by Price, E A
Lara wouldn’t be able to tell if she had magic. The magic had dried up in her family over a century ago. Too much breeding with the human cattle. The capacity for magic lay within her, though. All she would need would be a spark to set her going and who knew what she would be capable of.
She knew she was an embarrassment to Holling, and that was why he wouldn’t marry her. Holling was embarrassed for himself, too. He didn’t like to admit it, but his family’s magic had been waning for centuries. Holling was the weakest practitioner in his family yet. His younger sister – she who shall not be named - couldn’t do anything at all. Another generation and it could be completely gone. His family had always been so proud of their heritage, valuing magic over all else, only mating with other practitioners. Lara secretly believed that it was the inbreeding that had caused their magic to go sour. Anyone who couldn’t do magic was persona non grata to the late Holling senior – even casting out his own daughter. Lara was relieved that Holling didn’t feel the same way. He loved her, and they were going to get married. He’d said so in a roundabout way. She knew that he probably wouldn’t want her if she weren't a descendant of one of the Noir Clans, and, therefore, capable of wielding magic, but that didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered. The important thing was that she had Holling. He was hers. And when they finally did manage to wake one of the blasted creatures, the magic would finally be theirs, and both of their families would once again be the powerful forces they once were. It was the agreement Holling had made. He would help find and wake the gargoyles, and in exchange they would be permitted to kill one and absorb Merlin’s magic. The rest of the gargoyles would do as they pleased, but they would have an alliance with Holling.
This was all Holling’s dream, but given that all of Lara’s thoughts and hopes entirely centered on him – she had taken it on as her dream, too.
Lara kissed his cheek but stilled as he glared at her.
“What are you doing?” he snapped. “Where’s Andrew?”
She tried to shrug, indifferently, to hide the terror she felt inside. Holling wasn’t a powerful practitioner, but the flashes of pain he could create in her mind hurt, as did his fists. “Out.”
“Out where?”
“I don’t know; I think he went to talk to that Maggie girl.”
“Why didn’t you stop him?” he snarled. He pushed her away and began pacing up and down.
“Why would I?” She could care less where Andrew was at any given time of day.
“Haven’t you noticed how much time he’s been spending with that girl? Are you really so stupid?” His voice had become a howl.
“What does it matter?”
“It matters because if he suddenly decides to drop his cold bitch of a fiancée and take up with a sweet, small-town girl -”
Lara held back a snort, that trainwreck with ripped tights and eyeliner that would embarrass Cleopatra was not a sweet girl.
“Then we’ll be kicked out of here and everything I worked so hard for will be gone.”
Lara felt a stab of irritation. He had worked so hard for? She was the one who had to do most of the work – flat on her back with a man who had an impressive ability to recover. Holling was practically using her as a whore. Not to mention the fishmonger – seducing him into following Kylie around town was easy, but she wasn’t sure she could ever get rid of the smell or the feel of his sweaty hands on her body. Of course, Holling didn’t know about that yet – she was saving that as a surprise for him. Not that it had done much good yet. Visits to the library and grocery stores were yawn worthy.
“Do you know how long it took me to track the gargoyles down?” he demanded, in his familiar ranting voice.
Lara tried to be reasonable – not always a safe thing to be where Holling was concerned. “Surely there are other gargoyles in the world?”
“Not like this,” he spat. “The professor has at least twenty gargoyles hidden somewhere. At least twenty! But if I’m right, that could be closer to fifty. The collection has grown and grown since they were first turned. And there isn’t time to find others – we have eighteen months until the gargoyles remain stone forever, and all the magic is lost.”
She bit her lip. “What about that female gargoyle you found in France?”
“She’s a last resort. Storming a monastery and killing monks is not a high priority. Besides, I want this one. I need this one.”
“Which one?”
“I know the professor had him,” Holling muttered to himself. “He’s the descendant of the first gargoyle, of Guinevere’s gargoyle, of Demon. I know he’s here somewhere. She wants this one.”
Lara knew who the ‘she’ was, and she was caught between a shudder and a disdainful scowl. “Which one?”
“Lucifer.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kylie wrung her hands together. Luc had a temper. She knew he had a temper. He had never tried to hurt her – heavens no he was as gentle as a butterfly when it came to her - but even after all these weeks, the anger still lingered about the guy who tried to mug her. And about Brian. And any other male she happened to mention. And that cat that she almost tripped over the other day. Added to that his bubbling impatience about neither being able to go outside much or in finding his fellow gargoyles, he was a boiling pot of chicken soup readying to explode all over her kitchen.
Finding out that she ignored him when he ordered her not to steal a book, might kind of tip him over the edge.
She could lie to him… the thought sat like a lead weight in her mind, and that threatened to travel all the way down to her stomach and give her indigestion. Perhaps, she could just tell him about stealing the book and not about the whole ‘blackmailed date’ thing. He would probably forgive the book thing… eventually. She wasn’t sure how he would react if he knew what Holling had done. He’d probably be furious at Holling, but would he also be disappointed in her?
