Stoneheart Read online

  Stoneheart

  Cate Corvin

  Melora François

  Impish Heart Press

  Stoneheart

  CATE CORVIN AND MELORA FRANÇOIS

  All Rights Reserved © 2020 Cate Corvin and Melora François. First Printing: 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means with the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Cover Design by Story Wrappers

  Author's Note: All characters in this story are 18 years of age and older, and all sexual acts are consensual. This book is a work of fiction and liberties may be taken with people, places, and historical events.

  Contents

  The Gargoyle Orders

  Night of the Fire

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Before the Fire

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  One Month After the Fire

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  The Day of the Shooting

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  The Night of the Incident

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  About the Authors

  The Gargoyle Orders

  Diamond

  Truthsense

  Sapphire

  Emotional Manipulation

  Emerald

  Charisma

  Ruby

  Magical Immunity

  Topaz

  Battle Magic

  Onyx

  Protection

  Amethyst

  Invisibility

  Opal

  Dreamwalking

  Garnet

  Healing

  Night of the Fire

  The tension in the patrol car was almost a physical entity sitting between us.

  I didn’t press myself up against the passenger side door like I wanted to, but the temptation was there. Every instinct screamed at me to get the fuck out. Josh’s blind rage from two days ago had subsided into a deeper, seething anger that was just as terrifying.

  He parked the car at the end of a dark alley. Static hissed from the radio in spurts, but nothing had come through for nearly an hour. Odd, given it was nearly one in the morning in New York City. Even on our quietest nights, we’d have a handful of calls. I was going to ask Josh if he thought maybe our radio had malfunctioned, but one sidelong glance at him quashed that idea.

  I should’ve swallowed my pride and told my superiors I needed a new partner.

  “Nobody’s noticed,” he said abruptly, the sound of his voice unexpected. We’d made a point of not speaking to each other any more than strictly necessary for the last week. “That your ring is gone.”

  My chest tightened. Thin ice, Zara, watch your step.

  “It’s none of their business anyway.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Josh turn his head to look at me, a sneer twisting the clean-cut features I’d once found so attractive. “Have you fucked Hawkins yet?”

  I jerked like he’d actually punched me. “What?”

  “I asked if you. Fucked. Hawkins. Yet,” he spat, enunciating every word.

  No, I hadn’t, but even if I had, it was no longer his business, either.

  I wouldn’t do that to Officer Hawkins, though. Josh was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, and I wasn’t about to condemn anyone else to take the brunt of his wrath. Still, my hatred of him made it hard to bite my tongue. “No, Aberdeen.” I made a point of using his last name to highlight exactly what kind of relationship we had. Professional, and nothing more. “I’ve been busy putting my life back together. I know you think everyone's out to get you, but some of us have more going on than how much ass we can pull.”

  Maybe not entirely professional.

  It was my turn to glare. Josh turned away, staring through the windshield. A painful five-minute silence ticked by.

  “You’re going to.” He said it definitively, a judge passing a sentence without even waiting for a guilty verdict from the jury. “You think I don’t see how he looks at you? Bet you just couldn’t wait to throw away everything we had once Pretty Boy walked in.”

  I’d talked to Hawkins a grand total of three times since he’d joined our precinct. Sure, he was a great-looking guy, but he had nothing to do with my toxic relationship with Josh. “You’re imagining things. Again.”

  “Am I?”

  I didn’t deign to justify that with a response. Note to self: request a new partner ASAP. Like tonight, ideally.

  “We’ll see, Zara, we’ll see. Word gets around fast. And when it does…” He grinned, and patted his service revolver.

  Was he out of his fucking mind?

  Yes, Zara, you genius, he is out of his fucking mind, so save your own ass and get out of this car.

  My muscles clenched, but I was saved by dispatch.

  “Attention all units: report of shots fired at 5th and Dodge.” The voice crackling out of the radio was rougher than the usual dispatch officer, Andre. I wondered if they’d gotten someone to replace him.

  Josh’s hand shot out like a striking snake, snatching the radio before I could move a muscle. “This is unit 99 responding, we’re enroute.”

  “Copy, unit 99.”

  Josh replaced the radio and accelerated out of the alley.

  Something was off, but I couldn’t be sure if there was really something wrong or if Josh’s overt threat had thrown me off my game. Either way, I was unsettled and I prayed backup would be there shortly.

  We pulled up to swanky apartments with a backlit green sign: Viridian Condominiums. Gargoyle territory. Everything was quiet now, whatever had happened here already over. I frowned, expecting a few gawkers after shots were fired, especially in an area like this. When shit went down in the rich neighborhoods, everyone wanted to nose in.

  Josh headed towards the lobby’s glass doors, service pistol in hand, and spat on the ground. “Fucking pebble nest. Try not to trip over any dicks in here, Sterling.”

