Rocked by Love (Gargoyles, #4)(8)
A moment of silence. “You’re in a church belfry?”
“Yeah. Flew here. Imagine my surprise.”
Wynn cleared her throat. “Right. About that. You see…”
That was pretty much the point where the creature watching Kylie so closely seemed to lose his patience. “This witch you speak to, what does she know of the Darkness? Is she in league with the Order? How do you know you can trust her?”
In her ear, her friend let out an excited squeak. “Oh, wow, was that the Guardian? What’s his name? Where did you find him? Can I talk to him?”
“Yes, let me speak with the witch, human.”
Wynn babbled enthusiastic agreement in Kylie’s ear, and the gargoyle held out his serving-platter-sized paw for her phone. Kylie shook her head and took a step backward. She always reacted poorly to high-pressure tactics. “No, you know what? Before you all have your little kaffeeklatsch, I think somebody needs to explain a few things to me. Beginning with what the f*ck is going on?”
The huge gray creature actually winced, but Kylie had to admit that could be the result of her voice rising an octave and about twelve decibels rather than an attack of conscience. On the other end of the phone, Wynn mumbled something conciliatory.
“Kylie, I know,” her friend said. “I know you deserve a whole bunch of explanations right now, but this is kind of a long story, and at the moment it’s really, really important to make sure that you and the Guardian are safe first. Like, earthshakingly important. You shouldn’t be out in public right now, especially since I’m assuming that one or both of you were just attacked by nocturnis.”
That was disconcertingly accurate. “How did you know that?”
“Another part of the story. It just seems to be the way these things happen at the moment. I will explain everything, I promise, but first and foremost, you need to get somewhere safe. Can you get home? Fast?”
Kylie wanted to dig her heels in and refuse to move until she got the answers she wanted, but something in Wynn’s voice made her grudgingly restrain herself. “I’m not all that far from my house. I don’t think. I don’t think he flew me more than a few blocks.” She looked at the gargoyle, who shook his head. “Yeah, I can get home in a few minutes. But what about tall, stone, and grumpy?”
“He needs to go with you.”
She knew Wynn was going to say that. That didn’t mean she had to like it, did it? She just couldn’t decide if her instincts were trying to tell her that sticking with the Guardian was the best idea ever, or the key to impending doom.
“Because you’re the genius wunderkind they call Kyle E. Woyote, that’s why.”
“Really? You’re gonna blow rainbows up my tokhes? Now, of all times?”
“If it will get you and the Guardian somewhere safe and private with a video-chat connection, I will blow rainbow-covered sparkly unicorn fairies up your butt, Ky. This is serious.”
“You know how wrong that sounded, right?”
“Koyote, please.”
Channeling the urge to scream out her frustration into a low, hissing growl, Kylie spat out her agreement. “Fine, I’ll bring the thing—and I do mean The Thing, capital T, capital T—home with me, but I am calling you back the minute we get in the front door, Wynn, and I’m not going to be satisfied with simple explanations. I want everything.”
“Oh, trust me, sweetie, there is no such thing as a simple explanation for this. You’re going to get as many answers as you can handle, which will be about a hundred more than you’re going to understand.”
“Don’t sell me short, Pooh Bear. I’m a genius, remember? I can understand almost anything.”
“How about the end of the world?”
Chapter Three
Darf min gehn in kolledj?
For this I went to college?
He told her to call him Dag. When she tried to add Hammarskj?ld or Nabbit to the end, he got cranky. As in, “bared his five-inch fangs and hissed like a frickin’ cobra” cranky. Some people—er, mythological entities—had no sense of humor. He proved this when he mumbled something about teaching humans to hold their tongues around their betters.
On a night where the surprises just kept coming, Kylie got a biggie when her stone-faced companion deposited her at the base of the belfry and went from monstrous to monstrously hot in the blink of an eye. Actually, if Kylie had blinked, she’d have missed it, because one minute he looked like the gargoyle of her nightmares, and the next he looked like a former member of the BU hockey team—tall, muscular, human, and as if he’d taken more than one stick to his face over the years.
It took her a full minute to pick her mouth up off the ground and another to catch a glimpse of the creature he had been in the completely normal man standing before her. His features had been so animalistic in his other form that she wouldn’t have believed they could translate into anything quite so attractive, if she had believed they could translate at all.
His prominent jaw, heavy brows, and nearly flat nose had been refined into something completely masculine and utterly arresting. They hinted at a mixed racial heritage that perfectly suited the golden hue of his skin. No one should have that color of skin in Boston at this time of year, all caramel and supercreamy latte, but it worked on Dag. As did the height that skimmed just under the six-foot wire—more than tall enough for her to have to look way up at him—and the musculature of an athlete who believed all sports should be contact sports.