Page 7

ASH

The stone man stood outside my crypt for a second time as darkness blanketed the graveyard. And for a second time, I didn't tell him to leave.

Or flash fry him again.

He hadn’t disintegrated like everyone else did when I lost my shit.

That earned him significant brownie points in my book, even though I suspected he wouldn't understand the reference. Nor did I understand who he spoke to when he waited afterward, murmuring softly as though he prayed, though I didn’t think he was the prayerful sort.

No, we were gods amongst these mortals. Not above them in any way, but… apart.

Unlike them, as we were unlike all others.

Even his friend who seemed to have immersed himself in the culture of this world and all it had to offer. I wondered if he had always been that way, or if he, too, had struggled with a sense of time and place and where he stood within existence, once.

Or not.

Maybe one day we’d be on good enough terms for me to ask. Or maybe I’d ash him before I got the chance. Who really knew? That was the story of my intimate life right there: fall in love, have a snog, pile of ash.

My sex life, summed up in three dot points.

I’d never made it to third base, because intimacy caused that same flash/bang result my stone man experienced first-hand.

“So why aren’t you ash?” I asked the inside of my crypt.

“Why don’t you come out and we can work it out together?”

I started when he answered, not realizing he’d been listening so hard to my internal ruminations, as though he could read my mind all along. “It’s not nice to eavesdrop,” I snapped.

“It’s not nice to incinerate someone when they’re offering you protection,” he rebuked me softly.

Amber eyes met mine through the larger cracks in the stained marble.

I swore the gaps were bigger than they had been the night prior as I crouched over the cold slab.

My fingers traced the name etched into the stone that had worn away from floods the raised dais didn’t protect decades before, no matter the designer’s intent.

“It’s a failsafe,” I muttered, creeping forward, until my fingertips pressed to the outside. Another flash, a little ash, and I stood in the night air beside him, reeking of stale graves and death. “It always fails to keep me safe."

Hard, thick fingers hesitated a breath from my cheek before they made contact. His touch was warm and firm, as before, and he sought permission before his skin grazed mine. I nodded once, and didn’t pull away. Because I felt like I knew this man, despite his hulking size.

And he was safe.

“So you're not going to ash me this time?” The corners of his mouth lifted momentarily.

I shrugged, just to let off some steam on my sassy side. “I mean, I might. If you let that stoic nature of yours come out to play. Your stone could use a little tan on the other side.” I wiggled my pointer finger in a circle, indicating he should turn around like a rotisserie chicken on a skewer.

He laughed, long and full bodied. I liked that sound, and wondered what it would be like to listen at closer quarters, with my ear against that great, heavy chest of his.

“I might be a bit pasty on my other side,” he conceded, wiggling his backside.

I bit back a laugh. “I’m not sure I can deal with a smiling stone man,” I admitted, circling him, and checking out the goods he offered.

Nothing had changed about his well over the mid-six-foot-five-inches range and brick shithouse ranking shoulders that stayed as still as he had in his stone form until I completed my inspection.

I bit my lip and made my first confession since he had been nice and held to his promise of returning to see me. “I don’t know your name.”

“Dolion.”

My lips made his name in silence as I tried it out.

He’s definitely from a different time. We had that in common.

Those citrine eyes lit on me as I completed my rotation around his heavy body—not an inch of fat anywhere on him that I could fathom—and I cleared my throat as well of my mind, of filthy thoughts.

Clearly, I’d been deprived of male company, or any company, really, for far too long.

“Did you need me to say it again?” His eyes tracked my movement, tracing the shape my mouth made.

I shut my lips tight and shook my head.

His lips quirked. “In that case, I should sleep.”

“Sleep?” I broke my vow a fraction of a second after making it. “But you just got here.”

“And now I know that you are safe, perhaps you will return the favor. I have been awake for too many hours, and this body is…tired.” He leaned against my crypt, his shoulders dropping slightly.

I frowned at his posture. “Is that a…thing?” My frown deepened when his expression matched mine, and I shook my head.

