Rocked by Love (Gargoyles Series)

by Christine Warren

  “Okay,” Kylie said, resting her hands on her hips and surveying the area around her desk just to make sure no one had gotten overexcited and touched her equipment. “Why don’t you tell me where you’re at and we can go from there?”

  When the tech didn’t answer immediately, Kylie looked up to find him standing not by the bundle of cable where she’d last seen him, but less than two feet away from her. He still had the cable in his hands, but now he held a length of it in between his beefy fingers like a garrote, and when her eyes met his, she could see the crazy in them. They looked black and cloudy and entirely glazed over.

  He lunged at the same instant that she screamed and threw herself backward to escape imminent strangulation. She heard a loud crash from the hall, a curse from her attacker, and a fierce yowl from King David, but she had no idea which came first. Everything seemed to unravel into chaos and her only thoughts weren’t even real thoughts; she operated purely on instinct, throwing herself on top of the balance ball that had been pushed aside near her desk, rolling off the top, and using her legs to propel it into the crazy technician’s path.

  The tech kicked the ball away, the force of impact sending the inflatable sphere of rubber bouncing off half the vertical surfaces in the room. Every time it pinged and ricocheted, Kylie felt the hysterical urge to giggle. It almost made her feel as if she were featured in one of her Coyote namesake’s cartoons. Any time now, someone was going to come out with a “Meep! Meep!” and she was going to lose it.

  With the giant ball out of his way, the tech moved faster, cornering her in the space below the other, unopened window and laying his length of cable against her throat. Before he could exert any pressure, though, a golden blur flew into the picture and plastered itself against the man’s head. He screamed and jerked back, and Kylie could see an enraged King David hanging onto the technician’s face with tooth and claw.

  The cat had puffed himself up to nearly twice his normal size, and his tail whipped back and forth like a cobra on meth while he proceeded to try and dig his way inside her attacker’s skull. Judging by the blood and screaming, he might even be making some decent progress.

  And her lawyer had told her to get a dog. Pfft.

  Kylie scrambled to her feet, preparing to dart past the fracas into the hall and immediately to Dag’s side, when the mountain figuratively came to Mohammed. Dag appeared in the doorway, skin gray, fangs bared, and humanity nowhere to be seen. Since no other tech accompanied him, either he had already killed them, or seeing him in his natural form had scared the unsuspecting workers to death. In the moment, she didn’t really care which.

  She immediately threw herself in his direction, wasting no time in protesting when he all but shoved her behind him. That was exactly where she wanted to be, so he wouldn’t be getting any arguments. Not about this. She even had the foresight to cover her ears when he let out another of his roars, although she did glance up at the ceiling to make sure she had time to dodge any falling plaster. Luckily, this time the ceiling held.

  The tech finally managed to pry King David from his face and threw the feline across the room. The cat sailed into the open closet door and thumped hard against something inside. Kylie heard another yowl and cried out in response. Oy, but she hoped he wasn’t seriously hurt. As soon as Dag finished kicking this roseh’s ass, she was taking a shot of her own and then rushing the King to the vet.

  Just hold on a few more minutes, bubeleh, and I’ll get you all taken care of. I promise. She just wished the cat could read her mind.

  Dag, it appeared, didn’t need to. On this, at least, they seemed to be of one mind: stomp this kuppe drek into next week, then have cookies and milk.

  It didn’t quite happen that way, though, because the minute Dag laid a hand on the tech, the guy gave a high-pitched shriek, his eyes rolled back into his head, and he wilted like a debutante in a whorehouse. He collapsed into a heap, held off the floor only by Dag’s claws fisted in the front of his jumpsuit.

  Then, of course, Dag let go, and the tech and the floor got much better acquainted.

  Kylie stared for a moment, half expecting the guy to jump back to his feet, grin and quip, “Just kidding!” and get right back to the fight. Didn’t happen, though. He stayed unconscious, and Dag continued to look as if he’d just bitten into a knish filled with rancid earthworms.

