Death's Excellent Vacation

by Charlaine Harris

  She snatched her ruined shirt together. “If you have to rape me,” she managed in a queer little choked voice, “please, please use a condom.”

  Uh, what? “Um.” My jaw worked soundlessly for a moment. “I, uh. I’m not gonna rape you, ma’am. I just, um, I thought this was the safest place for you.” I swallowed hard, trying not to think that her shirt really wasn’t covering much and that I’d seen what she was trying to hide—the shells of the bra, cheap black lace cupping white skin, and the mark shifting against itself. “Since they’re trying to kill you. Because you’re . . . That mark on you. You’ve had a near-death experience lately, haven’t you?”

  Her eyes were full of welling water, washing out the blue and trickling down one smooth cheek. “Oh, shit,” she whispered, like she’d been punched. “You . . . you’re one of them.”

  Well, that answered that question. She’d brushed up against the Big Bad recently.

  “I ain’t one of them. They’re the Big Bad, and I’m stoneskin. I fight them.” Swallowed hard again. Suddenly I was very conscious of my ears poking up—I don’t wear my hat at home—and the stone walls and cans on the floor were probably weird to someone who worked at a reasonable dead-end job. “Uh, you got bit. I think you’re okay, though.”

  “Bit?” She shook her head. Her hair wasn’t dishwater under the energy-efficient bulbs I have down here. No, it was gold. Spun gold. “I . . . You . . .”

  Well, this is going pretty okay. “You had a near-death experience, right? Six months to a year ago, I’d reckon. Right?”

  “How did you—” She was having trouble getting whole sentences out. I didn’t blame her. EvilMart probably didn’t prepare her for this. “Look, is this some kind of joke?”

  Not even close. “I’ll explain everything. That mark on your chest showed up after your nearly dying. It’s changed again because it’s been triggered. You’re a Heart, and I’ve got to take you to Paris.”

  Tense, ticking silence stretched between us like a high wire between buildings, bowing under the weight of a daredevil’s feet. Finally, she gulped audibly again. “Say what?”

  All things considered, it was probably the only response she could make. I tried not to stare at her hands, loosening on what was left of her shirt. “The Heart of Hearts is in Paris. I’ve got to take you there. We’ll fly first class, probably.” I ran out of words.

  She stared at me for another fifteen seconds, then began to laugh. When she finished with that, she burst into tears while I stood there uselessly staring. Even with her skin all blotchy and her nose all full, she was . . . Well. I didn’t even think to get her any tissues until she was covered in tears and full of snot.

  It wasn’t a good beginning. She finally calmed down, and I wondered if she was going to be any trouble.

  Because I was lying to her. I was going to take her to Paris. But I didn’t think she’d like what happened when we got there. Of all the jokes life’s played on me, this one had to be the most sadistic.

  THERE was a phone box up the street. I stood outside it for a long time in the fine midday misting rain, my hat dripping all around the brim and my shoulders soaked. It wasn’t until a stray gleam of sun broke through under the rolled edges of cloud that I realized I was standing in a puddle and it had soaked through my sneakers.

  All things considered, she’d taken it really well. Six months ago she’d been married and in a car crash—in that order. The husband was buried, the job at EvilMart all she could get with no experience after being a housewife for five years. The car crash had left her in a hospital emergency room, miraculously healed of a collage of broken bones and bloody bruising between one breath and the next after they’d applied the shock pads. It was like white light, she told me. But not real white light—it was like being blind.

  I knew what she was talking about. It’s the Heart choosing its victim. We stoneskin feel the Heart’s pull, but sometimes it pulls the soft pink ones, too.

  The Tiend takes a few so the rest of us can go on. Or at least, that’s what we’re told.

  I stepped closer to the phone booth. Its edges were beaded, pearled with rain that was still falling. There was going to be a rainbow soon. Beautiful weather, the type you don’t often see in a city where it rains all the time.

  Instead of dialing, I took two steps back from the phone booth. Sooner or later the Heart would take her. I didn’t have to speed the process up.

