by C. E. Murphy
The warmth of seal fur against her skin told her everything she really needed to know. Margrit burst into Cara’s building as the sun slid past the horizon.
Waking up outdoors was startlingly cold.
Despite not being particularly susceptible to cold, winter seemed to have settled deeply into his skin, stone chilled all the way through. Alban opened his eyes slowly, searching memory for the last time he’d slept outdoors with no protection from the elements. It had been decades, perhaps bordering on centuries. If it could be said that stone softened, he was clearly getting soft.
He left his eyes half-lidded as he glanced around the rooftop. There was no frost built up on his skin; sunset was barely past, the western sky still bleeding gold and red. Margrit’s building was just two blocks away, as far as he’d needed-or dared-to fly in the moments before sunrise that morning. That, too, had been a sign of softness: he had sensed dawn coming, but lingered too long with Margrit, arguing about Biali’s trustworthiness.
Alban made a fist against his knee, a slow action that belied the depth of frustration that surged through him. He hadn’t made her understand. The Old Races had nothing but their trust in one another. Without it, they were all dead, exposed to humanity as freaks and curiosities.
The sky had been bright with daybreak when they’d finally ended the discussion, gratifying alarm sweeping Margrit’s face as she realized the hour. She’d pushed him away, hurrying him to safer grounds. Not as safe as his home beneath Trinity, perhaps, but quiet rooftops were less risky by far than city alleys.
There were no sounds of activity on the roof now, nothing to betray him as he straightened from his protective crouch to his full height, shaking off the gargoyle for the man.
“I couldn’t stand it, love.”
Alban whipped around, hands curved to mimic the talons he didn’t have in this form. Grace O’Malley sat on top of one of the roof’s heat vents, a leather-clad leg cocked up so she could wrap her arms around it. Alban flexed his fingers again, willing himself not to flash into the more dangerous gargoyle form. “How long have you been there?”
Grace lifted her chin, nodding toward the sunset. “Long enough to freeze my pretty tush. I followed you.”
Alban snarled, discomfited, and deliberately stepped back, trying to regain his equilibrium. “How?”
“Now, that’d be telling, love. Just know I been keepin’ watch. You can thank me for it later.” She gave a wink that made Alban shift his shoulders with unease.
“Couldn’t stand it,” Grace said a second time. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a gargoyle.”
“You…” Alban curled his lip, weighing his words before he spoke. “You know about gargoyles.” He exhaled, finding he was relieved. “No wonder you didn’t panic.”
“I know lots I shouldn’t, love.” Grace hopped off the heater and landed as silently as a cat, sauntering up to him. “There’s not lots I can offer that you’d have a need for, I’d wager, but there might be a thing, at that. A thing or even two.”
“What?” Alban’s shoulders rose defensively, and Grace grinned at him.
“The coppers found your lair, didn’t they? And you’ll be needing a place to stay now. Somewhere safe in the daylight hours. I can give you that.”
“At what cost?”
Grace’s expression hardened, making her beauty seem old and dangerous. “Help me protect the children, love. That’s all.” The hardness faded from her expression and she lifted a fingertip to Alban’s chin. “Well, maybe another thing or even two, at that.”
Alban wrapped his hand around hers, dwarfing her fingers even in his human form. “And if I don’t?”
She shrugged. “You’re Alban Korund, love. There are plenty who’d pay to wrap that fine throat of yours in irons. Korund the Outcast. What else do they call you? ‘The Breach?’ What’s that one mean, Korund? I’ve wondered awhile, I have.”
Disbelief and fear rose in his breast, mixing together to create fury inside an instant. Alban tightened his hand around her wrist, keeping to his less powerful human form with conscious effort. “How-?”
Grace gave a dismissive laugh. “Don’t bother, gargoyle. I told you, Grace knows more than she should.”
“How?” He didn’t loosen his grip, his heartbeat a stony thud that rarely came to his notice, but now rang loud and heavy in his ears. “Who are you?”
“Grace O’Malley, love.” She made her fingers thin and slid her hand from Alban’s grasp, so easily his own fingers crushed together. “Only Grace O’Malley. Have we got a deal?”
