The stone warmed under her hands, then all along her body. She didn’t care if he gave her a scorching sunburn; she wasn’t moving. The shadow of his wings moved up and away as his arms encircled her shoulders. A warm tongue slathered across her cheek and Gregory’s rumbling purr broke across her hearing.
“Tickles!” she gasped as tears streaked down her cheeks. She squirmed to get away. Helpless to stop, she continued crying, laughing, and shaking.
Gregory licked up her tears. To her utter surprise, his shoulders began quivering, shaking Lillian’s entire body with the force of his silent sobs. The need to protect and comfort, as compelling as anything she’d ever experienced, had her rocking him back and forth, murmuring meaningless words into his neck. “Hush now.”
“I didn’t know if your tree could heal you. The thought of losing you again...”
“We survived.”
“Yes, you’re a tough little dryad.”
She gently pushed away from him just enough to look up into his face. His dark eyes tracked the motion of her hands as she reached up to caress his cheeks. “I love you, too, gargoyle.”
Stretching up on her toes, she tried to plant a kiss on his cheek. Her foot slipped, and she lost her balance. He caught her but was far from steady himself, and they both pitched sideways. She yelped in surprise as they toppled off the pedestal. Gregory reacted faster and turned them in midair. He landed first, taking the brunt of the impact on his back. She still slammed painfully into his chest, knocking the breath from them both.
“Thanks,” she managed between bouts of laughter. “Having an eight-foot-tall gargoyle land on top of me isn’t on today’s to-do list.”
“I think I’ll just stay here for a few minutes until I figure out which way is up.” He lay underneath her, panting, his wings spread to their fullest on either side. After a moment, he started to chuckle. “You’re welcome to use me as a pillow for however long you like.”
“And would your willingness have anything to do with the fact I’m as naked as the day I was born?” She decided modesty required too much energy and simply snuggled closer.
His eyes remained closed, and he replied in a slow, lazy drawl. “Entirely possible.”
“You’re incorrigible. You know that, right?” Her words were playful, but a sense of seriousness was settling over her heart, eroding her earlier joy. She remembered the demon all too clearly. And she didn’t believe for a minute the demon was gone, even if she couldn’t feel it slithering around in her soul. It would only be a matter of time before the demon grew strong enough and made its reappearance.
“My little dryad, you do feel different,” Gregory said.
She frowned as she mused over his words. She did feel different and wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. “My magic is gone. I’ve been cored like an apple.”
“Hmm... that explains it,” Gregory rumbled by way of answer, sounding more relaxed than she ever remembered hearing. He nuzzled her hair, making sounds of contentment deep in his throat. A large, warm hand settled on her shoulder, then moved down leisurely to stroke her back.
“Explains what, exactly?” she asked, though she wasn’t certain she wanted to know. His answer might destroy the pleasure she took in his petting. He switched to running his hands along her hair before trailing his fingers down her back.
Resisting the urge to arch her back in cat-like fashion, she instead lifted her head to meet his eyes. He wasn’t looking at her. His focus was on her hamadryad. By the curve of his smile, which showed a generous amount of fang, he was pleased with what he saw.
“Gregory?”
“It’s easier if I show you.” He rolled her off to the side, then sat up. When he’d gained his feet, he reached down and pulled her up after.
Now that she was standing, looking down at herself, she no longer felt sexy—not covered in tree sap and bits of grass, dirt, and other plant materials. “A bath and some clothing would be nice,” she mumbled to herself.
With a slight motion, Gregory stirred the air with one hand. Shadows, flecks of sunlight, and bits of soft moss came to his hand. While she watched in silence, he wove a skirt and vest from the materials. It wasn’t as sophisticated as what the other dryads had made for her, but she was twice as happy. “Thank you.”
After she donned her new clothing, Lillian let herself be led back to her hamadryad. She even managed to swallow back the numerous questions floating through her thoughts.
“You said you felt empty?” he asked.
