C.E. Murphy - Heart of Stone

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!”