CHAPTER 11
Bunny
I wake to find him watching me. The room is dark, but there’s a light outside lining the path around the grounds, and it’s enough to see his expression.
“Hi,” I whisper shyly. I’ve rotated in my sleep so that I face him, our heads together on a single pillow, our limbs entwined. His wing folds over us like a blanket. No wonder I’m so warm. So content. I’m protected.
“Hi, yourself.” He smooths back my hair again before tracing a finger down my cheek. “You’re so perfect. I love watching you sleep.”
I’m sure I’m blushing, but that’s my norm. No need to worry it.
Suddenly, as if to mock the idea that I don’t have to worry about something, I remember his party. “Shoot.” I surge up to a sitting position. “The guests.”
“Long gone, I’d imagine. It’s the middle of the night. Witching hour.” He turns over and grabs a clock from the beside table to show me. Three o’clock.
I sink back down. He throws the clock carelessly over his shoulder and joins me. The timepiece thuds against the rug.
“The grazing board. I hope Jean-Luc really did stick it in the refrigerator.”
“You must be prescient. I’m starving. Sandwiches, did you say? Should I go fetch them?”
“I can do it.” After all, it’s his birthday. Sort of. Well, the day after, I guess.
“I’d rather not have you ogled by any staff members who might still be tidying up. I’m a jealous gargoyle.”
“Possessive, too.” But I smile up at him, and after we kiss, I let him go. He shrugs on a robe and ties it around his waist, belting in his wings. At the doorway, he turns his head. “You’ve slain me, Bumps, and taken my soul. I don’t ever want to let you go.”
But then he disappears. The click of the door behind him hits me with all the wrong notes of finality.
Snuggling into the softness of the bed should be easy.
My limbs are tired, still weak from riding Alain, and I’ve got his cum and mine trickling down my thighs, but I’m too apprehensive, though I don’t know why.
Maybe it’s just because I just had sex with the enemy.
Not that Alain is my enemy, but any monster has to be counted as the opposition in a general sort of way.
Or, maybe it’s because I’m afraid that now that he’s had me, he’s going to leave, despite his words just now.
He told me that he could be called back at any time to his cathedral post, and that when he is, he’ll go.
And I get that. Duty, I understand. Wanting a different destiny isn’t always enough to make it happen.
But he’s not going to leave me right now. He’s only gone to the kitchen to fetch the grazing board, which shouldn’t fill me with any level of unease, and yet…
Something’s wrong.
Without bothering to bathe off our cum, or to pee, which my bladder is telling me to do, I find another nightgown, this one a big tent of a thing that Alain bought me for nights during my period when I need to feel cozy.
It’s brushed cotton, imprinted with little blue bows, and I love it.
I especially love how easily it goes over me now.
Racing downstairs, I head for the kitchen. Because the house is so enormous, I have to run a distance. I’m still a room away when I hear voices. Alain’s is calm. Soothing. As if he’s trying to talk someone off a ledge. The other voice… I know that other voice.
Bursting into the kitchen, I find my tutelary chortling as he hides himself behind the grazing table that stands just outside the walk-in refrigerator. In the center of the room where there’s a big open space, a roaring circle of flames surrounds Alain.
“Bunny! Glad you could make the party. I’m just frying up the monster who kidnapped you.” Morrie rises to his feet and shoves an entire saucisson floret into his mouth.
“Hey, I didn’t make that for you,” I protest.
“Bumps, get out. Let me handle this,” Alain says quietly, even though the flames are awfully close to his skin.
“But that’s your birthday grazing bo…” Understanding belatedly falls through me. “You’re trying to burn my boyfriend?” I demand, shock ratcheting through me.
“Burn, boyfriend, burn!” Morrie sings. But then he loses his mirth. “I’m here to save you, Bunny. I know this vile monster has been keeping you imprisoned, and I can’t imagine how he’s tortured you, but I’m here now, sweet girl. I’ve got this.”
