Heart of Stone (22 page)

“Put your face against my shoulder,” he commanded, giving her a split second to comply before he hauled his free arm back and then threw it at the thick, tempered glass so hard, Ella felt the impact jar through his body and into hers. She gritted her teeth, held her breath and felt shards rain down onto her hair and shoulders. Then the smoke and air seemed to rush up around her and Kees followed them through the opening and into the night sky.

She half expected him to land on the roof and set her down so they could regroup and decide the safest route out of the house, but the gargoyle didn’t pause. He shot straight for the trees, moving toward cover faster than Ella imagined possible.

A chill of foul Dark magic arching past them told her why. The
nocturnis
who waited outside had seen them on the roof and wanted to ensure no survivors escaped from their fiery trap.

Tugging her shirt back into place, Ella adjusted her grip on Kees’s shoulders and squeezed. “What about Alan? We can’t just abandon him to the
nocturnis
.”

“It’s too late,” he bit out, sinking lower to hug the treetops. “I saw the lower floor. They had the doors and windows sealed with magic. He never made it outside.”

Ella choked back a protest and pressed her face against his shoulder again as he halted their momentum and dropped to land softly on the forest floor. Her eyes filled, and she knew she couldn’t even blame the lingering effects of the smoke. Alan was dead.

Suddenly the abstract danger she had heard about over and over during the last week felt very real. Her work with Kees had just morphed from an entertaining diversion—an intriguing puzzle to solve with missing persons and magic and adventure—into a war with blood and casualties and the very real possibility of death and defeat. Only Ella couldn’t just decide to stop playing. She was part of this now and she had to see that part through, for her own sake as well as for those who had already sacrificed themselves to the cause. Like Alan.

Unlocking his arm from around her waist, Kees reached for her shoulders to steady her. “We have to keep moving. They’re searching for us. We need to leave.”

Dragging the back of her hand across her eyes, Ella sniffled briefly and nodded. “I know. Let’s go.”

“We’re behind the end of the road. I would fly us farther, but it’s nearly dawn, and I don’t want to be trapped in the air when the sun comes up. We’ll have to go on foot.”

“If we can double back on the other side of the road and get to the car, I can drive us out of here. Will the
nocturnis
recognize you in your human form?”

“If they look closely enough, yes, but there’s a chance they’ll be too distracted to pay enough attention.”

Ella figured a chance was better than nothing. “Shift, then. We can use the woods for cover until we get close to the car. It’s right up against them, so if we’re lucky, we could climb in from the passenger side before they see us. But you’re right; it’s not long till sunrise. We’ll have to move fast.”

Kees looked down at her with a faint expression of surprise, as if he’d expected her to protest the danger or whine about having to move quickly and quietly while psycho killer magicians searched the woods for them. She supposed she could do that, but what was the point? They needed to move, and so they’d move.

Finally, he nodded and shifted, appearing a second later in dark pattered trousers and a matching shirt. It took a second for her eyes to adjust in the darkness; then she almost grinned. Maybe it was the adrenaline making her punchy, but it struck her funny that he’d dressed in camo. Too bad she hadn’t been prepared to run for her life, or she’d have chosen a top that wasn’t pink. Oh well, there was always next time.

He didn’t waste time, just began moving swiftly and silently through the trees. Ella followed as best she could, but she knew her footsteps practically echoed compared to his. Having never practiced at being stealthy, she kind of sucked at it.

Kees didn’t comment, just led the way through the trees and presumably back toward the rental car. He hadn’t actually told her to stick close, but then, he hadn’t really needed to. She had no intention of getting farther than an arm’s length behind him, and given his wings weren’t in the way at the moment, closer, if she could manage it.

Hell, if his pockets had been bigger, she’d have climbed inside one.

With the weight of the books in her backpack, she had to work even harder than usual to keep up with the gargoyle’s long strides. The panting didn’t help her stay any quieter, but with luck anyone hearing would assume someone in the neighborhood had a big dog they let wander around. It made more sense than a fleeing mage-in-training and her gargoyle protector, right?

