Trouble with Gargoyles: an Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 3) Read Online Free PDF

weren't sinking?
    Magick, that was how. And it was also to blame for the sparking, snapping bolts of blue electricity running above our heads that threatened to fry us all.
    I was about to tell my friends to make a break for the door when I noticed that it had disappeared. As in, there was no longer a doorknob. The windows, too, appeared to have glazed over and hardened, as if the glass had turned into sheets of petrified wood. When I looked to the beaded curtain that separated the shop floor from my studio in back, I was only partly surprised to see that the opening had been plugged with that same wood-like surface.
    We'd walked right into a trap.
    Melanie was a monkey shifter and Vale was a gargoyle. Both were undeniably talented and useful in their own ways, but in this situation it was up to me to stop whatever was happening. Damn. I should have resisted Vale harder because I'd known something would happen while we were here.
    Merchandise began to fall off the shelves. The shelves themselves moved forward across the cheap tile floor with rough, jerky movements that filled the air with screeching noises that stung my ears. Electricity slithered across the ceiling like a nest of blue snakes. A lightning bolt of it snapped against one of the katanas on the far wall with a loud crack! that made us all instinctively duck. The static in the air was so potent I could feel my hair lifting off my scalp.
    Using my sorcery wasn't my first choice. Not by far. In the back of my mind I'd hoped that I would never have to call upon my dragon again. I understood my weakness and I preferred to avoid situations where it might be revealed; my ego didn't care about proving that I was strong enough to overcome it. Our current situation, unfortunately, had less to do with egos than with survival.
    "Get into the middle!" I yelled.
    As the three of us huddled together in the center of the shop, I reluctantly reached into that rumbly place behind my breastbone. That should have been my wonderful place, the source of my strength both as a sorceress and as a person. But these days it felt more like a sore spot that hurt to be touched. Wincing, I called up Lucky. I carefully fed him enough energy that he transformed from golden mist to corporeal, thirty-foot Chinese dragon in the space of two seconds.
    I shuddered hard at the sensation of scales rippling across my skin. My heart, already racing, pounded fiercely as the familiar and yet alien call of my ancient blood began to sing to me. Just Say No to Dragons was my mantra, and I mentally chanted it to try to drown out the cajoling sensation. No dragon. No dragon.
    Lucky rammed his big head at the door, which shook the house impressively. The door held, even under repeated hits. He tried ramming one of the windows. Again, no dice. He needed to be bigger. Stronger. More like a living dragon.
    Even when faced with that indisputable proof, I couldn't bring myself to give him more energy. The fear of losing myself to the dragon filled my veins with ice. As I fought off a mounting feeling of panic, I directed Lucky to coil around the room and form a buffer between us and the crushing walls.
    When the moving shelves hit his body a few seconds later, he flexed and held them back. I cringed at the screeching sound of resistance. But the important thing was that Lucky didn't budge.  His anaconda-like body bulged with muscles as he held the walls in place.
    The ceiling was still coming down, though…That could be a problem.
    "Which would you prefer?" I shouted to Vale. "Being electrocuted or being crushed?"
    The look he shot me was priceless…right before the lights went out.
    I screamed along with my friends. The ropes of electricity no longer provided any illumination, but I could still hear them hissing and sparking above our heads. My entire body tensed with dread, primed for a painful strike of energy. When something went boom! as though a bolt of lightning had just struck the roof, I screamed