Falling Dark

by Christine Pope

  I might as well have been attacking a bag filled with sawdust for all the effect my assaults had on the semivive. He began to drag me away from Silas, back toward the bar, where no doubt Michael. St. John and his vampire friends waited. I knew they would take me to Lucius, and what would happen after that, I really didn’t want to find out.

  But then I heard Silas say, “I’m sorry, Serena.”

  Protests bubbled to my lips — I wanted to tell him I knew this wasn’t his fault, that he was completely outnumbered. This wasn’t the movies, after all; I couldn’t really expect him to fight off eight or more assailants at once, especially when they seemed to feel no pain whatsoever, would only keep coming unless their heads or limbs were lopped off.

  But the words I’d been about to say died before I could speak, because in the next moment, I saw why he had said he was sorry.

  A shredding sound, followed by — no, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but I knew it had to be real, just as vampires were real, just as my crazy visions were apparently real as well. From the back of Silas’ jacket emerged a huge pair of black, leathery wings, even as his jacket and T-shirt fell to the sidewalk, looking as if they’d been torn to pieces by a pack of wild dogs. His skin turned dark and leathery as well, features transforming into a nightmarish visage that wasn’t quite human or canine, but somewhere in between. Amber eyes glowed from that nightmare of a face.

  A scream rose to my lips but got caught somewhere in my throat. Even the semivive holding me seemed taken aback, because he hesitated for a moment, staring at this frighteningly transformed Silas as if he didn’t quite know what to do.

  That hesitation proved his downfall, because in the next second, my protector had taken to the air, those heavy bat-like wings propelling him upward while at the same time scattering any of the semivives near him like they were ninepins. Then he launched himself toward me and my attacker. One enormous clawed hand came out, talons gleaming like burnished silver. They caught the semivive across the throat, and it fell to the ground, writhing as it melted away into nothingness.

  And then Silas — or whatever he was — caught hold of me and bore me away, rising higher and higher until the rooftops of 4th Place were at least a hundred feet below. The needle-like rain drove against my face, and I winced. At the same time, though, I realized I wasn’t cold, even though I should have been. His flesh was very warm, so warm that I thought I saw steam from it rise as the raindrops hit his body.

  Los Angeles passed below us, and all around us, glittering and surreal in the rain, like something out of a dream. This definitely felt like a dream, or a nightmare. I couldn’t decide which, and didn’t know if I even wanted to decide. Silas had saved me…but for what? I trembled in his inhuman arms, and wondered what in the world would come next.

  We flew among the skyscrapers, his wings propelling us forward, taking us back toward the outskirts of Little Tokyo. I realized then that he must be headed for his loft, to a place I hoped must be a sanctuary from the vampires and their servants.

  His building approached, grew larger. Then he touched down, landing on the roof with hardly even a bump. Before I could even begin to struggle to get away from him, his arms opened, releasing me. I staggered a few paces away, then stopped, my breaths coming in huge, panting gasps. Where was I going? There had to be a way down somehow, but….

  “Serena.”

  Reluctantly, I turned toward him. I didn’t want to see that — that thing again. Not until I could gather my thoughts, try to figure out just what the hell was going on.

  To my surprise, the Silas I knew stood there, not that enormous winged creature. His shirt and jacket were gone, and rain slicked the impressive muscles of his arms and chest. Otherwise, though, he looked entirely the same, like the man I thought he was.

  I knew better, though. I’d seen the creature he’d become. He wasn’t a man at all.

  “I can explain,” he said.

  “That’s going to be one hell of an explanation,” I returned, my voice shaking.

  “I know that. But please, Serena — come inside so you can get dried off and warm.” He extended a hand, but remained where he was, as if he knew that to approach me would only make me retreat.

  Did I dare reach out to him, take that proffered hand? The sensible side of my mind was telling me to turn and run, to find the stairs or fire escape or whatever I could to get off that roof, and down to the street so I could call an Uber. Throughout the whole ordeal, my purse had remained looped over one arm. I had my phone, my I.D. I could get away if I wanted to.

  But….

  There was the not-so-sensible part of me, the part that had visions and believed in vampires. It was telling me I needed to know the truth, whatever that truth might turn out to be.

  Time seemed to stand still as I remained where I was, staring at Silas Drake. His eyes pleaded with me, but he remained silent. He knew I had to make this decision on my own.

  “All right,” I said at last. “I’ll come inside. And then you’d better start talking.”

  * * *

  Underneath my jacket, my sweater was more or less dry. After blotting my hair with a towel, and doing the same with my damp jeans, I decided I could air-dry the rest of the way, especially since Silas had turned on the gas in the freestanding fireplace in one corner of the living room. Instead of fake logs, it had a flat floor covered with chips of heat-resistant glass. They glowed blue in the dim light of the loft, almost as blue as the gas flames themselves.

  Silas had covered himself with a fresh T-shirt but didn’t seem too worried about drying his own hair. As I sat at the far end of the sectional, the one nearest the fireplace, he came toward me, a glass of red wine in either hand.

  “I thought you could use this.”

  I took it from him, although I was careful not to touch his fingers. They looked human enough now, the same fingers that had stroked my hair, cupped my face.

