Chapter 7
“You? On your own?” Gilbert’s eyes narrow with concern, and for some crazy reason, I know it’s genuine. “You could get hurt. You did get hurt.”
“I know, and I’ll be better prepared this time. Nothing throws you off your game like shoving a knife through someone’s heart and having them not die. Trust me, I can handle myself.”
“I’d like to see you handling yourself.” Gilbert smiles, sky-blue eyes dancing in the firelight. Maybe I’m becoming delirious from sleep deprivation, but I swear his eyes are more vivid than before and his skin is more olive than gray.
“I’m a detective. That means I look for bad guys.
So far, I’ve been good at my job. I catch the bad guys.
I’ve spent the last few years taking on cases no one else would touch, cases some of the law’s most respected cops swore to be cursed, and solved them, proving a human was behind the crime.
” I pull my shoulders in, suddenly cold again.
“And now I can’t help but think this…you guys…
the vampires…it’s all happening at the same time for a reason, and I’m not one to believe in fate or any of that shit. ”
“I understand,” Jacques agrees quietly. “I too doubted fate until…” He trails off, looking away. I notice a long scar running down the back of his neck, disappearing behind his wings. “You should rest, my lady. The sun will be rising soon.”
“Yeah,” I agree, and roll my neck.
“Sore?” Thomas asks.
“You could say so.”
He flashes a cocky grin. “I can help you with that.”
I swallow hard, fanning the rising heat inside of me. “I’m sure you could.” The image of his hands on me flashes before my mind’s eye, and the smoldering heat threatens to turn into flames.
“I have to work in the morning,” I mumble. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep with…with…” With you here. “With knowing there are more vampires out there.”
“We’ll keep you safe.”
I look into his deep, dark eyes. “I know,” I say, and despite everything inside me telling me not to trust him, I do.
“The bedroom upstairs,” he starts, and a shiver goes down my spine at the thought of us going into the bedroom together. “Will that suffice? It has a fireplace.”
“The couch is fine.” I eyeball the small sofa.
“And the fire is already going down here. I’d rather not use any more furniture for kindling.
I’ll, uh, get some firewood in the morning.
I brought a blanket for myself.” I have no idea how clean the bedsheets are upstairs.
I’m by no means a neat freak, but the thought of sleeping in God-knows-whose bed skeeves me out.
“Are you guys tired? I’d think a thousand-year nap would tide you over for a while, right? ”
“We’ll rest in the morning,” Jacques says.
“Okay,” I tell him, and get up to use the bathroom and get my bags.
By the time I’m back in the living room, only Jacques remains.
The couch has been scooted closer to the fire, with the dust cover pulled off and messily folded on the floor beside it.
I wrap my blanket around my shoulders and sit on the couch, adjusting my alarm for the morning.
There’s no way I’m working out, but I’m farther from the station.
“It’s a phone,” I tell Jacques, who’s looking over my shoulder at the glowing screen.
“What does it do?”
“A lot of stuff. Want to see it?”
His dark eyes narrow ever so slightly. “Yes.” He strides over, folding his wings at his back, and sits on the couch. I turn my head, taking him all in and wondering if it’s uncomfortable to have his wings scrunched up like that.
“So this is a phone. Technically, a phone is something you can call someone on, but now phones do so much more than that. Your voice goes through and gets converted, then transmitted as radio waves to the nearest tower.”
Jacques’s blank stare lets me know I made the right career choice by becoming a cop instead of a teacher.
He moves his head closer and my heart speeds up.
He might be part monster, but he’s also a man.
A very attractive, half-naked man who’s sitting very close to me.
I blink and turn back to my phone, hoping he can’t see the blood rushing to my cheeks.
“We call it technology,” I start again.
“Like the lights in the house instead of lanterns.”
“Right. And just wait until you take a shower. Indoor plumbing will blow your mind.”
“Blowing is a good thing?”
I fight the urge to snicker. “In this sense, yes. It means shock you in a good way.”
His eyes go to the phone. “You can contact anyone with that?”
“As long as they have a phone and you have their number, yes. I’m guessing your form of communication was handwritten letters, right?”
Jacques nods.