“You haven’t been around for a while, have you?

” I murmured. Gotta watch the references with this one.

Actually, it was kinda a breather to drop the current language with this man and drop back into an older style of speech that I hadn’t used in a long time.

“Let’s give this a go. I might be a little rusty,” I warned him, though those amber eyes never wavered in their focused gaze, despite the way he shifted restlessly against my crypt.

“You need rest after being up for the day, then?” I clarified.

He nodded, leaning his head back against the marble. “I used to wake at night, roam the bayous with Sebastian. My vampire friend,” he said, his voice near a thin whisper. “Back when…” Dolion’s voice trailed off.

I bit my lip. Don’t pry, don’t pry. “Back when what?” I asked softly.

I am shit at this.

Dolion pried his eyes open that had fluttered shut. “Back when I was in love. Three hundred years I slept. You’d think I have had enough of wasting my own time, would you not? But no. May I perch on top of your crypt while you sleep?”

He didn’t wait for an answer before slinging one long, muscular arm that strained the thin material of his fine cotton shirt over the peaked roofline of the crypt. He hauled himself up in a smooth motion that belied his heavy mass, all feline grace as he landed in a crouch.

Hands that I swore were smoother a moment before ended in extended claws that curved over the rooftop, his knees and thighs bursting with the sort of muscle football players and wrestlers around the world would have turned frog pond green over.

But his face was what took on the greatest transformation of all.

Those bronzed features, all smooth lined and rounded angles twisted into a grotesque monster until I couldn't reconcile the man with the hideous stone carving stooped over my tomb.

“Dolion?” I whispered, stretching out a hand to touch the gargoyle's face. His mouth hung slightly ajar, and I half expected water to tumble forth. If I hadn’t seen his kind overpopulating the rooflines of buildings in the darkest years of Europe's history, I might not have known him for what he was and walked past him in the cemetery just like the community walking groups. But having seen the hideous monsters who stood sentinel over the precious buildings and homes, warding away the worst of that period’s evil to keep their homes and families safe…

I stopped hesitating and curved my palm over his ruined cheek.

The stone beneath my hand was cool, though for a moment I fancied I could still feel the thrum of his pulse kick beneath the flesh turned cool.

No heartbeat emanated from within his hard chest, all the warmth sucked from him, or enclosed within the granite looking mineral that encased his body in this new form.

“I’ll see you at sunrise, little sentinel,” I whispered, lest I rouse him, though I had little fear of that, truly.

He had said he was tired, and I believed him.

I had my own jobs to complete tonight, including locate his friend, the vampire, and convincing both him and the bar witch that I wasn’t the threat they believed me to be.

And then, with or without my stone friend's help, I needed to create an exit strategy from New Orleans before I ashed someone else by mistake.

It seemed there were already rumors that I was some arcane creature of a different sort.

I should probably leave before they decide I was a dragon and try to experiment on me, or worse.

That last had been tried before, many times, along with a few other things that didn’t turn out so well, for either me or the other parties.

It turned out that I survived, even if they didn’t.

And their paperwork didn’t fare so well, either.

But in either case, Dolion wouldn’t be so excited to find out I’d abandoned my post if I didn’t return by the time he awoke.

I pressed up onto my toes until they barely touched the graveyard floor, and still found myself too short to be on eye level with my tame gargoyle. Well, nearly tame. He probably wouldn't want to be called that, but Dolion’s preferences weren’t tonight's problems.

“I’ll be back soon,” I promised him, and just because I could, I found the corner of his cold stone lips with mine and left a chaste kiss there that kind of burned with a sensation I hadn't experienced before.

It would be just my luck that I’d be allergic to gargoyle flavored stone.

Ignoring the tingle that wouldn’t rub off, I darted away from the stone sentinel clinging to my crypt as I left the safe haven of the graveyard, and the man who trusted me to keep him safe.

The vampire wasn’t at the bar the witch ran when I slipped through the doorway.

