Page 110 of The Stone Initiation
“When you need her, as in, when you’re in danger, angry or hurt?”
What was she getting at? “Yes. So?”
Selas tipped her head to the side. “She’s not a guard dog, Cameron. She’s a vital part of you, and I sense the disconnect between you. You hold back your primal nature, and I understand why. You’ve lived in the human world all your life, and maybe you wanted to hide what you were?” I didn’t confirm or deny but she nodded anyway. “You don’t have to hide any longer. I can help you weave a stronger connection with your primal self, with your gargoyle half. It will make you faster, stronger, and more intuitive in battle.”
Sounded good to me. “What do I have to do?”
“Meditate and move.” She took up a starting position, one leg in front of the other, knees bent, arms out. “Move with me, Cameron.”
The next forty minutes were spent learning the kata. Doing the moves repeatedly until I was floating, until my body moved without me telling it to.
A sense of calm settled over me, and a gentle vibration spread through my limbs. Was this the simmer she’d been talking about?
“There,” Selas said. “Do you feel it?”
“Yes.” There was a hum at my solar plexus and in my blood, a low-grade power that belonged to me, but usually only came out in bursts. It spread through me, settling and guiding my limbs.
“Good,” Selas said with a smile in her voice. “That’s enough for tonight. We’ll continue tomorrow at seven.”
There was a whoosh, and when I opened my eyes she was gone.
I guess I’d been dismissed.
If only I could dismiss Serath from my mind as easily as a gargoyle took flight, but there was no getting over a fated mate.
All I could do was steel my heart.
CHAPTER47
DEREK
“You have to howl,” Maury says in his scratchy voice. “Howl and moan, and it scares them, and that fear tastes so good.”
“The chase is my favorite part,” Blink says. His single eye glazes over as he casts his mind to a specially horrifying memory. “And when I catch them and dig in my claws, and they scream…” He shivers in pleasure. “It’s perfect.”
“I just want to eat,” Tiny hisses from the shadows, eight hairy limbs twitching. “Eat until I’m full…I’m never full.”
All eyes turn to me.
I’m ready. I know just what I have to say to fit in but the rehearsed words stick in my throat and the truth spills out from inside. “I miss Cam…” My tone is mournful and filled with longing.
My face stings from a slap I’m not sure who delivers.
I barely flinch.
I’m used to this,
“You’ll die,” Maury rasps. “You’ll fade away to nothing. She left you to die, do you understand. You’re lucky the goyles don’t care about Old Town. Lucky we get to feed and that the hunters here are shit. But you can’t escape the fade if you refuse to hunt and feed. Stop denying your nature.”
But Cameron doesn’t know this. I never told her that tulpas need belief to survive and most feed on fear. But me. I have only Cameron who believes in me, and my food of choice is love. I can’t tell the other monsters that. I can’t reveal that my nature isn’t the same as theirs. If I tell them I’ll be banished from this group and these creatures are all I have right now, so I hang my head in shame as they laugh at my expense because there is nowhere else for me to go.
No one who’ll validate my existence.
No one who needs me.
“You can come hunting with me,” Tiny hisses. “I’ll show you how. I’ll teach you, and once you hunt, once you feed, then they will see you. They will fear you, and your power will grow.”
I don’t want to hunt. I don’t want to feed. But if this is the only way to exist then maybe I need to try. I have to survive until Cameron comes home.
