Bumpy, the Gargoyle Slayer (Spice-tember #1)

CHAPTER 1

Alain

New York City

“Die, you gravy-sucking pig!”

The words hit me on a massive windstorm that’s disguising itself as a nubile blond in a short skirt and tight sweater.

Her rapid advance is punctuated by a wood stake that she thrusts against my chest. The weapon splinters into shards, though not before cutting a hole through my custom-tailored shirt.

Can’t impale stone with wood. It’s against all the laws of molecular science. Fabric, though, is made of lesser stuff.

For a moment, I don’t react, stuck as I am taking in the stabbing female’s curves.

Those breasts are worthy of hymns and poetry.

And those gams… but she must be cold with her legs so exposed, given the autumn day outside is wet and chill, and inside, the bunch of hot-air financiers require arctic level air-conditioning to balance out their hubris.

But those breasts. They fair stop my heart.

Odd, though, her trying to murder me on a live broadcast featuring the top economists and financiers from around the globe.

Odder still is the way heat flares up beneath my skin as I watch her blink large blue eyes at me with apparent befuddlement.

She’s so cute, I want to squeeze her until she squeaks.

“Missed?” I quip, keeping my tone deadpan.

Still, the heat. I’m suddenly roasting. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that I’m blushing. Or horny. Or possible alight with holy fire.

Honestly, any of those options are possible.

“I don’t… how…” She spreads her hand. After a chunk of wood tumbles to the floor, two large splinters remain, piercing her palm. She glances down before returning her stare to me, trying to penetrate me with her gaze rather than the stake.

“Would you like some help?” I ask, nodding towards her palm.

With a furrowed brow and a slight wince, she pulls out the tiny slivers before throwing them at me.

Everything in me stutters to a halt. Lucky for her, I’m a temperate sort of gargoyle or I’d be tempted to take her over my lap and teach her some manners.

Or passion.

Stop it, Alain. Don’t touch the fluffy bunny who’s trying to kill you.

“I don’t… why aren’t you…?” Suddenly, her head flings to the side, her tongue lolls, her eyes close, her palms extend, all in the imitation of a dead person.

A snort of laughter explodes from me. Isn’t she adorable?

Catching herself, she bites her bottom lip before taking a half-step closer, and pokes a finger in the hole she’s torn in my shirt, testing the resiliency of my flesh. She’s barely taller standing than I am sitting.

“I’m made of sterner stuff than that, little girl.”

Blue eyes narrow into sharp points, sharper than her stake, anyway. Those eyes may be the most dangerous weapon in her arsenal. Well, those or the curvaceous bumps under her sweater that are calling my hands to madness.

What is she? Twenty-seven-ish? Old enough, but too young for me.

“Security!” someone to my right yells.

With the call, I realize that everyone around the studio is screaming, scrambling, tripping, and generally creating mayhem, while the blond and I have remained locked in our own private universe.

Private, but on a live television broadcast to… everywhere.

“Slayer?” I test the word under my breath, staring deep into her soul. Can’t be right, though. If she’s a slayer, she shouldn’t be allowed out on her own yet. Someone more experienced should have explained to her that you can’t stake a gargoyle with wood.

“Fuck. You.”

Ooh, potty mouth. Not usually something I’m attracted to, though exceptions can always be made.

“Alain, get away from her! Don’t just sit there!” Torrance de Palma, a Spanish economist, screams at me from where he huddles behind a cameraman.

So much for our semi-circle of leading lights set to remake the global economy. They’re all quivering off-stage because of one tiny rabbit. Honestly, I’m just embarrassed for us.

As the blond begins to retreat, instinct takes over. I grab her around the waist, yanking her onto me. Her back arches as she splays against my chest.

She’s bendable. A thousand illicit positions flip through my head. I may be a holy gargoyle, but I’ve read the Kama Sutra and I’ve got an imagination. Though before I pretzel her under me, I should first find out why she’s trying to stake me.

“What are you doing, little girl?” I ask, a purr rumbling up my throat. “This is a private session. I don’t think you were invited.”

Another blink and her instincts finally rise. Her palms find my chest and push. “Let me go, you—you monster!”

