by A C Warneke
Dashing a tear from her eye, Daisy let out a humorless laugh, lamenting over her pathetic-ness. She had the mating instinct of a wolf but the awkwardness of finding herself mated to a gargoyle.
Chapter 6
After tossing and turning for most of the night, Daisy didn’t realize she had finally fallen asleep until she was startled awake by someone shaking her shoulders. With a gasp, almost expecting Roman to be there staring at her with his vacant eyes, she pried her eyes open. She released the breath she had been holding when it was just her mom sitting on the edge of the bed, smoothing her hair. Wiping the sleep from her gritty eyes, Daisy rasped, “Mom? What are you doing in here?”
“You were whimpering in your sleep, sweetie,” her mom murmured, still stroking her hair as she used to do when Daisy was a child. Her eyes were full of love and concern when she asked, “What were you dreaming about?”
Images filled her head, from her dream, from reality, and shame colored her face. Looking away, not able to meet her mom’s eyes, she painfully admitted, “About my gargoyle. I saw his face, momma.”
Bending her head, Lexi gave Daisy a soft kiss on the forehead. “Was it truly so awful?”
Squeezing her eyes shut, breathing in her mom’s familiar scent, Daisy admitted in a small voice, “Yes. But I was even worse. I ran, momma. It was too much and I ran.”
“Sweetie,” her mom murmured just as the light flicked on and both Daisy and Lexi raised their hands to shelter their eyes from the blinding glare. Even without being able to see, Daisy knew that it was Dominic.
“What’s wrong?” he asked in a sleep-rough voice, making Daisy smile in spite of her misery. It was obvious he was still half asleep but he had dragged himself out of bed anyway. That was their bond, the bond of twins. Scrubbing his hands over his whiskered face, he murmured, “Daisy?”
“It’s nothing Dominic,” she managed but he ignored her words. He also ignored their mom as he crossed the room and pulled Daisy from her rumpled bed. “Dominic!”
“We’re going for a run,” he growled, pulling her behind him, unconcerned that she was only wearing a t-shirt. Of course it didn’t matter to him because he was going to strip down to his skin to shift. But it was night and it was cold and Daisy was going to freeze.
“Mom!” she cried out with a laugh, knowing her mother was watching with a smile on her face and love in her eyes. “Save me from your demon child!”
“I think I’ll wake the others and we can all run,” her mom said instead, the traitor. Standing, she tightened the belt around her still trim waist and smiled at her oldest children with genuine affection, “I’m sure your dad wouldn’t mind a little pre-dawn romp through the woods.”
“Please tell me that romp isn’t code word for sex,” Dominic growled, dragging Daisy along the hallway towards the stairs, pounding on the doors of their siblings along the way. From behind, Daisy heard the doors opening and her sisters and brothers grumbling. Despite the complaints, all of them followed, the excitement of a run too much to pass up. Even the little ones who hadn’t yet reached puberty were waking up. Her dad appeared and scooped up the littlest, three-year-old Lila, and crooned to the little moppet as she fell back asleep with her thumb in her mouth.
This was why she loved her family; they were insane and wonderful. Amazingly, Dominic’s plan was working: Daisy wasn’t dwelling on Roman or how she had betrayed him at his most vulnerable. Maybe she could ask Dominic to track him down for her… only she didn’t have anything of his for Dominic to scent.
As they spilled out onto the lawns, the older Tremain children stripped off their nightclothes and shifted immediately, including Dominic. The younger kids went chasing after the wolves, leaving Daisy standing in her t-shirt with her parents and Lila. Her dad’s free hand was at the small of her mom’s back and he was looking at Lexi as if the sun rose and fell at her whim and he would do anything to ensure the sun never disappeared. Carefully, Daisy extracted Lila from his arms and whispered, “I’ve got her. Why don’t the two of you go run.”
With a brief smile of appreciation, her parents stripped down and shifted, too, her dad a beautiful black wolf and her mom a gorgeous, petite brown wolf. The black wolf nipped at the brown wolf and Daisy knew they wouldn’t be joining the others for a while.
