Page 7 of Stone Seduction
The first one crash-landed on the beach, crushing the woman with the staff under its feathered body.
I held Luke more tightly to me, beating my wings, watching the monster’s furious thrashing after being knocked out of the sky.
Ha ha!
Its lion body was covered in feathers, sporting huge wings, and a fucked up goat’s head that triggered memories of the chimera fight at the Thames Estuary back in my early days here. The scar across my left eye twinged in remembrance of me taking a talon to the face.
The monster jumped back up, its tail, comprised of twisted rope with a spiky mace at the tip, flicking angrily. It locked its goat eyes to me, the first signs of fire in its mouth.
Bring it. I’ll?—
Dane fell from the sky like a rocket in reverse, his silver dreadlocks flapping behind him. On purpose, about to pull off a killing blow.
Man, he looked so cool.
His sword went through the chimera’s middle. Dane landed heavily and got to slicing. Steaming entrails spilled over the sand like swollen spaghetti. The chimera shrieked, clawing at him uselessly.
Dane glanced at me, offering a nod. He had this, they all had this. There was zero need for me to be here.
Luke was my priority, stirring from his forced slumber already.
“Let’s get you back inside.”
I flew back to the lighthouse.
Luke awokeas a heavy rainstorm rolled in. Outside the shelter of this cozy home at the end of a peninsula, the sea expressed its fury against the rocks, the rain and wind battering the lighthouse.
“Hey,” I whispered, his eyelids fluttering open to reveal azure orbs within. Sometimes the hue shifted to cerulean, depending on the light.
Either shade took my breath away.
Frown lines creased his forehead, his features twisting into a grimace. “What… What happened?”
I told him everything from where I knelt before him. I’d laid him out on his living room sofa, drying him off with a towel and changing his PJs, the building’s central heating doing the rest while I waited for the knockout drug in his system to clear.
It had been a standard sleeping drug based on the rose scent, its efficacy moderate. I’d dabbled with it before to subdue panicked humans after a monster encounter.
I swallowed a growl.
“Looks like they were using invisibility charms,” I added, touching his forehead with the back of my hand.
“Chimera again?” he said groggily. “Things are getting so complicated.” He groaned, wriggling to sit up.
“Easy,” I said.
He ignored me, swinging his legs off the sofa. “Dammit.” He sat forward, his head bowed.
“Can I get you anything?” I asked, hands on his thighs.
“A new head.”
“Painkillers it is.” I grabbed a packet from the pile of necessities I’d made beside the sofa and handed it to him along with a bottle of water.
Luke’s smile sent my heart into a tailspin. His auburn hair shimmered like silk, his eyes incredible sapphires. He stole my breath, my mind, every part of me.
Man, I had it bad. Falling hard.
He was precious cargo. A human to be protected because of his power, my mark on his neck confirmation of that. Bound to me, my life entangled with his.