“Now we call it texting, and you send it right away. It’s instant.”
“Instant?”
“Sometimes there might be a few seconds’ delay, but yeah. You write your message, hit send, and the recipient gets it.”
He gets a weird look in his eyes, like he’s reliving a painful memory. I put the phone down, deciding that was enough of a reverse history lesson for one night anyway. I lean back and yawn.
“Where are the others?” I ask.
“Guarding the house.”
“Why aren’t you?”
“I’m guarding you.”
I want to tell him I don’t need to be guarded, that I’m not some damsel that needs to be protected or rescued. But my voice dies in my throat and I want to squirm away from his intensity.
Because I find it so damn attractive.
“I can hold my own,” I say when I can finally muster up my voice.
“I believe you can. Not many humans can stand up to vampires and live to tell the tale.”
“If you hadn’t shown up, I don’t think I would have. Speaking of…you said I summoned you. But I didn’t.”
“There is powerful magic tied into this curse. Somehow you’ve tapped into that power. Maybe it’s like those radio waves you were talking about.” A smile pulls up his full lips, making him look all the more human.
“Maybe.” I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders.
“Are you still cold?”
“A bit. It’s like the cold seeped into my bones. Ugh, bones. That just reminded me of the vampires.” I shake my head. “It’s all so weird.”
“It was weird when I first learned of it, too.” He slowly opens his wings behind him and moves over. “Here,” he says gruffly. “It will keep you warm.”
I sit up, eyeing the wing with curiosity. “It won’t hurt if I lean on it?”
“No.”
I carefully lean in closer and move against him, almost tucking myself in between his body and his wing. Resting my head on his shoulder, I’m certain there’s no way I’ll be able to fall asleep tonight.
My alarm sounds, and I jolt awake. The last thing I remember was Jacques taking me under his wing—literally—and closing my eyes for just a second. Well, that just a second turned into a few hours, and unfortunately, a few hours was all the sleep I’m getting before going into work.
Rubbing my eyes, I sit up. My body hurts and my head throbs, reminding me that a vampire threw a rock at me.
A vampire.
Right. Everything really happened…didn’t it?
“Guys?” I call out, and my voice echoes through the large house. The clouds left overnight, and bright morning sun fills the room. The fire has gone out, and the air around me is cold. Holding the blanket at my shoulders, I move from the couch.
“Jacques?” I call as I go straight to the front door. I have a feeling I know where the gargoyles are. I unlock the door and step onto the frost-covered porch, looking at the backs of Thomas’s and Gilbert’s large frames.
Ignoring my cold feet, I pad my way out to look at them. From the little gargoyle lore I know, the sun turns them to stone. But I thought I awakened them and lifted part of the curse? Reaching up, I gently touch the wound on my head.
Everything did happen. I’m sure of it. I’m not crazy. I remember it all too vividly. The fear I felt when the vampires chased me. The way the knife pierced the vamp’s heart.
Jacques’s wing curled around me, keeping me warm.
I flick my eyes up, and it’s all I need to ease my mind. Jacques and Hasan are back on the roof, but the pained expression is gone from Jacques’s face.
“I don’t know if you can hear me,” I say, looking from one gargoyle to the other. “But I have to go to work. I’ll be back tonight.” I put my hand on Thomas’s wrist, looking into his eyes for a moment before going back in.
I rush to get ready for work, knowing I’m going to need to stop for coffee on the way.
Today is going to drag since I’m running on just a few hours of sleep.
I remote-start my car before I get in, feeling the chill come back already.
Needing to make a note in my phone so I don’t forget, I remind myself to find someone to come out and make sure the fifty-year-old furnace is in working order before I fire it up and burn the whole house down.
My car bumps down the gravel driveway, and a weird sense of disappointment builds inside me. I don’t want to leave the house. Well, technically what’s on the house. I’m curious about the gargoyles, but it’s more than that and there’s no way I can deny it to myself forever.
Jacques has the sexy, broody thing going on strong, Hasan is all muscle and oh-so easy on the eyes, and Thomas and Gilbert have that cocky charm and old-world swagger down to a science. It’s like everything I could want in a man divided up and put into four very different bodies.
But they aren’t men. Not anymore.