What she was doing was waiting with all of her breaths held in abeyance for the first touch of his lips against her skin.
“I can see your pulse in your throat. A fine, strong throbbing pulse. I see it racing. Tell me, Kat lass, is that for me? Is it because you want me?”
Oh, why couldn’t he just kiss her and be done with it? Why did he have to keep talking to her? It was so much easier when he just kissed her until she was utterly mindless and didn’t have to think about the consequences. So all she could do was shake her head.
“No? Does that mean no, Kat? You doona want me?” He backed away from her and her hands shot to his shoulders and she cried out.
“No! I-I mean … I mean yes. It’s because of you. A-a physiological reaction i-is only normal when in a sexual situation.” Oh God! Did she just say that? Did she just babble at him like some kind of freaking dumb-assed textbook?
“I see. So ’tis the situation and no’ the man himself,” he said, his chiseled lips turning down in a frown.
“No! It’s not just the situation,” she added hastily. Then, afraid she sounded too eager, she subsided a little. “Why do you have to know this? Why can’t you just …”
“Just kiss you?”
“Y-yes,” she admitted breathily.
He leaned in until their lips were just about to touch, his bright eyes meeting hers intensely.
“Because that would be too easy for you, Kat lass. And I’m no’ about tae make this easy for you, no matter how much I’m wanting you.”
With that he pushed away from her and moved to the sink. He washed his hands and his face free of the remaining juice from the tangerine, but it wasn’t until he returned to his stool that she realized he wasn’t coming back to finish what he had started. She realized she was staring at him, completely dumbfounded. Then she felt just how cold the room had grown and she angrily grabbed up her sweater and jerked it on over her head.
“I’m going to check on the generator,” she said bitingly, leaving her food preparation to storm out in search of her coat. The problem was she’d have to pass within reach of him to get to the bedroom. Well, so what?! He obviously didn’t want to take advantage of her.
“Uh-uh,” he said just when she thought she was going to make it past him. His hand shot out and ringed her around her biceps on her right arm, yanking her forward between his knees as he turned the barstool to face her. She went to jerk away but he held fast. He grasped her chin in his fingers and turned her face up to his. “Doona pitch a fit, lass,” he said, making her want to claw his smug grin off his face. “I’m no’ trying tae be mean tae you, Kat. No’ rejecting you, either. I’m just telling you, I know I can run roughshod over others tae get my way, and I willna be doing that wi’ you. Me wanting you is one thing. You wanting me is all of another. I know it. I’m aware of it. I want tae know what you want and you need tae tell me.”
What was she supposed to say to that? He was a stranger. Was she supposed to say that she wanted a total stranger? Didn’t he know how ludicrous that was? Did she?
“I ken you’re no’ ready yet. I can wait, lass. ’Tis no rush. Now, let me check the generator and you can finish this fine meal you’ve been working on. Which way is it, Kat?”
“It’s outside … you can’t—” She ran her eyes down the length of his barely clothed body.
“ ’Tis no’ a problem, lass.”
“It is a problem!” she snapped, shifting instantly into tough medical professional mode. “You will sit right down and you will wait for me to do it myself. Your job is to heal. The sooner you’re better the better off we’ll both be.” The unspoken intent being that she would be happy when she could go back to hiding in her quiet, well-ordered little world.
“I will no’. Come if you like, but I’m going out.”
“B-but—” But she was speaking to herself as he ducked around her and headed for the door. “To the left!” she thought to call out inanely just as he was throwing the door open. He slammed the door shut in his wake, leaving her to shiver in the rushing cold left behind.
Ahnvil went out into the blistering cold with nothing but the towel he had on for protection. Ideally he could have donned his stone skin—it would have protected him from the cold—but these were not ideal circumstances. There were few things that frightened him, but permanent being was one of them … just as death frightened anyone, he supposed.
