C.E. Mutphy - Hands of Flame

“I apologize for the necessity of meeting at this hour. Margrit and I have something we needed to tell you—”

“Oh my God.” Cameron straightened and reached for Margrit’s arm, letting her own hair go in the process. It whipped around and she snatched at it, then gave up and seized Margrit again. “Oh my God, are you pregnant?”

Alban, accustomed to the swoops and falls of riding air currents, could not remember one that had ever plummeted his stomach so dramatically. Margrit squawked with dismay. “No! God, why does everybody—No! I’m not pregnant! Jeez, Cameron!”

“Oh.” Cameron released Margrit, expression downcast. “Man, that would’ve been worth climbing up to the roof in the cold and wind. What else could be that important?” She looked between Margrit and Alban expectantly. “C’mon, spill it.”

Margrit glanced at Alban, who gestured feebly for her to speak. His pulse continued to beat at an impossible rate, churning his stomach in a completely unaccustomed manner. Gargoyles were rarely shocked, but he was beyond words, a peculiar combination of relief and sorrow holding him in its grasp. A child wasn’t something he’d considered. To have the idea introduced and rejected in the same moment flummoxed him.

Margrit nodded, then looked at Cole, whose tense expression hadn’t changed, and sighed before turning back to Cameron. “Okay. I want you to hear me out, Cam. You’re not going to believe me, but I’m asking you to listen until I’m done, and then when you don’t believe it, I’ll prove it, okay?”

“Okaaaay. This is all very dramatic.”

Alban’s upset stomach faded a little as he, Margrit and Cole all breathed words very much to the effect of, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” at the same time. For an instant the possibility of camaraderie seemed alive, but Cole’s twisted mouth then belied it.

“All right.” Margrit inhaled deeply, clearly searching for somewhere to begin. Alban touched her shoulder, hoping to offer reassurance, and she returned a wan smile before saying, “You remember the speakeasy windows. The ones I put together to make into images?”

“Yeaaaah. We had this conversation already, Grit.”

“Yeah. Um, right. I just kind of didn’t follow through on it.” Margrit pulled her own hair out of its ponytail, then knotted it back up fiercely. “All of those creatures portrayed in the windows, the dragons and everything. Dragons and djinn, selkies and gargoyles,” she said more firmly, suddenly committing herself to the explanation. “That’s what they were. The ones you thought were mermaids were selkies, seal-people from Irish legend.”

“Okay, sure, whatever.” Cameron stuck her head out, a tiny shake indicating Margrit should get on with it. “And man presiding over them all. So what?”

“That wasn’t a man, it was…” Margrit trailed off, then looked at the sky and mumbled, “Never mind. The point. The point is they’re legendary, but they’re not imaginary. All of them, all of those creatures represented in the windows, are real. I’ve met them all.”

“You’ve met a dragon.”

“Yeah.”

“And a gargoyle.”

“…yeah.”

Cameron laughed. “So that’s why you can’t come out during the day, huh, Alban? You’re like that cartoon? I always thought that was a cool idea, even though I never got why they had to go to sleep during the day. Seems kind of pointless. At least vampires get, like, destroyed by sunlight. The gargoyles just turned to stone. Fwump.”

“In actuality,” Alban murmured, though he knew he shouldn’t, “vampires are not destroyed by sunlight. And my people are not especially like the ones in the cartoon, although we do share the transformation at dusk and dawn. Ours is a protective state, a way to help us maintain histories of our people that go back millennia. And now, because there is no way you can believe me otherwise, I’ll show you the truth.”

Alban transformed as he spoke, soft implosion of air bouncing out as his mass became significantly greater than it had been. Cole hunched and stiffened all at once, angling himself as though he prepared an attack. Margrit thought he didn’t even know he did it, that it came from someplace deep and instinctive, a primitive hunter faced with unknown prey. Alban, in face of Cole’s pose, held very still, though it wasn’t the preternatural stillness Margrit had seen him assume many times before. This, too, was preparation: waiting to see which way the predator would jump. That gargoyles, too, were predators crossed Margrit’s mind, and she hoped it wouldn’t come to any sort of fight.

All of that happened beneath Cameron’s resounding shriek. Margrit knew her friend well enough to recognize fear in her voice, and heard only pure surprise. Before the echoes had died Cameron had jolted closer to Alban, her babble making her sound like an overexcited teenager.

“Oh my God. Oh my God! Margrit! Oh my God! Cole! Oh my God! Are you actually—Oh my God. Is that—Are you—Are—Holy shit! Can I touch it? You? Him? What are you? Holy shit!” She reached out to touch Alban before getting permission, but before doing so froze, then whipped around to face Margrit, her eyes large as she hissed, “You slept with him?”

Margrit bit into her lower lip, trying not to look at Cole, whose expression blackened further at the reminder. She nodded warily, afraid of Cameron’s censure, but the taller woman just seized her shoulders for the third time that morning. “You are so giving me all the details!”

Cole made a sound of disbelief and Cameron turned a wide-eyed gaze on him. “What, don’t you want to know?”

“No! Jesus, Cam, look at that thing! It’s not even human!”

Cameron looked toward Alban again, and a smile of wonder stretched across her face. “I can see that. My God, it’s amazing. He. You. You’re amazing. What are you? How are you?”

Margrit, beneath the rush of breathless questions, murmured, “She’s taking this better than I did.”

“You were concussed,” Alban pointed out. “And I was wanted for murder. I believe the jury would consider a plea of extenuating circumstances.” Margrit smiled as he offered a graceful inclination of his head to Cameron. “I trust you mean how is it that I exist, rather than how I’m feeling. We believe ourselves to be simply another evolutionary track, from long before this world settled on its path. There are not many of us left, and I fear most humans aren’t as delighted by our presence as you seem to be.”

“I don’t know why not. You’re amazing.” Cameron walked in a circle around Alban, a hand lifted like she wanted to touch him, though she didn’t, only brushed the air near him. “This is incredible. Am I going to wake up back in Kansas?”

“I wish,” Cole said through his teeth. “I’ve been trying for two weeks. It’s real.”

“You knew? You did know, that’s why you and Margrit had a fight. She said it was about Alban. Cole, how can you be angry?” Cameron pulled her gaze from the gargoyle again, smile starting to fade as she took in Cole’s tight expression. “You really are angry.”

“Of course I am! Margrit’s screwing that freak and you…Jesus, Cameron, what’s wrong with you? That thing is a, a—”

“A gargoyle,” Margrit said quietly. Cameron’s draining pleasure exhausted her, saddening her immeasurably, just as Cole’s anger had done earlier. “And he’s a friend of mine, someone I care about a lot, Cole.”

“You want to talk about friends, how about Tony? You dumped him over that thing, and I’m—”

“Technically he dumped me.” Margrit half regretted the muttered words as soon as they were out, but a spark of vindictiveness was just as glad she’d spoken. It wouldn’t help, but damned if she wouldn’t have the record straight.