Stonewing Guardian Read online

  The lion obediently turned to face the indicated direction, giving Thea an eerie chill.

  Chest deep in the water, Mace half-walked and half-swam to the lion's side, with Gio drifting limply in the water along with him. "Forgive me, old friend," he murmured, and pushed Gio into the lion's stone body.

  At least that was what it looked like. The stone swallowed Gio exactly as the flagstones had swallowed Mace earlier. He did not emerge on the other side. Mace stepped back. The lion stood immobile, its blank stone stare fixed on the hill.

  "Come on," Mace whispered.

  Abruptly a ripple of movement ran down the lion from the tip of its stone nose to the tail held low in the water. Thea leaned forward in fascinated surprise.

  When the lion had walked into the water, it had been ponderous and slow, clearly animated by Mace's will. It was like an automaton. But now every part of it seemed to have come alive. It was solid rock—that part hadn't changed—but the whiskers twitched, and the carven strands of the mane rippled as it turned its head.

  "Gio?" Mace said. "Can you shift?"

  The lion turned in the water and waded out onto the edge of the pool, water streaming off its sides. Then it shook itself exactly like a wet dog. Since it was made of stone instead of fur, very little water went anywhere.

  It lay down and began licking one stone paw.

  Mace climbed out after it and stared at it worriedly. "Um."

  "Did it work?" Thea asked, reluctantly pulling on her wet shirt. The morning had an undercurrent of warmth that suggested heat later, but the shirt clung to her unpleasantly. "Is that what was supposed to happen?"

  "I ... am not sure." Mace looked uneasy. He put a hand on the lion's shoulder. "Gio? Can you understand me? Nod if you can understand me."

  The lion ignored him and started licking its other paw.

  Thea cautiously approached. Even lying down, the lion's back came up past her waist. It was even stranger to see it from close up, especially the way that its entire body was in constant, slight motion, just like a living animal. Carved muscle shifted under the skin.

  Before she could stop herself, she touched it. She wanted to see if it was warm. But instead it was cool to the touch, about the temperature of the spring water.

  Mace shook himself a little and looked down at her, then glanced quickly up the hill. "We need to leave," he said. "We've stayed here too long already." He brushed a hand across her arm. Through the wet sleeve, she felt its warmth. "You can change at the house. I'm sorry, we lost your suitcase. But I did get your passport." He touched the sweater's breast pocket, with a slight smile. "It even stayed out of the water."

  "I like that in a passport," she said weakly, taking it from him. Everything was happening so fast. "You fought the cultists again in Toronto, right? Are they on their way here?"

  "Sooner or later I expect they will be. Come on."

  Despite his hurry, Mace stopped to collect the bowls and other items. Thea helped, although she caught herself thinking, If he's a neat freak, there's no way this is going to work out.

  Work out! What was going to work out? They had a business arrangement, nothing more.

  The lion got up and followed them as they left the spring. It moved so silently that Thea kept having to look back to make sure it was there.

  There was, as it turned out, a dusty path that wound up the hill through the ranks of olive trees; she had overlooked it in her hurry. Thea could just glimpse the house's pinkish stucco at the top of the hill. Mace filled her in briefly on the second fight with the cultists as they climbed.

  "Gio took a dart meant for me. That's how he ended up like that."

  "Is he still in there?" she asked, looking back at the lion for the umpteenth time. "I mean, how much of him, his mind, his ... everything is in there?"

  Mace didn't look at her, and she abruptly regretted asking the question. "I have no idea. I wish I knew."

  They left damp, muddy footprints across the terrace. The lion stayed outside and lay down again, but was looking alertly down the hill, head swiveling back and forth. It made Thea think of a giant guard dog.

  Mace left the stack of bowls and other items on a table. "There won't be any women's clothes here," he said with a kind of forced briskness. "Gio is single and lives alone. But you can wear one of his shirts. I'll change as well."

  Thea's brain promptly provided her with vivid imagery of Mace peeling off the damp sweater. She choked a little before firmly pushing the mental picture out of her head. "Yes, that sounds fine," she squeaked out.

