Rocked by Love (Gargoyles Series) (12 page)

About three seconds before Kylie figured her socks would start smoking, he finally pulled back and stared at her. It took a few seconds for her eyes to uncross and focus again, but when they did, all she could read from his expression was the same shock and confusion she felt herself. Was a kiss that good a novel experience for him, too?

Dag snatched his hands from her and stepped back, leaving Kylie swaying on her feet like a birch tree in a windstorm. No lie. She actually had to reach out and put a hand on the desk to steady herself while the big lug just stared at her as if she’d been the one to knock him over the head with a lust hammer. How unfair was that?

When the room stopped spinning and her fine motor control finally returned, Kylie cleared her throat and opened her mouth. “Dag, I—”

“I will check security outside. No more
drude
will surprise us this day,” he grumbled approximately one-half second before he fled out the door like a scared little girl.

Oh, hell, who was Kylie kidding? She didn’t blame him a bit. A few minutes alone to regroup sounded like a mighty fine idea to her. As did a stiff drink, a slap upside the head, and a long, cold shower.

Groaning, she dropped back onto her balance ball, overshot her mark, and landed
tokhes
over teakettle halfway under her desk. Make that two stiff drinks. And she’d pour herself one in just a minute.

Right after she got the feeling back in her legs.

Stupid gargoyle.

Testosterone, she reflected as she stared up at the underside of her desk drawer. Forget the demons; testosterone would be the real death of them all.

Chapter Seven

A klole iz nit keyn telegram; zi kumt nit on azoy gikh.

A curse is not a telegram; it doesn’t arrive so fast.

As if the scent of her hadn’t been enough, now Dag had to contend with the taste of her as well. And it was nothing but his own thoughtless fault.

He could not even conjure himself a worthwhile excuse. One moment they discussed the task they had set out to accomplish, and the next she once again gave vent to that sharp, impudent tongue of hers, and his control snapped. He could think of nothing more than silencing her, of demonstrating to her once and for all that as a Guardian, he bore the responsibility for the success or failure of their endeavors, and therefore he would rightly make the decision of when and how to move forward.

Unfortunately, his unruly instincts had ceased caring about moving forward on the quest for the
nocturnis’
defeat. Their only concern had become imprinting his claim on the young female’s smart and sassy mouth, as well as a host of her other more intriguing bits and pieces.

This weakness displeased him. A Guardian, like any warrior, must live by his strength, and emotion was a creature’s greatest weakness. If he allowed himself to feel affection for another, it set the stage for worry to creep in at a critical moment. A worried warrior could not focus all his attention on his foe, and this opened him to the attacks of his enemy. Even rage could blind a Guardian in a crucial moment, but love was the greatest vulnerability a creature could have.

Love.

He tried to push the word from his mind as he circled the three accessible sides of Kylie’s semidetatched home. One common wall shared with the neighboring building gave him pause, but short of knocking on the door and demanding its occupants move out and allow him to take over their space, little could be done to address the concern. He would need to keep a close eye on the situation.

Yet another thing emotion made all the more difficult. How was a warrior to give his full attention to his duties when his thoughts constantly strayed to an aggravating female? He could overlook some subtle threat and thereby place not just himself but all of humanity in jeopardy.

No, a Guardian must remember the stone in which he slept and keep that cool, firm resolution in mind in the face of even the most extreme temptations. Especially when the temptations tasted of mint and spice, butter, herbs, and endless pleasure.

At the end of the deep, narrow alley beside the house, Dag paused and drew in a deep breath. He held it in for a long moment, then let it out slowly and allowed his head to fall back to his shoulders as he struggled to regain the equilibrium that had deserted him for the first time in his long memory. The battle raged within him for endless minutes before he felt his control return. Of course, how long it would last in the face of his female’s confusing chatter and wicked impertinence remained to be seen.

No, he would remember his duty and not allow his instincts or his inclinations to threaten his balance. It would be a simple matter of focus and discipline.

