Survive the Wild Hunt.
Don’t do anything foolish.
Pretend it wasn’t jealousy that tightened her stomach when one of the other dryads fawned over the gargoyle.
Simple.
Right.
With a rattle and a slight creak of hinges, the door eased open. She knew the intruder. She was attuned to him, linked by some strange magic she didn’t understand and didn’t want to question. He walked up behind her, his bare feet silent. She turned to face him. He stood so close the corner of her shawl slapped his arm. Her human-formed gargoyle had dispensed with his invisibility magic and revealed all his fierce beauty. Even though he wasn’t in his gargoyle form, he was still taller than her, and she had to crane her head. Unblinking dark eyes returned her gaze. The gargoyle bowed his head and inhaled a deep breath, his eyelashes dark against his skin.
A wave of self-consciousness tightened her stomach and dampened her palms. She smoothed a hand over her hips as she checked for bulges or wrinkles in the strange fabric. There were none. The dress fit perfectly.
With his head down, she hadn’t realized he’d opened his eyes. He shifted positions to better take her in with one look, which raked the length of her body. If he’d been much of a talker, she’d have called him speechless, but his silences were normal. She’d come to recognize nuances in the silence, like it was another form of communication to him. One he was fluent in, and she was still learning.
“Beautiful.” He whispered the one word like it hurt him to speak. Then he spun away, gone in the next heartbeat.
She could feel him retreat, heading down the stairs to the main floor. When she turned her focus inward, she could see through his eyes as he headed out to where the vehicles waited. His one word still hung in the air, and a strange heat swelled under her heart. He thought she was beautiful. The other dryads were far more elegant, but he thought her beautiful. She smiled and hugged her shawl closer as she left the room to follow in his footsteps.
* * *
The road divided two worlds. On one side of the winding gravel road, a deep wooded ravine waited, calm and mysterious, and on the other, the metal ribs of a derelict sawmill jutted up into the star-speckled night sky. The moon illuminated the land around the mill. The area had gone wild again, forest creeping back in, ready to reclaim the land. The contrast was eerie, like the surreal footage of a post-apocalyptic world. She shivered, cold down to her core. Instinctively, Lillian looked in the rear-view mirror, hoping to catch a glimpse of the gargoyle riding in the truck bed.
Her eyes found no sign of him, but she could feel him in her mind, his legs braced to hold him in place and his wings cupped to catch the wind. He loved the speed and the cold air. Lillian’s lips turned up at the gargoyle’s joy.
Lillian heard the heavy pulse of drumming before Gran turned into an overgrown driveway. The chain-link gate was thrown wide, tilting off to one side, partially unhinged where rust had eaten its way through the metal. Other cars were already parked, and more arrived from other directions as she took in the scene.
“All this is ours.” Gran swept her arms up and out, the gesture encompassing the mill and the surrounding forest. “The Coven and the Clan pooled resources and bought it from a logging company back in the seventies. It was one of our first joint acquisitions. It didn’t look like much then, but it came cheaply. As far as anyone knows, we’re an environmentally minded company specializing in rehabilitation, restoration and sustainable forestry.” She smiled. “While it’s not the whole truth, it isn’t a lie, either.”
Lillian grunted. That sounded like her life. There certainly hadn’t been a lot of truth telling there, either. If anything, the gargoyle was the most honest with his long silences.
Smoothing her skirt over her legs, she wiggled as she tried to get out of the truck without flashing everyone. Lillian silently damned all trucks to hell, and double damned skirts with slits up the sides.
Before Lillian could blink, Gregory was next to her, shapeshifted to look human once again. He gripped her around the waist and lifted. With a squeak, she slapped her hands down on his shoulders for balance. Even after he’d set her on her feet, his hands lingered a moment. She stood there staring, unable to think of something to say even when he captured one of her hands and ran his thumb over the back.
“Come,” Gran said. “The others are waiting.”
Lillian returned to herself with a blush. A large group of complete strangers had gathered around. The gargoyle’s invisibility magic was an interesting power and one she would have put to use about now.
