Three Fates

the arms, over the broad, bare chests.
    She had to fight the temptation to get out of the car for a closer look. But the chill that tripped down her spine as she turned through the open iron gates had her glancing back up at the warriors with as much wariness as appreciation for the skill of the sculptor.
    Then she hit the brakes and fishtailed on the crushed stone of the private roadbed. Her heart jammed into her throat as she stared at the stunning buck standing arrogantly a foot in front of the bumper, and the sprawling, eccentric lines of the house behind him.
    For a moment she took the deer for a sculpture as well, though why any sane person would set a sculpture in the center of their drive was beyond her. Then again, sane didn’t seem to be the operative word for anyone who would choose to live in the house on the ridge.
    But the deer’s eyes gleamed, a sharp emerald green in the beam of her headlights, and its head with its great, crowning rack, turned slightly. Regally, Malory mused, mesmerized. Rain streamed off its coat, and in the next flash of light, that coat seemed white as the moon.
    He stared at her, but there was nothing of fear, nothing of surprise in those glinting eyes. There was, if such things were possible, a kind of amused disdain. Then he walked away, through the curtain of rain, the rivers of fog, and was gone.
    “Wow.” She let out a long breath, shivered in the warmth of her car. “And one more wow,” she murmured as she stared at the house.
    She’d seen pictures of it, and paintings. She’d seen its shape and silhouette hulking on the ridge above the valley. But it was an entirely different matter to see it up close, with a storm raging.
    Something caught between a castle, a fortress and a house of horrors, she decided.
    Its stone was obsidian black, with its juts and towers, its peaks and battlements stacked and spread as if some very clever, very wicked child had placed them at his whim. Against that rain-slicked black, long, narrow windows, perhaps hundreds of them, all glowed with gilded light.
    Someone was not worried about the electric bill.
    Fog smoked around its base, like a moat of mist.
    In the next shock of lightning, she caught a glimpse of a white banner with the gold key madly waving from one of the topmost spires.
    She inched the car closer. Gargoyles hunched along the walls, crawled over the eaves. Rainwater vomited out of their grinning mouths, spilled out of clawed hands as they grinned down at her.
    She stopped in front of the stone skirt of a wide portico, and considered, very seriously, turning back into the storm and driving away.
    She called herself a coward, a childish idiot. She asked herself where she’d lost her sense of adventure and fun.
    The insults worked well enough to have her tapping her fingers on the door handle. And the quick rap on her window had a scream shooting out of her throat.
    The white, bony face surrounded by a black hood that peered in at her turned the scream to a kind of breathless keening.
    Gargoyles do not come to life, she assured herself, repeating the words over and over in her head as she rolled the window down a cautious half-inch.
    “Welcome to Warrior’s Peak.” His voice boomed over the rain, and his welcoming smile showed a great many teeth. “If you’ll just leave your keys in the car, Miss, I’ll see to it for you.”
    Before she could think to slap down the locks, he’d pulled open her door. He blocked the sweep of wind and rain with his body, and the biggest umbrella she’d ever seen.
    “I’ll see you safe and dry to the door.”
    What was that accent? English, Irish, Scots?
    “Thank you.” She started to climb out, felt herself pinned back. Panic dribbled into embarrassment as she realized she’d yet to unhook her seat belt.
    Freed, she huddled under the umbrella, struggling to regulate her breathing as he walked her to the double entrance doors. They were wide enough to accommodate a semi and boasted dull silver knockers, big as turkey platters, fashioned into dragons’ heads.
    Some welcome, Malory thought an instant before one of the doors opened, and light and warmth poured out.
    The woman had a straight and gorgeous stream of flame-colored hair—it spilled around a pale face of perfect angles and curves. Her eyes, green as the buck’s had been, danced as if at some private joke under dark, slashing brows. She was tall and slim, garbed in a long gown of fluid black. A silver amulet holding a fat