“And you think I don’t?” I demand, my hands finding my hips.
“Well, you haven’t slain him, have you? But maybe you didn’t know about the holy oil? You need the fire to burn with holy oil,” Morrie explains calmly. “I know we didn’t cover that, but I never expected…”
“A little help, Bumps? Since you’re staying?” Alain cuts in.
I look at him and notice that the flames are licking his wings.
“Ooh, sorry. Sure.” I look around the kitchen.
I don’t know what puts out holy oil, but there’s a fire extinguisher along the wall.
I pluck it off its hinge, try to figure out how to work the thing, and curse the fact I never learned.
I throw it to the floor and rush out to the hallway.
There’s an orange tree there, growing in a decorative Chinese urn.
Dragging that back into the kitchen through the swinging door, I get close enough to the flames for the heat to singe the skin along my arm, but I don’t hesitate.
Instead, I tip the pot over, sending the tree and the dirt over a small portion of the fiery wall.
A second later, the gargoyle explodes over the plant. He grabs me up into his arms and races through the door and outside into the chilly late-September night. Once we reach the lawn, he puts me down and begins rolling around in the grass.
“Sorry, Bumps. Sorry. I just need, ooh, that hurts.”
“Are you okay?” I demand.
“Just smoldering a bit. The grass helps. Nature. I’ll be fine. I’ll heal by tomorrow. Just… hey, stop right there.” He springs up and rushes back towards the house. When I turn, I see that Morrie is trying to escape.
Alain picks him up and throws him over his shoulder before marching him to where I stand. He deposits my tutelary at my feet and takes a step back. “Say you’re sorry. Bunny is a great slayer. She slayed me. And she has better instincts than you do, because I’m not the enemy, bucko.”
Bucko? He really has picked up a lot of slang since Notre Dame burned. Probably from Jean-Luc.
I turn to address Morrie, who’s clambering to his feet.
“Look, I know it’s not what you want, or what my parents would have wanted for me, but the truth is, I’m in love with Alain.
” I take a deep breath before forcing the worst part.
“Plus, I don’t think I’m cut out to be a slayer, not full time, anyway.
I’m sure that’s disappointing to hear. But on the positive side, I did help kill a vampire. ”
“And a demon. She was wonderful,” Alain agrees, wrapping me in his arms. His wings fly out. Protective. Possessive.
And I love every minute of it. I nuzzle into him, smelling the smoke and scent of charred incense on his singed robe and skin. The robe is nothing but tatters, destroyed when his wings extended, which makes it easy to see the angry, wine-colored burns, and…
The reality of what almost happened takes my legs. As if he understands, as if he can read my thoughts and body, Alain scoops me into his arms a moment before the ground would have reached up to punch me.
I touch his face. His makeup has dripped off in places. He’s scorched black in other spots. And he’s beautiful. “I love you so much. Please don’t leave me.”
“You can’t love him, Bunny. He’s a gargoyle, for goodness’s sake,” Morrie says. “He’s seduced you.”
“I don’t care,” I say. And suddenly, even though that’s not quite true, it’s true enough.
I look up into Alain’s mysterious eyes. “I don’t care if I’m not a slayer anymore.
My parents are gone. That was their dream.
The only place I feel like I belong is in your arms. And you said I could live in Paris with you.
That’s what I’ll do. You can go back to guarding the cathedral and I’ll see you on your off days. ”
“I don’t get days off. I get one year off every fifty-four years, to be exact, although five of my colleagues were killed in 2019 with the fire, so I guess it will be one year every forty-nine years. That’s no way to run a relationship.”
Oh. My heart sinks. “Well, maybe I could…”
“No.”
I swear, all of me dies a little. The rest that’s still living is just waiting for the final killing blow.
“No, Bumps.” He kisses my forehead, remaining there as if gathering strength, and finally, he sighs, long and low.
Suddenly, he smiles. It’s that same twist of lips, the one containing mischief and madness, that stole my heart.
