Creche (Book II of Paranormal Fallen Angels/Vampires Series) by Karin Cox Page B

irritate you.” Her thoughts penetrated my head.
    “Then what?” I spun to look at her. “To lecture me?”
    She moved to a round, flat stone set into the ground and slid it sideways, revealing a well. The chain squeaked as she lowered the bucket. When she drew it up again, the water was so cold that a tendril of white mist curled from it. Hoisting the bucket to her hip, she set off away from me, water sloshing down the sides, until she poured it into a stone trough nearby.
    “Only to help you,” she said as the deer flocked around her to drink. “As I help others.”
    “And this helps? You patronize me. You treat me like a fledgling. You teach me like a schoolmarm.”
    Her face crumpled for a moment, and she bowed her head. “I am sorry. I have never had to teach Cruxim lore to one who knows it not. Here, it is instilled from birth. It is in everything we do. How else should I teach you but by abiding by the lore? How should I please you without bringing about my own exile? Tell me, Amedeo, that I might teach you more kindly. Must I let you go, and Silvenhall with you?”
    Shame washed through me. “I am sorry.” I hung my head. I wanted to tell her yes, to leave. “I am grateful, but Sabine’s anchorstone sits in Delphi while the riddle I sought is here. You know it. You hear my thoughts.” I coughed. “And yet you keep yours hidden from me. You keep the riddle from me, and much more. Why must I wait?”
    “You heard Shintaro. You must wait.”
    “A month.” I raised my voice. “Do you know how many corpses they might turn in a month?”
    “Still it is so. What good would the riddle be to you here while that month passes? No good at all, even if you knew how to interpret it.”
    “I deciphered the other.” I sat on a boulder and frowned.
    “With my help.”
    “Fine. With your help.” I folded my arms across my chest.
    After dropping the empty bucket back down into the well, Skylar put her hand out to me. “If you would flee me and Silvenhall, I cannot stop you. But you are tired, as am I. Let us rest.”
    “Who will watch me while you sleep?”
    “None but me and my trust in you.”
    I climbed to my feet. “Brave—to trust one such as I when no one else will.”
    “Yes, or foolish,” she answered. The words were another echo of my past.
    You are brave, came my thoughts. I was the foolish one: for following her here and for already caring for her too much to flee.

    “W here shall we sleep?” I asked. Nowhere had I seen huts or shelters, villas or houses. I glanced at the treetops, but there was nothing there either but sunlight filtering through leaves.
    “Let me show you the Eyries.”
    Skylar turned away from the glade toward the cliff and then flew upward to where spurs of rock shot skyward to lonely heights. Caves formed faces in the stone. Carved into the cliff face were staircases and slides, all intricately functional. Stone deer, their antlers mossy with age, leaped from the staircases. Fauns and centaurs cavorted on the bannisters and lintels. I searched for the lithe, winged beauty of a Sphinx, but there were none.
    “Here.” Skylar alighted on a cedar balcony garlanded with vines and clinging honeysuckle. A film of silk covered the entrance to the cave beyond.
    Only more stone pillars, jutting heavenward, broke the blank blue of the sky.
    “It is magical.”
    “The Eyries,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Where we make our nests.”
    I laughed. “You sleep in nests?” As soon as I said it, I wondered why it seemed so odd to me. I had curled up with owls as a lonely boy. I had plucked out my own feathers to shield me from the cold stone floor of Sezanne’s tower.
    Skylar’s laugh could almost have been the call of a songbird, the way it rang through the Eyries. “Of course,” she said when it stopped. “How do you sleep? How do you dream if not in a nest?”
    “In a bed.”
    “You have been too much around mortals, Amedeo.” She tugged at my hand. “Try a