Trouble with Gargoyles: an Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 3) (3 page)

I wasn't particularly happy about that revelation. A glance at my gargoyle boyfriend showed he didn't appear too thrilled with it either.

"Could mean nothing," I ventured. "A coincidence." But I wasn't fooling or convincing anyone. We had to consider the possibility that Vale mattered more than the rest of us to this creature, and figure out why that was.

I smirked at him. "I won't bother asking you if you have any enemies." My tone was dry, because he and I both knew that Vale would answer in the negative. According to him, he was Mr. Popular. Anyone who didn't like him—such as a fringe group that disliked cold-blooded shifters—had been kindly told to leave him alone.

As I expected, he ignored the comment to address the Voodoo doll. "Explain to us about the condition of your physical body. You're using a form of astral projection but you can't maintain this forever. You'll need to return eventually. We need to make sure it's safe for you to do so. Are you able to check on your body?"

"Unfortunately, it's all or nothing with the spell I've used. Either I commit to my body or I commit to this doll. This isn't true astral projection. It's a spell I developed that allows instant extraction from the physical form, with the caveat that I am unable to move around freely and observe."

Vale nodded as if this was a subject he knew well. At least someone understood what was happening.

"I was fortunate there was something in this house that I was able to move into," Diana-doll continued with a droll laugh. "I might have been forced to move into a sack of rice. I had less than two minutes to choose. After that, my untethered consciousness would have been forever lost to the ether."

That little tidbit made Christian blanch until his freckles jumped out like stars in a constellation.

Diana didn't seem to notice or care. "I can give you the address of my apartment, Vale. I don't know what you'll find inside it, so forewarned." Her breathy voice somehow managed to sharpen. "Christian, I forbid you from going anywhere near the place. I mean it."

It was disconcerting to hear this small doll's voice warning Christian away just in case a dismembered or otherwise unusable body waited to be discovered. Diana might be tough and a bit overbearing, but there was no questioning her backbone or her love for her son. I admired that even if I wouldn't have wanted to be stuck in a car with the woman for longer than twenty minutes.

"I'll take care of it," Vale stated.

"And if you can't return to your body?" Christian asked quietly, his blue eyes steady on the Voodoo doll. "What happens to you then, Mother?"

We collectively held our breaths for Diana's answer.

The doll did its weird shrugging motion again. "Then you'll learn to love a Voodoo doll, Christian. Why must you make things so difficult?"