With a smile, Daisy sat on one of the chaise lounges, pulling her legs up onto the lounger as she settled Lila more comfortably on her lap. As well-intentioned as her brother was, he enjoyed running as a wolf too much to fret over Daisy, which she was okay with; it was the way it ought to be. But watching her family running made the ache of not being able to shift pulse in her chest. Pressing a kiss against Lila’s sweet smelling curls, she ignored the familiar pain and settled back to watch the kids and wolves playing.
Maybe she should have just gone to her dorm room after running away from Roman but then again she hadn’t been thinking at all. In the end, she had been unbearably cruel to him and she didn’t know how he was ever going to be able to forgive her, if she ever saw him again.
No, she knew she’d see him again. After all, he was her mate and she was almost certain she’d grow used to his face if she had the chance to see it every day. God, she wanted that chance because beneath that hideous exterior was a beautiful, beautiful man and she had been drawn to him from the very beginning. With him, she didn’t feel so out of place, the lone latent wolf in the entire pack, a Siren who wasn’t allowed to sing.
Maybe he wouldn’t mind if she sang to him. Maybe that could be her apology when she found him again. She’d sing to make him take off his hood so she could prove to him that she wasn’t really that stupid, shallow girl who had run away from him, that she loved him just as he was. She’d find him, damn it. If necessary, she’d take Dominic and explore all of the abandoned buildings in the city. Of course, she knew that there were a lot of possibilities and taking on such an endeavor carried its own risks, even if she dragged Dominic with her. Maybe she could talk some of her cousins into helping out as well without giving away too many of Roman’s secrets.
Now that she had a plan, she didn’t feel so wretched.
This was Roman’s least favorite part of his life, when the last moments of night were slipping away and the dawn was just about on him. He could feel the life draining from his body as he returned to his statue form, a gargoyle with the face most closely resembling a wolf. It was almost amusing that Daisy was a wolf who couldn’t shift and he was a wolf who wasn’t living, at least not until the curse was broken. But thoughts of Daisy filled him with anguish and rage as he kept picturing her face as she fled. It was a painful reminder that he wasn’t destined to find love or happiness until he broke this fucking curse. And he wasn’t going to break the curse until he found love.
“Do you wish for me to keep an eye on your pet?” Xerec asked softly from the foot of the bed, aware of Roman’s foul mood.
Nodding his head, feeling his flesh hardening, Roman grunted, “Always.”
“I was just checking.”
“Yeah,” Roman muttered. “I need a few days to… recover. Just… tell me if she meets anyone new.”
“Like a guy.”
At his grim nod, Roman finished, “Just don’t tell me anything else.”
“Perhaps you should have kept your hood on,” Xerec offered oh-so-helpfully. Roman just glared as his vision dimmed and the little fucker wisely left the room.
When she had first offered him that sweet smile and said that he was quite hideous, hope had flooded his gut, more fool him. The joy he had felt was overwhelming and he had taken her into his arms, vowing to give up his plans of vengeance. As long as he had Daisy, he didn’t need anyone else, including his brothers. But just as he was thanking the fates for giving him his beautiful Daisy, she had retreated and he knew it was because of his gruesome face. Oh, they may have been talking about flying but he knew the truth, he had seen it in those silver eyes of hers.
As the sun rose, he was once again frozen in stone, alone with
his memories as the world spun around him. For two millennia, he had existed in this almost dream-like state, aware of the changing world and yet unable to interact with it. In his dreams were the images of her, the bitch who did this to him. Through all of his years imprisoned in stone he had been aware of her, horrifically aware of every one of her triumphs. With every piece of Osiris that she found, he fell deeper into despair for once she found the last piece he would cease to exist altogether, even in the hellish existence of a stone statue.