  "Bedrooms are this way." Mace glanced out the terrace door at Gio one last time, his face drawn in thoughtful lines, and then strode off. Thea took a few quick steps to catch up.

  Bedrooms. Oh no. This wasn't helping.

  Mace went into a bedroom that was clearly in use, and probably Gio's. He rummaged in the wardrobe with the sort of casual familiarity and lack of inhibition that Thea associated with family.

  "You're close to Gio, aren't you?" she asked as Mace handed her a white shirt.

  "We've been friends all our lives. Since we were boys."

  "You mean since you were a boy?" Gio was obviously a couple of decades older.

  "Yes," Mace said. "Of course. That's what I meant. There's another bedroom through the adjoining door, and a bathroom where you can freshen up. I don't suppose you've changed your mind about stonewalking—"

  "No," Thea said. "Absolutely not."

  "In that case, we'll take Gio's car and I'll drive you to the airport in Rome. We'll book the first flight that'll get you to Newfoundland. It might take a lot of rerouting, but I'll be there to meet you at the airport in St. John's."

  "How will you—no, wait," she interrupted herself. "Stonewalking. Right. That's going to take some getting used to."

  She went into the other bedroom and tried to ignore the small rustles coming from next door. Just on the other side of that door, Mace was stripping down. Chest and pecs, legs and sculpted ass—no!

  Focusing on the business at hand, she unbuttoned and peeled off her clinging denim, and shook out the shirt Mace had given her. It seemed to be actual silk, slippery between her fingers. When she put it on, the shirt was too long in the sleeves, but it just fit her shoulders and if she hadn't had a small bosom, she would have struggled to button it.

  She rolled up the sleeves to mid-forearm and buttoned them back. A few swipes of her hand through her hair put it in order, at least as much as it usually was. She spared a moment's regret for the suitcase of her lost things and then shook it off. She could get a toothbrush and hairbrush, and she didn't need much else.

  It occurred to her that she had no idea where in Italy they were, or which airport they were going to be driving to. But they appeared to be somewhere rural, so that suggested a long car drive to get answers.

  And she was going to get answers.

  Mace

  After Thea closed the door between the bedrooms, Mace slumped a little. He had been keeping up appearances for her as well as he could, maintaining a resolute determination to push forward and also hiding his lingering headache and weariness. With Thea out of sight, there was no need to continue to pretend.

  It had been a long, exhausting day and night. Stonewalking first from Newfoundland to Toronto, and then from Toronto to Italy more than once would have taken it out of him on the best day—which this definitely was not.

  His fingers shook a little and he fumbled a few times as he undressed. The drug was still working its way out of his system, and what he really needed was food and rest—actually, now that he noticed, he was ravenous. Using his powers took energy, as did healing.

  Just have to grab a sandwich on the way. I can rest when Thea is safely on a plane.

  Even if the cultists pursued them to Italy, which was likely to happen sooner rather than later, he doubted they could portal to a moving target. Attacking Thea's plane seemed extremely unlikely. He just had to make sure they didn't lay a trap in Newfoundland.

>   He hastily dressed in the biggest, loosest clothes he could find in Gio's wardrobe, which still strained at the seams against his comparatively muscular physique. He left Thea in the adjoining bedroom and went into the kitchen. There were an assortment of meats, cheeses, and bread on the counter; it looked like she had been interrupted in the middle of making a sandwich. Good; that was convenient. He slapped together a couple of sandwiches, and had wolfed down most of one by the time Thea appeared.

  Gio's silk shirt was stunning on her. But then, he had come to the conclusion that it was impossible for Thea not to be stunning. She had a striking, angular beauty that gave her a classic elegance. It was easy to imagine her as an artist's model posing for a statue, or draped on a Roman couch with a handful of grapes.

  It was also impossible not to instantly remember what she looked like without the shirt. He had been desperately distracted by Gio's condition, but it was impossible to be too distracted not to notice her lean torso, her high perfect breasts in their bra cups.

