Gargoyle (Woodland Creek) (2 page)

When he disappeared completely into the quiet of night, my body jerked forward.

I was free. Free of the
wizard’s
hold.

I choked on air, trying not to pass out, and crumpled to my knees. My eyes never left the black, ancient book before me. I swallowed down the burning bile in the back of my throat.

Perhaps Woodland Creek wasn’t so beautiful.

I shouldn’t have accepted the package.

I had known the woman was a wizard. She radiated power, her voice even wracked with it. But I had taken it from her, accepted its intended destination, and now I was standing outside an office building where I could see
many
shifters inside. With the full moon and the lights shining brightly inside the building, it wasn’t hard to make them out through the windows. It appeared to be a drunken celebration.

They had probably just killed a new load of campers at Nightmoon Creek.
Yay for them
.

Killed innocents.

The shifters were s-h-i-t.
Shit
.

I hated them.

Hated. Them.

And I had to go in there. With them.

Sighing heavily, I unclipped my helmet from under my chin and set it on the seat of my Moped. No one would steal it here. Hell, no one wanted to come here after dark, this area of Woodland Creek…not so guiltless. But I needed the money. I would take just about any job right now.

Wiggling my shoulders past the nerves beginning to etch into my gut, a fluttering that made me half nauseous, I cleared my throat and began making my way up the concrete sidewalk that was pristine and unblemished, whereas the main street had been cracked and filled with potholes. It was just another indication that this was an
otherworldly
building. The woman inside hovering above everyone’s heads, with her angel blue wings beating heavily to keep from slamming into their drunken party, really wasn’t needed to tell me this. Nor was the man with the tiny devil horns, arm wrestling an average looking woman…if you didn’t count the fact she had only white bones for a hand. She was also winning by the looks of it, the man’s horns growing longer in his frustration.

At the large front door surrounded by floor to ceiling windows, I started to press the buzzer on the intercom, but a couple stumbled outside, their beer sloshing over the edges of their cups. I gritted my teeth against their voices that sounded like shards of glass threatening to burst my eardrums, and quickly caught the door before it swung closed. I don’t think they even noticed me, they were so plastered. That was one reason why I didn’t drink anymore. My eyes were wide open now to the way the world was and I wasn’t about to be caught unaware from imbibing.

I muttered a quiet curse when the scents of sour alcohol and sickly sweet substances—marijuana, I was pretty sure—attacked my nostrils. Though the music blaring wasn’t half bad, a jungle type with a hypnotic beat. It was music I might actually download later if I could catch any of the words over the shouts of revelry off to my right inside the ‘party room.’

Glancing around my surroundings, my black brows lifted slightly. There was no security here inside the lobby. Or a receptionist, the desk void of any living being to take the small package in my hand. I peered around a bit more, my eyes scanning from ceiling to marble floor. A delicate, beautiful green grass had grown up between each tile, giving the area a patio sort of vibe. Walking carefully on each tile—not about to allow the seemingly harmless grass to touch my feet—I rested against the receptionist’s desk. I even pressed the little bell on top of the counter, an ancient form of communication to indicate there was a customer here.

No one came.

Not even after ten minutes with me ringing the damn bell twenty more times. Maybe more.

Grinding my teeth, I tossed the package on the chair behind the desk.

The wizard woman hadn’t said I needed to have it signed for. I had been paid in advance, too. The chair was good enough.

It happened as I was turning to leave.

A blast of something…
unnatural
…crept through the air.

The feeling wasn’t harmful. At least, it didn’t feel like it.

Instead, it stroked like the sunshine…I groaned. My hand instantly went to my lower stomach. “What in the…” My God, my voice was throaty. I slammed my other palm down on the receptionist’s desk when another wave of unusual power pulsed through the air, radiating around me, ruffling my hair as if it were in a soft breeze. An excruciating tidal wave of
need
made my legs weak.

I doubled over, glaring at the door. “I knew I shouldn’t have taken this job.” Clenching my muscles between my thighs, an intimate wetness felt, I carefully placed a foot toward my exit. “Gotta get out of here.”

Groans and moans were my answer from the ‘party room’ along with cries of surprise.

My brows instantly furrowed, my narrowed gaze immediately moved in that direction. It didn’t sound as if they knew what the hell was going on either. That…couldn’t be a good sign. I didn’t like the clamor of their chairs and tables being knocked over either, the ruckus looming closer.

A pulse wave of
sunshine-lit-carnal
power
—it was the only way to describe it—brought me down to my knees, my hands jarring on the tiling, barely catching myself. “Oh, holy…hell.”

At least, the grass wasn’t killing me. It felt like normal blades of fine, soft grass under my fingertips where they hung over the edges of the tiles. I was pretty sure there was even dirt under it, my fingernails digging into it as I moaned.
Loudly
. There was no stopping it.

Pressing my thighs together, a blaze of sunbeams shivered down my spine, then up. Out to my limbs. I was a trembling mess of lust and pure need. “Lord, help me.”

He
didn’t answer.

A wizard did.

The door that appeared so damn far away now flew open, bringing a gust of damp night air, and suddenly, I was nose-to-nose with a wizard as he blurred inside, then stumbled as another wave of molten power pulsed through the air and fell to his knees right in front of me. His orange hair was a windblown mess and he was panting heavily, a sheen of sweat coating his dangerously handsome features. His black clothing even clung to him as if he had just run a marathon. He also had a cellphone pressed to his ear as he leaned heavily on one arm. His silver eyes glowing and blinking repeatedly, he merely ignored me, growling dangerously into the receiver, “I’m here. Where the fuck are you?”