The walk out into the crunching depth of fast-fallen snow was just the thing. As it was he was burning up from the heat of the desire he felt for his pretty little Kat.
No. Not his. She couldn’t be his. He didn’t want her to be his. Being his meant being in danger, and she was already fragile enough in health and in psyche. As he touched the cold metal of the generator, his warm skin sticking fast, he was forced to remind himself of these things. He was no prize. She would win nothing if she thought to pursue him. Asking for her to make the next move was inviting her to set herself up for disappointment. He had to stop this. Stop it now before it went too far.
If it wasn’t already too far. There was no explaining it, no way of defining what it was about her that made him want to chase her down like a hound chases a fox. And like those hounds he would be the death of his quarry.
Katrina set her pan over the open gas flame of the stove and began to cook the meal she’d started. She was almost finishing when the door exploded open and Ahnvil stepped inside in a freezing wash of wind and snow. As she hurried over to him she swiped up the afghan she’d been dozing under earlier and swung it quickly around his hunching body.
“Fuck, that’s cold!” he cursed fiercely. Kat hurried away and came back with a stack of fresh towels, pressing them onto him.
“You should have let me go!” she said.
“What’s done is done,” was his only reply. Realizing she wasn’t going to get anywhere, she retreated into the kitchen to tend to her neglected pan. When she turned around, she did a sharp about-face right back again. She’d just gotten an eyeful of gorgeous gluteus maximus as he whipped away his wet towel and replaced it with a warm, dry one. From that moment on she studiously focused on the stir-fry she was putting together for them.
“So … if the newscasters were no’ lying tae us, this storm will blow out in another twelve hours. We can go then.”
“First of all, just because the storm ends it doesn’t mean we can go anywhere. Not for days, considering how far up the mountain we are and how much snow they are expecting. And second of all, what do you mean ‘we’? I’m not going anywhere!”
“First of all, if you want that bloody necklace off you you are going tae have tae come wi’ me. Second of all, I doona bloody have days! Two at worst. Three at best. If I doona get back in time …” He trailed off, running an agitated hand through his dark hair.
“What? What’ll happen if you don’t get back in time?”
“I … it would be bad. ’Tis all I’m going to say about it,” he said, a definitive shutting down of the topic.
“Fine!” she snapped, pushing the meat around in the pan angrily. But after a moment she slowed and reached to fondle the cold metal of the Amulet. “Do you think they can get it off? The people you want to bring me to?”
“I’ve a fair idea they might. There’s a man there, if you can call him a man, named Kamenwati. He is well versed in magics of all kinds. If anyone is going tae know how tae get the bloody thing off, it will be him.”
“If you can call him a man?”
“Douche bag is a better word.”
She burst out with a sharp laugh. “Tell me how you really feel!”
He grimaced. “We have history.”
“What kind of history?”
He moved into the kitchen and retook his stool.
“He was my forger.”
“He wrote bad checks for you?” she asked.
“No,” he smiled with amusement, but it was a wry sort of smile. “Gargoyles are forged, lass. He was the man who forged me.”
“You mean he’s your creator.”
“No. God is my creator. Kamenwati is the man who made an abomination of that creation.”
She whipped around to face him. “You are not an abomination!”
“You are no’ weird,” he countered. They both frowned, inwardly admitting to themselves that they were hard on themselves as far as their feelings about what the outside world would make of them.
“So how exactly is a Gargoyle forged?”
“You take a man like any other, and you take a beast. Using complex spells you can make a combination of the two, but it cannot be living matter into living matter. You need—”
“A stone statue. A Gargoyle.”
“Aye. Usually a Gargoyle. The spell takes the essence of each and combines them into the stone receptacle. The bodies die and only the souls remain. Then the Gargoyle is branded by his maker and becomes slave to his house.”
“Slave!”
“Aye,” he said. “Kat lass, your food is burning.”
“Oh!” She swept the pan from the stove and quickly dished it onto twin plates. She stood on one side of the counter while he sat on the other.
