Heart of Stone

by C. E. Murphy

  “Grit.” Alban paused. “Isn’t that a food?” he asked eventually, then repeated, “Grit,” and seemed to be shaking his head. “No,” he said with a note of finality. “I don’t think I can.”

  Despite herself, Margrit giggled, a painful little burst of sound that came out through her nose. “Yeah, Grit, like the food, but singular. Why can’t you?” She shuffled through the cold water toward his voice.

  “It’s painfully lacking in formality. Could you call me Al?”

  She giggled again, then sneezed and coughed, bending over to hack water from her lungs. “You’re not an Al.”

  Alban’s fingers found her spine, a light comforting touch. “You see?” he asked. “Grit and Al are a different pair entirely. You and I are Margrit and Alban.”

  “Margrit and Alban sounds nicer, doesn’t it?” She straightened, coughing once more. Alban’s hand remained at the small of her back a moment longer, warm and gentle enough to drive away her cold misery. The shiver that ran over her had nothing to do with the chilly glop sliding down her skin, but instead brought heightened awareness of the closeness of bodies and the possibilities illuminated by shadow. There was nothing inhuman about his touch when darkness cloaked the hand on her spine, nothing alarming or strange that should be backed away from.

  The line he traced up her body lit trembling sparks inside her, until he found her shoulder and followed her arm back down, to wrap his fingers around hers. His hand, stony and solid, dwarfed her own. The sparks were quenched as Alban’s alien form came to the forefront of Margrit’s thoughts once more. Confusion rushed in to replace the heat she’d felt, leaving her frighteningly alone in the dark tunnel.

  “Yes,” he murmured. “It does. Are you all right?” he asked again.

  Margrit nodded in the darkness. “I’m okay now. Thanks.”

  “You’re sure you don’t want a light?”

  She ran her free hand over her sodden shirt and filthy jeans. “It’d probably be easier to walk,” she said reluctantly. “Just don’t look at me, okay?”

  “I’ll try not to,” Alban said, amused.

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “Yes.” He let her hand go and rummaged through something, then said, “Put your hands out,” and deposited a leather bag in them when she did.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “Things I might want in the event of a quick escape. I keep it under the bed.”

  “Oh! I saw it, yeah. I didn’t know you’d grabbed it.”

  A match flared and Alban’s smile came out of the darkness. “I did. There, this will help.” The flame grew brighter as he put it to a torch, waiting for the wood to catch.

  “Have you ever heard of flashlights, Alban?” Margrit looked down at herself as the light increased. Her clothes and hair were wet and dirty, but not as appalling as she’d imagined. The cold water around her ankles was littered with floating debris and yellow scum. Margrit shuddered and lifted her eyes.

  “It could be worse,” Alban offered, looking her over.

  Margrit smiled briefly. “You said you weren’t going to look.”

  “I forgot,” he said easily. “I’ve heard of flashlights. I’ve just never managed to buy one, for some reason.”

  “Probably because torches are a lot more dramatic and well suited to the whole creature-of-the-night thing.”

  Alban’s jaw worked, as if he was trying to come up with a protest. “I very much would like to say that I’m not a creature of the night,” he finally grumbled.

  Margrit felt a smile slide into place and grow. “Yeah, and I’d like to say I’m not covered in slime, but neither of us is going to get what we’d like. How do we get out of here? I want a shower.” Her voice rose in a whine and she scowled.

  “This way.” Alban gestured with the torch. Margrit shouldered the leather bag and slogged after him, staring fixedly at his back instead of at the murky water. His wings fell like a cloak, easier to see from behind than in front. The membrane was so thin that torchlight glowed through it, warming the ivory skin to a more human color. It looked soft and delicate, though it was capable of offering Alban the capability of flight, so had to be less fragile than it appeared. The impulse to touch the cascade of pale skin gripped her, and Margrit moved closer, reaching out without thinking how intrusive the action would be.

