Hard as Rock Read online

  Hard as Rock

  Khargals of Duras

  Stephanie West

  All rights reserved.

  * * *

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Introduction

  A thousand years ago, a Khargal scouting party left Duras, only to crash on a planet called Earth.

  * * *

  Injured and outnumbered, the stranded Khargals hid among stone effigies and observed the slow evolution of the planet’s primitive inhabitants. With no means of returning to Duras, they watched from their shadowy perches and faded into legend, becoming the mythical gargoyles.

  * * *

  Until today. Long after any hope for rescue had died, the distress signal has finally been answered.

  * * *

  It's time to go home.

  Hard as Rock

  After the loss of her parents, Meline scrapes together the cash to take a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Armed with her great-grandfather’s journal, retracing her heritage should be exciting, yet she can't shake the frightening feeling someone’s been watching her from the moment she arrived in the old city. Then Roc shows up just when she needs him, offering to help. He's sexy-as-sin, wealthy, and well-connected, but there’s something he’s hiding.

  * * *

  Roc needs to locate his Khargal sire's lost sigil before all hell breaks loose, and Meline holds a journal with the answers. After centuries of "liberating" art, he's never thought twice about lying or stealing, but when the captivating woman appears at the site where his father's buried, he hesitates. Something about her has gotten underneath his stoney exterior, and he doesn't know what to do.

  * * *

  When a clandestine group hunting the sigil emerges, Roc and Meline must face them together before the sigil turns everything to ash. Yet the challenge may not be finding the sigil so much as breaking down the wall guarding Roc's heart.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Author’s Note

  Glossary

  More Khargals of Duras

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Stephanie West

  About the Author

  1

  Roc

  Roc smiled to himself as he soared over the tree tops. The job had gone well. He made it into the ridiculously gauche private gallery and retrieved the painting without incident.

  “Who puts pieces like that in a hall with a skylight? Don’t they know light wreaks havoc on art?” Roc muttered into the wind whipping past him as he flew.

  When he laid eyes on the Van Gogh self-portrait, he was tempted to keep it for his own collection. The paint strokes were strikingly bold as only Van Gogh could pull off. But it was the tortured expression on Vincent’s face that tempted him to keep it the most. There was something in the man’s eyes that made him instantly feel like they were kindred spirits. However, it deserved to go back to its rightful owner, so he’d consoled himself by also liberating a lesser-known work by Klimt before leaving the ostentatious home. He had just the right spot for it in his Montreal estate.

  Roc snapped out of his thoughts when his cell phone pinged. He was nearly on top of the location programmed into it. Roc glanced around at the miles and miles of dense forest, then double checked the GPS.

  “This is it,” he confirmed with a smirk.

  Roc shook his head and did a nose dive, aiming for a barely noticeable swath cut through the trees, leading up the mountain.

  “Ah dammit.” He batted at the attacking brush as he landed on the gravel road. “I seriously need to remember the duramna next time I land at Zaek’s,” Roc grumbled as he pulled the brambles from his wings, tucked them back, partially shelled in his duramna—stony form—before heading up the overgrown road.

  The moonlight struggled to pierce the dense woods and light the way, not that he needed it to see the cabin ahead. It just highlighted how far out in the sticks his friend chose to hide himself away.

  Zaek’s not that unfortunate-looking for a purebred. You wanna talk about a tragic mug, that would be my sire, and hell, he bagged my mum.

  Roc paused midstride. It had been a while since he’d thought about his mother, the sweetest, kindest human he’d ever known. A twinge of guilt gripped him for his idle rambling. Theresa loved his sire, Petronus, despite his looks and a heart harder than his duramna. And that was saying a lot since she lived in an age when the unexplained was called satanic and the Khargals who showed themselves were hunted. Although the twenty-first century wasn’t too different from the fifteenth when it came to prejudice against the unknown.

  “But we do have modern amenities. Lar dammit, Zaek,” Roc cursed his friend as he stepped onto the porch and tried the door. “Seriously, why bother locking it?” He looked around incredulously at the forest. “Who’s gonna break in, the bears?”

  Roc tilted his head and listened, but didn’t hear anyone inside, and there wasn’t a single light on.

  “You gotta be kidding me. That hermit never leaves home,” Roc mumbled. Well, there’s no way in Macero I’m waiting out here. It hadn’t been an incredibly long flight, but he was ready to rest his tail and throw back a beer.

  A rotten grin twisted Roc’s face as he imagined Zaek getting his tail in twist when he found him in his home.

  That male really needs to chill.

  He opened his mouth and hummed the tune too high for mortal ears to hear. The wolves howling in the distance nearly broke his concentration, making him want to laugh. Apparently, they didn’t appreciate his serenade. He concentrated and listened for the innards of the complex lock to fall into place. Eventually everything fell in line like it always did when he used the handy subsonic sounds—the gift of his sire’s clan. His ancestors used the talent in defense of Duras, infiltrating the enemy and acquiring the means to defend the home world. At least that’s what his sire went on about during the hours and hours of training as a youth. However, here on Earth there wasn’t much use for a Khargal’s talents or a Khargal at all, so Roc used the clan gift for less noble ventures.

