C.E. Murphy - Heart of Stone

“What about Tony? I thought you two-”

“Cole!” Margrit let go of her shirt, her hand cramping from tension. “Cole, I don’t have time for recriminations right now. We won’t be here long. We’ve just got to do something-”

“Yeah.” He sneered, shooting a too-obvious look at Margrit’s open blouse. “I bet you do.”

Rage surged through her, so hot she didn’t know she’d moved until her hand cracked across Cole’s face, leaving a palm print that first bleached white, then curdled red. It took a will of iron to not follow with another blow, this time with a closed fist. “How dare you.” Her voice was so low it sounded distorted to her own ears. “How dare you.”

Unable to trust herself, she turned away and opened the door, noting Alban’s distressed expression in one glimpse before carefully, so carefully, closing the door quietly behind her. She was afraid to give in and slam it, afraid the release of fury would shatter the tenuous control she held on herself. She couldn’t remember hitting anyone since she was a child, and had now struck two men inside a week. An accusation hung on her lips: What have you done to me? as she stared up at Alban, hardly able to see him for the white rage still dancing through her vision.

“We’re leaving.” Margrit began walking toward the staircase, a blind, automatic action that had no purpose beyond getting them somewhere else. She went up, not down, an unconscious choice in deference to the gargoyle with her, though as they approached the rooftop door she asked, “Is this what happens? Is this what happens to people-humans-who get involved with the Old Races? Their ordinary lives just fall apart?”

The accusation was unfair and she knew it; she’d chosen to take Alban’s part. Fair, though, didn’t hold weight against her anger.

“Margrit, I’m sorry.” The words seemed to take all of Alban’s strength. “I shouldn’t have involved you. I am sorry. I’ll leave you. Whoever is behind this, it’s not your affair, and I shouldn’t have turned to you for help.”

“Oh, no.” She stopped a few feet from the access door, turning to look down the steps at the gargoyle. It seemed hardly possible that only minutes ago they had been entangled in passion on these same stairs. “I don’t think so, Alban. If my normal life is going to fall apart, I’m goddamned good and sure going to see through to the end what’s sending it to hell. This is not…” She reached for the railing, curling her injured fingers around it for support as she gritted her teeth. “This is not your fault. I’m sorry. I’m completely fucking furious at Cole right now, and you’re here, so I’m taking it out on you.” Her speech was too careful, the vestiges of anger still coloring it, but it was the best she could do. “This is my way of not bursting into tears because I’m so pissed off,” she added with a thin smile. “Sorry. Look.” She tightened her fingers on the railing until the ache in them began to overwhelm the boiling anger that seemed to make up her insides. “Look, I don’t know where else to go for privacy. What about your apartment, the one you took me to when the car hit me?”

“It is my fault,” Alban disagreed quietly, but passed a hand through the air as irritation distorted Margrit’s features again. “I thank you,” he murmured. “For choosing my path despite the cost to yourself. I am sorry for that cost, Margrit. I…didn’t think.” He exhaled then, glancing down the stairwell. “If I’d only thought of that apartment first,” he said a bit dryly.

Unexpected even to herself, Margrit released a short staccato laugh that helped shatter some of the discord within her. “If you had, we’d be having a lot more fun right now. Should we go there?”

Alban’s gaze flickered to hers, wry as he understood too clearly that she was not making a proposition. “If you wish. It’s likely here is as good a place as any, though.” He indicated the stairwell with a graceful sweep of his hand. “Unless many people use the stairs this late at night.”

“Most people use the elevator at any hour. If the stairs are quiet and private enough, why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”

“Margrit.” Alban turned a steady look on her. “When a beautiful woman invites you to her apartment, only a fool says no. I may not be a man, but I’m also not a fool.”

Another laugh broke free, a choked sound of surprise and confused pleasure. Margrit took one step down and Alban slipped his arms around her, sighing against her hair. “I am sorry,” he said once more. “The darkness and quiet of a private room would have been pleasant, but this will do. Better here than outside, where the cold would harm you, or wasting the time to return to my other apartment. Keep watch, Margrit, and I’ll see what memory can tell me.”

IT WAS NOT as he remembered it.

He recalled a peak thrusting toward the stars in a clear, midnight blue sky. Now that peak was hidden by dark clouds that roiled with the movement of his wings. Fog stirred around him, a fine mist against his skin, almost rain. There was no easy passage, no welcoming sense of being a small part of a greater whole. He’d given that up centuries earlier, yet still found the lack unexpected.

No matter. Memory could be clouded, but never forgotten. He knew his own path there, and for over a century, Hajnal’s had run beside it. They were intertwined, and no mere fog could keep him away from her.

He banked and rolled in the air, closing his eyes against wind and spitting water, letting old familiarity guide him where vision could not. Shadows closed around him, mountains of memory belonging to those whom he had grown up among. Those peaks were to be trusted, no more changeable than the sun’s path in the sky.

But there was a bleakness to them that he didn’t remember. A sense, unfamiliar to him, of being worn down by time. Too many of those mountains no longer grew, he realized, their reaching peaks stunted by their creators’ deaths.

How many? The question lanced through him, a pang of regret. Deliberately avoiding his own people for so long had left him less knowledgeable about their numbers. Aside from the recent meeting with Biali, Alban could not clearly remember the last time he’d spoken with one of his own.

Which had been the point of exile. “The Breach,” Grace had said accusingly. Alban drifted in memory, tasting the wound of that word. It, too, was something he couldn’t clearly remember last hearing, though that may have been due more to a deliberate reluctance on his part. Biali was not above throwing cutting words, working to provoke a fight wherever he could.

Blackness boiled up in the clouds, a wall forming out of the fog. Nearby memory-mountains darkened, seeming to move closer, until the space in which he unfurled his wings felt tight and constricting. Alban inhaled, filling his lungs and broadening his chest, an act of defiance against claustrophobia.

“You don’t belong here, Korund.” The voice should not have surprised him, though it did: Biali’s gravely tones. The one gargoyle with whom he’d had contact was now the one to stand in his way. For the first time Alban wondered if the scarred gargoyle had been asked to stay near him, in order to provide just this kind of barrier from the memories. Certainly no one else of their people would be as enthusiastic about the prospect of thwarting him. It was not the nature of gargoyles to hold grudges, but then, neither did stone forget easily.

Clouds whirled in circles, black and gray streaming together with the beat of wings, and Biali’s thick form came out of the mist, his scarred face curled in a sneer. Weight came behind him, the ponderous weight of time and memory; of disapproval, as heavy as mountains. As the closest to him physically, Biali stood guardian against Alban’s intrusion into the memory of their people, but he carried the support of others with him. All around him, mist dripped and formed into solid streaks, building a granite wall between Alban and his destination.