Sorceress Hunting (A Gargoyle and Sorceress Tale Book 3) (7 page)

Lillian scanned faces and spotted a familiar one—Major
Resnick.

He held a tranquilizer gun pointed at Gregory.
Somehow, that wasn’t reassuring.

“Normally,” Resnick said with a cold voice, “if
someone came this far without clearance, they’d be shot on sight. However, I
have a few questions for you and dead men are much harder to question.”

Gregory tilted his head in acknowledgement, and
Lillian could visualize the familiar glint of humor in his eyes. Only her
irrational mate would find thirty guns pointed at his chest amusing.

Major Resnick’s expression remained stony though he
did lift one eyebrow a fraction of an inch. “Were I in your place, I wouldn’t
be finding it humorous. I know Corporal Jenkins, and that fancy face job might
have fooled us had the real Jenkins not just crawled out of the forest and
reported how he was ambushed. Now, hands behind your head and face down on the
floor.”

Lillian tensed as Gregory reached out and touched her
mind.
“Beloved, grant me my defensive magic and be ready to follow close on
my tail.”

“Use your magic, but don’t get yourself
shot. And if we kill a bunch of soldiers to escape, they’ll just hunt us and
our allies all the harder.”

“I know, but my defensive magic can do
more than kill on a large scale.”
He gave the equivalent of a mental
shrug and added,
“I’ve just never had a reason not to simply kill my
enemies, until now. I’ll have to teach you this part of your gargoyle magic at
some point.”

“Down, now. Or we’ll shoot you down.” Resnick sounded
like he was losing patience.

Gregory rolled his shoulders and slowly placed his
hands on the back of his head. He went down on one knee like he was going to do
as they demanded. “It’s not a mask.”

Resnick’s eyes narrowed at Gregory’s words. “I’m sure
we’ll get to that during the interrogation.”

“Another time, perhaps.” At Gregory’s words, his
shadow magic swirled up from the ground and its chilled currents washed against
Lillian’s body. It had no effect on her, but when it touched the first human,
it exploded outward in an ever enlarging circle, carrying with it any hapless
humans it had captured.

Gregory bolted into motion before the soldiers landed
hard, a good twenty feet away.

Lillian followed him so close she bumped him once when
he slowed to turn a corner.

On the plus side of things, his defensive magic had
also taken out most of the lights, and she was no longer blinded by all those
viciously bright lights.

Gregory’s wispy shadow magic continued to hide and
protect them from the startled humans. The distraction would only last moments
at best. Some of the downed soldiers were already picking themselves off the
floor, as other newcomers came to their aid.

Lillian didn’t care. They were swiftly through the
last checkpoints. Shoving surprised guards out of their path, they were soon
surrounded by glorious night air and freedom.

Ahead, Gregory shifted and dropped to all four so he
could run faster. She lengthened her stride to come alongside him.

All around them, the terrain was suddenly torn up by
bullets biting into the ground. Dirt and tall stalks of grass were mowed down
as a continual rain of deadly projectiles pelted the ground less than ten feet
from her present path.

Gregory snarled in pain or anger, she couldn’t tell the
cause from her position two strides behind him. The roar of an engine drowned
out all other sounds. A helicopter was taking off. Possibly more than one, she
concluded, as a greater noise rose up from the military camp behind them.

Two armored vehicles with manned guns on the back were
racing across the field she and Gregory were presently running through.

“That was too damn close. Can they see us?”

Gregory veered to the side and slowed enough she shot
right past him. At which point she realized the move was intentional on his
part. He was protecting her, putting himself bodily between her and the enemy
closing in behind them.

His maneuvering also allowed her to see the bloody
furrows running along his flank where more than one bullet had found its mark.

“You’re hurt,” she uttered. The stupid remark exited
her mouth before she could stop it.

Gregory merely rolled his eyes at her. “They are flesh
wounds. A lucky round which made it past my defensive magic.”

Lillian instantly knew what he hadn’t said. The bullet
had only made it through because he’d concentrated the vast majority of his
magic around her. The shadow spells were still coiling around them, but they
were fading. Either Gregory was weakening, which she doubted, or he had another
idea.

“My magic hides us from view. Unfortunately, this long
grass still shows where we’ve been. In my haste, I didn’t weave a spell to
conceal the evidence of our passage until too late. Now they know the rough
area where to concentrate their attention, and fire.”

She glanced over her shoulder as she ran. Their mad
dash for freedom was creating a trail through the tall grass even a toddler
could follow. Ahead a marshy bog was meandering its way around the back acreage
of the community center. There’d be no easy way to hide their path. Even with
magic.

More gun fire and a small explosion of grass and dirt
erupted alongside Gregory, forcing him to leap sideways. He shouldered her in
the side, steering her into a new trajectory. For once Lillian was not
complaining about his overprotective tendencies.

“I think it’s time for your first flying lesson.”

“What?”

“Our shadow magic will be much more effective against
the dark sky. There will be no trail for them….”

Again Gregory drove her into a sharp turn. A half
second later the land where they would have been exploded in a cloud of debris.

“Damn, I think that was an RPG. They mean business.”

Gregory didn’t even miss a beat. “Ahead, when we reach
that small rise, spread your wings and allow your stride to power you more
upward than forward. Jump like you mean to clear a fallen tree trunk and spread
your wings. Ride the air. It will come naturally to you.”

“I’m not ready!”

But the rise—not much more than an ant hill really—was
upon them and when Gregory jumped into the air, she did too, squealing in
terror. Yes, she learned, a gargoyle could squeal.

