Wonderland Ch. 02

Authors Note: Sorry about the gender confusion during the first chapter. I think this story was the reason why I stopped writing in first person POV, lol. Hopefully this chapter can redeem the downfalls of the first. Remember, this story is copyrighted, and if you steal my work, I'll send the Four Horsemen to your doorstep in retaliation. That is all. =)

~+~

It's going to eat me.

That was my only thought as I reached the stairwell, sprinting down them with surprising agility. When I landed at the foot of the stairs, I took off towards the castle doors where my crushed bike was still wedged between them.

The ground trembled beneath my feet and I tripped up on the cracked stone, skidding to a halt just in front of the doors. I looked over my shoulder and stared in shock as the monster rose to full height, its black eyes expressionless as it stared down at me.

I scrambled to my feet and tried to pry the bike from the doors, but it wouldn't budge. Without hesitation, I threw myself into the wood, knocking my shoulder into the frame hard enough to leave bruises. On the third shove, the doors parted with an audible groan and I collapsed onto the concrete.

The monster wheeled back from the light with a soft roar, covering its eyes. I readied myself for a leap into the murky depths of Lake Wonder, but realized that if this monster escaped, Pandora and her box of troubles would have nothing on me.

Like I needed another reason to be picked on at school.

I turned and started to slam the doors home, but by then the monster had recovered, its black eyes widening with something akin to horror as it realized I was trapping it inside. With a roar, the monster charged with its thick arms extended and shoved me back, gripping us together as we fell.

I gasped in pain and surprise at the weight of the monster, unable to believe that I was still conscious after that tackle.

How do football players do it?!

Its body curled up to pull its tail through the doors, giving out a sigh of relief. The castle disappeared soon after, taking my bike along with it. I started to curse at my luck, but right now I had bigger problems than a missing bike.

I swallowed hard as the monster AKA "The Bigger Problem" turned its head towards me.

Oh fudge.

The creature had a gender.

And it was an unbelievably pissed off male.

He reached down and brought a long, sharp dagger to my throat, the blade barely scraping against the skin.

For a moment, he said or did nothing, just stared down at me with dark eyes narrowed with distrust. I didn't quite blame him for the hateful look, I mean I had just tried to shut him inside the castle against his will.

His lips parted and I felt my heart squeeze painfully tight in my chest out of panic.

He had fangs!

Now he's going to eat me, I thought.

In that moment a husky murmur began to escape from his lips, making his chest vibrate with the sound. When he finished, his wings flapped a little and his tail arched above him, like it was ready to strike.

I met his eyes and then blinked in realization. Had he been talking to me?

When I stared up at him in confusion, he put away the dagger (to my relief) and helped me stand. I came face-to-face with the area just an inch above his belly button and I had to curl my neck as far back as I could to see up into his irritated face. On the long way up, I managed to get a closer look at the monster who held me in his grasp.

His entire light grayish-blue body was hairless, his skin made up of fine scales that were almost too tiny to see distinctively. In the setting sun, his waist-length black hair shimmered like an oily water puddle you find in road potholes after a rain shower, the stray strands of his braids lighting up in a strange combination of violets and emerald green. His long, claw tipped wings were charcoal in color and folded back behind neatly his body. He wore nothing apart from a tattered animal-skin loincloth and a thick metal belt around his tapered waist, his dagger hilt knotted at his side. It was the only weapon he carried, surprisingly. The monster was built like a warrior but yet he seemed to be missing most of his armor.

Finished with my look over, I turned on the small bit of concrete, my stomach plummeting as I realized I was standing on the only remaining portion of the Wonderland boardwalk.

The monster realized our predicament as well. I watched his clawed toes dip into the mucky lake water and flick off the residue in surprise, a human gesture that I hadn't been expecting.

I looked up at him timidly and found that his charcoal colored eyes were looking over the boggy shore of the lake, confusion briefly furrowing his human-like face. Without taking his eyes off the shore, he reached down and scooped me up in his grip, his large wings unfurling.

