Stone Cold Lover (6 page)

Kees sighed. “I am afraid she is already at risk, my friend, whether we draw her deeper into our confidence or not.”

“Then I will send her to you. If she is not safe here, she must go elsewhere,” Spar insisted. “You will guard her while I determine if the
nocturnis
still lives. If he does, it will not be for long.”

“Spar, you are reacting without logic. You must stop and think. Vancouver is no safer for Felicity than Montreal. In fact, the Order has more reason to be wary of Ella and me, since we already destroyed several of their number here. It is only a matter of time before they come after us again. We must concentrate on more important matters. Our first priority is to locate the rest of our brethren. We must all be awoken and warned of the enemy’s plans.”

A shrill beeping sound punctuated the statement Spar had not wanted to hear. With a sigh, Felicity reached past him and tapped the phone’s screen.

“Um, not that I’m disagreeing about the world needing saving, and all,” she said, “but my phone is about to run out of battery. Could we maybe continue our kaffeeklatsch later? Like, near an outlet?”

Ella forced a smile that dragged with weariness. Spar could read it in the dark circles under her eyes and the drooping of her shoulders.

“Of course,” the other woman said. “We’ve thrown an entire encyclopedia of information at you—”

“Felt more like you dropped an Acme anvil on my head,” Felicity muttered.

“—and it’s already getting close to morning. You need to get some rest. And, you know, wash some of the gravel and stuff out of your hair.” Ella smiled and gestured to her face. “Maybe wipe off the smears of charcoal.”

“We can meet again tomorrow to discuss what must be done.” Kees’s nod was all masculine meaning and aimed squarely at Spar. “I will admit that while I would not have wished another human female to be dragged into this war, I will be glad to have you stand at my shoulder, brother. I fear it will require the strength of all our brethren to cast the Darkness back into the abyss this time.”

His gaze flickered to Felicity, and Spar nodded grimly. “Whatever must be done, we will do,” he vowed. “By my honor as a Guardian, I swear this. The Light will lead us to triumph.”

“Yeah, that’s just great,” his small human said beside him, her tone dry and acid. “But since you flew us here without so much as letting me pick up my bike first, and since I’m not entirely sure exactly where ‘here’ is anyway, Mr. Tall, Gray, and Invincible, the real question is: Is the Light going to lead me back to my apartment? Because I would kill for a shower right about now.”

Chapter Four

The question had been rhetorical, but Fil had meant the bit about the shower. Her skin felt dirty and gritty, coated with a layer of gray silt made up of the debris from the bomb, Spar’s pedestal, and probably a good bit of the abbey’s four-hundred-year-old stone walls. She wanted hot water and the largest shower pouf known to man or God, and she wanted them stat.

Unfortunately, she may have expressed her urgency a little too strongly to her winged companion, because she found herself whisked back up into the sky before she could do more than squeak in protest. This led to the discovery—on her part, at least—that arguing with a stubborn male while suspended several hundred feet in the air by no more than said male’s goodwill affected her blood pressure in a way her physician would never have approved of.

By the time she managed to convince him to set her back down on solid ground, Spar had returned them to within a half-mile of the scene of the crime. When she managed to open her eyes and pry her fingers from around his neck, she was able to read the street sign on the nearby corner and determine that the spot where she’d parked her bike for her illegal excursion onto the abbey grounds—and didn’t that feel like about eight or nine lifetimes ago—was less than two blocks away. Thankfully, they were just beyond the area already cordoned off by the authorities. Yay for preplanning and paranoia.

As soon as her legs stopped trembling, Fil straightened her spine and turned on her heels. She began marching toward her parking spot without sparing her companion so much as a word of parting. Frankly, she couldn’t be sure that if she opened her mouth, she wouldn’t start screaming again. Flying without an airplane around her was for the birds.

Or the gargoyles.

She could feel Spar’s presence lurking behind her as she cut through a narrow alley to save herself some time. It occurred to her that he might not exactly blend in this neighborhood, but at just before four in the morning, the chances of anyone being out on the street and getting past the police to see him were slim. She decided dealing with freaked-out bystanders was his problem. As was the potential for getting his enormous ass wedged between the centuries-old buildings that pressed close on either side.

