Lured, page 1
LURED
GARGOYLE GUARDIAN CHRONICLES BOOK 3.5
REBECCA CHASTAIN
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, dialogue, places, and incidents either are drawn from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright © 2016 by Rebecca Chastain
Excerpt from Flight of the Gargoyles copyright © by Rebecca Chastain
Cover design by Cody Watson
www.rebeccachastain.com
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All rights reserved. In accordance with the US Copyright Act of 1976, scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the author constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. If you would like to use material from this book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained from the publisher. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
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Mind Your Muse Books
PO Box 374
Rocklin, CA 95677
CONTENTS
Lured
Lured
Excerpt: Flight of the Gargoyles
Also by Rebecca Chastain
About the Author
For you and your enthusiasm for Mika’s series;
I couldn’t—wouldn’t—have done this without you.
LURED
Note to readers: Lured is book 3.5 of the Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles.
SERIES READING ORDER
Magic of the Gargoyles
Curse of the Gargoyles
Secret of the Gargoyles
Lured
Flight of the Gargoyles
If you have not read Magic of the Gargoyles, Curse of the Gargoyles, and Secret of the Gargoyles, this novella will be full of spoilers.
Read responsibly. :)
LURED
The cerberi took a sharp corner of the forested lane at a lope, whipping our cramped floating carriage around the bend behind them, and the centrifugal force wedged me against Marcus on the bench seat. I wriggled to straighten, but Marcus draped an arm around my shoulders and anchored me in place.
“I’m beginning to see the advantages of this tiny contraption,” he said, a smile in his voice.
“Oh?” I shoved a clump of my strawberry-blond hair out of my eyes, only to have it whip back across my mouth.
Marcus shifted, his knees knocking against the driver’s seat. His blue eyes skimmed down my face to rest on my lips. “It makes it easy to do this.”
I read the heat in his gaze and arched my neck to meet him for a kiss, bracing one hand on his muscular thigh, the other against the red velvet armrest for balance. He snuggled me closer, and I melted against his broad chest.
A kaleidoscope of sunlight and shadows flickered across my closed eyelids, and I smiled against Marcus’s firm lips, enchanted by the perfection of the moment.
In the driver’s seat, Gus cleared his throat with a hoarse, phlegmy sound and spit over the side of the carriage, jolting me back to reality. Marcus deflected the splatter with a well-timed brush of air, but the moment was ruined. Sighing, I leaned back, not missing the laughter in Marcus’s eyes. At least one of us found Gus’s perpetual rudeness amusing.
After our triumphant return from Reaper’s Ridge last night, I thought I’d seen the last of the grouchy cerberi sled runner, only to learn this morning when we prepared to leave that the stage coach wasn’t due for another week and the nearest train station was a two-day hike. Resigned, we’d returned to Gus’s kennels.
Gus and I shared one thing in common: our mutual dislike. He’d earned my scorn when he exploited my desperation to save the lives of seven sick gargoyles to make a profit. In return, I’d garnered his animosity by surviving the perils of Reaper’s Ridge and returning to force him to repay me. In fact, I’d made a tidy profit off the old man.
In a blatant ploy to overcharge us and recoup some of his forfeited riches, Gus had pulled out his most expensive passenger carriage. Or maybe he’d been trying to discourage us with the fussy little box designed to carry two average-size people. If not for the lack of legroom, Marcus might have been comfortable alone on the plush velvet seat. With me beside him and our two bags stuffed on the floorboard beneath my feet, the elegant carriage turned into a mild torture device.
There hadn’t been room left for the gargoyles. Fortunately, Celeste had decided to head back to Terra Haven earlier that morning. The enormous gryphon gargoyle had gotten us to safety, but she’d chafed at being away from her home. Flying, she could reach the city before nightfall, her route far more direct than ours. Oliver, my self-proclaimed companion, went wherever I did, but he’d been more than happy to fly above the carriage. Most of his young life had been spent in the city, and an aerial exploration of the countryside appealed to his adventurer’s spirit.
