Defiance (A Greystone Novel #4)

By Taylor Longford

Think you know about gargoyles? The beautiful winged race disappeared eight hundred years ago. When they last walked the earth, they traveled in close-knit packs, their throats marked with ancient runes. Their greatest enemies were the ugly and brutal harpies that people today mistake for gargoyles.

Defiance can't resist Whitney Anders. But the young gargoyle has trust issues where human girls are concerned. And Whitney's a babe among her human peers in Pine Grove, so he's going to have to work for her if he wants her. And overcome his trust issues once and for all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Taylor Longford
• Release date: May 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9780989278515

Taylor Longford

Hi! I'm Taylor Longford and I live with my family in Colorado. When it comes to books, I love fantasy, sword and sorcery, vintage comics and graphic novels. I drive an old Jeep Cherokee with 310,000 miles and almost as many dents. I've rolled it once and it looks like crap but it still goes fast! If I can make a living as a writer, I’ll buy something a bit nicer and write some more stories.

Book preview

Defiance

A Greystone Novel

Book Four

by Taylor Longford

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 9780989278515

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Defiance Copyright 2013 © Taylor Longford

www.taylorlongford.com

Electronic Book Publication May 2013

This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Taylor Longford.

Warning: Any unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher's permission.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination and used fictitiously.

Books in the Greystone Series:

Valor

Dare

Reason

Defiance

Chaos

Victor

Force

Courage

Havoc

DEFIANCE

A GREYSTONE NOVEL

Book Four

by

Taylor Longford

Dedication:

For Brittany

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Epilogue

About the Author

Prologue

I was fourteen when I killed my first harpy. A gang of the winged monsters attacked our town and carried off a young human girl, perhaps ten or eleven years old. My father and his brothers decided to go after the harpies and bring her back. They took with them the three oldest boys in the pack. Technically, that should have been Victor, Dare and Reason. But Reason was helping one of our neighbors and he wasn't on hand when it was time to go. So I went in place of my older cousin.

It's always meant a lot to me that I was a part of that rescue mission. Especially since it was the last time any of us saw our fathers. They held the rear guard, vowing to die before they let themselves be captured, while Victor, Dare and I whisked the girl out of danger and back to York.

And while our fathers took out many harpies that day, I was the only one of the pack lads who managed a kill. Even Victor failed to pull off what I did. But both Victor and Dare tend to be defensive in battle. I'm not like that.

My mother was descended from the tall, blond warriors who invaded England in the ninth century. And despite my gargoyle blood, I'm proud of that heritage. I took a page from what I like to call their Berserkers Book of Warfare. One of their common strategies was to fake a retreat then turn on the enemy after they'd abandoned their defenses. That's what I did to the harpy.

I spun away from the towering she-devil I was fighting and took several running steps. Then I opened my wings and acted like I was going to take to the skies and bail. It cost me a long slash from the top of my shoulder to the base of my spine, but it was worth it. As the harpy closed on me, I whirled to face her. She wasn't expecting that and she ran me over, falling on me. But as she crashed down on top of me and drove me to the ground, I jammed my long knife between the plates that protected her ribs, angling the sharp blade up into her heart.

With savage satisfaction, I felt the monster's thick blood coat my arm, from my hand to my elbow. Alright, that's probably too much information, but I'm trying to say that I wasn't squeamish about killing the harpy. I can kill when it's necessary, easily and efficiently. But I'm not like the men who murdered my mother three years later.

By both gargoyle and human standards, my mother was a beautiful woman. And by that, I mean that gargoyles have a very different perception of human beauty because we see what's on the inside of a person before we see what's on the outside. And a person's inner beauty often overshadows their physical features. But some women are lovely to both men and gargoyles. My mother was such a woman.

And it's difficult for gargoyles to understand why human men will often destroy beautiful things they want, but can't have. They'd never have touched my mother if my father had still been alive. And they knew that the men of her family—me, my brothers and cousins—were safely occupied, working down at the River Foss, preparing to lay the foundation for a new bridge.

They found my mother alone in the marketplace and cornered her in an alley. They told her that they knew her sons had wings and accused her of being a Valkyrie—a beautiful winged female that escorts warriors to the afterlife. Valkyries were considered goddesses in the old Norse culture but were viewed as something more dark and sinister to the men who lived in York at that time. They thought the Valkyrie was a wicked siren that lured men to their deaths.

When my mother ridiculed them for their backward superstitions, they tore her clothes from her, looking for her wings, planning to drag her in front of the townsfolk and expose her as a monster. Of course, she had none. She was just as human as they were. Having proved themselves wrong, they couldn't admit their error without being accused of indecent intentions. So they killed my mother and sank her body in the River Ouse to hide the evidence of their mistake and their crime.