"Well, then." I was beginning to like this woman.

~~~~~

"Not so fast."

Vale had cornered me in the kitchen, where I was washing my hands and face at the sink in the hopes that Lev's wolf would stop following me around. Our friends were in the living room, trying to brainstorm who the creature could be and what its motives might be.

I gave Vale an innocent look. "What's up?"

"What's going on over at Moonlight?" He leaned a hip against the counter beside me and peered closely at my dripping face. "Something's happening with the curses. Diana mentioned them twice."

I reached for one of the hand towels hanging in front of the oven and patted my face dry. "Did she?"

The towel and the kitchen smelled of beef jerky. Celestina and Lev sold the jerky as a side income, though I suspected the jerky was mostly for the wolf's enjoyment and selling some of it was Lev's way of keeping Celestina from complaining too much. After the hot wings and now this I was ready to go vegetarian for a week. I tried to push past Vale and return to the living room but he blocked me.

"I'm not letting this go."

"I see. So you're demanding the truth from me." I poked him in the chest with a finger. "But what do
you
know about telling the truth, hmm?"

He stepped back, hands up. At least he was smart enough not to play dumb with me. "I apologize. I didn't want to lie to you about Christian's mother. But I couldn't tell you the truth in public. Anyone could have overheard us in that restaurant or even in Melanie's car. It's important that she's perceived as dead so no one goes looking for her."

"You couldn't have hinted that she was okay? You had to go and scare me and Melanie?"

"Moody, I'm sorry. I thought it was more important to get you here so you could learn the truth from the source."

As far as things to be upset over, this was at the insignificant end of the spectrum. I had no trouble letting it go. And anyway, I'd achieved what I'd wanted.

"Fine, you're forgiven," I said magnanimously. I tried to push past him and was again denied.

"I still want to know what's happening at Moonlight." Vale was as tenacious as a gargoyle with a stone bone. "When Diana mentioned the curses you grew very still."

Sometimes having a perceptive boyfriend could be a real hassle when you were trying to be sneaky.

I rolled my eyes. "Look, it's nothing. She was exaggerating. You know how Moonlight is. Other people see it as a madhouse. I see it as—what it is."

He shook his head. "She said it's worse."

"You're taking her word over mine?"

"Are you giving me your word?"

Damn him. "Fine, some things have been happening," I said carelessly. "Just some new curses, that's all. I'll handle them like I've handled the rest."

But I could tell that his curiosity had been piqued. "I thought the current curses were all formed when your uncle was running the shop."

"Yeah, well, apparently it's a general curse that took a little snooze and now it's awake again and gleefully making my life a Crazytown." The bitterness and paranoia slipped into my voice before I could stop them. Vale's raised eyebrows said he'd picked up on it.

"Moody, you're taking me over there so I can see for myself."

"I thought you were going to California to check on Diana's body."

"I'll do that after." He took hold of my arm and steered me out the back door and into the yard.

"What are we doing?" For a hopeful second I thought he was interested in fooling around.

"We're avoiding distractions and excuses," he muttered, killing that fantasy real quick.

I huffed as he unlatched the back gate at the side of Celestina's house. "I wouldn't use either."

"Of course not."

"Hey, where are you guys going?"

Vale muttered something beneath his breath before turning and shushing Melanie into silence. He jerked his head to the side to indicate she should come with us. Wide-eyed, she followed us as we came through the front yard and crossed the sidewalk until we reached the iron gate surrounding Moonlight's yard. Here, Vale had to pause because of the magickal wards protecting the property.

They wouldn't let him in, which meant I could have ditched him there. But deep down I was glad that he was pushing this. Moonlight had driven me to near suicide by chicken wings. It was time for some outside help, or at least another opinion. Feeling like you were going insane was kind of a lonely feeling.

I entered the yard while he and Melanie watched from the safety of the sidewalk.

"What are we doing?" Melanie whispered.

"Why are you here?" Vale countered.

"I could tell Christian wanted some time alone with his mother." Melanie's normally bright countenance dulled. "I think he's afraid she won't be able to return to her body and she'll eventually fade away."

"I'll find out for certain," Vale promised, making it sound like he'd resurrect Diana's dead body if he had to. It was nice to have such a determined, kickass boyfriend.

I rearranged the white quartz and the black obsidian in the yard so the rocks formed a new pattern. Every day required a new pattern that arose from my subconscious. It was a neat twist on the usual defense and one that Orlaton had taught me. For as much as a snotty brat as he was, he had been surprisingly helpful of late.

  The wards dropped silently but noticeably, as though someone had opened the door of a sealed room. One minute pressure was there, the next it had vanished. I approached the door of Moonlight with a trepidation I tried not to let my friends see or sense.

After unlocking it, I hesitated with my hand on the knob. "Just so you know, anything could be inside. And I mean
anything
. Elvis riding an elephant, your last girlfriend turned into a man—it's all possible."

Vale dismissed my warning with an impatient nod. "Just open the door, Moody."

He asked for it…

I pushed the door in.

As soon as I did, Melanie gasped, "What is
that
?"

We all stepped inside for a closer look, which was the worst thing we could have done.

The shop was dark. Close your eyes dark. That shouldn't have been possible because of the two large front windows facing the streetlights outside, not to mention the light that oozed in from the back studio.

But something was up, not only because of the unnatural darkness but because it revealed flashes of blue within it, as though someone in the shadows was trying without much luck to spark up a lighter.

It wasn't just one lighter, either. Maybe dozens of sparks periodically flashed throughout the shop in the vicinity of the ceiling. Oddly enough, it was a somewhat charming effect. It made me think of mini stars struggling to be born, or perhaps neon colored glow bugs trying to kick start their illumination. Or, just a bunch of really stoned concert-goers who'd bought shitty lighters. I could feel Vale and Melanie close behind me as I moved toward the tiny blinking lights to try to determine what they were.

We made it easy for the front door to slam close under its own power. Made it easy for the room to go completely black. We all spun toward the door, but in my gut I sensed we'd already made our fatal mistake.

I was right.

The sparks above our heads suddenly exploded into brightness, prompting us to cry out and fling our hands up to shield our eyes. Our eyes rapidly grew accustomed, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing.

I loved
Star Wars: A New Hope.
Who doesn't? Han Solo is hot in it. But I could unequivocally state that I wasn't a fan of the trash compactor scene when it was occurring within my own shop. Melanie screamed when she realized what was happening, which I admit was an expected response but it wasn't exactly
helpful
.

"Moody, what the hell is going on?" Vale shouted above the rumble of four walls and a ceiling somehow managing to move toward us. The walls I got, but how did the ceiling come down when the walls weren't sinking?