A flash of movement caught her attention as Kees held up a hand in a signal for her to stop. She froze and peered into the slowly lifting darkness around them. She couldn’t see anything in the gloom, but she knew by now that Kees could see in the dark better than a cat. Creature of the night, and all that.

Her gaze remained glued to his profile as he scanned the area between the trees. She held herself perfectly still, waiting, nerves all but vibrating from the adrenaline coursing through her. At the most instinctive level, she wanted to turn tail and run—somewhere, anywhere—as fast as her legs could carry her, but she knew she was better off sticking with Kees.

She was certainly learning a lot tonight, though. For instance, apparently the “fight” portion of her fight-or-flight instinct was defective. Her fists hadn’t clenched, but her stomach sure had. Into knots.

The attack came with no warning—at least, none Ella could see. One moment she balanced on the balls of her feet, waiting for Kees to tell her to move or to drop to the ground, and the next she went flying into a tree trunk when a huge palm pressed against her sternum and pushed.

Damn,
she thought as she lay half-dazed at the base of the tree and struggled to clear her head. If this was what happened when a friend hit her, she’d better hope one of the
nocturnis
never got their hands on her.

Kees, she knew, had shoved her to get her out of the line of fire, and immediately moved in front of her. Anyone attempting to harm her would have to get through him first. His roar of fury echoed in the woods, accompanied by the shimmer of magic that signaled his change, and Ella had a hard time imagining anyone trying.

She didn’t wait for instructions. She might be new to this, but after she’d learned how to ground, one of her earliest lessons covered the most basic of wards—personal shielding. At the time she’d begun practicing, Ella giggled to herself, chanting the old “I’m rubber / you’re glue” rhyme in her head as she built a magical wall around herself and tried to make it impervious to attack. It looked like she was about to take her first and final exam.

Two figures emerged simultaneously from the trees ahead of them. They appeared to be human men in their twenties or thirties, which Ella should have anticipated, but apparently part of her had assumed the evil they served would show in hideous faces or monstrous deformities. She saw neither.

She did get a bit of a charge, though, from their outfits. The long, dark hooded robes covered them from the tops of their heads to the soles of their feet, with wide, billowing sleeves to give them the appropriate air of otherworldly and sinister intent.

She appreciated when folks paid homage to tradition.

Fear of dying also made her a little punch drunk, apparently.

Shield in place, she scrambled to her feet and braced her back against the tree trunk. A brief pause helped her gather herself, and then she opened her eyes to that other type of vision. The blue-white of her shields glowed at the edge of her vision, but in front of her, Kees raged with magical energy. It swirled around him like storm winds, all of it restlessly eager for release.

Beyond him, the
nocturnis
stepped forward, the dark tendrils of their magic oozing and twining, making it appear as if they were wrapped in black, greasy brambles. They left trails of it behind them where they stepped, and Ella almost thought she could hear the trees in the copse of woods shudder in revulsion. She knew she would, if any of that nasty stuff touched her.

One of the figures, the one on the right, slightly shorter than his fellow sociopath, halted no more than fifteen feet from where Kees stood his ground and raised a hand. His companion stopped as well.

“You can’t win this war, Guardian,” the
nocturnis
said, his voice high and hissing, like a snake. “We are too many, and our masters grow restless. They have been denied too long their rightful due.”

Kees didn’t bother answering. He simply sprang forward like a tiger, all coiled and lethal power. His arms stretched out, claws exposed, one hand raking hard against each opponent as he landed. Ella heard one of them scream and winced, but she felt no sympathy. After seeing the evil that surrounded these men, she knew they had to be stopped.

She stayed pressed against the tree and watched. Two mostly human mages didn’t seem like unfair odds against a seriously pissed-off gargoyle, and she knew Kees would not appreciate her jumping into the fray. As long as he could handle things, he would want her out of the way and not distracting him.

At the moment, she felt fine with that.

A low, guttural chant built, coming from the taller of the
nocturnis
. He had stepped backwards after the claws hit, leaving the one who had spoken to take the brunt of Kees’s attack. One more quick strike and the speaker lay dead, blood pouring almost black in the dim light from the gashes in his throat.