  But what the hell was I going to do? She was my problem. I was stoneskin. Serving the Heart is what we do. Indecision warred with duty, ending in a burp of exasperated indigestion tasting of CornNuts. I’d eaten the whole damn bag on the way here.

  It don’t matter. The Heart takes its own. And she’s so pretty.

  The indigestion turned into sourness. I’d left her with an awkward suggestion that she might want to take a shower and that I’d bring her some clothes for the trip. But why Paris? she’d wanted to know. What’s there?

  All I could do was mumble that it was what I was supposed to do, that she would want for nothing, that she would . . . be happy. And safe. And the shell-shocked look in her swollen red-rimmed eyes was enough to make me feel as if I’d stepped on a fluffy little helpless kitten. Or two. Or a hundred.

  I forced myself back to the phone booth. Put my hand on the receiver. It probably wasn’t working, anyway. If it was out of order, that would be a sign that I didn’t have to make this call.

  It seemed too heavy to lift. I did it anyway and put it gingerly to my ear.

  The dial tone was really, really loud. I went to hang it up, and duty caught my hand halfway.

  You know what happens if you don’t call in. Come on.

  The CornNuts tried to crawl free again. The dial tone mocked me. I held my stomach down with sheer force of will and punched the number I never thought I’d call.

  ’Cause what are the chances of finding a Heart candidate if you never get close to the pinks? Only this time I had, and it figures.

  Two rings, and it was picked up. The click of relays punched through my temple; I swallowed a shapeless sound.

  The voice was even, well modulated, with a hint of tenor sweetness. “Report.”

  I gave my control phrase and my district. Then the seven little words. “I have a Heart candidate. Request transit.”

  That was the only thing this number was ever used for.

  A slight pause. “Congratulations.” He said it like he meant it. “You’ll have the tickets and requisitions in six hours.”

  No point in messing around. “Okay.” There was nothing left to say, so I hung up. I thought I caught a muffled “Good luck” before the receiver hit the rest of the phone so hard it shattered. My claws were out, slicing through plastic, metal, and the innards of the phone.

  My stomach curdled afresh. Shit. That’s public property. But what did it matter? After I brought the Heart its candidate, I would stay at the Sanctum and become one of the Inners, keepers of the Mystery and honored servants of the Heart. Any gargoyle in his right mind wants to be part of the Sanctum. From the moment we’re hatched or brought in, we’re told it’s the place to be.

  The phone died with a gurgle. Quarters spilled out, and the LED screen on the debit-card reader up top flashed wildly twice.

  That’s the trouble with the world. It isn’t built strong enough to withstand anything.

  I turned on my heel. My sneakers were squeaking, since my feet were spreading, toes fusing together and the hind claw jabbing at cheap material. When you shred your shoes all the time, you learn not to buy anything high-end.

  When I had everything all back together and human-sized again, I trudged back up the block toward home. I suppose I should’ve been ready for what happened next.

  When I got back into my cell, it was empty. Maybe I should’ve locked the door. Or thought the stone panel would obey a candidate as well as a Heartkin.

  Her car was already hauled out of the EvilMart parking lot. I guess they don’t believe in waiting around
. There were stars and glittering cascades of pebbly broken safety glass, the damp noxious perfume of the Big Bad, and a lighter gray smell of rain and daylight.

  The broken purse had already been swept up and taken away somewhere, too. Midday shoppers didn’t glance at me—I was too far out in the lot. After a few moments of standing with my eyes closed, sniffing a little, I found what I was after.

  The thin thread of gold necklace almost burned my fingers. My nose twitched as I turned its supple length over and over. Waiting for the little tingle.

  A nose for metal is a nose for tracking, that’s what the older gargoyles say. Me, I just wait for the tingle. Often as not—even oftener than that—it leads me right to what I’m looking for.

  This time it ran along my nerves like burning gasoline and almost pulled me out of my human skin. It was hard work, keeping my shambling shape in some modicum of normalcy as I whipped around, the pull hard and close.

  That’s when the cop cars arrived, and the smell of the Big Bad wasn’t being rubbed out by the rain. It was fresh and fuming from the EvilMart.

