Heart of Stone

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.”

Margrit glanced around the dark-walled chamber. “I’d think you could do that today, too.”

“Perhaps,” Alban admitted. “I haven’t wanted to try for a long time. Not until-” He broke off, looking at her. She frowned, then ducked her head in understanding. Alban waited a beat before continuing. “When there were successes in the revolution, we weren’t prepared. It had been tried so many times, so poorly. We knew the threat, but like everyone, we thought it would fail, as it had half a dozen times before. And in the end, it did, but…” He shook his head. “We were wealthy. They caught us just before dawn.” He lifted his chin, looking away again. “We are not easy to kill,” he said softly, “particularly in our natural form. We fought. Many men died. I have never, before or since, tested myself against a man. I hope I never will. It rained that night.” He closed his eyes.

The chill of rain washed over Margrit, sending trickles of icy water down her back. An unfamiliar sound, like thunder, rolled, broken by distant retorts. “Gunfire,” she heard Alban say. “We knew about guns, of course. I had even fired one. But the idea that they could be used against us…”

Light blasted, inverting darkness into sharp illuminated shapes, like a dance floor on drugs. Pain ripped through Margrit’s shoulder and she fell back against the wall with a cry, trying to staunch a wound that wasn’t there. Under her fingers, blood flowed, thick and gritty, not with dirt, but with its inherent being. A second burst of pain slammed through her gut and she doubled over, gasping, staring blindly at cobblestones and mud, water streaming just beyond the tip of her nose. Her hair, long and white, fell past her shoulders, dragging in the dirty water. “I had never imagined we were vulnerable to humanity’s noisy tools. I was shot.”

Margrit planted a hand, heavy fingers with dangerously taloned nails, against the ground. She shoved herself to her knees, ignoring the burning agony that pulsed through her shoulder. Wrapping her arm around her belly, afraid to look and see that her insides might be spilling out, she roared, a deep sound like a jungle animal, and staggered to her feet.

All around her, men screamed. Her wings flared, widening, making her larger, the unfamiliar play of muscles in her back seeming natural. Through the rain, through bedraggled hair, she saw a man lift a rifle, and panic flared. A bullet through the wing would cripple her for life, would assure that she couldn’t escape the humans’ insane revolution.

She roared again, wings folding back in. It made her feel vulnerable, too small, although she towered over even the tallest of these men. Her own voice called, “Hajnal! Hajnal!” in sonic bellows as she swung her fist in a wide circle. Two men fell, their necks snapped with the force of the blow; neither would rise again. She snatched the rifle from another’s hands and bent it, mangling it before she dropped it into the mud, crying her lover’s name.

“She had been there only moments before,” Alban said, voice still filled with confusion. Margrit, half doubled with pain, stumbled forward, slamming her fists against bodies indiscriminately, shouting for Hajnal. She took no more than a dozen steps before collapsing to her knees again, heaving for breath around the agony in her belly and shoulder.

An iron bar smashed into the back of her head. She fell again into the wet. Under the sounds of rain and gunfire, the rod whistled through the air again. Margrit grunted and rolled, catching the bar in a fist and heaving. The eyes of the man grasping the other end widened as his feet left the ground, and Margrit heard a solid thunk as he hit a building and slid down it. Bracing herself with the bar, she got to her feet again and began to swing.

The light changed, bringing the glimmer of dawn as men died beneath her hands. She heard Hajnal scream, and twisted toward the sound, running heavily, every step jarring pain through her injured body. What she would give for a dragon’s fire, or the blinding speed of a vampire!

Nearly all the mob were dead when Margrit/Alban fell to her knees at Hajnal’s side, but so was Hajnal. Her wings were shattered, torn by gunshots, and an oozing hole above her heart pulsed with the black blood of her life.

“The sun is rising.” Hajnal’s voice was like Alban’s, rough and gravelly, though not as deep. “You have to go, Alban. You must go.”

“No. No, Hajnal, I won’t. I can’t.”

Hajnal laughed, and coughed up blood. “We will both die if you stay. Remember my name. Tell my story. And go!” The effort to speak shook another rattling cough from her. “Go, before the sun rises.”

