Heart of Stone

CHAPTER 17

CAMERON, LAUGHING, DUG out the Deluxe Edition Clue game, and between fried chicken and home fries they determined it was really Miss Scarlett in the library with the rope. Margrit slipped away to her date-coffee with a coworker, she’d finally ended up claiming, since neither of her apartmentmates would believe the truth-a couple of hours after sunset.

Huo’s On First was startlingly busy, with a book signing and reading going on in its crowded foyer. The bells on the door rang as Margrit pushed her way in, apologizing in murmurs to both the author and the people there to see her. Chelsea waved from atop a bookshelf-apparently it was her natural habitat-and nodded toward the back room. Margrit edged her way through the stacks and brushed the beaded curtain aside as quietly as she could.

In the prosaic yellow light of reading lamps, Alban seemed larger than she remembered him. He sat in an armchair meant for someone smaller, his shoulders overflowing it as he leaned to one side, head braced against his fingertips. He looked, Margrit thought, exhausted and terribly human. Suddenly at a loss, she hung back in the doorway, watching him. It was long moments before he lifted his head, and she saw his eyes dilate with surprise before she smiled crookedly. “Hey.”

“You came.” Relief filled the gargoyle’s rumbling voice. “I thought-”

“I might not have, if I hadn’t found a cabbie who knew what Huo’s On First was. I was thinking, What’s on second? But I’m here. I’m here, and I’ve got an awful lot of questions, Alban.”

“Yes.” He closed his eyes again, sinking into the chair. “I’m sure you do. This-might not be the best place for us to stay, though.”

“Somebody might’ve followed me?” Margrit teased. Alban lifted his gaze again, no humor meeting her question. She swallowed, remembering her own cynical thought that Tony might’ve let her go just for that purpose. “Yeah. Okay.”

“There’s rooftop access from here. If…” Alban hesitated, lifting his pale eyes to her. “If you trust me.”

Margrit let go a breath of laughter, averting her gaze. “I’m here, aren’t I? Maybe it’s good I didn’t get a chance to say so last night. Running off with you would’ve convinced Tony I was guilty, and now he just thinks I’m a victim.” She winced as she glanced back at Alban. “A potential victim.” She winced again. “That’s not coming out right.”

“But you,” he said. “You don’t think so?”

Margrit held her breath and the gargoyle’s gaze before letting both go with an explosive sigh. “I think you’re not the one killing women in the park, anyway. It’s not your style.”

“My-” Alban broke off, staring at her with dismay. “Do I want to know why you think I have a style?”

“Probably not, but if we’re going to get through this, you’re going to have to hear it. For what it’s worth, Alban, I’m on your side.”

He came to his feet slowly, with the massive grace Margrit was beginning to recognize in him. “It’s worth a great deal,” he murmured. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Who’s Biali?” Soften him up, Margrit thought, and then hit him when he’s not prepared.

Alban gave a start, like a cat being jolted out of sleep. “Biali is-where did you hear that name? He’s an old…acquaintance.”

“To be forgot?” Margrit asked, her tone deliberately light, though it did little to mask the sharpness. “I got the name from Janx.”

What color there was leeched from Alban’s skin, leaving him paler than new ivory. “Janx?” He barely whispered the name.

“I’ve been busy since you saw me.” Margrit pursed her lips, judgmental and not hiding it as she studied Alban’s pallor and the surprise in his eyes. Now or never, Grit. She pulled her gaze away once more and looked around the room, taking the calm beat of her heart as the Richter scale to judge her fear by. “So where’s this rooftop access?”

“This way.” Alban offered a hand and Margrit slid hers into it, momentarily struck by the size and strength of the fingers enveloping hers. Aside from dancing together, it was the first time he’d really touched her, and that…hardly counted. She hadn’t known his secrets then; hadn’t known what manner of man held her. She hadn’t known how his appearance would change her life.

Alban led her through a back door in Chelsea’s tiny apartment, both of them silent as they climbed the stairs to the roof. Once there, he drew her close, so gently she realized how easy it would be for him to injure her through carelessness. A surge of dangerous warmth swept over her. It was foolish to be drawn to things that could harm her, but she trusted the gargoyle. Trusted him far more than she trusted the New York City nights that she ran through every evening. Any man could be dangerous the way Alban was: strong, certain of himself, sensual. And the city where she jogged nightly had none of the gargoyle’s gentle side, no need or desire to protect without possessing.

Possessing. The word lingered in her mind, bringing color to her cheeks as Margrit curled herself against him. More than one person had treated her as a trinket in the past day, but Alban, who might have seemed the most possessive of them all, had nothing of that in his touch. His heartbeat was steady and slow beneath her cheek, making her own seem absurdly quick in counterpoint, but there was nothing inhuman about the arm he slipped around her waist. Solid, but not like stone. Simply like a man, warm muscle and sinew holding her safe.

Margrit closed her eyes, tightening her grip around Alban’s neck. “I’ve never done this.”

He chuckled, his breath stirring her hair. “I would think not.”

She looked up to find a teasing smile turned down at her, and felt laughter well in response. “I meant at all.” She bumped her hip against his in admonition, smiling even as the action made him draw her against him a little more solidly. “I’ve never flown.”

Alban ducked his head toward hers. “Then this will spoil you for your people’s methods of flight.” He crouched, then sprang straight upward, unhindered by Margrit’s weight.