  At the first touch of her fingertips she could feel both extraordinary strength and impossible softness. The sensation wasn’t an unfamiliar one, though Margrit associated it with far more intimate parts of a man’s anatomy. Heat flushed her cheeks as Alban’s breath caught, wings fluttering at her touch, and she realized the comparison might be closer than she’d known. He turned toward her, his tight features highlighted by the torch’s flame. Margrit dropped her hand, fighting not to twist it behind her back guiltily, and found herself without words as she stared up at his angular, alien face.

  He was so vividly male, and so completely not human. It created a divide that Margrit could almost see a bridge over, but didn’t know how to cross. Didn’t know if she could. Didn’t know if she wanted to. Male, but not a man…His eyes were wide and watchful in the torchlight, dark pupils eating the colorless irises, as he waited for her to choose.

  “You’re beautiful,” Margrit said awkwardly. Alban’s eyelashes fluttered, so subtle a motion that it might have meant nothing, but inside that instant possibilities shattered once more, leaving him with a brief smile and shuttered gaze.

  “Thank you.” He glanced down the tunnel, breaking the moment for good. “Not much farther. You’re doing all right?”

  Margrit bobbed her head, managing a faint smile of her own, painfully aware of how meaningless it felt. Alban offered her his hand again, and she took it, walking beside him. “So can you magically find the tunnel that comes out beneath my apartment building? Isn’t that how it works in the stories?”

  Alban’s quiet laughter echoed off the walls. “Maybe if I lived beneath the streets, but my preferred paths are over the rooftops. The best I can do is get us to street level. Which should be…” He slowed, then stopped, lifting the torch. Several yards away, the tunnel dead-ended. Frowning, Alban looked at the ceiling, then walked back a few feet, studying the top of the tunnel rather than the path they’d taken.

  “There aren’t any wrong turns,” he said under his breath.

  “Don’t tell me the end of your tunnel comes out on the other side of that wall.”

  Alban’s mouth twisted. “What would you like me to tell you?”

  “That you know a way out of here and we’re not going to freeze to death in a sewer? No, wait.” Margrit’s voice rose. “That I’m not going to freeze to death in a sewer, because you can just turn to stone and sit it out. That’s what I’d like you to tell me!”

  “We’re not going to freeze to death in a sewer,” Alban said, so calmly that it made Margrit hear the edge of hysteria in her own voice. She let out a breath of relief. “It’s a storm drain,” he added.

  She closed her eyes, setting her teeth as she counted to ten. When she trusted her voice, she lifted her chin. “All right. I’m better now. I’m not usually like this, you know.”

  “Not usually cold, wet, hungry and stomping around in sewers with a gargoyle? I’m surprised.” Humor glinted in Alban’s colorless eyes. “You’re handling it very well for an amateur.”

  “You’re making fun of me,” Margrit accused again.

  He shook his head. “Not this time. You show amazing fortitude.” Margrit ducked her head, absurdly pleased, and Alban smiled enough for her to hear it in his voice. “I can think of two options—go back the other way and see where the far end of this drain leads, or take the tunnel back up to my room.”

  “Where Tony and half the NYPD are probably pulling your books apart.”

  Alban growled, deep and low enough to lift hairs on Margrit’s arms. She raised a hand in apology. “Hey. Hey, sorry. I hope they’re not.” He growled again, and Margrit dropped her hand, sighing. �
�Going back doesn’t seem like a great idea, is my point.”

  Stone scraped against stone, sending reverberations bouncing through the tunnel, the sounds so deep Margrit’s ears itched. Alban lifted the torch again, his expression becoming wary as he looked beyond Margrit toward the dead end. He flashed into human form as she spun to face the wall, which shifted with slow deliberation. Brick dust shivered into the air, hanging there before drifting down to the dank water. Alban’s torch threw soft shadows into the darkness beyond the opening, then caught reflections from eyes and teeth as figures began to creep forward into the light.

  Margrit backed up until she stood beside Alban, gripping the leather bag with both hands as if it was a weapon. He rolled his shoulders, dropping into a slight crouch, and growled through bared teeth, as though he forgot which form he wore.

