by Zoe Chant
Darius! she thought. Help us!
It was strange; she almost thought she could sense him answering back. Hold on, my love, my brave, beautiful mate. I'm coming!
Wishful thinking. It had to be. And yet, it was as if she could feel him there with her, a warm, supportive presence in the back of her mind.
She needed that support when a small phalanx of flying stoneskins landed in front of the arbor, thumping down in a "V" formation like geese. They folded their wings, and the one in the lead smiled grimly at her, showing its fangs.
"Get back!" Loretta cried. She grabbed a nearby rake, abandoned in a flowerbed, and swung it wildly. The stoneskin caught it casually and yanked it out of her hand.
"So feisty," it said in a grating voice, and Loretta jumped back.
"I didn't know you could talk!"
"Most of my constructs don't talk unless I bother to give them voiceboxes," the gargoyle replied.
"You're not one of them." She backed up. "You're the master. Sharpe."
The gargoyle shifted, its rocky skin flowing into ordinary human skin. In his human form, Sharpe looked like a handsome blond man in his mid-40s, but his eyes were the coldest eyes she'd ever seen in a human face.
"Darius's mate," Sharpe said. "At last we meet properly, face to face."
Above her, Loretta heard a shout. The dragons had spotted them. Sharpe waved a hand, and several of the flying stoneskins behind him beat their heavy wings and rose into the air, blocking the dragons from being able to reach them.
"Now then, where were we?" Sharpe took a step forward.
Loretta turned and ran. She knew she couldn't fight him. All she could do was try to evade him in the garden until Darius got here.
It wasn't a bad place for it. The winding paths and decorative arbors concealed her in moments. But she'd forgotten he could fly. There was the sound of heavy wingbeats, and a moment later Sharpe in his shifted form thumped onto the path in front of her.
"Don't be like that," he said, his voice slurred because of his fangs. "I just want to talk."
Loretta picked up a rock from the path and hurled it at him. It clattered uselessly off his shoulder.
"You can't hurt me like that." He smiled. It wasn't a nice smile, even ignoring the fangs. "Come with me."
"I'm not going anywhere with you!"
"Oh," he said, as stoneskins closed on her from all sides, "I think you're very wrong about that. What you don't seem to realize is that you have no choice."
"Darius!" Loretta screamed.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she sensed him—the strain in his wings, the way he was pouring all his effort into getting there as fast as possible, even if his very heart burst. But he wasn't close enough. Not yet.
"Why?!" she screamed at him as cold stone hands closed on her arms. "Why are you doing this? All of this is because of things that happened ages ago! Just let it go, get therapy, I don't care, but leave us alone!"
"You're a human. I can't expect you to understand." Sharpe strode forward and gripped her face in his hard fingers, turning it toward him as she tried to wrench away. The gray skin of his gargoyle form didn't quite feel like the stoneskins' rock hands; it was more like heavy calluses. "Darius and his clan are a cancer on the world. I will put an end to them. Every last descendant, every last mate, everything he has built and made and owned."
"You're sick," Loretta spat, wrenching at his bruising grip. "You've lost your mind."
"No. I've won." He spread his wings. "Bring her."
To her horror, Loretta was swept off the ground in the grip of two stoneskins. She stopped trying to struggle as the ground dropped away. "Help!" she screamed.
None of the dragons heard. They were all too far away, caught up in their own life-and-death battles.
With deep, booming beats of the stoneskins' wings, they flew higher and higher into the sky. The mountain fell away below them. Loretta tried not to look down past her dangling feet; instead she focused on Sharpe, smiling his cruel smile as he flew alongside his minions.
"Where are you taking me?" she demanded.
"Don't worry, my dear, it's not much farther," he said. "This is probably high enough."
The stoneskins leveled off. Loretta gasped as she felt their grip on her loosen.
"What are you doing?" she cried, trying to twist her hands around and grab hold of the stoneskins' arms, but her fingers slid off the rock. "You can't! You can't!"
The cold smile slid off Sharpe's face. "Give my regards to Darius's family."