She ducked her head, and when Gregory trailed after Gran, Lillian followed. She didn’t have much choice. Gregory hadn’t released her hand. She was so focused on not stepping in puddles or doing something else to embarrass herself, she missed when the crowd of strangers broke up into smaller groups. They all headed toward the vast crouched shadow of the abandoned sawmill.
“Is it safe?” Lillian asked. That wasn’t the real question she wanted to ask, but she didn’t know how to put into words the sensation of cold fear hovering just below her heart.
“The mill? Yes, of course.” Gran gestured at the building. “We’ve done some work to the inside, but nothing that would show on the outside. We don’t want questions.”
Lillian nodded absently. The drumming she’d heard as they neared was stronger now. Heavy and primal, it called to her. Gregory released her hand and fell a step behind.
Doors on giant tracks slid open at their approach. Two men waited on either side of the entrance. Calling them door men seemed wrong. Each had the intensity of a bouncer mixed with the lean muscle of a ballet dancer or a martial artist. Whatever they were, they gave off strength, training, and menace.
Lillian glanced behind to ask Gregory if he felt whatever hovered in the air around the two men, but her gargoyle had vanished. She turned her mind inward. Magic answered her summons, vibrating in her lungs and the pit of her stomach. A moment later she found Gregory. He’d not gone far. When he finished circling the two men, he returned to her side, still invisible.
Gran took the lead, her long robes trailing behind her, quarterstaff held vertical like a walking stick instead of a weapon. Lillian still found the image of her grandmother carrying a quarterstaff a strange one. She’d dreamed last night, weird dreams about shadows lurching among moonlit trees, her grandmother swinging the quarterstaff, battling something in the shadows. Looking back at the last two days, it was no wonder she dreamed of strange, frightening things.
Lillian followed in Gran’s shadow as she entered the old mill. A short trip through a narrow hallway led to another set of doors. These ones opened onto a landing that overlooked the old mill’s main work floor. Gran marched down the stairs leading away from the landing. Lillian lengthened her strides to match the swift pace.
They were crossing through the sawmill’s old offices when she ‘felt’ the gargoyle drift away from her side a second time. Scouting, no doubt. He didn’t go far. She could still feel him with the strange sense that hummed in the pit of her stomach. They’d come to the end of the row of offices and faced a wall of windows, the glass clouded with dirt and faded with age. The pulsing was louder here, pressing against her eardrums. She closed her eyes, feeling the rhythm with her breastbone and in the soles of her feet.
She broke away from her grandmother and the rest of the group and paced over to the nearest windowsill. Her heart hammered in time to the pulse of the drums. Like the slow disbelief of watching a car wreck, curiosity drew her forward. Condensation fogged the glass. She wiped it away. The glass was cold against her fingertips. She glimpsed white crystals and bright flecks of blue as they drifted by the window before it fogged over again.
Snow? Inside a building?
Using the corner of her shawl, she cleared the window of fog and dirt. Then blinked. No. Not snow. Tiny flecks of light swirled through the air, drifting up from a whirlpool of magic below her. There were dancers moving amid the magic—and
they were not human.
Down at ground level, massive wolves, white-furred elk, small black ponies, and hounds with brown hides and tawny-coloured ears shared the space with hundreds of people. They moved in time to the beat, driven in frantic circles by the pulse of the drums. A whirlpool created of living bodies. They spun and whirled, caught in the tidal pull of the circle dance. Like the spokes of a galaxy, columns of dancers bunched closer together at the core before drifting farther apart at the edges. Those lithe figures at the center were so tightly packed together, Lillian couldn’t see their features, only the pale glow of magic which surrounded them. Their frenzied movements sheared the magic from their bodies, freeing it to drift up like wind-blown snow.
The wild power touched Lillian on a level she didn’t understand, frightening her with its seductive call.
Follow, instinct demanded.
Surrender. Become part of the magic.
Running her hands along the wall, her fingers sought a way through.
“You might try the door,” Gran said as she pointed to a doorway a few feet ahead of where Lillian stood.