One look at the bar owner who shook her head—either to say the creature I sought wasn’t in attendance or that I wasn’t welcome in her establishment—told me that tonight wasn’t my night.

I left as quietly as I arrived, wondering that she didn’t have security on the door and then decided that she probably didn’t need it after all.

The sting of her viridian gaze lanced through me long after I walked along Bourbon Street alone, letting the crowds pass by me.

Each brush of wayward hands or arms reminded me that I remained a part of their civilization, these people, even when I constantly felt apart from each person no matter how I tried to join in with their activities.

Strange, that when I finally stopped was when I found the closest acceptance.

Here, amongst the crowd, I could walk freely, be myself. Perhaps I should bring a Dolion along with me next time I decide to socialize by mistake. We could walk along with the crowd, or against the flow and pretend to be who we wanted to be, or just…be.

Perhaps that was the lesson that, after over six thousand years of existence, I had finally managed to learn.

I hoped he wasn’t too upset about the kiss I had stolen, if he recalled the pressure of my lips against his stone at all. I had no idea how aware he would be in his grotesque state, though I suspected he chose what to feel and what not to remember at all.

I was in love.

Okay, so I paraphrased. But that was the gist of what he’d said.

Not that he was in love now … I nibbled on my bottom lip, lost in thought as I walked through the edge of the crowd and out the back of the current party, lost in a darkened space for no more than a handful of breaths before the next on coming crowd engulfed me.

Long enough for an arm to snake out of the darkened space between buildings and tug me sideways into the shadows. Lost in my thoughts of another man, I didn’t even put up a fight. Because let’s face it. When you possess the ability to flash fry any enemy, fighting isn’t really a necessary skill.

Until the day an enemy possesses the skills to avoid said flash frying.

The fact that Dolion still existed bamboozled me. Not that I’d taken a stone lover before, or that he was one. Yet . If I had my way, maybe he could be my first.

Maybe.

Or maybe he was a smooth distraction in an otherwise bumpy existence.

I shrugged the uncomfortable admission that, in all my centuries in this world, I had never successfully taken a lover I could commune with intimately without killing the poor man. Or woman, because I tried that once before too. That one hurt. Really hurt.

I hadn’t meant to destroy the poor girl, and…

Well. Ash happened.

“You’re supposed to scream or put up a fight.” The soft voice behind me sounded…amused.

I sighed. “I was busy. And I had other things on my mind. Can we not get this over with? How much to make you go about your night and bother someone else?” I didn’t turn around.

All robbers were alike. Tall, or short. They had skin, hair and a beating heart. In a few minutes, when my boy heart ratcheted up a few notches, that m last wouldn’t be a problem any more.

Another flash/bang moment brought to the streets of New Orleans by yours truly.

Hopefully the local population would think my display had more to do with fireworks than any supernatural occurrence, thigh with Dolion’s friend and the bar witch sniffing about, my chances of surviving unscathed for too much longer grew slimmer by the nightfall.

“The thing is, little firebird, it’s you I wanted to find.” The amusement dropped from my captor’s voice, though his hand didn’t.

I sighed again. Peek-a-boo, I found you. Or rather, he’d found me. “Sebastian.”

“I am indeed.”

A snort ripped free from me. “The two of you won’t survive here. Your friend looks like he stepped straight from the sixteenth century. You sound like it. The pair of you need to level up, vampire king.”

I could hear his eyes roll, I swore.

“I can see why he’s enamored with you,” Sebastian murmured. “But, little firebird, we have a problem with you.”

“ You have a problem with me,” I corrected, as another sigh whispered from my lungs.

Facing Sebastian for the first time, I stared into the vampire’s soulless eyes as he tried to enthrall me and failed.

This is fun. What other tricks would you like to try on me, Mister Vampire?

My patience waned along with my energy as my body began to heat, boding poorly for both myself and my future lover’s best friend, plus any other life form in the alley.

“Let me set a few things straight. First?—”

“She’s not a firebird. She’s a Firestarter. You should know the difference, Sebastian. And why in the hell are my toes pink?”

.