As I took two steps through the field of flamingos a shadowy figure leapt from the top of the trailer. It crashed into me, and suddenly we were rolling on the ground together.
“Ye can’t have me!” Ronan’s garble Irish lilt met my ears as I flipped him onto his back.
“It’s me, you old coot,” I growled down at him, finding his lined stone face to be crumpled into a look of unknowing rage. His silver eyes which were nearly clear rolled wildly in his head as he fought against me.
“I don’t know anyone named Me!” Ronan insisted, his teeth sinking into my arm. Normally, nothing would puncture my stone-like skin, but like diamonds being used to cut diamonds, gargoyle teeth were special.
I howled and tried to yank my arm from his gnawing mouth. “Ow, you gobshite, release your fucking teeth before I pulled them out of your head.”
“Cash!” Daphne, who seemed to have forgotten the promise she’d made not even two minutes ago, screamed as she started to step out of the truck.
“Dammit, Daphne! I told you to stay in the truck!” I barked at her. “Get your ass back in there!”
With my attention on Daphne, Ronan took the opportunity to push me off onto my back and straddle my waist, his elbow on my jugular. “Tell me, fiend, who are ye!”
The sound of Daphne’s feet meeting the dirt made me turn to find her picking up a pitifully small rock from the ground and starting to advance towards us as if the rock would do anything to hurt the addled gargoyle currently trying to cut off my air supply.
I needed to regain control over this entire situation before my little human decided to try her luck scrapping with a creature that could rip her limb from limb.
“Ronan, look at me.” My voice was choked as I reached up and gripped the old gargoyle’s face and forced him to look down at me. “It’s just me. It’s just Cashiel.”
Ronan blinked once, then twice. Suddenly the elbow on my throat was gone and Ronan was leaning back on his knees, sudden clarity reentering his eyes again.
“Well why didn’t ye say so, my boy?” the gargoyle grumbled as if he hadn’t just been doing his very best to end me. He glanced up at Daphne who looked ready to murder him if he so much as looked at me wrong.
On one hand, her protectiveness made the song in my chest swell and crescendo with pride. But on the other hand, my heart was still pounding wildly with fear at the idea of her trying to defend me and getting hurt in the process.
“Who are ye, lass?” Ronan asked, his attention finally moving to Daphne. “And what did ye think the rock would do to me? It takes a lot more than a pebble like that to fell a gargoyle.”
Ronan stood and pulled me to my feet and set to work dusting my clothes off before frowning at the several flamingos that had been knocked over in the scuffle. “I’m sorry ladies, I didn’t mean to bring ye into my fight.”
He paused, as if listening to their responses. “No, I know his lass came to his rescue, but that doesn’t mean I need ye to do the same for me. Ginny, can the attitude before I put ye into time out.”
The flamingos, as always, remained silent where they stood.
“Ye might as well both come inside for a bit of tea, I just put the kettle on,” Ronan said, seeming to have forgotten his earlier question about who Daphne was.
Ronan hurried up the steps of his trailer, throwing the door open with a bang before disappearing inside.
I turned to Daphne. “I told you to stay in the truck.”
“He was hurting you,” Daphne said, pointing at the bite mark on my arm.
“Doesn’t matter, he would have killed you in a breath if I wasn’t here,” I told her, wanting her to understand just how serious the situation had been.
“But youwerehere, and you’d never let anything happen to me, right?” she asked, fluttering those damn lashes up at me before bending over to set the flamingos on the ground to rights.
Ronan popped his head out of the door of the trailer. “Thank ye for doing that, Irma and Magdalene appreciate it,” he called before ducking back inside again.
“See?” Daphne said pointing at the flamingos. “Irma and Magdalene appreciate it.”
Then my fearless heart song waltzed up to the trailer and stepped inside as if the entire skirmish on the ground hadn’t happened.
“What the fuck have I gotten myself into?” I muttered to myself as I followed her.
The trailer was actually cleaner than it usually was. There was no trash littering the floor and his bed was even haphazardly made.
There was a cardboard box full of Snickers bars, Ronan’s favorite food, shoved against the fridge and I watched him kick it out of the way so he could get to the stove.
