Heart of Stone

“Buddy.” Alban tilted his head, the graceful action of a winged creature. “Does the use of nicknames suggest a new level in our relationship, Margrit?”

“Yeah. It suggests the level where I feel free to kick your butt if you leave me behind.” Margrit turned a suddenly cheerful smile on the gargoyle. “So which will it be?”

Alban tipped his head again, bringing it closer to Margrit’s. Her smile grew, her heartbeat thundering at the intimacy of his approach. With his mouth very nearly against hers, he murmured, “Forgive me.”

In the same breath he gathered himself and leaped, clearing Margrit and the steps above her easily. She shrieked and ducked out of instinct, realizing his intent too late. She whipped around and scrambled up the stairs, tripping over her own feet in her haste. Fumbling with fallible, human grace.

Alban shot her one apologetic look over his shoulder before shoving open the rooftop door and disappearing into the night.

CHAPTER 30

ALBAN IMAGINED HE could hear Margrit’s outraged gasp cutting through the air behind him; imagined he could hear her curse, and her footsteps echoing in the stairwell as she bolted down them. Imagined, too, that there would be a moment when she looked down the hollow shaft made by the circling stairs, and thought she might jump to the bottom as easily as Alban himself could have. Rash impulse defined her, in many ways; the willingness to act boldly, consequences be damned. That sense of infallibility sent her ru

Reaching the cathedral was a matter of seconds. He winged a tight circle above the unfinished southern tower, searching the shadows for Hajnal’s form. There was no one there; he hadn’t truly expected her to be. Biali might lead him to her, but memory told Alban she’d left deliberate clues. Faster to follow them, and try Biali only if this route proved fruitless.

Faster. The thought came back to him so unexpectedly he chuckled. Margrit’s impatience was compelling. Less than a week had passed since he’d first spoken to her, and already the human need to get things done now seemed to be wearing off on him.

Laughter faded as he landed atop the tower, falling into a habitual crouch. If Margrit’s idea of the appropriate speed at which to do things could be so easily learned, perhaps she was more right than he’d given her credit for. Perhaps his people had changed more through their interactions with humans than he could have thought. Exiled from his own kind, he had deliberately held himself apart from humanity as well, seeking no solace in companionship. It was possible the gargoyles had passed by him in their social evolution, and that he, now, was a relic from a time gone by. The Breach. He formed the words without speaking them aloud. Maybe the inherent accusation went deeper than he knew.

The quandary could wait. Alban pushed to his feet, eyes half-closed as he turned his head, listening for the bang of a door and footsteps slapping on the sidewalk. Margrit would be there soon. Better if he was gone, drawing danger away, before she arrived.

It took a handful of moments to find the carving among the partially finished blocks of the tower. The board, several inches long, was spiked with carved ivory pieces: the Empire State Building at midpoint, Trinity Church near the bottom, tiny carved trees littering the space that was Central Park. Carefully carved figurines were fitted into peg holes in the board; a miniature Alban sat hunched by Trinity, and beautifully carved, tiny women fitted into holes punched around the edges of Central Park-four of them, making a diamond. A fifth hole lay next to the first-first because it was the location where the first woman had died, no other reason. The figurine that belonged in that hole rolled on the miniature’s surface.

Alban picked it up, studying it without truly seeing. The color, old ivory, brown with age, told him all he needed to know. Lying in his palm, it was the same color as Margrit’s skin, café latte, warm, lovely.

Margrit’s scream tore up from below.

She’d stood gaping after Alban for what felt like an impossibly long time. In a handful of days she’d come to think of him as someone who didn’t make decisions quickly, bound as he was by the element that was his essence. But beneath that, more profound even than the stillness of stone, was the nature of a gargoyle: to protect. She’d stood there, swaying in astonishment, wondering if others of the Old Races also had fundamental streaks in their being. If dragons lived to hoard, or vampires to feed. She couldn’t think what the selkies or dji

That was as much time as Margrit wasted in thought. She’d taken the stairs down four and five at a time, swinging on the railing to give her feet wings. Her injured hand yowled in protest every time she wrapped it around a bar, that only gave her more reason to reach the bottom faster.

She burst from her apartment building at a flat-out run, swearing aloud when forced to hurdle an icy patch at the foot of the steps. There was no sign of Alban in the skies above. Margrit hurled herself down the sidewalk toward the cathedral, forthright anger driving her even as logic told her there’d be no way to catch the winged creature, nor any way to learn what Hajnal’s next step might be.

A minute later Margrit ran up the cathedral steps, pounding a fist on the door and shouting uselessly. No one answered, though even if they had she could hardly imagine being allowed inside. She danced back again, turning her gaze upward, hands lifted to block the streetlights and help her see into the dark more clearly. “Alban! Alban, Goddammit, I know you’re up there! You can’t do this to me! You can’t-”

A blow like a sledgehammer caught her in the ribs, knocking her breath away. An instant later she rose skyward, thrown ignominiously over a slender shoulder. Wings smaller than Alban’s, more delicate, strained against the air, as if Margrit’s weight was dangerously heavy.

Margrit caught her breath and let it out in a scream.

A snarl, higher in pitch but no more human than Alban’s growl, answered her. Wings slammed back, buffeting Margrit’s skull between them, and for a moment disorientation took over. She drew breath for another scream as her head cleared, but the sound was cut off in her throat as the female gargoyle banked in a dangerously sharp turn, bringing them down among the trees of Central Park. A uniformed police officer lay crumpled near a footpath. Margrit shook her head, trying to clear her vision, then shrieked again as the gargoyle dumped her to the earth, a dozen feet below.

A swallowed scream erupted from her throat as she hit the ground badly, her left arm snapping audibly with the impact. White pain lanced through her, and she lay facedown, panting in agony, too stu

“Margrit!” Alban’s voice came from above, just before another impact: the gargoyle woman landing with a thud, her feet on either side of Margrit’s ribs. She crouched, taking Margrit’s hair in her hand and pulling her head back.

“One more step and she dies.”

Margrit whimpered, pushing herself up a few inches with her right arm. The weight on her shifted, and she was helped onto her back by a foot to the ribs. Stars swam behind her eyes and she gritted her teeth against nausea, trying to focus. “Hajnal?”

The woman standing above her was barely taller than Margrit herself, with large eyes and beautifully arranged flat, shining curls that spiraled around her face. Carefully shaped eyebrows rose at Margrit’s question, and she laughed, a sweet rich sound that was nothing like the granite of Alban’s laugh.