Sticks and Stones

by Tamsin Ley

  Inside, he heard movement. The porch light came on, and he sprang backward, flattening himself against the siding around the corner. The door opened. Mae asked, “Who’s there?”

  “Extinguish your light,” he said quietly.

  “Sten?”

  “Please.”

  The light went out, and he peeled away from the house, pushing past a gaping Mae. She closed the door. “Is everything all right?”

  “Do you know how to locate your sheriff’s office?”

  Mae’s mouth dropped open and she nodded slowly. “What happened?”

  “When I returned to Angie’s home, there were police outside, and she was not there.”

  “Fuck. Let me grab my phone.” Mae ran up the stairs and returned a moment later, already speaking into the device. “But the police were just at her place and now she’s not there.” Mae looked at Sten and shrugged. “Okay, thank you.” She lowered the phone. “They say she was released. The sheriff’s probably bringing her home now.”

  He ran his claws through his hair. Angie was in danger. He knew it deep in his gut. “I am concerned for her well-being.”

  “I’ll call her.” Mae dialed, listening until Angie’s voicemail picked up. Shaking her head, she said, “She never keeps her phone on her, but I’m sure she’s fine. My advice is to just go back to the house and wait.”

  Sten was good at waiting—he’d done it for centuries—but this was an entirely different situation. His sigil pinged him again. He clamped his hand over his pocket, suddenly frustrated with himself once more. He could use his sigil to track her down. He should have thought of it first instead of allowing panic to drive him. Opening the door, he stepped onto the porch. “I will find her.”

  Mae said, “Let me know when she gets home, please? I’ll keep trying to call.”

  Pulling his sigil from his pocket, he launched himself into the air. Once he was above the town’s lights, he activated the tracking interface. An urgent message overlaid the map, but it wasn’t from Frelinray or Alkor like he expected. It was a message from the one place he’d never thought to hear from again.

  Home.

  11

  At the county sheriff’s office, Angie stepped out of the Bronco only to be shepherded toward the back end of a van. “What’s going on?” she asked the man holding her arm.

  He wore a suit much like the other FBI agent and ignored her question with a face as hard and unresponsive as stone.

  Dragging her feet as the agent pulled her along, she looked over her shoulder. “Sheriff Rollands?”

  Rollands pushed his hat back on his head. “Now, my understanding was you wanted to question her here.”

  His voice was muffled as the doors to the van closed and the vehicle lurched into motion. The man who’d dragged her into the van settled in on the bench next to her. Another sat on the bench across from her, the butt of a pistol prominent at his side. Cold sweat broke out over her entire body. She felt like she was in a spy thriller. One where girls like her didn’t come out alive. “I haven’t been given my rights, you know.” She looked between the two men. “This is all illegal.”

  Both men just stared at her as if she wasn’t speaking English. Sten’s warning about the men hunting his kind had just become a stark reality. No wonder he’d been so worried Mae might tell the authorities. How was she going to escape? Sten had no idea where she was. The back end had no windows, so she couldn’t see what direction they were going. And these men looked like they’d prefer to shoot her over telling her anything.

  After a long, uncomfortable ride with her hands still cuffed behind her and her bathrobe gaping open, the van stopped. The back end opened, revealing the vast interior of some sort of warehouse. The man next to her once more grabbed her arm, pushing her from the van. She stumbled forward, half-supported by his grip, and walked between the towering rows of pallets to a sort of clearing where a chair had been chained to a support column.

  “Sit,” the man at her arm spoke for the first time. He half-shoved her onto the chair and reattached her cuffs to a bar on the chair’s back.

  Then she was alone, surrounded by pallets of who knew what. “Hello? Where am I?” Her pulse pounded in her ears. “Someone tell me what the hell’s going on!”

  After what felt like a long time, a familiar figure strolled from between two rows of pallets. Winston York the Third. He wore the same suit he’d been in when she’d seen him the first time, but his gaze on her was far less dismissive than it had been back in her garden. “Angie Martin. Thank you for coming in to speak with us.”

  Angie wriggled against her cuffed hands. “I didn’t come in to speak with you. I’m supposed to be talking to the FBI or something.”

  “Forgive the ruse, but after you were so uncooperative, we had to resort to more drastic measures to get your attention.”

  “I’m not selling you the house.” Angie glared at him, straining against her cuffs. “And the gargoyle is gone. So fuck off.”

  York clicked his tongue. “Such language.” He stepped forward and used both hands to close her robe over her chest. “Your situation has proven to be far more interesting than I first imagined. Your clumsy and obvious attempt to dissuade me from my purpose only strengthened my conviction that this gargoyle is one of those we seek. Why else would you refuse my offer only to conveniently 'sell' it to an unknown buyer a few days later?”

  Angie grimaced. He was right. It had been stupid of her to ignore Sten’s warning. Now she might never see him again. “Why do you want it, anyway?”

  “That’s a complicated question. Who would have ever expected to find one of those creatures in the middle of nowhere Montana? I would say it ruined my vacation, but that would be a lie.” He reached around her neck. She shied away, but his fingers deftly unclasped her mother’s necklace. “Do you know what this is?”

