I just needed two more minutes!
“Come on!” I whispered to my masterpiece. Four minutes left on the clock for the challenge. Once my timer beeped, I’d have just enough time to plate it for presentation to Chef Gordy Lynn.
I quadruple-checked everything was ready on the nearby counter. I couldn’t afford any mistakes.
Since the last thing I needed was to draw negative attention to myself while visiting my girlfriend’s family, of course my brother had to knock over a decorative vase.
I stared down at the ceramic shards and uttered a Motervian curse.
Jorgaa knelt and dipped a blue finger into the scattered powder.
There are echoes in the valley, and they speak my name.
Emereth. Emereth.
Desperate and muffled like a man with his face in a pillow, using his last breath—for me. It is carried on a low, whistling wind that aches through tall cliffs on either side of this place. It rustles through wildflowers, collecting pollen and doubts.
After my daughter and her husband’s car accident, it was just Carter and me. Then, three years later to the day that I had buried his parents, I laid six-year-old Carter beside them.
Leukemia.
Most of the people at the funeral were my grandson’s friends. A few had tears running down their cheeks as they hugged their parents…
I had always lived for darkness. No other time were gargoyles permitted to come alive and feast upon delectable, cursed things. The hunt was all we knew—all we desired. Each night atop my cathedral, I approached twilight with the same anticipation, blissfully unaware that one evening held the power to alter my destiny forever.
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