Beauty's Beasts

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Nick relaxed. “He’s already left the corridor. It’s Friday night, and the Knicks are facing Dallas at seven. He’ll be rushing home for the game.” His voice was very soft, almost subliminal.

  “How do you even know he likes basketball?” Riley demanded.

  “I’m guessing. But he’s heavy on his feet, so he’s overweight. Probably from too many sedentary pastimes. And that was a very superficial security check. He’s in a hurry and it’s not hockey season.” He chuckled soundlessly. “It makes it easier for us. Let’s hope he’s taking his workmates home with him for beer and pizza.”

  “How soon until sunset?”

  He breathed in, almost like he was sampling the air. Perhaps he was. “The sun is already touching the horizon. Lirgon will need to guard against too early a rising. Gargoyles rise at full dark, not at sunset. Ten minutes, Riley, and you will get to meet the monster that killed your parents.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The corridor was quiet and dark except for the red glow of emergency lights. The guards had switched off normal illumination already. Ahead, the gallery was lit by small spotlights that shone on the displays, but the main gallery lights that bathed the big room in merciless white glare had all been doused. Nick moved ahead, Riley behind him. He had the vision that could see infrared beams and signals, not her, and had to take point.

  Nevertheless, they moved fast, almost at a run. The timing was hurried by the sunset, which crowded too close on the heels of the closing of the gallery and the departure of the guards after their security shutdown round.

  “Nothing,” Nick said softly as they emerged into the gallery proper. “For a display of rocks that no mortal can lift on their own, perhaps they feel nothing more sophisticated is warranted. He moved over to the flat black square lounge pad, picked it up in one hand and shifted it over to sit underneath the skylight. Then he stood on it and threaded his hands together.

  Riley stepped onto the lounge, then onto his threaded hands, then onto his shoulders as Nicholas boosted her up to that level. He gripped her boots, holding her steady, as she examined the alarm wires the way Nick had taught her.

  “The circuit is broken,” she told him. “Although you really have to look hard to see it.”

  “Hurry,” he warned her.

  She lifted the skylight. It was heavy and she strained to move the large pane, but she managed to hoist it high enough to reach over the lip and grab the duffel bag sitting next to the frame. She and Nicholas had placed it there earlier in the day.

  As soon as she lowered the pane, Nicholas lowered her down to the pad. She dropped the duffel bag next to her and he opened the long zip, shoving the United Airlines tags out of the way with an impatient sound. Riley realized that this was Damian’s bag, the one he had brought with him from Greece. Her heart did a funny misstep, but she hurried. Nicholas had turned into the hard taskmaster. She could almost feel time ticking away in her own head.

  He pulled out her sword first and handed it to her. The message was clear. Lirgon was the priority. He was about to wake.

  She pulled the sword from the scabbard and hurried over to Lirgon. The gargoyle was still just a lump of rock to her eyes, crouched on a flat low stone pedestal, his clawed feet curled over the edges, his wings bent around him protectively while he snarled permanently as some unseen foe. The sculpture looked completely unchanged from the day she and Damian had studied it, and if she had not seen the creatures climbing from the skylight herself that night, she would have said this was just a lump of stone.

  But something was beating in the air around her. Invisible, rushing past her skin like cool water or an electric charge, but neither of those things. It almost prickled.

  Magic.

  She bent into the primary ready posture, bringing her sword over her head, both hands on the hilt. She kept her eyes on Lirgon. There were five other gargoyles, but they were for Nicholas to keep at bay, and the threat to their leader would halt them at first.

  “I’m here,” Nicholas said softly, from behind and just to her left, which was her unprotected side. “Keep watch. It’s about to begin.”

  “I know,” she agreed. “I can feel it.”

  “As soon as his eyes glow, he’s vulnerable,” Nicholas added.

  She didn’t point out that he had told her this many times already. This was Nick’s way of worrying. She brought the sword farther overhead so that the point was in her range of vision, and directly lined up on Lirgon’s muzzle.

  Her heart was hurting. She was shaking, but knew it would pass when she began to move. She was terrified, but knew that the terror would pass, too.