  The anger I’d tried so hard to suppress came roaring back to life. “Try to be professional for longer than five seconds, Officer Aberdeen.”

  He laughed and stared at me with his back to the building, apparently unconcerned with the reported shooter. “If it’s not Hawkins, it’ll be a gargoyle.”

  “Your pathetic grudge doesn’t matter right now,” I hissed.

  Josh’s eyes gleamed while he looked me over with distaste. “Whores first,” he said, sweeping an arm out in a mockery of chivalry.

  Only the very real possibility that he’d finally snap and shoot me point-blank kept me from snapping back. Still, there was no way I was walking into that building before him and giving him my back. Friendly fire was the perfect cover for why his bullet had ended up between my shoulder blades. “I’ll secure the perimeter.”

  Without waiting for a response, I strode away. I didn’t care if Josh came face-to-face with an armed gunman by himself or that I was severely breaking protocol, nor did I care that he was spewing undeserved vitriol. What I did care about was that my life was more endangered by getting my partner’s back than by going off alone.

&nb
sp; “Do whatever you want, Sterling,” he called as I paced away.

  I crept along the outside of the building, keeping my weapon pointed at the ground. There was nothing. No onlookers. No movement. No sign anything was amiss at all.

  A heavy stone sank into my stomach. There was something extremely off about the entire situation. Alarm bells went off in my head and I turned to retrace my steps. I lifted a hand to my radio, depressing the talk button to call for backup.

  A sharp noise cracked overhead, followed by a heavy whump that made my eardrums ache. One of the windows overhead had blown out, followed by a gush of flame. Even three stories below, the heat of it touched my face.

  I threw my arms over my head and ducked the shards of falling glass, my training kicking in. My partner was still inside, I needed to make sure he was safe and we needed to evacuate the building immediately. I raced for the lobby, guilt welling in my gut. If something had happened to Josh and I wasn’t there to back him up…

  The once tranquil night was a cacophony of sound. Gargoyles and humans fled the building, some of the former launching out of windows on widespread wings. I ducked against a wall, lifting my radio to my lips to call in the fire, my hands shaking.

  Josh was somewhere in there, and I’d let him go alone. I pushed against the tide of fleeing occupants, clinging to the rail as I dragged myself up the steps between them. A gargoyle carrying a child stepped on my foot, and only the steel toes of my department-issued boots kept my bones from being crushed.

  The second story was empty of escaping residents by the time I made it up the stairs. Smoke hung in the hallway, a thick haze. I pressed a hand over my mouth and nose, throat on fire as I coughed to expel the ash and residue from my lungs, but the explosion had gone off three levels up.

  I ascended another floor, opening the hallway door to a corridor filled with thicker smoke. A man in a green hoodie sprinted for the door at the opposite end, and he turned to glance back, giving me a quick glance at his uneven, scarred features.

  Something else caught my eye. A body was sprawled across the floor in front of an open door, charred and unrecognizable from the waist up, but it wore my uniform, the black spit-polished boots.

  Time seemed to stop, my heart seizing between one beat and the next.

  Josh.

  Josh was gone. I’d let him go in alone because I was scared for my life, and now he was the one who had wound up dead.

  The fire was a roaring inferno now, eating away at the ceiling as smoke billowed downwards like a living thing. I stumbled forward, trying to reach Josh’s body. I couldn’t leave him here like this.

  A sound stopped me in my tracks. It cut through everything. The sound of the fire, the shattering of overheating glass, my own rasping coughs, each layer of the pandemonium penetrated by a thin sound just inside the collapsing apartment.

  The only sound that could have made me forget my need to get to Josh’s body.

  A baby’s cry.

  Chapter One

  Cold beads of sweat rolled down my spine, soaking into the ruby silk cocktail dress I wore.

  Fuck. I’d bought it just for this occasion and it was already a goner.

  The pointed toes of my four-inch heels were killing my feet. My partner, Officer Sawyer Hawkins, had taken off to find me a drink and was nowhere to be seen. Looked like I was about to face the music alone.

  A fullblood gargoyle took the stage, microphone in hand. Curled sapphire horns caught the light, glittering a deep blue above a chiseled face everyone in the nation knew: Kreslin Kobalt, the producer and host of the infamous Rock Hard action movie, and the garbage Rock Harder TV show that followed.

  Tonight he was wearing a well-tailored suit, a far cry from the action-figure style clothes his character wore on TV. He’d gone to great lengths to rebrand himself after the show’s cancellation, hoping to snag a political seat now that the Supreme Court had ruled to allow one gargoyle serve in human government per state, and the gargoyle from the state of New York would wield tremendous power. Unfortunately for him, he’d never shaken his stage name of Kobalt, even though he belonged to House Sartora, one of the more prominent and respected families from the Sapphire Order.

