Free Secret of the Gargoyles (Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles Book 3) by Rebecca Chastain Page B

go.”
    “We’re not even to the base of the ridge,” Marcus said.
    Gus spat over the side of the sled. “This is as far as I go,” he repeated.

 
    7
    “I hired you to get us to Reaper’s Ridge,” Marcus said, his voice a menacing rumble as he loomed over the wrinkled old man.
    Gus clicked his tongue, and all the cerberi turned toward us, eighteen throats growling in unison. My skin tried to crawl. Oliver stood on his hind legs to see over the driver’s bench seat, wings flared in alarm. The cerberi raised their hackles and inched back toward the sled. Gus had dropped an anchor, and we remained in place as they stalked closer.
    “Really?” Marcus let out an exasperated breath. “Don’t threaten me, old man. I’m not in the mood. If you don’t want to go any farther, how much to borrow your team and sled?”
    Gus shook his head. “I wouldn’t send my least favorite hound to Reaper’s Ridge.”
    “Fine. How much to buy the whole pack?”
    “Not for sale.”
    “Not even one?”
    “Nope.”
    Marcus’s profile tightened, his standard scowl becoming threatening.
    “Get out or I’ll dump you out,” Gus said. He used a trickle of air to activate a spell woven into the sled, and it began to tilt to the right.
    Marcus smacked the spell with a whip of air and the cart righted itself. Gus’s gnarled fingers tightened on the reins and his eyes darted across the canyon to the riotous magic. A band of fire and air quested toward us, crackling into fiery lightning before it stretched across the canyon.
    “Suit yourself. We’re heading back,” Gus said.
    Marcus clapped a hand over the driver’s mouth before he could signal his cerberi.
    “How much for the sled?”
    When Marcus removed his hand, Gus’s grin revealed a few missing teeth. He named an exorbitant price. My heart dropped. I didn’t have any more money, let alone the small fortune Gus demanded. Maybe if we carried the gargoyles one at a time, we could make it work. We’d have to move them in stages, making sure we did enough magic around them to keep them alive without doing so much magic as to attract a wild storm.
    I eyed the wolf gargoyle. He weighed more than Marcus and me combined. Without using the elements, I wouldn’t be able to move him. We needed the sled.
    Marcus had already reached the same conclusion, because he was haggling. “Tell you what: I’ll accept your price, but only if you agree to pay me half again as much when I sell it back to you.”
    Gus’s eyes shone as he shook Marcus’s hand enthusiastically. He snatched up the wad of bills Marcus pulled from his pocket and leapt agilely from the seat to the ground. After unhooking a slender board from the front of the sled, he unhitched the towline from the sled and attached it to the board. When he activated the board’s spell, it floated a foot or so off the ground. Gus stepped on, grabbed the reins, and signaled the cerberi with a sharp whistle. They folded back down the line in the direction we’d come. By the time the last cerberus squeezed past the cart, they were galloping. Gus rode the floating board like he’d been air surfing his whole life, and he and his cerberi disappeared back into the forest. In less than a minute, the sound of the cerberi’s enormous paws faded and an unnatural silence settled around us, broken only by the rumble of rockslides and thunder across the canyon.
    “I don’t think he expects you to live long enough to return his sled,” I said.
    “Easiest money I ever made.” Marcus jumped from the driver’s seat.
    I tried to match his nonchalance as I scrambled to the ground. No birds chirped or called, no squirrels jumped through the branches above us, no lizards scurried through the fallen leaves. If any animals lived this close to Reaper’s Ridge, they stayed hidden.
    An eagle’s shriek echoed off the hills, chased by a clap of thunder. Celeste dove through the trees to land next to me, folding her wings to her black sides as she