“A slave? You were a slave?” Her eyes fell to the brand on his chest, the burn of snakes wrapping around a dagger like the medical caduceus.
“Aye, I was. For thirty years.”
“Thirty years! H-how old are you?”
“Three hundred and fifty-two.”
“Three hundred and …” She swallowed hard. “How is it possible for him to keep you a slave for thirty years? I mean, you’re so big, and if you can turn to stone, you must be practically invulnerable. How …?”
“He created a failsafe. It’s called a touchstone. A small stone that they cleave from the Gargoyle at the time of his making. That stone must be imbued with a Bodywalker’s energy on a regular basis and every day the stone must be returned to where it was cleaved. The Gargoyle must sleep in contact with that stone again in order to heal and regenerate. If no’ … if no’ they risk permanent being. Turning to stone permanently. Pretty much one of the few ways we can be killed.”
“So in order to be free you had to take the stone with you?”
“Aye. And something that small makes it easy tae lock up and tae hide. And since sunlight turns us tae stone, they make certain we’re in the sun before bringing it out. If they want tae punish us they will push us tae risk permanent being, knowing ’tis the thing we fear above all else.”
“So … how did you escape?”
“My maker had left his stones out of hiding that day. He rarely made such a mistake, believe me. I had been watching and waiting for years before he made this one li’le mistake. But even though it was out in the open it was still protected by spellwork. A lashing out of sorts. Taking the stone meant taking the hit.”
“Oh my God. It almost killed you didn’t it?”
“Aye,” he said softly before turning his attention to the meal she’d made. She let him eat for a short while, although with the speed he was eating at, a short while was more than long enough.
“I was going to say ‘so then you escaped’ but it wasn’t that simple was it? You were badly injured and these people, these Bodywalkers sound very powerful.”
He nodded then ventured to look at her. “The details are no’ important. Only the result. I’ve been a free man ever since.”
Until recently, he thought grimly. But he didn’t feel it necessary to tell her the details of how she had come to find him if she wasn’t flat out asking him for them.
“So how many days without a touchstone does it take before permanent being?” she asked with a delicate sort of curiosity, as if she were afraid he might find the query offensive. He did not. But neither would he tell her just how close he was to the condition himself. He wouldn’t worry her unless he absolutely had to.
“A few days. Sometimes a week. It can depend on the Gargoyle, who the forger was, how strong the spell work was. How big the touchstone is. Larger touchstones hold more energy, allowing a Gargoyle to store more energy, enough to last for longer periods of time.”
“And what about you?” she asked, her eyes nervously looking toward the windows and the storm swishing around beyond them. “Is that why you are in a hurry? Is that why you need to rush out of here?”
“I’ve got plenty of time,” he lied smoothly to her. “My forger was one of the two most powerful Templar Bodywalkers in the world. His Gargoyles are among the most powerful, most invincible of our breed. But it also meant we were held longest in captivity as well because he was not the kind of man to make mistakes or become careless with his touchstones. I need to leave to give my leader some information.” To bring him that Amulet. And the girl attached to it.
“But if you need a Bodywalker’s energy to rejuvenate the stone, how can you be free from your maker?”
Such a bright, quick thing she was. He marveled at her. The world of Bodywalkers and Nightwalkers in general was a very complex one, a tough one to keep track of at times, and she was keeping up enough to ask well-thought-out questions.
“Let me begin by explaining what a Bodywalker is.”
“Oh yes. That might be useful,” she said with an eager nod.
“Only if you promise tae eat,” he countered looking pointedly at her largely untouched plate of food. “Or risk forfeiting it tae me.”
She grinned at him for that, picking up her fork and stabbing at some meat and vegetables. Once she had dutifully popped the forkful into her mouth she gestured for him to continue with no little amount of impatience.
