I moved forward to see. How dare he worry about that damn scrap more than…me. He’d tossed the scrap aside and was actually muttering a spell into my hand. My arm was so numb I hadn’t felt him doing it.
“Thanks.” I had to say something to resolve my guilt. I was so used to thinking bad things about him that it didn’t dawn on me he might do something nice.
“I couldn’t let it stay there. What if some of the words came off on your hand?” Finished with his spell, he snatched the burnt scrap back and returned to his chair.
I lay there on the ground for a moment. I should have known he wouldn’t do something for me. It was about the damn scroll. Those scrolls had caused so much trouble in my life lately that if I ever found the rest of them I just might burn them myself. On the plus side my hand was tender, but it no longer looked toasted. I still didn’t feel much from it, but I figured that was part of the spell.
Muttering under my breath about spelled papers, dead bodies, and vile magic users, I pulled myself back over to my chair. I started to glare at him, then thought of my own scrap and quickly checked under my seat cushion.
It was still there. Alric must have been startled enough by the explosion that he hadn’t grabbed mine.
Good. Because he’d have to pry it out of my dead hand at this point. Of course looking at the way those pretty green eyes were narrowing, he might be thinking the same thing.
I was just about to demand he leave my home when the tunnel above the door filled with faery screams.
Chapter 31
An instant later all three of the girls crashed into the room from the tunnel above the door. They were covered in grime, fur, and dirt and all three of them were carrying large lumpy rocks the size of my fist. It was amazing they’d been able to get enough lift to get through the tunnel.
“What did you do now?” Stuffing the scrap into a coin pouch sewn into my pants, I grabbed Leaf as she came to a rolling stop at my feet. I didn’t really want to pick her up with all that slime on her, but she might actually be injured.
“Nothing. We did nothing. Fur monsters have gone bad.” She grimaced and clutched her rock tighter. “Big bad. Not good.”
Fur monsters? “The squirrels? This is about you and that squirrel family?” I so didn’t have the energy to deal with their little battles. There were dead bodies flinging around here. “They’re just squirrels, Leaf. Even you three have more brains than they do.” I tried to wipe her face off but it was going to take more work than I wanted to put in it.
“No, not squirrels, they fur monsters now. Have gone bad.” Crusty rolled her rock across the floor. It was unusual for her to be that exhausted, but she was using it to support herself as she tried to get closer to me.
I looked to Alric for help. Maybe he could figure out what they were going on about.
Before I could ask him anything, a pounding hit my door. Not like a fist, or even a boot. It was as if someone had thrown a handful of heavy rocks at the doorway of my home.
“What the heck?” Setting Leaf down, I headed for the door.
“No open!” Garbage had left her prize next to Crusty and flown up into my face, pushing me back. She was the most aggressive of the three, but even for her this was over the top. “Fur monsters. Bad. Not normal now. No open!”
I looked to see if it made any sense to Alric.
He shrugged. “Hey there, Garbage Blossom, what’s happened?” His voice had grown soft and melodic. I had to look back to make sure it was him. That was a dangerous voice. No wonder the girls fell for him.
Garbage looked torn. She clearly didn’t want me to go to the door, but also felt the need to be near Alric. He solved the problem by rising and standing next to me.
“Fur things have gone bad. Like big boom, only now instead of then.” Her tiny arms flew about in animation as she spoke, but her words still didn’t make a lot of sense.
“She says the squirrels have gone crazy and not to open that door.” He beamed at me like he’d just unlocked the mysteries of the Universe.
“I figured that out myself. What I want to know is what it means.” I turned and looked back at the prizes the girls had brought home. “You stole those rocks from the squirrel clan, didn’t you?”
“They took them. Long long time ago. We got them back.” Crusty stomped on her rock to emphasize her point and fell backwards when the rock morphed to a small black lump of glass.
“Ieeee!” She screamed then stumbled away from her treasure. Leaf went to help her, then she too screamed as her treasure transformed into a greenish stone. Garbage decided Alric and I weren’t going to go for the door and flew back to her rock—only to have it change into a piece of amber pottery.
It was hard to tell from this distance, but all three former rocks now looked like artifacts.
“Girls, where did the squirrels have these?” I ignored the increased pounding at the door that coincided with the change in the rocks. There was no way a bunch of squirrels could tell that the rocks had changed. Right? I snuck a look over my shoulder, but it seemed like the door was holding. To be safe, I reached up and secured the tunnel the girls used. It may have been my imagination, but I thought there were tiny red eyes gleaming back. I quickly bolted the tunnel door.
“Bad, bad, bad!” Crusty was the only one of the three who made sense and those were the only words I could get out of her. “Bad unhiding, why change?” At least she’d added something.
I slowly turned to Alric who was staring at the green lump while trying very hard to pretend he wasn’t.
“What of it, fancy spell boy? Did your undisguise spell do this?” I bent down and picked up the green lump. I tried to make it look like it was just random that I grabbed that one. But the fact was, Garbage’s amber shard was closer to me than Leaf’s green lump. However if Alric wanted it, then so did I. The former rock was smooth and heavy. Much bigger than it had seemed when Leaf rolled in with it, no wonder she was exhausted. The side I held up was shiny, with dark green veins that ran through an unusual light green stone. The archeologist side of me was instantly drawn in. Clearly a perfectly preserved artifact from the elven period.
