by E A Price
He came for her. Protected her, put his life at risk. He had to be okay – she couldn’t bear any alternative!
“Pumpkin,” murmured her father and she looked up at him.
He was older of course, but his eyes were just as kind and bright as they had ever been. She wanted to hug him, to talk to him, to ask him a thousand questions, but she was rooted to her place next to Drago. Could not bear to be apart from him.
“I think we should leave Drago to rest,” murmured Annis, trying to shepherd everyone out the room.
“No, I don’t want to leave him.”
The gargoyle gave her a strange smile. “No, I didn’t think you would.”
She made everyone leave, including her father and Maggie who wanted to argue but closed their mouths when Chris gave them a warning glare and pointed to his gun.
Annis closed the door behind her and Martha flopped onto the bed beside Drago, curling up on his wing in a familiar way that felt like she had done it a hundred times before. The events of the night were finally catching up with her. It would be dawn soon. She wondered if Drago would turn to stone in the bed. Would the bed support his stone weight – it seemed to be struggling with his weight as it was.
“Are they gone?” asked a low voice.
Martha shot up to find Drago had one eye open and his mouth was set in a grimace.
“Drago.” She bent down and gave him the briefest of kisses. His lips reached for hers, even as she pulled away.
“How long have you been awake?”
“Since we arrived. I thought they’d never leave.”
“You could have said something.” Could have shown her he was okay so she wouldn’t have to worry so much!
Drago gave her that searching look. “I had nothing to say to them.”
Martha lay down again, her head on his shoulder and her hand on his chest. “You scared me half to death.”
Drago grunted. “I scared you?”
“Yes! Annis pulled three bullets out of you. I thought you were going to die.” Her eyes filled with tears.
He grunted again. “Do not cry,” he ordered before softening with, “please.” She tried, though a few drops slipped out.
“If anyone should have been scared, it was me. You were the one who was kidnapped.”
“That wasn’t my fault!”
He grumbled some more.
“Annis said you will probably have scars.” She traced one of his older scars.
“What is a few more?”
“I don’t like you getting them for saving me.”
“You are worth a few scars. My only regret is that one of them lived.”
She frowned before realizing he must have heard them talking. He passed out before they realized the man was still alive.
“Barely,” she murmured. His hand was crushed, and he was burned, but a part of her wished he had not survived – had not put her in the position of asking the gargoyles to take him to the hospital because she couldn’t bear to leave him to die. The way that man had looked at her still made her shudder.
He tucked his wing around her as her body shook.
Some of the gargoyles had been reluctant, but the gargoyle who appeared to be in charge, Luc, told them to drop the man at a hospital.
Chris had already called a friend in law enforcement and had him arrested. Apparently, her mother’s beach house had burned down, and when the fire and police arrived, they tried to rouse her neighbor and found her dead in a freezer. They assumed the man had killed her so he could use her house to spy on Martha. While waiting for the evidence to confirm it, they had arrested him. Not that he was in any position to go anywhere at that moment.
They lay together in silence for a while until he groaned.
“It is nearly daybreak; I will be stone soon.”
“I know.”
“I will heal while I am stone. I will heal before you at least.”
Martha, with a great deal of effort, because after her long night she was starting to feel like her own limbs were turning to stone, half sat up, leaning her head on one elbow.
“Physically, I’m fine.” Mentally she felt like she’d gone ten rounds with a… well, with a gargoyle.
Drago’s expression darkened, and he traced a finger over her cheek – where she had been punched.
“Oh,” she whispered. “Honestly, it’s nothing. I’ll be bruised for a little while, but I’ll heal.”
“I should never have left you.”
“Not that I’m complaining or agreeing, but why did you?”
Drago hesitated, and Martha pursed her lips. “You’re not seriously going to keep this from me?”
“Humph, no, but I have only minutes before dawn. Explanations must wait.”
He tried not to let it show, but it pained him as he sat up in bed.
“Let me help you,” she urged lumbering off the bed to get to him.
Her feet caught in the sheets and she toppled to the floor, letting out a yelp as her leg burned in fiery pain. Instead of helping him, he was now plucking her off the floor, giving her a worried look.
“I’m fine,” she said through gritted teeth. She wasn’t, but she wasn’t going to complain about a few aches to someone currently sporting three gunshot wounds. She must have injured herself more than she thought when she fell over trying to run away earlier. She hadn’t had the chance to undress yet but assumed she was bruised. Again, nothing that wouldn’t heal.
“You are lying,” growled Drago. “Take off your clothes.”
“Drago…”
“I wish to inspect you for injury.”
“The sunrise…”
“If you will not take them off yourself,” he warned.
That was how he turned to stone, in the midst of trying to pull her sweater over her head.
Martha sighed and awkwardly ducked out of the garment – which was now firmly sealed in his hands for the foreseeable future, or at least until he woke up that night.
His face was set in grim determination; his mouth was open showing his fangs while his wings were thrown back. The pink sweater perhaps diminished his ferocity a little, making Martha smile.
