“What I want,” he said, catching up her hand before she could move out of reach, “is for you to come back to me. Keep me company.”

It was a bad idea. Company meant talk and talk meant telling her things she probably wasn’t ready to hear, things he probably shouldn’t be telling her. But he’d come this far already.

She sat back down on the bed and looked at him warily, like he might bite off her hand if she weren’t careful.

“What’s the deal with the turning to stone?” she asked immediately. Almost as if she knew it might make him shut down … send her away. Let her escape.

Ahnvil ought to have done that. He ought to have sent her away and just settled down to wait out the storm in relative peace. Also, the idea of having more to eat was appealing. His metabolism was so damn high that he needed a constant influx of food. Not every second of every day, but at the very least a meal every two hours. Except when he was in stone state.

“A Gargoyle has three states,” he found himself telling her, as if he told mortal humans these things all the time. One of the unspoken and harshest rules in the Nightwalker world was that they never revealed themselves to the human world. But she had already seen too much and he hadn’t been prepared to explain away what she’d seen. It had simply never come up before. He’d had a flawless record of avoiding being seen in transformation.

“The flesh state”—he indicated his present state with a hand—“the stone state, where I turn completely tae stone from the tips of my hair tae the tips on my toes. Then the third state is the grotesque. I …” He hesitated and wondered why.

Because he didn’t want to be ugly or frightening to her. And in grotesque form he was exactly that.

“Go on. I’m a big girl. I can take it.” She wheedled him with a small, teasing smile. It made him laugh and he found himself dropping his guard.

“I well and truly look like a Gargoyle. As though you might have ripped me from the top of an old cathedral. It’s different for all of us, the way we look, but the one constant is wings. We all have wings.”

“Wings! You mean, stone wings? How the hell do you make stone aerodynamic?”

“Wings are wings, and ours are strong enough tae take flight despite the weight of our bodies.”

“Oh my God,” she said, her jaw dropping open. She was a smart girl. She could easily imagine, he knew, just how strong that meant he was. “So … you’re ugly?”

“I am,” he said with a grim nod. “And when I turn tae stone I’m worse.” He winked at her and she laughed in a surprised burst.

“Oh!” She shoved at him slightly. “You’re not ugly and you probably know it.”

“Aye, but it has been some time since I’ve heard a lass tell me so.”

She seemed to think on that a moment, her teeth coming to worry at her bottom lip thoughtfully.

“Why the h? In your name?”

Now this was a touchy topic for him. He deflected instinctively because the answer would only start them down on a wild path that promised to be very painful for him.

“You first. Why did you quit? Doona tell me ’tis because you’re weird. Why are you weird? What’s so wrong abou’ you?”

The worrying turned to full blown biting of her lip. He could tell by the volume of pain in her eyes that she had just as much reason for avoidance as he did.

Stubbornly she stood up and walked away. Ahnvil cursed himself for being cruel to her, but he couldn’t have it any other way. He didn’t want to talk about how, once upon a time, he’d had no name. No identity. No value as an individual. Perhaps it was because he’d just come so close to being in the same conditions that he was sensitive to it. But he would not have been made a slave this time. This time he would have died. And they wouldn’t have batted an eye while allowing it to happen. He still had the taste of fear in the back of his throat because of it. A fear that would not be erased until he got back in contact with his touchstone.

He felt a tremendous urge to trail after her, in spite of his desire to keep his business to himself. The impulse truly surprised him because he was such a close-to-the-vest person. Yet here he was, blabbing about all things supernatural. Although, the horse had already been out of the barn once she’d seen him turned to stone. That and the fact that he was even conscious after so much blood loss.

But a Gargoyle could only die from massive amounts of trauma, like say a spear to the heart or a transected aorta or the ever charming beheading. Complete blood loss was probably deemed a massive trauma. But he knew he’d come very close to death … or would have if he’d been left out in the storm bleeding to death. The other way a Gargoyle could die? If someone took a wrecking ball to them in statue form. Or damage equal to that. It was every Gargoyle’s worst fear. To be frozen in stone, totally helpless, watching certain death come at them.

Ahnvil shook the morbid trail of his thoughts away, hunkering down into the bed once again, wincing at the blossom of pain the movement caused. He needed to rest and heal and he needed to do it as quickly as possible. When the storm let up he would have to be on his way immediately. But it worried him, this storm. He had to get all the way to New Mexico, and after a storm airports were bound to be shut down for a while. Normally he would fly on his own, but this time he couldn’t. Not without risking permanent being. He could put off being away from his touchstone perhaps a few more days as long as he didn’t turn into his grotesque state. At this point even his stone state was taking a risk.

And then there was the issue of a compact little beauty with eyes the color of bourbon and hair like nice dark mink. He could not, absolutely not, leave her behind. Not with the knowledge she now had.

She didn’t know it yet, but rescuing him was going to change her life as she knew it forever.

CHAPTER NINE

A blizzard. His wife had just sent them dead-on into a blizzard. Jacob wrapped his body around his wife’s immediately using his Demon power to transform them both into dust. The trouble with that form, however, was that they were going to be subject to the whims of the blustering winds even more than they had been thus far. But Bella had refused to wait out the storm and had pressed him on almost fervently, making him really start to question what was driving her. His wife’s premonition abilities were known to be dangerously consuming, especially if she didn’t obey them. She may not realize precisely why she was being driven in a certain direction, just that she had to go at all costs.