  Mace wrenched his gaze away from her. She is a colleague, no more. You're tired and you're not thinking clearly.

  Thea yawned. "Is that for me?" she asked, pointing at the sandwich.

  "It is."

  "Love me a man who knows his way around a kitchen," she remarked, and took a large bite.

  Mace made another sandwich for the road—one definitely wasn't going to do. "I think Gio has a farm truck in one of the sheds. We're going to need it."

  Thea helped him clean up the kitchen. He scribbled a note for Gio's cook and groundskeeper, in his somewhat limited Italian, telling them that their boss had been called away and they could stay home with pay while he was gone, and then found the truck keys in a drawer.

  Lion-Gio got up when they left the house and prowled along behind them. Mace was alert, scanning the hills in the morning sun. So far so good, but the sooner they got on the road, the better.

  The truck was parked beneath a small open-ended pavilion to keep off the sun. Thea watched dubiously as he encouraged Gio to jump up into the back. "Are you just putting him back there like a dog?"

  "I don't really have a choice. Lie down, please," he said to Gio, who promptly obeyed, and didn't seem to mind having a tarp tucked down over him.

  Thea was already up in the front seat of the truck when he climbed into the driver's seat. As he put the truck in gear, Mace glanced into the rear-view mirror and found that Gio was staying down. It just looked like a heavy load in the truck bed. He pulled onto the country lane leading away from Gio's estate and eventually to the highways that fed into Rome.

  "Are you going to tell me what you did to him?" Thea asked.

  Mace glanced at her. She was beautiful in the morning sun, her short brown hair fluttering in the wind through the rolled-down truck window. He might have felt defensive if her voice had been accusing, but it was merely curious.

  She didn't seem afraid of him, and that was genuinely surprising. Actually, she seemed to be handling the entire thing very well, considering everything she'd had dumped on her over the last twenty-four hours.

  "It's a spell to turn Gio into a—creature like me," he said. "I think it went wrong because I didn't know what I was doing. I had to reconstruct it from memory. When I did it before, I was working from a book, and the person I was doing it on had been partially turned already. And I had his mate there to help."

  "Mate?"

  Talk about things he didn't feel up to explaining right now. "Do you believe in true love, Thea? In soulmates?"

  "I don't know," Thea said solemnly. "I guess everyone wants to believe in it a little." She flashed him a quick smile. With the sun turning her skin to pale burnished gold, gilding the edges of her hair, she looked stunning. It was all he could do not to reach over and touch her cheek to feel its softness. "Why, are you mine?"

  It was startling to hear her say it aloud in her soft contralto—the thing he'd been wondering about.

  "I don't know," he said. "Maybe."

  The smile fell away. "I was joking," she said, but a little too quickly, making him realize there was a serious undertone to the question. It was something she was wondering about, too; he wasn't the only one who felt the first stirrings of a connection between them.

  It was hard to believe that they hadn't even held hands. They hadn't even kissed. Not that he wouldn't thrill to explore her lush lips. But the level of connection that he felt to her already was startling.

  Apparently being chased by evil cultists and doing magic rituals together was a good bonding experience. Who knew?

  "Soulmates are real, Thea," he said quietly. "As real as the darker magic you've experienced now too. There is magic in the world, true magic, and it's not all battle spells, death and pain. There is always light to chase away the dark."

  "Is this when you tell me what you are?" she asked, her gray eyes steady on him.

  "Let me get on the highway, and then we'll talk about it."

  He wound his way through tawny hills covered with olive orchards, past streams and herds of goats. The road was barely wide enough for one car, let alone two, and when they met other traffic they had to edge past each other.

  "Pretty far away from everything," Thea said.

  "Gio likes privacy. He says that the company of his books is the best company he has." Mace smiled slightly. "I've said things like that myself, but ..."

  But it wasn't really true. He was lonely. He hadn't realized how lonely until Jess and her mate Reive came to live with him. And now he realized that he was lonely for more than family. He craved female companionship as well.

