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  Her aim was true and the blood–coated stone collided with Alexander. He screamed in agony, a tone of glass–shattering quality. She winced. Hopefully such an unholy sound signaled a mortal injury.

  The fragment was embedded in his neck where an artery should have been. The stone fragment smoked and hissed. Other drops of her tree’s blood had eaten away at his skin, like she’d tossed acid upon him. A human would have hit the ground, dead by now. She didn’t know what he was, but he wasn’t human.

  The creature collapsed to his knees, but continued to smile at her. Oh, he was in pain, she could see it in his pinched expression: the white skin, drawn tight across his face, the slight grayish hue of his complexion. But it was the sharp fangs when he hissed at her which gave him away. A vampire? Impossible. But what else could he be?

  Another blonde male and a muscular female joined Alexander. While they were seeing to his wounds, Lillian took a step forward. Her sight blurred strangely and she swayed. Instead of the carnage of the glade, Lillian’s grandmother stood before her, eyes closed and face serene.

  Gran’s hands moved in a precise, intricate pattern as she chanted low in her throat. There was a soft–edged quality about her grandmother; she looked faded, like an unfocused old picture. Her grandmother wasn’t really there.

  “Lillian, get to the gargoyle,” her grandmother said, her voice echoing as if from a long way away. “Use your blood.”

  Lillian shook her head, trying to clear her vision. She slumped against the tree. A low–hanging branch offered support. She wanted to believe she was hearing her grandmother’s voice. Obeying her commands sounded like a good idea. Lillian gauged the distance from her tree to the gargoyle’s statue: a few feet, ten maybe, fifteen at the most. Ten feet or ten miles, it didn’t really matter. She doubted she could walk more than two steps before she fell on her face. But her grandmother needed her to get to the gargoyle statue. Maybe it was another kind of protection like the stone circle had been, but a stronger one.

  Could it be so simple? Could killing these creatures be as easy as getting to the statue and triggering some protection? She needed to try. She was already dead. She was losing too much blood to live, but perhaps she could still protect her family.

  Gathering her will, she straightened and held the second stone fragment like a knife. Doggedly, she lurched toward the statue. The ground seemed more uneven than she remembered. She tripped over a stone, and fell to her knees. She forced herself back up. There was someone in her path: a blurry blob with a cloud of dark hair around it. The strange feral woman she’d first noticed outside the maze stood between Lillian and her goal. Anger stirred to life. How dare these monsters come into her home and threaten to kill her and her family.

  A sense of something powerful and old flowed through her body, guiding her movements. She surged to her feet, the stone fragment held low against her good thigh. Lillian darted forward, the land around her a blur. Her opponent was moving far too slowly. One more step, and then snapping her arm up and forward, Lillian buried the stone shard in the woman’s stomach. Her opponent’s mouth fell open, gasping in shock.

  Growling, the woman clawed at the stone fragment. Lillian sidestepped her enemy. Three steps from her destination something slammed into her. Claws ripped into her back. Kicking desperately, Lillian dragged herself out from under the crazed woman. With a last desperate strength, she crawled up the pedestal and over the gargoyle’s stone leg. Protected on three sides by his body and wings, she collapsed forward onto his lap. She wanted to close her eyes and know no more pain or suffering—to know the peace of cold stone.

  Again those strange instincts stirred within her. All she could think to call it was power, old power, deep and familiar. Her body tingled. Was this what dying was like? Was this her soul preparing to leave? Such a strange sensation. It didn’t seem right, dying like this. A useless death. Never to know why her world had been turned on its head.

  Sleep called, wooing her into darkness. All she wanted to do was answer that summons, but that old power within her insisted otherwise. She lifted her head and gazed at the gargoyle. There was something different. Her eyes focused on a mark upon his chest over the heart. Someone had painted a symbol on her gargoyle. A small part of her mind took affront to that. Why deface a statue? Her mind fuzzed in and out of focus. Her grandmother wanted her to … wake the gargoyle?

