by Cate Corvin
Terror-stricken employees huddled in their cubicles, staring at us with wide eyes that begged for instruction. A few hand motions told the officers that had followed behind us to clear out the rest of the employees so that we could focus on the shooter and whoever was with him.
On closer inspection, the door to the office at the back was slightly ajar, Lesley Tillerman on the nameplate outside of it. We still couldn’t see inside well enough to form a solid plan, but we were running out of time and options.
“You’re fucking him! I know you are, I smell his rocky stench all over you!”
“No, Harold, you’re wrong.” The woman—Lesley, presumably—wept openly. “I never slept with him, I swear. Please, you have to bel—”
“I don’t have to do shit! There’s no other reason you’d have fired me and given him my job!”
“Harold, please, I need you to listen to me.”
“Fuck you! The only reason I haven’t shot the both of you sleazy bastards yet is because I want to hear her admit it! I want to hear how she spread her legs for a filthy rock person and why that meant I had to lose my job!”
“Harold. Harold, look at me. You’re not angry, you’re just frustrated. You want a good letter of recommendation, don’t you? That’s all you’re here for. Just to make sure you can get a new job that’s even better than this one. You’re confused about Lesley, but you’re hopeful for the future. Right, Harold? If you give me the gun, she can get your letter ready and you can be on your way.”
There was a lulling quality to the voice that pegged him for what he was. Gargoyle. Likely a Sapphire or an Emerald, based on what he was attempting. This might work out for the best, if we could just wait for the gargoyle to get through to Harold—
“NO!” A shot rang out in the office and that was it. Sawyer exploded into motion, shouldering the door open, weapon up and trained on Harold in seconds.
The shooter was sweating through his business casual clothes, hair in disarray. Lesley Tillerman huddled in the corner, eyes the size of golf balls as she stared up at him and the gun pointed right at her head. A bullet hole had been punched into the wall just inches above her skull.
A tiny movement caught my peripheral vision. A man with his hands in the air was standing ten feet away from the shooter and Lesley, and the sheen of his skin gave him away. A stonehearted human, likely with a Sapphire. Too bad for him that his magic was weak, and Harold still looked like he was on the verge of a mental breakdown if he wasn’t there already.
He was between the stoneheart and Lesley, or the Sapphire probably would’ve gotten her out by now.
I kept my weapon up, feeling a cold trickle of sweat run down my spine.
“He’s right,” Sawyer said, his voice soothing. He could practically be a Sapphire himself. “You don’t have to do this, Harold. Nobody’s been hurt yet. You can still walk away.”
“I can’t,” Harold breathed. The whites of his eyes were showing all the way around. “She fucking fired me for this.” He gestured to the Sapphire with his free hand, the sudden movement making every muscle in my body lock up, but the gun remained on poor Lesley. “A goddamn rock. He’s not even human. I was on disability, you know that?” His voice rose into a deranged shout again. “Why should I suffer, why should I be forced to starve to afford medicine when this fucker doesn’t even need to eat?”
To my surprise, a touch of bitterness welled up under my hyper-focused adrenaline surge. She’d thrown the man out for one of them?
Then I realized the craziness of my own thoughts. He had a gun on her. I shouldn’t, couldn’t, have any sympathy for Harold, no matter how much I distrusted gargoyles too. I’d never kill a woman over losing my job, no matter what gargoyles had to do with it.
“There’s other jobs, Harold.” Sawyer seemed to be barely breathing, even as sweat dripped in his eyes. “You don’t need to kill for this one.”
Harold’s shoulders rose and fell erratically with every breath as he glared at Sawyer. His entire body was jittering in place, the hand with the gun shaking. “It’s too late,” he whispered. “I’ve already come this far.”
Then he threw back his head and laughed. The maniacal intensity of it scared me, because no one in their right mind laughed like that.
A second later he shook his head wildly. “No, no! Get the fuck out of my head!” he shrieked, letting out another howl of laughter.
I could’ve punched the fucking Sapphire for setting him off again. He was obviously weak and the emotional manipulation was erratic at best, which meant Harold was even more unpredictable than before.