A vindictive thought, perhaps, but one Fil found quite satisfying in the moment.

Spotting her bike parked just where she’d left it, Fil fumbled in her pockets for her keys, grateful they’d been buttoned safe inside. The last thing she needed right now was to discover that her keys had tumbled out and landed at the bottom of the St. Lawrence at some point during her little adventure. Not that it would have surprised her. Not after tonight.

“Come on,” she said, slinging her leg over the motorcycle and settling into the worn leather seat. “I’m not quite sure you’re actually going to fit on here with me, but I’ve given up hope that I get to go home alone after all this. Right?”

“You are correct. I believe Kees spoke the truth when he said that there is too great a chance the Order will seek you out after the events of this evening. You require protection, and as a Guardian it is my duty to provide it.”

“Oh, goody.” Fil sighed. “Okay, then. Climb on, if you can manage it.”

When Spar didn’t move, she glanced over to see him frowning down at her with his brawny arms crossed over his massive chest. Now that she thought about it, she could have skipped inviting him to ride with her. She doubted he could fit so much as one foot on the pillion of her restored Triumph Tiger.

“Ooookay, so that’s not gonna work, then.” She shrugged. “If you can’t squeeze onto the back there, you’ll have to fly, I guess. Just keep an eye on me, and I’ll lead you back to my place.”

Spar shook his head and refused to budge. “To be separated from you by the necessary distance required to remain unseen as I fly puts you at too great a risk. You could be attacked before I was able to reach you.”

Exasperation made Fil snap, though she supposed the exhaustion didn’t help either. Damn it, she wasn’t wild about overbearing males at this best of times, and this damned sure didn’t qualify for that distinction.

“Look, Rocky, if you won’t fly, your only other choice is to get on the damned bike. You got a shrink ray in your pocket so we can move this along, maybe?”

“A shrink ray?” Spar shook his head, his expression indicating that maybe he was considering lumping her mental state in with that of the exploding cultist earlier. “I do not even wish to know what such a thing might be, so I feel certain that I do not have one in my possession. However, if this is indeed our only mode of transportation to your living space, perhaps this might help?”

A waspish demand fizzled on the tip of Fil’s tongue as she watched yet another impossibility occur before her very eyes. For an instant the air around Spar seemed to shimmer, but before she could focus on the strange phenomenon, her eyes were too busy focusing on the drop-dead-gorgeous specimen of apparently human man candy that stood in the gargoyle’s place.

“Wha-huh?” she stuttered.

Who could blame her? Fil might have found something compelling about the gargoyle statue that had drawn her back to the abbey that evening. It had possessed a kind of inhuman beauty in its ferocious strength and unwavering stance. This, though, this man who stared back at her from Spar’s bright black eyes … this man’s beauty was entirely human.

“Spar?”

Her voice wavered, and she felt ridiculous asking, but she had to be sure she wasn’t hallucinating. Or, you know, having a stroke. The man nodded, a short, proud dip of his chin, and the gesture solidified her first impression—that this was a gargoyle in human’s clothing.

He still towered over her, but at six foot and three or four inches, he no longer loomed high enough to draw immediate attention. His hair was cropped close to his scalp, dark and barely too long to be called a buzz. The style appeared vaguely gladiatorial, the way his clothing had been in his other form, but it suited him and his almost military bearing.

The wings were gone, of course—where, she couldn’t even hazard a guess—and his legs, clad in ordinary, faded blue jeans, appeared jointed in the normal human manner. She could only assume the feet in his heavy, battered boots no longer sported the kind of talons that could disembowel a bison with one swipe, because his hands looked claw-free, strong, and entirely normal.

His features, she realized, appeared almost the same, maybe a little less severe, softened even more by the shadow of stubble that covered his jaw, but recognizable from his statue form. His eyes still shone as if lit from within, but that could be a trick of the light. Spar the Guardian now looked like Spar the perfectly ordinary human man.

Only about fifty times hotter.