I almost dropped it when I slowly turned it over.
The glaring face could only be called a gargoyle. And while clearly elven in design, or older, it was also clear that what I thought was stone was, in fact, glass.
“Yes, I think my spell would have done that.” Alric had stepped up next to me without a sound. His hand reached forward to take the gargoyle, but there was no way I was letting it go. The pounding outside my door continued. Had the squirrels found bigger reinforcements? What the heck were they using anyway?
I pulled my hand away from his reach and stumbled backwards. I managed to miss the still wailing faeries, but landed awkwardly in my chair.
“You can’t have this. No one can have this.” I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but after all the prophecies, mysteries and murders about this thing, I wasn’t giving it up.
“Can you protect it? You know we don’t know what it does.” Alric was still using his low, soothing voice, but his eyes were almost constantly on the object.
“I can…” My voice trailed off as the truth hit me. I couldn’t protect myself or the girls. If someone really wanted this hunk of glass, and events pointed to a lot of people wanting it, I couldn’t stop them. The only other time I’d felt this helpless was when my parents were killed.
I hefted it in my hands. This tiny bauble could bring forth a storm of death. It already had led to a fair amount of death, more than I wanted to be around.
“Take it.” Taking a deep breath, I thrust my hand out toward Alric. “But you’d better keep it safe, magic boy, or so help me I’ll find that damn vanishing sword of yours and run you through with it myself.” I didn’t want him to think that I hadn’t noticed that I’d left him wearing a sword and returned to find him swordless. That wasn’t big enough to be a major mystery in my life, but it was enough to annoy me.
He held my hand while he gently lifted the glass gargoyle out of it.
“It’s what I think it is, isn’t it?” I asked. He still held my hand.
“Yes.” He nodded slowly, and still held my hand.
I thought about pulling it back, then changed my mind. For some perverse reason I liked him holding my hand. Besides, if he could forget about it, I could forget about it. I gave him a few more seconds, then finally pulled my hand back. He didn’t even notice. His eyes were wide and focused on the glass lump in his hand.
“Hello? Remember me? I know you told Covey you didn’t know much about it, but the drool on your face tells me otherwise.” There wasn’t that all that much stuff to look at on the gargoyle and I was pretty sure he’d seen all there was to see in the first few seconds.
“Sorry.” He finally shook his head and looked up. “That’s more powerful than I thought.” He looked around my room, searching for something. Finally he ripped off the lower part of his shirt and reverently wrapped it around the glass. “You don’t have anything softer, do you?”
I flashed my best scowl at him. “I’m not wasting anything soft on that lump. I don’t think the mysterious elven gods are going to care if their little totem gets scratched. It has been lying in the ground for a thousand years after all.”
He was still fussing with the thing now in his pocket, but he looked up quickly and smiled. “I thought you didn’t believe in the elves? Besides, I never said I thought the gargoyle was of their make. I think it may be older.”
Older? Crap, an example of the mystical ancient race that came before the elves and I’d handed it to him? I debated my ability to jump him and get it away. The thought of jumping him brought an entirely different scenario to mind, one I quickly chased away. The only thing worse than dating three jinns rolled into one would be getting involved with Alric.
And trying to get that lump of green glass from him would be almost as foolish as going to bed with him. But not near as fun.
The girls had been watching the interplay. They’d finally stopped crying over the transformation of their precious rocks into potentially valuable artifacts and were now carefully ignoring them.
But once they realized Alric valued the gargoyle, they changed their minds.
“Mine, you can have mine too.” Garbage flew up with her shard of amber pottery.
Alric smiled and pointed towards me. “But don’t you think Taryn should get something? She does feed and protect you.”
Garbage looked from him to me and back again. Finally she half-heartedly flew my way.
“Thank you. Keep bad fur things out. Special gift.” She practically threw the shard at my chair, then flittered back to the table.
Lovely, a gift rejected by the faeries and Alric. I smiled and nodded my thanks, then mindlessly looked over the shard.
It was about six-inches long and as wide as my hand at its widest part. Not thick, probably no more than a half an inch. The coloring I’d originally took as a stain or wash was the color of the pottery, a light amber hue. At least that was unique. I’d never seen any stoneware with that color. A closer look intrigued me more. There was writing in the shard. Imbedded within the piece as if a thin glaze layer covered the words. Except there was no glaze on them.
Covey would love to see this. I peered closer and suddenly found myself on the ground.
“Taryn? What happened?” Alric’s face was far too close for the second time this evening. At least this time nothing seemed to be on fire.
“I’m not sure.” Batting off his attempt at help, I scrambled back into my chair. It had been the oddest sensation—one moment I was trying to understand some of the words of the shard, the next Alric was inches away from me and I was on the ground. I was going to tell him about the words when a strange feeling hit me. I didn’t want him to know. No one should know. Not even Covey. It was my secret and others would try to take it. I covered the shard with my hand and gave Alric my largest yawn.
