Stone and Earth Read Online Free PDF Page B

nodded, stifling a yawn. “Yep. That’s Twyla.”
     
    “Pretty.”
     
    “Th—” This time the yawn erupted. Logan shook his head. “Sorry. Not much sleep in the past few days. Pixie morning sickness is a bitch.”
     
    “Ah. Well, congratulations, then.” It took a second for Damien’s brain to process the connection. “Pixie? Was she by any chance Katie Calhoun’s previous roommate?”
     
    Logan nodded. “Yeah, the mayor said he was going to see if Katie could put you up for the interim. Everything okay there?”
     
    Damien swallowed hard. It was easy to see that his new partner was fond of his wife’s friend. He’d have to tread carefully. He wasn’t sure exactly what sort of being Logan was, but he looked tough enough to be a threat, even to a gargoyle. “Everything’s fine. Ms. Calhoun seems like a very…special woman.”

 
    Chapter Four
     
     
     
    And wasn’t that the understatement of the year, he though later, sitting across from Katie at her kitchen table eating lasagna.
     
    “You never did tell me why you were here in Philadelphia,” she remarked. They’d gone at it like minks on her living room floor the moment he’d walked in. Now they were taking a break for much-needed sustenance.
     
    “The job?” He thought he’d try the easy answer but he wasn’t surprised when she shook her head.
     
    “Okay. The gargoyle population has been having some problems. Our seers claim that they can be fixed by the recovery of certain magical artifacts. And according to the most recent vision, one of the artifacts is here in Philadelphia. So I was sent to try to find it.”
     
    “What kind of artifact?” She sipped her red wine and played with the long antique necklace she always wore. With her dressed in nothing but an oversized hockey jersey and him in his boxers, it was hard to keep his mind on anything but sex, even the survival of his own race.
     
    “A belt,” he told her. “Part of the original regalia of our ruler. When the gargoyles were created, we were given four talismans to protect our people. Over the years all four have been lost.” And without them, his people were dying.
     
    “Created?”
     
    He should have known her agile mind would seize on that. He sighed and started at the beginning. “Originally the gargoyles were one of the many tribes known as Goths. When we lost a major battle to another tribe, my people were given a choice—either be completely eradicated, or be transformed.”
     
    “Transformed?”
     
    He nodded. “Into guardians of a sort. By night we would be our natural selves, but by day, we would take on the aspects of demons and be set as stone statues on the cathedrals and castles built by our conquerors. We were granted four powerful objects to sustain the magic—a belt, a crown, a ring and a cup, each representing one of the four elements. In the hands of our chieftain and his mate, they balanced the negative power of our demonic curse.”
     
    “Over the centuries our sentence was lightened as we performed acts of valor and mercy. We still transformed by daylight, but were only required to turn to stone to heal from an injury or illness. Later, even that change was only forced for a small portion of our lifespan as an encouragement to renew the population. Now we make our first transformation at puberty instead of in infancy and after we’ve reproduced the change becomes optional.”
     
    “But somewhere along the way, the four artifacts were scattered and lost. Without them, our people are suffering. Babies are far less common. More and more of our children fail to survive the first change. And even adults in their prime are beginning to succumb to disease.”
     
    “Do all of your people live in Montreal?”
     
    “No. We began in what is now southern France, so our enclaves tend to be in areas settled by the French. The two largest on this continent are in Montreal and New Orleans, but there is a small colony in New York and in a few