Heart of Stone n-1

by C. E. Murphy

  “People seem to. Do you want to look at the eagles?”

  “Yes!” Margrit laughed, then shrieked with panicked delight as Alban tucked his wings and went into a dive, plunging thirty stories. Wind ripped through her hair and she hid her face against his shoulder, trying to protect herself from the speed. His arms tightened around her reassuringly, and then with a jolt his wings flared again, catching the air and reversing the downward rush. An instant later he landed on the outstretched head of an eagle, setting her down on toe tip, then releasing her.

  Paralyzing vertigo swept over her. The eagle’s head lurched under her feet, and she stumbled without having moved. The ground, sixty stories below, plunged upward, threatening to dash itself against her. Margrit swayed, sickness rising up in her stomach and overwhelming her with dizziness. Raw terror turned her skin to ice, sweat leaping out in cold beads. Safety seemed only as far away as dropping to her hands and knees, but fear held her frozen, certain she would miss the broad steel head entirely and fall six hundred feet to the ground. Words failed her, a thin keening cry breaking from her throat instead, a sound of panic.

  “Margrit-?” Alban barely finished the word before he understood. The eagle’s head fell away from beneath her feet as he scooped her into a bride’s carry and leaped into the air, catching another updraft that let him wheel away from the building. Margrit flung her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder, unable to move or speak until she felt him backwing again, and they came to land with a gentle thump. Even then it wasn’t until he knelt, cautiously setting her on her feet, with his hands large and supportive at her waist, that she managed to pry her eyes open.

  “We’re on the ground,” Alban murmured. “Are you all right?”

  Margrit knotted her arms around her ribs, jaw still locked in fear. It took long moments to unclench her teeth, her gaze never straying from Alban’s steady, calm eyes. “I’m…” She shuddered, a violent little motion, and forced herself to drag in a deep breath as she glanced away. The inhalation brought with it the scent of winter-dead earth, hints of old rot and new life both entangled in it. It gave her something to cling to, and her eyebrows drew down as she glanced about. Graves and old headstones, ranging from the elaborate to the very simple, were scattered around her, and a cast-iron fence stood some yards away. “This is Trinity Church. What are we doing here?”

  “I live here. Are you all right, Margrit?”

  She shivered again, scrutinizing the yard, and nodded stiffly. “Yeah. I’m okay.” With fear receding, embarrassment came to take its place, heating her cheeks as she further tightened her arms around her ribs. “I was all right while we were flying, but when there was something under my feet and I was that high up I felt like I was falling.” She gave a wan smile and cast a sideways glance at the gargoyle. “Some tough New Yorker I am, huh?”

  “I’m sorry,” Alban said quietly. “One tends to forget a fear of heights when one cannot fall.” He took his hands from her waist slowly, as if uncertain that she would remain standing without his support.

  “I’m okay.” Her promise had no heart to it, Alban’s words striking unexpectedly deep. One forgets the fear of heights when one cannot fall.

  Handsome. Gentle. Kind. Observant.

  Alban flexed his shoulders, wings widening, then folded them down as if deliberately making himself smaller.

  All the romantic terms that described Alban left one thing unsaid: Not human.

  Margrit swallowed and took a small step backward, voice scratching as she reached for something to say. “You live here? In a church?”

  “For just over two centuries.”

  Margrit turned her face away, eyes closed as she exhaled a breath bordering on unhappy laughter. “Two centuries.” Janx had told her the truth, then, about at least one thing. Not human, she thought again, and made herself look at the gargoyle. “How old are you?”

  “I was born in the year 1533, by your calendar. The same year Elizabeth I was born. Margrit, are you certain you’re all right?”

  Margrit’s gaze slid off him again and she turned it to the nighttime shadows of the Gothic church. “You really live here?”

  Momentary silence met the question, as clear as the gargoyle confessing that he noticed her avoidance. “I do.”

  “Isn’t that sort of stereotypical?”

  Alban laughed, a deep warm sound in the cool graveyard. His lack of reservation caught her unexpectedly, and Margrit looked back to find his smile genuine and tinged with hope. “It is,” he said, unrepentant amusement in his answer. “There are reasons for it, not the least of which is that your people expect it. No one thinks anything of a gargoyle hunched in an old churchyard. Would you like to go in?” He offered his arm.