  Her attention drifted back to the strange symbol on his chest. On closer inspection it glowed, and it wasn’t painted on his chest like she’d thought, but hovered an inch above it. She reached out with a blood–covered hand and probed the symbol. Her hand passed through the symbol and touched the cold stone behind it. A flash of light, and it was like she’d touched a high–voltage wire. Her hand fused to the stone as it turned hot all around her. She screamed. Her body and the stone now glowed with a blue light. Power danced and pulsed between them. A wave grew, about to crest. She screamed again, knowing she would be consumed if she didn’t direct it in some way.

  Ancient memories sparked to life and flooded words and thoughts into her mind. With nothing else to do, she screamed the words.

  “I trust to the Mother’s choice. Dark Watcher, immortal servant of the Light, with my power I summon you to wake. With my will I do claim you. Hear me and awake. Evil walks the land. I have need.” Darkness crept across her vision, stealing the sights of the world from her until all that remained was the gray–edged image of the brooding stone gargoyle.

  At her cry the power surged into the stone. It softened under her hands. The shadow of his wings moved up and away as his muzzle dipped down. A warm, wet tongue brushed her cheek.

  She collapsed forward against his warmth.

  Chapter Three

  Stone no longer, he answered his lady’s call. The dark world came alive around him as his senses awoke one by one. The thump of many hearts hummed in his ears. One fluttered rapid and weaker than the rest, on the edge of death. He inhaled a deep breath.

  Air tainted with blood and death–scent filled his lungs.

  A warm weight slumped across his lap.

  Blood covered him is a sticky coating.

  He opened his eyes for the first time in many years as his mind slowly sorted order from the chaos of his senses. A woman lay sprawled across his lap. Surprise melted away as cold dread stole across his soul. She laid still, her pale skin gray–tinted. A sheen of sweat covered her face. The only color was the bright splash of her blood.

  His lady’s blood. Horror clamped his stomach and unleashed a churning void in his middle. He dragged in another great lungful of air, the lingering scent of her desperation and fear strong on the back of his tongue. With each beat of his heart, blood and burning fury rushed through his veins. Pointing his muzzle at the nearest enemy, he roared. But it didn’t expel all the hate and helpless rage trapped within. Again and again, he howled out his agony until it echoed across the width of the glade in a deafening wave.

  Rage destroyed reason. Muscles tensed for battle as talons sprang from his fingertips. He gathered his lady into his arms and fed her power while he straightened from his crouch to face his enemies. At the sight of them cowering away, another low rumble built within him. His lips curled back from his teeth, the need to rend and destroy overwhelming.

  The invaders fell back as they retreated to a safer distance. By the scents which permeated the meadow, his enemies were a mix of fae–bloods. A breeze picked up and blew the weakening essence of evil to his nostrils. Silent now, he curved his wings around his shoulders and cupped the escaping scent closer to him. He’d nearly missed it: the corruption of a demon–touched corpse. A vampire.

  One of his lady’s attackers knew what he was, and the vampire had run to save its unlife. He lowered his lady to the ground with gentle care as he whispered spells to staunch the flow of blood. While he unfurled his wings he gathered power. Using his soul–link to the Spirit Realm, he tapped into the torrent of creative magic. The cold power from the Spirit Realm mixed w
ith the warm air of the Mortal Realm, creating lift. Magic whirled around him like gale winds before a thunderstorm.

  A fae–blood shapeshifter with a gaping hole in her stomach growled and started to back away from him while three of her comrades advanced. By her unmistakable wolf–musk scent, she was dire wolf. With the flick of his tail, he decapitated the female. Before her body toppled to the ground, he was moving. He swept out a talon–tipped hand, ripping out the throat of one of the males and gutted a third with a kick from his hind legs. He pushed the body over backwards, and lunged at the next creature within reach: a silver–skinned female with pointed ears. A snapped neck freed her soul from the anchor of her body.