  “Shit,” I whispered, and lunged into a clumsy run.

  The cops had their guns out. A SWAT van pulled up, and people started screaming and running because there was a pocka-pocka-pocka of automatic fire from inside the building.

  Somebody was taking their shopping a little too personally. Or they were trying to kill my Heart candidate.

  They kill them wherever they find them, and I’d made a lot of noise and fuss last night alerting them to the fact that there was a stoneskin around and a Heart candidate to kill.

  Stupid me.

  I leapt on two cars because of the clots of people spilling out in the parking lot. They crunched under my feet, sloping away as I jumped. It was chaos. The cars crumpled because I had blurred out into trueform. Who cared what they saw? The screaming inside was taking on a more panicked, desperate quality, and for once I was glad I’m not imaginative. Imagination just gets in the way when you have a job to do.

  The automatic doors didn’t open, so I busted through. Glass tinkled, shattered, and flew. I was moving almost too fast for human eyes to track, and all that mass moving so quickly means it’s hard to slow down or stop. My claws dug huge furrows in the flooring as I bounded into the store and had to twist to avoid smooshing some of the pinks who were running around.

  Oh, great. Just great.

  Harpies.

  There were four of them. EvilMarts are built so warehouse- high, the feathered bitches could even skim the tops of aisles. They were circling, looking for something. And there were a bunch of little gray gneevil-gnomes with AK-47s.

  Heart have mercy, it’s an invasion! I squashed one gneevil by landing on him, spun and leapt, and my nose tingled. Good luck finding Kate in all this—but I had to find her, and the Heart inside me told me she was here.

  Well, best way is the most direct way. The Heart in me pulled, and I followed it, building up every iota of speed I could. One of the nice things about being stoneskin: Walls don’t hold up to us. Stone we can whisper aside. Steel struts? They break. And drywall? Don’t make me laugh.

  One of the harpies let out a chilling scream. It’d seen me. The sound shattered glass, and one of the aisles exploded. Dish soap, laundry soap, cleaning products spilled out in a tide. I was going fast enough it didn’t matter, claws ground into the flooring as I uncoiled and flew, wind whistling in my ears and bullets spattering behind me.

  The wall crumpled like paper. I blew through it and landed in something that looked like a conference room, a long table and a wall with a whiteboard and sheets of fluttering paper tacked to it. Chairs spun as I cracked right through the cheap-ass table. I skidded through another wall and found a break room. The impact broke the coffeepot, hurling it across the room, and the Heart in me sent a ringing thrill through every inch of nerve and meat I owned.

  There was a group of screaming pinks cowering in the break room. Drywall dust filled the air. I coughed, digging my hind claws in, and jolted to a stop.

  Kate wasn’t screaming. She stood in the middle of them, mouth ajar and eyes wide, staring at me. She clutched her broken purse to her chest. She also wore one of my hooded sweatshirt jackets, zipped up to the very top and absurdly big on her. Her hair, long and loose, fluttered on the breeze from me busting through the wall. I opened my mouth to say something right before one of the harpies plowed through the hole I’d made and things got interesting.

  I hate harpies. They smell horrible. When you rip ’em apart, they screech so bad it makes your ears want to bleed. They aren’t that bad if they’re grounded, though. And then there was just Kate to worry about—grabbing her and getting her away from the gnomes with guns.

  THE packet was delivered—fake ID for both of us; I got the sensitized filmstrip on the picture ID to look like her with just a little rearranging. Plane tickets and a wad of cash for supplies I didn’t have enough time to buy. We just barely made the flight, and Kate was still in jeans and my sweatshirt jacket. We’d stopped for ten minutes we couldn’t afford in the airport; I bought a handful of clothes in a size that looked like it might fit her and stowed the bag in the overhead compartment. The flight attendant wanted to do it, but I mumbled something and Kate just dropped into the seat near the window. The attendant gave me a dark look and left.

  Kate was still trying to process everything, and there was drywall dust in her hair. Air France has really nice first-class cabins.

  They spare no expense when bringing in a Heart candidate.

  So we had a space all to ourselves, and the attendants fussed over her right before takeoff. Me they just looked nervously at.

