Interview With a Gargoyle (28 page)

His knees buckled, and Mel caught him and struggled to hold him up. He turned his head slowly to meet her gaze.

“Hi there,” she said, grinning so wide she thought her face might break. He stared, uncomprehending for a moment, then he smiled back.

“Hi.”

“Cal broke the curse.”

“What?” he whirled around in time to see Calypso sink to the floor.

Paler than usual beneath her Goth makeup but still breathing at least, Calypso stared up at the anxious faces hovering over her. Palmer helped her sit up.

“She looks okay,” he said. “
Are
you okay? Should we call someone?”

“Nn—o—no. I think I’m all right.” She snaked a trembling hand across her stomach. “It hurts a bit.”

“It feels like you drained the Cabochon almost completely,” Helena said. “I can barely sense it.”

Calypso nodded. “Hopefully it will recharge.”

“What if it doesn’t?” Mel asked. “How will it affect you?”

Cal’s weak smile really wasn’t all that reassuring. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out. Help me up, will you?”

“No, you should rest a while. DeWitt, help me put her on the bed,” Palmer instructed.

Blake didn’t respond, and Mel turned to find him staring out the window in much the same position he’d been in when she returned from Calypso’s earlier in the day.

“What is it? Fremlings?” she asked.

“No. It’s just after sunset,” he whispered.

Mel glanced at Palmer, who had hoisted Calypso in his arms. “Sunset was officially when?”

Palmer shrugged and settled Cal on the bed. “Eight-oh-two.”

“That was two minutes ago—the same time Blake transformed.”

Calypso shook her head. “I gave it all I had. I know it worked.”

Mel smiled at Blake and slipped her arm around his shoulders. “I know it did too. We just have to wait and see.”

Blake climbed the stairs to his front door and let himself into the house after a deep breath of cool night air. The evening was quiet. The only sound was the rumble of Palmer’s engine receding into the distance as he followed Helena and Calypso back to Calypso’s apartment so the witch could get some more rest. No Fremlings stirred the shadows, and the buzz of the Cabochon that had made his very bones itch for ten years was gone as well.

Whether that was truly because the curse was broken or merely because Calypso had drained its power beyond his capacity to sense it, he couldn’t be certain.

He wanted to believe the demon witch had saved him, but he had to be realistic. He’d felt nothing unusual when coming out of his stone exile tonight, and he felt nothing different now except the nagging certainty that Percival, for all his crimes, had ultimately deserved absolution, whether he’d ever received it or not.

He tried to tell himself what Percival got or didn’t get was immaterial. Blake himself deserved to live the life he’d been born to. He deserved the sunlight, and at least for tonight, he wanted to believe he’d wake up to the world of daylight tomorrow.

No. He wouldn’t wake to anything. He planned to keep his eyes open all night long. The last thing he wanted to do was sleep. With that thought in mind, he stalked through the house and found Melodie in the kitchen attempting to sweep up the salt that remained from the previous night’s spell. He eased the dustpan out of her hands and helped her to her feet. “You don’t have to do that.”

“You shouldn’t waste time with it. It’ll only take me a minute; then maybe we could go out. Would you like that? Someplace bright with lots of people to help take your mind off—”

He engulfed her in his arms and hushed her with a kiss. “My mind’s already on the only thing I want to think about. You.”

She tucked her head under his chin and wrapped her arms around his middle. It felt good. After a contemplative moment, he said, “Isn’t Arnold expecting you back at work?”

She sighed. “Not tonight. I called him earlier today. We’re going to talk about me switching to the morning shift.”

Blake leaned back to meet her sleepy gaze. “Why? Finally ready to rejoin society?”

She laughed and fell into step with him. They moved out of the kitchen toward the stairs, arm in arm. “It’s not really that. I just thought if I worked days, I could spend my nights with you.”

“If the spell didn’t work, you mean.”

“No. I
know
it worked.” She put her hands on either side of his face and made him look at her. “I know it did. But either way, I want to spend my nights with you, if I can.”