  He was winning, but there were too many to fight his way free, and half his attention was trained on his lady. She was losing her battle to live. Why was her magic not healing her as it should?

  Another dire wolf female darted at him. His tail snaked up and speared her in the throat. He didn’t have time for a prolonged battle. This needed to end, now. He directed his magic at the encircling horde. Threads of power condensed in the air and the silvery wisps latched onto any warm–blooded creature near enough to touch. The scent of burning flesh filled the air and the screams of his enemies echoed in his ears.

  Seeing he had devastated half their comrades, the other creatures vanished into the shadows of a surrounding maze. He curled his lips and caught their individual scents on his tongue, committing each to memory. When he had them all, he sent his magic to hunt them.

  Back at his lady’s side, he lifted her into his arms, gathering her closer so he could share some of his heat. She was far paler than she should have been. Why wasn’t her magic healing her?

  While she’d been injured by creatures of darkness, her injuries didn’t look great enough to cause this kind of weakness. For that matter, her attackers shouldn’t have been much of a threat. Even in the Mortal Realm she should have had power and instinct enough to destroy what he had dispatched with ease.

  Detaching a portion of his consciousness from his body, he sent it into the woman lying senseless in his arms. Her power still drained away.

  He checked the weavings he’d placed over her wounds, but they were holding. No power hemorrhaged from those points. Elsewhere then, but where? His consciousness stretched beyond his body, following the scent trail of magic back to its source. A tree. Two long gashes. Heartwood deep.

  By the Light, his lady was a dryad!

  Blood leaked down the tree’s majestic trunk and saturated the ground at its roots. Instinct jerked him into motion and he summoned wards to shield the wounds. The prickle of power danced along his skin a moment before he directed the spell. An insubstantial webbing spun out between his outstretched hands, like a delicate blue lattice. It adhered to the bark and sealed the wound, preventing further loss of the hamadryad’s blood.

  A hamadryad in the Mortal Realm. Impossible. A dryad’s spirit tree required magic to grow.

  Yet, here his lady’s young hamadryad grew, defying everything he knew of magic. She must have had a small seedling with her when he’d rescued her from the Black Kingdom and brought her here.

  Her soft moan brought him back to the present. It didn’t matter how her spirit tree came to be here. Here it grew, and here it bled its lifeblood upon the ground. He dropped to all fours and padded over to the tree. Circling, he sniffed at the ground until he pinpointed the area where the greatest concentration of magic saturated the loam. The scent of sap and blood trigger instincts and dragged him back to memories of his infancy.

  He had first come to awareness hearing his mother’s deep slow heartbeat and the sounds of wind and lashing rain in her branches as he grew within the heart of her tree.

  There was something here he needed.

  Safe in his watery cocoon, deep inside his mother’s wooden heart, he’d grown strong.

  Ah, yes.

  Alone with the food and water of the earth, he had absorbed his dryad mother’s memories.

  There it was—the knowledge to heal his mistress. More of his memories returned, both recent and ancient. Heal her hamadryad and the dryad should live.

  Tonight, the second time his lady had called him had been as chaotic as the first. Worse. Now she lay dying along with her tree. If her hamadryad had been older, he could have put her in the tree to rest and heal, but such an attempt in this magic–less place might kill the tree. He scrounged his mother’s memories for other healing methods. He needed to find another way, something that would work in this realm.

  And quickly. The power was dissipating, sucked up by the earth like water on drought–cursed land. He dropped into a trance, and summoned his power for the delicate work of separating his mistress’s magic from the magic–starved land.

  The greatest concentration of magic pooled just below the grass, in the layer where small fibrous roots sought food and water. With one hand pressed against her trunk and the other on the ground, he flexed his talons. After he absorbed the magic from the ground, he drew it up into his body, purified it and returned it to the spirit tree. He drained the small pool and reached deeper. His mind rushed down into the earth, probing for the smallest tendrils of power. He continued until the smallest scrap, every little fragment no matter how small, was returned to the hamadryad.