  Then she saw it. Lirgon was changing right in front of her. If she tried to watch it happening she couldn’t see it. If she focused on any one part of him, nothing appeared to be moving, but if she looked over all, then she saw it. It was like watching a really big mound of snow during the spring thaw. You could watch it all day long and it didn’t seem to change at all, but in two days the mound would completely disappear under the heat of the spring sunshine. The stone-like quality of Lirgon’s hide was changing. Becoming more like leather.

  When the creature’s wing moved, Riley snapped her gaze back to the gargoyle’s eyes. They were no longer stone. But they weren’t glowing yet.

  Yet the wings were moving. The toes were stretching. The claws extending.

  She gripped her sword with her sweaty hands as the eyes rolled in their sockets and the creature began to straighten up from his daytime hunch. Not until the eyes glow. It was Nick’s voice, from all the training sessions, calm in her mind. If you bury your sword in his brain before the tissues are converted properly from stone sleep, he won’t be vulnerable, and you won’t kill him. You’ll just piss him off, and you’ll break your blade, both very bad things.

  “Nick!” she breathed softly, trying to contain her panic.

  “Wait.” He was so calm.

  Lirgon at full height had to stand at fifteen feet. How in hell was she even going to reach up to his head? Nick had overlooked that tiny detail. Full panic gripped her chest, locked her breathing. The creature was moving. Slowly, it was true. And so were the other five.

  “You. A bloodsucking abomination and your meat-sack woman. You are not welcome here!” The cry came from her left.

  Do not let anything distract you, Nick had warned her.

  But she knew that voice, and knew who spoke with such venom. It could only be Azazel, come to protect his beasts, and he had a weapon that could kill Nick.

  “Don’t turn around,” Nick told her flatly. Quickly. “Deal with Lirgon. He’s the greater threat.”

  “Azazel will kill you just to get at me,” Riley cried.

  “I will,” Azazel confirmed. “I will kill your other blood-sucking lover, you perverted bitch. He will die in agony at your feet.”

  “Don’t look at him,” Nick said quickly. “He’s trying to provoke you.”

  “No! You must not do this!” The thin voice came from behind them. From the stairs. Fábio Natan. She knew the voice even without turning. The beseeching quality was distinct.

  She caught a glimpse of movement to her left, and turned her head just enough to spot it. Azazel, still looking like her father, was moving slowly into her range of vision. Closer to Lirgon.

  Nick was tracking him. The tip of his broadsword came into her view, as well. Azazel wore a full-length raw brown leather coat that was scuffed and torn in places. Anything could be under it, including the gun that fired the concentrated gargoyle toxin pellets.

  Natan rushed toward Azazel and actually stepped in front of Nick. “You can’t do this,” he told Azazel. “You can’t.”

  Riley switched her attention back to Lirgon. The beast was stretching, the wings lifting out to their full span. Perhaps thirty feet across from tip to tip. Azazel stood inside that radius.

  A sour stable smell washed over Riley as the wings beat back a little, fanning air in her direction. Beast smell. She studied the e
yes. They were not glowing. There was no intelligence there yet. Lirgon was still waking. This was just rolling over and scratching himself as he got out of bed.

  Natan wrung his hands as he stared at Azazel. “For god’s sake,” he said. “Where’s your sense of decency?”

  Azazel threw his head back and laughed. “Little man, you have no idea what you’re dealing with.” He reached into his coat and pulled out the thick, ugly gun, the one that had killed Damian. Gargoyle toxin.

  Only, he didn’t bring the gun to bear on Nicholas. Natan was in the way. Riley realized the barrel was swinging around to point at her, the real target of Azazel’s plans.

  Time jumped out of its rails and slowed down to a crawl.

  There was nowhere she could run that Azazel could not track her with the gun and shoot anyway—and Lirgon was right there and waking. He would kill her if Azazel did not manage to hit her first.

  Lirgon. The gargoyle’s eyes were beginning to gleam as he reared back, stretching his wings, looking down at the dramatic tableau beneath him.