The ‘party room’s’ door slammed open…and a shifter stumbled outside of it, a horde of other shifters close behind her, but they were falling all over each other. The door swung shut behind her. Her cheeks were flushed bright pink, her breathing just as heavy as mine, and she lowered a cell phone she had to her ear and stared at the wizard in front of me. “I need you.” Damn…her chin began to tremble. “I’ve missed you.”

The wizard’s breath caught, then he blurred to his feet, wobbling a bit where he stood.

I didn’t make a sound. Didn’t plan on it. Not until the wizard paused and seemed to remember I was there on my hands and knees before him. I shook my head slightly and barely managed to moan, “I’m not stopping you. Go get her.”

He eyed me for another heartbeat longer, his silver gaze scanning over my face. If I wasn’t mistaken, committing my features to memory, then he blurred toward the shifter when the door handle to the ‘party room’ started to turn. My hair blew to the left in his breeze, then to the right as he flew back past me, with the woman in his arms—I guessed—since she had disappeared, too.

One of the doors on the far right side of the room opened and slammed shut.

A lock clicked.

“Christ,” I muttered under my breath. I hadn’t even seen them slip inside. My gaze honed on my exit, my salvation from this shifter pit of Hades. I had a hand lifted, but the stampede of shifters had made it here, the door to the ‘party room’ literally unhinging and flying over my body. And to match with the pure hell my night was turning into, another pulse wave of carnal demand lashed the air, sending me to my stomach.

Suddenly, the ground started to shake beneath me.

It wasn’t because of the shifters falling down heavily where they stood either.

I had no clue what the fuck it was, but it felt like an earthquake.

One of the shifters chose that moment to let out a piercing shriek, not handling the floor vibrating well.

In a domino effect, the lights above started popping and bursting left to right, in what appeared to be the entire building, from her heinous wail. I shouted, slamming my hands over my ears—my injured shout not the only one heard—horrified, I could feel so much agony, my ears feeling like they were going to
bleed
and still be turned on at a nuclear level at the same time. One by one, the lights burst…leaving the entire place in darkness, only the moon shining in through the front windows on either side of the door, the windows now cracked in a wicked spider web, an entrance worthy of this shit hole.

One shattered as the wailing continued.

Just as suddenly as it had started, the screeching stopped.

I moaned in appreciation to whoever had shut her the hell up. Though partial sanity quickly returned when I felt someone brush past me. Quivering in need, I swiftly began army crawling around the receptionist desk, my way slow going with the ground vibrating as it was. The front door was too far, and too many shifters were between it and me now. The desk would provide some cover.

Banging ensued on a door, in the direction that the wizard and shifter had escaped to, then a growling voice demanded on a brutal shout, “Cut that shit out!”

Instantly, the ground stopped shaking. Just as I managed to roll onto my back behind the desk.

A sizzling white, hot bolt of power shook the air, and my back arched off the ground, pieces of grass torn and sticking to my hands as I cried out. Fuck, my legs were even spread like a damn offering, my panties soaked. I wasn’t the only one by the sound of it either.

Moans and shouts of fleshy base
hunger
issued on the other side of the desk. A multitude of them, the freaking huge ass party sucked into the vortex of unnatural power, the gusts slamming again and again, repeatedly flowing through the air like a jackhammer.

I groaned softly in surprise when the man, I was pretty sure it was the same one who had banged on the door, stopped his stumbling back to the group. He doubled over right next to the desk and fell in a heap over the side of it. A harsh grunt escaped past my lips when the freaking wall of muscle landed half on top of me, knocking what little breath I had out of me.

Not good
.

He didn’t move.

I didn’t move.

Though it sounded like the shifters were beginning to ‘move’ on the other side of the desk. Jostling of clothes being ripped and barely murmured whispers of consent were given before shouts of fulfillment began soliciting the air in enticement.

A quiet whimper exited past my lips because the man—the
shifter—
lying on me…felt fucking
delicious
.

“Jesus…” he moaned, still not moving even as another wave slammed the air.

“He’s not answering,” I mumbled incoherently, trying to stay still.

The man…chuckled. Deep and rough. “They would say otherwise.”

Yes, the shifters did sound as if they were already climbing into paradise.

The man inhaled heavily against my shoulder, and his head cocked slightly, even as he began to tremble—just as my body was with the effort to stay still. He sniffed again, his tone guttural with need, but also curiosity. “Are you a Garden shifter? You smell,” another deep inhale, “of roses.” He pressed his face more heavily against my shoulder, inhaling again.

I tried really hard to ignore the fucking ginormous erection pressed against my leg—that had been there since he had fallen on me. “I’m not—”

My stomach vibrated.

Or his cell phone did in his pocket.

He quickly fumbled with it, and I jerked as the grand slam of sensuous power battered the air, my shout unable to be suppressed as I surged up against the muscled body that pressed more firmly against me, keeping me in place. Though my shout was muffled when his massive palm slammed down over my mouth as he—actually—answered his phone, muttering into the receiver, “Tell me you’re near.”

He paused, the tension in his body making his whole frame vibrate. “No, I can’t get there.” Another beat. “Don’t talk to me that way, dammit. I didn’t have anything to do with this. It isn’t any power I know of.” A halting pause, quiet ticks, and then he mumbled gently, respectfully, “I know. I’ll forgive you this time, as you will do for me.” He paused, then his body went even more rigid. “The fuck you will. Goddamn, you’re a bitch.” One more pause. “Fuck you, too. Oh, wait…that’ll be someone else tonight.” He stuffed his phone back into his pocket, and then his head lifted in the darkness.

His eyes were glowing the most vivid green. Beautiful and striking…and scary as shit.

He stared down at me, taking his hand away from my mouth, his glowing eyes all I could see in the darkness as they ran over my face. I couldn’t tell what color his hair was, but it hung down on either side of his face and brushed my flushed cheeks.