Standing on her tiptoes, she pressed a kiss to his stone lips and whispered, “Sweet dreams.”
*
With a few hours rest, a nap and something to eat, Martha was starting to feel a little less like a zombie. The mansion was painfully quiet. Nearly everyone who lived there was asleep, trying to adhere to the gargoyles’ schedule.
Maggie and Kylie had fussed over her, but she insisted they get some rest too. They were both nearly dead on their feet.
Rooms had been made up for both her father and his fire starting companion, Danica. Grey made a few strident objections to her being there, but Luc overruled him and then Danica stuck her tongue out at him.
Martha sipped at a cup of coffee as she tried to get her head around everything that was happening.
Her father apparently as restless as her, had also risen and after hugging, crying and then hugging again, they were finally talking.
“When did you know you were psychic?”
Her dad, Allen smiled weakly. “When I was about six. Had a vision of my dad dying of cancer. It came true.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am. I didn’t think you were like me. I thought you took after your mother. If I had known, I would have tried to come to you a lot sooner.”
“About Mom…”
He held up a hand and chuckled. “I’m aware she remarried.”
“You’re not mad?”
“Not at all. She thought I was dead, and I’m not sure things would have worked out for us.”
Martha frowned, and he said, “Oh, I’m sure we would have stayed together for you, for as long as possible. But,” he breathed out, “while your mother’s a wonderful woman in many ways, she’s not exactly comfortable when it comes to anything unusual. I tried to tell her I was psychic a thousand times but she wouldn’t li
sten.”
“What really happened, you know… back then?”
“Why did I kill that man?” He shook his head sadly. “I had a vision of him walking into the town library and shooting ten people. I had to stop him before that happened.”
“That’s awful, but surely there was a better way, didn’t you think to talk to the cops…”
His face twisted. “Martha, I saw him kill you!”
She blinked at him.
“I had to stop him, and I had to do it immediately. I didn’t know when he would kill you, but I had to stop him. The cops couldn’t and wouldn’t have done anything to stop him and if I had wasted time trying to talk him out of it, how would I have known he wouldn’t turn around and decide to do it the day after?
“Pumpkin, I’m not going to pretend I’m a good person or that what I did hasn’t weighed on me. I did what I did for purely selfish reasons – because above all else; I wanted to save you.”
Martha nodded dumbly. “I understand. If I was in the same situation, maybe I…”
“No, I don’t think you have it in you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You were attacked and kidnapped by two men who were planning to do god only knows what to you, but you were still horrified at the thought of leaving one of them to die.”
Martha shook her head. “We’re getting off track, what happened at the hospital?”
Allen rolled his shoulders. “Not much, really. Crawley couldn’t technically find anything wrong with me, but she kept at it. Then one night some men came to my room, stuck me with a needle and the next thing I knew I woke up in a different hospital. Only this one wasn’t full of crazy people – or at least, the crazy people weren’t the patients.”
“Didn’t you have, you know, a vision that they were going to kidnap you?”
“Yes, but there was really only so much I could do to stop them when four burly men in black burst into my room. The dreams and visions are hard to get a handle on. You’ll see a lot, and some of it will be nonsense, but some will actually help you. You’ll see different versions of the events, and it won’t be clear which one will come true. It’s hard working out what to believe. When did your dreams start?”
“About three months ago.”
“Ah.”
“Ah?”
Allen smiled ruefully. “I’m not entirely sure, but something happened three months ago that got everyone at the institute very excited. I think it was to do with these gargoyles.” He peered around the room as if expecting them to appear – it was daytime, they didn’t.
“I’ve had a lot of dreams over the years about them, not many that make sense, but there must have been something in my dreams they wanted to know otherwise they wouldn’t have kept me around so much. Course, I can’t remember that many of them clearly – they drugged me a lot of the time.”
“You said you dreamed of me surrounded by gargoyles?”
His lips thinned. “In a way – you were with Drago and pregnant. At that time. I thought they were all monsters and I worried what he was going to do to you, so Danica and I escaped, and here we are.”
She ignored the pregnant part for the moment - that was too close to her own dreams. They could talk about that later.
“All this time…”
“Made bearable because I thought you were safe. I thought when you didn’t start manifesting dreams that you wouldn’t be like me.”
“I did – after you were gone, but Mom got me on sleeping pills because I couldn’t bear them.”
“If I’d known…” He shook his head sadly. “Over the years I’ve broken out quite a lot. I’ve not spent as much time there as you’d imagine.”
“Couldn’t you have evaded them? Couldn’t you have kept running?”
Allen shrugged. “Maybe if I’d tried harder.”
“Then you could have come home.”
“No, they would have found me there in an instant.” He squeezed her hand. “I had to stay away from you.”
“Then why not go somewhere else?”
“They brought Danica to the hospital when she was six. She was just a child, surrounded by people who wanted to use and study her – I was the only person who had any interest in taking care of her, of treating her like a kid.”
