Black Briar Read online

  The bird’s fluffy chromatic tuxedo puffed. “Just barely.”

  The heavy dragon bone clock hanging on the north wall gonged midnight, marking the first hour of her birthday, and she tugged at the sterling silver spindle pendant hanging against her chest. “Okay, seriously. He’s so…late.”

  “Yes, well, he’d best hurry. The citywide shut down is still in effect,” the owl warned, eyes bloody and bright. “There is a monster stalking our cursed streets.”

  Another gust of screaming winds, and shutters throughout the Gothic house blew open, slapping against the decaying brick. Flaying against the merciless storm. Cool air chilled and shocked her skin into gooseflesh. She rubbed her arms, and her eyes fell closed. Scents. So many different ones. Sandalwood, incense, and the musk of parchment scrolls and cannabis wafted from the fat, fluffy bear fur strewn haphazardly across the foot of the bed. They were weak. She hadn’t noticed them before. Familiar?

  She faltered a step and her shins bumped the mattress. Warning lifted the hair dusting the line between the nape of her neck and her nun habit, and she closed her fingers into a white-knuckled fist. Who dreams here?

  The side table carting the smattering of oils, antiseptic, and her Norman Rockwell black medical bag were set up on the far end of the room, between the privy and a portable leather bench. Supple leather was smooth and seductive, a pillow for painful healing. And none of the familiar items offered any comfort.

  The bed…

  She couldn’t take her eyes off it. She couldn’t even breathe.

  This bed…

  This bed belonged to some kind of badass. There really was no other way to accurately put it. His presence—whoever he was—was a living thing. Even when he was far from home, his soul seemed to linger, hang in thick and smoky, wet pockets of fog—permeate the air with the mineral note of steel and stone.

  Get out.

  Sybille’s thigh collided against the edge of the “untouchable” desk and she gripped the smooth, dusty ledge. There were iron bars braced on all of the windows. Wide enough for a bird, narrow enough to absolutely choke anything else. Her eyes flitted to the doorway and the shadows posted in the hallway devoured her only escape. “Socrates, get my shit, we’re leaving.”

  “The dust bunnies in your loft, Sybille! The dust bunnies!” The bird hooted and scoffed, lost in a rant. Feathers flying with outrage. “The lot of them are growing teeth. Narrowly escaped with my life this morning! Wait—What, what? You can’t leave, Sybille. The Hag has sent you here. He has an appointment.”

  Something was off. She could feel it. It was humming like glittering yellow tension in the air. “Who has an appointment? Who lives here?”

  “WHAT?” Socrates crowed and then frowned. “Haven’t you been paying attention? This piece of tin belongs to Jael N. Ishi and the heathen mice who live here are out to get me—all three of them.” His feathers molted. “Thrice blind bastards!”

  The house, the bed, the dreams…

  They belonged to Jael N. Ishi. Yeah, she knew that. That wasn’t the question she was asking. In terms of recognizing the name, she did. Sort of. She felt like she’d heard the name before; her tongue tingled with a sensory memory. The texture, what it tasted like—the name was very familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

  The Briar did a lot of business, it was only natural she lose track of all of her patients, but she would seriously remember a name like Jael N. Ishi. She would remember a house call like this one. This was one of the very few worth remembering. She’d never been inside a master bedroom quite like this before. If she had, she wasn’t sure she would’ve left with her knickers on and intact.

  Get the fuck out. Now. Unease folded her stomach and she raked her gaze across the room in search of a fucking clue. “Socrates, why am I here? Where is he?”

  “Hickory! I tocked him for good, didn’t I?” Owl screeches of sinister glee, and then, cage rattling bluster and cough. “What, what? What now, Sybille? Can’t you see I’m talking? How dare you have the nerve to be talking while I’m talking—”

  “Who is he? Does Enid know him?”

