Stone Cold Lover (7 page)

He looked genuinely puzzled. “But I could not observe you from the other room, so how I was I know when you awoke without entering this room?”

“You could preserve your little granite soul in patience and wait until I got up and came out to tell you I was awake, Einstein.”

“That seems much less efficient than my way, but while we are speaking, I would like to address the issue of these names you keep giving me. I told you, I am called Spar, not Rocky, not stone face, and not Einstein. You will cease to refer to me in this manner.”

Fil rolled her eyes and threw back the covers. “Haven’t you ever had a nickname, Spar? It’s something we humans give to people we spend time with. Why don’t you accustom yourself to that, too? I’m going to go take a shower.”

When he rose as if to follow her, she shot him a look of disbelief. “Alone, boulder boy. You can wait out here. Sheesh.”

Spar didn’t look happy, but he obeyed her. At least for the time being.

Fil stomped into the bathroom and closed the door with a snap, or about two decibels short of a slam. Damned overbearing gargoyle. She seriously wondered if English was the guy’s first language; he had that much trouble listening. If Ella had faced half this much aggravation when she’d met Kees, Fil was prepared to feel some genuine pity.

Her reflection in the bathroom mirror only served to remind her that having the Guardian’s hulking presence in her apartment had completely thrown her off schedule. The dark circles under her eyes and the tangled mess of hair she hadn’t remembered to braid before falling into bed just went to show that no woman should ever be forced to gaze at her own reflection before at least one cup of coffee.

Grabbing her toothbrush, Fil slathered on the paste and went to work scrubbing the last of the gritty residue of the night before out of her mouth. There really had been a moment, just before she’d fully woken up, when her poor, confused little mind had her half convinced that the events of the previous evening must have been a dream. A vivid, confusing, disturbing, and surreal sort of dream, but a dream nonetheless. Catching sight of Spar, however, had put the kibosh on that feeble hope. He wasn’t the sort of sight a girl could explain away easily, or forget. He tended to stick with you.

She spat into the sink and groaned. Why, oh why, had she not listened to her brain instead of her gut and stayed away from that damned statue? If she’d just dug in her heels and ignored the strange compulsion the thing exerted over her, she wouldn’t be here in this mess—and more important, Spar wouldn’t be here in her home.

Which meant she wouldn’t have to stand here and admit to herself that the fascination she’d felt for the inanimate hunk of stone couldn’t compare with the draw she felt toward the flesh-and-blood man.

Gargoyle.

Guardian.

Whatever.

Fil rinsed her mouth and reached into the shower to turn on the water. She wished to hell she could figure out why she had this ridiculous reaction every time she got within ten feet of the man. When she’d thought him nothing more than a sculpture, the compulsion had still confused her, but she’d been able to rationalize it. It had, after all, appeared to be an impressive work of art, not just well made but rather remarkably preserved, too, given its estimated age. As both an artist and an art restorer, she’d could admire another artist’s creation, along with its ability to withstand the ravages of time and the elements.

Now, though, when she was faced not with a statue but with a breathtaking example of male physical beauty, chalking up her reaction to professional admiration had started to ring a little false. What Fil experienced when she looked at Spar’s stubbled jaw and chiseled muscles had less to do with her trained eye and more to do with her uncontrollable hormones.

The man just turned her on. Hard.

Wasn’t that a hell of a pill to try to choke down, Fil reflected as she stepped behind the shower curtain and turned her face up to the warm spray. Like she didn’t have enough on her plate in her everyday life without now discovering she might be the target of a mad cult, her old college pal wanted to recruit her to help save the world, and she needed a supernatural, immortal bodyguard to protect her from magical attacks? Now her body had started screaming that she ought to end her long sexual dry spell by climbing said inhuman Guardian like the Swiss Alps and planting her flag right in his tight, bitable backside.

Oh, she so didn’t need this.