“Yes, nothing happened when I tried to call my magic. I thought you were dead and a part of me had died as well... but you weren’t... and you heard me, even though I had no magic left.”
“I’ll always feel your joy and your pain; any powerful emotion will touch me. You don’t need magic for that.”
“I’m glad.” Her words couldn’t convey the slightest drop of what she felt for him, but her throat tightened and blocked any more words from escaping.
He reached for her hand. “Do you trust me?”
“Of course,” she agreed but didn’t know what he was getting at. Now she could add feeling perplexed to the riot of emotions bubbling up inside.
“The demon is gone from you. In part, that is why you feel empty.”
“How? I thought you couldn’t remove it without killing me.”
“I couldn’t. Your hamadryad did what I couldn’t—feel.” He took her hand and pressed it against the rough bark of the trunk. “I didn’t expect this.”
At first, she felt nothing except the tree, then Gregory put his hand over hers and called power. It washed into her.
“There is no danger,” he whispered above her, “not while I’m here with you.”
His mind touched hers, then his thoughts flowed away into the hamadryad. He tugged Lillian along after him.
“Do you feel it?”
Just as she was going to say no, she heard the distant echo of another mind, its enraged thoughts broadcasting its loathing. She sent her consciousness in the direction of the disturbance. Her hamadryad’s mind surrounded hers. It was strangely comforting, and Lillian forgot what she’d been doing until Gregory mentally nudged her.
“Come. You need to see this, so you’ll no longer doubt yourself.”
Another tortured, infuriated scream reverberated throughout the internal world of the hamadryad. It was so full of hatred Lillian shivered at the sound.
“That’s my demon, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Your hamadryad has trapped it.”
The demon howled again.
Lillian continued to follow Gregory’s spirit until she sensed they were deep in the hamadryad’s wooden heart. Ahead of them, golden power coiled and twisted around something of darkness. The two forces were joined in a fierce battle beyond Lillian’s understanding. What she saw wasn’t fought in the physical world; this was a battle between two spirits. Somehow Gregory was using his power to show her what was going on inside the hamadryad.
Gregory drew back from the fight and urged her along with him. Lillian swayed and found herself again in her body, staring at the trunk of her redwood.
“I don’t understand. How can my hamadryad trap the demon soul? Wasn’t the demon... part of me?”
“The demon was grafted onto your soul—the ancient essence of the Sorceress. You feel empty because you are no longer the Mother’s Avatar. That power now belongs to your hamadryad. In essence, she is now the Sorceress.”
“Gregory—” she held up her hand, “—you’re giving me facts, not an explanation.”
“Sorry.” He had the grace to look embarrassed. “I’ve been telling you half-truths for so long...” He sighed and bowed his head. “While the hamadryad was healing you, she saw a way to strike at the demon. One I hadn’t thought of. Apparently, the demon hadn’t, either. To heal you, your tree needed to call power from the Spirit Realm. Something both you and the demon were too weak to do, so the hamadryad called your shared soul to her. The tree became the Sorceress. Seeing no other way fo
r its host to be healed, the demon allowed this, but it had to go with the soul, into the hamadryad.”
“The hamadryad took my soul?”
Gregory curled a wing around her shoulders and guided her away from the tree. The warmth of his body pressing against hers triggered an answering heat in her belly. As if he read her thoughts, he bowed his head and nuzzled her shoulder.
“Stop that.” She slapped his nose away. “You’re trying to distract me. Did you just say I’m soulless?”
“Of course not. Your hamadryad is a part of you. It doesn’t matter to me which vessel the other half of my soul inhabits. In my eyes, you are one being.”
Easy for you to say, she thought to herself. First my memories and now my soul.
But it wasn’t Gregory’s fault, either.
Focus, Lil. You’re just scared shitless. Suck it up.
She glanced in the direction of the hamadryad. “So, my tree has trapped the demon?”
