Heart of Stone

by C. E. Murphy

  Alban’s eyes glittered as he glanced at her. “Yes.” Weight burdened the word, a weight Margrit was certain she wasn’t meant to hear or understand. She put her hand out, gripping the table before she spoke.

  “Is that what happened to you?”

  The gargoyle went still, more profoundly still than any human Margrit had ever seen. Even his hair seemed too heavy to be moved, and his breath seemed as if it might never come again. “I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said finally. “In a matter of days you’ve become more conversant with our people than I have been in centuries.”

  “What happened, Alban?”

  “As you surmise,” he said after long seconds. “Nothing more and nothing less, Margrit. It isn’t something I care to dwell on. Hajnal died and I fled the Old World for the new, with only memories to live with.”

  “That’s all? That’s all you’re going to tell me?” Margrit leaned forward, as if her intensity might draw more information from the gargoyle. A whisper of presence made itself felt in her mind, alien and familiar all at once, and she curled her fingers, as if she could hook them into shared memory. Her injured hand protested the action, and Alban shifted away, placing a subtle distance between them. Margrit’s eyebrows drew down. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  He turned toward her with a faint smile. “Why do you think there’s something I’m not telling you?”

  “Because you’re not letting memory ride me,” Margrit said, suddenly sure of herself. “You’re making certain it doesn’t.”

  “I chose long ago not to share memory again, Margrit. I’d have been more cautious earlier if I’d known humans were sensitive to it.”

  “Why?” she asked, mystified. “Why would you deny yourself that? The memories I got weren’t nice ones, but I’d think being alone after sharing a telepathic link with someone would be incredibly depressing.” The gargoyle shifted at the accusation, and Margrit caught her breath in recognition of his unintentional admission. “It is, isn’t it? How much of being an outcast is self-imposed? Why would you do that to yourself? Are you on a two-century sulk?”

  Alban growled deep in his throat, and Margrit smiled, triumphant at forcing a client to acknowledge something he didn’t want to see. He wasn’t exactly a client, she reminded herself, but the principle remained the same. It was time to back away now, leaving him to stew over her words, making him wrestle with their truth. The tactic proved much more useful than continuing to push, in her experience.

  “All right. Okay. I’ll let it go this time. We’ve got enough to deal with right now. What’s Janx doing, upsetting the balance like this?”

  Alban looked past her, into the bookstore’s yellow light beyond the bead curtain. “Making a play I don’t understand,” he said after a moment. “To make a blow as direct as this one, whatever he’s doing, he must be very confident of his position.”

  “Is Janx ever not confident?” Margrit asked wryly.

  Alban blinked, then smiled at her. “No,” he admitted. “None of us tend to lack confidence. We’ve paid the price, though. There aren’t many of us left.”

  “Maybe one more than you think.”

  “I know,” Alban agreed. “The woman Ausra. Grace O’Malley knows her. Knew her,” he corrected. “She disappeared years ago.”

  Margrit stared up at him. “When did you talk to Grace?”

  “Just after sunset. She followed us yesterday and found the building I slept on. She was waiting when I woke up.”

  A chill of irrational jealousy and concern swept over Margrit, lifting the hairs on her arms. “I spent all day worried about you,” she muttered childishly. “And she knew where you were?”

  “Margrit.” Alban tipped her chin up, smiling down at her. “She offered me a daytime haven, nothing more.”

  Margrit snorted. “So what’d she say about Ausra?”

  His smile faded. “Very little. Grace knew what she was, not much more. She was dark-haired and small.”

  “Like Hajnal,” Margrit said.

  Alban’s eyebrows rose. “How did you know that?”

  She looked down, feeling his gaze on her. “I’ve had a busy evening.” The events of the night suddenly overwhelmed her, the list of them leaving her without a place to start. She finally said, “Janx gave me this,” and took the sapphire from her pocket. It rolled in her palm, lamps making a bright star on its side, before she met the gargoyle’s eyes.

  Alban took the stone with thick fingers, the least graceful move she’d ever seen him make. “Where did you—” He broke off, squeezing his eyes closed, and rephrased the question. “Where did he get this?”