Hundreds of years after he was cursed, he had been moved and left to languish away in a moldering, old castle in the middle of Europe somewhere. But then, in the 1800’s an eccentric American decided to have the place transported to the New World brick by brick, including all of the trinkets and treasures that had been inside. And then he got to languish away in the moldering, old castle in the middle of America until Daisy came along and touched him when she was ten.
He had learned numerous languages through the centuries though they had proven more difficult to speak than he would have thought. Even though he had spent hundreds of years hearing it spoken around him, it had taken him nearly a year to learn to speak in English properly. The way the words rolled off his tongue was utterly alien and he had had no one to practice upon, not until Xerec. And now his own language was as dead to him as it was to the rest of the world.
When the little girl had touched him, she had brought him back to life but everything had changed and it had been difficult to adapt. Daisy had treated him as a person and not a monster and he had been beginning to doubt his plan.
The guilt that was nibbling at him disappeared the moment Daisy had looked at him with horror in her eyes. He’d give her a few days and then he would renew his efforts to seduce her, only he would be sure to keep his face hidden. Once her virgin’s blood had been spilled and he was returned to his original form, he’d take Daisy to the goddess and present his trade. The bitch would enjoy Daisy’s sweetness, hopefully enough to return him to his family.
It no longer mattered to him what happened to Daisy. The silly little girl could be torn to pieces by a flock of vultures and he wouldn’t bat an eye. She could be ravaged by the god Anubis and he wouldn’t shed a tear. He would be free, he’d have his brothers, and he’d have a million women to choose from for bed sport.
She held his gaze as she hovered over his large, gargoyle body. Her legs were straddling his hard thighs and her pussy was hovering just over his hard cock. In another moment or two, the sun would go down and she would impale herself on him and the spell would begin. In a month, she would accept the gift and become a gargoyle.
“No, my dear,” she purred as the sun disappeared and she slid onto his cock. Swiping the golden hair from his face, she smiled down at him with those lush lips of hers, those black eyes. “I’ll never be a gargoyle.”
He stared up at her in confusion because she had said he was hers and yet she didn’t want to be a gargoyle?
“I am a goddess,” she said in her husky voice, the sound twisting up his insides in pleasure. Drawing her finger along his jaw, she smiled down at him, “You’re so young and beautiful and I have waited an eternity for you. It is almost a pity that we will only fuck this one time.”
Her voice was so seductive, he almost missed her words. As soon as they sunk in, he panicked, grabbing her hips and trying to push her off his body but she was so much stronger than him. A force of nature unto herself.
A goddess.
“I want my lover back,” she continued, the slow undulation of her hips making her breasts sway and torturing him in the best way possible. “If that means I have to go to the ends of the earth to find the rest of him, I will. And you will bide your time until I return, until I have use of you once more.” There was more but it was starting to get a little fuzzy, until she started chanting and drew a dagger from out of thin air. Her words once again became clear as she droned, “Blood blinds them, makes them forget. Blood remains hidden in time and in spirit. You are mine and mine alone, forgotten, forsaken, turned to stone. Until the world ends and begins again, until you no longer exist.”
Roman tilted his head to the side and his brows pulled together as her words writhed through his body, attaching themselves to his very soul. Now that she had him where she wanted him, she let the mask drop, revealing her terrible beauty. Her eyes burned with black flames as her burnished skin shined as bright as the burning moon. She was imbued with magic… no, she was the personification of magic. Power radiated off her in waves and he finally knew who she was. “Isis.”
Her smile was mocking as she bowed her head in acknowledgement. “Poor Romulus. It isn’t your fault that you were created for me and it isn’t fair that you will be the one to pay the price. Your life for my love’s.”
“Stop,” he whispered, desperate to push her off but unable to move any of his limbs. His eyes widened in panic as she gave him a sad smile and he knew that it was too late. It had only been a few minutes since the sun had set but already the sky was lightening with the new day. And he was unable to turn his head. Glaring at the goddess that used his body, he asked, “How?”
Her smile widened as she nodded towards the rising sun. “It’s time, Romulus. Come.”