“I can carry you,” Alban/Margrit said stubbornly. Pain exploded through Margrit’s shoulder as she tried to lift the fallen gargoyle. Hajnal closed a hand around her arm, weakly.

“You can’t. Perhaps the stone will save me. Go. Go, Alban. Come back with sunset, if you must, but go now.” Fire reflected in Hajnal’s eyes and she surged upward, a last burst of strength, to catch the flaming torch a man swung down toward Alban’s shoulders. Hajnal screamed, the smell of burning stone thickening the rain-filled air. “Go!”

Margrit launched herself into the sky. Every wingbeat seared, muscles protesting and failing. Every lurch higher into the air felt closer to the rising sun. She fled, afraid to even look back.

“I returned the next morning.” Words penetrated Margrit’s hearing again and she glanced up, the blanket clutched around her shoulders, the pain in her belly and shoulder receding. “I fell in an alley when the sun broke the horizon, and stayed the day, frozen in stone. The stone…heals. My injuries were greatly reduced by nightfall. I went back. I searched. She was gone. There was…” Alban opened a hand and scooped it against the floor, then lifted it, fingers spread as if something might fall through them. “Only rubble. I waited-searched-a long time, but finally hope seemed to be gone. I came here and have never returned.” Ancient sorrow and loss colored his voice.

Margrit sat silent for long minutes, watching him, then closed her fingers over her aching shoulder. “What did you do to me?”

Consternation wrinkled Alban’s forehead. “Memory rode you?”

She laughed weakly. “That’s a perfect way to put it. Like I was there.”

His eyes clouded. “I apologize. I had no idea humans were sensitive to it.”

“What is it?”

“Our way of sharing history.”

Margrit rubbed her shoulder again, then pressed a palm to her stomach. “God, Alban, why didn’t you use it against them?”

The gargoyle looked at her without comprehension. She spread her hands, deliberately stopping herself from prodding the sore spots where memory suggested she’d been shot. “The men in the revolution. Why didn’t you put nightmares into their minds to send them running?”

Alban’s chin lifted. “I would never have imagined such a use for the sharing.”

“Yeah.” Margrit pressed her lips together. “Welcome to why we’re the dominant species. You thought of dragon fire. You thought of vampire speed. But you couldn’t think of your own telepathy?”

“It seems not,” Alban said slowly. “My people are very strong, Margrit. We don’t have to look beyond that strength for ways to protect ourselves in battle.”

“You might want to rethink that attitude.” She bit her lip, then pushed her hands through her hair, tangling her fingers in curls. “I’m sorry about Hajnal. You-God, you haven’t been alone since then, have you?” Alban’s faint, sad smile curled a fist of sorrow around her heart on his behalf. “That’s terrible.”

“Watching over women like you eases the ache a little.” He shrugged, then folded his arms over his chest, frowning. “What sent you to Janx? You’re lucky you survived.”

“Chelsea told me about him. And Tony had just mentio-shit.” Margrit stared at Alban, irritation heating her cheeks. “Shit. He set me up. He set me up!”

“The police detective?” Alban’s eyebrows drew down. “How?”

“Janx. He mentioned Janx. He said-shit! Shit! We’ve got to get out of here. Shit!” Margrit scrambled from the bed, throwing the blanket off her shoulders. “Come on. We’ve got to leave.” She darted across the room, taking the stairs three at a time and talking over her shoulder as Alban followed her. “He said they’d gotten an anonymous tip. That’s how he knew you were at my apartment. And then right before he let me go he asked if the name Janx meant anything to me.” She slapped the inside of the soot-stained door, looking for the catch to open it. “He set me up!”

“I do not,” Alban said with great precision, as if doing so would force Margrit to suddenly make sense, “understand.”

She hit the door again. “Janx tipped him off, the son of a bitch. I don’t know,” she snapped, before Alban asked. “I don’t know how he knew it was Janx, but I will sure as hell find out. He gave me the name to see if I’d go to Janx. He’s fucking following me, I know it. I thought I was being silly and paranoid, but now I think he hopes I’ll lead him to you, and dammit, I might have. If he did follow me tonight…How the hell do I open this thing?”