  Oh, God. I’d kissed him. Multiple times.

  Maybe I made some sort of despairing sound. I didn’t know. But Silas’ mouth tightened, right before he moved past me and settled himself on the sectional as well, although several feet away from where I sat.

  “We call ourselves the gula,” he said, after a long pause.

  “Demons?” I asked. I couldn’t think of another explanation for the monstrous creature he’d turned into.

  “No,” he replied immediately, sounding almost offended. “What I suppose you would refer to as gargoyles.”

  My brain still wasn’t working very well. I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Those funny-looking creatures that sit on the roofs of buildings?”

  “Not exactly. Those representations aren’t very accurate. We are….” He stopped there and swirled the wine in his glass for a moment, all the while staring down into it as if he could divine the future in the deep, garnet-colored liquid. “We’re a breed of shape-shifters.”

  “Like werewolves?” After all, if vampires existed, why not werewolves? And while we were at it, we could throw in a couple of reanimated mummies and some swamp creatures, too. Then again, swamps were in fairly short supply in Southern California. But mummies would definitely fit in our dry climate, the current rain notwithstanding. My brain was running away with itself, trying to focus on anything except the impossible transformation I’d just witnessed.

  “No. Werewolves are a legend, nothing more. And in that legend, one isn’t born a werewolf, but has to be bitten by one in order to turn. We gula are born this way.”

  For the first time, I lifted my wine glass to my lips and took a large swallow. I needed the alcohol if I was going to sit there and continue to listen to this. “So the world is full of people who look like people but aren’t? They’re gargoyles?”

  “Unfortunately, no. There are very few of us.” His gaze slipped past me, to the blue-hued dancing flames in the fireplace. Even in the dim lighting, I could see the sadness in his dark eyes.

  As shocked and scared and
worried as I was by the events of the past hour, I couldn’t help but experience a twinge of compassion at the sorrow in his expression. In fact, I had to fight back the urge to put down my wine glass and go to Silas, slip a comforting arm around him.

  Which was patently crazy.

  “Why so few of you?”

  Another swirl of the wine within his glass. This time he did take a drink, although a much smaller one than what I’d just swallowed. “We don’t reproduce easily.” He met my gaze and paused, as if steeling himself to make the necessary revelations. “The gula are only male. Our mothers are all human. Even when conception occurs, and the child is male, there is only a ten-percent chance — give or take — that the child will be gula. So you see, we don’t have much chance of filling the world with more of our kind.”

  I had to sit there and absorb those words for a moment. It did make sense why there weren’t more of these gargoyles. Gula, I reminded myself. Then something Silas had said finally sank in. Voice tight, I asked, “So you always have to be with human women? Is that why you were cozying up to me?”

  “No.” He set down his wine glass and moved closer, while I did my best to stay where I was and not shrink away from him, even though my first instinct was to get up from that couch and run like hell. “In fact, I knew I shouldn’t get involved with you. You are my charge, the one person in the world I must protect above all others. By allowing my emotions to complicate things, I could very well have compromised your safety.”

  “So that’s why you were trying so hard to stay away from me.” His words helped me to relax, but only a little. Because he hadn’t stayed away, had he? In fact, tonight’s mishaps only proved that my safety had been put in jeopardy. Silas-the-bodyguard probably would have made sure I stayed far away from downtown. But Silas-the-sort-of-boyfriend had caved to my request.

  “Yes. I had to confess to the Conclave — those who assigned me to you in the first place — that I had not been able to keep my feelings separate from the matter at hand. Now they are trying to decide whether to remove me from this duty and assign someone else to watch over you.”

  He related this information with a face that was nearly expressionless, but I saw the way he pulled in a breath and wouldn’t quite look at me. Clearly, I was more than a little conflicted on the matter, because the mere thought of having someone else as my bodyguard made my body clench slightly. I didn’t want someone else. I wanted Silas, hard as it was to admit such a thing to myself.

  “Can they do that?”

  “Of course. They’re the Conclave. They were the ones who gave me this assignment in the first place, and so they have the ultimate authority in deciding what will happen next.”

  “Well, they can’t do that!” I protested. “Where are they? I can go to them, tell them that you have to stay with me — ”

  “Serena.” His voice was calm, but now it also sounded strangely gentle, as if he’d recognized from my heated words that I wasn’t quite as frightened by him as I had been not even a half hour earlier. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. For one thing, the Conclave is located in Paris.”

  “Paris?” I replied, the word coming out as not much more than an indignant squeak. “Why Paris?”

  “All those gargoyles on Notre Dame,” he said, a hint of a smile playing around his mouth.

  I refused to be taken in by that smile. If I looked at his lips for too long, I knew I’d be in a lot of trouble. “I thought you said you weren’t that kind of gargoyle.”

  “No, we’re not, but we do enjoy our little jokes.”

  “So when will you know what they’ve decided?”

  “Soon.” That bit of a smile was gone now, his expression brooding. “They will not be pleased when I make my report as to what happened tonight.”