  A man has needs, after all. And his conquests had been so much fun.

  Roc stepped over the threshold and something zipped past his head, narrowly missing his eye. His hand whipped up and caught the projectile as he jumped back. Roc stared in shock at the dart in his hand. The diamond tip guaranteed the flimsy projectile would easily pierce his stony facade. And if he wasn’t mistaken, he scented a powerful sedative.

  “Are you fucking kidding me, Zaek?” he bellowed as his gaze swiveled from the fancy dart to the pressure sensitive tile.

  He studied the foyer, taking note of the motion sensitive laser array. The thin red beams bisected the entry, shifting in an ever-changing pattern. Even if he flew over the booby-trapped foyer floor, he’d still break the beams and set off the damn tranq darts.

  Not even Fort Knox has this kinda shit.

  Roc tilted his head and studied the pattern. Everything slowed as his focus honed in on the goal. He hadn’t had a challenge like this in a while. Roc’s tailed flicked with excitement. He forcibly stilled it and tuck
ed his wings tight against his back. Roc launched himself forward and flipped over the first beam, tucked and rolled beneath the next. He pivoted right to avoid the third but the clawed tip of his wing grazed the roving beam.

  “Fuck me!” He dodged the projectiles that shot out from both walls. “Screw it.” Roc ran for it, then dove, skidding into the living room. He stood up and smiled. “Now, where’s the suspicious bastard’s control panel?”

  He flanked the wall, knocking on the solid logs as he went. He didn’t dare venture further into any of the rooms considering the welcome he’d just received. The place was more stark and somber than he recalled from his friend. Of course it had been a decade, maybe two since they’d seen each other. Zaek hadn’t been an extrovert back then either, then again most Khargals weren’t, especially purebreds. But it looked like Zaek was really wallowing in his hermitude here in the sticks.

  Roc froze in his tracks when he reached the back of the cabin. The hair on the back of his neck stood up like it did when he sensed something odd. His gaze narrowed on an unusual spot on the wall. There was something there, hidden. He felt the ridges on the log, his finger catching on a knot. There was a click and a panel opened revealing a keypad.

  “Bingo.”

  His fingers flew over the controls as he teased out the sequence of numbers. It would be easier if he knew Zaek’s password, but what’s the fun in that?

  “That’s what I’m talking about!” Roc whooped with a pump of his fist when he finally got it, disengaging the system.

  A hidden door slid open, revealing a rocky corridor that appeared to lead into the mountain.

  I am so not going into Zaek’s secret room. The last thing I need to find is he’s into bondage or some shit like that. Although it’d be worse to discover he’s hiding a collection of My Little Ponies, Roc snorted as he shut the secret door, then added himself to Zaek’s security system just to aggravate the male.

  Roc took a little tour of his friend’s cabin, grabbed a beer then headed back to the living room and took a seat in the comfortable oversized chair. He propped his feet up on the tree stump turned coffee table and flipped on the TV to pass time.

  “Well, Zaek, you’re not quite a savage. At least you’ve got cable. Maybe I should buy a bunch of porn flicks on his pay-per-view.” He chuckled, imagining Zaek’s face when he discovered the cable bill.

  Roc paused on the news when a recognizable building captured his attention. It was Château Frontenac, in Quebec City, the place where he’d grown up. Dread filled him as he watched the story unfold. They were excavating the remains of the old governor’s mansion at the foot of the palatial hotel.

  “Shit, this isn’t good.”

  It seemed like yesterday when his mother died, but in reality, it had been centuries. Human life spans were a blink of an eye compared to a Khargal’s. If Petronus had kept his hands to himself, his mother wouldn’t have died trying to give birth to a sibling. His sire couldn’t even give her room to breathe, kissing her incessantly as she clung to life. Unable to reconcile his anger, after watching from the shadows as the Jesuits consecrated his mother to the earth, Roc left the city of his youth and set out to see the world. It took a long time for the bitterness to fade, longer than he realized. Eventually he returned to Quebec to discover his sire had retreated into the duramna and gone to ground. And the only clue to Petronus’ location were senile ramblings about the governor’s mansion from the grandson of a long dead human friend.

  Snarled curses from the front door drew his attention. Roc smiled seeing the perturbed expression on Zaek’s face as he stomped into the living room.

  “How’s it hanging, sour puss?” Roc waved a tranq dart as he grinned at his friend.

  “You are about to be hanging lopsidedly if you do not remove your fucking feet from my furniture,” Zaek growled.

  “Oh, please. You can just mangle a tree and make another. It’s not like it’s a Louis XIVth.” Roc thumped his heel on the stump.