  Cautiously, she eased a few steps forward and peered around the Guardian to the limp figure at his feet. “Uh, not to be a kibitzer, but any idea what just happened here?”

  Dag sneered down at the tech and clicked his talons together in a gesture of frustrated violence. “This one is no nocturnis. Just a filthy pawn in their games.”

  Kylie blinked at that assessment and quirked an eyebrow. “Really? So he tried to kill me just because he doesn’t like to work on Thursdays? That seems a bit of an overreaction.”

  “The attack came from the Order, but they used an innocent to make it happen.” His gaze scanned the room and caught sight of the half-open window in the corner. “They must have been watching the house. When he opened the window, they seized the opportunity to cast a spell. They hexed him, bringing his mind under their control and commanding him to kill you. And they nearly succeeded.”

  “They can do that?” Even Kylie thought she sounded horrified, but that was nothing compared to how she felt inside. “If they can force any innocent bystander to take a shot at me, I’ll never be able to leave the house again. I won’t be able to trust anyone.”

  “You can trust me.” Dag closed the window, then returned to loom over her, his expression solemn, but lacking the deliberate blankness he had shown her for the past week. “I have sworn to protect you. You can trust Knox, as well. As a Guardian, he too would be able to break the hold of the Order on one such as this and end the spell. And if your friend the witch has even half the talent of a trained Warden, you can trust her, too. She will recognize the danger and act accordingly.”

  Kylie shook her head. “I wasn’t thinking about you. About them. Of course I can trust them. But what about the other techs? Maybe you were right. Maybe letting them inside was a bad idea.”

  And didn’t admitting that chap her ass a little? Kylie hated to think that Dag’s paranoia had been closer to the mark than her own laissez-faire confidence. It would be a long time before she felt comfortable allowing another worker into her house. Maybe she could learn to view those cracks in the plaster as character features.

  “No.” She could hear his reluctance to admit it, but he forced the word out nonetheless. “The system is a good addition to ensuring the security of the house and everyone in it, especially with the others coming. If these humans did not come to install it, others would have. It must be done, and none of the others were affected by the hex.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  He hesitated, and for a moment, Kylie almost thought he looked … sheepish?

  “When I heard you scream, I became concerned for your safety, so I gathered the other three and left them bound in the empty room near the kitchen.”

  “You tied them up and left them in my dining room? Dag, one of them is going to get free and call the cops on us!”

  She hurried out of the room and headed in the direction of the Guardian’s captives only to have him stalk after her, shifting his form on the go.

  “I made certain they were unconscious,” he protested. “I am not foolish.”

  “Oh, so you knocked them out and left them tied up in my dining room. That’s going to make the police so much happier. Happy to add more charges, you shlemil.”

  “I do not know the meaning of that word, but your tone indicates it was not complimentary.” He followed her into the dining room, but took her arm before she could rush over and unwrap the still figures from about three thousand feet of plastic-coated wire. “The humans are unharmed and will remember nothing when they regain consciousness. Do you think that in the thousands of years of our existence, Guardians have never had to deal with
humans seeing us and jeopardizing our secrecy?”

  Okay, that eased her panic. A little. “Fine, but they still need to be untied before they wake up, right?”

  “I can see to it in a moment. First, I need to know if you sustained any injury.”

  Confused and impatient, Kylie shook her head. “I’m fine. King David—A broch! King David!”

  Kylie tore away and flew back to the office, heading straight for the closet where the cat had been thrown. She found him struggling to free himself from a tangle of hoodies she had stacked inside for cold days. She reached for him, earning herself a sharp hiss, followed by a plaintive mewl when he realized who she was.

  “Oh, bubeleh, I am so sorry,” she crooned. “Come here, boychik. Let me see what that mean man did to you.” The sudden dimming of the area told her that Dag had followed and stood in the doorway, blocking the light from the room. “The tech threw King David in here after he jumped on his face and nearly clawed his eyes out. I need to get him to the vet and have him checked out. If he’s hurt, I’m going to rip that nishtgutnik’s putz off and feed it to him.”

