Courage

  Books in the Greystone Series:

  Valor

  Dare

  Reason

  Defiance

  Chaos

  Victor

  Force

  Courage

  Courage

  A Greystone Novel

  Book Eight

  ISBN 9780997191806

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Courage Copyright 2015 © Taylor Longford

  www.taylorlongford.com

  Electronic Book Publication December 2015

  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.

  COURAGE

  A GREYSTONE NOVEL

  Book Eight

  by

  Taylor Longford

  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

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Courage's Prologue

  I don't know what I did as a young child that caused my mother to name me Courage. I can only say it's a hard name to live up to. I've never considered myself particularly brave or courageous, especially compared to my older brothers, Defiance and Force. And I'm certain they'd agree. If they'd had their way, we'd have fought it out with that gang of harpies eight centuries ago. But I felt the risks were too high. If even one of us ended up a prisoner in a harpy's lair, the cost would be too great. So, I sided with Havoc when he suggested we go stone to avoid capture.

  And thanks to the harpies, we ended up trapped between two walls where the sun couldn't reach us. Which is a problem if you're a gargoyle because the sun provides the energy we need to change between our stone forms and our living forms. Needless to say, we were stuck in stone for the duration. And the duration lasted a very long eight hundred years.

  In the twenty-first century, we were finally discovered by a modern-day treasure hunter who packed us in crates and shipped us off to his home in the New World. But the final shipment never reached its destination in Pine Grove, Colorado. The shipping van carrying the last three crates was involved in an accident and the vehicle caught fire. I was in that shipment along with my brother, Force, and my cousin, Chaos.

  Now, fire doesn't present much of a problem to a gargoyle in his stone form. So, Chaos and Force weren't in any danger. But I had returned to my living form after my crate was damaged in a fall that allowed a little sunlight inside. That probably wasn't a good idea, everything considered, since I started to get hungry after several hours. I hadn't realized how big America was and how long it would take to cross the country, even at the unbelievably fast speed of sixty miles an hour.

  But after having been stuck in my stone form for such a long stretch of time, I couldn't wait to be alive again, to feel my blood pumping through my veins, to expand my chest with a lungful of air. I don't know how to explain it, and you might find this difficult to understand, but…there really is nothing quite like being alive.

  But leaving my stone form was a bad idea. And that fire would have killed me if it hadn't been for the harpies. So, I suppose I should be thankful they showed up. But seriously, harpies are a hard thing to be thankful for. Especially when you've spent your entire life loathing them with good reason. I don't know how long the damn things had been following my scent as we sped west in the shipping van, but they ripped into the long vehicle and dragged our crates from the flames.

  I can't believe I'm saying this about harpies…but I wish they'd gotten there a little sooner. Because by the time they reached me, my crate was burning and so was I. The pain was so bad I don't even know how to describe it. Excruciating maybe. But what I remember more than anything else is the smell of my own scorched skin. Normally, that smell would be associated with a nice haunch of meat turning on the spit. In this case, I was being roasted alive. And if I live forever, I shall never get that stench out of my nose.

  In the flickering light cast by the roaring fire, the three sisters immediately—and not unexpectedly—started fighting over us. The biggest one, Vilschka, insisted on having my cousin Chaos and that made no one else happy. A violent argument followed, including some pretty ear-splitting screeching and some filthy medieval language that would impress exactly nobody nowadays. But eventually, Motschka was forced to settle for my brother Force, leaving me in the clutches of the particularly unappealing Nitschka. Not that I was a whole lot more appealing with half my face burned away.

  I'm sure I was a disappointment to her. I'm equally certain she considered me better than nothing.

  The pain was horrific. I wanted to curl into a ball on the ground and howl in misery. But there wasn't time to give in to the agony of my burns. Vilschka and Motschka had spread their wings to take off with Chaos and Force while Nitschka clutched at my shoulder with her gnarly claws.

  It's never good to be captured by a harpy. But if it can't be avoided, it's best to be locked in your stone form. Unfortunately, it was dark and without any sunlight I couldn't make the change. But I did not plan to spend the rest of my life as the harpy's plaything, feeding her my venom, losing my rune to her, and one day fathering her monstrous children. My only option was to make a run for it.

  Hunching away from the harpy to protect my injured face, I watched with my good eye as my brother and cousin were lifted from the ground. Nitschka still had her long claws anchored in my shoulder but her attention was riveted on the two beautiful creatures currently slipping from her grasp. Knowing I might not get a better chance, I bunched my fist and slammed my palm against the veins on the back of my hand, sending a stream of venom into the harpy's eyes. Her grip on me loosened a fraction. Just enough for me to tear out of her hold.

