Page 114 of Soulbound

"Some sorcerers use stone constructs in place of watchdogs."

She knew the theory behind magic constructs. The Jewish called them golem, though she'd read that a golem was created when a power word was etched upon a scroll and placed within the golem's clay casing. Constructs were resurrected by a single spoken power word, and a sorcerer could create one of the soulless, mindless automatons out of anything: stone, wood, paper, shadows....

"If Lady Beaumont died, then all her spell work should have died with her," Cleo said, "unless she embedded the spell in a rune."

"I can't see one. Someone else must have created this construct," he said.

The gargoyle's head turned to face them suddenly, and Cleo took a startled step back.

Those red eyes locked on her. Oh, mercy. She froze, but it was too late. The construct saw the small movement. "Sebastian?"

He stepped between them, funneling energy out of the air. "When I tell you to run, then run."

The gargoyle launched forward on all fours, it's heavy wings tucked tight against its body. Sebastian detonated one of the preprepared charges in his rings, and a wave of force unleashed. It smashed the construct back into—and through—a wall.

"Run!"

No need to say it twice. Cleo grabbed her skirts and raced along the hallway with Sebastian at her heels. A thunderous crash sounded behind them, sending her heart rabbiting in her chest.

"If we can get outside the house, there's a good chance it won't follow!" Sebastian yelled.

The front door had never seemed so far away. Growling sounds echoed behind them, hot on their heels. They'd never make it.

"Yes, we will," Sebastian snapped.

Sebastian warded, and the gargoyle flew into the shimmering dome surrounding him. The impact drove him off his feet, and he landed on the hall runner, sliding several yards along the floor. Cleo hesitated, turning toward the creature as it regained its feet. Sebastian's ward protected him, but the fall had disorientated him enough to leave him unsteady as he rolled onto his side.

If he dropped his ward....

She glanced around, and snatched an urn off a nearby pedestal, hurling it toward the creature. Priceless antique porcelain shattered on the gargoyle's wings. "Over here, you ugly lump of stone!"

Red eyes locked upon her, and the sleek muscle in its haunches gathered itself.

Cleo sprinted toward the stairs. Snatching at the railing, she hauled herself around the corner where the staircase met the upper hallway, chancing a glance behind her. Scrabbling claws peeled small scrolls of timber off the floorboards as it tried to bank, and the gargoyle slammed into a wall, tearing the delicate Chinese wallpaper and knocking a picture frame to the floor.

Its eyes flared red with vicious need. Cleo's heart stopped, terror choking her. She fled down the stairs, her boots catching on the last step and sending her sprawling onto the marble floors in the foyer, the sting to her palms and knees jolting her. She rolled onto her back, summoning her power and flinging up a hasty ward.

A man stepped into the foyer, avoiding the patches of hazy sunlight that lit the floor. He flexed a hand, and sorcery filled the air, tainting it with a coppery taste.

"Hezhrazahd." A single horrific word of command, and the gargoyle exploded into a million small shards, raining dust everywhere.

Cleo lowered the arm she'd hastily flung in front of her face. The word seemed to pulse in her ears, as if it ate its way inside her.

Wiping his hands and a cutthroat razor upon what appeared to be an old shirt, Drake de Wynter looked down at her, his lips thinning and his eyes no longer the pale gray they'd once been, but a demon's merciless obsidian depths.

"I truly wish the pair of you hadn't walked in here," it said.

Chapter 25

THE SIGHT OF the man who'd sired him punched through Sebastian's chest, shocking the breath from his lungs.

The duke might have been his mirror image if he were thirty years younger. The duke's shoulders and chest were broader than Sebastian's, his build solid and filled with a quiet menacing strength. The faint cleft of both their chins matched, and he recognized his mouth in his father's face, though the shape of his eyes was more like Morgana's.

They'd only met in the flesh once, and several times upon an astral plane Drake had dragged him to when he was trapped in a cell in his mother's house. Drake had been trying to rescue him then, begging him to hold on and not unleash the almighty powers brewing within him like a thunderstorm.

But there was no sign of his father anymore.

Sebastian rose to a crouch, and then froze when the demon stared at him. Any sudden movement.... He glanced at Cleo. She was far too close to it. He'd never reach her in time.