“What the hell? I—”
The pain engulfed her in another flow of lava. A whimper was all that emerged. His talons of magic and power slashed across her mind. She arched off the bed, struggling with everything in her. She punched him under the jaw and clawed at his bare shoulders. He took the abuse as if he didn’t feel it. Leaning his weight against her, he pinned her to the bed so she couldn’t fight him. With a tearing sensation in her mind, another barrier shredded under his attack. Pain receded into numbness. She floated above the pain, praying she would not fall back into her body lying upon the bed. Surely that was death. Where the hell was her magic when she needed it?
“Lillian, don’t call your magic. Please don’t fight me. It will make it worse.” His voice shook. “If you call your magic, it will repair your shields . . . please . . . I cannot do this again.”
The agony in his dark timbre pulled her back into her body. To her surprise, there was no blinding-sharp pain eating away at her brain. She looked beyond the barrier of her mind, out into the world. Gregory hunched next to her. Pain etched across his face, a tattoo of his horror. Dampness streaked his cheeks. Shocked, she reached out and gathered a tear on her fingertip.
“Oh, Gregory, that hurt you as much as it did me, didn’t it?” she asked as she fought to get her breathing under control. “I knew this wouldn’t be pleasant from your reluctance. I’m sorry I was such a wimp. I’ll do better.” She laid her hand along his cheek. “I love you.”
“I know.” He covered her hand with his own and curled his fingers around hers. When he turned her hand so the palm faced up, he leaned down and placed a kiss upon it. Then drawing her hand to his chest, he rested it against his heart. The steady beat of his pulse surged under the skin and bone. “The rest of this will be easier.”
“If something happens and you find I am one of darkness, do what you must, but know I’ll love you regardless. You are a part of me.”
He touched his forehead to hers. “We are one, always.”
With his words, she felt his magic flood over her, sweeping thoughts and worries away. He went deep into her mind, pulling at her memories as he hunted. To her surprise, his presence in her mind wasn’t an invasion. He belonged there. A half-smile curled her lips as he delicately leafed through her thoughts.
Minutes eased by, one after another until she lost track of time, and still he did not find what he sought. The sensation of his mental hunting stilled and he pulled away. She was about to ask what was wrong when a wave of darkness reared up and rolled across her consciousness. She blinked and yawned, but was unable to fight off the intense compulsion to sleep.
“Surrender, my lady. Know what peace you can find in sleep.”
She blinked sleep heavy lids. The last thing she remembered was Gregory’s troubled expression.
* * *
Gregory watched the rise and fall of her chest and prayed she would be alright. He’d put her to sleep as soon as he’d sensed the trap. When she was deeply under, he summoned his magic and flowed back into her mind. He had no idea what form the trap would take, so he slid his consciousness into her body a bit at a time, fearing to trigger something until a part of his soul was with hers, where he could help her fight it.
He shifted through her recent memories, mildly surprised how much she already loved and trusted him even though she did not know him. Further back, he encountered the night of the Wild Hunt—the awe and sense of rapture when they danced together and summoned power from the Magic Realm. Then her joy turned to horror as he fought the vampire. The glint of a knife in the moonlight descending toward her gargoyle.
His first clue came with the wash of her raw emotional reactions. He turned them over in his mind, examining them. He’d felt her possessiveness toward him before, and a small part of him took pleasure in her reaction, but now he witnessed a different side to it: ownership, not love.
That was not how his lady thought of him. He moved to the next emotion: her rage. He’d been hurt in battle before. Once the Sorceress had sent a mountain crashing down into a valley where a demon army was amassing. She did it not just to protect him, but to save a village in the path of the invading army.
But the rage she felt on the night he’d been stabbed was fuelled by a love twisted up with possession. She raged that someone had dared to harm her gargoyle, and she wanted to cause equal pain upon the enemy, to rip and tear into them and shred what remained of their dark souls. She’d grown talons, and with a strength she shouldn’t have possessed, she’d smashed the vampire’s ribcage and destroyed its heart. Then the demon blade had recognized a darkness greater than itself and obeyed her wishes and released her gargoyle.
