him to pace toward the darkened windows. “Nice
strategy, big guy, but you almost went right over the edge there. I’m not the kind of girl who goes around saving the world. That’s taking the melodrama just a footstep too far.”
Kees frowned. He could no longer see her face, which made him realize how accustomed he’d become to reading her thoughts and emotions in those gray eyes and soft, pink lips. He could always tell when he had angered her, even before she started kicking, just as he knew he had hurt her when she stepped from the bathroom after their night together only to find him cold and distant toward her. Now she was hiding from him, and he found he disliked the reaction that caused. It made his chest tighten and his palms itch.
“I did not mean to speak dramatically,” he said after a long stretch of silence. “I said only what was true. I do not expect you to save the world; I only point out that you can influence the coming battle more than I think you realize.”
He heard her sigh and saw her head drop, her chin tucking into her chest and her shoulders rolling forward. She looked sad and vulnerable, and the sight made him tense further. He wanted to wipe the image away. He wanted to wipe the sadness away and protect her from whatever harmed her, except an uneasy feeling told him that he might be the cause of her pain.
“Well, I’m glad we agree on that, at least.” She spoke softly, her voice tinged with an odd note, a sort of sad humor, woven through the rich tones. She turned back to him. “If I agree to this, I have one condition.”
He gave a short nod and waited, his heart beginning to gain speed.
“Before Parsons casts the spell, he has to give me a way to remove it.” Her voice grew strong as she presented her demand, and she lifted her head to look him determinedly square in the eye. “I won’t agree otherwise. I’m not going to put up with years and years of being tied to someone who comes to resent me. You already made it clear that you don’t want to be tied to me by anything other than the task at hand, and that’s fine. It works for me, but the spell doesn’t. Not unless I know for certain that I can get out of it when I nee—when I think it’s time.”
Kees stared at her pale little face. Her jaw was set, as stubborn as her heart, and her lips had compressed into a firm line, but her brow was furrowed and dark circles shadowed the tender skin beneath her eyes. She looked set and fierce and heartbreakingly fragile. He wanted to go to her, to touch her, but the minute his weight shifted forward, she drew back, pulling herself even farther away from him.
The itching in his palms intensified, and Kees wanted to roar his irritation. He just didn’t know whom he wanted to roar at.
He nodded. “Agreed. We will do this as you desire. Shall we go find Parsons and tell him to proceed?”
“Might as well.” Ella nodded briskly and turned to leave the room by the exit the Warden had used earlier. He followed close behind and thought he heard her words drift back to him as they entered the hall.
“Before I change my mind.”
Chapter Eleven
The binding spell had been brief, simple, and disarmingly anticlimactic, especially since when it was over, Ella felt absolutely no different. She even asked Alan if he’d done things properly, and he laughed as he assured her he had. She and Kees had been well and truly bound.
She supposed the short, simple nature of the spell should be counted as a plus. After all, being new at this whole magic thing, she wouldn’t have wanted the unbinding Alan had taught her—and included in her textbooks, as she called them, just in case—to be something long and complicated that had to be recited in ancient Sumerian under the light of a gibbous moon and over the body of a sacrificial salamander, but still. She’d expected something a little more impressive. Would one tiny whiff of frankincense have hurt anybody? A tingle in her right big toe? Something.
But no, Ella had felt nothing.
Kees had wanted to wait for morning to do the spell. By the time they found Parsons and made their request, it was nearly three in the morning, and Ella was swaying on her feet—but no, she’d wanted to get it over with before she lost her nerve. Sleep, she figured, would come the instant her head touched the pillow, so better to have it done now, when she wouldn’t have time to lie around and brood over it.
Famous last words.
Turning her head, she glanced at the small alarm clock that sat on the bedside table in Alan’s comfortable guest room. The Rose Room, he called it, not because it was pink, but because a beautiful climbing rose twined around a trellis just outside the bedroom window. Ella had cracked it open before she climbed into bed, and the sweet scent of cool and fading roses soothed her into sleep.
Or it would have. If she hadn’t been lying here wide awake, trying to count sheep and force herself into dreamland. At this point, she thought she had enough of the woolly little beggars to start her own ranch in New Zealand.
She knew exactly what her problem was, of course. It was hard to miss, considering it stood over seven feet tall, growled like a grizzly bear, and currently slept in the room beside hers.
