Stone Cold Lover Read Online Free PDF

behind the words, even if she hadn’t been able to see the faint shadings of irritation in his aura.
    “It’s not like I’m chatting with my sorority sister about the latest style trends,” she snapped. “Ella is the one who sent me looking for you in the first place, and it’s becoming pretty damned clear she knew something about you before she did. Frankly, she owes me some downright heavy-duty explanations right about now.”
    He folded his arms over his chest and settled farther down on his haunches. “Your friend knows of my kind. Is she a Warden?”
    “A what-den?”
    “A member of the Guild,” he added, as if that clarified things.
    Fil rolled her eyes. “Two species separated by a common language,” she paraphrased under her breath. She nearly jumped when the phone in her hand chimed again. This time, when she answered the call, Ella’s familiar face filled the screen.
    “Okay, El,” she bit out, staring into her friend’s troubled gray eyes. “Now would be a really good time to tell me what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks is going on here.”
    “I will, Fil, I promise. But first there’s something you need to see.”
    Before Felicity could protest, Ella shifted out of the picture and the camera panned over to focus on someone else. Or rather, something else.
    The image on the screen halted Fil’s breath in her throat. An angelic male face peered back at her with eyes blacker than pitch, lit from behind with a thousand fires. They made Fil think of lava flows, molten-red in the cracks, but topped with a crust of obsidian.
    The eyes were set in a face that looked as if it had been carved from granite, and if that wasn’t enough for her to make the connection, the skin like stone and the horns curving back from the rugged brow would have tipped her off. The man on the screen could have been Spar’s brother. In fact, Fil would have bet a year of her life that was exactly who he was.
    “His name is Kees.” Ella’s voice came from out of frame, but Fil had no trouble making out the words. “He’s a—”
    “A Guardian,” Fil finished, feeling grim. “Let me guess. Could he possibly be the ‘statue’ that was supposedly stolen from the Vancouver Museum of Art and History just a few short weeks ago?”
    Ella shifted back into the picture, sharing the space with the enormous creature beside her. Something in the way the woman leaned against the Guardian’s massive chest sent a stirring of something through Fil, but she ignored it. She had bigger things to worry about right now.
    “He is,” Ella confirmed with a nod. “But I think you know by now that Kees was never a statue. Not really. He was just sleeping.”
    “Yeah, it sounds like there was a lot of that going around.” She sighed and shook her head. “Well, let me be the one to get the reunion started. Kees, this is Spar. Spar, I have a feeling you know Kees.”
    Fil handed the phone to the creature beside her. Another time, she might have laughed at the way his giant hands fumbled with the small piece of technology, but her head had begun to ache way too much to risk it. The way she felt right now, the damned thing might explode on her at the smallest chuckle.
    Spar scowled down into the screen, moving the phone back and forth toward his face as if trying to zoom in the picture. “Kees? Is that you, my brother?”
    “It is,” the other Guardian snarled. “For the sake of the Light, will you hold still before you make us both dizzy?”
    “You look so small. I can hardly see that it is you. Why do you not come closer so that I might view you more easily?”
    “I am on the other side of the continent at the moment, my friend,” Kees explained. “What you see is a transmission of my image. This technology is new to you, I take it. When was the last time you woke?”
    “They told me the year was 1789. A great human slaughter began that fed one of the Seven too well. It began to stir, and I was summoned to send it back to its