Gregory shook free of her thoughts, and with a sinking feeling realized when he was in danger, she surrendered to a new dark and bestial part of her soul—a part he’d never known in all their lifetimes together, and a part that clearly thought of him as hers. This was the Lady of Battles’ work. But what could it mean? Lillian had killed evil to protect him. What was the purpose behind making her more protective of him than she already was? The Lady of Battles had plans layered upon plans, and Gregory needed to dig deeper to find the root of this.
He sought a childhood memory. One before she came to this world . . .
A child of eight, she stood on a battlement, looking up at the jade-coloured sky with its weak sun casting meager light upon the forests below. Small demons and lost spirits wandered among the trees.
She debated visiting her father in his prison there, but mother would be angry if she didn’t show up for lessons. This one was to learn the weaving of invisibility like her father could summon. And that would be a handy ability, especially if she was going to sneak out of this place before her gargoyle matured and came looking for her. She wouldn’t let the Lady of Battles have him. The gargoyle was hers, after all, and no one else had the right to command or enslave him. Only she had that right. She was Mistress.
Gregory broke away from the memory.
Even as a young child, Lillian had known what the Lady of Battles had planned. But by trying to twist the Sorceress’s love of him into something evil, the Lady had created a fatal flaw in her plan. Lillian would allow no one else to use him. Lillian’s eight-year-old memories had made that clear.
Darkness had corrupted the foundation of what they were. While this news was unwelcome, it was still something within his power to heal, if given time. But there must be more—the Lady of Battles was thorough, intelligent and completely competent. Twisting Lillian into something of darkness would only be the tip of her plan.
Gregory returned to the memory where Lillian had ripped out the heart of the vampire. She’d done it with talons. Another clue. The Sorceress wasn’t gifted with shapeshifting, yet she’d grown claws. Since he and the Sorceress were so closely linked, if the Sorceress learned to shapeshift, she might naturally take another shape he’d find even more appealing than a dryad. He envisioned Lillian with a long, dark mane and graceful wings.
His blood surged at the image.
With a mental curse, he halted his line of thought. There was one very good reason why the Mother had made it so the Sorceress could never shapeshift. Best not to even think about how his Mistress would look given a gargoyle form. Death lay down that road.
Surely that wasn’t the Lady of Battles’ plan. There were easier ways to kill him and his Sorceress than to have the Divine Ones burn them to ash. Once roused, there was no stopping or hiding from the God and Goddess. Gregory’s skin shivered with cold even as his heart raced. No, the Lady of Battles would gain nothing by stirring her parents’ ire. If anything, they might seek out the cause of all the trouble. And then the Lady of Battles would have a greater problem than being caged in her prison.
Gregory slid deeper into Lillian’s mind, merging with her soul. He needed to find what else the dark goddess had done to her, but her thoughts and memories pressed upon him from all sides, warm and peaceful, distracting him from his purpose. Home—lik
e the vaguely remembered time in the Spirit Realm when they were one soul.
With some regret, he turned his attention back to the internal dangers lying dormant upon her magic and soul. After sifting through her younger memories, he encountered a tight knot of blocked memories. He poked at the mass and it quivered and slid sideways away from him, seeking shelter in other memories.
Now, here was an anomaly that did not belong. It tasted of a foreign magic, and something else. A second spirit. Gregory examined his find with growing horror. The Lady of Battles had enslaved another soul and imbedded it within Lillian. It grew within his lady like a parasite.
He swam after it and chased it down a second time. The foreign consciousness tossed another barrier between them.
He wove a net of magic and cast it around the second spirit. Focusing, he stripped a layer of its protective magic away, only to reveal another layer underneath. Evil hit his senses with its unclean taste. This was no regular soul, but a demon soul—an evil seed which would grow into one of the powerful, higher-level demons. If he’d fought it within their home Realm, Gregory had no doubt he would win. But here in the Mortal Realm, his options were limited and the demon was protected within Lillian’s body. If he wasn’t mistaken, it was feeding on her power, growing stronger with each passing day.