  Zaek’s bark was worse than his bite—most of the time. And if the male’s subtle snort was any indication, his antics had the desired effect. Despite his kind’s generally brusque demeanor, it was good to see one of his own. It meant he didn’t have to hide his wings and tail, or cover up his horns with a hat. Except rather than greeting his friend in what should be a happy reunion, his attention was again pulled toward the TV.

  “Your sire is close to that, yes?” Zaek inquired, nodding toward the Quebec hotel featured on the screen.

  “Yeah, the stubborn bastard,” Roc growled.

  “So, you do not plan to move him before they discover him?”

  “I still have to find him. He’s gone so deep into the duramna, the stoning, that I can’t even sense him. All I know is he’s somewhere entombed at the foot of Château Frontenac.”

  Roc didn’t talk much about Petronus, and certainly didn’t want to start now. He could hardly recall the last time he tried to reach out to his sire.

  A decade? No. Two?

  Roc frowned as he tried to recall when he last wandered where the old mansion stood overlooking the river. It was hard to keep trying when in three hundred years he’d yet to hear a single word from his sire or sense him stir. Roc took a sip of his beer to keep from snarling at his friend. His issues with Petronus weren’t Zaek’s fault.

  “Hmm. You may want to get started on that. The beacon has fallen from orbit and gone active,” Zaek replied casually, as if he were talking about the weather.

  “Say again?” Roc cleared his throat with another swig of beer. Surely, he misheard.

  “The rescue beacon just switched on. We are getting off this miserable fucking rock.”

  The beacon! It’s live?

  Roc had been about six when he first learned about the beacon and sigils. He’d been nosing through his sire’s cache and discovered the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. It wasn’t like the other baubles and coins Petronus amassed, no, it was much more special. The way the ruby medallion shimmered and glowed, he was certain he’d found real treasure. True to form, his sire grumbled something about the home world being lost and shoved the sigil back into the trunk. It was his mother who patiently explained the oblong sigil connected his kind to their true home, a star in the heavens.

  “How? Where’d you hear that?” he asked, shocked to hear about the beacon and sigils after all this time.

  “I have monitored the frequency since we got here. As we all ought to have been.” Zaek cast him a look that clearly said he thought he was a dumbass.

  “I just thought that shit was wishful thinking.” Roc’s sharp brow furrowed. He figured the beacon had drifted off in space, but apparently not. “And I’ve never been to Duras. Why the fuck should I care?”

  “So, you want to stay here, hiding from the Earthians for the rest of your long life?” Zaek asked incredulously, his tail flicking in agitation. “Regardless of whether you were born here, you do not belong on this planet. You know that.”

  Purebreds spoke of Duras like it was the promised land. Every Khargal he’d met was so damn miserable, pining for their lost home. They were always shocked to discover he had no interest in going to a planet he’d never set foot on.

  “Yeah, ‘cause my sire’s first family is going to welcome a half-breed with open arms,” Roc snarled.

  Zaek grunted and kicked Roc’s feet off the coffee table, spread his wings wide then plopped down on the couch. Zaek coughed before continuing with the touchy subject, “You are welcome to join me on my land back on Duras.”

  Roc had several homes here on Earth filled with more than enough beautiful things. Why the hell would he give all that up? And then there was the very fulfilling hobby that brought him to this part of the States, not to mention human women. He shivered recalling the description of Khargal females. They sounded more like males than the fairer sex. No, he much preferred his females soft and round, even if it took some effort to see those soft and round parts.

  “Dude, that’s a
nice offer, but I’ve got a pretty sweet thing going here.” Roc smirked as something occurred to him. “But I know of someone who would go back. If I can wake his ass up.”

  “Who?” Zaek asked, looking perplexed.

  “Petronus, my sire, rocket scientist.” Roc shook his head. For being such an intelligent male, his friend really had his bonehead moments. “You know, this just might be the news he needs to snap out of his funk.”

  Over the centuries, Roc tried to reconcile his frustration with his sire and let it go. It had to be hard crashing on a planet where foreign races, humans, forced them into hiding. Even for him it was trying sometimes, and he’d grown up on Earth and was just human enough to find ways to blend into society. But giving up and retreating into stone, the duramna, was just a cop-out. Zaek and other Khargals hadn’t taken the chicken shit way out.

  Roc’s head popped up as he recalled something his sire said. “Wait, wasn’t there some doomsday shit connected with the sigils?” The grim expression on Zaek’s face confirmed the worst.

  When the Khargals crashed a millennia before it hadn’t been an issue, the humans weren’t advanced enough to pose a problem, but that had changed. The sigils weren’t merely a signal telling the rescue ship where to find them, they were a communicator and transporter all wrapped up in one. And in the wrong hands they were dangerous, like on an epic scale. Roc shivered as he pictured nuclear blasts going off all across Earth.