"No!" Loretta screamed as the stoneskins released her.
When she was a child, there used to be an old quarry not too far from the trailer park where she and her cousins would go swimming. There was a hill, just a little too high to be entirely safe, with a tree that had a tire swing. They used to swing out over the deep water and let go. She still remembered how much she had loved that exhilarating moment of letting go, the mingled fear and elation as the pit of her stomach rose and she plunged toward the water.
This was a similar feeling, but there was nothing, nothing at all fun about it.
She tumbled, helpless in the grip of the wind. She squeezed her eyes shut, as if not seeing the ground rushing up to meet her would stop it from happening.
And then, with a jarring impact, something caught her. Strong, scaled arms wrapped around her tightly.
"I told you I would never let you fall, my love," Darius's deep voice rumbled.
Chapter Twenty-Two: Darius
Watching Loretta plummet toward the ground had been the single worst moment of his life. Worse than the day he lost his family. Worse than seeing the picture of Ben beaten and bloody.
But now he had her securely in his arms. She clung to him, trembling. The strength of her grip was impressive. It would probably have bruised his flesh in his human form.
What a difference, he couldn't help thinking, from the day he'd carried her away from her burning apartment and she had struggled to escape. Now she held onto him as if she never wanted him to put her down.
Neither did he, but there was no choice. He needed to fight.
"You!" Sharpe screamed in fury. He folded his wings and dived after Darius. "Get him! Kill him!"
Every nearby stoneskin turned its attention from whatever else it was doing and winged its way toward them. At least the winged ones weren't the majority; the ones on the ground milled around in confusion but couldn't do anything. But there were still plenty of them in the air.
In moments he was going to be in a fight. And the stoneskins on the ground reminded him that nowhere near rock was truly safe ... and, in these mountains, there was nowhere he turned that wasn't bare stone or stone with a thin covering of soil.
"I have to find a safe place to put you down," he told Loretta. "Do you have any ideas?"
"Water," she gasped. "There's a lake somewhere near here where they took the kids. We can't go there; I don't want to draw the gargoyles to them. But if you can find something like that ..."
Another dragon drew alongside them, copper-colored with red stripes like a snake. There was no mistaking this dragon; Darius had seen him in his dragon form two years ago, when he had tried to kill Ben in ritual combat for Tessa. "Reive," he growled.
"Give her to me," Reive said. "I know a place I can take her. I'll guard her with my life. You take care of that bastard up there!"
He had only an instant to make the choice. He didn't want to trust Reive. But the alternative was trying to fight while carrying Loretta. She would be in terrible danger. And Heikon had sworn to help ...
"Do it!" Loretta told him. "I'm only going to be a liability to you." She kissed his claw. "Go get him."
"If any harm comes to her," Darius told Reive as they awkwardly but carefully transferred Loretta in midair, "the next person I'm coming after, when I've dealt with Sharpe, is you."
"Yeah, yeah, no pressure," Reive grumbled, clutching Loretta against his chest in his claws.
Darius turned aw
ay from them with great reluctance and wheeled to face the oncoming swarm of stoneskins—where he got a surprise.
The stoneskins were under attack. All of Heikon's nearby dragons had stopped trying to defend their home and turned, instead, to keep the stoneskins off Darius. Even as he watched, one of Heikon's dragons spiraled downward with blood streaming from her wing.
It made good tactical sense. Sharpe could create new stoneskins from anywhere he had suitable rock. Therefore, taking out Sharpe was the most important thing. And they were buying time for him to do that—sacrificing themselves, if need be.
Darius beat his wings and rose to meet Sharpe's attack.
They slammed into each other in the skies over the Aerie. Sharpe screamed his fury, an incoherent, inhuman shriek that sounded like metal tearing over jagged rocks. His claws bit into Darius's body, who was already injured and weakened from his earlier fight and the strain of the speed he'd flown to get here. Darius's claws scraped across Sharpe's body, but did little damage. Although Sharpe, unlike the stoneskins, was flesh and blood, his skin in this form was still as hard as rock. But he wouldn't be vulnerable to shattering like the stoneskins. True gargoyles were as durable as rock but as resilient as flesh. A formidable opponent, indeed.