  I buckled her seatbelt. “Bienvenue à Air France!” the intercom chirped brightly, and I didn’t let out a breath until the doors had closed and the plane started making its getting-ready-to-go sounds. The seat was wide and deep, and she wasn’t even scratched. Just that drywall, and glassy-eyed shock.

  “Thank God,” I finally muttered. “You want a drink?”

  Color flooded her cheeks again. She hunched her shoulders, darted me a mistrustful glance. “Christ, yes.”

  “What’ll you have?”

  “Vodka.” Her throat moved as she swallowed. The two little punctures were fully healed now. Gargoyle spit and garlic works wonders. She blinked at me like she was trying to get dust out of her eyes. “What the hell.”

  “Got it.”

  We didn’t have to wait long. The stews come around a lot in first class. She got a vodka with cranberry juice; I decided a Jack Daniels was in order. As soon as the attendant had finished pouring mine, Kate asked for another. The attendant gave her a weird look, but I palmed up a tenner and she ended up leaving us two vodka and cranberries, visibly hoping we weren’t going to be trouble.

  “Just don’t get drunk,” I cautioned.

  “Why the hell not?” She laughed, a bitter little sound. The seats around us were empty; I’d bet the Sanctum had bought them, too, just to give us some privacy. “What the hell is going on? What the fuck are you?”

  I winced. “I’m a gargoyle. Stoneskin. We serve the Heart.”

  “Gargoyle. Okay. Got that. What were those . . . those other things?” She took down another vodka with remarkable aplomb. I doubted she even tasted it, she tossed it so far back.

  “Well, there was a kolthulu. And some suckmonkeys. And harpies—those were the red and green flying bird things. And—”

  “The things with guns? What about those?”

  “I’m getting to those. Those were gneevil-gnomes.”

  “Gnomes. Okay.” She eyed the third vodka. “This is so Twilight Zone. It has something to do with that scar, doesn’t it?” Her right hand made a furtive little movement toward her chest. She put it back down.

  “The mark? Kind of. Sometimes people come back . . . special.” I sipped at my whiskey. At least in first class they don’t water your drinks. “I’m taking you to Paris, to the Heart. You’ll be safe there.”
>
  And boy, it was my day to lie with a straight face.

  “Since the . . . the accident, I’ve been seeing things. All sorts of things. You’re the first thing that hasn’t tried to eat me or scared me so bad I wanted to pee myself.” Her fingers played with the glass. “I’m sorry.”

  She was sorry? I closed my lips over a laugh and hunched my shoulders. When I could talk without wanting to spill the truth out, I took a deep breath. “Been seeing things, huh? Weird lights?”

  “Yeah. Around people, and sometimes plants. Living things. And sometimes the lights will go out wherever I am, and—what are those things, anyway? Those things after me?”

  “They’re all part of the Big Bad. They’re predators, and sometimes just outright evil. See, the Big Bad is in rebellion against the Heart of All Things. There was a war, back before humans came around, and—”

  “Never mind.” She picked up the third vodka and poured it down. Set the cup down, and the flight attendant came through to pick things up before takeoff. The plane started moving. “I don’t really want to know.”

  “Fair enough. Just . . . Kate . . .”

  She flinched as if I’d tried to hit her. It was the first time I’d said her name out loud. I tried again. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m here to protect you.” At least until we get to the Source. And then . . . I couldn’t think about it.

  “Great.” She let out a short, chopped-up sigh. “Why is this happening to me?”

  “I don’t know how the Heart chooses.” I wish I did. Maybe then I could’ve stayed away from you. Just looking at her hair and her sweet, aristocratic profile made both hearts inside me quiver. Why did she have to be so—“I’m sorry. You want something to eat?”

  “You don’t have any CornNuts on you, do you?” It was a weak attempt at humor, and it hurt me way down deep inside.

  See, I’m stone. I’m hard to hurt and pretty impossible to kill unless you know what you’re doing and you’re damn lucky. I was hatched and brought up in a stoneskin-only orphanage and sent out to make my way after they trained me and made me tough.