  No, I supposed they wouldn’t. The whole thing had been pretty much a shitshow from the time Silas and I left the sushi restaurant. The only bright point was that the street had been deserted when the semivives attacked. Angelenos hated rain, and everyone had taken refuge inside. There hadn’t been any spectators to see the melee on 4th Place, or witnesses to Silas’ transformation. Maybe some of the stores had security cameras, but those would have been focused on shop windows and doors, not the middle of the sidewalk. And even if those cameras had been aimed toward the sidewalks or the street, with the dark and the rain, how much could they have really caught on tape?

  “Still,” I told him, “no harm, no foul. I’m fine, and I doubt your Conclave will care too much whether or not you forcibly retired a few of Lucius Montfort’s semivives. No one saw anything.”

  “That we know of,” Silas said darkly. “Just because that one street was empty doesn’t mean there might not have been witnesses the next street over. A winged monster taking to the sky isn’t the sort of thing that happens every day, even in Los Angeles.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. Then again, I knew if I’d seen such a thing, I would have thought someone was filming a movie or TV show. Location shoots happened on a daily basis in various places around the Southland. Most people probably would have guessed the same thing. It was a lot easier to believe you were getting a glimpse at some practical special effects rather than actually witnessing a legendary creature flying overhead.

  But I wasn’t sure if I could convince Silas of that argument, so I lifted my wine, took a sip, then said, “True, but with that rain coming down, it would have been hard to see anything all that clearly. Especially once we were up above the buildings. In my experience, most people don’t spend a lot of time looking up. They’re focused on what’s ahead of them.”

  “I hope you’re right. We do our best not to transform in populated areas. It’s far too great a risk. But I didn’t have much of a choice.”

  “No, you didn’t. And you need to tell your Conclave that.” I set down my wine glass, then slanted a look up at him through my lashes. “So, your…transformations…are completely voluntary?”

  “Not completely. We have to train to be able to control them. But we’re not allowed to live and move amongst you until we’re absolutely certain there won’t be any mishaps. Even then, there have been a few incidents when one of us is under duress and loses control. That’s very rare, though.”

  “So where do you live? That is, those of you who aren’t out living amongst us mere mortals.”

  Silas didn’t exactly sigh, but he did release a breath, as if slightly annoyed by my remark. “The gula are as mortal as you, Serena. Different, but mortal. We’re born and live and die, just like anyone else. We’re not vampires. Our lifespans are much the same as yours. As for your other question, we have several compounds where we grow up and train to use our abilities. The largest, and oldest, is in the countryside outside Paris. One is on the East Coast, in Virginia. And there is another here in California, but in the northern part of the state, outside Humboldt.”

  Humboldt sounded like a good place to put it. That part of northern California wasn’t nearly as populated as it was down here in SoCal, and besides, from what I’d heard, the residents of Humboldt and its environs spent so much time cultivating and smoking weed that if they did see any gargoyles flying around the countryside, they’d probably just chalk up the vision to getting some bad bud that week.

  “Where are you from?” I asked.

  “Here in California, just like you.” His dark eyes glinted in the odd bluish reflection from the fireplace. Or at least, I hoped it was only a reflection. But it had to be. When he transformed, his eyes were a dark, baleful amber. “In general, we’re given assignments near our home regions. If you had been from New York, for example, then you would have been assigned someone from the Virginia compound.”

  “But you have this loft,” I said. “And you said you’d lived here for several years. So how could you have come from the Humboldt compound?”

  “I was assigned to you three years ago, as soon as we learned of your visions. You only met me recently, because it wasn’t until then that it was requir
ed for me to do anything but watch over you.”

  I had to let that remark sink in for a moment. So, ever since my accident and the visions that had haunted me after I came out of my coma, Silas had been there, watching, waiting. It was a distinctly strange feeling, realizing that all the time I’d felt so desperately alone, I really hadn’t been. He had always been looking out for me, even if I hadn’t known about his presence in my life.

  An uncomfortable silence filled the room. I reached for my glass of wine and drank again, noting that it was already more than half gone. Would Silas refill it? I wasn’t sure whether a single glass of wine was enough to help me cope with everything I’d just heard.

  What I’d just seen.

  “This troubles you.”

  “Of course it troubles me,” I retorted. “It’s just a little disturbing to realize you’ve been stalking me for the last three years, and I knew nothing about it! I never saw you, never got a single clue that this was going on.”

  “It was not stalking,” he said, still in that too-calm tone of voice. But I saw how the fingers of his left hand clenched on his knee, as if he did so to keep himself from responding in anger. “I was assigned to you to protect you. Only when you went out into the world, understand. You were safe when you were home, as I’ve told you. I never looked inside your condo, never pried into your emails or phone calls.”

  “Could you have?” Somehow that notion annoyed me more than anything else he’d revealed so far.

  “I myself couldn’t, because technology isn’t my strong suit. But yes, someone in our group could have, if they thought it was necessary to preserve your safety.”

  Wonderful. Was I supposed to feel honored that he and his masters had shown such forbearance?

  “Look, Serena,” he said, “I understand that this is a lot to take in, especially coming after everything you’ve experienced tonight. Maybe it’s better if I take you home.”

  “No,” I said immediately, then stopped. Where the hell had that come from?