Alban snarled again, hands knotted so tightly he felt the ache to his bones, as deep as the cold that had settled in them. “A gargoyle does not need coercing to protect the helpless, Grace O’Malley. But I wonder if Janx wasn’t right, after all.”
“I’m not your enemy, Korund. Opportunistic, is all. I like to make sure everyone understands the rules when we play the game. Will you watch the children?”
Alban pulled his lips back from his teeth, once more keeping his human form with effort. “I do not play games, Grace.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So I’m told. And I’m told you hold the pieces to bring it together, as well. It’s an enigma that you are, isn’t it, love? Grace likes a mystery.” She reached out to brush a finger down Alban’s chest, a featherlight touch that felt as if it slipped beneath his skin instead of pressing against it. Alban caught her wrist again and she froze, not out of fear, but with amusement dancing around her mouth.
“Who tells you these things?”
Grace shrugged loosely. “Another gargoyle, a long time ago. Her name was Ausra.”
“Cara?” Margrit pounded on the door, then tried the knob, aware she was intruding but too breathless and hopeful to care. She’d taken four flights of stairs two steps at a time, Deirdre’s sealskin warm against her belly, safe, her only thought the baby girl’s sweet, tired smile. “Cara, it’s Margrit. Can I come-in?”
Cara sat in the midst of shambles, the worn apartment rendered far worse than it had been the first time Margrit was in it. The sofa had been upended, cushions cut open, with stuffing strewn across the room. Deirdre, oblivious to her mother’s distress, lay in a mat of the stuff, cooing and pulling white batting apart with determined baby fingers.
Crockery lay shattered, chunks of porcelain spraying out of the kitchen. Scars marked the walls where they’d been hit by shards of dishes, the pieces of a jug lying next to the window. Blankets had been torn to strips and were flung about the room in wanton destruction. The building had no heat; without blankets to bundle in, Cara and Deirdre could easily die of exposure.
“Daisani?” Margrit dropped to her knees, taking the girl’s cold hands in her own. “Cara, did Daisani do this?”
She laughed, a soft, bitter sound. “My neighbors.”
“Why?” Margrit’s voice rose and broke, incredulous. “Why would they do something like this?”
Cara turned her gaze on Margrit, hopelessness in her brown eyes. “Because I talked to you. Because I asked for help. They think if we keep our heads down we’ll be forgotten, just like we always are. They think the building won’t come down if they stay quiet.”
“They need a scapegoat.” Comprehension wasn’t the same as understanding, not on an emotional level. A chill ran over Margrit’s skin, leaving sorrow in its wake. “Someone they can actually attack, somebody closer to their level than Daisani’s corporation. Oh, Cara. I’m so sorry. You and Deirdre should come back to my apartment. It’s warm, and you’ll be safer.”
She drew herself up, straightening her thin shoulders. “No, thank you.”
“Cara, this could just be the first wave. It could get a lot worse. For your own safety-”
“Miss Knight,” she whispered, “I’m stronger than I look.” Her fragile bone structure belied the words, but Margrit found herself drawing back, stomach knotting.
Not human. It was hard to remember. Hateful to remember, Margrit thought, but she set her
jaw and asked, “What about Deirdre? Are you strong enough to keep her safe, too?”
Despair slumped Cara’s shoulders. “I thought I was. But without her skin-”
It was Margrit’s turn to straighten, shock and embarrassment coursing through her. “I forgot. That’s why I came. Here.” She withdrew the fur from beneath her shirt, missing its warmth as soon as it left her. But Cara gasped and snatched it up, clutching it against her chest. Joy illuminated her, making her seem fully alive for the first time since Margrit had met her. It enhanced her color, bringing warmth to her cheeks and brightening her dark eyes to amber. Her pupils were still enormous in their golden bed, making her waifish and vulnerable, but strength shone from them now. Determination, and beneath that a core of something wild, as if the girl had been transformed into a creature raised by wolves.
