8. Soren
SOREN
She touched me, and I’ve spent the whole gray length of this day holding the feel of it. Her fingers came up trembling and pressed warm against my face.
The want rose through my stone the way it rose the first time I caught her scent, pushing at my claws and pulling at the base of my wings until every seam of me strained for a way out.
The old crack in my shoulder ached its warning about gargoyles who move under the sun.
I held the pressure down until she walked off toward Lena Crafts, and even then her warmth stayed on my cheek.
You’d think she’d offered me the world instead of a moment of one hand. I would grovel to feel that hand against my living skin. I’ve never groveled for a single thing in my long life, but for her I would learn.
Resting at ground level was a risk I took. The Settling protects us when we sleep among humans, smoothing their minds over until the statue has always been there, certain as the sidewalk beneath it.
It doesn’t hold forever, though. It wears thin over months or years, and the day a human squints up and asks where that statue came from, a wise gargoyle is already gone.
The unwise ones stay to meet the hammers.
That’s why I rest high. Today I sat beside a diner door like someone’s guard dog. Being near her was worth more than being safe. Her voice came through clearer down here, and her strawberries cut under the fry oil every time the door swung. Her hand on my face paid for all of it.
The Settling has never failed me quickly, yet Treasure saw through it on her first day, tracking me from roof to door while the whole town swore nothing was there. From inside the stone she reads red at her center where every other human runs gold.
Sable and I have been running alone for centuries. Every elder who might’ve known what a mated human can see went to rubble long ago, so the answer belongs to her.
The dinner rush never comes. Rain keeps the mountain roads empty, so I listen to my mate work a slow floor. The register drawer rolls, the coffee pot fills, and her rag moves over tables that are already clean.
The cook decides an empty diner is an invitation.
“You know,” Lamar says through the wall behind me, “a storm like this is no kind of night to be going home to an empty house.”
“Then get a dog,” she tells him.
He laughs like the no is part of a game. I open a new file for this man, and it isn’t watch him anyway anymore. This one ends in a hole in the ground.
He can offer her daylight, a house his mother left him, a hand without claws resting on her shoulder in the noon sun. All I own is the dark half of every day and a body that ruins brick.
But if she chooses me, I’ll spend the rest of my nights working the ache out of her feet and putting a hot plate in front of her, and anything heavy in her life becomes mine to carry. No man alive can outbid me on devotion. It’s the only wealth I’ve ever held.
Somewhere behind the storm, the sun finally lets go of the mountains.
There’s nothing to see from down here, no gold on the ridge, just gray rain going dark, but the law that made us doesn’t ask for proof.
We rest by day and hunt by night, and my body has kept that clock through every storm the old world ever threw at it.
I stand and stretch to my full height out in the open, joints popping the whole way up my back.
Two shoppers come up the sidewalk sharing an umbrella. They split around me without breaking their conversation and come back together on the other side, and neither one glances up.
A woman with an umbrella stops in front of me. She looks me over from crown to claw with her mouth pulling tight, and I brace for the terror I’ve been owed my whole life.
“Just so you know, if anyone hasn’t told you yet,” she says, “this is Shadow Wolf Creek, not some barbarian territory. You come into town with some clothes on. We have rules here, you know.”
I look down at myself, at my skin and the single cloth I’ve worn across my hips since the old country.
“Apologies, madam,” I manage.
She shakes her head at me, steps around me, and carries on toward the grocery store.
My wings pull in flat against my back. The hammers chased my kind across every land I’ve ever slept in, and what Shadow Wolf Creek can’t forgive is that I came into town without clothes.
“All I’m saying is one dinner,” Lamar says inside. “You’re playing hard to get. That’s fine. I got patience.”
“Or maybe I’m really just not interested,” Treasure says. “Did that one ever cross your mind?”
The mortar goes to powder under my grip. She’s answered this man plainly every time he’s asked, and he keeps hearing a game.
I take the brick to the roof and settle at the edge above the door. I’m going to learn where this human named Lamar lives, and I’m going to give him one warning to leave my mate alone. That’s more mercy than my kind ever got.
I’m supposed to find Sable tonight so we can walk this town openly and see how it answers us, but my brother can wait. Nothing matters more than Treasure right now, and I let myself pretend that only holds until closing.
Andy leaves first, muttering his way across the lot with his jacket held over his head, and the dishwasher follows with lighter steps than he carried yesterday.
I’d bet my wings on the reason. She talked that boy through his panic, and if there were any justice in this town, she’d be running that diner instead of closing it.
Then the lights go down inside, the bell jingles, and my mate walks out into the rain with the cook. She stops dead in front of the empty spot beside the door where I spent my whole day.
“Okay,” she announces to the empty shopping center, “someone needs to tell me what the hell is going on!”
Lamar pulls his hood up against the rain. “What are you talking about?”