  She finally managed to untangle the cat and picked him up, cuddling him briefly to her chest. He endured the affection for a moment, even head-butting Kylie’s chin and purring before squirming out of her grip and dashing toward the nearest exit.

  “Bubbee, wait,” she called after him, scurrying to follow. Dag put a hand out to stop her.

  “The cat seems fine. It moved with no sign of pain or stiffness and easily covered the distance to the door at a run. I believe it objects to the idea of a physical examination. Much like someone else I could name.”

  Worried and irritated, Kylie snapped her reply. “I already told you I’m not hurt, stone face, so lay off. I really don’t think now is the time for you to decide you’re ready to play doctor.”

  Dag stiffened beside her a split second before the unintended double meaning to her words registered with Kylie. She felt her cheeks go hot and shouldered past him to return to the captives in the dining room.

  She cleared her throat. “What I mean is, the guy barely laid a hand on me. I jumped out of the way as soon as I saw the look on his face, not to mention the wire in his hand. And King David attacked him before he was able to do me any harm. So I’m fine. No need for a physical exam. From a doctor. Or anybody else, really. I’m good. All systems go.”

  “You are babbling,” Dag observed, his words thoughtful. “The idea of an examination makes you uncomfortable? This makes me believe you are being untruthful about your lack of injury.”

  “No, really. I’m not bleeding, I’m not limping, my pupils are evenly dilated, and I’m having no trouble breathing. Satisfied?”

  “You cannot see your own eyes react to changes in light, so how can you be certain about their dilation?”

  Kylie ground her teeth together. “Do you really think I got a concussion from running and screaming?”

  “You are the one who raised the possibility, not I.”

  Oy gevalt! God give her strength.

  She took a deep breath and tried not to push it out with all the hissing force she had built up. “For the last and final time, I am unhurt. If my status in this regard should change at any time, I promise on my grandmother’s life that I will inform you immediately. Without passing go, without collecting two hundred dollars. Now, if you don’t mind, I think the more important task at hand is to untie the guys in the other room before one of them wakes up and thinks they’ve been kidnapped by the crazy Jewish lady and the big scary guy who talks like he’s definitely not from around here. Mmkay?”

  Without waiting for his reply, she spun on her heel and marched down the hall and the devil take the hindmost. Her mouth twisted into a frown as she patted her hip and realized she had left her phone back in the office so she couldn’t check the time. She needed to know exactly how many more hours it would be until Wynn arrived.

  Then she needed to go online and see if there were any liquor stores in the greater Boston metropolitan area that either delivered, or were staffed by employees open to a little judicious bribery. This jailbreak/bitchfest was going to require something a whole lot stronger than the couple of bottles of wine she had stowed in the kitchen.

  Like vodka, maybe.

  Or tequila.

  What was rotgut, anyway? Kylie had always been curious.

  Or, hey, did anyone in Boston sell moonshine?

  * * *

  As soon as the workers had been freed, Dag found himself battling against the need to disappear somewhere far, far away from his little human female. He needed space, lots of space, and time away to deal with the reaction he had experienced when he realized she had been attacked once again.

  The sound of her scream of mingled fear and anger would echo inside his mind for the next thousand years. At least. He had stood beside the male human, watching as he marked and cut the opening to install the high-tech security control panel near the house’s main entrance. One moment, he had felt nothing but boredom and the restless need to hurry this process along so that he could clear the premises of the strangers he had been forced to allow within his territory. The next, his ears had registered Kylie’s scream, and his mind had exploded in a white-hot lightning storm of rage and terror.

  Someone was threatening his female. The creature would have to die.