  After he reinforced the wards on the hamadryad’s larger wounds, he healed the small punctures his talons had made. Those larger wounds would need intensive healing, but must wait for now. Mending the tree would be useless if—

  No, he would not permit failure.

  Returning to the prone dryad, he sat on his hunches and lifted her into his lap. He licked at her face. Feeling her skin’s clamminess and noting the shallow coloring, he knew he didn’t have long to prepare for healing.

  But before he began the arduous task of healing her, he’d need to find a shelter more defendable than this maze. He repositioned the small dryad in his arms, and broke into a ground–eating stride. He navigated his way free of the leafy corridors and emerged into a lush garden. The serene shadows beckoned to him, offering a way to hide from the sun’s revealing rays, and he summoned a weaving of invisibility.

  He exited the gardens and encountered a stone home, large and spacious but surprisingly empty of people. He wondered where the servants were, and the guards. There should have been some defenses guarding this house, yet he detected nothing.

  After one more probe of the house and surrounding lawn, he tightened his hold on his lady and entered the stone cottage by a back entrance. As a precaution, he placed a ward around the entire structure and keyed it so only he could pass. Then as an added measure, he mentally scanned the area immediately around the building. Still no one.

  The house as safe as he could make it, he turned his attention to the inside of the dwelling. A stone–tile floor stretched out under his talons. He made a soft clicking sound with each step. A large table of polished wood sat at room’s center and a counter stretched around two sides of the room in an L shape. The table held a loaf of freshly baked bread and a basket of sweet–smelling fruit. It lacked a hearth, but if he was to guess, this was a kitchen of some sort.

  He laid his burden upon the table. The rapid beat of her pulse worried him and her breathing was too shallow. Dropping into a deeper trance, he summoned his magic. At his silent command, the magic flowed out from his body. It was less than he’d hoped, lacking the wild turbulence he was accustomed to, but it would be enough to heal the Sorceress. It had to be. He bowed his head until his muzzle touched her breastbone and he breathed more power upon her.

  Nothing happened. His magic didn’t even penetrate her skin. Panicked, he leapt upon the table and hunched closer, willing the power into her. She jerked awake, her chest heaving as if a nightmare suddenly gripped her. Her eyes focused on him and her expression softened in recognition.

  A shaky hand caressed his muzzle, then reached back into his mane, circling his neck. Still she didn’t take what he offered, power she despera
tely needed. He bumped her face with his muzzle and licked at her skin, but was careful not to sip the smallest drop of her dryad blood for fear of losing his concentration. She moved; her arms tightened around his shoulders as she nuzzled the underside of his jaw. Her fingers grasped his shoulders and clung there a moment before sliding down one arm, grazing the slashes from one of the dire wolves. Gentle fingertips paused in their downward descend and reversed, gliding back over the broken skin. Light caresses turned to a savage prod and he grunted at the sharp pain, but her hand dropped away in the next moment.

  Slowed by his shock, his reflexes didn’t spur him into action until her bloody fingers were halfway to her lips. She no longer looked at him. Instead her gaze riveted to the bright smear on her fingers. Before they reached her lips, he snatched her wrist. She cried in frustration, struggling weakly before falling back against the table, her energy spent.

  Trying and failing to understand her bizarre behavior, he reared away from her. He dropped to all fours and began to pace with his wings mantled, tail whipping with agitation. He froze at what his mind tried to tell him. She craved his blood, hungered for its power like a mate would. They were not mates. They could never be mates.

  Sacrilege.

  A soft sound, followed by a watery gasp dragged him back to the table. She was paler than before, gray, and her breath came in a death’s rattle. Gathering her into his arms, he carried her over to a corner and sat with his back braced against a wall, her slight form resting in his lap. She was so light, so fragile. What if he could share blood without forging mating ties? If there was even the slightest chance he had to try. He slid her hand closer to the warm dampness he could feel making its sluggish way down his arm, but her fingers didn’t tighten upon the wound as they had before. She was too weak even for that.