“Tch, tch. Did no one ever tell you not to call a monster ‘monster’ to his face?”

“Asshole.” She spits the word like an angry wet kitty. But then her gaze clashes with mine again and the earth stops turning.

Seconds tick by. I’m barely aware of the continued chaos around the studio as the ocean of eternity envelops us once more.

Her eyes are so blue above a little pert nose and plump lips.

She still has that lift of youth to her cupid’s bow.

And her hair… more like brushed gold than blond.

Her tresses shine and glitter under the overhead lights.

My fingers seek out the soft strands, stroking the silk from the top of her head to her shoulders where the ends slightly curl. And down further… but I stop before groping the swell of her breasts. I’m not that kind of monster.

“Why aren’t you dead?” she whispers, her face crinkling into adorable creases… twenty-something-year-old creases that mean I should let her go.

But she feels so good in my arms. On my lap. In my world.

Nope, can’t do it. I want to bundle her up and take her home, explore why I’m feeling like there’s suddenly a fire burning beneath my skin, but that would be a giant gargoyle not-happening.

If she was fifty, maybe I could play, but she’s at that age where her experience is only now rounding out.

She’s just beginning to learn the imperfections of a man’s desires. I need someone who knows them cold.

“Why are you trying to kill me, little one?” I ask in a more reasonable tone.

Rage suffuses her features with a pretty red. I take note of it right before she skims her knuckles down my abdomen and shoots them hard right between my legs.

Pain glitters up my spine as my stomach folds into knots.

Stars and stripes of light flash before me.

It feels like she’s just pulverized my cock with a chef’s mallet.

Which makes sense. There’s only one place a gargoyle can be hurt and she’s found it.

Only one place we’re hard as men and not simply stone.

To counteract the effect, I turn my lower portion briefly into actual stone, before turning back to flesh. There. No harm done. Not that I’m planning on making children, but I appreciate keeping my options open.

“Fucking vampire,” she grits between her teeth, before she punches the base of her palm under my chin.

She’s less successful. Her cry of pain echoes up my spine.

I’m not even aware of releasing her before she’s off my lap.

Her injured hand is cuddled against her chest, but she digs with the other into a large leather messenger bag that she wears with the strap draped between those glorious mounds.

Suddenly, I’m doused in the face with an enormous shower of water.

“Are you suicidal, little girl?” I demand, blindly reaching out, water dripping past my eyes.

Luck is with me. I manage to grab her arm and drag her back into me.

No way is she getting away from me again, not before I have some answers.

“Well, good for you, you’ve managed the impossible. I’m annoyed.”

“Let me go, you—you fiend!” She slaps at me, but this time, I’m prepared.

I dodge her knee, latch both her hands in mine, and set her onto my lap so she’s seated across my thighs. “I think not. You wait right here until security comes to take you away.” Though they’re certainly taking their sweet time. I could be dead six times over by now.

Absently, I lick my lips and find the taste of the water familiar.

St. Anne’s, if I’m not mistaken, on Bleeker Street, blocks and blocks from where we film.

Gargoyles are privileged to drink from all the holy fonts, which is especially refreshing during the summer months when we perch on sweltering roofs to await strikes by the Big Bad’s minions.

They’re always minions of low rank, whose breaths stink of sulfur, and who cry when we catch them. No spine, not like the fluffy bunny with the big bumps under her sweater that are magnificent enough to make a grown gargoyle give it all up for a peek at them.

“What is wrong with you? Why won’t you die?” she wails.

“From holy water? Talk about bringing a knife to a gun fight and then handing it to your enemy on a silver platter.”

“You should be vampire soup,” she whispers, clearly shocked that I haven’t melted into a screaming puddle of agony. But then she straightens her spine and flashes me a blinding smile. “Can I have my hands back, please?”

“Why?”

“I need to scratch my nose. It itches.” For good measure, she wrinkles the adorable little thing that sits in the middle of her face.

I nearly offer to scratch it for her, but I’m already too close. A recently abused part of me is rising again to the challenge she presents, so I free her hands from mine.

She grabs inside her sweater and drags out a giant silver cross. In a swift motion, she slams it between my eyes. “Take that, asshole.”

“Ouch.” I can’t help rolling my eyes.