Magick, that was how. And it was also to blame for the sparking, snapping bolts of blue electricity running above our heads that threatened to fry us all.

I was about to tell my friends to make a break for the door when I noticed that it had disappeared. As in, there was no longer a doorknob. The windows, too, appeared to have glazed over and hardened, as if the glass had turned into sheets of petrified wood. When I looked to the beaded curtain that separated the shop floor from my studio in back, I was only partly surprised to see that the opening had been plugged with that same wood-like surface.

We'd walked right into a trap.

Melanie was a monkey shifter and Vale was a gargoyle. Both were undeniably talented and useful in their own ways, but in this situation it was up to me to stop whatever was happening. Damn. I should have resisted Vale harder because I'd
known
something would happen while we were here.

Merchandise began to fall off the shelves. The shelves themselves moved forward across the cheap tile floor with rough, jerky movements that filled the air with screeching noises that stung my ears. Electricity slithered across the ceiling like a nest of blue snakes. A lightning bolt of it snapped against one of the katanas on the far wall with a loud
crack!
that made us all instinctively duck. The static in the air was so potent I could feel my hair lifting off my scalp.

Using my sorcery wasn't my first choice. Not by far. In the back of my mind I'd hoped that I would never have to call upon my dragon again. I understood my weakness and I preferred to avoid situations where it might be revealed; my ego didn't care about proving that I was strong enough to overcome it. Our current situation, unfortunately, had less to do with egos than with survival.

"Get into the middle!" I yelled.

As the three of us huddled together in the center of the shop, I reluctantly reached into that rumbly place behind my breastbone. That should have been my wonderful place, the source of my strength both as a sorceress and as a person. But these days it felt more like a sore spot that hurt to be touched. Wincing, I called up Lucky. I carefully fed him enough energy that he transformed from golden mist to corporeal, thirty-foot Chinese dragon in the space of two seconds.

I shuddered hard at the sensation of scales rippling across my skin. My heart, already racing, pounded fiercely as the familiar and yet alien call of my ancient blood began to sing to me. Just Say No to Dragons was my mantra, and I mentally chanted it to try to drown out the cajoling sensation.
No dragon. No dragon.

Lucky rammed his big head at the door, which shook the house impressively. The door held, even under repeated hits. He tried ramming one of the windows. Again, no dice. He needed to be bigger. Stronger. More like a living dragon.

Even when faced with that indisputable proof, I couldn't bring myself to give him more energy. The fear of losing myself to the dragon filled my veins with ice. As I fought off a mounting feeling of panic, I directed Lucky to coil around the room and form a buffer between us and the crushing walls.

When the moving shelves hit his body a few seconds later, he flexed and held them back. I cringed at the screeching sound of resistance. But the important thing was that Lucky didn't budge.  His anaconda-like body bulged with muscles as he held the walls in place.

The ceiling was still coming down, though…That could be a problem.

"Which would you prefer?" I shouted to Vale. "Being electrocuted or being crushed?"

The look he shot me was priceless…right before the lights went out.

I screamed along with my friends. The ropes of electricity no longer provided any illumination, but I could still hear them hissing and sparking above our heads. My entire body tensed with dread, primed for a painful strike of energy. When something went
boom!
as though a bolt of lightning had just struck the roof, I screamed again.

Dying by electrocution sounded like one of the worst ways to go. But how could I avoid that fate while still keeping the walls from crushing us?
What more could I be doing?

The answer was painful for being so obvious. This curse was keyed to me. It only ever occurred when
I
was in the shop. My friends were merely unlucky collateral damage from something that was meant to hurt me. Therefore it was on me to protect them, to stop this. I needed to give my dragon full power.

Except I was terrified.

I typically thought of myself as reasonably brave, or at least stubborn, which could pass for brave. But in that moment I understood the truth: I wasn't brave; I was lucky. Lucky that both times I'd succumbed to the lure of my ancestry there had been someone present to pull me out of the dragon madness: Liliana the first time and Vale the second. On my own, I'd failed to save myself twice.

Vale was here and I didn't doubt that he'd be ready to help me again, but what if this time he couldn't? What if each time I became the dragon I slid further beyond reach of saving?

"Anne!" Melanie called out. She didn't say anything more. She wouldn't pressure me, but I understood her plea:
You can save us…so save us!

She thought this was so easy, that the only reason I hesitated was because I feared drawing the attention of the Oddsmakers. But they didn't scare me the way they should; not when I feared myself even more. Melanie didn't know that, though. She saw me as fearless and badass. That carried responsibility. I shot to my feet, telling myself I was doing what Melanie needed me to do and to be.

But once fully straightened, I did nothing except close my eyes.

The buzzing above my head was maddening. The electricity must be less than six inches from the top of my skull. If I became the dragon, might I survive this? It was a moot question. I was more terrified of giving in to the dragon than of being electrocuted.

Crack!

The lights blinked on again.

I snapped my eyes open and practically gave myself whiplash as I threw my head back to look up at the ceiling. Deadly electricity no longer twined above our heads. The shop walls were back in place where they should be, with the junk that had fallen off their shelves still scattered across the floor. Lucky, coiled protectively around my friends and me, was now braced against nothing but air.

"What the hell was that?" Vale demanded angrily, surging to his feet. He grabbed me by the upper arms. "Were you going to sacrifice yourself for us, Moody?"

It would have been so easy to say yes, to pretend that I had been on the verge of being the heroine my friends apparently thought I could be. I looked into Vale's wide eyes and opened my mouth to tell him the truth.

I surged forward and kissed him. His hands on my arms loosened and I took advantage of his shock to grab him by the sides of the face and deepen the kiss. He yielded to me in surprise, giving me the chance to be aggressive and bold. Strong.

That's right, folks. Big, bad Anne Moody is back in the house. With the power to kiss the hell out of a guy, but forget about saving your life when the chips are down.

Yeah, such a heroine.

I broke the kiss as suddenly as I'd begun it, leaving Vale breathless, his pupils blown. Melanie was staring at us, her earlier fear replaced by girlish amusement.

Vale touched his lips, still looking slightly stunned. Then, conscious of Melanie watching, he lowered his hand. "Tell me what the hell just happened," he said roughly.

I shrugged, the picture of cool nonchalance. "I kissed you and you nearly swooned. Seems pretty clear to me."

His glare was worth it. Totally.

But I'd cheated, and no one knew that better than I.