  “There was another murder tonight,” Margrit whispered. “The real killer this time, not Janx’s copycat. She left this at the scene.”

  Alban jerked his head up, meeting Margrit’s eyes. “She?”

  “Doesn’t it have to be? Someone’s trying to draw you out, blame you for the deaths of women who looked like Hajnal.”

  Alban went gray, a bleaching of color that left him less human than before. “How do you know that?” he asked indistinctly. “I didn’t want to tell you—to frighten you.”

  Margrit ducked her head. “I’m not easily frightened, remember?” The reminder of his words brought a brief smile to Alban’s face, and she exhaled. “Honestly, I’m already scared, Alban. I’m in way over my head. Anyway, Biali told me. More than told me,” she added, remembering the too-vivid shock in Biali’s memory at the gargoyle woman’s arrival. “I talked to him earlier tonight.”

  “Biali. Janx. Daisani. Malik. Are there any of the Old Races you haven’t had truck with since I last saw you? Biali,” Alban repeated, then pressed his mouth in a thin line as he curled his hand around the sapphire. “I suppose I could’ve guessed. Tell me what it is you think,” he said without looking back at her. “Tell me what you’ve deduced, Margrit. I have no heart for speculation.” He seemed to age with the words, until Margrit bit back tears and took a tentative step toward him.

  “She didn’t die. She got away somehow, and it’s taken her this long to find you again. Or maybe she’s been waiting for you to expose yourself and talk to somebody. All those other women who died—”

  “Daylight hours, Margrit,” Alban reminded her heavily. “Hajnal, had she survived that night, could not have killed any of those women. They died during daylight hours.”

  Margrit bared her teeth, frustrated at the reminder. “All right. Still, you’ve said you live alone, privately. Maybe you’re hard to find.”

  “I have been so deliberately, though if someone…haunts me…then perhaps I haven’t been circumspect enough. Margrit, I saw—”

  “You saw her dying. But dawn was close, and you said the stone heals you. Maybe she got away, Alban. Maybe she was too hurt to find you again. Ausra is Hajnal, Alban. I saw it in Biali’s memories. She was small and had black hair and amber skin and—”

  “What?” Alban’s voice went hoarse. “You—what? Rode memory with Biali?”

  “I didn’t mean to. He didn’t mean to let me. I was asking him about Ausra and he said he didn’t know her, but this time a memory caught me. She walked right up to him and he said, ‘You’re dead.’ I saw it. They’re the same person. I think Hajnal must’ve gone crazy.” Insistence lost the battle to sympathy as Margrit concluded her argument.

  Alban stared down at her, sightless. “We don’t—” he began.

  Margrit shook her head. “Somebody who knows about gargoyles is out there killing people, Alban. Somebody who knows about you. Somebody who’s willing to risk exposing you all, just to hurt you. If the Old Races are so circumspect, isn’t what she’s doing insane?”

  “It can’t be,” Alban said, but without conviction. “You…saw her?”

  Margrit edged another step forward and wrapped her hands around his, around the sapphire in his palm. “I’m sorry. I know it shouldn’t be, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be. All kinds of things that shouldn’t be, are. Like us.”

  “
Us.” He looked down at her with weary, questioning eyes. Margrit’s heart skipped a beat and she wet her lips, trying for a smile.

  “Us,” she said again. “I mean, a gargoyle and a lawyer? That can’t be written in the book of things that should be.”

  “Is it wrong?” Alban wondered, without moving. “This thing that shouldn’t be?”

  “No,” she whispered. “No, it’s not wrong.”

  He straightened away from the table, making it creak again, and brushed a taloned finger against her cheek, pushing an errant curl back from her face. “It has been a very long time since someone said my name with hers, and meant us.”

  Margrit gazed up into his eyes, unable to take a deep breath. “Maybe it’s time to start living again, Alban.”

  “Perhaps it is.” He cupped her cheek in his palm, his hand dwarfing her skull. Smiling, Margrit turned her face into the touch as Alban lowered his head.

