“I know you?” I whispered, barely able to hear the words.
He didn’t seem to have trouble. “Yes, for many years. You called me Max.”
“Max.”
The name fell easily from my lips. Shadowed images swirled in my mind. A large library in the middle of a city. Neat piles of gleaming bird bones, picked clean and set aside. Standing with him on a ledge high above that same city, gazing down at its nighttime colors. Sneaking into his lair. Hit from behind. A woman with white hair bleeding to death while Max stood by and watched. The handsome man with black hair threatening Max with a ball of sunlight.
A ball of sunlight. Max. Gargoyle. I did know him.
“You left,” I wheezed. “Left the city.”
“I did, and have not returned since our last encounter.”
Memories were coming back in snips and bits—Max saying his race would not choose sides in the upcoming war; realizing he’d been responsible for my kidnapping once before; racing to stop an elf mage from raising a demon. It played out like a video on fast-forward, flashing faces and events without any real clarity. Most of their names hovered on the edge of conscious thought, just out of reach.
“Where?”
“In a small rural town sixty miles south of the city,” he said. “This house is secluded, and it serves our need for protection during daylight. We have been searching for one of our coven these past five weeks. We found him the day before yesterday, his body taken apart, the remnants turned to stone. He had likely been dead for several days.”
I thought of a young boy, half his body stone, the other half barely human, dead on an operating table. Only gargoyles turned completely to stone in sunlight. Their cousin race, vampires, scorched and burned. Vampires … A shiver tore up my spine.
“We were not far behind the man who disposed of our coven member so carelessly.” A biting edge crept into Max’s voice, making it even more inhuman than usual. “We attacked only moments before dawn, sending the tractor-trailer and its inhabitants off a high mountain road to the gorge below. We were not able to search the wreckage until the sun set again.”
Tractor-trailer. My stomach gurgled at a dimly recalled sense of motion, of constant movement rocking me in and out of consciousness. I’d been on that trailer, strapped to a table. Someone had held me there. The same person who’d held and tortured Max’s friend. Someone named—
“Thackery,” I squeaked. “Alive?”
“I believe he is.” My heart howled in agony. “His body was not found in the wreckage. We discovered footprints leading off, back to the road, but they were not human. They were animal, some sort of dog.”
“The driver?” Someone had to drive the tractor-trailer. Had it been that blond kid? No, he’d been inside with us a few times.
“We found no one in the cab. We discovered two other bodies near the wreckage,” he continued. “One vampire and one half-Blood vampire. Both were dead when we discovered them. I was … surprised to discover you there. Your wounds are … unforgivable.”
“I saved you, Evangeline.”
Not what I meant. I swallowed, ignoring the fire in my throat. “Recover research? Computers? Information?”
“One of my brethren searched the wreckage. He is more familiar with human technology than I. He retrieved one item. I shall fetch it for you.”
He left the room with those same thundering stone steps. I’d never noticed before how heavily he walked. He returned moments later with something that made me want to hug him—Thackery’s PDA. The one he’d used to record every minute of our time together. Bingo.
“It is damaged, but my brother is certain it can be repaired.”
I needed to get it to the city, into the hands of people who could decipher the scientist-speak and tell me what Thackery had learned about my blood. Any leaps he’d made in his plans to eradicate vampires. I had to tell people, too, that I wasn’t dead. Someone in particular would be worried about me. Someone I cared about a great deal. Who? The broader strokes were filling in, but I was still missing details. The things closest to my heart weren’t there, and I needed to find them.
“Phone?”
“I am sorry, I do not possess a telephone. Nor have we contacted anyone else about your recovery. I wished to know your mind before I did so.”
It was kind of thoughtful, really, to make sure he didn’t accidentally tell an enemy I’d been found. If I couldn’t call anyone—and several phone numbers rattled through my head, just no names to go with them—I’d have to go to them. “Home, please.”
“The sun will set in two hours. We shall return to the city at that time.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to wait but had no choice. Not when my only means of transportation would crisp in the sun.
“Do you require anything?”
I required a whole hell of a lot but said no. Mostly I just needed to get closer to the Break so I could start to heal. I’d gotten used to it. Thackery had taken advantage of it. And until I returned, I was helpless to do anything except wallow in every ache and pain.
True to his word, Max and I were in the sky moments after sunset. Stars were just peeking through the cloud cover, winking in a purple and navy sky. Two other gargoyles flew with us in flanking positions, each as tall and hewn as Max. I’d never seen three at once and guessed several more had stayed behind in the house.
The town was tiny—just a few houses around a blinker-light intersection, a market, and a church. It seemed like the kind of village where no one could keep a secret for long, and yet a coven of gargoyles was hiding out a few miles down the road.
I was wrapped up in three blankets, tight like a body cast, and Max held me to his hard chest as though I were his child. Each movement sent shocks of pain through me. I closed my eyes and tried to block it out until we arrived, to ignore everything except the brush of humid night air on my face. I’d always wondered how gargoyles’ small wings—maybe four feet of thin skin stretched across a batlike frame—kept their huge forms in the air. And somehow Max was managing it with me as added weight, and with no apparent hindrance.
On the edge of sleep, it occurred to me I hadn’t asked how long I’d been with Thackery. Max wouldn’t know, even if I told him the date I’d turned myself over. Gargoyles didn’t have calendars, didn’t follow time the way humans did. I’d have to ask my friends.
Friends. I had friends waiting for me, worrying about me. Had they been searching for me? Surely yes. The man with the black hair wouldn’t have stopped as long as he knew I was alive. I was certain of it. Secure in his love for me. He’d do anything to find me.
Wyatt.
I choked on a gasp, and the sound made Max turn his head. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” I shouted to be heard over the roar of the wind.
With that one name, dozens more slammed home and restored my memory completely. Wyatt. Phineas. Kismet. Tybalt. Milo. Felix. Baylor. Amalie. Rufus. Bastian. Each slid into place like a perfectly cut puzzle piece, re- creating the picture of my life.
My heart ached for Wyatt. For leaving him behind with the uncertainty of my future. For how much I loved him and wanted him to hold me in his arms until the hurt went away. I recalled his cell number and wished for a phone so desperately my body trembled. Just to hear his voice and let him hear mine. Put his fears to rest.
“We are over the city,” Max said at some point.
I hazarded one eye open and saw the high-rises and gleaming buildings of Uptown passing by beneath us. Headlights and street signs and business billboards glared up from the ground, lighting the sky with their particular type of pollution. The cathedral spire of the Fourth Street Library loomed, and the three gargoyles swooped down. They alighted on the library roof—a narrow strip of gravel that surrounded a hollow building in which Max had once
