Chapter Thirteen

A scream filled the air, the sound one of pain and terror. It filtered through the fuzz in Gran’s brain, pushing aside the red mist and anger that stopped him from thinking properly. Ever since he’d woken up in this place, he’d felt odd. Wrong. Not himself. All he wanted to do was rip and tear, snarl and destroy. Like something had tapped right into the rage at his core and opened the door wide.

It was a woman screaming.

His head turned, and he looked at the woman strapped to the cheap table. Her face was contorted with pain as she struggled against both the bonds that held her immobile and the spell wrapping itself around her like the coils of an anaconda. For saying the spell was just words in the air, itching at his eardrums, it was no less deadly.

His heart picked up pace as he focused on the words. He knew them. The first time he’d heard them had been through different ears than the ones he currently used, but his soul, that eternal part of him, remembered them well. The second time . . . that soul had been ripped in two, a part gone from him forever.

Iliona. He looked at the woman again, and a sense of recognition filled him. Lifting his hand to his lips, he replayed the soft kiss. It wasn’t the first they’d shared. Memories tumbled through his brain, scattered and disjoined as the rage tried to reassert itself. Growling under his breath, he shoved its insidious coils away to concentrate. He remembered kissing her, holding her in his arms . . . more. She was Iliona Graham, the woman who’d treated him as more than just a monster. The woman he . . . loved?

The realization sent a bolt of heat through his chest, one that burned away the chains of whatever spell had been holding him. It fell away, his rage receding to its proper place, and he took a deep breath, like he was breathing clean air for the first time in months.

His head snapped around again, noting the statue suspended above Iliona, and the glowing lines that crawled over its skin. They pulsed and brightened in time to the chanting that filled the air.

His eyes widened. He’d seen that before . . . just once. Those lines meant that a soul transfer was taking place, one that would result in the “birth” of a new gargoyle.

But those lines also meant the woman he loved would die.

A low snarl trickled from his lips as he turned toward the sound of the chanting. A thin, weedy-looking human stood behind him, peering down at some papers in his hand. Gran dragged in a breath, easily picking up the scent of printer ink and cheap paper. His snarl of anger deepened. This little asshole wasn’t even a proper sorcerer . . . where were the spell books, the mysticism? Where was the pride in his work?

He didn’t make it more than a step before Cal stepped in front of him. But this wasn’t his brother as Gran knew him. Sure, it looked like Cal, walked like Cal, but there was an emptiness behind his eyes that made Gran shiver. He tried to reach out to him using the mental pathway they’d always had, but his query slid off something that felt almost glassy.

“Oh, I can’t let you do that,” Cal rumbled, nothing human left in his voice as he blocked Gran’s sideways step. He was protecting the human sorcerer.

“He’s killing Iliona!” Gran hissed, sweeping an arm toward the screaming woman. Her spine was bent into a hard arc, her heels drumming on the cheap wood. “Look!”

Cal shrugged, no emotion on his face for Iliona’s suffering even though Gran knew how he felt about her. “The transfer has to complete and then we’ll have the perfect bride.”

“You . . . what? . . . No!” Gran gasped as he took a step back, looking at his brother in horror. No, not his brother . . . whatever this was, it was just Cal-shaped. It wasn’t Calcite. Cal would never look at someone’s suffering with such indifference. Particularly not a woman he—they both loved.

And he did love her. In one perfect moment, Gran realized that yes, he loved Iliona. Not because Cal did, but totally separately. He’d thought they would have to love the same woman because they had the same soul, but in that moment of epiphany, he realized that a soul was infinite. It could be split, separated in many ways, but not be any the less for it. His soul was part of Cal’s, but the part that resided in him was his own.

He could love—separately and distinctly from his brother. But that made no difference because they had fallen for the same woman anyway, one who’d accepted them both.

And now she was about to die.

Launching himself into motion, Gran slammed into his brother without warning. Cal, though, was just as fast, his expression glassy and smooth as he blocked Gran’s move, leaving the two of them grappling to get a grip on each other’s shoulders.

Stone squealed against stone, both fully in their gargoyle forms. It was like a sumo bout but with mountains as wrestlers. They locked eyes, Gran battering at the mirror behind his brother’s eyes as he fought for millimeters on the floor, willing him to see what was going on.

The screams behind him subsided to pain-filled sobs, and panic filled his veins. “Cal, wake up!” he roared, pulling back and slamming massive hands into the front of Cal’s shoulders. The other gargoyle snarled back, stabbing hard fingers into the long ragged furrow across Gran’s chest . . . the wound left there by a chisel, never healed properly.

He screamed as Cal tore it open. Pain drove him to his knees as Cal dug deeper. Only a gargoyle would have been able to do it. Cal’s fingers were as hard as the stone he dug into, trying to reach Gran’s heart.