He kissed her again, quickly, and that led to three more longer kisses. Finally he broke away. “The nights might be all I ever have to give you. Nothing more. Ever. No walk down the aisle. No honeymoon. No babies.”

Her chocolate eyes filled, but she held back the tears through sheer force of will. “That’s okay.”

“No. It’s not. You deserve more than just hanging around in the dark with a brooding gargoyle.”

She swept the tears away before they fell and gave him a tremulous smile. “You are not a gargoyle. And I happen to like brooding.”

“I don’t know if I can put you through that kind of a life, lass. The curse didn’t just take the lives of ten generations of men, but their women as well. A lot of heartache comes with this life.”

“That’s because none of those women knew what was happening to the men they loved. They always kept it a secret, but I already know the secret, and I can live with it.”

The men they loved.
Blake’s heart reacted to her words with a quick thud, as if trying to escape his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed as hard as he dared. “Ah, lass. I’m just not sure
I
can.”

By the time they reached the bedroom, Mel’s heart was pounding so hard she was certain Blake could hear it.

She shivered when he ran his fingertips up under her shirt and around the waistband of her jeans, tantalizing her nerve endings. She went up on tiptoes and kissed him while he explored, letting him maneuver her toward the bed.

They fell together in a tangle and rode the soft undulations of the mattress while they worked at pulling off each other’s clothes.

“I’m sorry it can’t be more than this,” Blake whispered in her ear as he covered her with his body. “I’d give you a future if I had one.”

She hushed him with trembling fingers across his lips and paused to sigh as he sheathed his erection in a condom and guided himself into her. “This is enough. If this is all there ever is, it’s enough.”

She wouldn’t let him argue and distracted him from any further protests with eager movements of her hips. He smiled against her neck, nipped at the taut skin there and laughed.

“You do know how to control the conversation, don’t you?”

She nodded and gasped at his next deep thrust. “Less talk and more of that.”

“Who am I to argue?”

Their whispered conversation ceased, and Mel lost herself in the moment. The friction of skin on skin, and the heady, spicy scent of man chased any worrisome thoughts out of her head. She hoped that, for a little while, she could make him forget that he might not have tomorrow or any other “day” to look forward to.

When the rhythm of his movements increased, she urged him on with a moan and told him with her body she could take all he had to give. A moment later, she shuddered with her climax, and Blake followed. They trembled together, and he caught her lips in a desperate kiss that left them both panting.

“Is it wrong to say I’m in love with you?” Blake asked finally. He stroked a thumb over her lower lip and followed its path with his tongue.

Content and cozy beneath him, Mel brushed a dark strand of hair from his eyes and smiled. If this was all there ever was, it would be enough. “Why would it be wrong? I love you too, and that’s all we need, isn’t it?”

He kissed her again and smirked. “That…and maybe a sturdier mattress.”

They both laughed and loved again and finally, they slept.

Anticipation of this moment made every beat of his weakening heart more painful than the last, but still Percival trudged toward his goal. Cold mud gripped his boots, and the torch he held aloft with his aching left arm dripped pitch on the sleeve of his tailored greatcoat. Heedless of the last of his expensive clothes, he pressed on through the fallow field surrounding the lone cottage. Moss and ivy-covered walls the of rough-hewn stone, and the roof thatch was bare in spots, attesting to both its age and the financial straits of its resident.

A gibbous moon lit the damp spring night, casting long shadows from the few pieces of chipped granite in the small yard bordered by a rotting fence. This had once been the home of a sculptor and lapidary. Castoffs of his work littered both the unkempt garden and the small patch of overgrown land to the south of the cottage. The man who’d lived here decades past carved headstones and statues, and his skill had finally afforded him a nicer home in London.

Now his abandoned cottage belonged to a witch.

Not any witch, of course.

She was the
one
. Birgid Cooper was her name, so said the woodsman as well as the villagers who spoke of her kindly enough but rarely paid her a visit.

She lived alone, having lost a husband and young son to consumption three winters past, he’d been told.

When Percival first heard that rumor, he’d consoled himself with the unkind thought that perhaps the Lord had seen fit to punish her, but he’d quickly repented.

