by Tamsin Baker
The guards that are still alive are trying to stand, and the rest are dead. My gaze darts around, but I can’t see any danger. Which is a very good thing.
Relief flows over me.
Blood oozes out between my fingers, and black spots are forming in my vision. The adrenaline leaches out of my system, and I get dizzy, drifting in and out of consciousness.
****
When I wake up, I am in a sterile, white hospital room and doctors are talking over me.
“Can you tell me your name?” the man asks.
“Christiana Barry. Where am I? Where’s Roman?”
“You were shot on the top of the state library. How are you feeling?”
The light hurts my eyes. Tiny miners must have taken pickaxes to the back of my eyeballs.
“I have a headache.”
“We’ll increase your pain meds. Sleep if you can, and the police will be in to question you tomorrow.”
That won’t be good. But thanks to the drugs they stuck in my arm, I go back to sleep.
During the night, Roman sneaks in and takes me out of the hospital. I think he flew me through the air at one point, but the medication makes me so dippy, I am not sure if I hallucinated or not.
Chapter Seven
Roman
I lay my beautiful Beloved down in our bed, her shoulder bandaged up, her usually healthy complexion as pale as an eggshell.
“Is she okay, brother?” Gabe asks, squeezing my arm.
“I believe so. The doctors seem to think she’ll be fine physically, plus, as we have united, she should heal as we do. But as she doesn’t shift, I’m unsure of how her immortality works.”
“Then what concerns you?”
I sigh. “She was concerned about us before this happened. She wasn’t sure she would be able to handle our paranormal world. What will she do now, Gabe? I wouldn’t blame her if she wanted to run half a world away.”
Gabe shakes his head, his long, blond hair covering half his face. “No. You are united. She cannot leave. Plus, we owe her a debt. I don’t believe any of us would be here tonight if it weren’t for her. Those men had the jump on our guards, if she hadn’t taken them down. What would we have awoken to, brother? Oblivion.”
I nod, a strange sadness filling me up. “I didn’t think she had it in her. My weak little human.”
“Weak? You’ve never been a good judge of character, brother. Take it from me. This girl is everything you need. Let her heal, give her time. She will be part of our family now.”
“Speaking of family, how is Rafael?” I turn, giving Gabe my full attention.
Gabe grimaces and tucks his hair behind one of his ears. “He’s pretty bad. Most of the damage they did to him will be permanent. There’s no way of repairing his face, or his arm.”
If I were able to cry, this would be the time for it. My beautiful brother, a beast.
Instead I turn to anger, my hands fisting into balls, a growl rumbling through my chest.
“Who could have done such a thing? Why? Tell me why they did this!”
Gabe hustles me out onto the balcony so I don’t disturb Christiana.
“We don’t know, and thanks to your Beloved finishing them all off—great shot she is by the way—we don’t have anyone to question.”
“Have you spoken to anyone from the Chicago crew?”
“Yes, and they’re at as much of a loss as we are, unfortunately. There’s nothing to go on. These men are ghosts.”
“But our kinsmen think these lunatics will strike again?”
Gate nodded. “Absolutely. We need to change strategies. We aren’t safe on the library anymore.”
“I know. But we don’t have anywhere else to go.”
As far as we know, we can’t exist anywhere else as Gargoyles. Anytime one of us tries to, the pain is excruciating.
I look back through the windows to my bedroom, my Beloved calling to me even in her sleep.
“I need to go back.”
“Do. Be safe.”
I leave Gabe out on the balcony and move inside, Christiana’s eyelids fluttering awake as I move to sit next to her and take her hand.
“Roman…”
She swallows hard and licks her lips.
I grab a bottle of water and hold it to her mouth. She drinks and smiles gratefully.
“You came for me.”
“Of course I did. I couldn’t leave you in that hospital to be poked and questioned. I’ll have a private doctor see to you. Everything will be okay.”
She blinks sleepily up at me. “I love you, Roman. I have to say it, in case something else happens to you.”
“Stop, beautiful. You are immortal. Just like me. You need to heal. Nothing will happen now.”
Or I bloody hope it won’t happen. I’ve hired new staff and doubled our security. I don’t know what else I can do.
Maybe buy her a sniper gun and set it on the balcony?
She grabs my hand and squeezes tight, her eyes fluttering open and closed.