  Sten had warned her not to allow the pendant out of her possession, but how was she supposed to protect it in this situation? “It was my mother’s. What does it have to do with any of this?”

  York held the gem up in the harsh light of the warehouse, the red facets glinting between the silver wire. “Our tech team will be thrilled to get their hands on this.” He tucked it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, then let his gaze roam up and down her body in a way that wasn’t sexual, but made her skin crawl just the same. “What I’m most curious about is you, however.”

  A man in a lab coat moved in and pulled up the sleeve of her bathrobe. The sharp scent of alcohol rose between them as he swabbed the crook of her elbow.

  She tried to squirm away, but she was still cuffed to the chair. “You people are insane!”

  “Hold still, please.” Lab guy’s grip was making her hand go numb. He seemed to be having trouble inserting the needle.

  “People will come looking for me, you know,” she said through her teeth while lab guy jabbed her again. She was still processing everything York had told her. “You can’t get away with this.”

  “We know how to cover our tracks.” York paced with his hands behind his back. “Your charred body will be found in the morning. Such a tragedy you neglected to turn off the stove before bed.”

  “M-my charred body?” She could hardly breathe. Did they plan to kill her after all?

  “Well, not yours, but someone who will fill your grave.”

  Lab Guy finally seemed to locate a vein, and she flinched as the needle pierced her skin. A cold weight settled into her stomach. Sten had said there were people hunting his kind. My kind. Did York suspect she had Khargal blood? A burning sensation ran outward from the insertion and made her fingertips turn icy. “What are you injecting me with?”

  “Calm down,” York said in an oily tone. “We’re just taking some blood.”

  She gritted her teeth. “You have the pendant. Just take it and let me go.”

  “You know, I was disappointed when my associate failed to obtain the pendant that first night. But if he had, I would’ve never learned about y
our relationship with that “statue” of yours. There have been theories about gargoyles taking mates among humans. But all our attempts to breed them have failed.”

  The air suddenly didn’t want to enter Angie’s lungs. “Breed?” she choked out.

  York gave her a condescending smile. “I noticed there has been quite a lot of… entertainment… going on at your house lately. I was willing to wait and watch, but then you relocated your gargoyle.” He sighed. “It is better this way, I suppose. Studying creatures in the wild is always risky.”

  They’d been spying on her and Sten this entire time? And now they wanted her to “breed?” Her throat felt too tight to speak as she considered the implications. They were definitely after a hybrid. What would they do when they figured out they already had one? Sten, where are you? She let out a shaky breath and jerked against her cuffs, ignoring the sting as Lab Guy pulled the needle free. He stuck a bandage on her and picked up his tray of vials, now filled with samples of her blood. “I should have some preliminary results in the next hour or so.”

  “Very good.” York nodded. “The mobile unit should arrive soon along with a full team.”

  The iciness in Angie’s fingers crept upward to envelop her entire body. “Mobile unit? What are you talking about? I demand you let me go immediately.”

  York only smiled coldly and strode out of sight through the stacks, leaving her alone with her fear.

  12

  Sten followed the sigil toward Angie’s location. The call from the rescue ship continued to ping him, demanding an acknowledgment, but he didn’t have the energy to even think about that. Every tenet of the Prime Directive was in jeopardy right now, but most of all, his Hondassa was in enemy hands.

  He prayed to Lar they hadn’t separated her from her sigil, or he’d never find her.

  After about an hour of flying at full speed, the white dot on his matrix told him he’d reached the location of Angie’s sigil. He floated on an air current above one of the larger Earthian cities, sure he must be visible against the heavy cloud layer reflecting the glow of the streetlights. The streets below were nowhere near as silent as New Turnbull this time of night, and he’d have to be careful in his approach. Angie’s signal appeared to be coming from a commercial district, and he alighted on the steeple of an old church to refine the signal’s tracking.

  Her sigil appeared to be in a large warehouse one block over. He moved to the next building over and wove between the HVAC units dotting the rooftops to survey the front of the building. A box truck was parked in front of one of the two closed bay doors. A smaller access door to the left of the bays was clothed in darkness.

  He’d been out of touch for a few centuries, but he would not underestimate Earthian weapons; Earthians had come a long way since the days of arrows and muskets. Simply charging in would be like handing himself over, along with the sigil he carried. He crouched, straining his eyes in the reflected orange light from a distant streetlamp.

  A man with a sidearm at his belt stood in the shadows by the door. Silly Earthians. It had been a long while since he’d faced the Rose Syndicate, but it was obvious they still had no appreciation for a Khargal’s enhanced senses. He’d expected far more guards at the very least. Perhaps they were concentrated inside the structure.

  Taking to the air, he flew a three-sixty around the building, looking for other entrances. A huge fork lift was parked against another bay door in the back, almost touching the building in an obvious attempt to block the door. He’d need to gain access from the front. Which meant disabling the guard.

  First things first. Dropping to the ground beside the building, he skulked over to an abandoned truck sitting on its rims and sliced through the fake leather bench seat with a claw. He tucked his sigil into the stuffing among the springs. Whether he made it out of this alive or not, he couldn’t allow any more technology to fall into Syndicate hands.