  I wondered how much they’d paid him to be here tonight. Even non-famous Sapphires’ services were expensive for events this large.

  Kreslin smiled, taking in the entire ballroom, the sea of faces locked onto him. “Good evening, friends. We’ve gathered tonight for one singular purpose: to honor a hero.”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my hiding place near a marble column. Hero was a strong word, the kind that made me cringe and want to curl into a ball of invisibility so no one could see me.

  No chance of that happening. That glittering sea of faces turned my way, light from the huge chandelier catching on jewelry and gemstone horns. I felt the heat of their stares like laser beams and probably turned beet-red on impact.

  “Officer Zara Sterling. Please join me onstage.” The Sapphire gargoyle held out his arm, smiling at me like he was doing me a big favor.

  I tried to swallow, failed, and pasted what I hoped passed for a smile on my face instead.

  Fucking smile for real, woman, isn’t this what everyone dreams of?

  Yeah, it was nice to be acknowledged for one’s best efforts. I just wished it wasn’t on a stage. In a swanky hotel ballroom. In front of a crowd of incredibly loaded socialites and business people, fifty-percent of which were representatives of gargoyle houses. Most of my precinct was also in attendance, scattered drops of mundane humanity in the ocean of gargoyle glitz.

  I moved towards the stage on wooden legs. When I blinked again, I was next to Kreslin, up close and personal. He was even more flawless in person than he was one a television screen. He grabbed my hand, shaking it firmly.

  The gargoyle’s skin was as warm as mine, but the texture was strange, almost like glass covered in a fine layer of velvet. It wasn’t a sensation found anywhere in nature.

  But then, gargoyles were by no means natural. They were made of living stone and pure magic.

  He gave me a sly bump, forcing me to face the crowd. I was going to implode on the spot. That was far too many eyeballs on me at once for my comfort. “In a stunning display of selfless courage on November 25th, the day of the Viridian Condominium fire, Officer Sterling risked life and limb to rescue those who couldn’t help themselves. In the face of grave danger, she pulled others from the fiery grip of certain death and led them back to safety.”

  The crowd ooh’d and ahh’d at the appropriate moments as Kreslin regaled them with my stunning tale of bravery, prodding their feelings of excitement and hero worship. He made it sound a lot cleaner and cooler than it’d actually been. If his show hadn’t been so crappy, I could have seen where he might have made an excellent politician.

  I still had nightmares about the heat of the fire. The acrid smell of smoke.

  The stench of cooking meat.

  Warmth washed over my skin, and I realized tears had pooled in my eyes. What the hell? I hadn’t cried in months, but now I felt like all I wanted to do was sink to my knees and sob.

  I realized a society matron in the crowd was doing exactly that, a silk handkerchief pressed to her mouth. And I knew exactly what was happening.

  Fucking gargoyles.

  I’d been wrong. Kreslin Kobalt was going to make a stellar politician, trashy television be damned.

  “Thanks to Officer Sterling’s valiant efforts, several human children and a young gargoyle were extracted before the fire could claim their lives. House Aerithor of the Opal Order offers its undying appreciation to Officer Sterling.”

  Another fullblood gargoyle stepped to the front of the crowd. Her horns were the same stone of which her heart was made, milky white and fractured with rainbows of color. Despite the emotional magic Kreslin was working on me, discomfort roiled in my gut under her penetrating stare.

  “Zara Sterling, House Aerithor owes you its eternal gratitude.” She touch
ed her chest, right over her stoneheart. “We can never repay our debt to you.”

  I nodded, my throat closing up even tighter. It was impossible to tell if I was really feeling it, or if Kreslin was forcing me to sob for showmanship points.

  The infant gargoyle probably wouldn’t have survived the fire if I hadn’t heard its squalls. Plenty of humans hadn’t. The moment I’d laid eyes on the innocent baby in the cradle, with its tiny nubbins of future horns, I never could have walked away. Not all officers could say the same.

  Sometimes, though, late at night when I couldn’t sleep, I wondered if by taking the gargoyle baby, I’d doomed a human to death. Maybe even a child.

  It was pointless to wonder now. The decision had been made and I would have to live with it.

  The Opal gargoyle stepped back. I found myself suddenly smiling at her, overjoyed that she’d deigned to acknowledge me at all… and my temper finally snapped.

  I surreptitiously elbowed Kreslin in the ribs, earning myself a bruise, and ducked my head. “Knock it off,” I hissed.

  He raised a hand to the crowd and shot me a sour look. “Can you try to look happy about this for thirty seconds? You’re receiving an award and there are photographers everywhere. Be jazzed, this is quite the opportunity for some good publicity.”