Stoneskin Dragon (Stone Shifters Book 1)

by Zoe Chant

  It was strange to have permanent housemates again. Strange ... but pleasant. He had thought that he might find it awkward, particularly since he wasn't sure how Reive would react to living in a house with gargoyle magic embedded in its very foundation stones.

  But it had worked out far better than he'd hoped. Reive and Jess were good company, keeping to themselves for the most part, but joining him for occasional meals in the dining room with the big windows looking out over the harbor. He had been teaching Reive to play chess some nights, beside a roaring fire with sleet rattling against the roof tiles. Jess was helping him in the library.

  With plenty of room available, Jess and Reive had taken over one wing of the big house, with several suites of rooms. Reive was renovating one of them for some kind of rock collection, and Jess had been talking about converting another to a nursery. They had several bathrooms and their own kitchen rather than needing to use the main house kitchen. Jess also had her own small library for her own books. As winter settled on the island, Mace found himself more contented than he had been in a long time.

  On this particular winter day, he was puttering around in the library with Jess, working on her project to sort, categorize, and inventory the library's vast and disorganized collection.

  Frost crusted the edges of the library's windows. Outside, wind lifted snow in small swirls above the Newfoundland hills. The harbor was locked in ice. Wind pounded the sturdy stone walls of the old house.

  Despite the cold, it was warm enough inside, with just a little draftiness around the edges to make the fireplace pleasant. The entire house was geothermally heated. Mace didn't know exactly how it worked. His great-grandparents had done it when they built the house, the first of the family to come to this new land, and those secrets were lost now along with the earliest gargoyles, who knew how to do things their descendants could only guess at.

  In any case, it made for a pleasant winter experience and cheap heating costs.

  "Uncle?" Jess said, looking up from a stack of books. He still got a little thrill of pleasure when she called him that. "I was thinking about going flying with Reive today, while it's still light outside, if you don't mind."

  "Of course I don't mind. You've been spending far too much of your time shut up in this dusty old library."

  "I love this dusty old library. It's wonderful here. Just let me put these away." Jess got up and stretched. Her hair was pulled back in a thick braid, with wisps of irrepressible brown curls trying to escape. That hair had never been a MacKay family trait. It must come from her father, that long-dead human, Lizzie's mate, who he never had a chance to meet.

  He put his own book aside and went to help Jess reshelve the catalogued books.

  "I wish I could have brought more of the gargoyle books from the Ossowa library," Jess said. "But those were for the library, not for me. You have an amazing collection here, though. I feel like I've barely seen a fraction of what's here."

  "This isn't all of it either," Mace said. "The entirety of our family library doesn't fit in this room, large though it is. There are boxes of books in the attic too."

  Jess's eyes went round. "More books? How many more?"

  "A lot," Mace said with a laugh. It was easier to laugh these days, too. He felt less rusty at it. "Imagine generations of long-lived bibliophile gargoyles living in this old house, and you might have some idea of how bad the problem is."

  The smile faded from her face. "Do you think there could be more copies of the book up there?"

  She didn't have to specify which book. "I think the book was one of a kind," Mace said. "Fortunately for all of us. The secret of gargoyles, the making and unmaking of us, is much too powerful to even risk letting it falling into human hands again."

  "I know," Jess said. She frowned, looking down at the book in her hands, then quickly shoved it onto a shelf. "It just seems like a shame. All that knowledge, lost."

  "Some knowledge isn't meant to be found."

  "Knowledge isn't evil on its own," Jess argued. "It's what you do with it that matters."

  "Yes, well," Mace said, "with people like Black Robe out there, I'm just as happy to let it stay lost."

  He had picked up the young people's nickname for the magician, since they still didn't know any more about him than they had before. Mace had feelers out with Gio and everyone else he knew in the antique book collector market, but so far no traces had surfaced. The magician was gone. Mace was too cynical, or perhaps realistic, to expect that he wouldn’t be back, though.

  "You're sure he can't come here?" Jess asked.

  "Positive. The defenses of this place will not let him."

  Jess looked back at the bookshelves, trailing her fingertips along the spines. "You know what I've been thinking about? It might be nice to set up a library down in the village. Especially now that I know there are boxes upon boxes of books up here that we don't even have room to display. Of course I wouldn't take out any of the really valuable ones, or any that you're sentimentally attached to. But it's my dream, you know ... running a little library. And they all read a lot here, even the old fishermen. There just isn't much else to do in the winter. I think a library, maybe with an attached bookstore, might be really fantastic for the people here."

  "If it makes you happy," Mace said quietly, "I would be delighted to offer up my library to stock your shelves."

  Jess left the room with a skip in her step, off to find Reive and bursting with ideas for her new library. Mace looked after her with a smile, then stirred up the fireplace and went over to his desk.

  Most of the drawers in the desk were unlocked and contained nothing of value. But there was a locked drawer at the back of the desk's rolltop. Mace took out a small gold key and unlocked it. He pulled out the thick sheaf of handwritten notes and laid them on the desktop for perusal.

  He had been working on this project intermittently. He could only do it when Jess wasn't in the house.