Lillian lurched into motion, intoxicated by the power. She grabbed the doorframe while she surveyed the metal stairway leading down. She hugged the railing, hoping to steady herself long enough to get control of the rioting emotions swirling through her heart.
The gargoyle came to Lillian, pressing his body against her back. Peace, love, protection, serenity—his calming and soothing emotions swamped her, flooding into her mind from where they touched. “I will keep you safe,” he said in his silent way. She loved him for it in that moment. No fear. No questions. Just unequivocal acceptance.
Her heels clicked against the metal stairs. She concentrated on the sound, grounding her scattered thoughts.
Caught up in the power of the dance, individuals swept past her and Gregory without noticing the newcomers. A strange force tried to pull Lillian toward the center of the vast room. When it couldn’t physically drag her closer, it seeped into her body. The hair on her arms rose. She shivered at the invasion. The foreign magic flowed through her blood, and then it receded. As it fled, it took some of her magic with it. She resisted. It tugged harder at her soul. Panicking, she summoned power of her own. With claws of magic, she struck out at the threat and shredded the filaments trying to steal her magic.
The vortex at room’s center shuddered. The tide of power shifted, snapping from the center of the room toward where she stood. Dancers lost their rhythm. Drums faltered. The room erupted into chaos. Cries of alarm and growls of challenge resounded through the air as more people stilled in their dance. Weapons appeared in hands as the crowd gathered itself, and as one being, it turned to look at her. Some gazes were fearful, others hostile and a few curious.
Lillian’s nerve broke. She whirled back to the stairs, ready to flee, but Gregory in his gargoyle form materialized on the stairs a step above her. He stopped her with ease, his wings blocking escape. A muscular arm wrapped around her shoulders and turned her to face the crowd. Silence claimed the room.
Shock replaced fear on many faces. They weren’t looking at her. They stared at the gargoyle overshadowing her with his greater bulk. A memory flashed across her mind, of the unicorn in human shape when he’d first beheld the gargoyle: a look of shock and wonder, followed by desperate hunger. She prayed they weren’t about to get torn apart by a mob disparate for magic.
“We must fix what we broke,” Gregory whispered into her mind through the touch of his hands on her arms. “This was a ceremony of sharing. Had I known what we were walking into, I might have approached this differently.”
“I screwed up, didn’t I?” She glanced over her shoulder. Looking at him was better than facing the mob.
“No. How could you know the magic would try to gather some of your power and share it with this world?” He pushed her from behind, guiding her back toward the crowd. “Now we shall fix what went wrong and make the magic stronger than it was before.
“I don’t know how.”
“Follow my lead and embrace your instincts. They are there, buried under layers of my protection. Look and you will find them. I will keep you safe.”
She doubted herself, but trusted him, so when the crowd parted down the middle to let him pass, she followed close at his heels. He took a long and twisting way to the center of the room, herding the crowd back into motion. They moved for him, with him, following his subtle gestures.
He spun in a leisurely circle and the motion unfurled his wings. The glow of power spread out around him, flaring in the breeze created by his wings. Stomping his feet in a slow, sideways motion, he began to move. His tail lashed in time to some unheard rhythm and drums took up the beat as magic pulsed in the air.
Lillian swayed, uncertain. But Gregory gestured and called to her with power. Entranced, she took a half-step toward him, then another. The magic in the room gathered, starting to spin into a vortex once more. Order slowly defeated chaos, and both crowd and magic moved to Gregory’s silent commands.
Unable to help herself, she followed as willingly as the others. She closed her eyes, and guided by sound and the magic pulsing in her blood, she began to dance a softer counterpoint to his rhythm. Swaying and whirling around him in loose circles, moving in the opposite direction to him, she summoned a second larger ring of magic around the vortex. He increased the pace of his dance as the inner ring shrunk down upon itself. She danced just beyond the outer expanse of his wings. All the women in the room, beast and human shaped, echoed her motion.
Then the males took up Gregory’s rhythm, and followed his lead. Moving in opposite directions, the alternate rings of dancers spun past each other, driven beyond exhaustion or reason by the rising current of magic.
