Heart of Stone Read online

  Cautiously, she opened her eyes and peered through the fringe of her lashes. The creature who held her hadn’t moved, hadn’t run away, hadn’t disappeared into an explosion of light and smoke. He also hadn’t been killed, wounded, dismembered, beheaded, or otherwise driven insane. Instead, he just looked annoyed.

  Well, annoyed and curious.

  “Are you planning to stop anytime soon, or do you plan to exhaust yourself into unconsciousness, human?”

  The question startled Ella so much, the energy cut off as if a switch had been thrown. The gargoyle simply continued to loom over her, looking not a bit worse for the wear. Come to think of it, if anything, he looked mildly irritated.

  He underlined the impression by glaring down at her and snapping, “Are you finished?”

  Ella wondered. Her head was spinning—a side effect she knew came from letting down her barriers and unleashing the darkness inside her—but she couldn’t use that to explain why a gargoyle was currently speaking to her. He’d started before she attacked him.

  And she had attacked him, so why was he still standing?

  As if triggered by the thought, Ella’s knees gave out, and suddenly she was no longer standing. She would have ended up tailbone first on the hard stone terrace if the monster in front of her hadn’t moved faster than she could blink and gripped her elbows, catching her weight and easing her down to a sitting position on the pavers.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled reflexively.

  He waved away her gratitude. “I told you that I mean you no harm, but I have questions that I must ask you. Are you well enough to answer?”

  The gargoyle had crouched down beside her, but Ella still had to look up to see his face. Maybe that explained the touch of hysteria in her small laugh.

  “Me? I’m just fine. I’m hallucinating, because it’s either that, or I’m talking to a real live monster at the moment, but other than that, I’m perfect. Ask away.”

  His mouth firmed, lips pressing together in what Ella guessed was probably not his amused face; then he blew out a breath that sounded like exasperation.

  “It disturbs you to look at me? I appear as a monster to you? Fine. Is this better?”

  It took Ella a good thirty seconds to remember her name.

  Somehow, watching while the monstrous, terrifying creature in front of you aimed a put-upon expression in your direction and then proceeded to transform himself into a vision right out of the pages of Studs Monthly could really knock the wind out of a girl.

  The thing from a French artist’s long-ago vision of might and menace had just become the most blatantly attractive man Ella ever laid eyes on.

  Standing at a huge but realistic human height of six feet and three or four inches, the man now crouched in the spot the monster had just been had the heavy, chiseled musculature of a bodybuilder. Not the thick-necked Arnold Schwarzenegger type, though. Even as powerful as he looked, he still managed to appear lean and graceful, as if every muscle in his body hadn’t been artificially enlarged, but worked and honed to peak efficiency.

  Underneath the jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt that had appeared during his transformation, Ella could see the ripple of contained force and found herself wishing for a better look at all that masculine perfection.

  What was she thinking? Ella mentally slapped herself. This was a monster, not a man. Ogling males of other species was a creepy habit she had no intention of developing.

  But without the distraction of fangs and horns and, you know, wings, Ella found herself admiring the nearly angelic clarity of his features. His face had actually changed very little from how it had appeared in his stony form. A little softer, perhaps, the angles a little less steep, but overall he looked nearly the same. She couldn’t call him beautiful exactly—his face was too forcefully male for that—but even so, the combination of the sharp, high cheekbones; the long, narrow nose; and the hard, tapered jaw shadowed with the hint of evening scruff threatened the natural balance of her hormones.

  And that was before she took into account his eyes.

  Monster, El. Not hunk—monster.

  Deep and intense, his eyes shone with an inner fire that burned so clearly, Ella was tempted to reach for a skewer and a marshmallow. It flickered and flared in pools so dark, they appeared nearly black, just the barest hint of gold ringing the centers to distinguish iris from pupil. His eyes held secrets and power and magic unlike anything she had ever seen before, anything she had ever imagined. They caught and held her like a rabbit in a snare, leaving her feeling just that vulnerable.

  Just that tasty.

  She shivered, tore her gaze away.

  His voice rumbled between them. “Is this form better for our conversation?” he asked again.

  Ella nearly choked on her own tongue. “Ah, yeah. Sure. You look great. I mean—er, I mean, it’s great. The body. I—that is … I mean—” Her cheeks reached approximately five million degrees. “Uh, it’s fine. Thanks,” she finished lamely.

  Mr. Studmuffin didn’t appear to notice her bout of oral diarrhea. He nodded once and leaned his forearm on his knee. “Good. I am called Kees.”

  Ella dragged her attention away from his body and back to his words. He had told her his name, because he had a name, which she supposed shouldn’t surprise her now that he was moving and breathing and talking and turning himself into a human. She had to stop thinking of him as a statue.

  “Kees,” she repeated cautiously. “Rhymes with ‘peace.’ Ironically enough.”

  He nodded.

  They stared at each other through a stretch of silence, one long enough for the last of Ella’s immediate fear to melt away. Logic dictated that if the monster—Kees, she reminded herself; he probably wouldn’t like being called “the monster”—had wanted her dead, she’d be halfway through his digestive tract by now.