  Beside the truck lay a pile of broken bricks, so he picked up several and once more took to the air. He felt like a barbarian, throwing stones at men with guns, but he had no other options. They had Angie and were sure to figure out she was a hybrid. Then he’d be facing more than a single guard at the door.

  A well-aimed brick dropped the man near the door with a thud. Sten pulled back his arm, ready with a second brick in case more guards appeared, but no one seemed to notice the fallen man. Opening his wings, he shot over to the door and opened it quietly, slipping inside what appeared to be an office. The small room was dark, lit only by the illumination coming through the small rectangular window between here and the main warehouse. He crept forward and peered through. Rows of shrink-wrapped pallets reached toward the ceiling, but there was no sign of activity. Why were there not more guards? He might be a mere junior communications officer, but even he could recognize a poorly executed plan.

  Slipping into the warehouse, he intended to leap on top of one of the stacked pallets, but then he spotted the breaker box right next to the office door. How fortunate. Within moments, the entire warehouse was plunged into darkness too deep even for his enhanced vision. Not that he needed his vision. He launched into the air, clicking his tongue to echo locate and avoid bumping into the dangling light fixtures.

  Someone shouted from the recesses between the towering pallets. Then he heard a more welcome voice. “Sten!” Angie’s cry was accompanied by the sound of metal scraping metal.

  Below, someone turned on a flashlight, and Sten knew he had only moments before he lost his advantage.

  Angie cried again, “I’m here!”

  Angling toward her voice, Sten dropped down between several shrink-wrapped pallets, his nose now telling him exactly where to locate his Hondassa. His hands touched her flesh just as several emergency lights ignited along the warehouse perimeter. Angie sat in a chair with her hands bound behind her. Her smile at the sight of him melted his heart, and he wanted to kiss her soundly, right then and there, but now wasn’t the time. Reaching behind her, he twisted the metal chain between her handcuffs, snapping it in two.

  Angie stood, adjusting her robe’s sash. “I knew you’d come for me.”

  “We must escape immediately.” He pulled her into his arms and once more took to the air.

  From inside a transparent plastic medical tent at the far end of the warehouse, a man in a white coat emerged and pointed. “He’s flying!”

  A gunshot cracked the air, and Sten dodged left, alighting on a row of pallets that nearly touched the ceiling.

  “Do not harm the woman!” Someone shouted. “She may be pregnant!”

  Sten stiffened for just an instant, his gaze meeting Angie’s. “Pregnant?”

  Her eyes were wide and she shook her head in a confusion that matched his own.

  Macero. Among Khargals, pregnancy was a rare thing, sometimes taking hundreds of years for couples to achieve. How could Angie be pregnant so quickly? He had to get her out of here.

  He eyed one of the vents overhead. The opening was too small for his broad shoulders, but Angie should be able to slip through easily. “I will distract them while you exit through that vent,” he whispered against her ear, one hand pointing upward. “There is a forklift parked against the back you should be able to climb down.”

  She gripped his arm with both hands. “I’m not leaving you here.”

  “You must. I stand a better chance fighting them off alone. I will meet you.”

  “Where?” A sob hitched her voice. “They know where I live.”

  His heart wanted to break, but this was no time for softness. He thought about the rescue ship, finally coming to Earth after over a thousand years. She had to reach it and get off this planet, with or without him. It was the only way to escape the Syndicate. “My sigil is hidden inside the seat of a derelict vehicle outside. Retrieve it and follow the map north. My people are waiting there. Whatever you do, do not return home.”

  From somewhere below, a man shouted, “They’re on top of the pallets!”

  Sten reached u
p and tore the vent cover free, then grabbed her hips. “Go, now.”

  She tried to argue, but he hoisted her over his head, stretching his hardened wings to shield her from any stray bullets. More shouting came from below, and the warehouse echoed with gunshots. Although he’d hardened his skin, something penetrated his flank, and a wave of dizziness weakened his muscles. His hands slipped free of Angie’s hips and he felt himself go numb as he toppled sideways.

  Angie screamed, dangling from the vent by both arms.

  Unable to control his wings, he plummeted toward the floor.

  “Angie!” he roared. He hit the concrete flat on his back. One wing made a sickening popping sound, sending stars across his vision.

  Overhead, Angie’s hands slipped from the vent opening. As if in slow motion, she tumbled toward him.

  He had to save her. He had to move. To catch her. To stop her before—

  She hit the concrete next to him with a sickening thud.

  Sten’s entire world seemed to stop on its axis. What had just happened? He didn’t have enough control over his body to turn his head, and blackness pressed against the edges of his vision. From the corner of his eye, he gazed upon his Hondassa—his beautiful, broken Hondassa.

  And then everything faded to black.

  13

  Angie kept her eyes squeezed shut and sucked in a shuddering breath. Was she dead? Every bone in her body felt bruised. But not broken—not that she knew what a broken bone felt like. She’d never sustained a significant injury in her life. But she imagined her bones should be broken in a hundred places from a fall like that. She should at the very least be in blinding pain.