But their crime didn't remain hidden. My mother had taken two of her murderers with her and the surviving men were forced to explain their companions' deaths, which they blamed on the Valkyrie they said they had killed in self-defense.

After their dark accusations, many of our human neighbors became suspicious of my family. Others had always been wary of us so there was no great change there. A handful of longtime friends came to our home to express their sorrow and outrage. But they were few. I resolved then and there that I'd never give my trust to a human again.

Of course, that didn't stop me from messing around with human lasses. At least I think that's the term you'd use nowadays. But I didn't care about any of them…and I trusted them even less.

Fairly swiftly, I developed a reputation with the people of York. The girls considered me a serial heartbreaker, which wasn't far from the truth. The men of the town regarded me with suspicious fear and kept their distance. Even the blacksmith—a very black soul—was afraid of me.

Then about a year after my mother's death, my entire pack was trapped between the walls of a house in our stone forms. Not a single ray of sunshine reached us in our dark prison, and without the help of sunlight we couldn't make the change back to our living forms. Fortunately, we could still hear, and our ears are sensitive, so we were able to keep up with the times during our long captivity.

The treasure hunter who stumbled upon our tomb eight hundred years later brought us out of the darkness and shipped us to his home in Pine Grove, Colorado. There, his stepdaughter—MacKenzie Campbell—opened one of the packing crates and found my cousin, Valor. In all, six of us made it to MacKenzie's place. Three others, including both of my brothers, were lost in transit. We've been looking for them ever since.

Sometimes the trail has been hard to read and the news hasn't always been good. The truck that was carrying my kin passed through St. Louis where three harpies picked up their scent. The evil creatures broke out of the museum they were in and followed them. And when the truck crashed outside of Limon, Colorado, one of the harpies captured Chaos—Reason and Victor's younger brother.

From what we can tell, only one of my brothers was in his living form. He was injured in the accident but managed to help the driver of the van, then disappeared. A harpy named Motschka carried off my other brother. But she dropped him somewhere along the way, probably in a farmer's field. Motschka's dead now, so we can't expect to get any help from her…not that a harpy is ever helpful.

We've been out to Limon a few times to look for Courage and Force but haven't been able to turn up any clues. But if we ever catch up to Chaos, he might be able to help us locate my brothers. So we've decided to focus our efforts on finding him. He's with a harpy named Vilschka and, recently, they were holed up together in the foothills west of Boulder. That's all we have to go on right now. But we know that Chaos gave his venom to Vilschka in return for the safety of a young girl. And with the help of one of Mim's prophetic dreams, we figured out who she is. Her name's Torrie Evans and, right now, we're trying to locate her to see what she can tell us about Chaos's situation and whereabouts.

But if we find him, we'll have a fight on our hands because the gargoyle venom pumping through Vilschka's veins will make the harpy more like us. Her rocky hide will become more like the fine-grained stuff we're made of when we're in our stone forms. That will make the monster almost indestructible. But that isn't the only problem we'll face. Apparently, Chaos has given the harpy his rune, and that means his instincts will command him to protect Vilschka with his life, no matter how much he despises her.

Chapter One

Sitting halfway up the bleachers in the gymnasium at Pine Grove High, I lifted a red aluminum can to my lips then grimaced as I swallowed. I don't like modern soft drinks. I can't get used to the burn. But I drank the stuff anyhow, because most teenagers seem addicted to it, and I planned to fit into the twenty-first century. I'd seen what could happen when people thought you were different. I'd learned young that conforming was the best way to survive in the human world. That's why I hadn't really wanted MacKenzie to join the pack. Or Mim. Or Elaina. And every time another human found out about us, I felt more exposed.

Absently, I ran my tongue over the rough edge of my front tooth, which had been chipped ages ago in one of many fights I can barely remember. As usual, my eyes were glommed onto Whitney's slender frame as she sprinted across the basketball court. Her legs, actually. For some reason, my eyes found her long legs irresistible. Of course, back in my time, you had to work fairly hard to see that much leg, so the twenty-first century was turning out to be a real visual feast for me and the rest of the pack. But when it came to Whitney, it wasn't all about her legs.

I pushed out a ragged sigh, hating my attraction to her and wishing I could fight it. I'd been doing okay a few weeks ago, back when we never saw her. She'd stopped coming to MacKenzie's house and she made herself scarce whenever we picked Mac up from school at the end of the day. 'Course I wasn't happy about her absence but at least I was doing better at fighting the hold she had on me.