~~~~~

"Why didn't you tell us, Anne!" Melanie looked ready to stamp her feet. "All this time! I can't believe it!"

I nodded like the bad girl I was. "I honestly thought that that one time with the wasps was Dearborn trying to agitate me," I told them. "But then when my bed tried to nibble on me and all the money in the register kept catching fire, well…I guess I didn't want to worry you guys. None of it was dangerous, just annoying. Until now."

"You're not going back in there until we determine what's causing it," Vale said sternly.

"I'm not arguing with you there."

We'd gathered on the sidewalk outside of my shop because everyone was nervous about being crushed and fried a second time. A part of me felt gratified that they now shared the anxiety that I'd been living with for weeks. But that was selfish and I quickly banished it. I could have asked for help but I hadn't. That was on me.

"I should have guessed something was wrong when you wouldn't invite me over," Vale murmured, just between the two of us.

I rolled my eyes, though inside I was relieved that he was able to joke about this. "Because you're so irresistible that it doesn't make sense otherwise, is that it?"

He smirked. "You said it, not me."

"The truth is that it's just really annoying. I can't relax in there."
And it's leading me to harbor some seriously unsexy doubts about myself.
Who cared about how I looked in a bikini when I had to worry about whether I'd turn into a fire-breathing monster?

"Well, no kidding, Anne!" Melanie butted in. "I can't believe you spent even one night in there."

I hooked my thumbs in my bra straps and drawled, "We Moodys are hardy folk."

"Except your uncle didn't have to deal with that." Vale pointed at Moonlight. "Everything that's happening now is new. And yet you've done nothing that could have revived a dormant curse."

"I like that you believe I'm well-behaved," I quipped.

"I know that you don't like to use your sorcery unless you're threatened," he said quietly.

My throat grew tight and I couldn't look at him. It was important to me that Vale saw me as strong and competent. It wasn't that he'd shown hints that he would leave me if I wasn't those things, but those were traits that I demanded of myself.

My own death wasn't my greatest fear. Not really. If I could be this wonderful, powerful woman then I believed that if Vale or Melanie or any of my other friends moved away or worse, were killed, then I would be able to handle their loss without pain. In the end, that was what drove us all, wasn't it? Fear of suffering, fear of being afraid. In my case, I feared being abandoned, of being the last person left standing. I thought that maybe if I were this super dragon warrior of the desert, then that fear wouldn't touch me.

But the fear is definitely touching me, because I'm no dragon warrior.

I wasn't sure if Vale was aware of how I felt, but I had a hunch that he did. He watched me all the time. It was immensely flattering, if a little unnerving when I was trying to keep a secret. Still, I'd take an observant boyfriend over one who struggled to notice when I got my hair cut.

"If your magick didn't trigger this curse," he went on, "then this is being caused by something else.  I wouldn't be surprised if there's physical evidence here to explain what's going on."

That caught my attention. Why hadn't I considered the possibility that the source of all the craziness in Moonlight was something I could identify and stop?