Heart of Stone by Christine Warren Page A

Ella marshaled her courage and tried to quiet her animal instinct to run. Run and hide. And scream. This was Kees, she reminded herself. The same man she’d driven to Lions Bay with. The same man who had slept in her apartment the night before. The same man she’d kissed in the ballroom of the museum. He wasn’t a monster.
    No matter how much he looked like one.
    “No, I know. It’s fine,” she said, proud when her voice didn’t quiver the way her stomach was doing. “I just forgot, that’s all. I forgot how … big you are.”
    And she had. She felt tiny next to his human shape. In this form, she wanted to break into a rousing rendition of “The Lollipop Guild.” Kees was lucky that her apartment was in a historic building with twelve-foot ceilings. As it was, if he stretched again, he’d easily touch them.
    Kees rumbled something noncommittal and took a seat on the sofa. He made it look like dollhouse furniture. Ella watched in fascination as he settled his wings around him before turning his attention back to her.
    “You should sit,” he instructed. “There are things I must explain to you.”
    “It’s about time.”
    He waited until she sat. With him taking up so much of her sofa, Ella dropped into the only other available seat, the battered armchair to his left, and tucked her legs up underneath her.
    “I told you before about the Guild of Wardens and the other Guardians like myself. I explained that we were summoned to battle the Darkness, that the Guild of Wardens assists us and watches over our slumber, waking us when there is a threat to this world. I also told you that the Guardians defend against the Seven demons, while lesser threats are dealt with by other guards who do not sleep as we do.”
    He waited until she nodded. Yeah, she remembered all that. It made her head spin, but she remembered it.
    “What I did not tell you was the story of the Darkness, and why the Guardians stand ever vigilant against its servants.”
    “Well, I kinda figured that ‘the Darkness’ was your way of talking about evil, and I figured that staying vigilant against evil was pretty much a given.”
    “Matters are not quite so simple.”
    “Why do I feel like that’s my new life story?”
    He ignored her grumbled question.
    “The Darkness is not just evil, it is the evil, the sum of all that is evil and all that evil is. It has existed since the dawn of time, and in all those ages, it has sought to devour all life that stands against it. It is eternal and relentless and indestructible.”
    “Indestructible?” Ella swallowed hard. “If it’s the all-powerful embodiment of evil, how come the world isn’t dead and gone already?”
    “Because the Universe abhors the Darkness.”
    His clawed fingers tapped on his thigh as he spoke, reminding Ella that when resuming his natural shape, he’d also assumed his “natural” clothing, which basically amounted to a cross between a loincloth and an abbreviated kilt. And she really shouldn’t be staring at the thigh muscles of a guy from another species. No matter how much she wanted to lick them.
    Down, girl!
    What the hell was wrong with her?
    “Now even the powers of the Universe cannot destroy the Darkness, but they could weaken it, and so they did, by dividing it into Seven pieces. Seven slices of pure and utter evil whose only desire is to reunite and destroy all life and light in existence.”
    Ella forced herself to focus and remember what he had already told her. “Seven pieces, huh? That number seems like a pretty big coincidence.”
    “It is no coincidence. The Seven demons my brothers and I guard against are those same Seven pieces of Darkness. We fight to keep them apart and to keep them off the mortal plane, because when they are here, they can feed off the chaos and destruction they cause and become stronger. Banishing them not only keeps humanity safe from their evil, but it also weakens them—however, they never stop looking for ways back into