I’d lost sight of his carnelian Chinese dragon body behind the thick canopy of pine and oaks, but I could still pinpoint his location with eerie accuracy. I had Reaper’s Ridge—or more accurately, the baetyl—to thank for my newfound ability. I still wasn’t sure if it would last or what to make of it, but for now it was comforting to be able to keep tabs on my adolescent companion when he was out of sight.
Another turn mashed me against Marcus, and my knees knocked together as I shifted to get pressure off my tailbone. With my feet propped on our bags, my heels almost as high as the bench seat, finding a stable position had proved futile. I probably would have been more comfortable sitting on Marcus’s lap—and I might have been bold enough to suggest it if Gus hadn’t been present.
“Quit yer jostling back there. It’s giving me heartburn,” Gus groused.
“Try being downwind of you,” I shot back. Between the breath of four panting cerberi—all twelve of their muzzles open wide with strings of drool trailing from their lolling tongues—and Gus’s own signature scent of cerberi kennel and stale cigar smoke, it was little wonder my nostrils had given up hours ago. I’d welcomed the reprieve.
Gus tugged the reins, weaving the cerberi down a straight stretch of the dirt road, driving obnoxiously wide around a few leafy weeds and snapping my head back and forth on my neck. I wedged my feet tighter against the bags, making sure I gave the back of the driver’s seat a good kick.
Pretending to speak to Marcus, I said, “I never realized how hard it is to steer a sled in a straight line. All the drivers in Terra Haven make it look easy.”
“Mika . . .” Marcus murmured in a halfhearted rebuke.
Gus’s spine stiffened. “City carriages are cheap pieces of crap. This here is a Cadence 156. Only three hundred of them were ever made. I’m not scratching her up just to smooth out the ride for your pampered backside.” He stroked a gnarled hand down the carriage’s glossy black side.
I rolled my eyes. “Right. You wouldn’t want to make your passengers comfortable.”
“Not unless my passengers want to pay to have the Cadence refinished.”
“Nice try, Gus.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at the old man’s knobby spine beneath his threadbare shirt. He peeked over his shoulder at me, then swerved around a grassy weed too short to touch the bottom of our elevated carriage. I jerked my arms apart to brace myself, not missing Gus’s satisfied smile.
Marcus’s chest vibrated against my left shoulder, and when I realized he was silently laughing at me, I transferred my glower to him. I couldn’t hold on to my irritation, though. The wind tousled his thick dark hair and flattened his shirt against his sculpted chest, and when he flashed me The Smile—the one that made my stomach flip and heartbeat accelerate—my lips curled up involuntarily. Marcus and I had shared plenty of serious life-and-death experiences, but I was only just beginning to discover his affectionate, teasing side, and I really liked it. When he leaned in for another kiss, I met him halfway, anchored in his arms as the carriage canted through another sharp turn. A tiny hum of pleasure slid up my throat before I could suppress it.
“Do you hear that?” Gus asked.
Resolutely ignoring him, I deepened the kiss, sliding my tongue along Marcus’s bottom lip. His hand drifted up the back of my neck into my hair, pulling me closer. I attempted to oblige, hampered by the cramped seat.
“It sounds . . . sweet,” Gus said. “Do you hear it, Fed Man?” He reached back and thumped Marcus on the shoulder.
Marcus jerked back to scowl at Gus, and I hid my smug smile. Finally it wasn’t just me the old man was irritating.
“This has got to sto—” Marcus cut himself off, cocking his head to listen. He shifted, releasing me to scrutinize our surroundings.
I straightened, drawing on the five elements and holding them ready, unsure what I was preparing for. Raw earth, air, water, fire, and wood hummed inside me, but I chafed at the limited amount. I peered through the leaves in Oliver’s direction, trying to make him out through the foliage. I’d feel a lot safer with his enhancement.