“The statue.” She points at the wet pavement where my shoulders were. “The gargoyle statue was sitting right here by the door. You stood next to it with me this afternoon and told me it’s always been there.”
“Did I?” He laughs and rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t remember saying that. Nothing was here, Treasure.”
“You are trying to make it out like I’m crazy, and I’m not.”
“Hey, I think you’re a really cool chick.” He puts both hands up. “But I hate to break it to you. Nothing was there.”
“And what about the roof?”
He looks up, and I flatten behind the chimney. “What about it?”
She doesn’t answer him. The rain ticks off her braids while she stares him down, and he shifts his weight under it.
“Look.” His voice drops into something gentler, which is worse. “Maybe you’ve been watching too much anime or something. We don’t have gargoyles in Shadow Wolf Creek. Your occasional shifter, sure. Vampire. Sometimes merfolk, and witches and warlocks like to visit. But gargoyles?”
“Oh, okay.” She crosses her arms. “Wolves, vampires, and merfolk, that’s just a regular Wednesday around here. But gargoyles are the mystery. What gives, Lamar?”
I grin into the rain behind the chimney. Sarcasm looks good on my mate.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” He fishes his keys out of his pocket. “Or how about this. Maybe not every mythical creature is real. I think the cleaning chemicals got to you tonight. Go home, Treasure. You want me to walk you to your car?”
“I’m gonna find out what the hell is going on in this town.” She backs away from him toward her car. “I’m not crazy. Y’all are.”
He sighs like she’s the one being unreasonable and walks off through the rain to his truck. There’s a certain voice men use on women they’ve decided are silly, and the cook just used it on the only human in this blind town seeing things exactly as they are.
His truck pulls out, and she stomps to her car with her apron held over her head. Even through the rain and the slammed door, her voice reaches me. “I’m not crazy. I know I’m not crazy. What is happening in this town?”
The words pull the smile right off my face. The Settling covers me while she holds the truth alone, and every night I stay hidden, Lamar calls my mate a liar on my behalf.
I could end it, drop into her headlights and let her be right in front of him. But what would I be showing her, a ghoulish face and a wet loincloth, with nothing else to my name? My mate needs more reason to love this than proof she was right about a statue. Not yet.
She pulls out of the lot, and I turn my eyes to the road the cook’s truck took.
“What did I miss?” Sable asks, landing at my wingtip. “Why is the woman frustrated?”
Her taillights climb the mountain road, and I give him nothing.
“Are the humans in fear of us?”
“No.” Her car disappears around the shoulder of the ridge, and somewhere ahead of it is a truck I’ve already scented. “I won’t feed on fish tonight. I prefer something else.”
I’m off my haunches when my brother’s palm lands flat on my chest.
“If we’re considering this land as our home,” Sable says, “I think it best we not hunt a human. Besides, we don’t feed on them, and you know it.”
“I don’t like the male.”
“Why not? What has he done to bother you so?”
The rain comes down on the empty lot.
“Soren.” He waits until I look at him. “I am your brother and your companion for centuries, yet you hide from me.”
I quit fighting it and point at the road that swallowed her taillights.
“Her,” I say. “I’ve found her, Sable. My mate.”
His wings lift half-open and hang there. “Truly? You’re certain?”
“Her scent is imprinted on me. Strawberries. It hit me my first day on that roof while I was locked in the stone, and I knew right then she was mine. I hadn’t even seen her face yet.” My claws curl over the roof edge. “I want nothing more than to claim her.”
“Well.” Sable grins. “That explains the windowsill.”
He takes my glare without flinching.
“I’m happy for you, brother. Truly happy.” His grin fades, and his eyes go serious. “But it means we prepare for her now, and it means you stop frustrating your mate. Or are you expecting a rejection?”
“The fear is there.” There’s no point lying to Sable. He knows me too well. “Look at me. Humans only ever had one word for what we are.”
“Look at this town.” He tips his head at the wet street below us. “Something brought her here, of all places. Fate, perhaps. She will not reject you, brother. I’m sure of it.” He pauses. “Though she might if you keep making the poor woman feel she’s losing her mind.”
I groan. “I’ll keep my distance until the time is right. But it’s difficult, Sable. The ocean was easier.”
“Then let’s make the time come sooner.” He turns toward the Shadow Bar glowing across the street. “How about we introduce ourselves to the shifters tonight and see how they take us? And while we’re at it, we let them know your mate is here and we have no intention of leaving.”
I want to follow her up that mountain road. My brother is right, though. I’ve frustrated her enough for one night, and if we’re going to make a home in this town, the shifters need to hear it from me directly.
I spread my wings and take off into the rain. Sable leaps from the roof and follows, and we bank toward the bar together. The shifters get our introductions tonight. Lamar gets his warning soon enough. I know exactly where he works.