“Yes. The demon is tied to the Sorceress’s soul and can’t escape. A hamadryad is different than her dryad. A demon must prey on emotions of jealousy, greed, rage, and fear to overwhelm its host’s mind and take command of the body. Unlike a normal host, a hamadryad lacks the type of emotions a demon can manipulate. The demon has been rendered impotent.”
“I don’t trust the demon. She’s a cunning bitch. She’ll find a way to hurt or corrupt my hamadryad.”
“The demon can’t hurt your tree. Your hamadryad is doing more than passively trapping the demon.” Gregory pointed at the redwood, then made a sweeping motion to indicate the far distant forest. “What do all trees do?”
Lillian didn’t think Gregory wanted a scientific answer, so she waited for him to answer with an arched brow.
When he realized she wasn’t going to answer him, he continued with his explanation. “A normal tree can purify the soil and water. A hamadryad does much more.”
Lillian looked back to her hamadryad with renewed interest. “My redwood is purifying the demon?”
“Yes. Killing its evil. Eventually, she’ll release the second, damaged soul back to the Spirit Realm. But hamadryads work slowly.”
A new concern wormed its way into Lillian’s mind. “How long will this process take?”
“Perhaps a season. Maybe two,” Gregory answered.
“If I can’t reclaim the powers of the Sorceress until then, that’s going to be a problem.”
Gregory nodded. “There is that concern. The Lady of Battles will likely send her minions before the hamadryad has killed the demon. You can’t merge with your tree at all until the demon is dead, or it will migrate back to you with your soul. And it isn’t stupid enough to be tricked a second time.”
“What can I do?”
“We’ll unite all the Clan and the Coven and create a force to fight the Lady of Battles herself. And I still am the Father’s Avatar; I’m far from helpless. As long as the hamadryad holds the demon trapped, it can’t reach me through you.”
“I’m glad you’re safe from the demon, but we’ve just traded one problem for another. Without magic, I’m useless. I’ll be a liability when the Lady of Battles comes calling.”
“The Battle Goddess can’t actually come to this Realm. We’ll just have to deal with her underlings.” A glint of humor sparked in Gregory’s eyes. “I don’t think you’re half as helpless as you think. The demon is gone, and your hamadryad has blocked you from touching your dryad magic, and that of the Sorceress. But if I am not mistaken, you still have one formidable talent.”
“What? Polishing swords?”
He looked baffled for a moment and then chuckled. “It does have to do with weapons. Natural weapons.” Gregory flared his wings and gave them a little shake.
Lillian’s mouth dropped open. He didn’t mean...? Surely not.
“The power to shapeshift into a female gargoyle is a power that has nothing to do with your power as the Avatar. Up until now, there were no female gargoyles but because of the Lady of Battles—” Gregory paused, seeming to search for the correct words. “Because of her breeding program, you are now the first female gargoyle. You are equal parts dryad and gargoyle. Where the other female dryad children sired by gargoyles carried the potential, none of them could take that next step and become gargoyles themselves.”
“You’re talking about the genetic code—recessive and dominant genes.”
Gregory looked uncertain.
“Never mind.” She grinned from ear to ear. “I can be a gargoyle if I choose?”
“You’ll need rest and then training first, but yes, my lady, you are still a gargoyle.” He reached for her hand, his engulfing hers.
She squeezed his fingers. After what the demon had forced her to do, Lillian wasn’t sure what Gregory wanted. Yes, he loved her. He’d always loved his Sorceress. But she was no longer the Sorceress. She didn’t even have a soul.
“You are my beloved companion regardless if you’re a dryad, a gargoyle, or demon possessed.” He tapped his fingers on the back of her hand.
Of course he knew her thoughts, they were touching. He could read her every thought and emotion. Heat mounted her cheeks, and she stared at the ground.
A finger under her jaw tilted her head up. She was just wrapping her arms around his neck when the sound of hooves on gravel intruded.
Gregory sighed, then rested his chin on the top of her head. “It’s probably that one-horned fool.”