“No,” he says finally, “I don’t think that’s going to work, but you know what I’ve realized? ”
“What?” My voice is so small. It’s hard to find it to push it out.
“I realized something so important that it’s just stupid that I didn’t know it right from the beginning.
I’ve been waiting for my past to claim me again, but it can’t.
Like I told you, I’m not the same gargoyle.
Honestly, I feel as if I’ve been kept away for a reason.
My destiny has changed. I truly believe my place is out among humanity now, battling evil in a more physical and immediate fashion.
I’ve searched my heart and soul this past week, and do you know what I’ve come to understand? ”
“What?” But my voice is still small. He sounds like he might stay with me, but there are lots of denials in his words.
“I understand now that I’m meant to guard flesh, not stone.”
“I don’t…” I shake my head, trying to comprehend his meaning.
“I’m going to become a slayer, too.”
“What?”
“What?” Morrie demands.
“Without the benefit of a tutelary, unless you want to learn together, little girl?”
And there I go, getting all melty for him again. “You mean it?”
He offers another smile. “Destiny is what you make it, Bumps, and I want to make you mine.” He sobers for a moment before adding, “I’ll always be a gargoyle.
I’m just choosing a different way to guard Good.
And I still have my global currency initiative.
I’ll be busy. Plus, I need to focus a lot of attention on making you happy. ”
My fingers walk up his chest. “I can focus on making you happy, too.”
He releases a long breath, as if he hasn’t been breathing. “Good.” He pauses before he adds, “And if that’s not enough for you, what with our double-slay-team soon to be up and running, you’ll find other passions. I’ll help.”
“I’m not very good at anything other than being in love with you,” I confess softly, my heart crimping because my words are true.
“You’re wonderful at everything. Your grazing board? Objectively the best I’ve ever seen.”
“Better than the one with the corn cobs and Fall leaves that the team with the blue shirts constructed on television last week?”
“Much, much better. My point is, you can do an amazing number of things really, really well. Though you can do being in love with me even better. I love that for you.” He winks, causing me to smile, before he sobers. “Do you really want to give up slaying for good?”
I have to think. I’d tossed quitting out to Morrie as a way of marking my independence, but do I really want to let my old destiny go completely? If I have a choice to continue and still be with the gargoyle I love?
“If I can do it with you,” I say slowly, feeling my words to make sure that they’re true, “then I’d like to continue as a slaying couple. It’s not my passion, but I would feel guilty leaving it behind.”
“I’d really like that. A slaying couple.
That’s us.” He leans in and presses a kiss to my forehead.
“But it will also be okay if you change your mind and decide not to slay again. We all start out as one thing and end up being another. That’s what life is about—changing, growing, becoming.
When our original destiny no longer fits, if we’re smart, we move on to one that does. ”
He’s so wise. It’s one of the things I love about him.
“But what will I be in this new destiny of yours, other than your co-slayer?” My fingers curl around his neck, probably digging into him, but I need the connection. “Your real girlfriend?”
“My girlfriend, my mate, my wife. I want everything from you, everything that will make you happy. I’ll give you anything you need. I swear it to you.”
“You’re sure?”
He offers me another slow smile. “I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”
A sudden exultation fills me. I feel so light, it’s as if I’ve grown wings. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I’ll be your real girlfriend, gargoyle, with benefits most definitely attached. Forever.”
He laughs. We kiss. Then he says, “But I’m going to marry you, too. Is that okay?”
“That’s okay.”
“Good. Because I need you to be mine. I need to protect you without anyone trying to stop me.”
“Like my tutelary?” Damn it. I forgot Morrie.
But when I search the grounds, I can’t find him.
“Escaped. Don’t worry. I won’t let him get the drop on me again. Plus, I know people. Angels. They’ll talk to him. It will be alright.”
And I’m sure it will be, because he’s my gargoyle, and I’ve slain him. Turns out, he’s slain me, too.
~THE END~