  “Alban,” Margrit said quietly, “no one thinks anything of gargoyles at all.” She pushed her hands into her pockets, trying not to see him slowly lower his arm, and followed him as he led her through the graves. “Doesn’t the local priest notice somebody lives here?” The question came too loudly, a staccato burst to break the silence. Alban glanced over his shoulder.

  “Some of them suspect. Or, I should say, some of them seem to know someone lives here, although I don’t think any of them suspect the truth. It’s something of a game.”

  Margrit looked toward the church. “What about the others? If you’ve been here two hundred years, haven’t other priests noticed you?”

  “Some. Some have been friends. Some of them have never noticed me at all. Your people, Margrit, are very good at closing their eyes to what’s before them. This way.” He stepped past her, over a mossy green grave marker. Margrit lurched to the side, avoiding stepping on the stone, trying to make out the words in the dim light.

  “Atkinson, 1799,” she murmured.

  “John,” Alban rumbled. “The Ludlums, to the right, there in the middle, and the Waldens, here.” He nodded toward his feet, and the lichen-stained stone almost below them. “I knew John. I like to think he and his family wouldn’t mind that to hide I must step over them.” He pressed his palm against a square of brownstone. It slid back with a scrape, opening a small door in the wall. Alban ducked through, his form shimmering and shifting, the man fitting through the narrow opening more easily than the gargoyle could. “Be careful. The passage leads downward.”

  “Did someone build a secret passageway just for you?” Margrit turned to take a final look over the graveyard, peeking from behind the wall that neatly concealed Alban’s hidden door.

  Several yards away, at the church’s front corner, a bemused Episcopalian priest with an erratic white beard and elevated eyebrows stood watching her.

  Sweat sprang up on Margrit’s forehead and palms, the sheer panic of youthful guilt clenching her stomach. For long seconds counted off by the wild hammering of her heart, she and the priest looked at one another through the dark night. Then he inclined his head graciously and walked around the corner of the church, leaving Margrit alone. She finally blinked, tears ducts flooding as a reminder of how long she’d stood there, eyes wide. Then she giggled nervously, whispered, “Son of a bitch, ” and bolted through the doorway, feeling like a child who’d won a reprieve from detention.

  “Margrit?”

  “I’m fine.” Her voice squeaked, making her blush and fight off another giggle. “Um, so someone built this place just for you, or something?” she repeated, trying to shake off her nervous laughter at being discovered.

  Alban looked over his shoulder. “Yes.” The door swung closed again behind Margrit, almost silently. A familiar snick sounded, a lighter making a small spot of brightness in the dark. “Richard Upjohn, who built this church, was a friend. It was constructed in 1846. I’d been living here almost forty years before it was built.”

  Margrit tucked her hair behind her ears, watching the steps carefully as she trotted down them. “What were you living in before they built this?”

  “The old church. This is the third on this site. Richard was a romantic, very much
in love with the strange and beautiful. I thought it was safe to introduce myself.”

  “And he built you a chamber?”

  “Deep below the vaults.” Alban nodded, pausing to lift a torch from a wire basket on the wall and putting the lighter to it. Flame faltered, then flared, sending a warm glow through a black-walled room.

  Margrit touched a finger to the wall; it came away sooty. “Not much for housecleaning, hmm?”

  Alban echoed the gesture, examining his fingertip. “Black walls seem natural to a night dweller. I never thought of cleaning them,” he admitted.

  Margrit smiled and stepped past him into the room. It was almost twenty feet on a side, enormous for a single room, but small for a dwelling. A cot like the one she’d slept in at the apartment above the bar was set in one corner; shelves stood against the wall at the head of the cot. Leather-bound books overflowed the shelves and lay in stacks on the floor. A small wooden table was pressed against a wall, a single chair pushed beneath it. Books and candles sat on the table. There was nowhere to cook, nor any obvious ventilation. Margrit turned, taking in the room as a whole. “Is there a back way out?”

  Alban paused in the act of lighting another torch, examining her. “You don’t look like someone who would think of foxholes,” he said after a moment’s consideration.