Lillian shivered as a wave of unease coursed through her. Her heart rate spiked, her breath becoming labored. She thrashed like in a nightmare. If she physically flung him off and broke the link between them now . . .
Cursing, he disengaged from Lillian’s mind to control her body. Dryad scent, the silk-soft warmth of skin, and his own heady desire swamped his senses. Fighting for control, he mentally shook himself, then took a firmer hold on Lillian. At least the umbilical of magic between them remained strong, unharmed by her brief fit of wakefulness or his break in concentration.
As he poured his consciousness back into her body, he met with resistance. The demon soul had escaped its prison and had been busy the few moments Gregory had been distracted.
The darkness uncoiled within Lillian, expanding and building defenses as it fed on her magic. Gregory attacked her link to the Magic Realm, hoping to starve the demon into defeat.
Magic surged and Gregory realized he was already too late. A dam broke within Lillian, unleashing a river of magic upon him. Helplessly, he was thrown back into his own body by the torrent.
The demon soul continued to call power as it expanded its spell outside Lillian’s body.
Chapter Eighteen
Gregory raised his head from the pillow of Lillian’s hair and inhaled a steadying breath, hoping to calm his racing heart and gather his thoughts. It had the opposite effect. Even in his nose-dead, wingless hybrid form, she still smelled good to him. He brushed the back of one hand against her cheek. Her eyelashes fluttered but didn’t open. As a precaution, he whispered a spell so she would slip deeper into slumber. Then he forced his attention away from Lillian long enough to glance around.
A pale nebulous power dripped down the sides of the bed and gathered in an ever-spreading pool on the floor. After a moment, the shimmer intensified and began a purposeful crawl up the north wall of Lillian’s bedroom. What he’d first thought was a spell to loosen his hold on her mind was something of greater concern.
His own magic answered his call with a skin-tingling rush and he reverted back to gargoyle form. All his senses were riveted on the foreign spell and claws extended from his fingertips, poised to rend anything the hostile magic might summon. The silver flames crawling up the wall now flickered with the look of true fire. The mass seethed and heaved like wind-blown grass, and then with a bright flash, a window opened into another place.
The teal-coloured light of the Magic Realm illuminated a circular room with a raised dais at the center. Occupying the dais, two thrones, carved of a dark rock and polished until they resembled black glass, overlooked the rest of the room. Instead of a back wall, a series of stone arches allowed in light and provided a majestic view of white-capped mountains set against the backdrop of a cloudless, green-tinted sky. Presently, the thrones were as empty as the sky, yet by the shimmer of the polished stone floors, this room was well cared for.
From the corner of his eye, Gregory caught movement. He’d forgotten the fae council members were still in the room with him. Whitethorn approached the magic window. He had a sword in one hand, point forward. With a blur of motion, he slashed at the image. The blade bit into the unseen wall behind, raining chips of plaster and white dust down across the floor.
The reflection to the other world rippled like a stone had been tossed into a still pond.
Blessedly, it was an image and not a real gateway. When Whitethorn eased back to his original position a few steps in front of the other Councilors, Gregory caught his eye. “Get out of the line of sight. The less this new enemy knows about our alliance, the better. Let them think Lillian and I are alone.”
Whitethorn’s expression darkened, but he nodded and signaled the other immortals out of sight. The sidhe bowed in Gregory’s direction, then vanished as quickly as the rest. Gregory stared at the door Whitethorn had used a moment more. At least he had some allies, even if they were reluctant ones.
Lillian thrashed upon the bed, fighting his compulsion to sleep. She made a soft exclamation and sat up next to him as she shrugged off the last of his sleep spell. After she took in her surroundings, including the new wall, she focused on him again. Her expression remained serene. A faint smile played across her lips. “Durnathyne, my Hunting Shadow, let me handle this.”