Space imploded around her as he shifted forms within the circle of her arms. Blood tingled beneath her skin, pinpricks shivering over every inch of her until she was achingly aware of Alban’s body pressed against hers. There was no human softness left to him, his muscles stronger and ropier than they had been moments before. His face changed, centimeters from her own, with rougher lines replacing the more familiar human form, and warm white hair washed over her forearms like heated stone. His wings spread, so close and broad they blocked out what few stars shone through city lights, though the crescent moon made a spot of brightness through the thin membrane. Not human, but his body heat and the way he cradled her told her he was still far from stone.

A thrill bordering on panic fluttered in Margrit’s stomach, pulling laughter from her. Her body stung with need, a runner’s high pushed to the point of ecstasy and desire. She tilted her head back, making a vulnerable line of her throat, and pressed her breasts against Alban’s chest as she arched in his arms. Her breath was torn away, tears streaming from her eyes as the wind straightened her hair and slapped strands of it against her cheeks. Buildings sailed by beneath them, their familiar forms utterly changed from this new vantage. Margrit heard herself laughing and pulled herself up against Alban again, burying her face in his shoulder. “This is fantastic.”

Given the rush of wind in her own ears, she was uncertain he could hear her, but he laughed, a deep sound of delight that seemed to shiver through Margrit’s body. “I thought it would suit you.”

“It does.” The impulse to curl her leg over his hip to hold herself closer to him sent a deep jolt of desire through her groin. The impulse was as alarming as it was appealing, and Margrit shoved it away, stretching into the wind.

As if it was less dangerous to trust the gargoyle with her life than to find him desirable. Margrit let go her hold around Alban’s neck with first one arm, then the other. She curved back, making a rainbow arch, until only the gargoyle’s grip around her waist kept her from falling hundreds of feet through the air. Delight and fear shivered through her like a drug, heightening her awareness of tactile sensations. The wind against her face cut like ice shards, tasting clean and cold so far above the city. Exquisite counterpoint came from Alban’s warmth where her hips pressed into his. Heat surged through her again, this time mingled with laughter that she didn’t dare release. Arching into the wind had not been the way to escape her growing awareness of the intimacy offered by sharing the sky with a gargoyle. Another blush and shiver seized her, sheer curiosity making her wonder if a winged creature could make love to an unwinged one in the air.

“Margrit?” Alban’s voice, always low, seemed to carry more question in it than usual. Perhaps she wasn’t the only one becoming ever more aware of the familiarity of their pose. Margrit caught her lower lip between her teeth, deliberately twisting to look down on the city beneath them.

The lights were bright and stationary despite the wind that flattened her hair into her eyes. Flight, to her modern mind, was a method of rapid travel, leaving things behind in an instant, but with Alban it was different. For him it was a thing of nature, not languid, but not mechanically quick. Wholly natural, yet completely unnatural to human expectations.

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll be seen?” Even as she asked the question a pang of regret slipped through the heat building in her core. It wasn’t the response the gargoyle had looked for when he’d spoken her name. For an instant she wished she could take it back.

“I do not do this…often,” Alban rumbled after a moment, the deep granite of his voice cutting easily through the wind. “When I do, I try to stay above the towers, so no one simply looks out and notices me. It helps that I can only come out at night. City lights help block curious eyes looking up, and the sheer improbability of my existence helps people doubt what they see, if they do catch a glimpse of me. And,” he added prosaically, “I’m usually very, very careful.”

“Usually.” Margrit tilted her head back again, looking down at the streets gliding below. “This isn’t being careful.”

“No,” Alban agreed, “but I thought you might enjoy the scenic route. Hold on,” he advised. He cupped his hand behind her head, pulling her out of her arch and against his body again. Margrit slid an arm around his neck, closing her eyes and inhaling his scent in the instant before the wind ripped it away. He smelled like raw broken stone, newly shattered, an outdoors smell that Margrit was surprised she recognized, having been raised in the city. Alban banked, slowing, then rolled her in his arms, making her yelp as her eyes popped open with surprise.

The city was right side up. Alban still held her firmly around her waist, but instead of being pressed chest to chest with him, her hip fitted against his, her ribs stretched along his side and her arm wrapped securely behind his shoulder. The intimacy was gone. “You’ve done this before,” Margrit said into the wind.

“Not recently. What would you like to see?”

“The Chrysler Building,” Margrit said. Alban flashed a smile, no distress evident in his expression. Maybe the surge of want had been only on her part, she thought, but shook her head even as Alban banked again, climbing higher into the sky. Human or not, the gargoyle was male, and Margrit had felt evidence of his attraction when their hips had been pressed together. He might have been as uncertain as she of the right steps to take to address that interest.

Powerful muscle worked beneath her arm, Alban’s wings gathering air and pushing them higher as they angled through the city toward the glittering steel-peaked building. Triangular windows in the massive arches glowed yellow, blazing with friendly light. As they neared the skyscraper, Alban caught an updraft and soared on it, his great wings suddenly all but still. Margrit laughed breathlessly, reaching out as if she could touch the building.

“I must’ve seen this in a hundred movies,” she said. “I’ve been looking at this building from the ground my whole life. It didn’t seem so big.” She found herself counting the steel-framed stories that narrowed toward the spire, even though she knew there were seven of them. “Did you know they put that up in an hour and a half?”

“The spire?” Alban asked. A heavy shifting of muscle brought spread wings back into play, and he climbed the updraft to circle lazily around the top. The red light at its tip spilled down over them, a faint discoloration.

Margrit nodded. “So it could be the tallest structure in the world. They built the spire in the elevator shaft and mounted it without telling anybody they were going to. But the Chrysler Building only got to be the tallest for four months, before they finished the other one.” She nodded toward the distant Empire State Building, an embarrassed smile playing at her mouth. “I always felt a little sorry for it because of that. I like it more than the Empire State Building.”

“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.”