He thought it was pain that sent Margrit running in these small hours. She’d asked him to stay away while she came to grips with it, but she hadn’t said how far away, and he was, after all, a gargoyle. He watched over her every night from dusk until dawn, even when that meant sitting across the street on an apartment-building roof, patiently watching lights turn off in her home as she and her housemates retired to bed. He ignored the others who had demands on his time: Janx, the charming dragonlord who’d lost his territory in the fight that had ended Malik al-Massrī’s life; who had, in fact, nearly lost his own life and who was still healing from the wounds Malik had dealt him. Alban had helped him escape, had brought him below the streets, into the vigilante Grace O’Malley’s world. Janx was safe there, but Grace and the children she helped were not, not so long as Janx remained. And yet Alban took to the skies each night, watching Margrit instead of resolving the conflicts that grew in the tunnels beneath the city.
If it were not entirely against a gargoyle’s nature, Alban might say he was hiding from those responsibilities by insisting on another. But then, he’d lost his sense of what was, in truth, a gargoyle’s nature, and what was not. A few months earlier he would have answered with confidence that a gargoyle was meant to keep to a well-known path, to be a rock against the changes forced by time. Now, though, now he had lost his way, or found it so reshaped before him that he had to gather himself before he could move forward. He hadn’t wanted to leave Margrit when she said she needed time, but suddenly he understood. Distress might be eased when shared, but the need to understand herself—or himself, now that he saw it—could be as necessary a step toward recovery. To edge back and rediscover the core of what he thought he was, without outside influence, might be critical.
And the secluded nights did give him time to think. No: time to remember. Remembering was a gargoyle’s purpose in existing, and for the past two weeks he would have given anything to be unburdened by that particular gift borne by his people.
Margrit sprinted away from a park bench without looking up, and Alban felt a twist of sorrow. Not anything: there was, it seemed, at least one thing he would not give up under any circumstances. He had killed to protect Margrit Knight, not once, but twice.
It might have meant nothing—at least to the other Old Races—had he taken human lives. But he’d destroyed a gargoyle woman with full deliberation, and a djinn thanks to devastating mistiming. Those were exiling offenses, actions for which he could—would, should—be shunned by his people. For all that he’d exiled himself centuries earlier on behalf of men not of his race, knowing he now inexorably stood outside the community he’d been born to cut more deeply than he’d thought it could. And for all of that, what disturbed him the most was the unshakable certainty that, given another chance, given identical circumstances, he would make the same choice. If he could alter the paces of the play, he would, yes; of course. But if not, if the same beats should come to pass, he would choose Margrit and the brief, shocking impulses of life she brought into his world.
He was no longer certain if he’d stopped knowing himself a long time ago and was only coming back to his core now, or if Margrit Knight had pulled him so far from his course that he had nothing but new territory to explore. He would have to ask Janx or Daisani someday; they had known him in his youth.
Startling clarity shot through him, the disgusted voice of another who’d known him when he was young: You were a warrior once. You could have led us. Biali hadn’t meant it as a compliment, his shattered visage testimony to the battle skills Alban had once had. Maybe, then, the impulse to make war had always been in him, buried during the centuries of self-imposed exile. Maybe the ability to kill had waited until it was needed, or wanted: a vicious streak through a heart of stone.
Too many thoughts circling near the same ideas that had haunted him through Margrit’s sleepless nights. Alban shook himself, leaping from the treetops to follow her, certain of this, if nothing else: he would not let the human woman come to harm, not after the changes she’d wrought in himself and his world. To lose her now would undo the meaning of everything, and that was a price too dear to be paid.
An impact caught her in the spine and knocked her forward. Margrit shouted with outraged surprise, hands outspread in preparation for breaking a fall she couldn’t stop. But thick arms encircled her waist, and the ground fell away with a sudden lurch. A body pressed against hers, muscle shifting and flexing in a pattern that might have been erotic, had Margrit’s incredulous anger not drowned out any other emotion, even fear. She struggled ineffectively, swearing as her captor soared above the treetops. “Alban?”