“Noooooarrrrrhhhhhh!” he bellowed, whipping his tail around and surging upward. With Cal’s hand half buried in his chest, he locked a powerful arm around his brother’s throat.

His heart tore in two as he cut Cal’s air off. To save the woman they loved, he would have to kill his brother.

“Please, Cal . . . wake up,” he begged as tears coursed down his cheeks, dropping from his cheeks as small crystals to ping against the floor.

Cal struggled against him, the chanting behind them getting stronger. Iliona’s moans had subsided to whimpers. Gran cast a glance over at her. The female statue was almost alive, a glow surrounding her and making her look like an angel as she hung above the table.

He was out of time.

Shoving his brother’s nearly limp body away, Gran ignored the flare of agony across his chest as the fingers buried in his chest were torn free. Whipping around, he advanced on the sorcerer with murder in his heart.

“Hold there!” he ordered and then continued chanting. “Aanal-athanari, oran septal, gorian en-thak.”

Gran just snarled, covering the space between him and the sorcerer in a heartbeat. The human looked up with a gasp, surprise in his eyes to see Gran there.

“B-but . . . you . . . you should be spelled,” he gasped, trying to back up. Gran’s hand snapped out with the speed of a striking snake and closed around his puny neck. Just one little squeeze, that’s all it would take . . .

“Guess what, asshole?” he yanked the guy off his feet and snarled right into his face. The scent of fear filled the air, rolling right out of the human’s pores. “I’m not, and I’m going to enjoy every second of killing you.”

The human went gray, his lips soundlessly moving as he tried to beg for his life, but no words came out.

“Stop . . . don’t . . . please.”

Gran frowned, looking at the human in surprise. He was terrified out of his mind, still yammering and clutching at Gran’s hand clamped around his neck. The fact he was going purple probably meant the plea hadn’t come from him.

Easing up the pressure, he turned to look over his shoulder to find Iliona watching him.

She lay motionless on the table, her skin as pale as the stone of the statue glowing above her, but her dark eyes were fixed on him. “Please . . .” she said again. “You’re not a killer. Don’t let him make you one.”

He was a killer, but that was beside the point. His female had asked something of him, and everything in Gran wanted to grant her wish. He’d give her anything she wanted, the world if he could.

“He tried to kill you,” he snarled, dragging the semiconscious human toward the table. Sparks flew from the gargoyle female above the table, and the look of pain stopped him in his tracks.

“It’s nearly done,” Iliona said. Her voice didn’t issue from her lips, but from the lips of the gargoyle. Gran’s eyes widened as he looked from one to the other. The statue’s face had changed to a mirror image of Iliona’s. “The transfer is almost complete.”

“No!” The howl of protest came from behind Gran. He half turned to see Cal stagger to his feet, the glassy emptiness in his eyes replaced by horror as he looked at the scene in front of him. “What has he done? Fuck . . . I’ll kill him. Rip him apart with my bare hands!”

“No, no, no, it’s okay. I can fix it!” the sorcerer gabbled, gasping as Gran barely allowed him enough air to breathe. “The spell isn’t complete. I can fix it.”

Cal and Gran both growled as they turned their attention to the human. “Talk,” Gran advised. “Fast. Or you and your spine are parting company.”

“Yes . . . yes, of course.” The human looked crumpled and defeated. Like this turn of events hadn’t occurred to him. He looked like he’d been given a wake-up call and was now seeing the world anew. One where his continued living and breathing was very much in debate. “Just let me have my notes. The spell is a hybrid of my own . . .”

“Here.” Cal picked up the scattered papers the human had dropped when Gran had grabbed him and shoved them into his hands. “Work fast. If she dies, we’ll see how easily humans bounce from twenty stories. Hint,” he added with a growl and a look that would terrify most paranormals, never mind humans, “they fucking don’t.”

“She won’t die. I promise.” The human almost tumbled over his words trying to get them out, his hands shaking as he reordered the papers. He looked at them, his expression blank, and jumped when Cal growled again. Quickly, he turned them the right way up. “I got it. Just a moment.”

The air filled with the sound of chanting again, both Gran and Cal bracketing the human as they closely watched his movements and for any sign of change from Iliona. Gran’s fingers flexed. One wrong movement or word, and he’d snap this asshole’s neck like a twig. He might still do that after Iliona was okay.

“Israth terravis anoth torakeen . . . Ferran othal oten verison!”

The human stopped chanting, the last word ringing in the air like a bell clap. The three of them watched the scene in front of them as magic swirled in the air, wrapping delicate chains of what looked like golden sparks around the woman and the statue above her. They got faster, brighter, and then with a pop, flared like a star going supernova.

