Rocked by Love (Gargoyles Series) (14 page)

Dag pointed at the screen. “Apparently, it happens when they brag to jealous acquaintances about the ‘good shit’ their private club provides them. And when they deliberately punch a police officer in order to be arrested and removed from the scene.”

“Yowza. I suppose that’s one way to get out of a sticky situation. Why were none of the others arrested?”

“I suspect that none of the substances found were illegal, either because they used more esoteric ingredients, or because they used magic to eliminate any traces of banned substances.”

“Wow. Don’t let that strategy get out to the world of professional sports.” Kylie scrolled down the page, her gaze skimming over more text. “
Oy vey,
does that really say the guy had himself exorcised? As in, ‘I need an old priest and a young priest’?”

“It appears so. That may explain the lack of a taint in the apartment, despite his initial involvement with the Order.”

Kylie looked at him, curious about that statement. “You mean the Catholic stuff really works?”

“Not in the way you imply.” Dag shrugged. “Any strong faith in goodness can work effectively against the Darkness. Religious rituals and acts of faith are magical workings by another name. They possess power to affect the world. That does not mean that any one human religion has all the correct answers to the meaning of life. It merely suggests that if this man believed in the power of the Catholic Church to remove the taint of the Darkness from him, he may have influenced the efficacy of the ritual.”

“All righty then.”

Kylie leaned backward, suddenly remembered she was balanced on her ball, not sitting in a chair, and righted herself with only minimal flailing of the arms. At least she didn’t accidentally elbow Dag in the crotch. Though on second thought, it did feel like a bit of a wasted opportunity. She also disturbed King David’s nap, to which he reacted poorly. He jumped to the floor with a hiss and stalked away, the tip of his tail twitching all the while.

“Well,” she managed. “I’m thinking that this maybe explains why this guy was willing to answer my questions about demons, Guardians,
nocturnis,
and Wardens.”

Dag frowned thoughtfully. “Perhaps, perhaps not. It explains his separation from the Order and his negative feelings for it and all it represents, but does it fully account for his remaining alive past his release from police custody? Or his continued collection of information on the group and the decision to share it with a stranger such as yourself.”

“Hey, I’m not that strange.” She ignored his skeptical look, mostly because she’d seen it before when she’d said similar things to others. “But yeah, I can see it as a motivating factor. Someone sucks the soul out of the person I love, and I’m going to want to bring those sons of bitches down. And I’d take help from just about anyone who offered it.”

He appeared unconvinced. “How did you offer to help him, precisely? I was under the impression that you merely asked questions and expressed an interest in certain concepts surrounding the struggle between Darkness and Light.”

“Does all that cynicism ever give you heartburn?”

“You have already experienced one attack by a minion of the Darkness. Do you truly wish for another?” He stared at her with those burning black eyes of his until she wanted to check her skin for burn marks. “You are in danger. Until we know the source of the threat we cannot assess its gravity. Would you prefer to be taken unawares?”

Kylie glared at him. “I thought you didn’t approve of sarcasm, Rock Hudson.”

He ignored her and gestured to the computer screen. “We must assume that this human was intelligent enough to hide from the Order after he escaped their clutches. One who had seen so much of their operations would never be allowed to live unless fully indoctrinated and devoted to their cause.”

“You’re right.” Kylie considered that, her lips pursing as she thought. “That makes me wonder if Dennis Ott was his real name or some sort of alias. If I wanted to avoid a group of crazy psychopaths who knew my name and all the other pertinent details of my identity, the first thing I would do is change my name. I’d also leave town pretty quick, but if he did want some kind of revenge on the Order, he may have felt sticking around offered him the best chance at bringing them down.”

“He had no chance of ‘bringing them down’ as you say. The Order predates him by thousands of years. If my brothers and I have not managed to destroy it by now, he had no hope of besting our attempts.”

“So he was an optimist. A naïve, totally-out-of-his-depth optimist, but still. It doesn’t really matter to us who he was before he got mixed up with the
nocturnis,
I’m assuming, but if you’re interested, I can see if I can find anything on his real background.”

