“I… did. I forgot my cell phone on the plane. Hence the phone call.”
“Hence the phone call,” he echoed, words elongated by his rolling accent. “Well, dinnae you worry about that, aye? My friends and I will give you a ride tae your hotel. The Brighten, right?”
It felt like some invisible fist was squeezing her lungs. “How do you—”
The gargoyle winked again. “Dinnae trouble that pretty head.”
He stooped to press his shoulder into her stomach, but Atria was not about to meekly submit to a kidnapping. She thrashed and began to scream, her knees and elbows flying with ruthless abandon. It didn’t matter that gargoyles had stone skin and the impacts hurt her more than him. She would fight until she was rotting in the ground.
The gargoyle struggled to keep her still and pin her hands at the same time. When one of the men started laughing, Dan used her wrists to give her a hard shake, then delivered a light blow across her cheek with the back of his hand.
Light forhim,anyway.
She knew that if he’d given her a proper hit she’d be dead, but that didn’t mean it didn’thurt.Atria gasped as stars exploded in front of her eyes. Her head snapped to one side while her brain moved in the opposite direction, leaving her with a feeling of intense disorientation. It preceded a terrible pain just below her eye, on the swell of her cheek, and then a deep throbbing that echoed in her skull.
She was so shocked by the pain that she didn’t even notice they were moving until she nearly stumbled and was yanked up again, this time by the hair.
“Keep fuckin’ moving,” he growled.
The pain in her scalp made her eyes water, but she could make out the fact that they were moving quickly toward an old, dented SUV. One of the gargoyles hurried ahead to pop open the trunk. She had just long enough to be glad that they weren’t planning on flying with her anywhere before she saw what wasinthe trunk.
Rope, what looked like a dark, empty sack, duct tape, and one of those utility blankets that seemed to only ever be used for rolling up bodies.
She experienced a single moment of stark disbelief before raw terror washed into the empty space in her mind.
The gargoyle with the jammer walked leisurely around to the driver’s side while Dan dragged her toward the trunk. The other gargoyle bent down to grab the rope just as Atria found her voice again.
Sucking in a huge lungful of air, she screamed, “Kaz—”
The bolt hit Dan before any of them registered the high whine of the gun or the smell of burning air. He grunted and stumbled down onto his knees, taking her with him in a brutal fall she couldn’t protect herself from.
Her knees and elbows scraped the asphalt. Her captor wheezed, trying to catch his breath. His hand slackened around her wrists and in her hair as he began to recover from a shot that would have blasted a hole in any other being.
Atria didn’t waste a moment. She yanked her wrists out of his grip and threw herself backward before scrambling away on her knees.
Pushing her hair out of her eyes, she looked up and felt the air leave her lungs in one greatwhush.
The orc was striding swiftly toward them from between two cars, a massive handgun held aloft with both gloved hands. The gargoyle by the trunk had turned around, his wings arching up and around him protectively even as he charged toward the orc, but it wasn’t enough.
As she watched, three bolts left the chamber of the gun in quick succession. The orc’s face didn’t change one iota as they hit their target: the center of the gargoyle’s forehead.
The first one knocked his head back, making him stumble, but it wasn’t enough to kill him. The second and third, however…
Atria turned away as his body hit the back of the SUV and slumped down, his wings crooked and lifeless. She saw only a hint of what was once his head — now a smoking ruin remade by superheated plasma.
“Atria, to me!”
The sound of the whip-sharp command made her jolt. Kazimier was closing the gap between himself and the back of the SUV, but there were two more gargoyles to handle.Where’s the other one?she thought, clumsily attempting to get back on her feet and do as he said.
For once, she cursed her habit of wearing flowy clothing. It certainly didn’t make getting up any easier, especially when her bones felt like they were made of jello.
She’d just managed to push herself up with the help of a tire when a cruel hand grabbed the front of her sweater and yanked her down again. Atria yelped as the gargoyle clasped her to his burnt chest and began to rise. His wings extended. A growl, deep and awful, reverberated out of his chest and into hers as he began to back them away, toward the front of the SUV.
The orc aimed his gun at the both of them without so much as a flinch. “You’re going to regret touching her,Dan.”
“Fuck off, orc,” he snarled. “You ken how much she’s worth? I dinnae give a fuck about your gun. All you’re doin’ is saving me from having to split the bounty.”
He dragged her back another step and banded his thick forearm over her neck. Atria clawed at it, but her useless human nails had no hope of scratching the stone skin of a gargoyle.