"Oh crap," I muttered as his feet kicked off the concrete, my head snapping back with the force. A few seconds later, the monster grunted in surprise, his fingers gesturing for me to look. I followed his fingers west, flinching at the sight of Wonderland against the setting sun.

I met the male's eyes, about to start playing Charades to help him understand the meaning of "city", but once I stared into those cold black irises, I instinctively went still and silent.

One clawed hand reached up and cupped the back of my head, the tips of his talons scraping my scalp as he buried his fingers into my ponytail. He tugged back my head hard, but I still made no noise, though I did close my eyes so I didn't have to see what came next.

The thick arm at my back pressed me tighter into his frame, so tight that I could feel his steady drumming heartbeat against my chest, a counter rhythm to my discordant, racing timpani. Now completely immobile, I had no other choice but to wait.

He murmured something against my ear, the contact of his mouth against my earlobe sending strangely hot shivers down my spine. Before I could even contemplate what in the hell that meant, I felt that same mouth against my neck.

At this point, I should've gone Laura Croft Tomb Raider mode, I realize that. I should scream, kick, and fight with all my short-in-supply might. But as his lips made a soft trail along my throat, his teeth nipping a pathway on my flesh from one ear to the other, I couldn't help but feel like I was being...seduced. He continued his assault, punctuating each brush of his lips with soft growls. Despite the warning bells that were going off in my head, I relaxed in his arms and allotted him complete control.

Until he bit me.

Nothing shatters a blissful high like being munched on, and the monster was definitely munching. In that moment, I stopped playing swooning damsel and wriggled like the pissed off worm I was, desperate to get rid of his teeth.

"S-Stop!" I finally managed to squeak. "I-It hurts!"

The hand in my hair tugged me back again, and I felt his teeth sink further into my skin. White spots exploded in front of my eyes and then a second later – there was nothing but wonderfully aching...need?

My breath left my lungs in a giant whoosh as the feeling blossomed like a budding rose spreading its petals. It started at his bite and worked its way down my torso before concentrating in one area that had only tingled before.

It didn't take but seconds for the feeling to build up to out-of-control proportions. And when I was just about to reach the edge of whatever this was, the monster pulled his teeth and mouth away from my neck, his tongue licking over his bite.

The groan escaped my mouth, sounding torn between loss and pain. I flushed at the sound, turning my head away when he reached for me. With a growl, he pulled down my head by my chin, tutting at me when I began to squirm in his arms again.

"Be still, Tempest. The loss of blood will make you sick and I'd rather you didn't throw up on me. And besides, you're five hundred feet in the air. That's one dangerous fall."

At the sound of his deep voice, I stopped struggling. I looked up into the monster's eyes and swallowed hard, my lack of courage warring with my anger. Anger won out.

"How do you know my name?" I demanded hotly.

His eyes (I noted his irises were now a soft downy grey) narrowed a little. "It is in your memories."

When I only stared at him in confusion, he gently ran the back of a single talon over the sore part of my neck where he had bitten me. Instantly, my eyes fluttered closed at the touch, his chuckle filling my ears.

"One tick – I suppose that's what you call it – of my kind is that blood tells us everything. Your blood has told me much, name included."

I opened my eyes and swallowed down the question of bite side effects out of embarrassment, hesitantly meeting his eyes once I was fully in control of myself again. "Everything?" I asked, trying not to cringe.

He smirked. "Everything," he confirmed.

For a few seconds I allowed myself to drown in panic. The Exlax incident, he now knew. The fact that I was a high school geek was out on the table as well, obviously. He probably knew my favorite color and that I still jammed out to the Spice Girls when I was in a mood, and how I hated tomatoes but loved ketchup.

Then I realized that none of that really mattered, not compared to the bigger problem that was literally staring me right in the face.

"Okay," I told him, licking my dry lips to wet them. "So you know about me. But what are you?" I pressed. "Who are you? How did you get to be in the middle of a lake? In a castle, besides?"

He put a hand over my mouth to hush me, his head turning back in the direction of the city. "Perhaps we should discuss this in a different location," he told me quietly, his wings changing tempo and direction despite the fact I hadn't said anything yet. With little effort the monster flew us across the forest and away from the lake, dipping down into the trees so he could not be seen. Soon we were flying around a section of woods I knew well, but before I could get a word out, the monster lowered his feet and we landed with a soft thump in my backyard.