Gus whistled a soft command and the cerberi slowed to a trot. Both men tensed, straining to hear. I held my breath, trying to pick up on any out-of-place sounds. Wind whispered through the oak leaves high above us and a few birds sang to each other. Beneath my feet, the bags shifted, and the seed cryst
Marcus jabbed his hand over Gus’s left shoulder. “There. I think it’s coming from that direction.”
“What is it?” I caught the faint garbled notes of a tone-deaf bird, but that hardly seemed cause for alarm.
“Shush,” Marcus said. He leaned forward, his wide shoulders pushing me against the armrest.
“Is it dangerous?” I whispered. “Should we call Oliver—”
“Quit yappin’, woman,” Gus barked. “I lost it.”
I spared a glare for the obnoxious man, then turned to Marcus, waiting for his response. He scanned the dense forest to the left of the road, ignoring me.
“There,” Marcus said, pointing again in the direction of the bizarre bird noises.
Gus yanked the reins, and the cerberi pivoted to the left, crashing through the manzanita beside the road. The bush’s spiny branches scratched against the underside of Gus’s precious carriage, rattling the whole box, and I grabbed the door panel for balance.
“What’s going on?” I demanded, searching Marcus’s profile. A thick bramble slashed across my knuckles, and I jerked my hand inside the carriage with a yelp, ducking a second later to avoid a branch to the face. The warbling song grew louder, but if it was something dangerous, Marcus would have been reaching for the elements and his crossbow on the floorboard. Instead, he looked eager, almost excited.
I shook Marcus’s arm, and he slapped my hand aside without looking at me.
“Hey, that hurt,” I said, shocked.
“Quiet,” he growled.
I cradled my stinging fingers to my chest. What had gotten into him?
“Faster,” he ordered.
Gus nodded and whistled a new command. As one, the four cerberi surged into a gallop. Heedless of the damage inflicted on the Cadence, Gus steered the three-headed hounds straight for the bird sounds, avoiding trees but scraping the sides and bottom of the carriage as the cerberi plowed through small bushes.
Dumbfounded, I crouched in a tight ball and clung to the seat. Marcus held himself rigid in the jouncing carriage, head canted to listen for the strange song over the cerberi’s racket, and I did my best not to touch him.
Without slowing her mad dash, the lead cerberus leapt a thick oak log and disappeared down a leaf-strewn slope. The next followed a step later, the towline between the cerberi arching into the air.
Oh no. I wedged the toes of my shoes into our bags and clutched the back of the driver’s seat with both hands just as the last cerberus cleared the fallen tree. The carriage catapulted into the air. Helplessly, I launched free of the seat, then slammed back into place as we plunged down the hill. The cerberi surged up the opposite side of the shallow ravine, bounding over the rim so fast that the bottom of the carriage hit the hill before the flotation spell bucked us back into the air, tossing me around like a doll.
Zigzagging around thick trunks, the racing cerberi turned the towline into a whip, with the carriage flicking back and forth at the end, out of control. For the first time, I was grateful for the slender width of the Cadence: Narrower than the three-headed dogs, the carriage fit anywhere the cerberi did—though not half as gracefully at these breakneck speeds. We ricocheted off a broad oak trunk, slammed into an outcrop of granite hard enough to crack the carriage’s wood paneling, and scraped through a gauntlet of pines, leaving behind a waist-high strip of black paint. Marcus crowded me, preventing me from getting a solid seat, and every bounce levitated me. I clung to the driver’s seat, heart hammering against my rib cage, fearing each collision would pitch me from the carriage.
“Slow down. You’re going to get us killed!” I yelled, eyes watering when the next bounce snapped my teeth together and I bit the edge of my tongue.
Gus urged the cerberi even faster; he and Marcus were as oblivious to me as they were to the imminent destruction of the carriage. Both men stared with unnerving intensity in the direction of the strange song.
“Marcus, you’re scaring me. What is it?”
Finally he looked at me, and the fury contorting his face stole my breath.
“Shut up,” he snarled.