Didn’t need and wouldn’t worry about, she decided, sleeking her hair back from her face. She saw no point in getting tied up in knots over things she couldn’t control. She’d be much better off if she just focused on the things she could actually accomplish, like finding out how big a threat this Order of Eternal Darkness cult was actually likely to be.

She had a few ideas about that, beginning with finding out whether the bomber from last night had survived the blast. After all, if the guy never made it out of the abbey, chances were he hadn’t gone blabbing about her to any of his demon-worshipping buddies. That would mean the risk to Fil was relatively small, and she might just be able to get out from under the protection of Spar and back to her life.

Let him and his buddy Kees worry about saving the world. She just wanted to save her own sanity.

Keeping that hope firmly in the forefront of her mind, Fil flipped open the cap to her shampoo bottle and squirted a dollop into her palm. Then she yelped, and the bottle slipped from her suddenly limp fingers and thudded against the fiberglass floor of the tub. What the hell was going on?

A question she repeated when the door burst open and Spar flung the shower curtain aside to glare down at her, wings and stony skin very much in evidence.

“What is wrong?” he demanded, his gaze searching the small room as if he expected crazed cultists to start jumping out of the steam around them. “I heard you cry out. Are you hurt? Was someone here? What happened?”

The unheralded interruption had been bad enough, but when the gargoyle reached for her with a huge, clawed hand, she slapped it hard and backed away, tugging the corner of the shower curtain with her.

“Hey, naked here!” she snapped, trying to cover herself with white fabric that rapidly began to lose its opacity as it soaked the water up off her skin. “What did I tell you about barging in on me in private rooms, huh? Get the hell out of here and go wait in the living room,
ž
ioplys
!”

He ignored her, except to continue glowering. “I heard you scream, and there was a banging noise. I believed you to be in danger. Tell me what disturbed you.”

“You’re disturbing me right now.” But she glanced down at her hand and felt a fresh jolt of shock at what she saw there.

On her left palm, the one she’d instinctively thrown up to block the lunatic’s magical attack the night before, something disturbing had begun to take shape. Last night, the skin had just looked a little red, like she’d incurred a mild burn, so she’d figured whatever the jerk had tried to do to her had failed. It hadn’t pained her, after all, so how serious could it be?

Now she began to wonder.

Spar followed her gaze to the source of her distraction and gently seized her hand, lifting and angling it into the light from the bathroom window. He studied the faint pink pattern for a moment, then cursed. From the sound of it, Fil was willing to bet it beat the Lithuanian version of “fucker” she’d called him a few seconds ago by a nautical mile.

“What is it?” she asked. Anxiety clawed at her belly, but she needed to know. How much more trouble did this mean she was in?

“I am not certain, because it appears not to have fully formed,” he told her, “but it seems that the spell the
nocturnis
cast upon you may still be affecting you. This pattern is faint, but it looks to be the symbol of Uhlthor.”

“A symbol of what? Was that supposed to be a word, or were you just clearing your throat?”

Spar traced the strange lines and curves with the tip of one claw, the sharp point barely grazing her skin, and Fil had to work to suppress the shiver that passed through her.

“Uhlthor,” he repeated, enunciating through gritted teeth, which tipped her off that this news wasn’t making him very happy. “The Defiler. It is the name given to one of the Seven, the demons worshipped by the
nocturnis.
”

Fil jerked her head back. “You mean—what, like that psycho at the abbey branded some demon’s name on me? Are you kidding me? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I am unsure, but I do not believe it can lead to any good.”

“Oh, ya think?” Shaken, Fil snatched her hand back and pulled the shower curtain closer. “Well, if you don’t know, we’ll have to find someone who does. Until then, you still need to get back on the other side of the damned door. And the next time you decide you want to come into the room where I am, you can fucking knock. Act like a normal person already.”

She knew she sounded like a bitch, but she couldn’t keep the words from tumbling out of her mouth. Once again, her day had gone from normal to nightmarish before she’d had time to blink. If this kept up much longer, she was going to end up with whiplash.

On top of everything else.