  Beads rattled, a soft precursor to Chelsea’s voice. “Forgive me.” She shifted the curtain a few centimeters, enough to look into the back room. “Forgive me, but I thought you needed to know. There are police on the way.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “POLICE?” SHOCK TIGHTENED Margrit’s stomach even as Alban took a few quick steps toward the stairway leading to the roof. “How did they—”

  “Someone must have seen me come in,” he growled. “I should have used the roof.”

  “But I told Tony that—” Margrit broke off with a soft curse. “I told him Vanessa’s killer was a copycat. There’d be no reason to retract the APB on you, Alban. You’re still their primary suspect. We’ve got to get out of here.” A sense of the absurd rose in her as she echoed the words of a hundred bad movies. “Who knew people actually said things like that?” she breathed, then followed Alban across the room, stopping at the foot of the stairs, where he blocked the way. “Go,” she said impatiently. “It’s not like I can fly out of here without you. We’ve got to find Hajnal, Alban. We’ve got to stop her. Go! Move!” She pushed him, which was as effective as trying to shift a wall.

  Beads rattled as Chelsea disappeared back into her bookstore. Alban glanced at the swinging curtain, then slowly uncurled his palm, where the sapphire rested. “When we were very young, we made a foolish promise to each other.”

  “What was it?” Margrit squeezed past the gargoyle, taking the stairs two at a time. Alban followed ponderously, stopping again at the first landing while Margrit searched fruitlessly for something to block the door with.

  “That if we were ever endangered and separated, we would find the highest place in the city or countryside where we were, and wait every night for a month for the other to come.”

  “Great.” Margrit caught his hand, tugging him up the stairs. Alban followed, as if the only thing keeping him in action was her momentum. “We’ll go to the Empire State Building. It’s tallest now.”

  He made a low sound in his throat, loosening his hand and slowing to a stop. Margrit turned back, impatient, to catch a distant look in the blond man’s eyes, as if he no longer saw her or the stairs where they stood. “In Paris, it was Notre-Dame. We loved the cathedral and its gargoyles. Once in a while we’d settle there for a day, to be among our human-made brethren. Every night, Margrit.” He refocused on her, his expression drawn. “I waited every night for a year. She didn’t come. She cannot be alive. Biali’s memories must be wrong.”

  Margrit groaned and took Alban’s hand in both of hers, putting her whole weight into pulling him, without effect. “We’ll never know if we don’t try. Come on, Alban.”

  “Margrit, it was centuries ago, and she never came.”

  Exasperation overtook her. “Do you have a better idea? You could go back downstairs and let the police arrest you, for example. I’m sure they’d be very understanding at seven-thirty when the sun comes up and you turn into a block of rock, which you’ve already got for brains. Come on, Alban!”

  Irritation flooded his face, the first real expression since she’d suggested Hajnal was alive. He looked up the circling stairway, then flexed his shoulders. “Do you insist on climbing all of these on foot?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a faster route if you’d like to give me a hand. Are you with me now?”

  Another grumble sounded low in his throat, but Alban offered a hand, a slow, graceful movement. Margrit plucked the sapphire out of his other hand and put it back in her pocket, shrugging when he looked askance at her. “So it won’t get dropped.”

  “I wouldn’t drop it.” He closed his fingers around hers, pulling her into his embrace, and she heard words that went unspoken: no more than I would drop you. “Hold on,” he said above her ear. “There isn’t room here for my wings, and leaping requires both hands.”

  “I’m a runner, Alban,” Margrit muttered against his chest. “My strength’s in my thighs, not my arms.”

  After a tension-charged moment, he replied with humor, “Remember this was your idea.”

  He slid his hands under her bottom and lifted her as if she weighed nothing, wrapping her thighs around his waist. Margrit barely contained a shriek of laughter, ducking her face against his shoulder to smother a shout that would bring the police to the stairwell in seconds. She locked her ankles behind him, then leaned back, grinning as heat colored her face. Her heartbeat scampered faster when she met Alban’s cautious eyes, inches from her own. She ducked her head forward, bumping her nose against his, and Alban responded to the intimate invitation.