Too bad his female seemed incapable of either of those herself.

After a brief pause to assure himself of a cool head, Dag reentered the front of the house and returned to the office. As he’d predicted, Kylie once again sat at her desk, bouncing atop the ridiculous sphere she used in place of a proper chair. She didn’t bother to look up when he stepped in the room, merely kept her gaze on her computer monitors and continued with the muffled clatter of rapid typing.

She thought to ignore him? Indignation threatened to rise, but he shoved it down and stomped on it. No emotion, he reminded himself. Her strategy was a sound one, and he would do well to emulate her. Repeating those words to himself, he turned to the only other chair in the room and found it already occupied.

No
nocturni
or human visitor had snuck past his notice, Dag observed, but Kylie had acquired a guest regardless. A large, orange tomcat sat half curled on the battered toile cushion, one hind leg stuck in the air while he industriously cleaned his short, sleek fur. When Dag approached, the animal didn’t even bother to pause in his ablutions, just fixed unblinking yellow eyes on the stranger and continued to lick.

“That’s King David.” Kylie’s voice broke the silence, her tone even and carefully neutral. “He comes and goes as he pleases, but when he’s here, that’s where he sits.”

Dag took that to mean that he himself could either stand or go to the devil because the cat was staying put. He supposed that summarized the nature of cats, but it also indicated his little female might have been just as put out by that unplanned kiss as he had been. How he felt about that, he couldn’t decide.

He glanced around the space and caught sight of the closet door. If he remembered correctly, Kylie’s perfectly serviceable desk chair should still be inside. Crossing to the small space, he pulled out the rolling seat and positioned it beside the cat’s current perch. It lacked the toile chair’s soft cushions and well-broken-in cozy comfort, but at least it saved him from standing around like a fool in the queen’s court.

He wondered if his female realized the significance of giving her cat the title of King. Wouldn’t that make her a monarch in her own right? She seemed to have no trouble acting the part.

For several minutes he simply watched and waited, dividing his time between Kylie’s green-ringed eyes and King David’s furry yellow coat. Both ignored him, even after the cat completed his bath and settled into a sphinxlike pose to relax. It seemed cat and mistress had something else in common—neither appeared particularly impressed by his presence.

After nearly twenty minutes, it became clear to Dag that Kylie had no intention of speaking to him unless it became absolutely necessary. He could only hope that if a demon suddenly appeared at his back, she would at least put aside her irritation long enough to warn him to duck, but just then, he preferred not to chance anything.

When he finally broke the silence, his voice sounded unnaturally harsh, even to his own ears. “Have you found anything else on the device?” He winced when he heard himself, but it was too late to alter what was said.

Kylie stilled, her fingers freezing a hairsbreadth above her keyboard, her gaze still fixed on her screen. It appeared as if she debated the merits of responding to his question or continuing to ignore him, and Dag honestly had no idea which she would choose.

Of course, when she eventually made her decision and turned her dark gaze on him, relief failed to flood through him. She looked at him as if he emitted some sort of odor offensive to her senses.

“I’ve found several things,” she said, her voice still tight and flat, as if she spoke to an irritating stranger. “As I mentioned earlier, there are a number of files saved on the drive in various formats. However, the footage we already viewed was the only video file. I’m afraid we won’t get any more information of that kind from this source.”

Dag nodded, trying to prevent a frown from pulling at his features. It took a second for him to realize why she sounded so strange to him; it was the lack of spark in her voice. Without the undercurrent of energy and impudence in her tone, she simply didn’t sound like Kylie. She sounded like a recorded message.

Something told him not to point that out, though. He thought he remembered seeing a pair of scissors in her desk drawer. Better to be cautious.

He rephrased his question. “What have you found of importance?”

Her lips pursed briefly, then she bounced a few times on her ball and seemed to thaw a bit. He only wished he knew exactly what had precipitated the change so he could do it again in the future. He had the feeling this would not be the only time he angered her.