Wisely, Spar retreated, leaving Fil alone in the steamy shower. Damned convenient, she thought, bending to retrieve the fallen shampoo bottle. The way she felt knowing she had some evil symbol branded into her flesh, this was going to wind up being the longest shower in the history of Canada.

She might never feel clean again.

Chapter Five

Spar followed his small female to the eating establishment and tried to look human. After snapping back to his natural form when he had feared Felicity might be under attack in her bathroom, it had taken him an unexpectedly long time to calm himself enough that he could resume his human appearance.

He found his lack of control baffling. Never, in all of his long existence, had he encountered such a challenge in maintaining his temper. He had not even realized that he had a temper, given that Guardians did not suffer from the weakness of human emotions. Other than the hatred he felt for the Darkness and its minions, he had never known fear or anxiety or protectiveness.

Or lust.

It shamed him to know the small human in his care could inspire every one of those feelings within him. When he had thought she was in danger behind the closed door of her small bathing room, he had felt the shock of the first three, and seeing her wet and bare and vulnerable had brought the last crashing down upon him.

Spar had looked upon Felicity, and he had lusted.

Even now, he had to struggle to force the images from his mind, the expanse of pale, silky-looking skin, the full curves and intriguing hollows. Every time he let his concentration slip, his thoughts went straight back to that moment before she had shielded herself with the fabric curtain. Every time, his fingers ached to seize her, to feel her softness and press it up against him.

Perhaps he was the one suffering under some malevolent spell.

The scents of frying meats and toasted bread managed to grab Spar’s wandering attention as he stepped into the café close on Felicity’s heels. She had informed him that this was where they would find the acquaintance she believed they needed to see.

“I’ve thought about this a lot,” she had told him, after emerging dry and fully clothed into the living room of her home. “The way I see it, the most important thing we can do right now is figure out if anyone else in this Order group knows I even exist. Because, if not, I’m perfectly happy saying I can take care of myself and showing you the door.”

He had tried to protest, but she had cut him off.

“However, I’m not stupid enough to send you packing if there might really be some magical mystery freaks looking to feed me to their demon overlord or something. So, first things first. We need to find out if our mad bomber friend made it out of the building last night. If he didn’t, well, that’s that; but if he did, then we can start figuring out how much trouble I’m really in.”

Spar had assumed they would simply return to the abbey and look for the
nocturnis
’s remains, but Felicity had disabused him of the notion.

“The explosion was big enough news that they aired it on the station Ella and Kees were watching in Vancouver. That means the police will have the scene locked down tight. We’d never get near it, and if we called the authorities or started poking around, they’d think we could have had something to do with it. No, we need to talk to someone they expect to be asking questions about it, because that’s who just might have the answers.”

Following someone else’s lead didn’t sit well with Spar; he’d had to remind himself a thousand times on the short walk to the restaurant to refrain from ordering Felicity about. He wanted to order her to walk close behind him, that he might protect her from attack, and to remember to allow him to pass first through any doors so he could assess the safety of each new environment. One hard kick to his shin when he’d tried to yank her back into her apartment so that he could exit first had assured him that she would ill appreciate any such chivalry on his part.

She might be small, but he thought her boots must be lined with steel.

Felicity paused inside the crowded room to unzip her coat and scan the sea of faces. Spar watched her closely enough to note when her gaze settled on a lone human male in a corner booth near the window. He followed closely as she waded through the tables and chairs to her target.

“Hey, there, Ricky,” she greeted, sliding into the seat opposite the human without waiting for an invitation. “Fancy meeting you here. Buy you a
café
?”

Spar squeezed into the booth beside her, noticing the way the man she spoke to eyed him coolly before his gaze dropped to Felicity’s chest.

“Morning,
chère,
” the man drawled, finally lifting his eyes to her face. “To what do I owe this pleasure today?”

“Coffee first.” Felicity reached around Spar to grab the attention of a passing waitress. “A refill for my friend,” she said, accepting a menu and handing a second to Spar. “
Café au lait
for me and, uh,
noir
for him.”