If anything, the female went even more still. She seemed almost to stop breathing, and her dark eyes opened so far the whites shone in the dim moonlight. Her jaw fell another full inch, a look of utter shock suffusing her features.
“Warden?” she repeated in that unexpected rasp. “The Order, the Seven, the Darkness, a Guardian.” She shook her head and scrambled suddenly to her knees, leaning forward to stare at him intently. “How do you know those terms? What do they mean to you?”
Dag felt his brows knit together as he stared down at the tiny human. “They mean everything. I am a Guardian of the Light, sworn to protect your world from the evil of the Seven Demons of the Darkness, and if you do not know this, then you cannot be my Warden. But if you are not, then tell me how I was summoned from my sleeping?”
“Sure, sure, absolutely. Just as soon as you tell me which rabbit hole I fell down, because all of a sudden I have the feeling that I am very late to the party.”
Chapter Two
Dos lebn iz nit mer vi a kholem—ober vek nikh mit oyf.
Life is no more than a dream—but don’t wake me up.
Kylie pinched herself hard enough to leave a bruise, but nothing changed. She still knelt in the bell tower of some ancient Boston church, and she’d gotten there by being flown in by a creature out of a Disney cartoon series.
Flown. As in picked up in a set of wickedly sharp talons, lifted clear off the ground, and carried through the air without the benefit of a cramped seat, an air-pressurized cabin, and a minuscule bag of complimentary pretzels.
If this turned out to be some kind of weird, mugging-induced hallucination, and she was really in a hospital bed somewhere having herself a nice little coma, she was going to be hella disappointed.
This was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to her!
You know, provided it was actually happening.
She shifted forward, easing an inch closer to the giant, inhuman creature that filled her vision, and winced when her muscles protested. She definitely felt like she’d just been attacked, and wouldn’t she be pain-free if she were in a coma? If not, it sounded grossly unfair, so she was going to assume she was alive and the sight in front of her was real.
She wanted so badly to reach out and touch him, just to prove it. Her fingers actually twitched as she struggled to control the impulse.
“You speak nonsense, human. I saw no hole,” the creature intoned, its voice so deep she felt it almost more than she heard it. It vibrated through the planks underneath her and up through her body like an earthquake. “You appeared to fall as a result of the nocturnis’ attack, not because of some misstep.”
Huh. Well, this was certainly proving to be an articulate monster, she decided with a blink, and that had to be more evidence on the side of reality. After all, given her tendency to abuse two languages—English and Yiddish—equally, why would her mind conjure up a figment of her imagination who spoke more precisely than she ever did?
And really, where would she have gotten the idea of being carried off from a random attack in a park by a living gargoyle? Even the statue she’d walked past hadn’t looked like this. The gray stone of the carving had been weathered beyond belief, the features and details of the original nearly worn away by time and the elements. It looked more like a misshapen blob of natural limestone and not at all like this chiseled, three-dimensional work of Gothic art. When had she acquired the skill to think up a sculpture this vivid?
He looked like he should be perched atop a spire at Notre Dame. With his stony gray skin, animalistic features, and enormous batlike wings sprouting from his back, he defined the cultural image of a gargoyle. He sat crouched in front of her, and considering she’d bet that he topped out around seven feet when standing erect, she couldn’t complain about his decision not to loom over her.
If her bubbeh had taught her better manners, she’d have thanked him. Well, okay, if the manner lessons had stuck with her, because heaven knew her grandmother had tried.
Muscles bulged and rippled every time the creature so much as drew breath. Muscles on top of muscles, so that he radiated the kind of power that could rend limbs from bodies or uproot ancient oak trees. He probably couldn’t open a door without ripping the thing from its hinges, yet he had carried Kylie with care, not so much as pricking through her coat with the claws that looked like they came from some kind of predatory dinosaur.
Maybe that was why, when she looked at what should have struck her as a monster, she felt no fear. Fascination, curiosity, even awe, but no fear. So either she instinctively trusted the thing not to hurt her, or she was just seriously out of her mind. Even on her best day, that was a tough call.