Dag shook his head. “That is unimportant. What matters is that even though he made an effort to hide from them, the Order still found him and killed him. If he was equally careless in concealing his connection to you, it would explain why the
nocturnis
are already looking for you. If they believe he shared his knowledge with you, they will not like leaving a loose end untied.”

Oh, wow. Kylie hadn’t even thought of that. “Um, maybe I should stop procrastinating and go ahead and order that home security system I’ve had my eye on…”

“Any measures you take to increase the security around you are worth exploring, but relying on mundane human methods would be folly. I will begin regular patrols around the building and will take full charge of your whereabouts at all times.”

She couldn’t say she liked the sound of that; to her it smacked too much of the life of a prisoner. On the other hand, she liked the sound of dying from a knife to the throat and the gut even less. “I guess we’ll be busy for the next little while, then, huh?”

“Very.” Dag looked grim. “In addition to doing what must be done to increase your safety, we still have unanswered questions raised by the contents of this device. Who was the man in the video recording? Based on his words, both what he said and how he said it, I believe there is a possibility he may have been, if not the Hierophant, then one very close to the ruler of the Order.”

A surge of excitement raced through her and Kylie sent up a quick prayer. “Oh, please let it be that easy!” She called up a new program and did a few quick fiddles, capturing a screen shot of the man’s blurry image and saving it as a separate file. “I got the film as clean as I was able to, but I know a guy who’s an expert with imaging. If anyone can do something to get a recognizable face from this
shmuts,
it’s him. I’ll shoot it his way and see what he can do.”

The Guardian grunted his approval of the idea. “Good, but there is more. How are we to discover the details of this grand plan the
nocturni
mentioned? Clearly we must put a stop to anything that could raise so much power for the Seven. Both for the greater good, and for the sake of the hundreds of lives that would be lost.”

Kylie sent her e-mail to Vic, the wonder imager, zipping through the ether, then returned her full attention to Dag. “No, you’re absolutely right. Whatever it is, we need to stop it, which means first off, finding out what ‘it’ is. There are still a couple of files on here that I haven’t gone over yet. It’s possible they could tell us, or at least point us to where we can look for more info.”

“Digging deeper only increases the danger to you, and by extension, the larger cause.”

She scowled. Seriously, the guy was a bad influence. “Are you saying we don’t look? That we just let it happen?”

“Of course not. But perhaps it would be safer if you did as the other man did not and left this city for a different location, one where you would be harder to find.”

“That’s a joke, right?” Kylie knew the answer to that, but he needed to hear how ridiculous his suggestion sounded. “First of all, no frickin’ way. Second of all, what? You’re just going to send me away somewhere where I
won’t
have my very own Guardian watching my back? Are you going to paint a target on it, too?”

“Do not be ridiculous. You could travel to the home of the witch. She is your friend, and my brother would guard you just as I would. You would be safer away from here.”

“I call that
blote.
Bullshit. All I would be is away. Safer’s got nothing to do with it. If they want to find me, they’re going to find me. If you really want to keep me safe, you’d be better off bringing Wynn and Knox here where they can both help guard me and maybe teach me to better guard myself. I’m a Warden now, right? Well, I’m not going to be a very good one until someone shows me how.”

When he opened his mouth to protest, she bounced right up off her ball and got up in his face. Or as close as she could be from more than a foot below it. “And you can add all that fine, rational logic of mine to this: I flat refuse. You want me out of here, you’ll have to drag me out, kicking, screaming, and plotting in my head the quickest way back. I don’t like taking orders, and I
hate
being treated like a child.”

Number five on the List, actually.

By the time she finished her little speech, she stood before him on the tips of her toes, leaning so close that her chest nearly mashed itself up against his. She had her shoulders pulled back, her eyes narrowed, and her chin practically pointed at the ceiling. Her hackles were raised, her back was up, and frankly, she was a little surprised that smoke didn’t seem to be pouring out of her ears, because she was mad, she was determined, and she was all worked up into an epic case of
shpilkes
.