Her wings, true to Gregory’s word, stretched wide,
capturing the air and propelled her body up higher into the sky with each
stroke. Her wings might know what to do, but her legs churned and thrashed like
they were still hoping to find something with more traction than the air.

Gregory maneuvered under her, putting himself between
her and the ground as they gained more altitude.

For another whole ten seconds of pure panic, she
thought she’d entangle their wings and send them both spiraling to their
deaths. Blessedly that didn’t happen. Instead, her body and wings began to
mimic his motions in the air.

He’d been firmly in her mind the entire time, but her
blind panic had kept her from detecting him.

“That’s it. Follow my lead.” His confidence washed
over her senses. “You’re doing fine. We will be able to land soon, but not
here. We are over solid forest at the moment. There’s a road a little distance
ahead, which should be empty this time of night. We’ll land there and make our
way home through the forest.”

Home sounded good. The shelter of the forest sounded
nice too.

She’d settle for either at this point.

“I just want to say this was an absolutely terrible
time for my first flight lesson.”

Gregory chuckled. “All in all, I thought it went
rather well. We are free. We don’t have too many holes in our hides, and you
did actually make it into the air under your own power.” He pulled ahead and
then performed an aerial maneuver that would make a stunt pilot hold his
breath.

“Show off.”

In a blink, he was flying next to her again.

She concentrated on beating her wings and not falling
out of the sky. They flew another two kilometers before she saw the road ahead.

“Oh, thank heavens,” she hissed, feeling a strain in
her wings and shoulders. “I’m so not in shape for flying, but this has got to
have been my best cardio workout ever.”

“You’re tiring?”

Lillian held back a sharp retort and instead said,
“I’m a little tired.”

“We’re almost there, but landing is more dangerous.
I’ll carry you to the ground this time. We’ll practice landing over shallow
water the first few times. Trust me, it’s a much safer practice.”

Lillian wasn’t at all sure about having him help her
to the ground. It summoned visions of tangled wings and broken bodies.

Gregory curled the edge of one wing a fraction and was
suddenly right over top of her. He flew so close she could feel his heat.

“Get ready to fold your wings tight to your body at my
command. Don’t struggle or try to unfurl your wings until we are safely on the
ground. Understand?”

The road was almost under them and she didn’t have
time to argue. Besides, she trusted him with her life. “I understand.”

She still squeezed her eyes shut.

“Fold your wings now.”

She did and his tail snaked around her waist and hips
as his arms snapped forward to lock in a strong embrace around her chest.

A squeak of surprise did escape her as his wings
fanned out to slow them, and the combined forces of gravity and momentum
threatened to peel her from his hold and leave her broken on the ground below.

But Gregory didn’t fail her. With a few more violent
beats of his wings, they came to the ground with only a slight jolt.

Her eyes snapped open to find herself standing on a
tree-shrouded road.

She panted harshly but dug her talons into the road’s
gravel surface, mindlessly happy to be on the ground and to be in one piece.

Slowly she came to recognize the area. They weren’t
far from the old saw mill the Clan and Coven used during their lunar Wild
Hunts. Well, the one they used to use before all the reporters, scientists, and
military arrived. The saw mill should still be a safe place to hole up for a
couple hours until she had her breath back.

Gregory didn’t immediately release her though his grip
loosened to allow his hands to skim along her arms as if he searched for
wounds. He, too, still panted, his chest pressed against her back and wings,
his warm breath puffing against her neck and right side of her face.

“Are you alright?” his voice rumbled in her ear, and
she detected a note of worry there.

“I’m fine. A little shaken up, but no lasting scars.”
She turned in his arms and touched her muzzle along the underside of his jaw
while she simultaneously wrapped her arms around his waist. Her horns framed
the sides of his face, but he seemed not to care. As for her tail, it seemed to
seek out Gregory’s lower legs like it was trying to prevent him from going
anywhere.

Tonight Gregory could have been badly hurt. She didn’t
know if he could have survived being riddled with as many rounds as were aimed
at him if his magic hadn’t been there. What if in the future he was unable to
call upon his magic because she didn’t give an order in time?

Gregory gave an affronted huff. “I would never have
allowed them to land that many blows. Even if they caught me asleep and
unaware, these weapons wouldn’t kill me. I’d heal. Sometimes I think you forget
what I am. What I am capable of doing to protect you.”

Lillian knew his words were true, but she had seen her
beloved brought low before, and he had died defending her in past lives. She
might not have those memories at the moment, but he’d alluded to such.

Gregory nuzzled her, and then dragged her as close as
two bodies could be. “Silly little dryad, those times we faced off against creatures
far more deadly than a few humans—some of those creatures could kill even a
demi-god such as the Lady of Battles.”

“Oh my god.”

He held a finger up to her lips to silence her. “And
other times I lost you first, not because I couldn’t protect you but because
you would throw all you were into destroying the enemy before it could decimate
other worlds. In so doing, you sacrificed your mortal body to call upon the
full force of your Avatar magic. I don’t like to remember the times I lost you
first. So, my little dryad, feel free to make me forget those unpleasant
thoughts.”

“I’m a gargoyle, at the moment, not a dryad if you
couldn’t tell.”

Gregory laughed with genuine humor. “Like I could
forget it with you wrapped around me like a towel.”

Lillian pretended insult and tried to extract herself.
The slight flaring of her wings stirred the air and brought a fresh wave of
blood scent to her nostrils, reminding her Gregory was still bleeding.

“If you are so invincible, why the hell are you
dripping blood on the road? Eh?”