But, even shifted, Sharpe was only slightly larger than a human being. Darius had all the size and power of a mature dragon, and he decided to use it. Clutching Sharpe in his claws, he dived toward the nearest cliff, planning to crush Sharpe underneath his own body.
Sharpe saw it coming, and to Darius's shock, the rock split in front of them, rending a huge cleft in the side of the cliff. Unable to stop in time, Darius slammed into the cliff with a jarring shock, catching himself with his hindclaws while trying not to lose his grip on Sharpe. Rather than smashing into the cliff face, Sharpe was neatly saved by the cleft, while Darius took the brunt of the impact.
"I didn't know you could do that," Darius panted, forcing himself to keep his grip on Sharpe. He dropped away from the cliff, beating his wings to climb back into the air before he hit the ground. He could feel the strain in his injured wings. There wasn't much more of that he could take.
"I am a gargoyle clanlord," Sharpe snarled. "Rock answers me like a dog on a leash. Let's see how you like fighting it!"
Darius expected another onslaught of stoneskins, but instead, the cliff face itself shivered and then crumbled, an avalanche of boulders falling toward him.
Shocked, he twisted his body in midair to avoid them, as boulders plunged all around him in a lethal rain. One hit his wing a stunning blow before he was able to fly free, soaring out of reach of Sharpe's impromptu avalanche. Below, the boulders crashed on the mountainside, drowning out Sharpe's mocking laughter.
Darius's wing was numb; he had to struggle to fly. But he noticed something. Sharpe was no longer struggling to get away. Although he had his claws sunk deep in Darius's wrists, causing blood to stream down Darius's silver-gray scales, he hadn't done any more than that. At the start of the fight he'd been putting much more effort into it. Darius had had all he could do to keep Sharpe from clawing open his underbelly or tearing his wings to shreds.
What had changed?
But the answer was obvious. The strain could be seen on Sharpe's face. No action was without consequence, and Sharpe was straining himself to the limits, trying to control an army of stoneskins and manipulate the mountains themselves.
Of course, I'm straining myself just staying in the air at this point ...
It was starting to be a question of whose body and willpower would give out first. Darius labored to keep himself in the air. If he hit the ground, he was done for; Sharpe could raise a wave of rock to crush him. His pulse pounded in his ears, and black spots danced in front of his vision. He had never fought so hard to stay airborne in his life.
"You missed me," he taunted breathlessly. "Is that all you've got? Parlor tricks with pebbles?"
"I split a mountain open and you call it a pebble?" Sharpe's clawed fists tightened convulsively, ripping at Darius's flesh. "Let's see you dodge this!"
Rocks sailed upward toward them from the mountainside beneath. Evading them was harder than escaping the avalanche; they were coming from all directions, arcing in unpredictable ways as Sharpe hurtled them like a child throwing stones into a pond. If Darius could only beat his wings hard enough to soar higher, he could get out of range; Sharpe couldn't possibly lift a boulder a mile in the air. But Darius barely had the strength to stay in the air carrying both their weight.
I could drop him ...
But that would be worse than useless. Released, Sharpe could able to go after Loretta, or retreat to the safety of his stoneskin army—perhaps escape to lick his wounds and come back stronger the next time. Darius gritted his teeth and told himself he couldn't let go.
Instead he beat his wings with all the strength in him, driving them upward. The farther he could get from the ground, the safer he'd be.
Sharpe growled and fought back, flapping his wings and trying to tear himself out of Darius's grip. "You think you can defeat me? You think you can save your friends? I'll break the very earth under them!"
There was a low rumbling, and Darius looked down in shock. Beneath them, the entire mountain containing the Aerie shuddered like a dog shaking off fleas. One of the lower garden terraces let go, sliding down the mountainside in an avalanche of rubble. For an instant all Darius could think of was his own mansion, shattered in a similar avalanche. Had it all been the explosives, or had Sharpe intentionally undermined and destabilized the cliff beneath it? He thought of the Aerie in similar ruins, Heikon's hospitality repaid by the destruction of his home, Heikon's wounded dragons caught beneath falling rocks—
"You bastard! Stop it!" Darius snarled.
