Heart of Stone

CHAPTER 27

“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?”

Alban’s expression soured. Margrit smiled, lowering her voice. “We couldn’t just land here, Alban. The observation deck’s open till midnight.”

“There are very few people around,” he muttered back. “It would’ve been safe.”

“Maybe.” She leaned against the wires again. “But I like the elevator. I used to think that being this high would show me how to fly. Anything that can get this high should be able to fly, shouldn’t it?” She spread her arms, spinning slowly. “But I never learned how.”

“You can fly now,” Alban murmured. Margrit bumped her hip against his, smiling as she looked up at him.

“I can,” she agreed in a whisper. “It’s like magic.” She curled her arms around his neck, leaning her head back to look up at the floors above the observation deck, then let go with a start. “This isn’t the top floor, Alban.”

He glanced up. “I know.”

“So it’s not the highest point in the city.” Margrit gestured upward. “There used to be rooftop access below the tower. A gargoyle could still get up there.”

Alban’s jaw tightened and he stepped back. “Wait here.” With a perfunctory look around, he sprang upward, shifting into gargoyle form midaction.

Margrit watched him climb toward the upper floors. “Where would I go?” she murmured to herself before turning back to the view. She was half-asleep on her feet, supporting herself with throbbing fingers wrapped through the wires, when Alban touched her shoulder. Margrit yelped, yanking her hands free, then swore and stuffed them under her arms while she blinked tears away and scowled at Alban.

“My apologies.”

“It’s okay,” she muttered. “Did you find anything?”

He opened his hand silently. A tiny model of a Gothic cathedral sat in his palm, with a tower, complete with miniature scaffolding, at one end.

“That’s Saint John the Unfinished. It’s right next to my apartment.”

Alban, despite the tight line of his mouth, chuckled. “I believe it’s Saint John the Divine.”

Margrit widened her eyes with innocence. “Isn’t that what I said?” She left humor behind, squinting up at the tower. “She must have put it there. Why Saint John?”

“It’s Episcopalian,” Alban said. “Like Trinity. Perhaps it’s a warning. Telling me she knows my daytime hiding spot.”

Margrit’s shoulders straightened as she caught her breath. “You believe me now?”

He folded his hand over the miniature, his hesitation clear. “I don’t see how it’s possible, Margrit.”

She touched his closed fingers. “I know, but we don’t have anything better to go on. Isn’t moving forward and exploring the chance better than holding still and not knowing?”

“My people are made of stone,” Alban said, a whisper of wryness in his voice. “To remain still is natural.”

“Yeah, well, it’s killing people. My people. How do I convince you? If the sapphire isn’t enough, if the carving isn’t enough, if me seeing Biali’s memory isn’t enough, then what does it take?”

“Memory…” Alban’s colorless eyes lost focus, his gaze looking through Margrit instead of at her. Then his shoulders grew tense and he shook his head. “No.”

“What?” She tightened her hands over his. “What was that thought, Alban? Come on. You said-you said your telepathy was your people’s way of sharing memories. Does that mean you can-” She caught her breath, taking half a step back so she could see him more clearly. “It means you can access other gargoyles’ memories, doesn’t it?”

“I have not shared memory in two centuries, Margrit. Even if they let me back in I may not be able to sift through the memories to find the truth of Biali’s recollections.”

“Let you back in? How could they stop you?”

“Those nearby can sense it when we step into memory. With focus, someone can be driven out.”

“Why would they do that?”

His gaze flickered to hers, then away again. “Outcast,” Margrit said after a moment. “Exile. That’s how you’re punished, by not being allowed to join the memories. What’d you do, Alban?”

“That,” he said, “is not my story to tell. No,” he added more sharply, as Margrit drew a breath to protest. “No. Let it be enough for you to know that my people do not refuse to share memory. At most we will exclude a specific memory, and even that returns to the whole when we die.”

Margrit made a fist of her hand, clenching her teeth when her fingers ached. “All right, fine.” She pushed away the questions she wanted to ask, finding another facet to focus on. “If Hajnal is dead her memories ought to be part of the whole. You know her better than anybody. Better than you know Biali. Look for her memories in the gestalt. If she’s there, we’ll know what happened and we’ll know Ausra is someone else.”

“Gestalt,” Alban echoed quietly. “Is there nothing you humans do not have a word for?” He dismissed the question by following at once with another, his expression bleak as he looked down at Margrit. “Do you insist on this?”

“Yeah.” She heard herself draw the word out incredulously, sounding like a teenager. “Yes. You’ve got to try, Alban. If they won’t let you back in, we’ll cross that bridge, but this is the best way to be sure of who we’re dealing with. Besides, how many of them are there around here to play watchdog?”

A corner of Alban’s mouth curled up, so slowly it was obviously against his will. “Gargoyles are very good watchdogs, Margrit. There are not many nearby, but there may be enough. I’ll try,” he added before she could work up another argument. “I’ll try, but this is not a good place to do so from. Entering memory is usually best done in private.”

“We could go back to my place.” The offer sounded so natural and so absurd Margrit laughed, clapping a hand over her mouth at Alban’s quizzical glance. “Sorry,” she said through her fingers. “Just, you know, that’s sort of a stereotypical invitation to…” Heat built in her cheeks when his expression grew more curious. “Nothing. Nevermind. We can go somewhere else.”

All her humor fled and she turned an inappropriate glower toward the streets below. “Maybe to the safe house Grace offered you.”

Alban slipped a finger beneath her chin, not quite touching her, but encouraging her to look up. “I would be honored,” he said quietly, “to accept your offer of your home as a haven.”

Margrit puffed her cheeks out and exhaled noisily, feeling chagrin slip away into embarrassment. “Oh. Okay. We could stop by the cathedral on the way. It’s just up the street from my apartment.”

“A glide-over,” Alban agreed. “Perhaps she’s waiting for us there.”

A note of suppressed hope rang through his voice, making Margrit’s heart tighten. “You really don’t want to do this, do you.”

“No.” He slipped an arm around her waist and curled one of her arms up around his neck, turning his head as he checked for spectators on the observation deck. A young couple rounded the corner and disappeared from sight. Alban shifted in Margrit’s arms, clearing the safety mesh with an easy leap. “But I will do it for you.”