His body arched off the bed and a guttural roar was torn from his throat as the spell, the curse, was completed. Instead of getting a month beneath the sun with the woman to whom he had given his nights, he turned into a statue. It had happened so quickly, he hadn’t even felt his body shift. One moment he was a man and the next he was a gargoyle, frozen for eternity.
As the sun set and Roman woke from his frozen slumber, he realized he had forgotten his name. Romulus, twin of Remus. It was his mother’s perverse sense of humor, naming the twins after the mythological founders of Rome. Perhaps it wasn’t a surprise that his and his brother’s forms were both that of a wolf.
Stretching, hearing all of his stone muscles groan in protest, Roman stared up at the ceiling. He hadn’t dreamed about the night he was cursed in ages.
Throwing the cloak on, making sure his face was completely hidden within the folds of the hood, Roman stalked out of the room. He was determined to see his brothers that still lived in the city, even if they weren’t his pod brothers and they had been born hundreds of years after he had been cursed. He needed that connection to remind him what he was fighting for. If there was time before the sun rose, he’d find some better food to eat. The crap that Xerec was bringing him was no longer tolerable.
And as long as he didn’t think about Daisy he’d be fine.
Chapter 7
For nearly two weeks, as soon as the sun went down, Daisy had kept an eye out for Roman. Whenever she had a spare moment, she had grabbed Dominic or one of her cousins and explored a few of the condemned buildings around the city but they never came across Roman. They met a lot of transients, both human and non-human, but no gargoyles.
Growing up in a family that was well off, Daisy had never realized there were so many people living on the streets. Thinking about Roman living that way nearly broke her heart and made her even more determined to find him. But, of course, he wasn’t going to be found until he was ready. It had made the end of summer term nearly impossible to deal with.
“How do you think you did on the final?” Adrian asked as they walked out of the room of their last mythology class long after the sun had already set. He had short, pale blond hair and brown, puppy dog eyes and a swimmer’s body, since he was on the swim team. They had been friends since freshman year, though there had been a period she thought he might have been interested in her. He had asked her out a few times but when she finally accepted, he started avoiding her like she was the carrier of the Bubonic plague.
It wasn’t as if anything was going to come of it because she hadn’t been attracted to him in any way, which made sense since she was definitely her mother’s daughter and that meant one destined love. Still, his sudden aversion to her had been a little strange, making her
realize that every guy who had ever shown an interest in her always started avoiding her. Luckily, Adrian found himself a beautiful, if slightly crazy and possessive, dryad named Anaiis and oddly, he and Daisy renewed their friendship. Anaiis tended to hover but she accepted Daisy because she knew Daisy wasn’t a threat to her human.
With a rueful smile, Daisy admitted, “I’ll be surprised if I passed it.”
“You probably scored an A,” he huffed but he didn’t know how distracted she had been lately or how she had spent every spare moment searching for Roman, not that Adrian knew who Roman was. “Even with all of Anaiis’s help, I still couldn’t remember all of the gods and goddesses of the Pantheon to say nothing of the Nordic gods or the Egyptian gods or all of the lesser deities and creatures.”
Daisy smiled, nodding her head in agreement. Not for the first time she wondered how much of each myth was true and how much was fabricated to hide the truth that these creatures truly existed. If it was difficult for someone like her to wrap her head around, someone who had roots in the mythological world, she couldn’t even begin to imagine how hard it was for humans to figure out. Granted, there were those like Adrian who accepted the mythological world with hardly a second thought and found love with a dryad.
After nearly ten years, most humans were at least learning to live with their new reality. Hell, many of them were planning on participating in the celebrations that were planned throughout the world in a few weeks. For them, it was either celebrate life or give in to despair. If she found Roman, she might actually join in instead of just lighting a candle for her friend.
“I’ll see you later,” Adrian murmured as they came to the parking lot. Since all of her crap was packed up into her car, there was no need to go back to the dorm, which was just as well because she just wanted to go home and crash.