AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I scrambled off Percival Marigold’s lap, bewildered, looking for my gargoyle, but there was no ‘my gargoyle,’ just Percy of No Mercy, who had played me completely. He really had no mercy. I crossed my arms while panic and anger fluttered around inside my chest. My heart beat harder and faster while anger and humiliation grew. He’d been playing me this whole time.
He scrambled to his feet. “Let me explain.”
“Liar!” I shoved him hard, knocking him back two steps.
He came right back, hands outstretched. “It didn’t start the way I wanted. I wasn’t looking for a human mate!”
I slapped his hands away. “You tormented me for two years, mercilessly, and then, as the cherry, you took a break for two more years and then made me fall in love with your monster form! I should have known that’s all you ever were, a monster with a pretty face and fangs.” My stomach cramped, and I folded over, gasping and breathing hard.
“He spent two years tormenting you?” My father clucked in sympathy. “He must have found it amusing to tease the child who was fixated on gargoyles.”
Another wave of agony had me collapsing to my knees while tears of rage and pain ran down my cheeks. And I’d been feeling guilty about finding Percival attractive, because I already gave my heart to my gargoyle, but he wasn’t my gargoyle, just Percy in disguise. There was no ‘my gargoyle,’ just another malicious trick to prove how gullible and stupid I really was.
I gasped while my insides roiled and I dug my fingers into the grass, stone claws and stone hands, the gray spreading up my arms and towards my body.
“Relax into it,” Percy urged, his voice gentle, his hand on my shoulder feeling like home.
I snarled at him, knocking his hand off me. “Don’t touch me! You will never touch me again! I can’t believe I ever liked your apples.” I curled up in a ball while my insides turned to stone and then to flesh, then to stone, then to flesh, at least that’s what I imagined was happening, but I really couldn’t say, not being inside my organs and checking them out. The world went still as stone. No pain either of heart or of flesh could interrupt the silence.
I lay there, relaxing into that safe and perfect quiet. Nothing in the world could touch me here, because I was a gargoyle, a wise sentinel of stone, a protector of humanity, with purpose as resolute as granite. Or limestone.
I relished in the quiet, but it didn’t last long before the raw agony swept through me, leaving me once more human, weak, trembling like I’d been newly birthed.
“Carefully,” my dad said in a gentle voice he probably reserved for hatching chickens as he wrapped a warm blanket around me.
I shivered and grasped the edges of the blanket in my blood-streaked hands. No, that wasn’t blood, more like red marble veining. My teeth were chattering. “Why-y-y a-a-are my han-n-n-ds red?” Red, like Percy of No Mercy had called me. Maybe he’d known that I’d turn into red stone. He’d been a gargoyle all along, the great protector of humanity who had made my life a living hell.
“It will fade. For now, you need to drink tea and rest as much as possible. You’ll have to stay here so that I can watch over you. Half gargoyles shifting is an extremely delicate process, but you’re doing beautifully.” His whole thing was so gentle and nice, soft voice, careful touch as he lifted me up in my blankie like I was a five-year-old and he really was my daddy. I’d wanted a dad so much for so long, someone who would remember to get me from school, someone who could help me worry about my mom, someone who would help with the bills and the pain and the tears. But he hadn’t been there. He’d spent two months being cold and austere, and now that I shift, he can show his gentle side?
A flare of anger had me struggling to get away from him, but it faded too quickly to give me enough strength to actually get down. There was no way I’d be walking on my own two feet for some time.
“Why is it so hard?” I whispered, closing my eyes.
“You think that turning to stone would be soft?”
I opened my eyes to peer up at him. He was smiling, and if I wasn’t mistaken, had genuinely cracked a pun. “That was terrible.”
“I apologize. I’ll work hard to improve my dad jokes.”
I closed my eyes because I didn’t have the energy to deal with that much weirdness. Where was Percy of No Mercy? What was his problem? Who goes around making people fall in love with their alternate persona while cultivating hate and animosity with the other one? Maybe he was schizophrenic. Either way, I was going to kill him. I was going to kill him slow and painful and permanent. He’d killed the dream I’d had of love, and that was the worst kind of murder.
I was tucked into a bed even more lush and enveloping than the train bed, and for a long time I slept, only waking up to drink a cup of nasty tea before going to sleep again.
When I woke up to my father’s cheerful, “Get up! You’re going home today,” I had no idea how many days I’d been passed out.
“My mom, is she okay?” Of course she was okay, because he had her under guard, so no one came and broke her again. It was kind of nice knowing that he took offense to that kind of thing.
“She is anxious to see you and has threatened Miss Tertrue that she will call the librarian if you don’t come home now.”
I rubbed my face, and my skin felt human, normal. “Yeah, that’s scary.” I examined my hands and arms, and they were so human without any of the red veining. “Did you actually push me off your house?” I had the energy to scowl at him.
“That’s right,” he said pleasantly.
“So, if Percy of No Mercy hadn’t caught me, I’d be a dead gargoyle.” The anger built at the thought of the lying, cruel monster. I was going to kill him.
“I spelled the pavement. No harm would come to you whether Percy of No Mercy showed up or not, but he did, as expected. It’s terrible, isn’t it? But the change is triggered by shock and other strong emotions like anger and hatred. I’ll have to thank Percy of No Mercy for being so terrible to you, or you might have died in the transition.”
I stared at him while my heart twisted along with my stomach. Anger erupted sudden and furious. I squeezed my fists and wished they were around Percy’s miserable, lying throat. How dare he play such an elaborate, cruel, and worthless trick on me? What did I ever do to him for him to target me like this? “Only if your thanks involve violence and pain.”
