Stone Cold Lover Read Free Page B

chilling instant. Then the light went out, and the female hissed as if she’d been burned.
    Rage welled within him, unexpected but undeniable. Only a worm would seek to harm a woman when a warrior stood before him in challenge. Of course, Spar should expect no better from a minion of the enemy.
    He drew back his spear, prepared to skewer the rodent where he stood. The cry stopped him.
    “Is that a fucking bomb ?”
    The female had clutched her injured left hand to her chest, but her horrified gaze was fixed on the nocturnis and the strange bundle the man had withdrawn from beneath his robes. The item meant nothing to Spar, who saw a messy handful of colored wires, metal, and plastic, but the expression on the female’s face told him she perceived it as a threat even before the word bomb registered. He understood this word. Even if the Guardians had never used so cowardly a weapon, he had lived centuries enough to have witnessed the destruction such things could cause.
    “Hierophant wants the Guardian smashed!” The servant’s cry rang with madness, and Spar could see the sick fire of it in his eyes. “Should have smashed the cold, cold stone. But the mousy made me forget!”
    Hands fumbled with the misshapen bundle until an ominous click sounded and the pale green face of a digital clock began to glow.
    “Holy shit!” The woman scrambled to her feet, her gaze darting between the minion’s bomb and the Guardian warrior hovering above the floor. “I did not sign up to die tonight, damn it, and I refuse to wind up a feature on the morning news. I am outta here !”
    Spar had had centuries to study the ways of humanity. He had, after all, been created to protect them from the Darkness; but in all his long existence, he had never witnessed a member of the race behave with quite so much foolish courage. Without an instant of hesitation, the small, fair-haired female tucked her head, rounded her shoulders, and launched herself straight at the cultist and his destructive device.
    She might very well have gotten herself killed. Should have gotten herself killed, he reasoned even as he found himself diving after her. She reached the madman a moment before Spar’s arms closed around her, and the force of her tackle knocked the nocturnis off his feet. The man went stumbling into the nearest window ledge, and the device in his hands tumbled free to skitter across the marble floor. It landed near the base of Spar’s pedestal with a series of sharp beeps and the rapid flashing of green lights.
    The female in his arms shouted an oath and attempted to free herself from his grip, but Spar was having none of it. He held tight even as her tiny hands beat frantically against his chest.
    “Let me go, you giant idiot! That thing’s about to blow!”
    The high-pitched squeal of the cultist emphasized the truth of that prediction. Somehow the bomb’s timer had been accelerated when the nocturnis had dropped it. Detonation was imminent.
    “Hold on,” he growled. There was no time for anything else.
    He had no way of knowing how powerful a weapon the cultist might have devised, but he gathered it was strong enough that it had been expected to shatter his immobile form into rubble. It was a cowardly, dastardly plan to destroy an enemy in such a vulnerable state, but it might actually have worked. Locked in his sleep, a Guardian had all the vulnerabilities of the stone form he resembled. Fortunately, something had awoken Spar before the plan could be carried out. A fully awoken Guardian was one hell of a lot harder to kill.
    Before he had even finished his warning to the small human, he had drawn her hard and tight against his chest and dragged her down to the floor with him. Folding himself in around her, he shielded her with his body and wrapped them both tight in the shelter of his wings.
    His feathers hadn’t even settled before the explosion shook the foundations of the building.
    Spar had his eyes closed against the potential