“No. Listen. I do. You saved me from a dead-end life, and I want to stay.”
“I have to ask, just once. Why were you ever with that man? You are such a beautiful woman, and he is such a…” I can’t find the words. I’d been thinking the same thing for days and hadn’t been able to say it.
She sighs, her head dropping down so that I couldn’t see her face.
I tap up her chin so that she has to look at me.
“Christiana. I’m not criticizing you, I promise. I just want to know about your life.”
She gives me half a smile now. “When I finished school, my parents died, and I didn’t have anyone to turn to. I came to the city, got a couple of different jobs … and after a while I met Greg. I thought he was … well, nice. He wooed me with dinners, and nice words. And after struggling for so long, I thought my life would be easier with him. But it wasn’t. all his fake flattery was just a way to get me do what he wanted. At home. At work. And he had a temper. I’d want to run away, but where was I going to go? I felt trapped, and I didn’t want to be alone again. He’d been there for so long … I just…”
I pull her lips up to kiss them, loving the softness of them beneath my own.
“I understand,” I say, although part of me doesn’t. As a paranormal, and a man, I would never need to rely on anyone for anything. “But you don’t need to ever feel like that again. I want you to be happy. I want you to feel loved. Complete. Be as you, as you can be. And I promise you, I will always love you.”
“No matter what?” she asks, her voice barely a whisper.
I chuckle. “No matter what. That is our Beloved union. You can count on it.”
She nods, her eyes clearing so that I can clearly see the intelligence behind them.
“Then it has to go both ways. This union, this … love. I want to help you. You need someone to watch over you as you sleep in the day.”
My heart breaks and is remade in the image of her face. What an incredibly beautiful soul Fate has blessed me with.
“I’m not sure how safe that would be, my Beloved.”
She whacks me in the shoulder. “Hey. You just told me that I’m as immortal as you are. And I think I proved tonight, I can look after myself. Thanks to my dad and some gun lessons. I want to know what the plan is. Because obviously, I’ve landed in the middle of something pretty big.”
I take a breath. Yes, it is probably time to have the talk we should have had that very first night.
“You already know so much, or have inadvertently learned.” I search my mind. “I may as well start from the beginning. I am a Gargoyle shifter, born that way. As are my brothers. We are one hundred and twenty-five years old, immortal, and bound to the sunrise and sunset for our form. I cannot change that. I am sorry. Though I know you would like it. Just as you are a woman, and human, I am a man, and a Gargoyle during the daytime hours. Can you accept that?”
She stills for a moment, then nods once. “Of course.”
�
��Then there is the matter of our union. You are my Beloved. My soul mate. And I am yours. Will you allow me to love you and show you, through all time, that we are meant to be together?”
Her eyes shimmer with tears, and she smiles up at me.
“Only if you let me love you the same way.”
I bow my head, lift her fingers and kiss the knuckles of her soft hand, humbled to the very center of my being.
“And finally. We must talk about the danger our family faces, as I must beg of you to accept my brothers as your family, too. I know I said we may live wherever you wish, but until this passes—”
She hushes me. “Shh, no. Don’t be silly. I grew up an only child with no siblings, and now I have no parents. It would be an honor to live here and be a part of your family. Especially with Rafe needing help now.”
Horror strikes a deep chord in my heart. “Rafe. My handsome brother.”
Rafe would not take his disfiguration well. He has always been the best looking of us all, and now, we have no idea if he would ever recover from the trauma of the attack.
“Where to now, Roman?”
“Now, we try to work out who is attacking us, and why. We double our security, and we talk to the elders. I need to know what these men want.”
“I do, too. What did you guys ever do to them?” she asks, her tone angry.
“Nothing. We don’t interfere with humans at all.”
She smiles up at me. “I love that you interfered in my life, Roman.”
I grin. “You are the exception to every rule and always will be.”
She giggles happily and settles her head deeper into the pillow, her eyelids beginning to fall once again.
“I love you, too, Christiana, light of my life. Now sleep, and I’ll watch over you.”
She nods and drifts off to sleep again.
I stand up and walk to the window, watching our busy city rumble and flare around me. We are at war, and I have more than myself to protect now. I have my brothers, and my Beloved. No one, not even those evil enough to attack us during the day, will tear them away from me.
The battle is far from over.
The End
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