  A blond woman with short-cropped hair came out of the darkness, splashing without concern through stagnant water, firelit drops rolling down her leather boots. “Got the coppers after you, do you,” she said, then let go a sarcastic snort when Alban and Margrit’s stiffening shoulders answered the question against their wills. “This tunnel dead-ends on this side, too, so it looks like you’ve got two choices, loves. You can come with the lady, or you can go back and face the tiger.”

  “Alban,” Margrit said through her teeth, “what is she?”

  The blonde stepped forward with the confidence of a cat and took Margrit’s jaw in her hand. Margrit jerked away, wondering if the woman ever slipped, and if she did, if she washed herself as if to say, I meant to do that.

  “What am I? Is it blind you are, girl? I’m the lady. The coppers back there, they’re the tiger. Get it?”

  “I get it. Alban?”

  “Just a woman,” Alban said cautiously. “Just the lady.”

  “Just!” Mock offense filled the woman’s voice. “I’m a hell of a lot more than just, love.”

  “What are you doing down here?” Margrit asked. She didn’t look as if she belonged in a sewer, not that Margrit knew what someone who did belong in a sewer looked like. The woman’s pants and coat were leather, too, as water-treated as the boots, and the collar of the coat came up to her chin, fitting snugly. She looked like she barely needed an excuse to shoot someone.

  “Oh no,” she said. “I get to ask the questions—these are my tunnels, see. But I already know what you’re doing. So. Make your choice. We can close the door back up and you can rot, or you can come with us.”

  “We’ll come with you.”

  The woman smiled. “Smart girl. C’mon, kids.” She turned on a heel and strode back toward the opening.

  “Did she mean us?” Margrit asked quietly. Alban spread his hands without answering, and followed the blonde.

  A dozen teenagers closed in around them as they stepped through the opening. One pushed a switch on the wall and the door swung closed, subsonic rumblings making Margrit’s ears itch again. “I think she meant them,” Margrit muttered.

  Alban murmured an unintelligible curse to the ceiling. Margrit looked up to see a boarded-over square in the concrete.

  “Your exit?” she asked. He nodded.

  “Been wondering,” Grace said. “Found that a good six or seven years ago. Closed it right up and dug the other hole. Took weeks to build this door.” She thumped the tunnel end with a fist. “Nice to know that years of paranoia pay off. Come on, now. Keep an eye on them, kids.” She strode off again, the teens gathering around Alban and Margrit and, by force of numbers, ushering them forward.

  They walked through concrete tunnels and slushy, thick water until Margrit’s feet were numb and Alban’s torch burned low. Occasionally they dropped down a level, or came up one, but Margrit had the sense they stayed largely on a single plane. Other than that, she had no feeling at all of where they were or where they were going. Questions to the teens—all of them dressed similarly to the blonde, in waterproofed, warm leather or denim—earned her skeptical looks and no responses. After a while she stopped trying.

  Eventually the air cleared, and one of the teens yanked a heavy steel door open, gesturing them all up a rickety wooden staircase into the basement of a building. Another dozen young people, all of them clean and wary, climbed to their feet, watching the newcomers arrive. The blonde barked an order and the teens scattered, two returning minutes later with tea and towels. Margrit took a towel gratefully and sat on the floor, pulling her shoes off to rub life back into her feet.

  “Thank you,” she said, when blood began to tingle painfully in her toes.

  “You’re welcome,” the blond woman said. “There’ll be food soon. While we’re waiting, why not explain to me why I shouldn’t kill you?”

  “Why would you have waited this long if you were going to kill us?” Alban asked.

  The woman’s smile went bright and sharp. “There’s a bigger audience here.”

  “That gun you mentioned the first time I met you,” Alban said to Margrit.

  “Yeah?”

  “You don’t really have one, do you?”

  She let out a humorless laugh. “No.”

  “It wouldn’t matter if you did.” The woman lifted two fingers, dollars held between them. “I’d have taken it from you. Your pockets,” she said to Margrit, who stuffed a hand into her jeans, coming up empty.

  “That’s my money!” She looked around at the silent teens, then back at their ringleader. “Jesus, what are you, some kind of Fagin’s Morlocks?”

  “You don’t seem like the literary type, love. I’m in awe.” The woman crouched in front of Margrit, still holding her money aloft. “It’s not even a bad description.”