  For the first time in his existence, his change had taken him by surprise, muscles and tendons stretching and snapping as his body reshaped itself into his natural form without his choice or consent. The human at his side had uttered a hoarse cry, then promptly passed out at Dag’s feet. The action had been enough to remind the warrior to first secure the area, but taking the three minutes required to capture and secure the three workers had nearly cost him his sanity. The moment he dumped them in the empty dining room, his instincts would no longer be denied. They drove him immediately to Kylie’s side.

  He barely remembered the sight that had greeted him as he flew through the office door. A red mist obscured his vision, and all he had been able to pick out was the sight of Kylie huddled in a crouch beneath the window. The fact that her eyes were wide and animated and that he could see the rapid rise and fall of her chest were the only reasons why the house around them remained standing.

  The feral temper inside him had urged him to seize the male and rip his head from his shoulders. He wanted to taste the man’s blood, to see the life drain from his eyes, and to know that the foul piece of shit realized that in seeking to harm Kylie Kramer, he had actually sought his own death.

  It took a moment for the sight of the cat clinging to the human’s face to register, and for a split second, Dag envied the cat the ability to sink the points of his claws into the man’s flesh. He could almost feel the soft parting of skin and muscle, the click of talon against bone, but then the human wrested the cat from his head and flung it across the room. Dag had gotten one glimpse of the man’s glinting, darkly clouded eyes in the instant before his fist grasped the front of the uniform jumpsuit, but as soon as it felt his touch, the spell on the man shattered. The demonic influence winked out, and left Dag holding a confused, terrified, and cowardly victim of the same attack that had threatened his female.

  He threw the man down in disgust and hurried to Kylie’s side. Where he, of course, was greeted not with gratitude, or even an understandable accusation based on his failure to prevent such an attack, but with calmly delivered questions and the sass to which he was quickly becoming accustomed.

  This did not mean he approved. He disliked the sensation he seemed always to have in her presence of being somehow off balance. A new experience, it made him question his ability to anticipate danger—hadn’t he missed the threat of the drude and again of the hexed worker until each had nearly succeeded in harming his female? How could he guarantee her safety if being near her created such distracting turmoil within him?

  Definite turmoil. Among other things.

  He struggled against a floo
d of unfamiliar emotion every time he drew near to the small human, unfamiliar for more than one reason. For centuries, he had believed that his kind lacked the capacity for the relentless current of feelings that seemed to plague the mortal world. He experienced only the emotions suited to his purpose—rage at his enemy, determination to win victory, hatred of the Darkness, loyalty to his cause. No other had been allowed to distract him, but he could not recall when anything had tried. Yet now, the addition of one tiny mortal female into his presence had shaken the very foundations of his identity. How could he remain a Guardian when all he truly cared about guarding now was Kylie?

  Dag brooded over the question throughout the afternoon and long into the night. He sought meaning in the change and found his thoughts returning again and again to the same point, to the conclusion that he had avoided since that first conversation with Knox and Wynn.

  Perhaps Kylie was meant to be his mate.

  For centuries, the legend had mocked him. He knew of no Guardian in millennia who had been freed according to the stories of the first of his kind. It had become a fairy tale among the brethren, and Dag had dismissed it as easily as any other story meant for children and fools. He would live forever in service to the Light unless an enemy managed to destroy him first, in which case a new Guardian would be summoned. No other option existed, certainly not that a woman of power would come before him and free him from his magical sleep forever. It had seemed not just improbable but entirely impossible.

  Until Kylie.

  The idea that he could have been so wrong disturbed him. It pointed toward the kind of mistake that could get a human or a Guardian killed, and hadn’t that very thing nearly happened twice? Perhaps the only way to combat the problem was to give in to it.

  That idea had his instincts rumbling a satisfied noise that reminded him disturbingly of King David’s loud purr. The instant that he entertained the thought, something inside him settled and he felt a sense of calm like nothing he had ever experienced. It was as if something had clicked into place within him, a piece he hadn’t known was missing yet whose absence had kept the whole machine from operating at peak efficiency.