She held her breath as Luc awoke, he stretched out his long body as he let out a growly yawn and gently fluttered his wings.
He caught sight of her, and a slow smile spread over his face. Her body tingled, but definitely not because she was nervous.
“Good morning,” she whispered.
He walked across the room and eagerly swept her into his arms. It took two steps for him to get to her. It had become their custom to hug whenever he awoke – unless he was mad at her for overloading on books, of course. It had started out as a pat on the back. Then escalated to a squeeze around the shoulders – he squeezed her shoulders, no way could she get an arm around his mountainous muscles. He put bodybuilders to shame. That then became a one-armed hug, which morphed into a two-arm hug where you angle your body away from the other person. Until, eventually, it blossomed into a full-on hug where, in his enthusiasm, her feet barely touched the floor.
Well, it was no big deal, right? Friends hugged all the time. And that’s what they were… friends.
After a few fraught moments where Kylie thought her ribs might just pop he put her back on her feet, and she giggled, her unease momentarily forgotten. She left a hand on his arm and one of his lingered on her waist. Even her slightly thick body felt tiny compared to him.
“I have something to tell you, but I don’t want you to get mad.” Stupid thing to say, it was like starting a sentence with ‘no offence, but’.
Luc stilled slightly, and his eyes narrowed. “Oh?” he asked, coldly.
She looked down, anywhere but at his unforgiving, amber eyes that demanded she confess everything.
“I stole a book from Andrew Hardcastle,” she blurted in a rush.
“I told you not to,” he said quietly.
“I know, but I got it.”
She wriggled away from him and produced the book. She could see that he was intrigued by it but still annoyed by her actions. His tail flicked, and his wings rustled as he debated what to say.
“It was brave of you,” he admitted after a few moments. “But foolish. You told me that you do
not trust Hardcastle’s companions. You took an unnecessary risk. Who is to say what they would have done if you were caught.”
Kylie could feel the heat in her cheeks, and Luc interpreted that as guilt – which it kind of was.
He lifted her chin to look at him, and she saw, in spite of the fact that he was obviously looking at a flaming red stoplight of a face, he was smiling.
“Do not disobey me again, little one,” he said in a soft, but firm voice.
She bristled at the term ‘disobey’ – he was making her sound like his pet, and she was about to object when he ruined it.
“I could not bear it if something happened to you.”
And yes, she melted quicker than a bowl of ice-cream over an open fire. She was about to promise him she would always do as he said when she caught herself. That wasn’t a promise she could make to anyone. “I’ll try.”
He was not wholly satisfied with this answer, but perhaps sensing it was the best he was going to get he nodded and was glad to get hold of the book.
As he read it – flipping through the pages like a speed demon – his tail absently caressed her ankle. That was another habit they had fallen into. While they were sitting and reading or talking his tail would find her ankle, or he would place a hand on her shoulder, his clawed thumb tracing patterns on the skin of her neck. He found some way to touch her no matter what they were doing, and she found that his affection was very welcome.
After he had finished, Luc closed the book and let out a grunt.
“Find anything?”
“No. There is nothing in here that would explain how you were able to wake me. There are perhaps some ideas about waking the others, but nothing that would explain my awakening.”
Kylie knew he was curious about that – he told her often enough - and heck, she was a little curious herself. But she couldn’t believe that she had anything to do with it.
“Maybe it was a solar flare or something.” She’d surely heard something about them on TV shows. She wasn’t exactly sure what they were, but they seemed like a plausible MacGuffin that could be used to explain it.
Luc shook his head. “No, there has to be more to it than that.” He stood and started pacing in agitation. Given the size of her apartment, it took about four steps from one end to the other. “Have you tried to use magic? Have you tried a spell?”
Kylie threw up her hands in exasperation. “I wouldn’t even have a clue where to start. What spells would I try?”
“You must have magic within you,” he said, firmly.
“Wouldn’t I have noticed by now?” Even Harry Potter spotted it when he was a little boy.
“Usually,” he admitted. “But you won’t even try. My brothers and sisters…”
“What the hell do you want me to do?” she screamed, frustrated by their lack of progress and his persistence on this subject. “Until you came flying into my life, I was just an ordinary, boring woman, okay? I’m happy I met you, but you need to get it into your massive head that I am not special. Nothing I do is special.”
He glared at her, intently. “You’re wrong; somehow you woke me. There has to be an explanation for it. What did you do on the night when I awoke? What did you say?”
“Nothing, I didn’t do anything.”
“You must have done something.”
“No, I…”
“You must have!” he roared.
“I kissed you!” she howled, jumping to her feet, hands on her hips.
Luc froze for a second and looked at her incredulously. “You kissed me? In my stone state?”
She pushed through her blazing embarrassment. “I was drunk and upset and lonely and yes I kissed you. It was dumb and…”
“Have you ever done anything like this before?”
“Before?! Oh yes, I go around frenching statues all the time,” she snapped, with a healthy dose of sarcasm.
“You don’t understand, Kylie. You have magic, of that I am certain, but to have been able to wake me up without even thinking about it, without trying, with a lover’s kiss - it means that you are special to me.”
