Reason (A Greystone Novel #3)

Reason

A Greystone Novel

Book Three

by Taylor Longford

Smashwords Edition

ISBN 9780983707882

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Reason Copyright 2012 @ Taylor Longford

www.taylorlongford.com

Electronic Book Publication April 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

REASON

A GREYSTONE NOVEL

Book Three

by

Taylor Longford

Table of Contents

Title Page

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

Epilogue

About the Author

Reason's Prologue

Almost every gargoyle can tell you a story that involves a close call with a harpy. My father was a young warrior during the great harpy wars that almost wiped out our race, and he told some spine-chilling tales of battle and survival. Everybody loves stories like that.

My story's a little different.

It starts back in England in the middle of the thirteenth century. Back then, my father and brothers and I lived with the rest of our pack in a fair-sized community of gargoyle families. Our homes formed a square on the east side of York, just north of the bridge over the River Foss. The two-story houses enclosed a grassy courtyard on three sides, where we kept sheep and goats and even a few horses. A low wall closed off the south side of the yard, and looked out on another square of houses across a wide road. Most of our human neighbors didn't know about gargoyles but there were a few good people in town that we trusted with our secret.

I'd turned fifteen that summer and it was my responsibility to water the livestock every morning. I'd just filled the trough behind the house when Defiance called me to the other side of the yard where he was using the wall to mount his horse. The sky was blue and the grass was springy underfoot as I loped toward him, the smell of wood smoke from the morning cooking fires drifting on the air.

Beyond the wall, the sun splashed down on a family of small children playing in front of their home. Three youngsters chased each other around in a game of tag while a toddler sat with an upturned bowl between his chubby legs and banged the round wooden top with a stick. On a large island known for its dreary weather, it could easily be described as a glorious day.

You should have bargained for a shorter horse, I taunted my cousin when I reached him, shaking my head when I thought about how much his father had paid for the long-legged creature.

I'll grow into this one, he answered with his usual stubbornness.

She's a beauty, I admitted, reaching up to stroke the horse's neck. The mare was a deep golden color with black mane and stockings.

Come on up, Defiance offered, patting behind him on the horse's back. I'll give you a ride down to the river.

A lift to the river sounded good but before I could step up onto the wall to mount the mare, a large black sail appeared in the sky above the house across the street. On a beautiful sunny day when you're not expecting trouble, you don't react right away. Several heartbeats went by before I realized what I was looking at. We hadn't sensed the monster's evil presence because she wasn't close enough yet. Following my startled gaze, Defiance whipped his head around and muttered beneath his breath, Harpies.

It was a strange sight and one to put ice in your veins. Harpies usually hunted at night and rarely flew in the daytime, at least not in places where anyone might see them. This one must have gotten into some fermented apples. It was the only thing that could explain her lopsided flight and reckless behavior. But strange swiftly changed into something much more ominous. Because, as we watched, we saw several more dark shapes tilting wildly over the town.

Defiance cursed a medieval oath. I saved my breath and hurdled the wall, sprinting toward the children. Behind me, I could hear the voices of my family and pack, the men telling the young gargoyles like me to take cover, Havoc's mother calling his name.

Ignoring all of that, I raced across the road to the little ones. If a harpy got hold of me, she probably wouldn't kill me. A harpy wouldn't take a gargoyle's life unless she had no other choice. The human children were another matter. As far as harpies were concerned, they were just tender morsels for the cooking pot.

Run, I shouted at the children. Get inside. The three youngsters stopped their game and stared up at me. Uncertain looks creased their small faces. Get inside, I roared and pointed upward. Harpies!

They knew what harpies were. Though humans tolerated their presence in and around York, the winged demons were routinely blamed for lost livestock and missing travelers. And wherever people got together, in the market or outside churches, men traded stories of monsters that dropped out of the sky and attacked at night.

The children turned toward the open doorway as I continued my race in their direction. The oldest lad scooped the toddler into his arms and disappeared into the house. The young girl grabbed the hand of her little sister and followed. The harpy reached the girls a split instant before I did, clawing at the smaller one's skirt and yanking her away from her sister. I pulled my knife and dove for the child, slashing my blade at the heavy fabric of her dress and separating her from the harpy's talons. Rolling on the ground, I shoved the tiny lass through the open door.

The harpy lifted back into the sky with the tattered cloth clutched in her talons. She didn't realize right away that she'd lost her prey. When she did, she wheeled in the air and shot toward me, screaming in fury. She made a grab for me but I scrambled into the house and slammed the door behind me.

Outside, we could hear the monster throwing herself at the door like something that had gone mad. Bar the rear door, I told the children's young mother while I stood with my back braced against the front one. The little ones followed her to the other side of the house and gathered around her like so many chicks. Silent and wide-eyed, they held onto her skirts and stared back at me.

Where is your man? I asked her.

He left for the fields at dawn, she answered, and flinched at the sound of a human scream. She sent an apprehensive look at me. Will you stay with us?