  How much did Azazel want to protect his pets? How instinctive was it?

  Riley recalled from the very first day she had trained with Nick the moment she had caught him off guard by jumping inside his defenses instead of farther away. The unexpected move from the smaller opponent using the stabbing sword.

  She surged hard to her right, toward Lirgon, moving as fast as she could. She slapped her foot onto the creature’s bent thigh, using it as a stepping stone, then pushed herself upward with a hard thrust of her leg. She threw her left arm around Lirgon’s massive neck, hooking herself there.

  Lirgon reared back even harder. His wings flapped forward and around in front of him protectively. It was instinctive, as he tried to grab at the woman clinging to his neck.

  Azazel’s gargoyle toxin pellet struck Lirgon’s leathery wings and whined away harmlessly.

  Riley had the katana in her right hand, down low, in a stabbing grip. She looked into Lirgon’s eye from about six inches away. There was intelligence there. And fear.

  “Remember me?” she asked. She thrust the sword up under the muzzle, and kept pushing deeper, higher, until the hilt rammed home. Then she twisted.

  Lirgon screamed. He staggered backward, flailing at her and the thing in his head, trying to reach her. But she pulled the sword out and dropped to the ground and let herself roll safely out of reach of the staggering monster.

  She looked around for Nick.

  Azazel stood with his gun to Nick’s chest. His face was writhing with fury. “I will have your flesh for my walls for this!” he screamed at her.

  “Kiss my ass,” she told him.

  Nick smiled.

  Natan tugged at her arm. “The others! The others!” he wailed.

  There was a crash and the musical notes of breaking glass as the other skylight was thrown aside. The five leaderless gargoyles were clambering out and taking off into the night air. “I cannot tackle more than one a night, Natan,” she told him. “I was lucky with Lirgon, as it was.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it,” Nick said.

  Lirgon lay still and silent on the gallery floor. Black, oily stuff oozed from his body. Gargoyle blood? Riley presumed so. She stared down at the creature, her heart pounding, listening to the sudden silence.

  Her parents’ killer lay dead at her feet. She had achieved what her mother and father had been unable to do.

  Her body began to shake. Riley looked at Nick. “It shouldn’t have been so easy.” Even her voice wobbled.

  “It wasn’t,” he said flatly. “You don’t see it, do you?”

  “See what?” She hugged herself, as cold seemed to seep into her bones. Ice shards were pricking her skin.

  Nick’s eyes were that of the master swordsman. The hunter who had seen it all. “Your speed. Your agility.” He spoke with the flat tone of sincerity she had come to rely upon as the rock bottom truth. “You have inherited the greatest talents your parents could have given you, and tonight you used them all. I gave you the one advantage I could never give your mother, Riley. For the first time in the history of their species, I was able to give you the gargoyles’ nesting location. But you used it in a way she could never have.” He waved towards Lirgon. “Natalia would not have thought to move closer to her enemy. If she had, fear would have stopped her from executing the move.”

  He dropped his hand and the corner of his mouth lifted. “Your courage is probably your greatest asset and I had nothing to do with that at all.”

  Azazel made a noise in the back of his throat, a disgusted sound. “If you’re done with the hearts and flowers?”

  Natan moved to Azazel. “Let them go. You have nothing left to punish them for.”

  “Natan, shut up,” Riley said sharply.

  “Yes, and exactly who helped them bypass security so this disaster happened, I wonder?” Azazel asked, studying Natan.

  Natan swallowed and took a step back.

  “I see you’ve had a change of heart, Natan,” Azazel said. “Fame and fortune no longer your cup of tea?”

  “Not at the price you ask for it,” Natan told him, lifting his chin.

  “Okay.” Azazel turned the gun on Natan and fired, and the little man went down clutching his gut.

  At the same time, a dark shape dropped through the skylight above them, landing right behind Azazel. Azazel’s arm, the one holding the gun, was wrenched back. Azazel cried out, his whole body arching as the black tip of an oddly-shaped sword punched out through his chest from behind. The sword ripped upward in a series of jerks that tore the chest apart and lifted him completely off his feet.