“This is what they make us do!” he screamed, grabbing a handful of Lesley’s hair and shaking her as another peal of laughter rang out between words. “They get in your heads! They take your jobs and your lives!”
Lesley was screaming, too, and the tiny office had become a whirlwind of chaos in only seconds. I aimed for Harold’s center mass, but he had Lesley and I was deathly terrified of hitting her instead—
A crash echoed from overhead, but I felt no relief. SWAT was finally in the building, and Harold’s lips stretched into a grotesque grin. “It’s the end of the line,” he said. “For all of us.”
The gun left Lesley’s head and swung up. A shot rang out, shattering the glass door behind us. I felt like time slowed down when the dark barrel pointed my way, and my ears were still ringing from the second gunshot when Harold squeezed the trigger.
A massive force hit me, knocking me aside as white-hot pain blazed through my arm.
A final gunshot rang out, cutting through the screams as that force became a dead weight on top of me, Sawyer’s limp body pinning me down.
Chapter Ten
I was perfectly aware that they would be furious the second they realized I was gone, but to hell with it. I needed air and alone time to process. A woman could go crazy being trapped in a penthouse with nothing but her thoughts, two gargoyles, and a man looming over her shoulder.
I’d seen a bodega only a few blocks away the first time I’d visited Viridios Tower. Unlikely territory for an ambush. If anyone was hiding out on this particular street with a grenade launcher, I’d eat the damn grenade. I wasn’t going to allow myself to be afraid. Worst case scenario, if I came face to face with an enemy gargoyle… well, I was one of them now. We’d be on equal footing. And I had a serious case of pent up anger on my side.
I shoved my hands in the pockets of Sawyer’s jacket and bent my head down against a gust of wind. Maybe it was petty of me to take off without a word, especially given the events preceding my flight to the penthouse. I definitely felt bad that I was breaking an agreement that had been in place for less than six hours.
Good job, Zara, definitely petty.
As I walked, I realized no one was sparing me a second glance. Even with the smooth, perfected features of a gargoyle, I still didn’t stand out much in a human crowd. With my hair in a sloppy bun and my collar pulled up around my chin, there really wasn’t much of me to look at.
Damien and Gio had gotten me all wound up, fearing an assassin lurked around every corner, when in reality I could pass through life just as invisible as I ever was. Stonehearts walked among us every day-
Them. It wasn’t us anymore.
I released a long breath and looked up. Nobody met my eyes and shied away. Nobody was aiming a weapon at my chest.
The door of the bodega tinkled as I pushed inside, grateful for the warmth after the chill of the afternoon. A teenage girl with messy blonde hair barely glanced up from her celebrity magazine, Stone Cold Studs. I caught a glimpse of a male centerfold gargoyle who looked a little too much like Gio for my peace of mind. Behind the counter, a massive campaign poster of Kreslin Kobalt grinned back at me.
The girl cracked her gum and I turned away, grabbing a caramel candy bar on my way to the drink cases. The bell tinkled again while I was debating if I needed my tea sweet or unsweet that day.
Definitely sweet.
An older wom
an’s quavery voice rose in indignation from the front. “What’s a nice girl like you doing reading that trash? There’s plenty of nice human boys to moon over.”
I was just tall enough to see over the low racks of junk food. The blonde clerk was staring at an old bluehair with the scorn that only a late teen could muster. She cracked her gum again, deliberately flipping a page. “Everyone knows gargoyles are way hotter.”
The bluehair’s mouth fell open for a second. “Hotter? Missy, they’re creatures. Unnatural.” She shuddered, seeming appalled by their very nature. “These pebbles are going to twist your head around and lead you off the path of righteousness. Nothing good comes from their kind. Just look how much destruction they cause! They’re bound to be the downfall of our society.”
It was the missy that did it. The clerk’s head had snapped up at that, and she twisted her lips in a sneer. “Downfall of society? Get with it, granny. They do all kinds of cool shit! And…” The sneer shifted into a mean smirk. “I’ve heard they stay hard forever, if you know what I mean. Besides, look at this guy. How hot is he?” She pointed her thumb over her shoulder at the poster of Kobalt.