I stared up at the blackened windows of my father's esteemed monument to his ego, the mansion resembling the brainchild of Tim Burton overhauling the Disney World castle.

Since neither of my parents was home and I was an only child, I knew I could breathe easier since I wouldn't be caught. In fact, I was breathing easier, which wasn't right, considering I had a man-eating monster at my back.

I turned to the monster and took a step back, swallowing etiquette as I faced off with him. "You need to start talking," I said as firmly as I could. "Because if I get my hands on a phone, you'll be answering questions to some pretty powerful people," I vowed.

"Don't you think I could subdue you long before you reached a phone?" he asked with a smirk. "You are, after all, only human."

I crossed my arms and glared. "And what are you?" I asked, taking a different tactic.

His eyes flickered black for a moment. "I am a Gargoyle."

I eyed the setting sun before looking back at him, recalling how I had found him as a stone statue. "How is it that you can still walk around? It's daylight out."

This made him laugh. "The legends that you know so well are just that – legends. My kind lives for the sun. I'm sure the misconceptions began once our numbers dwindled." At that, his expression turned somber and his eyes left mine to survey the backyard and the distant houses down the lane.

"And when our numbers dwindled, yours soared," he muttered to himself as he began to walk along the boundary fence that reined in our yard. With his back to me, I began to look around for a weapon. My eyes strayed to the patio furniture but I knew better than to lift the heavy iron frames. I would injure myself first before I injured him.

"Don't think about it," he called over his shoulder.

I froze at the edge of the pool, grumbling under my breath. The leaf skimmer I used to clean the pool with was just a few feet from me, and while I knew it couldn't do permanent damage – and for some reason I didn't really want to hurt the Gargoyle – it had been a decent weapon of choice.

I turned to face the Gargoyle, my eyebrows going up when I caught him sniffing some yellow trumpet-shaped flowers my mom had ordered the gardener to plant.

"While your memories have explained much of my current situation to me, I still have some questions," he told me as he turned at the corner of the yard to face me. He did not have to lift his voice despite our distance. It felt as though every word he spoke was punctuated in my thoughts, as though I knew what he would say before he said it. Like we were connected, somehow.

"What do you want to know?" I asked haltingly, disturbed by the strange feelings in my stomach and chest that stirred up as he approached, unable to stop myself from looking over the Gargoyle once again. He was the perfect mesh of something human and something not. An attractive mesh, actually, which only disturbed me further.

"Why aren't you running?" he asked once he stood in front of me, his voice deceptively soft. "You do not smell of fear, at least, not as much as you should." To emphasize his point, he leaned down and sniffed at my hair. "You smell of things I cannot place," he continued in a huskier tone. "The scents are...appetizing."

I swallowed hard and he chuckled. "Now you smell of fear." He straightened up, admiring his work no doubt, and I let out a shaky breath. When he put distance between us, I was finally able to think.

"You need me," was the first thing out of my mouth. "You need a place to hide," I continued when he said nothing. "And you need to know the rules of my world, which you can't learn if you kill me, so...so I'm not afraid of you. You need me," I reiterated.

The Gargoyle hesitated, running those thoughts through his head.

"What you say is true," he said finally. "But how can I trust that you won't turn me over to your kind? I am familiar with betrayal and humans do not strike me as a trustworthy species."

My mouth flopped open in astonishment. "What makes you say that?" I asked, more out of hurt than logic. He had a million reasons to not trust me, but I took his statement as a personal blow nonetheless.

"Human history is full of deceit," he reminded me, arching bluish-gray eyebrows that I had not noticed before. "And you have made it very clear that you wish to maim me with pool cleaning tools." I flushed in response, dropping his gaze.

He smirked down at me, satisfied that I was contrite. "I have little reason to trust you, Tempest, but considering the simple fact that you are the only human I know, I have no other choice. And since you are the one who helped me escape my prison, you will have to accept that you are solely responsible for my safety and wellbeing. We're in this together, for better or for worse."