She chuckled as she curled her arm around his waist instead. “If he’s here, Gran can’t be far behind. She always knows what I’m thinking before I do—she probably knew down to the hour when my hamadryad was going to go into labor.”
As Gregory had predicted, it was a white blur that bolted from the nearest maze entrance. The unicorn galloped toward them, grass and clumps of dirt flying in his wake.
“Bet Gran has a feast laid out for us.”
“I hope so.”
Lillian took note of her gargoyle’s eagerness at the mention of food. “Come on, let’s go greet the unicorn and then eat.”
“Mmm, roasted unicorn meat.”
She swatted Gregory in the arm, then took his hand as they walked out from under the canopy of her redwood. Once again, her maze felt like home, her life complete, the void of missing memories no longer important. Some things she could live without. Gregory wasn’t one of them.
Epilogue
LORD DRAYDRAK GALLOPED down the sandy beach of his island home. The ocean breeze blew warm and strong, driving the waves high up the sands to wash around his hooves. As soon as he’d felt the sword’s return, he’d bolted from his temple, through the terraced gardens, down hundreds of stone stairs, and finally onto the warm sands.
As pleasant as his surroundings were, he wasn’t out for a pleasure jaunt. He slowed when he approached the sword lying half in the ocean and half on the shore.
He hadn’t expected the sword to return so soon, but then again, he hadn’t planned for the misbegotten Riven to find it either. His original plan was for the sword to provide the Avatars with enough power to allow them to heal swiftly and return to the Magic Realm where he could free the female half of the Avatars’ soul to be cleansed and reborn.
But his twin had disrupted his plans.
Now he’d have to set into motion a new strategy to force the Avatars’ return.
He couldn’t allow his sister to sink her claws into them more than she already had.
The Divine Ones were clear on that. All of creation would suffer if his twin succeeded with her plan.
If he couldn’t free the Avatars from her influence, then he would have to send his Gargoyle Legion to kill them both.
There was no other choice.
Lillian and Gregory’s adventures continue in Sorceress Rising.
Sorceress Rising
A Gargoyle & Sorceress Tale
Book 2
Lisa Blackwood
Sorceress Rising
Blurb
IGNORANCE NEARLY KILLED Lillian
once.
That time, she’d known nothing of magic until Gregory, her Gargoyle Protector, awoke from his stone sleep and saved her from demons escaped from the Magic Realm. They defeated the demonic Riven at great personal cost, one which forced them both to hibernate for months while they mended.
Healed, Lillian wakes to a world greatly changed, one where her sleepy northern town has been overrun by military, scientists, and paparazzi. Apparently, her battle with the Riven didn’t go completely unnoticed, and her actions put her Coven family at risk of exposure.
These new tensions unearth another concern. Lillian and Gregory may be one being in the Spirit Realm, soul mates in the most literal sense, but it doesn’t guarantee a perfect accord here on Earth, especially when Gregory’s clearly defined sense of good and evil urge him to eradicate anyone he deems as evil—which, to her dismay, includes a good chunk of humanity.
But their troubles are not limited to humans, not when another, older power rises from the ocean’s depths. Tethys, a siren of the ancient world, has her own plans for Gregory. For the first time in their many lives, Lillian finds herself at odds with her other half.
And if she doesn’t master her own magic, this battle will become her greatest defeat.
Prologue
A TREMOR SHOOK THE silent, underwater world. Fish darted into the safety of large schools as other marine life took shelter in the deep crevices of the living reef. A moment later, the ocean floor bucked and shivered in the grip of an earthquake. Fierce shockwaves rolled out from the underwater epicenter, displacing vast quantities of water. As the pressure built, water rushed toward the distant landmass—a series of enormous waves building in height and power.
Deep in the heart of the coral reef, the siren shifted and turned in her sleep. Chunks of calcified reef broke away. The tiny bodies of coral from centuries past crumbled, sprinkling her with sediment.
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