“What do you mean?”
His chest rose and fell as he took short, sharp breaths. “It must mean that we are connected – that we are fated to be together. Just the touch could not have done that if it weren’t for the fact that we are already a part of one another. For me to have woken at such a tender gesture, it can only mean one thing.”
Kylie felt her chest tighten, and she clutched at her heart. “What?”
“Fate decrees that we should be mated,” he declared, adamantly.
Her head was spinning. “Don’t I get a choice in the matter?”
“No, neither of us has a choice. I am surprised that fate would give me a human, but whether we want this or not, it is fate.”
“You’re not serious?!”
There was a sharp rap at the door, and Kylie jumped. For a moment she thought it was her jaw hitting the floor but then she blinked and remembered where she was. She didn’t move to answer the door; she was trapped in a hostile staring contest with Luc.
Eventually, there was another knock. “Kylie, you in there? Your light’s on.”
It was Holling.
“One second,” she called automatically.
Fearing that Luc wouldn’t move even if she asked him to, she pulled the blind across the kitchen and left him standing there, trembling with anger
She opened the door a crack. “Now isn’t a good time.”
In spite of her mind being completely preoccupied with Luc and his declaration, she couldn’t help but notice that Holling appeared out of sorts. His clothes looked a little rumpled, and he was shifting from foot to foot, impatiently. Through that, he tried to smile, but it came off a little manic. “I’m afraid I can’t make our date tomorrow – something just came up.”
“Fine,” she hissed, mortified that Luc could hear every word.
“We can reschedule for another day.”
“Fine.”
He tried to look over her shoulder, but in spite of his insistent look she wouldn’t back away from the door. Tomorrow she was taking the book back to Andrew’s house, and she was going to forget about this incident.
“I’ll let you know.” He said goodbye and left. Kylie gratefully shut the door, the second she did, he was on her.
“You are supposed to be my mate, and this is how you behave?!” he snarled, eyes flashing.
“I’m supposed to be your mate?” she repeated, incredulously. His words about having no choice in being her mate, of being surprised it was her echoed in her head, taunting her. “I only just found out that fate decided to saddle you with me – how was I supposed to know that fate would draw the short straw for you?”
“This Holling man, what is he to you?” Luc seemed to grow even larger in his anger. His whole being seemed to fill the room. “Is he your lover?” Kylie snorted and his face twisted with fury. “I did not think you were the kind of woman who would encourage men and then cast them aside.”
Kylie gasped and slapped him. It wasn’t the worst insult she had ever heard – far from it. But it hurt the most. She regretted her action the moment her hand made contact with his face. Not just because her hand throbbed more than holy hell, but because he looked so surprised by her actions.
She grasped her hand and scrunched her face, willing the tears to go the hell away. She didn’t think they were all because of her hand, but she imagined it was as painful as slapping him in his statue form.
“Little one, you are injured, let me see,” he commanded.
He reached out to her, and she ducked away, scowling. “No, leave me alone.” She grabbed her coat and made for the door. She half expected him to grab her and stop her, but he didn’t.
“Where are you going?”
“None of your damn business!”
As she hurtled down the steps, listening to his roar of frustration, she felt like a child. Perhaps she was acting like a child, but she
didn’t care. The situation had quickly gotten out of control, and she needed some air.
'Whether we want this or not', he had said. ‘Neither of us has a choice’, he said. Was that what she was? A consolation prize for someone who didn’t want her. Don’t worry Luc, your whole life is gone, all the other gargoyles are gone, but here’s a fat, idiotic human to keep you company.
Muttering and furiously dabbing at tears that dared to spill down her cheeks, she stomped down to Maggie’s store. She found Miranda manning the place and pretending that her boyfriend wasn’t currently under the counter and clearly doing unspeakably rude things to her while she was serving customers. She didn’t know where Maggie was.
Kylie walked around town for a while. She didn’t know how long. Long enough so that her head stopped spinning, at least.
Was the idea of mating with her that unappealing? From what he said, she wasn’t anything like female gargoyles, but surely he could find some good qualities in her. In the same way that she did with him. The thought of being with him – of being intimate – wasn’t horrifying. No, if their time together had showed her anything, it was that he could be very tender. He didn’t repulse her, not in the least. She had been scared at first, but she was used to him, and even found him attractive. Yes, it was the truth – she was attracted to him. A part of her, the insanely human part told her it was wrong, but she couldn’t care less. She just wished that Luc felt the same way.
She found herself at her front door, no less confused than when she left. But, she couldn’t run away forever. She needed to speak to Luc, and this time hopefully, it wouldn’t devolve into a shouting match.
Kylie braced herself and pushed the door open. The apartment was empty. Luc was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Luc! Luc, where are you?!” Kylie cried out in panic. Rain pattered down, thoroughly soaking her thin coat. She was aware that perhaps she should have grabbed a waterproof coat and some rubber boots, but in her haste, she considered herself lucky that she bothered to pick up a flashlight.