Not human, Margrit remembered again, but unmistakably beautiful. It hadn’t been, until that moment, a word she’d have chosen to describe Cara. Now she wondered how she’d missed it.
“Miss Knight! You-how did you-?”
Margrit smiled quickly, wryly. “Believe it or not, Daisani needs something from me. I got this in return. I’ll get yours back, too, Cara, so just hold tight, okay?”
Wariness crept into the wolf-colored eyes. “What did he need from you? You have to be careful, Miss Knight. You don’t understand the dangers.”
“He needs me to find someone,” Margrit answered quietly. “Cara, I need to understand the danger I’m in.” She managed another quick smile. “I know I’m in trouble, so anything you can tell me, anything at all, might help me.”
“Do you know what he is?” Cara’s voice dropped to a whisper, as if she didn’t want Deirdre overhearing the conversation. Margrit nodded, and relief let Cara change positions, sitting Indian-style with Deirdre’s skin still held tight in her hands. “There are five of us left,” she whispered. “Five Old Races.”
Margrit nodded again. “Dragons and djinn, selkies and gargoyles and vampires.” Chelsea was right, she realized. “Dragons and djinn” was delicious to say. The other pairing lacked the music, and vampires stood uncomfortably alone.
“Selkies from the sea,” Cara explained, still whispering. “Gargoyles from stone, dragons from fire, and djinn from the air. We all have our places in the world. Djinn are desert-dwellers. Gargoyles like the mountains. Dragons came from the hot places near volcanoes, but they can’t stand one another and have spread far and wide so they don’t have to share territory. We all know where we come from.”
“Water, earth, air and fire,” Margrit said. “But what about the vampires?”
Earnestness faded from Cara’s eyes. “The vampires say they’re not from this world at all.”
Cold sprang up over Margrit’s skin. “Is that even possible?”
Cara studied her for long moments, then got to her feet and climbed over the ruined remains of her sofa to pick Deirdre up. Margrit stood, watching, as the baby squealed indignantly, then cooed when Cara wrapped the sealskin around her.
The fur squirmed, writhing, suddenly full of life as it snuggled and wrapped itself around the child in Cara’s arms. It distorted space more violently than Alban’s transformation, an external element to it that he hadn’t shared. Then Cara held a mottled tan-and-white baby seal, its brown eyes as bright and interested as Deirdre’s had been. For the first time Margrit saw strength in Cara’s thin body, as she held her child and leveled her gaze in blatant challenge. “You tell me, Miss Knight.”
At Margrit’s hard swallow, the girl knew she’d won, and spoke with authority. “Janx would use you up and cast you aside, Miss Knight. That’s what dragons do, when their treasures lose their luster. Alban Korund would crush you and it’d be over in an instant. But Daisani will make you his creature, until you can’t live without him, yet you have no life with him.” Cara ran her fingernails over her daughter’s seal belly, splitting an invisible seam until the skin fell away and a wriggling, happy baby girl emerged.
“I owe you,” Cara said, “and I can survive without my skin if I have to. If you get a chance to break free of Eliseo Daisani, Miss Knight, don’t hesitate. Everything you do for him, even making a bargain to help someone like me, will pull you down until the deeps are stained and the shallows run red with blood.”
Denim was lousy material for running pants. Margrit jogged anyway, arms loose and her strides long as she darted around other people, brushing shoulders and elbows with them. The cadence of ir-rah-shun-al was gone, leaving her mind clear to think about other things.
Like how to trace a hired killer. Margrit let out a breath through her nose, almost a laugh. Finding a hired killer was even further outside her arena of expertise than housing lawsuits. Nice girls didn’t know about that kind of thing.
The key, though, had to be the hired part of the equation. Whoever had killed Vanessa Gray had done it for Janx, so the money would lead back to him. Should lead back to him. Whether it could be traced was another question entirely.
With Daisani’s help, overt or otherwise, the money could lead back to the dragonlord. But Daisani wouldn’t help. Margrit shook her head and rounded a corner, strides lengthening. She understood on a surface level why he wouldn’t touch Janx, but the subtleties of their interactions were beyond her.
