Vincent heaved a sigh.
Samael gazed into Meira’s eyes, which were already starting to darken around the edges, making the whiter centers appear to glow slightly. Her hand did not tremble. Neither did her voice.
She was not afraid.
Samael frowned as realization penetrated his frustration. She was protecting someone. Before he could ask, a large creature burst into the room through the window and grabbed Meira by the shoulders, hefting her off the ground as it flew her across the room.
Samael lurched forward, but he only got a few steps before Meira shook her head at him and he pulled up sharply, despite his dragon going wild inside him. Instinct had taken over, and it took him a full, painful minute to calm the rage. Hands still in hard fists, he finally managed to focus enough to get a closer look at the creature—the back of a winged man, one made of gray stone.
Literally stone. Gargoyle.
He’d heard of them, of course, but he’d never seen one in the flesh, so to speak. Why did Meira bring them to a creature notoriously shy and reportedly of a nasty disposition?
The creature set down, folding his wings behind him with the sound like a stone and pestle, rock grinding on smoother rock.
Vincent gave a happy little bleat and started to prance over, but one look from the creature and he stopped, cocking his head like a dog.
“You brought a stranger to my house?” In the same way dragons sounded of smoke and fire when riled, the gargoyle’s voice sounded like gravel and sand.
Meira grasped the creature’s wrists, less to pry his grip away and more to beseech the thing. At least Samael hoped that was the case. “I’m so sorry, but I had no choice. He’s my bodyguard, Carrick. I need him.”
The word “need” forming on her lips, when talking of him, sent a fire through Samael’s veins. Inappropriate, for too many reasons to count. He shoved it back down deep, his dragon growling low. A sound Samael couldn’t hold on to as it came up his own throat.
The creature didn’t move, and Samael couldn’t see his face. “Something happened?” it asked Meira, ignoring him.
Meira nodded, then her lips twisted. “Do you…mind changing forms?”
Was she afraid of this Carrick in this form? Samael took a step forward, but the gargoyle turned his head to the side, almost owl-like in the movement, eyeing him sideways. Samael stopped, holding up both hands in a gesture of temporary surrender.
The gargoyle had yet to be violent—its grabbing Meira that way clearly a means to protect her from a potential threat. She trusted it, though with her soft heart, maybe trusting her instincts wasn’t his best move. Still, Samael wouldn’t provoke him.
With his first decent view of the creature from the front, he could see why Meira was nervous. Grotesque didn’t cover it. Carrick appeared to be made from the carvings of many different beasts—the mane of a lion, head of a water buffalo, brow of a gorilla, tusks of a wild boar, legs and tail of a wolf, ears of a bat, and body of a bear. The strangest part was his eyes. Human eyes surrounded by delicate, purple-bruised skin that faded underneath the cracked rock that surrounded those eyes.
Like a being possessed.
Carrick left his head turned so he could watch Samael and Meira at the same time. “Does anyone else know where you are?”
“No one saw us leave to come to this place,” Meira assured him.
“Then you don’t need a bodyguard.”
Try to make me leave and see what happens. Samael deliberately remained loose, nonthreatening in appearance, hands hanging at his side, feet set wide, but he was ready to go if Carrick made a move.
“He’s… It’s important,” Meira insisted. “We have to find Gorgon. He’s been taken. We won’t stay long but needed to hole up for a day or two and figure out a plan.”
The gargoyle remained silent.
“Please, Carrick,” Meira whispered, begged.
His back still facing Samael, though head turned to keep an eye on him, Carrick released her and appeared to shift. Unlike dragons, or wolf shifters, or any other type of shifter Samael was familiar with, who all completed the act in silence—except maybe werewolves, who were a different breed altogether—a gargoyle sounded like rock being gouged out of a mountain by force. More than that, the process appeared painful.
With what Samael could see of his face contorted, Carrick jerked his body in violent movements, and again that grinding sound filled the room as his wings absorbed back into his body and his face changed to that of a man, though his features remained both broad and sharply angled. Skin turned from solid rock to something more human, though it still had a gray undertone to it.
Like other shifters, clothes formed over his body during the transition. Medieval garb of trousers, belted tunic, fur-lined cloak, boots, and gloves. He could’ve passed for human royalty in the fifth or sixth century dressed like that.
Clothes like the dress Meira had been wearing that day he saw her reflection. This was where she’d been hiding.
“We must take this in front of the chimera,” Carrick said. “I owe your mother my life, and I’ll use it to protect you, solnyshka.” He sent an indifferent glance Samael’s way. “He does not fall under the same protections.”
“I don’t need you to protect me,” Samael snarled.
Sunshine. The gargoyle had called Meira sunshine. It fit, from her bright hair, to her eyes, to her name, which meant “one who illuminates.” But the term of endearment was too casual, too easily cast from the tongue. Was there more here? Had Meira fallen in love with the protectors her mother had clearly sent her to?
Carrick ignored him, instead reaching out to run his fingertips down the side of Meira’s face. An intimate gesture that had Samael gritting his teeth to keep from ripping the fucker’s hand off. A violent response that he should ignore, except…
He’d learned long ago to rely on his instincts. The trouble was, what his instincts, and the dragon inside him, were telling him was…complicated. Potentially deadly at worst. At the best, catastrophic. So he ignored it like he’d been doing since the day she offered herself as a mate for Gorgon.
Focus. They had to fix the problem staring them in the face first.
“You are unharmed?” the gargoyle asked Meira softly.
Her eyes faded to light blue, allowing more of the white in. Clearly whatever threat she was worried about earlier had passed. She smiled softly at their reluctant host, and a burn of jealousy scored through Samael. Until she happened to glance over the gargoyle’s shoulder directly at him and blinked.
“Other than losing the man I’m supposed to mate, I am well,” she said.
Carrick stepped back and gave an oddly formal little bow. “Come with me.” He shot Samael a look swimming with distrust. “Both of you.”