“I... I don’t…”

“You need better training, little girl.” I brush her hand and the cross away from my face, but I must use too much force because she cries out and grabs her fist back to her chest. The cross clatters to the floor.

“Did I hurt you? Here, let me see.” I grab her arms above the elbows as she struggles to get away from me, but I hold her loosely. She’s so delicate, it’s just stupid that she’s interacting with me.

And obviously thinks I’m a vampire. Her tutelary has a lot to answer for.

“Enough,” I order, using the tone of voice that regularly brings pigeons and demons to heel. It seems to work for her, too, because she stills. “Now, did I hurt you?”

Hissing at me like a drowned cat, she lifts her chin. “You can’t hurt me, vampire.” And for good measure, she oscillates her injured hand.

That’s a relief. I wouldn’t want to have injured her during her attempt at slaying me.

I still need to set the record straight.

“Your judgment is lamentably poor, little girl. Barging onto the set of a financial roundtable and attempting to slay a participant on live television is an insane action that will have terrible consequences. You…” But my glance takes in three big brutes who are running towards us. Security.

“I’m not afraid of you.”

Sure. That’s why her brow is all furrowed.

The desire to send the guards away is strong, but she did just attack me in front of millions.

I need to control the situation. Fast. Nothing can disrupt the global funding initiative I hope to institute, a system that will take the place of digital currency while being identification free, thereby outfoxing the current crop of assholes who want to use a digital system to enslave the populace.

“Tell me why you’re here.”

“To kill you. And don’t give me those puppy-dog eyes. I’m not falling for your stupid mind tricks or that handsome face,” she whispers, before licking her lips.

And fine, I’m a little bit complimented. “Your name then?”

“Bunny, if you want the name of the woman who is going to slay you and… wait a second. Are you wearing make-up?”

I am, indeed, the better to hide my naturally gray stone-like skin from humans who don’t know that Kinds live among them.

And right now, said makeup is sluicing down my face onto my heavy white silk shirt, further ruining it and my charcoal gray suit that I purchased last year in Paris. My favorites.

“This won’t be easy, Bumpy,” I say, loosening my grip so the guards and I don’t pull her apart like an overcooked wishbone. “Courage.” Which she’s going to need… until I can rectify her mistakes.

“Bunny,” she spits. “Not Bumpy.”

I look at her heaving breasts as she tries to fend off the goons. Er—guards. “Bumpy is more accurate.”

“Mr. D’Ange!” Sally Rothmore, the production manager who cowers behind the guards, startles in outrage at my characterization of my would-be assassin. “That’s sexist!”

She’s more horrified by my noticing Bumpy’s chest than by the fact the girl just tried to murder me. Humans are puzzling on the best of days. Still. It’s a testament to how the little slip of a slayer has unnerved me that I’ve made such an error… on live television.

“I only meant that she bumped my chin and forehead.” And cock, but I’m hoping no one saw that, what with her body shielding the action from the cameras.

The last thing I need is to be labeled… whatever it is that society will label me for leering at her chest and calling her Bumpy.

These moderns take their sexual harassment claims very seriously, never mind that Bumpy just tried to kill me, which they’ll now likely interpret as proof of my guilt about… something reprehensible.

I’m going to need to do some damage control. But first.

I lift to my feet and stalk the three steps towards where Bumpy is attempting to fight off all three security guards. They’re winning, but she’s like a crazed cat without bones, all slide and squirm.

“Wait.”

Instantly, the guards halt. They’re afraid of me, not because of what I am, since they don’t know what I am, but because of what I own. Humans have an odd obsession with wealth.

I step in close to Bunny. She stops squirming so she can glare up at me through narrowed eyes that shoot a hail of blue fire. I take her chin in my fingers and lean in. Slowly. Carefully. Giving her time to protest. And she should protest. She thinks I’m a vampire, after all.

But I reach closer and closer, and all she does is part her lips. And so, I almost, but not quite, brush her mouth with mine. It’s not a kiss. It’s intimidation. “This isn’t over, little one,” I whisper against those soft pads.

Her knee comes up again, but even though I’m enchanted, I’m prepared. I evade her blow with ease.

“Bite me,” she snarls.

I certainly want to.