She danced so close she could feel the heat of Gregory’s body, but they never quite touched. He danced in the same manner, echoing her courtship, following her every movement until the rhythm of the drums carried him away from her again, only to return that much closer with each turn. Like a pair of binary stars, they orbited each other—glowing brighter as they expended magic.
When the rhythm of the dance brushed their bodies together, she reached out to him, learning his thoughts, communicating like he did. A sense of purpose, pride in her abilities and that she trusted him, flowed from his mind to hers. There was heat as well. She accepted it. Desire simply became part of the dance.
Magic reached a fever pitch within her. Unable to resist any longer, she stroked the warm silk of his wing membranes, delighting in the way his wings quivered. When he turned to her, his fierce gargoyle features had vanished, replaced by human ones. Yet, he still possessed wings, like he was caught between the two forms. Somehow she’d caused his change, perhaps against his will, but she wasn’t sure if she cared. Her fingertips trailed across his chest, over firm muscle and the slight ridge of his ribs. He caught her hand, stopping its exploring.
“Naughty dryad,” he scolded, but his accompanying thoughts lacked anger. “This is not part of this dance.”
She watched him through her lashes as the magic increased another notch. It washed the last rational thoughts from her mind. He’d said to embrace instinct. She did.
“Then this isn’t part of the dance either.” She leaned against him, rising to stand on her toes so she could lace her fingers behind his head. He leaned down at her adamant tugging. After a slight hesitation, their lips brushed together. She wasn’t sure which of them had closed the last short span, but she’d hoped it had been him. His lips were warm and hard under hers. After a few of her gentle nips, he returned her raw enthusiasm with a breath-stealing passion. With the heat of his body pressed against hers, she didn’t think, simply enjoyed the feel of his smooth skin sliding against hers.
His hand dropped to rest on her hips. Even though he was human, a growl rolled from his chest, shaking her breastbone. He dragged her closer. Sliding a hand down her thigh, he found the slit in her dress. His warm fingers settled in the hollo
w behind her knee, then urged her thigh up over his hip. She could feel the heat of him through the thin barrier of her clothing. When their bare skin brushed against each other, she closed her eyes and shivered at the most delicious sensation.
Shrouding wings cloaked her, hiding them from view. His lips broke away from hers to trail along the length of her neck. She arched her back and gripped him harder as he nibbled his way lower. Breath hissed between her lips. At the sound, another growl escaped him. His one hand covered her breast and flicked the nipple through the fabric of her dress. She bit back a groan of pleasure and buried her face against his hair.
Between brushes of his lips along her throat, he mumbled words too low to hear clearly. One sounded like “forbidden.” After a few moments he broke away, panting softly. He lowered her to the ground with reluctance in every line of his body.
Half-dazed, she smiled up at him. “Now who is naughty? I was just going to kiss you.”
“I know. I wanted more. The dance seemed like a good time to steal it.” He tossed his head back, his wings stretching toward the ceiling, and he laughed. The great rolling sound rumbled from the depths of his chest. His joy was infectious.
“Gregory, I . . .”
Her human-formed gargoyle placed a finger across her lips. “We should finish what we started. The dance, that is. The others are waiting.” His eyes drifted closed and he pressed his forehead to hers.
She’d forgotten the dance. Everything had vanished from her mind except Gregory. With the return of her wits, embarrassment awoke, too. Focusing on Gregory helped. She didn’t have to see the others still circling them slowly.
With his eyes closed, Gregory looked serene, at peace. He remained motionless for a moment, and then he released a sigh and opened his eyes. The magic above him shuddered. A strange humming doused all other sounds for several heartbeats, until her eardrums sorted the noise out. With a low whine, the magic revved up. Teetering, it hovered on the brink of losing control, then the magic exploded out, colliding with her circle of magic. When the two powers merged, a retina-searing flash of light blinded her, followed by a clash of sound louder than thunder. Power raced away like shooting stars. Most of the magic vanished through the walls and ceiling of the room. What remained fell like big wet flakes of snow, except they sparkled like tiny fireworks.
The Avatars Series: Books 1-3 Page 11