“The Bodywalkers, like me, were once human. Long ago in Egypt in the cradle of civilization. It is believed that their mummification processes and their selfish desire tae bring all their worldly goods along with them into the land of the dead angered the gods. As punishment they were indeed allowed tae be preserved for all time … in spirit. In the Ether, a place sort of like the way people picture heaven. Full of clouds and insubstantial spirits. There they were aware of one another, aware of time passing in gruelingly slow increments. Aware of the life that continued on the living plane of existence. A limbo, if you will. No’ heaven. No’ hell. No reward … but a great deal of torment simply by nature of being aware of the passage of time second by second, year by year, century by century, with nothing tae occupy their minds.
“One day one of the souls in limbo discovered that they could live again. All they need do was find a human being on the verra instant of death and ask them if they would mind sharing their bodies with a second soul. If they say yes they are reborn together as a Bodywalker. The visiting soul brings with it remarkable healing ability and a very special power, different from soul tae soul, and immortality. As long as they can stay alive, they will live indefinitely.
“There are two factions of Bodywalkers,” he said, “the Politic and the Templars. The Templars use spells and unnatural magics tae get their way in the world. They also subjugate the host, the original soul, completely taking over the body. The Politic are different in that they do not like tae use most magics and that they Blend with the host soul, coming tae a point of equal sharing and harmonious life together with the host they are guests tae. Now, tae answer your question, the Templars and Politic are at war and it is we Gargoyles that were the catalyst of that war. The Templars were already disapproved of for their hijacking of the host body, and there were other reasons why discontent was brewing between the two factions, but it was the creation of Gargoyles as slaves that pushed them over the edge. There was a great war, much like your civil war, only there is still no winner and those who were the original tribe of Gargoyles were physically freed in one great fell swoop at the beginning battle of this war. The Gargoyles were led tae freedom by a great man named Herron.”
He grew quiet for a moment, toying with a last piece of bell pepper left on his plate. “You see, we are no’ allowed tae have names once we are made. They strip us of them. I doona know why exactly. A way of humiliating and
subjugating us, I suppose. Herron was the name of the great Politic general that led the charge that freed all of the first generation, or tribe, of Gargoyles. As homage every Gargoyle in the first tribe took a name starting with h. Every Gargoyle in the next generation put the silent ‘h’ in as the second letter in their names.”
“Then third put the ‘h’ in the third position,” she said with understanding. “So that makes you a second generation Gargoyle because the ‘h’ you use is in second position.”
“Aye.”
“What defines a generation?”
“A hundred years. If you were forged in the first hundred years you were a member of the first tribe. The second hundred, the second tribe. And so on.”
“I see.” She frowned at him then handed him her half-emptied plate. He took it and began to finish her leftovers.
“So in answer tae your original question, we each find a Politic Bodywalker tae swear fealty tae. We pledge tae protect them and theirs, stand sentinel outside their walls, and they in turn vow tae recharge our stones, give us a place in their homes and families and protect us in turn as we sit in our statue states recharging in the sun. ’Tis what you might call a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
“I see,” she said again. “Do you like your Politic Bodywalker?”
“Oh aye,” he said with enthusiasm. “Menes is the ruler of the body Politic. A finer Pharaoh there never was. And he has a sweet mate as well. A fiery redheaded lass. Her name is Hatshepsut. Or Marissa. We use Marissa. Wi’ two souls comes two names and they choose which one tae be called by. Menes uses his host’s name as well. Jackson. You’ll meet them before all is said and done.”
“I will? A pharaoh?” She swallowed hard. “I don’t know if I’m fit for royalty.” She swallowed again and her hands began to wrap around each other. “It’s just a necklace. A pretty one. I can just stay here and keep it on.”
“No! You canna! That’s dark magic there,” he said, pointing harshly at the Amulet. “You’re coming wi’ me. The sooner we get that thing off you the happier I’ll be. You can be on your way after that, but I’ll no’ let you run around wi’ that on no’ knowing what it might do tae you.”