Ella tugged at the covers and twisted onto her side to stare out the rose-bordered window. Every time she thought she’d adjusted to the Guardian, regained her equilibrium and had her feet back on solid ground, he went and jerked the rug out from under her. Did he realize how maddening that was?
It had started That Night, which now glowed in capital neon letters in Ella’s confused mind. He had spent all that time telling her that he experienced as little emotion as the stone he appeared to be carved from, yet all the while he treated her with a tenderness she had never expected. He had touched her as if he cared for her, and when he emptied himself inside her, he’d done it with her name on his lips like a prayer.
And yet, the next morning, he treated her like a disease. The shock had almost knocked her down, but Ella considered herself stronger than that, and smarter. She’d taken the hint, and she’d given him what he seemed to want: space, distance, and chilly formality. Of course, she’d continued to argue with him, because the gargoyle operated under the vastly mistaken assumption that he was always right, and Ella felt she had a duty to point out how misguided such a belief really was. But she’d stopped trying to show him that for a cold, emotionless, warrior monster, the man showed an awful lot of heart.
Take their earlier argument, for example. She had to wonder if he’d actually heard himself speaking. She had, and she saw right through his bellows to the meaning behind it. He worried for her. Worry. That human emotion. And he felt the need to protect her, almost as if he cared (another emotion) about what happened to her. He also hadn’t liked the idea of her staying in Seattle while he returned to Vancouver one little bit. He’d sounded darn close to possessive to her.
Did she sense a theme developing?
She really had to wonder if all gargoyles were so stupid, or was it just Kees? The man honestly appeared to believe his own nonsense about lacking emotion, as if by pretending the feelings weren’t there, he could make them go away. He reminded her of a toddler playing peek-a-boo; just cover his eyes and no one else would be able to see him.
Ella could definitely see him, crystal clear and in living color. Now, she just had to decide if she should continue trying to make him open his own eyes, or just let the whole thing go. Would the chance that she could convince Kees to recognize and acknowledge his own emotions be worth the effort—the supreme effort—it would take her to accomplish the seemingly Herculean task?
She had no trouble recognizing her own emotions. Ella was falling in love with the gargoyle, as strange and ridiculous as that sounded. A week ago, she hadn’t even known he existed, hadn’t known a creature like him could exist, and yet here she lay, staring out into the night and trying to reconcile her increasingly hard-to-ignore feelings for a man who wasn’t even of her same species.
Who’da thunk, right?
Maybe she would understand the emotions tormenting her more easily if she felt them for a different man. You know, a nicer one. Kees, she admitted, was a grumpy, grouchy, dictatorial, annoying, and ofte
n thoroughly unpleasant individual. But he was also protective, patient, intelligent, and fiercely loyal.
His commitment to what he called his mission never wavered. He never questioned the long, lonely period he spent trapped in sleep waiting to be released for the sole purpose of fighting. He believed absolutely in the need to defend the world against the forces of evil, and he would do whatever he deemed necessary to emerge victorious. Ella could admire all of that. God knew she’d met more than enough human men in her life who could barely commit to what they wanted for dinner, let alone to the sacrifice required of a Guardian. His strength, both physical and mental, left her slightly in awe.
He had also demonstrated often that he had the ability to be gentle and supportive. Not just when he touched her, although her body heated and softened every time she remembered That Night, but when he taught her. She would have expected him to be a stern, unforgiving teacher, but while he demanded a lot from her, he never failed to offer encouragement when she needed it, or praise for a job well done. She knew that he had grown to respect her magical abilities and her mind, if not her ability to protect herself from the enemies they were likely to face. And soon. He showed that respect in the way he spoke of her to Alan, and the way he never hesitated to offer her a new challenge when she had demonstrated mastery over an earlier skill.
There was a lot to love about the ornery, stubborn, closed-minded jerk. And unfortunately, her heart seemed determined to ferret out all of it.
In a way, her own uncontrollable feelings for Kees made it easier for her to understand why he seemed so determined to deny his every emotion. Life would be a lot easier if she didn’t have feelings. Then, she wouldn’t experience the hurt that sliced her every time the gargoyle pushed her away. She wouldn’t be lying in bed wishing for something she could never have. And she probably wouldn’t be having any trouble sleeping.
Kees, she thought bitterly, was probably snoozing like a baby next door. The jerk.
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