Granny looked positively apoplectic at this point. Much as I hated to admit it, she had a point. Gargoyles were destructive as hell, and I’d seen too much of that damage firsthand.
On the other hand, they—we could do some pretty cool shit.
Still, it was people like Granny who would keep me in hiding forever. Despite the Accords between the gargoyles and the human government, and after centuries of tenuous peace, many humans still hated them with a burning rage borne of envy and fear.
I knew, because I’d feared and envied them until only a few short days ago. Mostly out of fear, after seeing what a single gargoyle was capable of.
Granny recovered her ability to speak. Unfortunately. “Have some respect for the fallen! What have your parents been teaching you? The cult massacre, the uprising in Chicago… you’re old enough to have learned a little history!”
The clerk just shrugged one shoulder, uncaring. Despite the old bag’s obvious case of speciesism, she had a point, and my irritation with the teenager was a tiny insect gnawing at my gut. She was old enough to understand the terrible things they’d already done, and all the damage they could still cause in the future. But she had the blindness of youth. She’d never gone toe to toe with a rampaging Topaz and ended up with a broken spine for her troubles.
It wasn’t her fault. The gargoyles had a tireless PR team and scads of TV shows, magazines, and blogs designed to teach younger humans just how ‘cool’ they were. Kreslin Kobalt had been one of the first wave of gargoyle celebrities who’d invited human guests—mostly young women—on his show, Rock Hard. For one season, they’d paired off several male gargoyles in a house with human women, and had the humans compete to win the gargoyles over.
The human news networks had a field day with that one. Granny here had probably been glued to CVN, clutching her pearls in a white-knuckled fist while they were covering that debacle. Kobalt had gone out of his way to have all footage erased, but the Internet was forever. Some of the GIFs still circulated on illegal snuff sites. There were entire conspiracy sites devoted to proving the gargoyles had been doped up with rage-inducing drugs before being locked in with them, but regardless, it’d been a tragedy and a PR disaster.
“Sure, my school taught me history.” The clerk flipped another page. “Humans kill each other, too.”
“We should be putting them down,” Granny said, practically spitting now. “Not looking at their… their pornography!”
My stoneheart pulsed. I would never hurt anyone who hadn’t asked for it. Would she still want me put down like a dog, too?
The bell tinkled a third time. I barely paid attention, still riveted by the dichotomy of viewpoints in front of me, sweet tea totally forgotten.
Two men walked in, both wearing dark coats with their hoods pulled up to obscure their faces. My instincts and training kicked into gear and I reached down for the familiar holster that was always at my hip, only to come up empty. I went for my phone in the pocket of the coat, only to realize that it wasn’t my jacket, and the phone was probably nothing but smithereens back in my apartment.
So much for calling for backup.
The first man raised a gun, aiming it in the clerk’s face. All her jaded worldliness immediately slid away, replaced with abject terror. Granny stumbled away, bumping into the counter and toppling over in her panic. Her mouth opened, but the second man had a pistol pointed at her head.
“Make a single fucking sound and I blow your brains right out of your head, grandma,” he growled.
I was frozen in place, only steps away, but it might as well have been a thousand miles. Either one of them could pull the trigger faster than I’d get there, but I had one trump card: they hadn’t seen me yet.
Both of them were shaking a little, flush with adrenaline. They’d be twitchy, liable to kill both women if I made the wrong move.
I ducked down behind the metal shelving, creeping heel-to-toe around the edge. The first man was just visible from this vantage point, his back to me.
The clerk’s quavering voice warbled up front. “We don’t keep that much cash! Less than two hundred dollars, my manager just left with the rest…” She kept babbling, words spilling out of her as I turned my attention to the second perp.
The other guy moved around the counter, keeping his gun trained of Granny until the last possible moment. He gestured the clerk aside with an impatient flick of his wrist. “Unlock the register and empty it. Keep your hands in sight; if you touch that phone, I will fucking waste you.”
