Page 1 of Hidden By the Gargoyle

Prologue

My heart was pounding in my chest as I packed clothes and toiletries in a bag.

Dax Tremaine was on his way here. For me.

My hands shook and I nearly dropped the bras I was pulling out of my dresser.

For years, I’d wondered how it would feel to be waiting for Dax to pick me up. Only, in my daydreams, he was picking me up for a date. Not because I needed protection from a threat that I didn’t truly understand.

I’d long since gotten used to Aunt Minnie’s premonitions. She saw things that I couldn’t and refused to talk about them.

Like the time she forced me to stay home from a party that I’d really wanted to attend in high school. She was more insistent than I’d ever seen her. We had a huge knockdown-drag-out fight about it. I’d been so angry with her.

Then, the next morning, we heard about a single car accident in the same area as the party was being held. On the road I would have taken to come home. A witch had gotten power-drunk from practicing black magic and crashed into a tree. She hadn’t survived.

I knew then that my aunt had seen my death in that crash. That was why she’d kept me home. Since that day, I almost never argued with her when she had premonitions and asked me to follow her instructions. I trusted her with my life because she’d probably saved it on more than one occasion.

Now, I was about to go home with the gargoyle I’d had a crush on since I was old enough to understand sexual attraction. The gargoyle I’d secretly been in love with for nearly a decade.

All because my aunt had a vision about the blood god sleeping beneath the mountains near our town, Devil Springs. A god that I would somehow awaken with my magic.

Magic that I never thought I would possess, since I didn’t manifest my powers during puberty.

Then, there was the problem of Leona Mansfield, a lion shifter and local businesswoman. For some reason she had a vested interest in this god and his powers, and she would do whatever was necessary to gain access to them, including finding a warlock who would help her for the right price. Edgar Sommerton had never been my aunt’s favorite person. Now, she loathed him because he had agreed to help Leona free the blood god. Somehow, they believed that they could control him and, thus, his magic.

It wasn’t until they kidnapped Sela Ward, the human mate of the wolf pack’s alpha, that Minerva realized what they were trying to do. Only Sela wasn’t human. She was a witch. A powerful one who had suppressed her powers her entire adult life.

Their plan had failed, but Minerva and I knew them both well enough to understand that they weren’t giving up. They were going to find another way to achieve their goal.

Now that Minerva had a premonition of my destiny to wake the blood god, it was only a matter of time before they discovered that I was the key to getting what they wanted.

They had already kidnapped one woman. We both knew they wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to me if they got what they wanted in the end. Which meant I needed to put myself beyond their reach.

Hence, the gargoyle who was coming to pick me up. They were guardians by tradition and nature, which made him the perfect candidate to keep me safe.

“Ally, Dax is here,” my aunt said from the door to my room.

I stuffed a few more things in the bag and zipped it.

“I’m ready,” I told her. The lie sounded almost believable coming from my lips.

Aunt Minnie walked over, cupping my face with her hands. It was strange, really. She was only eleven years older than me, but she had taken on the role of my surrogate mother with ease after my parents died.

"Call me every day,” she said.

“I will.”

“And listen to Dax. He’s been a guardian his entire existence. If he tells you to do something, please do it without question. I want you to be safe.”

“I will,” I answered, barely refraining from rolling my eyes.

She smiled at me, leaning in to kiss my cheek.

“I love you.”

I hugged her. “I love you, too.”

She released me, her golden eyes gleaming. In that moment, she looked so much like my mother that my heart ached.

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