The punishment was his alone, and he’d borne it for nineteen years. He could bear no more.

A wilted wreath of lavender hung on the whitewashed planks by the door. It rattled when he knocked, and shriveled leaves fell to the flagstone beneath his feet. She came to the door immediately, an oil lamp in one hand and a shock of dried thistle in the other.

“Day will break soon, my lord,” she said by way of greeting, as if she’d been expecting him. “You’ve only a few minutes to kill me, if that’s your intent.”

Her blonde hair had darkened to dull gold and hung in heavy braids, shot through with black ribbons of mourning. Those jewel blue eyes he remembered so well had faded to slate and bore wrinkles at their corners that might have been laugh lines from earlier times when she had occasion to smile.

Here was a woman hardened by circumstance, her once-brilliant colors leached away by years of strife. Like him, she might have welcomed death, but that wasn’t what he had come to offer.

He knelt before her, and the mud from his boots soaked instantly through the worn knees of his trousers. Pain shot from his shoulder through his chest when he doused his torch in the rain bucket beside the door.

“Killing you won’t free me. I know that. I’ve come to beg forgiveness.” Those long-rehearsed words burned like bile at the back of his throat. How many times had he vowed vengeance? How long had he prayed for one moment within arm’s reach of the creature who’d stolen his life? Now, for the first time, he saw her not as the personification of evil, but as a human being, a woman as weary of her worldly burdens as he was of his.

She stepped back, bare feet scraping the thrush-lined floor of the cottage. “Have you now?”

“My son will marry on the Sabbath at noon. I have few days left, and I’ve long ago lost any joy in living, but this one day I covet. He’s begged me to see him wed.” The weight on his chest grew, and the rattle in his lungs forced a harsh cough from him. The months he’d searched for the witch had been long and cold, and he’d gotten little rest for his weary bones.

When he’d regained his breath, he looked up at her as he had to the altar of the Lord so many times, beseeching.

“Lift this curse, if only for a day.”

“There’s so much blood on your hands,
my lord
.” The title held no reverence. She used it as an insult, but he hadn’t the strength to take offense. He’d welcome insults if it meant he could see the sun once more.

He clutched his chest and waited, head bowed again, for her decree. “I beg you. Since that night, no other woman has died at my hands, and no other will. I give you my word.”

Her breath caught, and she set the lamp aside, casting her lithe shadow long across the floor beside her. Percival closed his eyes, hoping to squeeze away the pain that racked his chest. His left arm had gone numb from the exertion of wielding the heavy torch, and the very air seemed to weigh on him, pressing him toward the earth.

“They were my sisters, Percival. Each one of them as close as if we’d come from the same womb. Five of the dozens you killed belonged to
me
.”

He nodded and folded his hands in supplication. Gnarled fingers rubbed together, parchment skin, bone on bone. He’d worn himself down to nothing over the years, searching for her, praying for salvation through the long nights until dawn stole his breath and turned his body cold and stiff. “I will give you anything you ask. I will do anything within my power.”

“You have nothing I want, my lord. And I imagine you have nothing
you
want either.”

Percival tugged a small coin purse from his coat and dropped it on the floor at her feet. “If nothing else, surely gold will be of use to you. Take this, and I will give you more anytime you ask.”

“I should have to ask you for nothing, my lord. I
will
ask you for nothing except this…”

He raised his head. The effort made his chest hurt. So tight were his lungs, he feared he would not be able to draw another breath, but he would have given her the very blood from his veins if she’d asked for it. “Anything.”

“Pay homage to the witches for every life you took. Your gold will certainly buy a monument to them, open and free for all to look upon. Percival Blake should beg forgiveness of the women he murdered, bear his shame in public and face the consequences of his crimes.”

A small price indeed. He almost laughed. He could pay the very sculptor who’d once resided here to carve a statue in honor of them all, with his beloved Rebecca at the center. He smiled and bent to lay a kiss upon Birgid Cooper’s feet.

He never rose.

Death took him swiftly before she could raise a hand to break the curse. She buried him there, in the overgrown field to rest eternally in the shadow of her cottage.