“I was really hoping for another video, so I checked for hidden files first,” she said. “Nada. It’s a total WYSIWYG. I don’t think Ott was as tech savvy as he liked to think. Or else he figured the
drude
would eat anyone who tried to get into his files, so why bother being sneaky.”

Dag swallowed a sigh and reached for his calmest, most level tone of voice. “Nada?” he repeated. “Wizzy-wig?”

She blinked at him, her expression remaining blank for an instant before realization hit. She truly was unaware of her automatic use of slang and phrasing someone not from her own culture might have trouble understanding. At least he knew now that she didn’t do it to torture him.

Or rather, she hadn’t done so just then.

“Sorry. I didn’t find anything buried or hidden,” she explained. “What you see is what you get with this particular drive. So, next I started weeding through the files. E-mails are copies of his conversations with me. He didn’t keep as thorough a record as I did, so that’s pretty useless. The spreadsheet he set up was the first thing that really caught my attention.”

She turned back to her keyboard, set her fingers flying and opened a new document on the screen which she angled to allow him to see it. He had noticed that she used the small palm-sized device next to her typing surface sparingly and had asked her about it earlier. She called it a mouse, and said she could use keystroke shortcuts more efficiently most of the time. Now, however, she used the small pointer icon the mouse produced to highlight areas of the ledgerlike document for Dag to make note of.

“It looks like our friend Dennis was compiling a database of local
nocturnis,
” she said, her voice taking on more of the animation to which Dag had grown accustomed. “He has a list of people, mostly men, but evil is apparently not Y-chromosome-linked. Each entry is listed starting with what he calls the person’s handle. I can only guess he felt some kind of nostalgia for the days of CB radio when they used them. But I’m guessing a lot of the members of the Order chose to go by an alias rather than a legal name. A
nom de guerre,
I guess you could say.”

“This has often been the case. In the past, it proved an effective disguise, as information exchange was much slower and a real identity much easier to disguise.”

Kylie nodded. “Yeah, I can see that. Anyway, for some entries he does manage to list a real name. Unfortunately, a lot of them are only partial, either first or last. Usually first. I’m guessing he was trying to ID them all, but it was slow going, so he hedged his bets by also including a short physical description of each person. I’m not sure if that was to jog his own memory, or if he actually started it with the intent of handing it over to someone at some point, but it could prove useful.”

“Provided the information is accurate. I would not put it past any member of the Order to create such a document and populate it with false information for the purpose of throwing outsiders off the track.”

“I don’t know. That sounds like a pretty elaborate red herring, especially when you’re going to save the thing on a drive designed to ensure said outsider gets eaten the minute they try to access it.”

Dag grunted. “Perhaps. But I find myself unable to trust any information provided by this source of yours. Why would a member of the Order agree to give its secrets away? To do so is not only a risk to the other
nocturnis,
but also a direct betrayal of their Demonic masters. To do so practically invites a hideous death. Why take such a chance?”

“I don’t know the answer to that, but I thought Ott’s death did look pretty terrible. I mean, we both assumed the
nocturnis
were the ones who killed him. Maybe this was the reason why.”

“You could be right. The only way we will know for sure is to verify the information he has provided. Was he able to list full names for any of the
nocturnis
he mentions?” Dag felt a surge of excitement. Perhaps he could use a good hunt to distract himself from his attraction to the female.

“Three. I’ve already started basic searches on them to see what comes up. I’ll let you know as soon as I find something.”

He could almost feel his wings rustle with impatience, but he supposed he would have to content himself with her assurance.

“I was just getting ready to open the word processing documents when you came back,” she told him. Her gaze darted to the side toward him, but she made no mention of why he had departed in the first place. Good. His control was already stretched thin at times, like whenever he inhaled too deeply and caught a whiff of her intriguing, intoxicating scent. Or whenever his memory strayed back to—