I'll stay, I told her, never thinking that I might be needed somewhere else. Our gargoyle community counted upward of forty families divided into seven packs; a dozen harpies shouldn't pose too much of a problem. I figured my father and his brothers alone could hold them off if they attacked our square.

After a long period of banging and screeching, it grew quiet outside the house. Apparently, the harpy had given up her attack on the door. I relaxed a little then stiffened again when I heard a heavy clunk overhead. I lifted my eyes to the ceiling, remembering there was a shuttered window on the second floor. And since it was a nice day, it had probably been open at the time of the attack.

I lowered my gaze to the young mother and questioned her with my eyes.

Her look of dread gave me my answer.

I crept toward the ladder leading to the upper level while looking around for a weapon. As I put my foot on the bottom rung, the young mistress brought me a long piece of metal—the spit from the fire. Gripping it firmly in one hand, I climbed the ladder. When I reached the third rung from the top, I crouched below the level of the second floor then sprang upward, landing on my feet and spinning to face the window.

The harpy had one foot on the planked floor and the other one on the sill. Amazingly, she was trying to get through the opening without closing her wings. The creature was obviously drunk. That didn't make her a great deal less dangerous but it definitely gave me an advantage. With the spit braced at my side like a Roman pike, I sprinted across the room and plowed into her midsection, hitting her so hard I almost went out the window with her. She tipped over the sill, her face contorted in a snarl, her sharp talons clawing at me as she tumbled to the ground. Breathing hard, I slammed the shutters closed and pulled down the locking bar, then added the long piece of metal as a safety measure before returning to the lower level.

Inside the dark house, we held our breaths and listened for any new sign of attack. We heard nothing except for distant shouts, and I assumed the rest of the town was busy avoiding the harpies, merchants taking cover with their families, hunters and farmers grabbing their bows and planning to defend their homes. But it would take a fair marksman to bring down a harpy. Unless an arrow found a chink in the creature's armor, the shafts would simply bounce off her rocky hide.

When the screaming and shrieking had finally faded away, I cracked the door open and checked the road outside. Several knots of men stood about, talking in serious tones and pointing toward the north. It looked as if the danger had passed and I opened the door wider. The children's mother hurried over to me to thank me and I stayed long enough to tell her she was welcome, but I wasted no time getting out of the house and back home.

Across the road, the yard was disturbingly empty. As I vaulted over the wall, my brother Chaos stepped from the house and hurried to meet me. He wrapped me in a tight hug and steered me into the house where my aunts and cousins sat with a group of our closest neighbors.

Is everyone safe? I asked as I stepped through the doorway.

Valor's mother jumped from her stool and threw her arms around me. Where have you been? she cried. We've been so worried.

Where's my father? I countered, looking around and noticing that Victor was missing as well as Dare, Defiance and my two uncles.

Sit down, she insisted and put a hot posset in my hands. In her distraction, she'd forgotten that I hate the drink but I put on a good face and pretended to enjoy a few sips. A young girl was taken by the monsters, she reported. Your father and uncles followed them to try and bring her back. They took the three oldest lads with them.

Three oldest, I echoed, feeling a gut wrenching stab of dismay. My brother, Victor was the oldest; Dare and I were a year younger. I should have gone with the rescue party but Defiance had gone in my place, the six gargoyles dropping over the walls and racing for cover before unfurling their wings to chase down the gang of harpies.

Do we know the lass? I asked, hoping the answer was nay.

My aunt shook her head and pushed a slender hand through her tumble of long, bronze hair. The family lived over by the abbey. The girl was about ten and their youngest child. The mother is distraught.

Immediately, there was a great deal of reassuring talk from the neighboring menfolk, everyone cheerfully advising us that the great warriors of the harpy wars would be back with the girl before nightfall. But their words didn't erase the look of concern on my aunt's face and the sun set on a quiet house. A quiet house that felt dreadfully empty despite the fact that it was filled with waiting friends and family.

Nobody slept that night. We kept the fire going, with a hot drink and a meal ready for the returning heroes. Morning crept into the room and I looked at my aunt's face, her brow smooth but her eyes filled with worry for her man and her son.

I couldn't stand to be in the room where everybody held their breath, waiting. Along with Valor, Chaos and Courage, I climbed the north wall and scanned the landscape for a sign of our family's return. But we overlooked them at first when they finally came into view at the end of an interminably long day. We'd been searching for six people making their way through the high grass toward home, but there were only three. Two blond heads and one dark. There, shouted Valor, pointing to the figures in the distance.

We jumped from the walls and pelted through the gates, plowing through the fields of grass toward our returning kin. When we caught up to them, Defiance was carrying the girl while Dare limped along beside him. Victor brought up the rear, periodically glancing back over his shoulder. But not in fear. He looked in hope. He was looking for our father and uncles.