The clerk raised her hands in the air, fingers trembling. My stoneheart pulsed painfully; I needed to somehow get closer without tipping them off. If I wasn’t on administrative leave, I’d have my damn service piece, but now I was weaponless and these poor women were sitting ducks.
Jaded Clerk fumbled with the register keys, nearly dropping them. The guy’s arm twitched, and the clerk’s face twisted, like she was holding back a sob.
Fuck this. I couldn’t sit here and do nothing. I wouldn’t. I had never been that kind of cop, and just because I didn’t have a gun in hand didn’t mean I was about to start now. Not when I knew the outcome of officers standing idle when innocents were in danger.
I scooted back behind the shelf and surveyed my limited options briefly. I had seconds to make a decision. The aisles were narrow, and a wire display of chip cans sat across from me. I thrust out a foot, knocking the display over with a loud rattle and sending the cans rolling everywhere.
I heard the sharp intake of breath from across the store and flinched, but there was no gunfire. I straightened up and raised my hands, putting a little quiver in them even though I felt cold as ice inside, like I had a small glacier growing in my stomach.
Both men were staring at me. The perp looming over Granny turned away from the old woman, the barrel of his gun rising to point at me.
“Hey,” I said, forcing my voice to come out small and afraid. “Don’t shoot, okay?”
The guy was only fifteen feet away from me. Above the black bandanna wrapped over his mouth and nose, wide blue eyes stared out of a freckled face. I didn’t need to see his whole face to tell that he was young. Way too young to be throwing his life away like this.
“Did you call the cops, bitch?” The guy behind the register, still holding the clerk at gunpoint as she emptied the till, sounded older and harder.
“I don’t even have a phone,” I whispered. I just needed him to back away from the girl. “Please don’t shoot. Here, you can take my wallet.”
The freckle-faced robber waved me over with the gun. “Give it here.”
I moved forward, one slow step at a time, putting all my focus into making it look like I was desperately afraid. Granny watched me with huge eyes, clutching her purse to her chest like a shield. I doubted that hideous floral thing could stop a bullet.
The clerk finished emptying the register and slammed it shut, shoving the cash towards the hardened robber and sweeping half of it on the floor in her panic. He glanced at her, his eyes betraying his disgust. “Goddamn useless. Pick it up, put it in the fucking bag.”
She ducked down, and the robber turned his attention back to me. I was only a few feet away, still inching towards Freckles, hand tucked into my pocket reaching for a nonexistent wallet. When I was just out of reach, his cold eyes went wide as he got a good look at my face up-close, at the unnaturally perfect skin and almost luminous eyes.
His gruff voice went high, almost girlish when he yelped, “Gargoyle!”
That was my cue. Freckles had frozen in place, unable to do more than watch me advance. Unfortunately, his accomplice still had his wits about him. He jerked the pistol down, aiming it at the clerk on the floor instead of me.
I leapt the last two paces, whipping Freckles into a headlock and bending his wrist back. The pistol clattered to the floor. Every human flinched. I didn’t. Thankfully, it didn’t discharge.
“Put down your weapon.” I released Freckle’s head and gripped him in a bearhug, exerting enough pressure to force all the air left his lungs out in a hard rush. He didn’t bother struggling; everyone knew once a gargoyle had you in a solid grip, you were fucked unless they were feeling generous that day. “Unless you want to watch me shatter every one of his ribs.”
I punctuated the threat by squeezing harder. Freckles gagged, straining to draw in another breath. I loosened my grip just enough to allow him shallow sips of air.
The older man’s hand was shaking. “That’s my son.” I’d figured as much with how Freckles had looked to him in askance before every move.
“I don’t give a damn who he is. Maybe you should’ve been a better father and thought of that before you dragged him into your bullshit.”
Tears poured down Freckles’ cheeks. Instead of making me pity him, it just sickened me. Only minutes ago he’d been willing to blow an old lady’s head open for a pathetic amount of cash.