“Sorry, lawyer.” The words spoken into her hair were gargoyle-deep, but not Alban’s reassuring rough-on- rough accent. There was no sincerity in the apology, only a snarled mockery made of its form. “Hate to use you as bait, but I can’t do this out in the open.”
“Biali?” Margrit’s voice broke into a rarely used register as she twisted, trying to get a look at the gargoyle who’d swept her up. Her hair tangled in her face, blinding her. “What the hell are you doing?”
An edged chuckle scraped over her skin. “Getting Korund’s attention.”
“You couldn’t use a telephone like a normal person?” Margrit twisted harder and looped an arm around Biali’s shoulders, so she was no longer wholly reliant on his grip around her waist. He grunted, adjusting his hold, and gave her a baleful look that she returned with full force. “This was your idea.”
Exasperation crossed Biali’s face so sharply that for a moment it diluted Margrit’s anger. That was just as well: they were passing rooftops now, and pique might get her dropped from the killing height. With anger fading, she realized she had precious moments that could be better spent in investigation than in argument. “What do you want from Alban?”
“Justice.” Biali backwinged above an apartment building, landing on messy blacktop. He released Margrit easily, as though he hadn’t abducted her. She bolted for the rooftop door, though seeing its rusty lock stopped her before she reached it. She spun around, running again before she’d located the fire escapes, but Biali leapt into the air and cruised over her head, landing between her and the ladders. “Don’t make me have to hit you, lawyer.”
Margrit reared back, staying out of the gargoyle’s reach, though she doubted she could move fast enough to avoid him if he wanted to catch her again. For the moment, though, he simply crouched where he was, wings half spread in anticipation, broken face watching Margrit consider her options. He wore chain links around his waist, a new addition to the white jeans she’d seen him in before. Wrapped too many times to be a belt, the metal made a peculiarly appropriate accessory for the brawny gargoyle, enhancing his thickness and the sense of danger he could convey. Margrit found it disquieting, the dark iron twinging as a wrongness, but that, too, added to the effect.
Any real expectation of escape blocked, she resorted to words for the second time. “Justice for what?”
“Ausra.”
Dismay plummeted Margrit’s belly. The name conjured as many demons as flame-haunted dreams did. Ausra Korund had styled herself Alban’s daughter, though in truth she was the child of his lifemate, Hajnal, and the human who had captured her. Driven mad by her own heritage, Ausra had lain in wait for literally centuries, stalking Alban, waiting for a chance to destroy him. She had been Biali’s lover, and very nearly Margrit’s death. The Old Races were meant to think Ausra’s fate lay in Margrit’s hands. Only she and Alban knew the truth: that Alban had taken Ausra’s life to save Margrit’s.
Only they, and, it seemed, Biali. Margrit felt all her years of courtroom training betray her as her mouth tightened in recognition. Dark humor slid through Biali’s expression. “Everything make sense now, lawyer?”
Margrit drew in breath to respond and let it out again in a shriek as a flash of white darted over her head. Biali launched himself skyward to meet Alban, all attention for Margrit lost.
They crashed together with none of the grace she was accustomed to seeing from the Old Races. Too close to the rooftop to keep their battle aerial, momentum and their own weight slammed them to the blacktop. Margrit staggered with the impact and ran for shelter, putting herself against the rooftop access door. It seemed impossible that no one would come to see what the sound had been, and each roll and thud the combatants shared made it that much more likely. She didn’t dare shout for the same reason, but she pitched her voice to carry, fresh fear and anger in it: “Are you crazy? Somebody’s going to come!”
Neither gargoyle heeded her, too caught up in their private conflict to respond to sense. Biali lifted a fist and drove it down like the rock of ages. Alban flinched just far enough to the side that the blow missed. The rooftop shook again and Margrit skittered forward a few feet, sure that interfering would be useless, but driven to try. “Alban, stop! He grabbed me to make you come after him! Just get out of here!”
For a moment it seemed he’d heard her, an instant’s hesitation coming into his antagonism. Biali took advantage with a backhand swing so hard the air whistled with it, his fist a white blur against the graying sky. Alban spun, dizziness swaying his steps. An appalled fragment of Margrit’s attention wondered how hard a hit that