  Azazel didn’t burst apart in blood and guts as Riley thought he would. He began to scream like a man on fire, clutching at the sword point.

  “Iron through the heart,” Nicholas said softly.

  Then the demon disintegrated like a paper-stuffed effigy on a bonfire, soaked in gas. He went up in silent flames that burnt blue and green, until there was nothing left but bright images dancing on Riley’s retina, blurring her vision. She blinked, trying to clear her eyes.

  Damian stood holding the ancient-looking sword, watching them both warily. He was in black. Black jeans, black sweater, black sneakers. He was very alive. “Yes, it’s me. I know it’s a shock. I can explain.”

  Nicholas dropped his broadsword, took three steps forward and drove his hand in a short, sharp upper cut to Damian’s chin. It was a sucker-punch. The exact same one Riley had given Nick not so very long ago. It rocked Damian back on his feet and made him stagger.

  Nick rubbed his knuckles and looked at Riley. “You’ve got something there. It does help,” he told her.

  Damian was flexing his jaw with his free hand. “I suppose I deserve that.”

  Nicholas rounded on him. “You can explain?” Fury was etching lines beside his mouth.

  Riley wanted to keep listening, but couldn’t. She sank onto the lounge pad as her knees seemed to suddenly give out. Noise was beating at her. The world seemed to be rushing around her with too much noise and speed. She held up her hand to try to make it stop.

  “You need food, and quickly. Why didn’t you say something? Damn it, Riley, you have to give me a chance to get used to these things again.” It was Nick. His arm around her. Trying to lift her to her feet. Trying to cope. Sounding worried.

  But Damian was there, too. She could feel him. His hand on the back of her neck. She nearly wept at the touch. “I did this,” he said softly. “Let’s get her home.”

  “Someone take care of Natan,” she whispered.

  * * * * *

  In the end they all took care of Natan’s body. Riley’s momentary shock passed. So did Nick’s fury, when he saw her back on her feet. Damian stowed his new iron sword in the duffel with Nick’s and Riley’s and they put the gallery back the way it was supposed to be. There was nothing they could do about the broken glass in the second skylight, so they left it as it had fallen, to make it look
as much like an accident as possible. They worked in almost wordless concert, holding off any discussion of Damian’s reappearance until they were back at the apartment and safe once more.

  They weighted Natan’s body and lowered it into the East River. With the gargoyle toxin spread throughout his system, his remains could not be left for human authorities to autopsy.

  On the taxi ride home, Nick drew Riley into his arms. She went willingly and resting her head against his shoulder. He kissed her. “You did it,” he said. “Do you know how proud I am of you?”

  “Are you playing games, Nick?” she asked softly. “Because Damian is here?”

  He smiled. “I don’t have to, do I?”

  She threw her arm around his neck. “No.”

  But she caught him glancing at Damian.

  Troubled, she found she couldn’t look at Damian directly herself.

  It was a long, silent trip home after that.

  * * * * *

  Nicholas barely waited for the door to shut before rounding on Damian a second time. He grabbed two handfuls of Damian’s sweater and pulled him closer. “How dare you let us think you were dead? For five fucking days!”

  Damian didn’t resist the manhandling. “For two of them, I pretty much was. When Azazel shot me, I thought it was the end, too.”

  Nick stared at him, clearly trying to make sense of it. “Fuck!” he said finally, disgusted. He let Damian go and walked away, frustration pouring off him in waves.

  Riley curled up on the couch, hugging her knees. Abruptly, with both of them in the room once more, she felt like the mortal in the middle again. The only one without an agenda. The Nick she had fallen in love with had gone. There was just the old Nick, squaring off with Damian.

  Damian was the key. She looked up at him. He was watching her. “I told you to trust me, remember?”

  “You planned this?” She sat up.

  “Not this exactly, no. But it helped.” He came and sat on the sofa next to her. Not close enough to touch. But close enough that she felt small. She could remember being in his arms. Remember his cock sliding into her. His kisses.