Trouble with Gargoyles: an Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 3) by Tricia Owens

Author:Tricia Owens [Owens, Tricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2016-06-24T18:30:00+00:00

~~~~~

I opened the shop because I'd hoped that servicing customers might clear my head and allow me to think about the situation rationally rather than emotionally.

It seemed unlikely that Vale had been the one to attack Diana. She knew him reasonably well. She would have recognized him, shadows or no. Plus, the creature had been asking questions about me and Vale. Sure, that could have been a ruse to steer suspicion away from him, but why torture Diana for info he didn't need? Nothing about Vale had hinted that he could be cruel in any way. That didn't seem like something you could hide, especially from a girlfriend.

No, I was positive it wasn't his gargoyle, but it was something around the same size, with claws. That left a lot of options.

With my chin propped on my hand on the counter, I watched the two teenaged boys who hovered around the section that held monster hunter paraphernalia. The items there weren't really meant for use in hunting monsters—I'd be run out of town for encouraging such an activity—but it was how I called that section of the shop in my head. The shelves there held weapons of all sorts, from wooden knives to sharpened katanas, to curved scimitars and small crossbows that fired silver arrows. My favorite was a shield the size of a pizza, covered with silver eagle heads whose beaks would come alive and snap the hell out of whatever came in contact with them.

One of the boys reached for it and immediately yelped and jerked his hand back.

"It's protected by blood wards," I told them.

Startled, they both jumped back from the shelves.

"What are blood wards?" the younger boy asked.

"Duh, you need to spill blood before the ward lets you through," his friend told him after punching the younger boy in the shoulder. "Then the weapon is keyed to you."

"That whole section is warded," I warned them. "So you can look, but I don't suggest you touch. Not until you're ready to commit blood and buy."

"Why can't we test them out?" the older boy asked, scowling slightly.

"Test them out how?" I replied, bored. "Two of those blades leak poison. The arrows will melt once they penetrate skin. That axe on the wall will inject barbed metal thorns into your palm that won't release you until you've named and killed a victim. Which one did you want to try out?"

The boys didn't linger long after that.

I thought about them, and tried to guess what kinds of magickal beings they'd been. Shifters? Probably. But either or both of them could have been warlocks or sorcerers. Or something rare like a water fey or one of a dozen entities whose powers hadn't been fully cataloged by the people who liked to do such things. The truth was, the magickal community was wildly diverse, which was great if you were trying repopulate the Earth but not so great if you were trying to pinpoint a poorly described creature.

Sunset came quickly, thank goodness, and fortunately, so did Vale.

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