Then after the last basketball game we went to, she flipped me off. At least, I thought she was flipping me off. But MacKenzie and Elaina insisted that the two-fingered gesture she sent in my direction was the symbol for love. So, now I was sitting in the stands and thinking maybe I'd try to talk to her after the game…and almost sure it would be a mistake. And if it was, I'd have no one to blame but myself.

Of course, it was Havoc's fault that I was sitting there with a homemade valentine buried in the pocket of my black leather jacket. Last night he'd pulled out a bunch of paper he'd bought at the local grocery store, saying that Valentine's Day was tomorrow and he'd promised MacKenzie's little stepsister a card. So, okay. That was a nice gesture. Sophie's only twelve and a handmade valentine would probably mean a lot to her. But a few minutes later Dare and Valor were sitting beside him at the table, cutting lacy hearts out of white paper and pasting them onto red backgrounds, planning to give them to Mim and MacKenzie.

Yeah, I couldn't help but roll my eyes. It was totally lame. But after they'd turned in for the night, I sat down at the table and went to work, just to prove I could make something better than they had. And my valentine turned out pretty nice. Better than Valor's, anyway. I signed it with my neatest printing and now I was sitting with the damn thing shoved deep in my pocket, planning to use it if my conversation with Whitney went well.

Seriously, I never thought I'd feel this way about a girl. Intense. Unwound. Out of control. I'm the kind of guy who likes to be in charge and call the shots. But I can't resist Whitney.

I first met her on Halloween night, about three months ago. She and Mim swept into MacKenzie's house then disappeared into Mac's bedroom before I could get a good look at her. But I liked what I sensed about her. And when the girls came back out about thirty minutes later, they were dressed in these amazing long gowns. Whitney looked like a queen in gold brocade.

She might not be the most beautiful girl in the world—at least not by gargoyle standards. To the rest of my pack, she's not as pretty as Mim or MacKenzie. That's because Whitney's not as sweet as they are. But I like a girl with a little more fight in her.

And I'm pretty sure most humans find her attractive. I mean, the girl's tall, blond and willowy. All the human words that mean a girl's really hot. So as far as the guys at her school are concerned, Whitney's a babe.

All I know is there's more to Whitney than her looks. She's regal and cool but tough too. And I suspected she'd be fearless in a fight. I was pretty sure that if I was in a tight situation and everyone else was running for their lives, she'd stand beside me and hand me a knife…or at least a can of mace. Maybe I was attracted to that side of her. The cool, steely side that reminded me of myself.

Because she can be intimidating when she wants to. Mac told me about this one time when Whit was just a freshman. One of the seniors on her school bus was picking on this nerdy kid. So she sat down beside the timid redhead and looked back at the bully who was taunting him.

You have a problem with Jeremy? she asked, already tall and imposing even though she was only fourteen.

He's a loser, the senior howled like he'd just discovered the cure for acne. Everyone knows he's a loser.

Whitney sent him a scathing look. Yeah, well everybody here knows you're stupid but you don't hear us complaining about it.

But that wasn't as good as the time she shot down Ryan Myerson who's the starting quarterback and most popular guy at her school even though he beats up freshmen whenever he can find a lame-ass excuse. He broke this one kid's jaw, supposedly because the kid scratched his car. A little while after that, he made the mistake of asking Whitney out. MacKenzie and Mim were there when it happened, waiting for her to get her lunch from her locker.

Whitney closed her locker door and gave Myerson a cool look. I don't think so, she said. I wouldn't want you to beat the crap outta me if I somehow scratched your car.

Scratched my car? He tried to laugh his way through her cut down even though his ears were turning red. How's that gonna happen?

I think I can find a key that would do the job, she said as she turned and walked away.

What's that supposed to mean? he called after her as the girls headed for the cafeteria.

I think it means no, MacKenzie had thrown back over her shoulder.

So, yeah, you don't want to get on the wrong side of Whitney.

But I was smitten. Sorry, I mean whipped. And for the first time in my life, I wasn't sure of myself. I wasn't sure I was good enough. And her hold on me bothered me. I flat out didn't want to feel that way about her. Even worse, I was starting to have protective feelings about her and that wasn't good. I knew what that meant. Next thing you know, I'd be begging her to wear my rune. And I swore I'd never go that far with a human girl.

Because when a gargoyle gives his rune to a girl, he's bound to her forever. He'll remain faithful to her for the rest of his life, even if she gets tired of him and doesn't want him anymore. Even if she walks away. So there's a lot of risk involved for the gargoyle that loses