  He did not plan to tell Jess, Reive, or anyone else that the secret of making gargoyles was not entirely lost. He had done the entire ritual himself, after all, and with his sharp memory, he was confident he could recreate it if he needed to.

  Since that night at the rock pool, he had been noting down all he could remember, annotating and adding, carefully reconstructing it.

  He had meant what he said to Jess. Some knowledge ought to be lost. But he still wasn't quite ready to let go of this particular secret. Not with people like Black Robe out there. His people's survival might someday hinge on it.

  It was just that the only person he trusted with it was himself.

  He had to smile at his own hubris.

  They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions ...

  He reached for a fountain pen from the edge of the desk and spread the sheets apart. Before he could get started, the fax machine in the corner began to clatter.

  Hmm. He wasn't expecting anything. Out of an abundance of caution, he put his notes back in the drawer and locked it. The fax machine had stopped chattering by the time he was done. He went over to see what it had spit out.

  The fax was from the University of Oslo in Norway, puzzling him, for he didn't remember requesting anything from them. Then he saw Jess's name on the top sheet, and remembered abruptly that she had mentioned she'd sent them some pages from the book for translating. With everything that had happened, he'd completely forgotten about that, and apparently, so had Jess.

  He hesitated briefly, but there was nothing to suggest the faxes were meant to be for Jess's eyes only. There was a cover letter from the university, which he glanced at before flipping quickly through the pages of rough, blocky scans, most of them showing Norse runes with annotated translations in English written next to them. One page was almost entirely taken up with drawings of some sort of—medallion? An ornamental carving, perhaps? This one was annotated mostly with question marks.

  Mace flipped back to the cover letter.

  Here are the translations you reque
sted. It's quite an interesting project. What did you say this is from? We were wondering if it was a fiction project you were working on, or perhaps something like another Voynich Manuscript, an authentically old manuscript with made-up contents. Or, rarest of all, an actual, untranslated version of a previously unknown myth. We'd be very interested in seeing the original!

  Most of this is concerned with an object called Hrungnir's Heart. Hrungnir, if you aren't familiar, is a giant made of stone in Norse mythology. His heart is also said to be made of stone.

  This manuscript talks about Hrungnir's Heart as a physical object that can be placed in a human or animal body and turn them to living stone like the mythological giant. It goes on to say that it can be used in reverse, to turn living stone to normal, inanimate stone once again.

  We've never come across a story like this in the extant writings, so we would be fascinated to know where you found it!

  By the way, we were also curious if you know someone named Professor Javic Lundgren. Is he a friend of yours? He's come around several times wanting to see the translations. We showed him what we had at the time, but if you can contact him, you can let him know the project is finished.

  There was a nearly illegible faculty signature scribbled below—Dr. so & so.

  Mace lowered the page and frowned deeply.

  Perhaps the secret was not as lost as they had hoped.

  This Javic ... could he be Black Robe? Or someone else looking for the book? Jess had mentioned that Black Robe had said he was working with others.

  Mace flipped back to the drawings. It could be a medallion of stone, he thought.

  Was it possible to turn someone into a gargoyle just by using a physical object, no ritual needed? Maybe the ancient Vikings were the earliest gargoyles. Perhaps they had the secret long before medieval alchemists came across it.

  Memory stirred. Family legends half-forgotten. Stories told around the fireplace when he was only a child.

  His mother used to say that his family came to Newfoundland originally because their people had lived here once. That once, very long ago, Newfoundland had been home to gargoyles.

  It had been settled by Vikings, in the very distant past. But all of that was gone now.

  Or was it?

  He had to look for this thing ... Hrungnir's Heart. Maybe it didn't exist. Maybe it was only a legend.

  But if it was real, he couldn't risk letting Black Robe beat them to it, and get his hands on it, and destroy them all.

  If you enjoyed this book, please join my mailing list so you won't miss Mace's book, Stonewing Gargoyle, Stone Shifters #2, coming later in 2021!

  Most of the previous events described in this book (Reive's poisoning and the fight with the gargoyles) took place in Dancer Dragon, Bodyguard Shifters #6, if you haven't read it yet. Available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited!

  Bodyguard Shifters #7, Babysitter Bear, will be out soon.

  A note from Zoe Chant

  Thank you for buying my book! I hope you enjoyed it. If you’d like to be emailed when I release my next book, please click here to be added to my mailing list: http://www.zoechant.com/join-my-mailing-list/. You can also visit my webpage at zoechant.com or follow me on Facebook or Twitter. You are also invited to join my VIP Readers Group on Facebook!

  Please consider reviewing Stoneskin Dragon, even if you only write a line or two. I appreciate all reviews, whether positive or negative.

  Stonewing Gargoyle, Stone Shifters #2, Mace’s book, will be out later in 2021. Also look for Babysitter Bear, Bodyguard Shifters #7, coming soon!

  Cover art: © Depositphoto.com

  Also by Zoe Chant

  Bodyguard Shifters

  Bearista

  Pet Rescue Panther

  Bear in a Bookshop

  Day Care Dragon

  Bull in a Tea Shop

  Dancer Dragon

  There is a convenient boxed set of the first four books.