Alban put one hand against the door and lifted his other one, palm out, to calm her. “He couldn’t have followed you beyond the bookstore, Margrit,” he said gently. “Unless he’s grown wings.” He offered a brief smile, pointing upward. “Remember?”

Margrit sagged against the wall as anger and panic bled out of her. “Right.” Lips pressed together, she took a deep breath, then straightened before making a mewl of dismay. “My shirt.” Tugging it over her shoulder to see the back proved what she’d suspected: soot was smeared across it, blackening the fabric into oily streaks. “Crap. Well, crap. This is dry-clean only, too.”

Alban chuckled. “Better a sooty shirt than a betrayed hideaway, I think.” He edged her aside and put his hand against the door, tilting his head as he listened. “The mechanism is here.” He touched a shallow groove in the stone, light gleaming dully off a black iron catch now that Margrit knew where to look. She reached for it, but he stayed her hand, shaking his head.

“You may be right, after all.”

Margrit’s fingers clenched into a fist. “What? You just said-”

“I know. But the voices I hear-I believe your detective friend is just on the other side of the door.” Alban hesitated. “Your people make use of tracking devices, don’t they?”

Margrit snorted, then winced at the sound, fearful it might carry through the stone walls. “I don’t think the NYPD has that kind of money, Alban.” She found herself patting her hands over her body regardless, searching for anything that didn’t belong. “Shit. Will they be able to open the door?”

Alban shrugged, liquid motion. “The mechanism is well hidden, but I don’t think it’ll stand up to a thorough search.”

“Well, they can’t catch you,” Margrit said flatly. “There’s no way you’d get out of there by dawn, and I’m not letting them turn you into a freak show.”

“I can hide in stone,” he reminded her. “They could find only you.”

“Can you? Can you turn all the way to stone before sunrise?”

Alban nodded. “It’s not usually necessary, but yes.”

“Okay.” Margrit bolted down the stairs, then stopped, turning to look up at the gargoyle. “Shit.” Alban’s wings flared, a sudden sharp motion that scraped them along the narrow walls as he avoided crashing into her.

“What?”

“The club…” Margrit grimaced. “You hid in the Goth Room. I sort of identified you in the security video. Tony saw your other shape. I’m sorry.”

“He saw it?”

“Well, he thought it was a mask. He thought you were incredibly clever, actually,” she added, then shook her head, pushing curls behind her ears. “But if he sees the same face here-”

“Then he’ll think the mask I used was modeled after it,” Alban said. “Believe me, Margrit, nothing else would make sense to him.” He cocked his head, listening. “They’re searching the wall now, Margrit. Maybe they won’t find the opening mechanism, but-”

“The storm tunnels,” Margrit blurted.

Alban’s eyebrows rose. “Not a pleasant option.”

“Better than abandoning you here,” she said.

Alban studied her briefly, then touched her cheek. “There isn’t much time.” He turned her around and nudged her down the stairs; Margrit jumped the last three and skidded across the stone floor. Alban shouldered past her, seven feet tall and winged, to lift the cot with easy strength and set it aside. A leather satchel was crushed against the wall by the cedar chest, which Alban pushed aside with a scraping noise. Beneath it, one of the flagstones had grooves in its shorter sides. Margrit stared down at them.

“Gimme a lever and I can move the world, Alban, but how the hell are you going to move that?”

He glanced at her, amused, and crouched, sliding massive fingers into the grooves and gripping. Smooth muscles in his arms and back bunched, and he straightened from the legs, lifting the stone so easily it might have weighed no more than a few pounds. A two-by-three-foot hole gaped in the floor, leading into blackness.

“Good,” Margrit said in a strangled voice. “Good, lifting with your legs. Good for you. Jesus Christ!”

Alban rumbled with laughter, propping the stone on his shoulder and gesturing. “The tunnel is broad enough to fit me. You should be able to make it easily, but it will be dark. The torches won’t last in the water.”

Margrit laughed, a soft high sound of alarm. “Is there a light at the end of it?”

“There’s ankle-deep water and muck at the end of it,” Alban said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“You could’ve lied,” she muttered, but nodded.

“Go, then,” he said. “I’ll be behind you.”

Margrit sat down, swung her legs into the hole and, mumbling reassurance to herself, dropped into the pit.