  Margrit stared at her, then tossed her head in a gesture of futility and frustration. “You’re Grace O’Malley. The vigilante. I should have recognized you.”

  “Why?” she said easily. “Ever seen a picture, love?”

  Margrit caught her breath, startled. “No. Nobody ever posts a picture of you. Why not?”

  “Grace doesn’t like having her picture taken.” The woman curled her fingers around Margrit’s cash, then slowly lowered her hand. “Compromises safety, it does. And so do you, love. You want to live, I need a guarantee that our little secret down here isn’t going to be spilled.”

  “Why’d you rescue us? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just let us rot?”

  Grace’s eyes deepened with a sad smile. “Because it’s what I do, love. I take a risk on the ones who got left behind. But you think I’m one of the bad guys, don’t you?”

  “She ain’t,” a boy mumbled into his knees. “All of us, we’re off the street ’cause of her. We’d die for her.”

  “An army of children?” Margrit asked, disapproval coloring her voice.

  Grace curled her lip. “Not for me. For each other. It doesn’t always work.” Her eyes grew dark and sad again. “Kids die out here. Stray bullets destroy dreams. Drugs do it slower, but just as certain. The ones who stay with me usually get out, and that’s about all anybody can do. But the thing about me is people don’t know how I get around.”

  “Rooftops,” Margrit guessed.

  Grace snorted, unladylike. “I prefer belowground. It’s hard to fall off a tunnel.” She studied Grace, then Alban. “I can’t afford to let people who can’t keep a secret go.”

  Margrit glanced at Alban. “We can keep a secret.”

  “Talk is cheap, love. Try again.” Grace stood up and pulled a gun from the small of her back, cocking it so casually that Margrit felt no sense of danger until the warm metal pressed against her forehead.

  “Wait,” Alban said.

  “Alban, no.” The words were out before Margrit considered how foolish it was to protest an action that might save her life. Ignoring her, Alban slowly came to his feet.

  “Send the children out,” he said. Grace’s eyebrows arched. “Send them out,” he repeated. “You’ve got the gun. I offer an exchange of secrets, but not in front of the children.”

  Grace studied him a fraction of a se
cond longer, then jerked her chin. The teens filed from the room, a few looking back over their shoulders. Margrit, shivering from trying to hold still, whispered, “Don’t they have any curiosity?”

  “They trust me,” Grace said. “I trust them. It’s all we’ve got down here. I’ll shoot your pretty girlfriend, love, if you make one move toward me.”

  “I believe you,” Alban said. “I would like to ask that you not shoot me when the secret has been exchanged.”

  Grace laughed, a sharp clap of sound like a gunshot. “That’s not a promise I’m willing to make, love.”

  “Alban, don’t,” Margrit whispered.

  “I have to.” With the words, he shifted, the ripple in space tearing at the corner of Margrit’s eye. Inches from her face, Margrit saw Grace’s finger tighten against the trigger as she took in the gargoyle’s height and breadth, the wings that half opened, then closed again to make him smaller.

  Very slowly, Grace lifted the gun away from Margrit’s forehead, cupping the butt in both hands, muzzle pointed at the ceiling. Alban stood motionless, Margrit on the floor beside them, heart hammering in her throat.

  “All right,” Grace said, after seconds stretched until they felt like minutes. “All right, then, love.” She nodded once and uncocked the gun, sliding it back into her pants beneath the hem of her coat. “There’s dinner in the making. Are you hungry?”

  TWENTY

  “THAT’S IT?” MARGRIT asked with a dry throat as Alban shimmered back into his human form. Grace whistled sharply and the doors opened again, children filing back in and settling into their places.

  “That’s it, love,” she replied. “Miriah cooks up a good pot of chili. You’re welcome to eat with us, and you can tell me why you’re running from the coppers. Here.” She fanned out the money she’d taken from Margrit’s pocket. “Suppose you’ll be needing this, if you’re not going to be dead.”

  Margrit exhaled a shaky laugh and took the cash. “Thanks. I’ll tell you about the cops if you tell us why Janx put you on Alban’s list of enemies.”