Sabrina and the Gargoyle

by Marie Dry

  She absently massaged her aching knee. “How many hunters are there? Couldn’t you call the others in and kill him together.”

  “I’ve called them already. Unfortunately, Kratos has managed to kill quite a few of my brethren through the centuries.”

  He knelt before her, strong and powerful even in that humble position. She sucked in a breath when he gripped her ankle, his hand warm on her skin, her calf, and then it folded over her injured knee under her evening dress.

  She stiffened, her skin came alive under his hand. “What are you doing?”

  “What I should’ve done the first time I saw you.” He placed his other hand on her knee as well. Heat flushed through her body. Not a comforting warm heat and not the arousal she normally felt at his touch. A strange cold-warm heat seared through her, through muscle and tendons right into her bones. A light flared through the fabric of her dress and, for one terrible moment, she could see her knee joint like a macabre X-ray.

  Sabrina screamed and screamed and couldn’t make herself stop. The reason-stealing, bone-crushing pain consumed her. “Let go of me, please, you’re killing me. Please.”

  She tried to pull her knee away, to push his hands off her, but he clamped down in a hard unbreakable grip and muttered something she didn’t understand. Some kind of incantation. If she didn’t get him off her, her knee would burn to ashes from the terrible heat.

  “Let go,” she screamed at him and still couldn’t get away from him. “You monster, what are you trying to do to me? Haven’t you done enough already?”

  “Only a little longer,” he said. He sounded strained, as if what he did drained him.

  She heard his voice as if bodies of water separated them. Tears streamed down her face and fell on her chest. The pain was so intense she couldn’t emit anything more than soft mewling sounds. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get away from his burning hands. She wanted to scream to the heavens. The pain was so bad, her throat wouldn’t work to scream it out. The heat intensified with the pain until she thought smoke would come out of her knee. And through it all there was a sexual energy, her body responding to some primal call that horrified her. How could she experience such pain and be left wanting him?

  Abruptly the heat disappeared. The pain went away. He withdrew his hand and stood up, his stance curiously guarded. He looked like a man awaiting judgement. “Try standing.”

  Instead of standing as he said, she flexed her knee and realized the pain was gone. Her knee didn’t feel stiff anymore. Her body was on fire, wanting him, wanting him right now. She clenched her teeth and stood. Her knee took her weight as if it had never been injured. “You have the power to heal?”

  He clasped the back of his neck and paced up and down. “A gargoyle male doesn’t have a lot to offer a woman. It is said the gods gave them the gift of healing their wives in order for them to have something to entice a woman into marrying them.”

  “You have the power to heal?” she said again, louder this time.

  Ever since the accident she had to carefully get to her feet if she was sitting. Then she had to wait for a few seconds and adjust to her own weight before she could attempt to put pressure on her weak knee. She took a careful tentative step forward, walked to the door, and back and then slowly back to where he stood. She slapped him or tried to. His reflexes were too fast.

  He moved back. “Careful, you could break your hand.”

  “I struggled up and down those stairs and you watched me. You had the power to heal and you let me suffer.” She wanted to beat the stuffing out of him.

  He flinched and balled his hands.

  “I endured agonizing pain every day and you pretended sympathy.”

  “It wasn’t pretense, Sabrina. If I’d healed you, I wouldn’t have been able to go through with the plan. From the first, you meant too much to me. I was desperately thinking of a way to get Kratos without using you.”

  She barely heard him. “How you must’ve laughed at my pitiful gratitude each time you carried me down the stairs. Why did you do it? To make me fall more in love with you? So that I’d feel even worse when I find out how you’re going to use me?”

  “I never laughed at you, I could never do that to you.”

  “You bastard. You could’ve done this all along. What kind of monster are you?

  “I’m sorry.” he said, somber.

  “You’re sorry.” A hysterical laugh escaped her painfully bitten lips. “Show me how sorry and get out of my life. And take your monsters and end of the world doom with you.”

  He reached out with one of those lightning fast movements and drew her tight against his body. “I’ll never let you go, Sabrina. Resign yourself to eternity with me.”

  “I thought we had no eternity because the world is going to come to an end,” she said. All the anger and hurt drained away, leaving her tired. “You never told me you loved me.” Looking back, she realized she’d actually said it plenty of times, though she hadn’t realized it until now. But he’d always kissed her in response or held her. She’d very naively assumed that he loved her too. That his actions were his way of proclaiming his love. Her heart ached for the young naïve girl she was just a short while ago.

  “At the time, I believed it would be a lie. Now I think it would have been true, even on the first day we met.”

  “Was anything you ever told me true?” she whispered through dry lips. “I don’t even know if this unrelenting love for you is real or something you planted inside me.”

  He hesitated and she closed her eyes, tried to absorb the pain of knowing she’d love him until the day she died because he put those emotions inside her. Not because they grew naturally.

  “I will make restitution.”

