Chapter Ten Storms #3
Daniel is easy prey. I race towards him, running as only a predator can, pinning him with my hands, feeling his soft human body give under my talons. “Where is Lady June?”
“June?” he warbles as the smell of urine assaults my nose.
“Where is she?” I shake the boy, burrowing him into the grass, ruining his expensive coat and clothing with churned earth.
“At the lodge!” he squeaks. “What... Who?”
“I am her protector. A demon summoned out of your nightmares, betrayer!” I wrench him up and let him dangle above me, a living target for lightning.
“I ought to take you and fling you from the edge of these cliffs and let you shatter—the way you’re shattering my clan’s ancestral home. The way you break promises!” I howl.
“Please! What? I didn’t do anything, I’m not the person you’re looking for,” Daniel gasps as my talons shut tight over his throat. His blunt nails scratch at my tough skin, and I simply smile, a smile that speaks of horrors I could unleash upon him if I wanted.
“You are exactly the person I am looking for. You hurt my lady, and for that? You pay.” I couch, spring, and shoot myself high into the air, listening to Daniel’s horrified screams as lightning arcs around us.
“I’ll give you anything you want. I’ll take her back, I’ll never cheat again,” Daniel sobs. “Just please let me go!”
“Let you go?” My fangs flash in the lightning’s aftermath, and I drop him.
I KNOW I’M ALL OVER the road, but I comfort myself that it’s not like there’s much traffic. I can barely keep the little black sedan between the steep banks, but I can’t stop. My eyes are a little blurry, and my ribs and head hurt, but I remind myself that tough girls on a mission walk it off.
So I do. I keep careening towards the only road away from the lodge, looking for Duncan, looking for Daniel’s car.
I don’t expect to see Duncan bursting through the sky with Daniel dangling like an old jumprope. I slam on the brakes and let out a little scream when Duncan drops him.
“No!” I shout. I don’t want Duncan to be taken away from me for murdering Daniel.
“My lady!” Duncan cries and swoops, stopping to pluck something from the branches of a tree—an unconscious, limp form.
Daniel.
Duncan drops Daniel unceremoniously over the roof of his Merc and rushes to embrace me.
“Oh! Oh, my love, you fought so bravely! Are you badly hurt? It was not the first time in my life I wished to be human, but I have never wished so hard. I would understand if you didn’t want me now, now that you see I can only protect you by night, and bandits and betrayers, and ohhh.
” Duncan stops his frantic speech and hugs me harder, burying his face in my hair.
“Oh, God. You’re okay. You’re okay, right?” I ask, my hands patting all over Duncan’s chest, smoothing up his arms and down his shoulders.
“If you are?”
“I’m going to need a few days taking it easy, but as long as you’re alive, I’m okay.
I love you so much, and all I could think about was how I was hesitating over things, over places to live, and what jobs we’d have...
Like, any of that would matter, as long as we were together.
I could live anywhere with you, do anything, as long as I had you to come back to.
” I cup his jaw and press a kiss to his lips.
“As soon as we figure out what to do with Daniel, you’re going to go home, we’re going to make something simple for dinner, and you’re gonna carve that heartstone, so I can take it, and read the words, and give you my heart to match, okay?
” I nod, sniffing in, my head throbbing, my ribs aching, but the happiest I’ve ever been. “If you still want to?”
“I will always and forever want to.”
“Good. Good.” I let out a sigh. “Um. Is Daniel alive?”
Duncan shrugs. “Possibly. He asked me to let him go—so I did.”
From the roof of the Mercedes, Daniel lets out a faint moan.
“Hm. I shall arrest him.”
“You’re not a police officer! And on what charges, exactly?”
“Abducting a gargoyle, attacking a woman, trespassing on Mr. Fenclan’s lands... I’ll think of something.”
“You’re still not an officer!”
“One day, I will be.” Duncan gives a sinister leer at Daniel’s twitching form. “It will be practice. You can call the policeman and have him watch while I do it.”
“You have to read him his rights. Tell him he has the right to remain silent, and you—” I never get to finish.
Duncan marches to the car, yanks Daniel off of it, and holds him an inch from his snarling face.
“You are under arrest. You have no right to trespass on Ian Fenclan’s land, steal another’s belongings, and you most certainly do not have the right to harm the woman I love.
” Duncan lifts Daniel’s lolling head with a talon and presses it into his throat.
“You have the right for me to silence you—and I will gladly arrange it,” Duncan growls.
Daniel lets out a whimper and lapses back into unconsciousness.
“You know, I think that works. Toss him in the back,” I say with a smile. “I’ll take him to the station.