I fell back in the seat, then clawed for purchase when the carriage tipped to the right and Marcus’s hip smacked into me, pushing me half out of the tiny box. Pine branches slashed my face, threatening to dislodge me, and I formed a hasty shield of woven strands of air. Without a boost from Oliver, I could barely hold enough air element to buffer my face, but it gave me the reprieve I needed to scramble back into the seat. When the carriage righted, Marcus crouched, hands braced on the driver’s seat as if he were planning to spring off the front of the speeding carriage. He never once glanced my way, not to check if I was okay or to help me right myself inside the carriage.
The cerberi burst through the trees onto a gravelly beach at the edge of a tranquil lake, the serene setting as jarring to my panicked brain as the blinding sunlight glinting off the placid surface. With the cerberi’s thunderous footsteps muffled by mud, the tone-deaf bird song swelled to fill the quiet.
I thought Gus would drive us straight into the water, but he tugged the reins, whistled a command, and the cerberi swerved to follow the curve of the lake. They didn’t slow, not even as we approached a reed-choked tributary. I cowered behind Gus as the tall stalks whipped through the carriage, burying my face in the crook of an elbow to avoid the stinging lashes. My head cracked against Gus’s elbow moments later when we slammed to a stop.
Scrambling free of the Cadence, I fell through a flurry of exploded cattail seeds, landing on my hands and knees on the rocky beach before sprinting up the hill. Spinning around, I grabbed as much magic as I could hold and prepared to defend myself. Against what, I wasn’t sure. Something was wrong with Marcus. Something was probably wrong with Gus, too, but I didn’t care about him.
Neither man looked in my direction. They both stared out at the lake with vapid expressions of adoration.
A siren undulated in the water less than fifteen feet from the shoreline, her gilled neck fluttering in a nonstop, deadly melody. The notes of her song slurred against my eardrums, harsh and garbled, like a flute played out of tune underwater, but whatever the men heard held them entranced.
Marcus tumbled from the carriage, landing on all fours more clumsily than I had. In disjointed increments, he straightened to his full height, never once removing his eyes from the siren. Gus collapsed to his knees when he landed, falling again before managing a stiff, wide-legged stance. In eerie synchronization, Marcus and Gus took a step, arms rigid at their sides, feet landing flat and clumsy.
I’d seen Marcus move with a dancer’s grace after a day of battle, much less after a few hours in a cramped carriage. Yet now, every stride looked forced, his movements stiff and awkward, as if he’d never used his legs before.
Goose bumps rushed over my skin when I realized the truth: It wasn’t Marcus and Gus forgetting how to walk; it was the siren controlling them.
Shambling like animated corpses, they lurched three steps toward the lake before I shook myself out of my horrified trance. An honest-to-goodness siren floated less than ten feet offshore. If we were still back in the forest, I might have stood a chance of breaking her spell on the men; now that she was in their sights, it would be impossible.
But I wouldn’t let that stop me from trying.
Heart in my throat, I sprinted around the cerberi, wishing I knew a few of Gus’s whistle commands. The three-headed dogs had collapsed onto their bellies, tongues lolling from their mouths, sides heaving. A few heads watched the siren and a few watched Gus, but none looked ready to jump to Gus’s aid—or mine.
I planted myself in Marcus’s path, careful not to turn my back to the siren. A couple dozen feet separated me from the deadly enchantress, half of them water, putting me far too close to her for my comfort. She tracked me with flat gray-black fish eyes set too wide on her humanoid face. Fleshy lips parted beneath two slit holes that served as her nose, revealing a mouthful of needlelike teeth. She hissed at me, projecting the sound from her mouth without interrupting the garbled song emitting from her gills. Other than the grayish green tint of her rubbery skin and the webbing between her fingers, the portion of her visible above the water vaguely resembled a petite woman, with a trim waist, tiny breasts, severely sloped shoulders, and yellow-brown slimy hair. Water churned around her waist as she used her tail to hold herself upright, and from the glimpses I caught in the frothy water, there was nothing small about her eel-like bottom half.