  An image of the elderly hook-nosed old woman, hunched and swaddled in black velvet, hooded robes bloomed in Sybille’s mind. Right now—during the midnight hour—the Hag was always found sitting in her rocker by the firelight, scribbling patiently in her journal, her quill a gold feather torn from a dying Phenoix. Big brown eyes wet and glassy, bright with the thrill of her latest conniving concoction.

  Crafty old bitch. Have you nothing better to do with your time? Must you spend it thinking up ways to torture me into mating? Do I drive you that crazy? Why can’t you just knit and feed me cookies and candy like other grandparents? Sybille’s jaw clenched and balled her hands into fist. “What the hell is she up to now, Socrates?”

  “Try not to sound so ridiculous, Sybille.” The bird rolled his eyes, pecked at his chest. “You know that old crone is always up to something.”

  “I see you’ve found the best room in the house,” came the smooth interruption.

  That voice.

  It was deep, so deep and serene. A sharp, precise old Latin hiss and the echo of melodic French church bells. And of course, a little dash of New Gotham’s down and dirty never hurt. It was…wicked. Familiar. So very familiar.

  Sybille’s spine went ramrod straight and her teeth cemented, jaw ticked. “Nova.”

  And by the gods, he really was a motherfucking star.

  Chapter Two

  Standing in the shadows, Nova was a paragon of serenity with ash grey skin and heavy beast muscle clad in tight black medieval leggings, complete with a pair of red suspenders banded over his naked pectorals. Skin glittered like moist granite. Not sparkling. Shimmering. Slick. Reptilian.

  The kind of physique that made a woman wonder whether she would be able to breathe, trapped and spread beneath all that power. Something to call a woman’s tongue. Make her lick her lips. Bite them.

  His wings were hovering in a vicious ribbed “M” above the massive mantle of his shoulders. Towering at seven feet, what people readily recognized as the depiction of a pop-fiction gargoyle was really a gargouille. True gargoyles were entirely too devoted to thousands of years of tradition to be caught dead stalking New Gotham’s dark alleys. He wasn’t the first of his kind, but Nova’s breed of winged monster was a rare marriage between the real thing and a woman who’d thought she could handle it, wandered to the darkness side, and gotten lost. Way lost.

  Nova didn’t speak of her. Ever.

  All she knew of the woman who’d born folklore in her womb was the faded, sepia picture she’d glimpsed in his wallet once upon a time. It looked like it had been ripped from a locket’s frame. Torn and tiny. But it was enough. He took his long and elegant oriental features from her.

  Low cheekbones, wide and big eyes. Strong nose. The waves of black hair falling across the sharp planes of his face didn’t meet their lustrous end until well after his waist. The sable mane washed down his back in a sharp board, the sinewy and curling ebony ends clung to his thighs after every shower and she knew firsthand what it was to roll in that wet, black bounty. The face, the hair, the harsh heart of a samurai—all of which he took from his mother.

  Her peered at her from the darkness with slanted molten onyx gems, flecked with diamond chips for eyes, gaze roving over her with the heat of a million dying stars. That and everything else, he must have taken from his father—a true gargoyle.

  Even after all this time, he was still screw-all brooding and sexy.

  She pointed and what was left of a fingernail shone like a poison dart. “Did you really leave the house in just that? Never mind.” Short lashes brimmed over her cheeks as she lowered her eyes gaze in lecherous study of the length straining against his hose. “Fuck, I love this country.”

  “Behave.” Nova folded sculpted arms across his chest and tapped his clawed fingers against his bicep flexed. “Sybille.”

  Her name.

  When he sai
d it…

  Suddenly, Sybille wasn’t a mental patient with a butcher knife. She wasn’t lost. And she wasn’t broken. On the tip of his purple spaded tongue, it was sip of resplendent wine and butterflies tortured her stomach. But whatever. Like she’d said before, time and time again, a prince could go fuck himself. The end.

  Socrates’ big gold eyes flitted back and forth between the couple and he hooted. “My, look how awkward things have gotten.”