“Actually, I’m exhausted.” I turned to the faeries who were already starting to look bored. “Girls, do you think your friends are gone?”
“No our friends! Bad fur things!” Garbage stomped on the table a few times for emphasis.
“Do you think the bad fur things have gone?” The faeries usually had a bit of a sense of humor, but apparently not where the squirrel family was involved.
The three faeries huddled together tightly. There was much muttering, arm waving, and, if I heard correctly, name calling.
Finally Garbage stepped forward with one hand firmly on Crusty’s shoulder. “Crusty will go check.”
Crusty looked much put out about the idea but she did what Garbage said. With a sigh she flew toward the tunnel, unlocked the door, and vanished down the hall. I locked it behind her.
I figured she was probably fairly safe. I hadn’t heard any pounding for at least five minutes now. Even so, I kept my hand on the door.
A few minutes later a tiny knocking sounded on the tunnel door. Crusty flew in once I opened it and shook her head.
“Bad fur things gone, but they made mess.” She wrinkled her tiny nose at me and held out her hand. A foul smelling black ooze dropped off her fingers.
“Oh for love of the gods, what is that?” I opened the front door to shove her out—unfortunately the smell was worse out there.
My front door was pocked and smeared. The massive amount of small rocks lying there told me how the pocking occurred, but I had no idea what the smelly stuff was. Although it did sort of remind me of something.
“Hey, is that the same stuff you used on the girls when we first brought you in?”
Alric shook himself like a man coming off a smoke-leaf bender. He had been staring at the still wrapped glass gargoyle. “What? I don’t see how it could…” His voice dropped as he got closer to the door and a scowl appeared.
“That’s not good.” He stepped forward and hovered near the goo.
“I know it’s not good. It’s my door they attacked. But is the goo yours?” Sometimes he just didn’t seem too bright. Pretty, possibly dangerous, but not quite all there.
“No. And yes.” He looked around and grabbed a bag from my most recent trip to the market. Carefully he scraped off a small portion. “This isn’t what I made, but it’s the same recipe.”
“Someone else took your recipe for stinky goo? How awful for you.” I couldn’t figure out why he was looking so upset. It was my door after all.
He finally turned back to me. “No, that’s not it. I took the recipe from an old find, a very, very old elven find a few hundred miles from here. This is original. This isn’t a recipe copy.”
I went back and sat in my chair. “So possessed squirrels flung rocks and thousand-year-old elf stink at my door?” I leaned my head down on my knees. My life was far less complicated before I took that job to find Alric. Maybe if I could just get him to leave things would settle down again.
“I’m not sure about possessed,” he said while ignoring the cries of outrage from the faeries. “But yes, they somehow found a thousand-year-old compound. In useable condition. And threw it at your door.” He fingered a small portion of the sample, then started swearing.
“You need to get this off now.” Ignoring me, he barged into my kitchen and began rummaging around. He came out with two of my largest, and mostly unused, pots filled with hot water. “Come on, if they figure it out, your door will be gone.”
“Figure out what?” I refused to get out of my chair. This had been by far the longest, weirdest, and most disturbing evening in my life. Not to mention it was clearly well past midnight and I needed to be up and at the dig bright and early.
“The squirrels, or rather whoever or whatever is working through the squirrels. The compound they put on the door can be modified to have explosive properties.” He nodded when my eyes grew huge. “Exactly. The version I used couldn’t have done any harm. However, this could. We need to get if off now.”
He rolled up
his sleeves and furiously began scrubbing my front door. While part of me just wanted to sit there and enjoy the show, the other part really didn’t want to try and deal with an exploded door.
Dragging myself out of my chair, I applied my remaining energy to removing the gunk. Of course the faeries had vanished by this time, so were of no help.
The door clean, I started to shut it. But Alric stayed outside.
“Hey, wait a minute, you can’t leave.” I still had too many questions. At this point I might as well stay up until I had to go into work anyway. A huge yawn betrayed me.
“We do need to talk.” He had the gargoyle back in his pocket, but he also kept his hand on it. “You’re safe for now, and you need sleep. We’ll talk at Covey’s place. Tomorrow night.”
I tried to argue, but it was as if all the events of the day just slammed into me at once.
“Fine,” I yawned the word more than spoke it. It was damn hard to argue with someone when one’s own body was selling them out. I could barely keep my eyes open. But before I could rally enough for another comment, Alric had vanished from the hall.
I was too tired to even swear at him properly as I shut and locked the door and stumbled toward bed.
Chapter 32
The next day started wonderfully in spite of all of the trauma of the day before. The faeries were already gone for the day and I woke up early enough to have a nice breakfast at one of the local street vendors. While I did normally eat my meals at the Shimmering Dewdrop, breakfast wasn’t Foxy’s strong point. Besides, I’d gotten up early enough to grab a sack of tiny spiced donuts. Made by a sweet little grandmother, they were usually gone before I even thought of getting out of bed. With them, I could ignore the relic of mass destruction drifting around town in Alric’s pocket. At least for a little while.
You would think with the way my life had been going as of late, I would have been suspicious of too many good things coming my way.
The Glass Gargoyle (The Lost Ancients Book 1) Page 25