The Gargoyle was right, and he knew that he had me trapped. With a cynical smile down at me he brushed by and walked to the rock ledge of the pool. Clearly, he was waiting for me to cave in first and that didn't help my already foul mood.

"You can stay in the pool house," I finally told him, the words escaping through gritted teeth. "No one goes in the bedroom there anyway, so as long as you confine yourself you should be fine."

"Like a pent up animal," he said suddenly, turning to look over his shoulder at me. "That's what you expect me to be."

I felt my hands bunch into fists. "You saw my memories," I told him firmly. "You know what humans would do to you if you were exposed. Being the last of your kind, they'll keep you under microscope until they have you broken down into a Wikipedia entry."

The Gargoyle turned on me, gathering me up in his grip. Fury flashed across his face and a low growl escaped his throat. "I do not know if I am the last of my kind," he grumbled at me. "You are one human and your logic is limited to the number of years you have graced the planet with your bumbling presence. Do not presume to know everything, for you are not all-knowing."

The words were like a physical blow. His hurt and fury became my hurt and fury. Hot pricks in my eyes told me I was seconds away from leaking like a faucet and I turned my head into my shoulder so he couldn't see me cry.

"Tempest..." he began, realizing his mistake.

"Put me down."

The Gargoyle did as I said and I promptly turned on my heel, walking towards the pool house. I didn't look at him when he caught my elbow in his rough palm, trying to reclaim my attention.

"Tempest, I didn't mean to upset you."

I pushed open the pool house door and flipped on the light switch, jerking my arm from his grasp. "This is where you can stay," I said flatly, ignoring his apology. "At night, try to stay in the bedroom area and shut the door. If my parents see lights on, they'll come back here to investigate." I continued to walk through the small pool house, gesturing to the rooms as I walked past them. When we reached the kitchen, I paused.

"I eat from the forest," he supplied, finally giving up on apologizing, which was a good idea since he sucked at it. "I'll make sure to keep my meals there."

I turned to him and watched his shame briefly mar his unique features, feeling the emotion as well. "I'll go hunt now, but when I return, I want to speak with you. There are many things that we need to understand about one another, the sooner the better."

Grudgingly I agreed, nodding at him. Relief made his shoulders slouch and his tail slid around my ankle.

The touch sent white hot shivers up my spine and the Gargoyle's black pupils dilated as he felt the effects through me.

For a moment, the both of us were too frozen to move. When that strange need began to fill me up again, we jumped apart with sheepish expressions.

"I'm hungrier than I thought," he chuckled wryly, turning his back on me.

Too stunned to reply I followed him, watching as his wings unfurled and beat currents that fluttered the grass at our feet. The Gargoyle looked over his shoulder at me, his grey eyes darkening to black. "If your parents return before I do, meet me here. If not, I'll find you."

Before I could ask how that was possible, the Gargoyle flicked his wings downwards and soared off into the twilight, his frame instantly swallowed up by the dark forest.

The connection between us, the one I'm almost positive he initiated, thinned to almost uncomfortable weakness, like a rubber band stretched far too tight. As I prepared the pool house for its new guest, the connection began to take over as a physical ache that left me too winded to continue preparing. I had just given up on preparations when a sudden surge of hunger had me checking the fridge for food. Coming up empty, I called in for pizza and paced the confines of the house, trying to figure out what in the hell was wrong with me. The delivery man arrived ten minutes on the dot and I couldn't pay him fast enough. After devouring the entire box, I collapsed onto the couch, turning on the TV.

Then, I waited.

~+~

I was watching the late-night talk shows when the Gargoyle finally showed up. I checked the time on the bedside clock – 11.52 – and shook my head as I cut off the TV.

The Gargoyle walked into the bedroom slowly, his eyes glowing silver in the dim light of the table lamp. "I didn't think you'd come," he murmured, stopping at the edge of the bed. Shouldn't that be my line?

I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could, not willing to read into the relief in his tone.

"You wanted to talk?" I asked him, getting down to business.

The Gargoyle nodded and walked around the bed, facing me as he sat down slowly on a small chaise lounge.