  Wheeling away from her, I sprinted toward the end of the burning vehicle where I hoped I'd get lost in the billowing smoke as I opened my wings. But before I could take to the air, I caught a glimpse of a man slumped in a seat at the front of the van. He appeared to be unconscious. And as much as I wanted to focus on my escape plan, I knew the man would die in the flames if I didn't help.

  With an anxious glance over my shoulder, I dug in my heels and came to a halt beside a large black wheel. And climbing onto the van, I pulled the man through a broken window. A few yards from the fire, I left him sitting in a shallow ditch with his back propped against the wide base of a tree. By now, I had lost precious seconds and expected Nitschka to be right behind me. Crouching in the night shadows cast by the tree, I looked around for her.

  But when I found Nitschka, I had to smother a grunt of surprise. Because she was in the air, searching the sky for me, and drifting lopsidedly away in the wrong direction. My salvation had been in stopping for the man. If I hadn't taken the time to help him, the harpy would have probably found me in the air, right where she expected me to be, right where I had planned to be.

  Normally, the hideous monster would have been able to track me by the scent of my venom
. But in this case she was screwed. She wouldn't be following anybody with my venom all over her face. She'd have to stop and clean it off before she could sniff me out again. And by then, I intended to be long gone.

  But I was hurting, the right side of my face fried. And I needed to put as much distance between myself and the harpy as quickly as possible. So, catching the wind and hugging the ground, I glided away to the southwest. I flew as far as I could bear, perhaps fifteen miles and hopefully out of range of her keen sense of smell, before I had to seriously think about doing something for the pain.

  I was looking for water, something to ease the fiery agony of my burns. So, I was hoping to find a river or creek. But all of the creek beds were dry as I swept across the country, about a foot off the ground.

  At one point, a solid bulk loomed out of the darkness and I veered away just in time to avoid a collision with the tail end of a sturdily built cow. But after my heart rate had returned to normal, I doubled back in the direction of the animal, wondering where she watered. Deciding to take a chance, and hoping Nitschka wasn't on my tail, I climbed higher into the night sky to see if I could find out where the cow went when she wanted a drink. Within a thousand paces, I found two more of the creatures drinking at a large round container made of unpolished metal.

  Landing lightly beside the gray tank, I scooped some water into my hand and splashed it on my face. The cool liquid gave me some relief but it was pretty minimal. It reduced my scale-of-ten pain to maybe nine-and-a-half.

  I moaned under my breath and checked out my reflection on the dark surface of the water. I was a mess, the hair on the right side of my head burned away along with a good chunk of my ear. But when I scowled at the situation, I quickly decided I didn't want to do that again. It hurt to frown. It hurt to smile. It hurt to blink! I decided zero-facial-expression was the best option as I braced my hands on the rim of the tank and considered my next move.

  I needed to hide from Nitschka. I needed to do something about the pain ripping down the side of my face. But by chance, I'd already found the solution to both of those problems. The color of the large round water tank matched the color of my stone form almost exactly. And it was filled with cool liquid. The tank provided a camouflaged hiding place where I could recover from my injuries.

  So, I spent the long, agonizing night bathing my wounds. And when the sun came up in the morning, I stretched out on the bottom of the tank and turned to stone. One of my hands was firmly fixed to the rim of the tank so I could access the sunlight in the daytime and return to my living form whenever I wanted to. And my eyes were open so I could watch the sky for harpies.

  But if a harpy ever came my way, I never saw her. And—better still—she never saw me camouflaged against the flat gray color of the water tank.

  And there I stayed for the next several months, returning to my living form for only minutes at a time. Minutes were all I could bear. But minute-by-minute and day-by-day, the pain finally eased enough that I felt maybe it was time to get out of the tank and get on with my life. I didn't know how long I'd spent in my living form a-minute-at-a-time, but I was ravenously hungry.

  It was time to find food if nothing else.

  But when I finally climbed out of my hiding place in the water tank, I didn't head back to the site of the wreck where I'd last seen my family. Because that was also the place where I'd last seen Nitschka. I didn't want to fall into her clutches under any circumstances.

  I decided the best course of action was to leave some signs on the ground in case my family was looking for me. Something that could be seen from the air. So, that was my long-term goal. I'd get to that as soon as I could. In the short term, I needed food. And just as importantly, I needed someone to help heal my scars, which were monstrous.

  To do that, I needed a witch. A good witch. A nice lass with red hair.

  Lorissa

  Chapter One

  People go to church for different reasons. Believers are there to celebrate their faith and God's gift of life. For others, it's a chance to get together with friends and neighbors. And for more than a few it's a chance to hedge their bets; if there is a God, they want to be sitting on the right side of the fence come judgment day.

  Now, I'm as steady a churchgoer as you'll ever meet. But I'm not a believer and I'm not there to socialize or hedge bets. I go to church for redemption. Because I'm a sinner. And I'm not talking about your everyday common garden-variety sinner, either. When I was a kid, I did some really bad things. And I haven't missed a day of church since.