  He had scared the hell out of her and totally altered her understanding of reality, but he hadn’t hurt her. That meant the possibility existed that he had no intention of doing so.

  Maybe it was time to relax. A little.

  Realizing that she sat on her butt with her knees pulled up and the night breeze blowing directly up her skirt, Ella scrambled into a more dignified position. Tucking her legs to one side, she cleared her throat.

  “So, uh, Kees … Now that we’ve been introduced, I should thank you, I guess. For, um, leaping to my rescue.”

  He eyed her. “Only one of us has been introduced.”

  She flashed him a smile so fake, a bouncer would have tossed it right out the club door. “Oh, right. In all the confusion of losing my mind, I forgot to mention my name, didn’t I? It’s Ella. Harrow.”

  “I have many questions that need answers, Ella Harrow, not the least of which is how my slumber has ended with no scent of demon in the air.”

  His voice in this form sounded only slightly less bass and rumbling than in the other. It tickled her senses like sandpaper, or the rough, warm tongue of a cat. She had to force herself to focus on his words.

  “Such questions appear only to confuse you, however,” he continued, “so perhaps we might start with something simpler. What is the name of your mentor?”

  Ella frowned into his patient expression. He looked like he was making an effort not to intimidate her too badly. She could tell by the way he constantly smoothed out the glare that threatened to pull his dark brows down and together. That, however, didn’t make his words any clearer to her.

  “I have no clue what you’re talking about,” she answered, “which is one of the few things reassuring me that you’re not a figment of my imagination at this point.”

  “Your mentor. The one who has been doing such a poor job teaching you to use your powers. What is his name? If he is a member of the Guild of Wardens, he might be able to explain what has awoken me.”

  “You’re still not making any sense to me.” She frowned, reaching up to rub her temple, which only served to emphasize the pounding that had begun behind it. “I haven’t had a men
tor since I left the foster system; the only quote-unquote power I have is the kind I pay BC Hydro for every month; and everything I know about guild systems, I learned in my medieval art classes. Maybe this really is a hallucination. Or one of those really bizarre dreams people have when they eat spicy food before bed.”

  This time, Kees was unable to smooth away his scowl. “If you give me the name of your mentor, perhaps I can ask my questions of him. He might also be able to explain why you required assistance in dealing with one poorly armed nocturnis when even a novice should have been able to dispatch him easily.”

  Ella tried with all her might to make sense of the words coming out of his mouth. She felt as she had the first time she heard a native Parisian speak to her in French; it was close enough to the Quebecois she was used to for her to make it out eventually, but she had to concentrate. Hard.

  “I can’t give you the name of someone who doesn’t exist,” she said. “I told you, I don’t have a mentor, and if nocturnis is some new term for mugger that I haven’t heard of yet, I’d like to know just how I was supposed to deal with a guy coming at me with a knife. Do I look like G.I. Jane with the kung fu grip to you?”

  She figured he might have begun to understand, because his expression went from scowl all the way to glower.

  “You truly do not understand at all, do you? You honestly mean that you have had no training whatsoever. Not even the most basic shielding and grounding work.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe her ignorance. “No wonder the nocturnis thought to seize you with a single kidnapper. It would be no harder than seizing a sleeping kitten.”

  “Whoa, there. Kidnapper?”

  Ella felt as if she’d just taken a punch to the solar plexus. The unconscious guy on the terrace hadn’t just been a garden-variety mugger? He’d wanted to kidnap her?

  “You can’t possibly know that’s what the guy wanted. He probably just wanted my wallet, not that it would have made him very happy once he’d opened it. But why would anyone want to kidnap me?”

  “How is it that a human with so much potential has been allowed to go unnoticed by the Guild?” He muttered to himself and pushed to his feet. “Something must be very wrong for such an oversight to have occurred.”

  Turning to face her, he placed his hands on his hips and fixed her with a level stare. “I can think of two very important reasons why this scum would want to kidnap you, human. One, he is of the nocturnis, and they live to do evil for the sake of evil. And two, you are an untrained Warden. To one like him, and to his masters, you are like a fresh battery, an untapped well of magical energy they could feed off for days, perhaps even weeks. That he has failed to seize you will make this fellow’s masters very unhappy indeed.”

  Ella still didn’t fully comprehend what the gargoyle man in front of her was talking about, but she understood enough to make her very uneasy. She didn’t see how what he described was possible, but it certainly sounded unpleasant. And there was that word he’d used. That word made her particularly nervous.

  “Masters?” She squeaked, “What do you mean, ‘masters’? The guy is some kind of slave?”

  “He is nocturnis, enslaved to the will of one of the Seven, the vilest powers ever known to visit this earth. A demon of the Darkness.” His dark eyes seemed to drill into her. “If the nocturnis came to kidnap you, it was because his master commanded it, and without training, you have no hope of evading capture. For that, you need me.”

  Chapter Three

  If she lived to be a hundred—something she hadn’t really doubted was possible before a gargoyle informed her she was being hunted down by demonic minions—Ella would never forget the trip from the museum garden back to her apartment.