  Sabrina leaned back into the couch, too tired to care much about anything right now. “How do you make restitution for planning to sacrifice someone? For messing with their minds and emotions?” He was crazy, there was no way she wanted money. How much was a broken heart worth, anyway? How would he measure it? She took a threatening step forward. Vampire or gargoyle, she was going to hurt him for even thinking she’d take money as compensation for him crushing her feelings

  “I can be made to suffer as well.” For a long moment a heavy silence reigned. He seemed to have forgotten her presence and Sabrina was tempted to try and walk out and just keep walking until she left all this behind her. His head snapped up and he speared her with a dark deadly look, as if she’d said the words aloud. “I will never allow you to leave me.”

  “Stay out of my mind.”

  “I should’ve healed your knee, but for gargoyles healing our mates is an intensely intimate act. I couldn’t do it, couldn’t see you as my mate, because then I would never have sacrificed you.” He jumped up again. At this rate she’d get whiplash. He paced in front of her. “I don’t care if the world comes to an end, I’m not sacrificing you to that monster. Now is a bad time for me to do this with the drogge already taking humans, but if it means you’ll forgive me eventually, I’ll do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Redeem myself in your eyes. Prove that you are the most important thing in my life.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What on earth is it that you think you can do to make up for pretending to marry me? Letting me suffer with an injury when you could easily have helped me?”

  “I’ll talk to the enforcer shortly. Promise me you won’t leave the house.”

  She pressed her lips together and glared at him. “I’m not an idiot. No way am I going out with all the creatures roaming this city.”

  “I won’t be long,” he said and disappeared.

  The wolf padded in and sat down on his haunches. He cocked his head at her in a typical canine gesture, a small moaning, questioning sound escaping him.

  “I suppose you’re watching me to make sure I don’t go out.”

  He showed her teeth.

  She forgot her pain and misery and twirled in front of the wolf.
“I can walk.”

  Carefully, she walked up and down and then faster until she ran laughing up and down the stairs under the wolf’s incredulous eyes.

  She ran to her closet and grabbed a pair of heels and slipped them on.

  She pranced up to the wolf and held out a high heeled foot. “You know what, Wolf? I might even start wearing high heels all the time.”

  Mark appeared before her. There was a strange wild look in his eyes, his lips pressed together.

  “Come.”

  With only that one word spoken she found herself between one blink of her eye and the next in a big cavernous room. It looked like a medieval dungeon. She clutched at Mark until the dizziness passed. She’d never felt this disoriented before when he transported them this way. Lifting her chin, she stepped away from him and looked around. Strangely braided ropes hung from the high ceiling and the edges of the room were dark with shadows moving. She shivered.

  “What is this place?” she whispered. It seemed appropriate to whisper. As if the cave would come alive and punish her if she didn’t show the proper respect.

  “When we are in Africa, enforcers, or as we’re more commonly known, hunters come here for ceremonies.” His voice echoed.

  She needed to talk to him about what exactly hunters were. “Where are we?”

  “Deep inside Table Mountain.”

  She couldn’t believe him. The thought of a whole mountain on top of them was frightening.

  “Welcome.”

  She nearly jumped into Mark’s arms, she was so startled by the deep resonating voice. She turned around and there was Dumbledore. Complete with long beard and flowing long robes. His eyes were wrong, instead of the kind blue ones of Dumbledore, black, fiery, hate-filled eyes glared at her. She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. She’d faced down gargoyles and shook hands with a werewolf. How bad could this creature be?

  He came forward and towered over her. Between him and Mark she felt like a midget.

  The old man glared down at her. “So you want to have your pound of flesh?” His voice boomed over her.

  Mark made an impatient motion with his hand, frowned at the old man, and grabbed two of the ropes, stretching his hands wide.

  “Enough, Nicholas. You’ve had your fun now. Let’s get started.”

  “Started with what?” Sabrina asked. She had a very bad feeling. Her spidey senses told her to grab Mark and run from this place.

  Mark turned his head towards her and his face softened. “You need to be able to trust me. To know that I would endure anything for you. I have found the means to do that.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that. And the medieval looking chamber with its strange torture devices and resident wizard creeped her out.

  She pulled at his arm, tried to drag him away from Dumbledore. “Please, Mark, let’s just go. You don’t have to prove anything to me.” Nothing good was going to happen here. She knew in the depths of her soul that she needed to get Mark away from this old wizard with his hate-filled eyes.

  He didn’t answer her. Just pointedly looked at the wizard he’d called Nicholas. What a mundane name for a wizard, she thought hysterically. He should be named Beelzebub or something.

  Nicholas came forward and tied the ropes around Mark’s wrists. Before she could move, Mark was hanging by his hands. His feet tied to poles as well and she held both her hands in front of her mouth.

  Then she shook off the stupor that came over her and ran forward. She grabbed the arm of the old man and touched strong muscles.

  “Please stop. Whatever you’re going to do to him, please don’t,” she pleaded while tears fell down her cheek.

  He glared down at her, his angled face contemptuous. “This is all for you, sweetheart. So that you can have your girly heart go pitter patter over the idea of your man sacrificing for you.” Nicholas’s sarcasm cut deep.

  “You don’t know what--” she started to say, but Mark’s voice boomed over hers.

  It echoed round the chamber and Sabrina clutched her ears. Did all of these supernatural people have the ability to make their voices resonate like that?

  “Nicholas. Enough.”