Then she blinked and got a good look at Dag’s expression.

All of a sudden, the
shpilkes
became tingles and dropped down to concentrate in a very specific place—namely, right between her thighs. What did it say that every time the two of them worked each other up, Kylie’s mind turned immediately to sex?

And her mind still lagged about three steps behind her body, it seemed, which for the first time in her life was working more slowly than someone or something else.

The tension between them could not be cut by a knife. Kylie guessed it would require a chain saw at the very least. Maybe a laser torch. Dag’s black eyes had turned nearly red, so brightly did the fires that normally flickered within now burn. She felt pinned in place, breathless and aching, and damn him for being the cause of it all.

For the span of several pounding heartbeats, she waited for his hands to close around her, for his mouth to crash down once again and consume her the way he had just a few hours ago. She could feel the crackling energy of lust sparking between them and knew anything could happen at any moment. Any. Thing. At. All.

But she wasn’t expecting the roar.

Throwing back his head, Dag released a roar even louder than the battle cry with which he had greeted the
drude.
This time, her plaster actually did crack, a small section of it raining down from the ceiling even as the Guardian spun and shot from the room faster than the sound could travel.

Kylie stood there and watched him go, a light coating of dust in her hair and a vow to get even growing in her heart.

So Mr. Rocks for Brains thought he could just walk out on her every time things between them got a little heated? Oh, he would learn the truth, and Kylie T. Kramer would teach it to him, one day very, very soon.

She hoped he took notes, because it was going to be a long and thorough lesson.

Chapter Eight

Di velt iz sheyn nor di mentshn makhn zi mies.

The world is beautiful but people make it ugly.

The second time Dag disappeared, he didn’t return for hours. Oh, he didn’t really
go
anywhere. Kylie could occasionally see him through the windows as he paced around the house, covering all three sides in a uselessly repetitive patrol. More than once she considered going online and buying him one of those big, furry hats the ceremonial guards wore at Buckingham Palace, but when she found herself fantasizing about places to put it other than his head, she decided against it. She doubted he’d stand still long enough for her to lodge it where she really wanted to.

In the end he stayed outside until she gave up and dragged her ass upstairs to bed way earlier than usual. Apparently finding a dead body, being attacked by a minor demon, kissing a gargoyle, and then doing hours and hours of esoteric research could really take a lot out of a girl.

The next morning set a new pattern for the week. After informing her stiffly that he had indeed decided to summon Knox and Wynn to join them in Boston, Dag had spent the rest of that day and every following one performing a disappearing act that would have made David Copperfield proud. He never went far, but he always seemed to find something to do outside, in another room, or as far removed from her presence as possible. Kylie started to wonder if someone had tampered with her shower gel and slipped some
eau de skunk
in there while she wasn’t looking.

The few times he did deign to speak with her, it always revolved around his “security” concerns. The first words out of his mouth every time he so much as glanced at her were to inquire whether she’d called the alarm company yet, until she did just to get him off her back. The man could teach her
bubbeh
about nagging.

It wasn’t as if Kylie hadn’t always intended to have a security system installed, she just resented being ordered to do it. In this day and age, property crime was a concern not to be taken lightly, and her lawyers kept telling her that a woman with her money needed to be even more conscious of personal security than the average person. Kylie tended not to think like that, because to her, the money wasn’t a big deal.

Okay, so she was worth more at twenty-three (about to turn twenty-four) than most people were after a lifetime of work and savings, but to her the money that resulted from her work was a total afterthought. It was the work itself she cared about.

When she’d written the app that eventually earned her millions, she had just wanted to see if she could fix a tech problem that bugged her. She hadn’t intended at that point to drop out of college, let alone to be bought out and eventually hired by the very company whose product she had improved upon; that had just happened. And for her, the money was convenient. It meant she could buy a house in a neighborhood she liked, that she could decide what to work on based on what interested her, rather than any other criteria, and it meant she could buy herself a few cool toys when she felt like it.