He snapped his jaws on Sharpe, but his teeth merely glanced off the gargoyle's hard skin. But Sharpe was struggling, too. His breathing had become labored, and there was a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth.
His body's breaking down. He can't take the strain.
But Darius was giving out, too. He could feel his wings starting to yield to exhaustion. Cracked bones threatened to snap.
Still he beat his wings, driving them higher and higher into the sky. The rumbling mountain receded below them, growing blue and hazy with distance. Surely if he could get them far enough away, Sharpe's connection to the earth would be broken.
Loretta ... I'll save you ... save everyone.
"You can't do this," Sharpe panted through bloody teeth. "I'll destroy them, destroy all of you, every last dragon ..."
And then his body convulsed in Darius's claws. His eyes opened wide; froth appeared at the corner of his mouth. Darius thought at first it was a trick, but as Sharpe's eyes went glazed and the life faded out of them, he knew it wasn't. Sharpe had strained himself too far, trying to move an entire mountain and then maintain the connection as they got further and further away. His body had finally given out.
As Darius could feel his own was about to do.
Sharpe's body slipped from his claws. Wings trailing limply, the dead gargoyle fell.
And the stoneskins fell too.
One by one, hundreds of stoneskins went inert and dropped out of the air, slipping out of the claws of startled dragons, plummeting out of blue skies. Without their master to control them, they'd become nothing but ordinary rock again.
In a rain of falling stone, Darius felt his grip on consciousness start to slip. His wings were leaden weights; they would no longer respond to him. As Sharpe and the stoneskins fell out of the sky, his wings went limp, and he fell with them.
If he could only glide down, find a place to land ... but he was too high. Wind screamed past him, and the distance-blued mountain grew clearer below. With failing vision, he saw that the Aerie had survived the siege. There was damage, but nothing that couldn't be rebuilt.
We won.
Loretta ... I'm sorry ...
With his fading awareness, it seemed that he felt her r
eaching out to him. Darius! Hold on!
I can't. Pushed myself too hard. Be safe, Loretta ...
He could hear her in his mind, half-laughing, half-crying. Darius, you stupid self-sacrificing idiot, just hold on, we're coming.
The wind screamed in his ears. No time. Loretta ... But he'd never been good at saying the right thing, let alone finding words to say goodbye to his mate. All he could do was push all his love toward her down the bond they shared, letting her feel the things he couldn't say.
What he felt back in return was a love that staggered him in its intensity, along with a complicated knot of anger and exasperation and, suddenly, relief. Darius ...!
Something caught him.
Darius squinted up at the huge blue dragon gripping him in steel-colored claws. "Oh no," he groaned.
"Oh yes," Heikon grumbled back. "I would have just let you fall, but your mate made such a noise—"
"Don't listen to him, Darius, he came looking for you on his own." And that was Loretta's voice, dizzying him for a moment—she was inside and outside his head, both, and then he looked up past Heikon's wings and spikes, and saw her. She was on Heikon's back, leaning precariously far over the edge of the bigger dragon's strongly beating wings.
"Be careful, little human," Heikon rumbled. "If I let you fall, I'm sure he'll blame me."
"Of course I will," Darius muttered, and let his eyes slip shut.
He opened them again when Heikon let him down with unexpected gentleness onto some kind of soft surface. He was lying in a mountain meadow, surrounded by flowers and sweet grasses. An instant later, Loretta thumped to the ground, jumping off Heikon's back with no regard for her personal safety, and flung her arms around Darius's scaly body.
"You're getting blood all over you," he pointed out. He felt like he should fold his wings, but they wouldn't move; they sprawled in the grass, inert as a pair of canvas sails. He'd never been in this much pain in his life. It felt as if every muscle in his body was strained, sprained, or overused.