  Nicholas and Mark glared at each other. At last, Mark said through gritted teeth. “Enough, let’s get on with it and stop with the theatrics. No matter how badly you want to be, you’re not Dumbledore.”

  With a sneer on his face Nicholas transformed. Sabrina’s mouth dropped open. A tall man with long black hair and dark fiery eyes staring out of a sculpted, savage face, stood before her. No more than thirty years old, he looked tough, cruel, and powerful. She wouldn’t want to meet him alone in a dark alley. Not even in a well-lit one. He gave her a last sneer and then turned toward where Mark still held onto the ropes.

  “All right, let’s get started then,” Nicholas said and opened an ancient looking box.

  “Started with what?” Sabrina shivered when he drew out a long silver splinter. If the books and movies were to be believed, silver around vampires was bad news. What would it do to someone who was half vampire?

  Nicholas turned to her. “A vampire has very few weaknesses. Even daylight is not as dangerous to us as you’d imagine. The only thing we might fear if we were capable of that emotion is the drogge.” He walked slowly toward Mark, his voice echoing around her. “But that is a story for another day. For now, what you need to know is that our capacity for pain is as big as our capacity for pleasure.”

  Sabrina’s stomach gave a prickly queasy turn, as if she’d somehow swallowed a box full of sewing pins. This couldn’t be happening. She wouldn’t allow this to happen. “Stop right now. I know what you’re going to do, but please don’t.” She wiped at the tears streaming down her face, gave a stumbling step toward Mark.

  “I don’t take orders from you, human,” Nicholas sneered.

  “I don’t want him in pain,” she pleaded with Nicholas, but it was Mark who answered her.

  “No, I’ll do this and then you’ll accept that I could never harm you. That you are important to me.” Marks voice rang with certainty. And desperation.

  “Please, I don’t want him to hurt you. Please make him stop. I believe you, I swear I believe I’m important to you.”

  Nicholas turned and tore open the knee of Mark’s pants. He showed no reluctance.

  Sabrina looked at the silver sliver in his hands and the torn pants on Mark’s knee and horror clawed at her. “No.” She meant to scream it out at them, only a hoarse sound came out of her throat. She tried to get between Nicholas and Mark, but some invisible force held her back.

  Before she could move to stop him, Nicholas took the sliver and inserted it into Marks knee.

  “No,” she screamed.

  Mark’s groan of pain echoed her scream around the cave as the sliver slid home. The invisible force that held her back disappeared, but she was frozen in place, sent frantic signals to her legs to move, her arms to start beating Nicholas, but they wouldn’t obey. Mark’s skin changed, turned into marble, black and gray striations covering his body, his face broadened and his brow thickened. A magnificent pair of wings tore out of his back. He was beautiful. And in pain.

  “No,” she screamed again and, at last, her legs obeyed her instructions. She ran forward and grabbed hold of Nicholas’s black shirt.

  “Take it out. Take it out now. You can’t do this to him,” she screamed in his face. She tried to shake him, but he didn’t even move, simply lifted a brow. She was vaguely aware of Mark calling her name. She wanted to go to him, but she was intent on forcing Nicholas to take that sliver out again.

  “Take it out of him. I’ll put a stake through your miserable vampire heart and cut off your head. Take it out. Right now.”

  “It’s done. The sliver is bespelled and will come out in six months.” Nicholas’s voice was calm and controlled, with that faint edge of contempt in it.

  Sabrina immediately made the connection. She’d endured two months with him when he could’ve healed her kne
e and didn’t. He’d multiplied the time by three. Still this was too much. She couldn’t bear to see him suffer. “What if he has to battle the gargoyles or the drogge? Please release him.”

  “No.”

  Sabrina looked around, desperate to make him release Mark. On the table, with his other instruments of torture, a silver knife lay next to a wicked looking scalpel. She grabbed the knife and pressed it knife against his stomach above his black jeans.

  Deliberately, she made a tear in his shirt and pressed the silver against his flesh. The smell of burning flesh reached her nostrils and she saw his flare. His eyes narrowed, but he gave no other indication of the pain he felt.

  “This knife is made of silver. If I cut your gut open with it and leave it inside, I bet you--”

  She didn’t get to finish. Before she could blink, he’d disarmed her and had her held aloft by her throat. She was vaguely aware of Mark screaming. It hurt, being held up with his fingers wrapped around her throat. It got quiet, except for the humming in her ears, darkness pressed in on her vision.

  Vaguely she heard Nicholas growl. “Filthy human. How dare you?”

  “Let her go.” Mark stood behind Nicholas, the knife held at his throat. “She was trying to help me. You can’t hold her to vampire law.” Mark’s voice was firm. Even through the ringing in her ears, she heard the deadly threat.

  Slowly the pressure on her throat eased. As the darkness in front of her eyes receded she saw Nicholas’s eyes glaring up at her. With excruciating slowness, he lowered her. Mark stood absolutely still, the knife steadily at Nicholas’s throat. At last, her feet touched the ground. The vampire still held her by the throat and she knew she was going to die today.

  The reality was, a monster had her by the neck, a monster that had no intention of letting her live, even with Mark holding a knife at his throat.