  But the town I live in is really small. And that means I have to go up to Limon once a week to find a church. I even manage to get myself up there on days when my folks are too busy to attend. If I have to, I hitch a ride with one of the neighbors.

  Most people have never heard of the place where I live. That's because it's about smack dab in the middle of nowhere. It's hardly big enough to be called a town on account of it's only got six streets and not one of them is longer than you can spit. But the big tornado of 1990 got its start here, touching down in our neighbor's alfalfa field and traveling northeast. When it reached Limon, it ripped through the town's main street, destroying most of the businesses. That was twenty-five years ago. And since then, my town has once again faded into quiet insignificance. But that doesn't mean nothing interesting happens out where I live, because that's where I met my first gargoyle.

  My brother and I were home alone that summer. The folks were on a European tour, funded by my mom's parents. Her family has always had money and they insisted my folks take a real vacation for the first time in twenty years. Kellen had just turned eighteen so Mom and Dad figured he was old enough to run herd on me and…the herd.

  We raise cattle.

  So, it was just me and Kellen at home on the ranch. Which almost meant it was just me. Because Kellen's a good guy and a great brother but he's relatively useless when it comes to ranch work. Well, not useless exactly, but unreliable. Kellen's always got something else to do and somewhere else to be. Most recently, he'd been spending a lot of time practicing with his band. They called themselves Other Regions.

  But I don't mind if Kellen ducks out most of the time because I love the ranch and Dad got on that plane to London knowing I'd watch over the stock and keep the rustlers at bay.

  Oh yeah, there's still such a thing as rustlers, although they rarely try to take off with your entire herd nowadays. They're more likely to field-butcher a young heifer, take all the good parts and leave the rest for the coyotes to clean up. I'd like to catch me a rustler one day but I think they do most of their work at night. And Mom and Dad probably wouldn't appreciate me goin' all vigilante on them in the middle of the night when they weren't around. Probably not the safest career choice for a fifteen-year-old girl.

  But getting back to the gargoyle and how we met…

  I was coming home from Jesse's house; her mom had dropped me off at the top of the driveway. Jess and I had been working on her online comic strip, Zombie Cantina. She does all the art but occasionally needs help with plotting. That's where I come in. She paints her characters into a corner and I get them out of it.

  What are friends for?

  Jess and I have been together since kindergarten. We're pretty close. Well, as close as two people can be who live fifteen miles apart. Rancher's kids tend not to make tight connections, partly because of the distance that separates them. And partly because we're so busy in the fields at home.

  But Jesse's my hero as well as my friend. She's artistic, wild and unconventional. Her hair is thick and dark and she wears it really short except for on top where it sprouts out of her head in three tall inches of reckless abandon. If you turned her upside down, you could use her for a broom. But when she gets out of high school, she's going to study art and graphic design and look for a job in New York.

  She's so ambitious compared to me. I might go to college one day but ultimately I want to live on a ranch just like my folks. Sometimes I feel a l
ittle guilty that I don't want more, like I'm not living up to my teenage potential, like I should be more rebellious and I shouldn't be so content to live the same life my parents have lived. But I love ranching—the stock, the horses, the smell of fresh cut alfalfa—and I don't think that's ever gonna change.

  After Jesse's mom pulled away in her old Chevy Blazer, I opened the gate and started the long dusty walk to the house, tripping over about a dozen dogs that came to escort me the rest of the way home. The dogs belong to Kellen. My brother has never met a dog he didn't like. Or a puppy he could ever sell or give away. So, there's no shortage of dogs on the ranch. I'm not sure why none of them ever leave. I guess they just know a good thing when they see it. And evidently, Kellen is a good thing from a dog's point of view.

  My phone rang so I dug it from the pocket of my jeans and answered it.

  It was Kellen.

  From what I could tell, he was on his way back from the ranch supply store with some fence posts. It was hard to say for sure because he kept breaking up. That's the problem with living out in the middle of nowhere. Cell coverage isn't exactly a hundred percent. It seemed like he was trying to warn me about something but I couldn't make out what it was.

  Whatever. I figured he could tell me about it when he got back with the fence posts.

  When I reached the house, most of my four-legged entourage settled down in the shade on the covered porch. The ones that were still at my ankles got shooed away as I opened the door because dogs aren't allowed in the house.

  Inside was a lot cooler than outside. We leave most of the windows open in the summer so the breeze can run through. It keeps the place from getting too hot.

  I left my keys on the sideboard in the family room and kicked off my cowboy boots, heading for the kitchen. That's about when I heard the shower running in the back bathroom on the main floor. Which was hard to understand. Because the truck was gone. And Kellen had just called me on his way back from Limon.