  Margrit’s breath disappeared; awareness of his strength and closeness superseding all else. Clarity descended, making her hands tingle with knowledge of the thing that lay between them, as yet unbreached. It would remain that way unless Margrit acted, Alban’s nature precluding such a thing.

  Should and ought to were washed aside in favor of the hunger she’d been trying to ignore. For an instant they were simply two people sharing desire, Alban’s mouth as soft as any man’s, Margrit’s fingers tight at his nape. They were both wordless, breathless, when they broke apart, Margrit’s eyes wide until a broad grin overtook her.

  “This was my idea?”

  He arched pale eyebrows, smiling. “I wouldn’t want you to fall.” He cupped a hand at the back of her head, drawing her nearer. “You’ll still need to hold on, Margrit. Hold close.”

  She put her cheek against his neck, nodding. “I am. Don’t let go.”

  “Never.” Muscle bunched under her thighs as he crouched, then uncoiled in a burst of power, leaping upward with dizzying strength. She squeaked, a constricted sound as much of laughter-filled panic as fresh desire, the play of Alban’s body against hers feeling far more personal than even the kiss they’d shared. Her bottom brushed his thighs again as he landed against the edge of a stair, the abrupt stop lasting only a few seconds before he leaped again. Eyes closed, Margrit felt the strength of his arms as he darted toward the roof. It seemed as though the power in his hands must dent the railings he clung to for brief moments, but there was no sound of rent metal, only her own near-silent laughter, muffled against his shoulder.

  The landing at the top of the stairs was different, more solid. Margrit dared lift her head for a moment, wide-eyed. “Are we still alive?”

  Alban tucked his hand against her bottom to lodge her more firmly around his waist as he pushed the roof access door open and stepped through. “Quite.” The door banged behind them and Alban broke into a loping run. “Hold on.”

  “I am!” The words turned into a helpless shriek as he planted a hand on the waist-high roof wall and vaulted it with ease, flinging them into the air. Wind rushed, screaming past her ears and snapping hair into her face, and then Alban, wrapped in her embrace, transformed.

  The soft implosion shot through her at every contact point, an erotic charge that weakened her muscles more thoroughly than any lover’s touch ever had. For an instant she was falling, unable to cling to the gargoyle any longer.

  As if he expected it, Alban took her weight and pulled her close again.
Margrit whimpered, rescue too close at hand for fear to prompt the tiny sound. Instead it was born of desire powerful enough to make her languid and needy, cradled in Alban’s arms. She nuzzled his neck, making another senseless little noise as she tasted desire sharp enough to be tears in the back of her own throat. The faintest thought intruded, that soaring above the streets of New York in search of a killer was a wildly inappropriate time to give in to need.

  Irrational, she thought, and it brought her back enough to prod muscle into responding. She hugged Alban closer, and he turned his mouth against her hair, murmuring, “Don’t worry. I will never let you fall.”

  “I know.” Margrit pressed her lips against his throat, her eyes closed. “I know.”

  “She’s not here, Margrit.” Alban came up to her side, hands in his pockets, shoulders tense, the intimacy of their flight lost as they renewed their search for Hajnal.

  Margrit leaned against the concrete barrier, fingers laced in the latticework wire that prevented jumpers. “Doesn’t it look peaceful down there?” Headlights and taillights streaked, eighty-six stories below, the sounds of the city faint when they could be heard at all. “I used to love coming up here when I was a kid. I’d scare the hell out of my Mom. Dad would put me up on the wall—” she bumped her elbow against the barrier “—and I’d hang on to the wire with both hands and look out. Once I tried climbing up to the bars.” She nodded upward at the curving steel spikes above her head. “Mom nearly had a heart attack. There’s a picture of me doing that, like a baby Spider-Man.”

  “Margrit.” Impatience filled his voice. “She’s not here. Why stay?”

  Margrit tilted her head to the side, looking up at him. “Because we paid twelve dollars each to ride up the elevator, and I want to look around?”