  Margrit shook her head. “I’m not. It’s just that if I were…like you…I wouldn’t want to live in a room with only one exit.”

  Alban inclined his head, then finished lighting the second torch. “Under the bed. A trapdoor that leads into storm tunnels beneath the city. The passage to the tunnels is unpleasant, and the tunnels even more so, but both are superior to being burned alive.”

  “Or broken to shards,” Margrit said. Alban lit another torch, nodding. The glitter of plastic wrapped around a book caught Margrit’s eye, and she picked it up, looking at the tagged spine. “You have a library card?”

  “I do. Getting money can be difficult, so I take my pleasures where they’re most affordable.”

  “I’d think Chelsea would lend you books. Why don’t you get a night job, if money is tight? I mean, if you have no money, what do you eat?”

  “Small children.”

  Margrit blanched and looked up, the book sliding from nerveless fingers. It hit the floor with a hard crack, and Alban threw his head back, laughing out loud. Margrit picked the volume up, color heating her cheeks. “That wasn’t funny.”

  “Yes, it was.” Laughter echoed around the room again, deep and rich. “Oh, forgive me, but that was very funny.” He cleared his throat, still grinning, the open expression bringing human vitality to chiseled features. Margrit’s shoulders shook with laughter, her shock at his answer fading to rueful humor that she tried to hide with a stern look. Alban shrugged with the fluid motion of a pleased cat. In repose he was austere and beautiful, but with laughter creasing his features, he seemed approachable, almost ordinary, despite the wings that wrapped around his shoulders.

  “Some of my people do take night jobs, security positions or the like. I…have chosen to remain outside of that. I prefer to have no part in your social security system, or anything that’s a means of identifying myself. I used to leave the city to hunt, but these days I volunteer at homeless shelters and have soup or sandwiches when I need to eat.” Alban’s expression turned serious and he put forth a hand, though he didn’t seem to expect her to take it. “Thank you for trusting me, Margrit.”

  The attempt at looking stern ceased to be a struggle. Margrit wrapped her arms around her ribs as she studied him. “You’re welcome,” she said after a few seconds. “But you’re not out of the woods yet. Tell me about Tricia Sanger.”

  CHAPTER 18

  A GOGGLE-EYED LOOK of astonishment, Margrit reflected a moment later, was no more attractive on a stone face than a human one. Alban’s jaw actually dropped and he took a step back, blinking in astonishment. “Patricia…Perry. She married, I remember that. Margrit, what-?”

  “Ann Boudreaux,” Margrit said very quietly. “Rachel Ward. Julia Patterson. Christina Lee.”

  Alban flinched with every name, backing away until he bumped into a wall and sank down into the crouch that looked so natural to him. “Susannah Albright,” he murmured. “I only learned their names from the papers. From stories of monsters haunting women in the dark.” A smile with no joy in it passed over his face before he lifted his hand to hide all expression. “Susannah married, as well. You wouldn’t have found her in the list of dead women.”

  “No.” Margrit’s voice cracked as she shook her head. “She and Tricia Sanger survived your watch. Alban, what happened to them?”

  “I don’t know.” The gargoyle’s voice dropped low in frustration. “Margrit, I swear to you, I don’t know. I never spoke to any of them. I never harmed any of them.” He ran his hand over his face again, lips compressed. “They were a little like you,” he murmured eventually. “Brave, perhaps braver than they were wise. I watched over them, when I could.”

  “And?” Margrit could hear the hardness in her voice and made no attempt to gentle it. “One woman dying under your watch I could dismiss, maybe. Even two might be coincidence. But not four, Alban. Not four.”

  “More than four.” Reluctant dread colored Alban’s voice and he shook his head. “There’ve been…a dozen, over the years.”

  “Jesus, Alban.” It took conscious effort to hold herself still. Margrit wet her lips, refusing to let herself fold her arms defensively as she stared at the gargoyle. The itch she’d felt in her feet while facing down Janx was back, making her want to bolt for the door. She could have-may very well have-misjudged. For a fleeting moment she regretted not being able to tell Tony he’d been right, before she drew in a breath so sharp it made her lungs ache. She was hardly dead yet, and-maybe-Alban wouldn’t have confessed the secret if he was guilty.