Martha thought of the small yet infinitely scary young woman. “Are you saying she’s kind of like the crazy stepsister I never, ever imagined having?
“I suppose, she has become like a daughter to me.” He must have seen something in Martha’s expression, because he added, “I don’t say that to hurt you.”
“I know,” she said quickly. “Part of me doesn’t believe any of this is even happening. Four months ago my biggest concern was whether or not it was worth vacuum packing my summer wardrobe.”
Allen chuckled before giving her an attentive look. “You don’t seem to have difficulty in believing that gargoyles exist.”
“I dreamed of them for a while before I met Drago.”
His expression hardened. “I dreamed of them too, but I didn’t realize that there were others out there as well.”
“Others?”
“Yes, they had them at the facility where they kept me.”
“They were keeping gargoyles as prisoners?”
“No, the gargoyles were the guards – made running away a hell of a hard job I can tell you!”
Chapter Thirty-One
They talked for hours. Everything he told her seemed to raise further questions. She told him of the dreams she had of him, in the facility. He said they were true. Of the one where she imagined she was in the facility, he believed that she was dreaming of something that happened to Danica. He said dreaming through other peoples’ eyes wasn’t uncommon.
They took him because of his psychic abilities. Used him to gain visions.
The facility housed plenty of humans with unusual abilities – like Danica. He tried to escape many times, sometimes succeeding, but they usually kept him in line by threatening to hurt Martha and her mother.
But when he dreamed of Martha being psychic and being with a gargoyle, he feared for her, and Danica helped him get free.
He broke out of the institute to go to her. He found her using his visions, but he knew that someone would be watching her. However, he didn’t think they would attack her unless they were sure he was there – he was sorry he was wrong. Something clearly spooked them.
Martha told him of Dr. Crawley’s belated confession. Her father wasn’t particularly surprised. He thought as much, had to believe she was somehow involved.
She said it was someone called Blackthorne behind it – and he told her he’d met him briefly, a couple of times when he questioned him about his visions. Some crazy but powerful nut obsessed with magic and prophecies.
Before sunset, Chris offered to drive her home. He wasn’t exactly keen for her to leave, but she wanted a shower in her own house and to change into her own clothes.
When they arrived at her house, she paused about to get out of the car. “I’d rather you not tell Drago that I asked you out on a date.” She’d rather no one knew that, but somehow she didn’t think Drago would like it.
Chris snorted. “I’d rather I didn’t tell Drago either. I’d like my head to remain on the top of my body.”
“He wouldn’t,” she said with very little conviction.
“I’m pretty sure he would. I wasn’t there, but Gracchus told me when they got to your house, and you weren’t there, he was ready to walk through fire to get you back – literally thanks to that strange girl. Gracchus said he took off after you like a bat out of hell without the rest of them.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Gracchus said bat out of hell?”
Chris shrugged. “He said Drago was prepared to kill anyone who got in his way – including his clan mates.”
Probably not something that should make her insides twitter with happiness
“All I’m saying is be careful – the guy’s a little off.”
Martha scowled at him and he sighed. “And I can see I’m too late for warnings.”
She ignored that. “I’ll come up to the mansion later, I mean, I assume I’ll be welcome…”
“I’ll wait here for you.”
“There’s no need.”
“I’ll wait, Martha. I’m not leaving you alone until we get you back to the mansion. We don’t know that this Blackthorne guy didn’t send more men for you. I’ll wait out here in the car – you take the time you need.”
She considered arguing but instead, nodded in resignation at his determined expression. She was about to move when she asked, “What is it like being marr… mated to a gargoyle?”
If she didn’t know any better, she’d say his eyes took on a dreamy glint. “It’s, I don’t know, just right. Being around Annis, everything just seems to shift into focus – like I’m right where I need to be.”
“Hmmm.” She thought of how unfocused she’d felt before coming together with Drago, and she wondered whether Drago felt the same way.
“You best get moving. It won’t be long before the sun sets, and Drago wakes up grouchy at the best of times.” He shuddered as if remembering something.
Martha nodded and started moving.
“If I were you I’d pack a bag,” he called after her.
She was going to object but rather, she just nodded again.
*
Martha wavered between a blue and a pink t-shirt and then tossed them both into a suitcase.
“Pack a bag, he says,” muttered Martha. “For how long, though? Will Drago even want me to stay up there?” She wrapped her wet hair into a bun and stared down at the suitcase that was gradually becoming overstuffed.
She had no idea where she even stood with Drago, never mind anyone else who lived up at the mansion. She and Maggie were hardly close, and Valerie had been an absolute cow to Kylie in the past – and though Martha hadn’t joined in, she certainly hadn’t stopped her. Would she even be welcome?
Plus, she had nothing to wear!
Okay, that might have been the stress talking – but her nicest pieces had apparently gone up in smoke at the beach house. Hell, what was her mother going to say when Martha told her about that?