We helped them back to the walls where the girl's parents snatched their daughter from Defiance's arms and hurried her away. Our family swept the young warriors home. In our kitchen, Dare's mother bathed and wrapped a deep wound in his leg while Defiance's mother worked on a long tear that ripped across her son's back from the top of one shoulder down to the base of his spine. Dropping onto a stool beside the fire, Victor told us what had happened, how their fathers had sent the younger gargoyles back while they held off the gang of monsters, vowing to die before they let themselves be taken.

The men never returned. My father—perhaps the greatest hero of the harpy wars—was missing. I never saw him again. Victor took over leadership of the pack, a duty that would have normally fallen to him at a much older age. Defiance, who had gone in my place, wore his terrible scar like a badge of honor and I always felt a little envious of the wound he'd earned fighting alongside our fathers. And I never stopped feeling that I should have been there.

But stories like mine aren't exactly rare. When Dare was sixteen he was captured by a harpy and spent two years trapped in her aerie. He lost his wings and barbs…although lost is a nice word for what happened to him. The harpy stripped out the leather between his spines. And he destroyed his barbs so she couldn't force him to share his venom with her. What he did was insanely brave. I've known gargoyles in similar situations who couldn't do what he did.

But after Dare's ordeal, we were all a bit protective where he was concerned. There were probably times when he felt smothered, but we did our best to give him some breathing room. We just asked him to check with us before he took off on his own. Which he'd done on the afternoon he set out to help Ewan, the blacksmith's bonded boy. We okayed the trip, considering Dare a low risk since harpies couldn't scent the venom sealed behind his ruined barbs.

Dare just got unlucky that afternoon. The harpies would never have known what he was if they hadn't gotten so close to him. Looking back, I suspect they must have had some dealings with the blacksmith. He was a loathsome old codfish. Nowadays, you'd call him a jerkoff, or maybe something worse.

We were just leaving work for the day when Ewan came pelting down to our worksite beside the river, gasping for breath and pointing across town. Dare, he wheezed.

We didn't hang around for an explanation. It was enough to know Dare was in trouble. We threw down our tools and took off for the smithy. Defiance and his brothers reached Dare first but the rest of us were close behind. There were at least a dozen harpies involved and all nine of us ended up trapped against the old Roman walls that surrounded the town.

Despite Dare's insistence that we clear out, we couldn't desert him. Instead, we chose to stay with him and take on our stone forms. We hurried into a small croft built against the town walls, opened our wings, and used the day's last rays of sunshine to make the change. It would have been a fine plan if the harpies hadn't decided to imprison us at the back of the hut. Using large blocks of stone, they sealed us behind a roughly constructed wall.

There we sat for eight hundred years while the original stone hut became a storage room for a larger home that was built up around it. The house experienced numerous additions and renovations while we were trapped. At one time, a large family with servants lived there. Later on, it was little more than a crowded slum for several families. And as the centuries passed, the gargoyle race apparently died out and humans gave our name to our worst enemies—the harpies. I suppose it was an honest mistake, but that doesn't make it any easier to accept.

Enter MacKenzie's stepfather who's a modern day treasure hunter. He pulled down the wall at the back of the old house in York and found what he thought were nine winged statues—Valor, Dare, Havoc, Defiance, Courage, Force, Chaos, Victor and me. Thinking he could make a killing by selling us to collectors in America, Mac's stepdad shipped us to his home in Colorado.

Altogether, six of us made it to MacKenzie's house. Three of the pack went missing and are still unaccounted for—my brother Chaos, and Defiance's brothers Courage and Force. But after regaining our living forms, we started looking for them right away, Mac calling the shipping company every day to demand information about their last known location.

Eventually she got word that the delivery van carrying our three missing gargoyles had crashed outside Limon, Colorado. The van caught fire and the entire shipment was destroyed. But it wasn't all bad news. The driver claimed that an angel with wide black wings had pulled him from the burning wreck and carried him to safety. So, we have reason to believe that my brother and cousins are alive.

What's more, we know that three or more harpies followed the van from St. Louis and our kin might have been forced to make a run for it after the accident. Dare killed one of the harpies while on a reconnaissance trip to Limon; her sisters had left her behind. But there are still at least two of them out there somewhere, probably tracking the missing members of our pack…if they haven't already captured them.

Anyhow, while all this was going on in Colorado, I was sitting beside a pool in Texas. That's not quite as good as it sounds. I was in my stone form and I'd traveled there in a wooden crate after Mac's stepdad sold a statue to a millionaire collector. The millionaire actually wanted Valor but I offered to take my cousin's place. As second-in-command, it was my duty and responsibility. It wasn't a huge sacrifice on my part. We figured the buyer would return me when he realized he didn't receive the statue he'd ordered.

That was another great plan that went wrong. 'Course I can't blame anyone but myself. All I can say is that it could have been worse. Someone could have died.

It involved a girl, a kiss, and a short trip to the bottom