The gargoyle turned to the other enemy and bared his teeth just as the man’s voice rose sharply and his hands thrust forward. Bursts of black energy emerged from his palms like concentrated flares of darkness and slammed hard against Kees’s chest, hard enough to stop him and rock him slightly on his heels.

Ella gasped and instinctively took a step forward. A hand in her hair jerked her back hard enough to make her scream.

“Well, well, what have we here?” A voice cackled in her ear, sharp and grating as broken glass. She could hear the malice in it and knew she wasn’t cut out for this business. She should have been watching her back—their backs—while Kees forged ahead into battle. Next time, she would know better.

“A little human, following like a puppy at the monster’s heels. How precious.”

Ella threw back an elbow, but the man holding her merely twisted away and yanked hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. Asshole.

She heard another laugh, then felt his hot, nasty breath as he leaned in close and—
ew
—sniffed at her skin.

“Ooh, I smell magic,” the
nocturnis
purred, sounding way too interested for Ella’s peace of mind. “She’s a little mageling, isn’t she? No wonder the Guardian leaps to your defense. Not a Warden, though. Not … ripe enough. Too bad they didn’t have time to train you up, puppy. Maybe if they had, you’d have made for an amusing few minutes of diversion before you died. Not that many of the others did, but a man can hope.”

Ella made a low sound of fury and reached up to dig her nails into the hand holding her hair, but the
nocturnis
just hissed and shook her. “No. No scratching, naughty little puppy. Someone needs to teach you some manners.”

Okay, maybe she should get to work on those offensive spells everyone said she could worry about later. She planned to start worrying now.

“And someone needs to teach you to lay off the frickin’ metaphors, dick lick.”

With a savage growl, Ella gripped the man’s hand tightly and gave him all her weight, leaving her legs free to kick up and outward. It wasn’t the most graceful backflip she’d ever performed—God knew her third-grade gymnastics teacher would roll over in his grave if he could see it—but it worked. At least partly.

The man’s grip on her hair tightened for an instant, which hurt like hell on fire, but then dropped away as Ella tumbled backwards over his shoulder to land inelegantly on her ass behind him. He spun around, but Ella had her shoulders out of her backpack and the straps in her hands. The second he leaned toward her, she swung with all her might and clapped him a solid blow to the side of the head with the book-weighted knapsack.

Thank God for old-fashioned hardcovers. The e-book reader she had at home wouldn’t have packed nearly the same punch.

The man staggered sideways, cursing. His black robe twirled around him, parting slightly to reveal a very ordinary pair of blue jeans and beat-up tennis shoes. Somehow the sight reminded her that
nocturnis
or not, this man was just a man, a human, and like all of them, vulnerable to injury and entirely mortal. Evil itself did not make him better than her.

She could do this, damn it.

At least, she thought she could until he righted himself and shouted something foreign and nasty sounding that caused a bolt of black light to come shooting at her head. That kind of thing could pose a problem.

Even as she ducked, she knew she’d be too late, but it turned out not to matter. The bolt made it three inches from the side of her head before abruptly stopping, drawing one last inch closer, then springing back toward her attacker like a stone from a slingshot. When it hit him, he cried out and shook like a dog coming out of the rain.

Hey, maybe she
was
rubber!

It didn’t appear that the reflected magic had done him any harm—maybe because it was his magic to begin with, and therefore not a foreign invader—but it did surprise the hell out of him.

He stared at Ella with bloodshot dark eyes and snarled. “Who are you, insolent puppy? I want your name before I end you.”

Ella stared straight at him and flipped him the bird. “End this, asshole.”

And then Kees landed on his head like a ton of stone.

Literally.

Chapter Twelve

They got the hell out of Dodge.

Ella spared not a thought to the three bodies lying in the woods until about halfway through Seattle. When she mentioned something, Kees grunted not to worry. Apparently, one of the prices paid by users of Dark magic was that once their life force flickered out, the magic devoured whatever was left over in order to sustain itself.