  Sybille plucked and played with the spindle hanging from her dainty, silver necklace as she cut her eyes across the gargouille. “You look like hell.”

  Plucking a small satchel from the floor, Nova stalked from the shadows, into the room, and his massive clawed feet clicked, sharp knifes across the wood. Sulfur. Pungent. Gut-roiling and burning. He was bleeding. Wounded. How badly, she couldn’t tell. Green blood was black in the moonlight. It dribbled in fat oozing rivulets down his arm, raining from his fingertips. Splattering across the oak like metallic bread crumbs.

  “The Hag was already paid for services rendered.”

  Oh, right…

  And what exactly did he take her for? ‘Cause nothing was that fucking stupid.

  It could never be that simple.

  She didn’t want to see him. He knew that. She’d made that very fucking clear the last time they’d seen one another nearly a month ago. And besides, if past evidence was any indication, Nova didn’t exactly relish Sybille’s company either. Not that she could blame him. She’d picked him up one day, fucked him all night, then tossed him to the curb come morning. Over, and over, and over again. And when she’d finally gotten bored with her sexy trinket, she’d lost his number and completely forgotten his existence. Or rather, that is how she told the tale.

  Facts? Irrelevant.

  There were other physicians he could’ve sought out for care. The Briar wasn’t the only clinic catering to the weird and wicked. And frankly, the man was a paladin. It was highly doubtful he was concocting something sinister. He wasn’t the kind of man to bullshit around the bush. He would never concede to trickery without having been offered something worth the blight on his precious pure soul. So, the question remained—why the fuck did he want her here?

  “Sybille.” The gargouille abandoned the room for the privy. “Now.”

  Sybille banded her arms across her chest, but otherwise didn’t move an inch. “Who is Jael, Nova? That is who the Hag sent me here to tend. So, where the hell is he?” Anyone, but you.

  “Right here.”

  Goddamn it, she shouldn’t have looked.

  She should’ve swept out the doors, grabbed her broom, and took to the sky in a storm of tattered, velvet glory. She should’ve gone home, slapped that silly old woman and gone to bed. But she looked. She looked as if he’d hypnotized her with rhythmic timbre lurking in his voice. And she was damned for it.

  The massive gargouille with menacing wings was gone. Vanished.

  In place, stood a creature that wasn’t wholly man, nor was it wholly beast—beautiful because it demanded the word. He was still a powerful with wide shoulders and rippling pectorals, but he’d shrunk down to a manageable six foot, claws and talons had been replaced by a man’s feet and fingers. Parts of his skin were washed in a gargoyle’s echo ash gray, tiny diamond chips and scales. He was patched from head to toe—the rash scarring and cracking sections of his otherwise creamy bamboo caramel skin.

  His face was that of man’s and it wasn’t what one would normally call handsome. It was far too rugged and flat, too basic for that. But those eyes—those big, severely slanted Japanese eyes remained bottomless gemstones and that mouth was a moist and firm, sinful bend. The snug hose had tailored to accommodate his menacing thigh muscles and he pulled the red suspenders off his shoulders with a man’s fingers, abandoning the red ribbon at this thigh.

  Temptation.

  And she was damned.

  “Jael Nova Ishi.” He raked his fingers through the mane of think silken tresses, a sable ocean rolling down his shoulders. “Merry met and happy birthday, Sybille.”

  He was being sarcastic, of course. Granted, any brand of humor from a gargoyle was a dry and dark sort. They’d dated for the better part of two months. Well, “dated” was a word for it. Stranger wasn’t. He wasn’t a stranger. Well, he hadn’t been a stranger. Not until now.

  It appeared that Nova and Jael N. Ishi were one and the same monster. She’d never asked his full name. Never bothered to make it back to this house for that infamous “coffee invite.” The back alley of Club Brimstone was as good a place as any for the very rare nights she felt the need to scratch that itch in corporeal reality. Never did she allow herself to care about her source of pleasure beyond what it was. And now, it was coming back to bite her square on the ass.