  Or maybe he just didn’t intend to let her go. Margrit flared her nostrils in defiance, denying her own thought. “So tell me what’s going on.” Her voice cracked and she swallowed, fear making her want to rise on her toes, ready to run.

  “I have never killed a human.” Alban turned his head to the side, a swift and guilty motion. “A woman,” he amended. “And never outside of a battle for my own life. Margrit.” He lifted his gaze, challenging and desperate. “When did they die?”

  Margrit glared at him. “June 18, 187-”

  “No! The hours, not the days.”

  “Julia Patterson…” Margrit’s chin came up, surprise and relief making her suddenly cold. She reached for the blanket on Alban’s bed, dragging it around her shoulders and reveling in the scratchy gray wool. “Julia Patterson was found an hour past noon, still warm.” Margrit sat down, the strength that had pushed her to run deserting her without warning. She barely heard her own whisper. “It couldn’t have been you.”

  Alban lowered his head, curled knuckles scraping against the floor as he swung his arm down, a gesture of relief. “I can’t prove the hours on all of them, Margrit. Some of them-most of them-were women so unimportant the police never took notice. But I swear to you, I do not know what happened to them. I stopped-” He broke off, then heaved a breath that bespoke exhaustion. “I stopped watching them so closely. For eighty years I’ve been…”

  “Alone?” Margrit’s murmured question seemed loud in her own ears, as if unnoticed voices had fallen silent just as she spoke. Alban’s forehead wrinkled and she looked away before he could catch her gaze again.

  “Alone,” he agreed after a few seconds. “More alone than usual. That this has begun again…” He straightened, turning away from her to idly straighten books in the dark wooden shelves. “I didn’t think I had enemies.”

  “What about Biali?”

  Alban stilled, then faced her again. “What were you doing talking to Janx?”

  She held up her hand, palm out. “Right now you’re the one answering questions. What about Biali?”

  Exasperation crossed his stony face, making heavy lines
that seemed more etched than temporary, though they smoothed away again in a moment’s time. “Biali and I were rivals when we were young. It means nothing now.”

  “Janx listed him among your enemies. Biali, Eliseo Daisani and Grace O’Malley.”

  Befuddlement colored Alban’s features. “The pirate? She died centuries ago.”

  Margrit smiled briefly. “I guess it’s her ghost, then. Don’t you read the papers?”

  “I find them depressing.”

  Margrit lifted her eyebrows and pulled the blanket tighter. “I guess they can be. O’Malley is this eccentric who’s trying to change the world from the bottom up. I don’t know what her connection to you might be. What was Biali your rival over?”

  Alban curled his fingers in a loose fist, offering a smile that had more to do with loss than joy. “A woman. Isn’t that always it?”

  “Not in my experience. What happened?”

  “We fought bitterly over her. I won, and nearly lost her for it.” Alban shook his head. “Biali came too close to dying. Our people aren’t so many that we can afford that kind of rivalry. Hajnal was furious.” A smile, crooked and ashamed, curled Alban’s mouth and slowly turned into a grin. “She didn’t speak to me for six months. She didn’t leave, just refused to speak. Women of every race seem to think silence is a terrible punishment.”

  “That’s because women talk a lot. You’re supposed to miss the sound of our voices.” Margrit smiled in return. “Maybe it doesn’t work very well.”

  “Stone,” Alban pointed out, “doesn’t usually have a lot to say. Threatening it with silence is a peculiar form of punishment.” His smile returned briefly, then faded again. “She forgave me, in time. Biali never did.”

  “What happened to her?” Margrit put the question out cautiously, and was unsurprised when all the humor left Alban’s expression and he looked away, as if studying memories.

  “She died.” He was quiet a few seconds, then went on, seeming to sense that Margrit hesitated to ask more. “The French Revolution was surprisingly bad for my people. I think we had become complacent, Hajnal and I. We’d lived in Paris for decades by then.” He gestured around his dark quarters, the movements graceful. “This place doesn’t show it, but we’re as fond of luxury as anyone, and the elite of Paris could and did adopt the most extraordinary habits. A couple who only came out at night was hardly notable.”