Black Briar by Sophie Avett

stone would overtake them and they would all be equal beneath the sunrise. But there were those special ones. Those rare half-breeds. Unlike most, Nova had the cursed reprieve of retaining a completely human form and life for his first thirteen years. But with puberty came the “casting” period. Rock cracked and ravaged skin until the man was all but swallowed whole.
     
    A hereditary skin disease. Not lethal, but ugly to look at. Leprosy, but with scales instead of plagued skin. For Nova, daylight slumber brought the power of a dreamspinner. Unlike true gargoyles, gargouilles like Nova never slept. They were awake even when the sun was beating down on their iron shoulders. They were wandering, walking, spinning and weaving entire worlds together and apart. It was existing in several places at once, a tangible astral being. To see everything—forever and always. Eternal vigilance.
     
    Nova would never be considered a true gargoyle. Not by anyone. Not even as the rock rash overtook and ate his humanity away, layer by painstaking layer. Not that those blemishes ever seemed to bother him. But in this dream, he’d come to her as a man.
     
    Just a man.
     
    No trace of gray flesh and diamond glitter remained. In his mental projection, he met her as himself, as the simple man he might have been another lifetime ago—a tall Japanese aristocrat with intense black eyes and a sinful bend for a mouth. The sheer size of him was imposing. His killer body made his clothes fine. Not the other way around.
     
    Hard muscles and lithe lines were draped in the elegant folds of a peacock blue kimono . Where a traditionalist would’ve paired the outfit with socks, sandals, and a pair of wide, pinstriped hakama pants, her gargoyle did no such thing. He’d selected tight and revealing medieval black hose swatched with leather, prayer beads, and chains.
     
    The wide obi belt’s lapels danced on the wind, lost in the inky ribbons of his hair. The silk rolled and waved, slipping across the sharp planes of his face as he came to stand before the black briar on a pair of highwayman riding boots rescued from the pits of Sherwood Forest .
     
    He widened his stance and peered into the perverted heavens without a shred of respect. “Troublesome, woman.”
     
    My, oh my, was he ever gorgeous?
     
    Was the gargoyle fuck all beautiful?
     
    Did he have the power to make her knees weak with one hot look?
     
    Indeed, but so what.
     
    Sybille’s tongue darted out to sample the tension wafting between them in oceans of red mist. “You lost, baby?”
     
    He didn’t humor her with a twitch. “Come down, Sybille. Or you will be fetched. And you will not like it.”
     
    Her lips curled, poison apple ruby lipstick snaring the light. “I like my ice a little thin too. But if I were you, I’d skate away while I still had fucking legs to speak of…” she whispered softly. She almost sang it in a sad little song for him.
     
    The gargouille’s eyes burned with hellfire. “Why don’t you come down and walk with me?” He opened his hand, “Like you used to…?”
     
    Now, now, he knew her way better than that. Green flame ignited in her palm and she blew the fireball like a kiss. “Only in your dreams.”
     
    Explosion. Worthy of an orchestra.
     
    Nova shot into the sky long before the flames could land a kiss. The ocean roiled like the River Styx, wakened by the blast. Thousands of tiny eyes winked to life in the waves, spirits of the drowned gaping up at the samurai, a wish pinned amongst the stars. He hovered a battlefield apart from her balcony, suspended in midair like a god.
     
    “Sure, Sybille?” A jewel encrusted dragonlance sling-staff roared and ruptured into existence. He caught and wheeled the post in menacing arcs. “This lesson was succulently taught once before, and you did not enjoy it…”
     
    “I remember.” Smoke bubbled at her feet and carried her up from the balcony on a cloud, skirts billowing around her in a