“Is this acceptable?” he asked, his voice still low enough to rumble through her, but not as booming now. “Have I erred with my appearance in some manner?”

Yeah, you made yourself so sexy, I want to lick my way from your forehead to your heels, you big hunk of man, you.

Quickly, Fil shook her head and cleared her throat. “Um, no. Not at all. You look, uh, you look fine.” She had to tear her gaze away, something that took more willpower than she wanted to admit, and she covered her discomfort by starting the bike’s engine and lifting the kickstand.

“Come on,” she said, desperately hoping her voice didn’t sound as husky to Spar as it did to her own ears. “I’d like to get home before sunrise, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course.”

Fil stared straight ahead and gritted her teeth while her newly gorgeous companion moved to straddle the motorcycle behind her. She just hoped he wouldn’t notice her fingers curled so tightly around the handlebars that her knuckles had turned white.

The Triumph had been a gift from her grandfather, a project the two of them had worked together to restore before his death, and it was her most prized possession. For the first time in her life, she wished she hadn’t driven the damned thing. If she’d taken the van she used mostly for business and in driving rainstorms, she could have put some distance between the two of them.

Instead she found herself holding her breath and praying for strength while the most attractive man she’d met in at least a year pressed himself tight against her back and wrapped his thick, muscular arms around her waist. His thighs nestled along the back of hers, and she swore there wasn’t room between them for so much as an impure thought.

Which was fine, because every single one of those that had ever been invented had just taken up residence inside Fil’s head.

Oh, but she felt like a dirty, dirty girl.

“I have never ridden on a machine like this.” The saddle of the motorcycle might have been built for two passengers in theory, but apparently the Brits had never accounted for one of those two being the size of Spar, because it forced them closer than Siamese twins. “I believe I must hold on to you in order to maintain my seat, correct?”

“Correct.”

Resorting to cursing under her breath in Lithuanian—
Pisam rugsti is cia!
—was a sure sign Fil had reached the end of her rope, so she revved the engine and put actions to words.

It was so past time to get the fuck out of here.

*   *   *

Fil opened her eyes and blinked up at the ceiling above her bed. Bright sunlight reflected off the smooth white paint and bounced around the room in cheerful beams. Clearly, the sun had better sense than to spend the night sneaking into museums, getting attacked by mad cultists, and arguing with men whose skulls were literally hard as a rock.

Because that’s what Fil remembered doing before she crawled into bed, and her mood upon waking definitely did not count as cheerful.

“I have been thinking.”

Aaaanndd … there went any hope that her memories of last night had been nothing more than the remnant of a very bad dream. She recognized that voice, damn it, but what was it doing coming from inside her bedroom?

No. You know what? She didn’t care. Grabbing a spare pillow from the other side of the mattress, Fil thumped the feathery softness over her face to stifle her aggravated scream.

“Aaarrrrggghhh!”

“I cannot understand your words,” the voice continued. “Perhaps if you uncovered your face, we might speak more clearly.”

The pillow went flying toward the voice, making the second scream much more audible. Fil sat up in a tangle of sheets and blankets and glared at the man sitting in the corner chair.

“I wasn’t using words, stone face,” she snapped. “I was expressing my frustration using nonverbal articulation.”

Spar, still looking human and gorgeous and oh-so-annoying, caught the cushiony projectile in one hand and frowned at her. “What have you to be frustrated over, Felicity? You have only just awoken.”

“What are you doing in my bedroom, Spar?” she asked instead of even attempting an explanation that would adequately sum up her current state of mind. “Didn’t we have this conversation last night? I agreed you could stay to ‘protect’ me, but you were supposed to sleep on the sofa. In the living room.”

“I did. I am finished sleeping.” He shrugged and set the pillow aside. “Guardians need very little of it during our waking periods. I could have gone without easily, but I thought it best to try to adapt to human customs while we are working together. Did you have an adequate rest period?”

“Peachy, but if you’ve going to adapt to my customs while you’re here, you might want to remember that my ‘custom’ is not to wake up with uninvited guests in my bedroom, okay?”