The use of his old name startled him enough that she slipped by him, and was half off the bed before he’d realized she was moving. He leapt into motion and repositioned himself to keep her fenced in between his outstretched wings. He held her in place with his tail for good measure. “Stay. Your protection is my duty.”
“For once let me protect you. You’ll find these enemies don’t play by your rules, my old friend,” Lillian said. She didn’t fight him, but remained behind him with her one hand resting on his back. “The demon soul the Lady of Battles grafted upon me thought it was under attack. It tried to summon help, but it exhausted itself. Now I am in control, and I remember everything. Let me deal with this. Please.”
“But I must—”
“Protect your Mistress?” she asked, sounding sad. Then she pressed a kiss to the muscle of his shoulder as if in apology. “Always the noble protector. I think we’ve taken our disguises too far and you have forgotten we are equals in power.”
The click of boots on stone tiles drew Gregory’s attention back to the image still rippling against the wall. Two columns of heavily armored guards marched into the room from opposite sides, converging upon the center dais with its raised thrones. Tall spears bristled above their heads, and they wore helms shaped in the image of horned demons and snarling beasts. If he’d had doubts about their allegiance, their surcoats with the black dragon against a red field quickly banished his doubts. These were the Lady of Battles’ creatures.
The black-clad guards positioned themselves in a semicircle directly in front of the viewing window, then froze in place. Silence, thick and heavy, pressed all around Gregory. He strained his ears. At first he heard nothing, and then a soft scuffing sound teased his senses.
A ripple went through the line of soldiers as they raised their spears and thumped the staves of dark wood against breastplates. Again, Gregory heard the sound. Louder now. Boot heels striking stone.
A man of middle height stopped a few paces in front of the viewing mirror, his black armor polished until it glistened like wet shadows. At his side, a small, graceful woman waited with her head bowed. A delicate chain peeked out from the flowing sleeve of her gown. The silver links glittered in the dim light but abruptly vanished into gloom a few paces behind the woman, like they had been severed with an axe.
Something about the shadows caught Gregory’s eye, diverting his attention from the leader to the small woman
. It hit him then, a shock so profound he recoiled back a step. Lillian moved behind him and smoothed a hand across his shoulder in a subtle caress.
“Easy, my gargoyle,” she said, pitching her words to carry, like she intended for the new arrivals to hear. “When you rescued me, you were not the only gargoyle there. They needed to practice capturing and holding one of your kind before they attempted to capture you, my pet.”
At the mention of another gargoyle, the small woman with the manacled wrist gave the chain a tug. The shadows parted and a gargoyle materialized on the opposite side of the viewing mirror. He sidled up next to the woman and licked at her hands before bowing his head low. Then he lay down at her feet. Like a loyal dog.
Gregory’s stomach heaved. He looked over his shoulder at Lillian. “Is this to be my future?”
“Not if I can help it, my love.” Lillian’s voice filled his head. “Play along with me if you do not want to become their slave for real. As long as they think I’m winning you over to their side, they will not go to the trouble of coming here. And since they will have the way back to the Magic Realm guarded, we are trapped here with nowhere to go. They’ll assume I’ll bring you home to them once I’ve had my fun. Gregory, please play along no matter what I do. I promise not to shame you in front of the others. You have my word.”
Lillian’s thoughts were as shocking as her hands sliding under the obstacle of his wings and around his sides in a gliding caress. Her fingers traced along the ridge of his tensed muscles.
“You’re playing a dangerous game,” he cautioned.
“I like danger,” Lillian said, her breath disturbing his mane and tickling his neck.
Her tone, so like the Sorceress of old, warmed him. Then her hands shifted lower, her thumbs hooking under the top edge of his loincloth. And that wasn’t anything like his old Mistress.
“Greetings, Commander Gryton,” Lillian said while she draped herself along Gregory’s back.
The Avatars Series: Books 1-3 Page 19