If she thought much about it, that fact was a relief. She grinned briefly, shaking her hands to loosen them as she cantered through the city. The pavement sent sharp jolts into her knees with each impact, comforting and always the same. Someone whistled as she jumped a curb, the impersonal admiration helping to restore Margrit’s sense of freedom in running.
Fingering Janx wasn’t the answer. There had to be another way to find the killer through him. Margrit skidded to a halt at a crosswalk, jogging in place to keep her heart rate up while she waited for the walk signal.
He’d promised her one more favor. Margrit broke into a run again, flashing a smile at a passerby, then huffing in discontent. One more favor, but she didn’t want to call it in yet. She owed him already. When she made the third request, she wanted it to be huge.
Margrit wondered when protecting her own life had become something less than huge and laughed, a breathy burst of sound that interrupted her run. She stopped to catch her breath, saying, “Okay,” out loud. A passerby averted his eyes and Margrit flashed a grin after him, trying to keep her thoughts to herself.
She had to find Alban, first. Janx could wait. If she were a gargoyle caught outside at sunrise, she would…Well, she would go back home again come sunset, or as close to home as she could get. His hideaway under Trinity had been compromised, so her apartment might be the next safest place. Margrit dug her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed her home, propping one foot on the building behind her.
After four rings, the answering machine picked up. “This is Grit. If Alban comes by, can you ask him to give me a call? He doesn’t know it, but they-well, they didn’t find the real killer yet, but they know it’s not him. Tell him…nevermind, just have him call. Thanks. Bye.” She hung up and tapped the phone against her lips, then punched up the received-calls screen, a thought striking her.
Alban’s number wasn’t there. She scowled at the screen, remembering he’d called her on the house line, not her cell. “Crap!” She dialed the house back and added, “Me, again. Could you also check the answering machine and see if there’s a record of Alban’s cell phone number on it? Thank you. I owe you. Bye again.”
Follow the money. Margrit pushed away from the wall and began running once more, phone back in her pocket. Follow the money without implicating Janx. “You don’t ask much, do you,” she muttered under her breath, as if Daisani might hear her.
Janx. That son of a bitch. Her thoughts came around full circle again and Margrit shook her head in time with her stride.
A car, moving more slowly than she was, poked its nose into the walkway against a light change. Margrit hit it with her elbow and forearm, rolling across the hood, and stopped to pound her fi
st against the metal, denting it. “Watch where you’re going!” She came to her feet, continuing on, leaving the woman in the car gazing after her with panicked eyes.
A moment later Margrit slid to a halt at another intersection, smacking her palm against the street lamp. “How do I do it?” she asked out loud, distant stoplights steaming and fading behind the white of her breath in the misty air. She closed her fist and whacked the lamppost again. “You got caught up in some kind of huge freaking game, Grit, and you don’t even know the rules. Dammit!” Her palm made a hollow clang as she hit the post again, harder, then ducked her head, laughing with frustration. “Son of a bitch. Margrit, you idiot. Go on. Waltz in. Demand some favors. Negotiate a deal.” She rotated her head, looking up at the streetlight. “I am in so far over my head I don’t even know what game I’m playing.”
“Janx does,” a voice growled behind her ear, and a hand clapped over her mouth.
CHAPTER 24
MARGRIT SCREAMED, A constricted squeak behind the hand over her mouth. An arm slammed around her waist, pinning her own arms against her sides, and she twisted with panic, throat loosening enough to scream again, the sound muffled by the man’s hand.
“You think you’re good, don’t you?” he breathed in her ear, his voice too soft to be recognized. “Too good to get caught. You’re just another piece of meat, girl. Just another piece of mortal meat. You’re coming with me.”
The city turned to mist around her.
Her lungs burned, vision swimming red: the mist was unbreathable, and it went on forever. Streetlights left oily yellow trails of fog through the scarlet, like blood on butter. Cars driving by tore black jagged streaks through her belly, pulling Margrit’s insides out and stretching them until they snapped back and tangled around her feet. She stumbled, her heartbeat crashing in her ears, each thump slower than the last.
