Heart of Stone Read Online Free Page B

fast. Then she could start forgetting. Again.
    She knew her mind replayed the echoes of old screams, and she concentrated on blocking those out. She frowned when she realized that without the memory-screams, the room sounded oddly quiet. The waves of energy created a rushing sound in her ears, like a constantly incoming tide, but nothing sharp or shrill rose above the steady whoosh. No one was screaming.
    Cautiously, she opened her eyes and peered through the fringe of her lashes. The creature who held her hadn’t moved, hadn’t run away, hadn’t disappeared into an explosion of light and smoke. He also hadn’t been killed, wounded, dismembered, beheaded, or otherwise driven insane. Instead, he just looked annoyed.
    Well, annoyed and curious.
    “Are you planning to stop anytime soon, or do you plan to exhaust yourself into unconsciousness, human?”
    The question startled Ella so much, the energy cut off as if a switch had been thrown. The gargoyle simply continued to loom over her, looking not a bit worse for the wear. Come to think of it, if anything, he looked mildly irritated.
    He underlined the impression by glaring down at her and snapping, “Are you finished?”
    Ella wondered. Her head was spinning—a side effect she knew came from letting down her barriers and unleashing the darkness inside her—but she couldn’t use that to explain why a gargoyle was currently speaking to her. He’d started before she attacked him.
    And she had attacked him, so why was he still standing?
    As if triggered by the thought, Ella’s knees gave out, and suddenly she was no longer standing. She would have ended up tailbone first on the hard stone terrace if the monster in front of her hadn’t moved faster than she could blink and gripped her elbows, catching her weight and easing her down to a sitting position on the pavers.
    “Thanks,” she mumbled reflexively.
    He waved away her gratitude. “I told you that I mean you no harm, but I have questions that I must ask you. Are you well enough to answer?”
    The gargoyle had crouched down beside her, but Ella still had to look up to see his face. Maybe that explained the touch of hysteria in her small laugh.
    “Me? I’m just fine. I’m hallucinating, because it’s either that, or I’m talking to a real live monster at the moment, but other than that, I’m perfect. Ask away.”
    His mouth firmed, lips pressing together in what Ella guessed was probably not his amused face; then he blew out a breath that sounded like exasperation.
    “It disturbs you to look at me? I appear as a monster to you? Fine. Is this better?”
    It took Ella a good thirty seconds to remember her name.
    Somehow, watching while the monstrous, terrifying creature in front of you aimed a put-upon expression in your direction and then proceeded to transform himself into a vision right out of the pages of Studs Monthly could really knock the wind out of a girl.
    The thing from a French artist’s long-ago vision of might and menace had just become the most blatantly attractive man Ella ever laid eyes on.
    Standing at a huge but realistic human height of six feet and three or four inches, the man now crouched in the spot the monster had just been had the heavy, chiseled musculature of a bodybuilder. Not the thick-necked Arnold Schwarzenegger type, though. Even as powerful as he looked, he still managed to appear lean and graceful, as if every muscle in his body hadn’t been artificially enlarged, but worked and honed to peak efficiency.
    Underneath the jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt that had appeared during his transformation, Ella could see the ripple of contained force and found herself wishing for a better look at all that masculine perfection.
    What was she thinking? Ella mentally slapped herself. This was a monster, not a man. Ogling males of other species was a creepy habit she had no intention of developing.
    But without the distraction of fangs and horns and, you know, wings, Ella found herself