  Bears of Pinerock County

  Sheriff Bear

  Bad Boy Bear

  Alpha Rancher Bear

  Mountain Guardian Bear

  Hired Bear

  A Pinerock Christmas

  Boxed Set #1 (collects Books 1-3)

  Boxed Set #2 (collects Books 4-6)

  And more … see my website for a full list at zoechant.com!

  If you enjoyed this book, you might also like my paranormal romance and sci-fi romance written as Lauren Esker!

  Shifter Agents

  Handcuffed to the Bear

  Guard Wolf

  Dragon’s Luck

  Tiger in the Hot Zone

  Shifter Agents Boxed Set #1

  (Collecting Handcuffed to the Bear, Guard Wolf, and Dragon's Luck)

  Standalone Paranormal Romance

  Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

  Keeping Her Pride

  Warriors of Galatea

  Metal Wolf

  Metal Dragon

  Metal Pirate

  Turn the page for a preview …

  Preview: Shifter Agents

  If you enjoyed Stoneskin Dragon, try SHIFTER AGENTS by Lauren Esker!

  Full-length HEA shifter romantic suspense! The men and women of the Shifter Crimes Bureau fight to protect their mates and the other shifters in the Pacific Northwest.

  Handcuffed to the Bear

  Guard Wolf

  Dragon’s Luck

  Tiger in the Hot Zone

  Boxed set: Books 1-3

  Keep reading for a preview of the first book in the series, Handcuffed to the Bear:

  A bear shifter ex-mercenary and a curvy lynx shifter searching for her best friend's killer are handcuffed together and hunted in the wilderness. Can they learn to rely on each other before their pasts, and their pursuers, catch up with them?

  Chapter One

  Casey's first thought was, How did rocks get in my bed?

  Her second thought was that maybe the rocks were actually in her head.

  Okay, I'm never drinking anything Billy mixes for me again. Her boss's favorite bartender had a heavy hand with the alcohol.

  Although ... she'd only had one drink. That she remembered.

  The annual company mixer for Lion's Share Software, the tech firm she worked for, was held each year on a cruise ship off the coast of Washington. This was the first time Casey had been invited, after working her way up from a lowly mailroom employee to nothing less than the administrative assistant for Roger Fallon, the head of the company himself, in just two years.

  All the high-level employees were shifters of one kind or another. It should have been an opportunity for Casey to spend two days among her own kind, making professional connections and sipping expensive drinks. They would be sailing up Puget Sound, around the scenic San Juan Islands, and then back to Seattle by lunchtime the following day.

  At this point, though, all she remembered clearly was sailing out of Seattle. Billy had opened up the bar, and everyone was mingling out on the deck. She'd had a drink ... or possibly two ...

  Shit, did I get roofied? What the hell happened to me?

  She was slowly becoming aware that not all of her physical misery was because of a hangover. She was nauseated and trembling, but some of the shivering was because it was actually quite cold and damp. Those really were rocks pressing into her backside.

  Her .... very naked backside.

  Startled, and even more worried, Casey peeled her eyes open. It was dim, but not the flat darkness of a room with the doors and windows closed. She was outside somewhere. As her senses came slowly back online, she began to register the myriad little smells and sounds of a forest at night. Leaves rustled overhead; tiny things skittered in the darkness. She could smell wet leaf mold and the acrid tang where a fox had marked its territory. Since she was in her human form, her senses weren't much sharper than a non-shifter's, but she could feel the lynx instincts inside her stirring lazily at the proximity of small prey. Her awareness of her lynx side was fuzzy, though, muffled by the
lingering vestiges of whatever the hell had happened to her.

  And she really was naked. Rocks and wet leaves pressed into uncomfortable parts of her anatomy. Had she been—? Her mind shied away from even asking the question. She didn't feel terribly uncomfortable in the way that a person might if they were—if they'd been—

  Raped, she thought. Don't dance around it. You're naked in the woods and the last thing you remember is having a drink at a party. The implications are obvious.

  But she really didn't feel like she'd had sex anytime recently, forcible or otherwise. Mostly she just felt achy and miserable and like she might throw up if she sat up too suddenly.

  And also naked. Very naked.

  Casey started to raise a hand to investigate her physical condition, and was brought up short by a sharp jingling, like a heavy bracelet, and a tug on her wrist.

  Wow, okay, that was twelve shades of not good. She was chained to something. It was too dark to see what it was. A log?

  Casey gritted her teeth and sat up. Her stomach heaved, but once the initial wave of dizziness passed, she felt better now that she was vertical. At least, it made her feel a little more in control of the situation.

  The in-control feeling went away fast when she discovered that she wasn't chained to a log, she was handcuffed to a dead guy.

  "Oh Jesus," she whispered.

  She gave the cuffs an experimental little tug. They were locked around her left wrist and Dead Guy's right one. He was a very large man, lying facedown in the damp dead leaves of the forest floor with his head twisted to the side, away from her. And he was naked too.