  He merged onto a highway heading into Rome. Once they settled into the flow of traffic, Thea said, "Okay, I was promised answers, and now I have even more questions."

  "And you will have them. To start with, I'm a gargoyle."

  He should have been more nervous putting all his secrets in her hands. But it was impossible to be afraid of her. On some deep, instinctive level, he trusted her not to hurt him.

  Thea blinked. "Like ... downspouts on buildings, that kind of thing? 1990s Disney cartoon? That kind of gargoyle?"

  Mace smiled. "You saw me. What did I look like to you?"

  "You looked ..." She hesitated. "Magnificent," she said softly.

  Mace gave her a surprised look. "What do you mean?"

  "I've spent my entire life solving mysteries, Mace. At its heart, that's what being an archaeologist is all about. And seeing you out there in the dawn light, I'll never forget it. You were the most beautiful mystery I had ever seen."

  He wasn't quite sure how to react to that. It was true that he had grown up with the gargoyle thing, so he was used to it. Still, "beautiful" wasn't a word that most people typically applied to gargoyles.

  Just another sign that she's perfect for you, isn't it? said the voice of his subconscious.

  It wasn't quite his gargoyle speaking, not exactly—not in the sense that other shifters' animals talked to them. Gargoyles didn't have that, which, come to think of it, might be why the fated mate thing didn't quite work for them as it did for other shifters, either.

  But there was an inner certainty, a quiet center that Mace had carried with him all his life. It didn't have a separate voice, but it was the part that knew things. Maybe it really was his gargoyle, speaking to him in a way that transcended words and went straight to his emotional core instead.

  And it seemed to him that Thea had settled into that calm center without a ripple, as if she was made to fit there.

  "Where do gargoyles come from?" Thea asked.

  "We were made by medieval alchemists, centuries ago."

  "You were created?"

  "No, we were human once," he hastened to explain. "You saw me perform the ritual on Gio. Those early alchemists were more ... competent."

  "Mace, you were trying to do it in a hurry, from memory, with improvised ingredients and no one to help you. I don't know much about magic, but I can't imagine that'd be easy. I mean, it'd be so
rt of like trying to bake a cake when you had only ever seen a cake recipe once and had to collect the ingredients in five minutes from someone else's kitchen."

  Mace laughed softly. "That's not inaccurate, I suppose."

  "Why did they do it, your ancestors? It seems like a pretty big step to take."

  That wasn't an easy question to answer. "We were meant to be guardians. To protect and defend. But there were those who had less noble purposes. Over the years, we were twisted away from our original purpose and used not for defense, but to attack and to conquer. Once we broke away from our creators, we made sure the secret of creating gargoyles was lost, never to be found again."

  "But you know how to do it."

  "It was rediscovered recently—by a few of us, at least. There was a book that explained how to do it. The book no longer exists, and I'm one of the only people who has ever read the whole thing. But the group who attacked us in Toronto are trying to get the secret themselves. Apparently," he added, rubbing his still-sore shoulder, "they've moved along to trying to capture a gargoyle of their own."

  "To ... reverse-engineer you, or something?"

  "Or force me to tell them how it's done. Unfortunately, they know I know how to do it. I think I'm the only one of us who can still perform the ritual." He glanced guiltily into the rear-view mirror, where Gio rode in the truck bed as a docile tarped-over lump. "Except apparently I'm not that good at it."

  Thea hit him lightly in the thigh with her fist. He looked at her, startled.

  "Stop beating yourself up," she said. "Gio's not dead, right? You made that happen. If something went wrong, we can find a way to fix it."

  We. It had been a very long time since there had been a we for Mace. "We can," he said, and she smiled slightly, a tug at the corner of her generous mouth. "And, while I can't demand it of you, you'll be an invaluable help to me now. It's all the more important that we find the medallion, Hrungnir's Heart, if it exists. First of all, we must keep it out of their hands. But it's possible that it may be able to complete the transformation and bring Gio all the way across."