Gran covered his eyes, blinking away spots from his vision, and straightened up. The sorcerer did likewise, his movements hampered by Gran’s hand tight on his shoulder. To the other side Cal blinked as well.

His gaze immediately cut to Iliona, and he gasped. She lay on the table, the statue above her just . . . gone. Blinking, she tried to sit up, but he was there in a heartbeat to slide his arm around her and help her.

“How do you feel?” he rumbled, checking her for signs of . . . anything. Her color was a lot better, not the grayish pallor of death it had been, and she managed a small smile.

“Like I’m whole again, not like I’m being ripped in two.” She looked up at him and lifted a hand to stroke his cheek, tears in her eyes. “It was agony. You must have been in so much pain . . .” she whispered.

He cut a glance at Cal, holding the defeated sorcerer by the scruff of the neck. “It was worth it. Without him, I wouldn’t be here today. I would have gone mad locked in stone on the roof of that church years ago.”

He pulled her tighter into his embrace, closing his eyes in relief as he rested his lips against the top of her head in a gentle kiss. “But let’s just concentrate on you, eh?”

The police kept them at the station for hours. Endless rounds of questioning about the statues, the attacks on Iliona by all manner of paranormal creatures, and how exactly she knew David Wigginstein, the internet-self-trained sorcerer. Apparently, he’d lost touch with reality after his girlfriend had left him because of his online role-playing obsession, so he’d decided to turn his online wizard character into reality. Unfortunately, he’d stumbled onto a web archive of actual spells. From there, it was a short hop to bumping into Iliona in a crowded bar and fixating on her as a replacement for the girlfriend who had run off to Europe to escape him.

“And then, it seems,” Jack said, sitting catty-corner to Iliona with what she’d instantly named his “supportive father figure” face on. “He decided to make a stone girlfriend instead, enlisting the aid of all manner of nasties to get hold of you. Sheesh . . .”

He ran his hand over his head. His hair was receding at the front, but he hadn’t resorted to the usual “grow and sweep forward” style to cover it. That was what she liked about Jack. What you saw was what you got.

“I miss the days when the assholes just got blow-up sex dolls or amassed a porn collection. Trawling the internet for a spell to make yourself a girlfriend? That’s just sick . . . especially when it needs a soul to power it.”

She sighed, leaning her head back against the wall, her hands wrapped gratefully around a mug of coffee. She wasn’t drinking it. Instead, she was absorbing all the heat she could as she tried not to let her mind flitter back to being on that table. The pain had been so intense, but the cold as her soul leached out of her body had been even worse. There was no way to describe it.

A growl from Cal, sitting next to her, brought Jack’s head up with a snap. Gran lurked on the other side of the room, a hard expression on his face as both gargoyle men looked at the detective.

“Yeah, right . . . sorry, that was insensitive,” he apologized quickly. “Anyway, the upshot of it is, it looks like Mr. Wigginstein will spend the rest of his days in a secure facility for the mentally unstable where they can look after him.”

She nodded, a wave of tiredness washing over her. “At least he won’t be able to do it again.”

“Ohhh no. He’ll be lucky to get first-grade books to read, let alone be allowed anywhere near the internet. If he can do what he did with a simple search . . . well, we can’t have him breaking out using magic. Can we? The powers that be have allocated funding for more para . . . hmm, officers of the nonhuman persuasion to deal with threats like this.” He smiled. “Looks like you did it, Iliona. Finally got them all to realize that we need these guys.”

“Well, you can’t have these two. They’re mine.” She chuckled, leaning against Cal, his very presence comforting as he wrapped an arm around her. Warm, solid. Reassuring. Safe.

“Oh?” Jack’s look was sharp. Curious. “You’ve already signed them up to your agency?”

She shrugged. “Maybe, but I didn’t mean like that.” Meeting his eyes levelly, she added. “They’re mine as in romantically. They’re my partners.”

There was a tense silence in the small interview room, both gargoyles looking at her in surprise, but she didn’t take her eyes off Jack. What did they expect her to do? Shy away and be ashamed of what they had? If so, they had the wrong girl for sure.

The look of surprise on Jack’s face was replaced with a small smile. “Not what I expected, but whatever floats your boat I guess. Congratulations . . . I think?” he said, offering his hand to Cal.

“Definitely, and thank you,” Cal rumbled, shaking it before Jack offered the same to Gran. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I think it’s about time we took Iliona home. Don’t you?”

“Of course, of course.” The human detective nodded, taking a step toward the door as Cal eased Iliona to her feet. She was tired, but the thought of home . . . somewhere safe that didn’t involve her being tied to a table . . . sounded like bliss. “Although, we may need to ask you to come back for more questions. Before you go, though, any idea what happened to the last statue? The one he was going to . . .”

She shook her head as Cal led her to the door. “Sorry, Jack. I haven’t. She disappeared into thin air.”