  Karma, you blind whore. She pinched the bridge of her nose. Go pester a serial killer.

  “It’s your birthday, Sybille?” The owl snapped his beak. “Why is there no cake?”

  Nova snorted. “She prefers Cherry Coke to anything else.”

  “Shame on her,” Socrates fluffed. “It should be tea.”

  Fuck my life. She crossed her arms over her “barely a handful” breasts. “Focus, idiots.” Socrates opened his beak to object, but she quelled him with a sneer. She pointed to the gargouille and narrowed her eyes. “What happened to you, Nova? Why the games? And why did you go through Enid? Why not just call me?”

  “Don’t have your number.” A bead of blood from the gaping gash on his shoulder rolled down the middle of his chest, drawing her eyes down the line of vicious abdominal muscles. The elastic waistband hugged his jutting pelvic bone and tight fabric pressed against his manhood. He eased off the second strap with a sinister snap. “Besides, would you have come?”

  It was a whisper, but it bloodied the air like a funeral horn.

  She almost lied. Almost. But thankfully, she’d never pretended to be anything but herself with Nova. Never. And therefore, she could be the mean bitch she was at heart without a shred of remorse. “No. Not even if you’d screamed.”

  “Our sweet, black briar rose…” The owl cackled in a deep and mystical voice and was swallowed in a tight cloud of black magic and tiny gold spectral stars, “Delightful, isn’t she?”

  Socrates’ harsh notes lingered, echoing in the nearly empty room as he faded into another realm. Nova didn’t offer much into the silence, nothing but that terrible, penetrating glare. It warmed her and she swallowed hard. Her eyes drifted to the bundle of towel tucked beneath his left arm. The knot was roiling. Tiny fists striking against the fabric. In the excitement, she’d missed it until just now. But then, he was shirtless, so whose fault was that?

  She pursed her lips. “What is that? Another patient?”

  The gargouille’s flat eyes sparkled with mirth as he closed the distance between them and extended the bundle toward her. An offering to some pagan goddess. “Don’t let the teeth fool you,” he whispered. “She’s panicked…and pitiful.”

  Sybille accepted the angry rolling knot of fabric graciously, eyebrows lifted as she practiced her cell-block alibi for the proper authorities, “The gargoyle? He ran into my butcher knife…you know, tripped. All fifty times. Tragic, isn’t it?”

  The gargouille offered nothing but a noncommittal grunt and stalked past her to the leather bench. “Now. It bleeds.”

  Sybille fumbled with the roiling ball until she unmasked the fury within.

  It was…

  A puppy. Well, sort of.

  Sometimes called a warg or hellhound, the freybug was the Black Dog, the demon hound that had spent the last millennia burning its scarlet eyes into legends and folklore. As an adult, it was a dire black beast cast in the mold of a sleek and powerful ancient sighthound. The deathly Scottish Deerhound would stand nearly as large as an ancient cerberus pup, with shaggy black brindle and grey fur coated with obsidian spectral dust.

  They had hunted and killed in ravenous packs since before the time of recorded history. Stalkin
g battlefields, graveyards, and the ravines of pocked pasty bodies during the plagues, they were vicious vultures who fed on the dead like Odin’s all-seeing ravens. That’s not to say they wouldn’t eat a living creature…piece by mangled piece.

  Yip!

  The puppy’s fat purple, spaded tongue rolled out of her mouth. Tiny spikes and horns crested and adorned her brow in a Roman corona. Dark “Rose” ears were perked in excitement. Eventually her fur coat would be harsh, wiry, but for now it was downy and soft like a kitten’s and the white patch cradling her little pot belly was speckled with gray. Her long curved tail was wagging her entire body back and forth as she gaped up at Sybille with impossibly big and sweet crimson eyes.

  Oh, fuck this. No one has time for a pupp—