  And not for lack of trying.

  When a muffled moan had come from the mugger-cum-kidnapper on the terrace, Kees had pointed out that they might not want to still be around when he woke up. Ella had suggested that she would be more than happy to head home and wished the gargoyle a good night.

  Like that had worked.

  “You think this attack was some sort of aberration? That the demon who sent the nocturnis after you will now give up on the idea of finding you and draining you of power until your heart lacks the energy to continue beating?” He had glared down at her like a guardian angel on a bad day, obviously disgusted with her. “You cannot be so naïve. You are in danger, more danger than you know. I will not leave you unguarded until we can be certain you are safe.”

  No argument she put forward had swayed him. Heck, none of them even looked like they so much as ruffled his hair. Kees remained determined, and eventually Ella had surrendered to the inevitable. She’d invited him home with her.

  To be fair, when he asked for her address, she’d thought maybe he would get them a cab, or maybe he had a statue of a car tucked away somewhere that he could bring to life to drive them home. She certainly hadn’t expected to see him transform back into his gargoyle form, sweep her up into his arms, and launch them both into the sky.

  She’d been forced to muffle her screams against his chest. With her eyes closed and her fingers clenched in a death grip behind his neck, she didn’t even have the presence of mind to appreciate the feel of his chiseled muscles wrapped around her, or the way his strength made her feel small and feminine and delicate in his arms.

  She was too busy praying she didn’t die.

  So busy, in fact, that she didn’t even notice they had landed until Kees bent down and set her feet on the familiar metal surface of her apartment fire escape. He had to reach up and pry her fingers loose from around his neck, and Ella wasn’t ashamed to admit she whimpered once before she let go.

  She managed to force her eyelids open with an extraordinary force of will, only to narrow them furiously on her unwelcome mode of transportation.

  “Unless I am trapped in a burning building and all the doors and windows have been nailed shut by a homicidal arsonist,” she hissed through clenched teeth, “don’t you ever do that again, do you hear me? I will kill you before you clear floor.”

  Kees shrank down before her eyes, assuming his human form and a puzzled expression. “I do not understand. How did you propose that we return here from the other location without being seen by any accomplices the nocturnis might have had waiting? To fly was the only logical choice.”

  She could see for herself he believed that. Maybe even when he looked like a human man, his head was still made of stone.

  Muttering to herself, Ella spun around and headed for the stairs down to the alley beside her building.

  A hand closed over her elbow. “Where are you going? I have said you are not to be alone.”

  “I’m going downstairs so I can let us into the apartment through the front door. I have no intention of smashing my bedroom window and crawling inside over broken glass.”

  “Of course not. That would be needlessly destructive.”

  Reaching out with his free hand, Kees pushed casually against the window sash. The new—and formerly sturdy—lock snapped like a dry twig and the window slid up as if it had been recently oiled.

  He waved at the wide opening. “No glass. And this way, no one is likely to see where we have gone.”

  Ella didn’t waste time glaring at him again. She just scrambled inside and got out of the way while he followed close behind her. When he closed the window, she reached for the dowel she had used until the new lock was installed and wedged it between the top frame and the bottom sash in a low-tech but mostly effective security device.

  “Is there anything else you’d like to break at the moment? Or can we call it a night? I’m a little bit exhausted.” She couldn’t quite manage to keep the snark out of her voice, but she was trying very hard not to think about the fact that the most attractive man she’d ever seen now stood right beside her in her darkened bedroom.

  If only he’d been human.

  Kees shook his head. “We still have many things to discuss. I have questions that must be answered,
and I have been considering the best way to keep you safe. I can guard you for the moment, but while you remain untrained, you will always be in danger. You should be under the care of the Guild. Once we discover what threat I have been awakened to destroy, my duty as a Guardian will take priority over watching you.”

  And there he went, back to speaking his Parisian French. Ella sighed. “If you’re not going to let me sleep, I need to get out of sight of my bed. I can hear it calling to me.”

  She would not mention that not all the suggestions she heard it make had to do with slumber.

  After leading the way into the living room of her small apartment, Ella curled up on one corner of the sofa and waved Kees to a seat. “As long as we’re up, maybe you can start making some sense for me. For instance, what is this Guild you keep talking about, and what do you mean when you call yourself a Guardian?”

  “I find it difficult to believe that someone as talented as you has had no training and seems so ignorant of matters such as the Guild and the Guardians.”

  His voice rumbled as he sat not in the chair she had pointed out, but on the other end of the sofa. Too close for comfort.

  “It makes no sense for it to be so.”

  Leaning back, Ella grabbed a throw pillow and clutched it to her chest like armor, eyeing Kees warily—and wearily—over the top.

  “Yes, well, in my world, it makes no sense for me to be sitting here talking to someone who used to be a museum display, so I guess shit just happens, huh?” His words registered a second late, and she frowned. “And there you go again. What kind of talent and training are you talking about?”

  He turned so that he mostly faced her across the sofa cushions. “The magic you possess. The power that drew the nocturnis and his masters. The talent for it is obvious, and I cannot possibly be the only one ever to have witnessed it.”