Margrit laughed breathlessly, partly in response to the gargoyle’s words and partly in response to the thrill of leaving the earth behind. “I didn’t know he was a dragon.”
“Would it have mattered?”
She twisted to watch the House of Cards recede below them. “I’m going to be cocky and say no.” She grinned as buildings below began to blur into one another as the two of them gained height. “I could get used to this.”
“I wonder if you could,” Alban said, more to himself than her. An ache of sympathetic loneliness ran through Margrit’s heart, weakening her arms, and she slipped a little. Alban’s grip tightened, solid and safe. She drew herself up again, nose buried against his neck, but she remained silent.
“She’s a pretty little bit. For sale?” Biali squatted on an eagle’s head at the Chrysler Building, hunched and broken. Like Alban, he had nearly white hair even in his human form, which he wore now, but the resemblance ended there. He was short and thick, muscles on his muscles, like an aging prizefighter. His left eye was scarred over. Margrit wondered what that damage looked like on his gargoyle face. In the moments between his landing and his transformation, she hadn’t been able to tell.
“No,” Alban said before Margrit could squawk a protest. “She’s my attorney.”
“The law.” Biali growled in revulsion and spat to the side. “You’re better letting me dump her off the building, Korund.”
“I think not right now,” Alban said, then left English behind, speaking a guttural language that sounded like stones scraping. Biali shifted backward on the eagle’s head, eyeing Margrit suspiciously, then snarled and squinted his one good eye at Alban.
“Last time, Korund. This is the last time.” He waited for Alban’s faint acknowledging nod before continuing. “I saw your face all over their news, but I’m not the one who put it there. You’re not worth the trouble.”
“You thought I was, once.”
“Pah!” Biali tossed a hand in disgust. “You were a warrior then. Good enough to give me this.” Heavy fingers indicated his face. “Good enough to kill me.”
“I didn’t, though.”
“Mercy is a strength.” He almost sang the words, his voice full of ridicule. “Mercy has brought you low, Alban. You could have led us.”
“To what? A glorious sunrise defeat at the hands of the humans? By the time we thought of it there were too few of us to wage war, even among ourselves. I had no wish to see another of our kind die.”
“Mercy,” Biali said again, scathingly. “Go away, Korund. I’m not the one murdering women in the park, and if I were, I wouldn’t be trying to make it look like it was you. I choose my fights in alleyways, with men who stand a chance.”
“No single man could defeat one of us, not without weapons. Is this what you are now? One of Janx’s thugs?”
Biali smiled, an ugly one that wrinkled his scar. “We’re all of us thugs and killers. You’ve just forgotten your nature in your long years of isolation.”
“We don’t have to be.” Alban turned to Margrit. “He’s telling the truth. We can go.” He slid an arm around her waist as she looked back toward the other gargoyle.
“Biali?”
“It speaks!” He rose from his crouch, stretching his thick shoulders. “What?”
“Who is Ausra?”
Surprise flickered across the scarred gargoyle’s face, his eyebrows drawing down before he shook his head, one short abrupt movement. “Never heard of her. Sorry.” He stepped back, then lifted his arms above his head and fell, graceful for all his width, off the eagle’s head into darkness.
“I don’t believe him. He knows Ausra.”
“You speak,” Alban murmured dryly. Margrit shot him a sharp look, then pulled away to see him better. She’d held her silence for long minutes after they’d returned to earth, watching the city begin to come to life around them.
“At least I’m a you instead of an it. He’s a real charmer, isn’t he?”
“We Old Races rarely have reason to charm humans, Margrit.”
“Tell that to Janx and Daisani.”
“Janx and Daisani are not usual.”
“Are you?” Margrit asked sharply, then dismissed the question with a short brush of her hand. “What makes you think he was telling the truth?”
“We don’t lie.”
Margrit laughed out loud. “Oh. So you’re all thugs and killers, then? He was telling the truth?”
“Margrit,” Alban said with exasperation.
“No! Don’t Margrit me, Alban. Either he never lies or there’s a possibility I’m right. Which is it?”
“Exaggeration and lies aren’t the same thing.”
“You’re not answering the question.” She stalked a few yards ahead of the gargoyle. “Do you exaggerate?”
She heard Alban’s hesitation in his intake of breath. “I don’t eat small children,” he finally said.
“Still not an answer. That was a joke. It’s a different realm of communication entirely. If he’s lying, Alban, how would we make him tell the truth?”
“Gargoyles don’t lie,” Alban repeated, frustration replacing hesitation. “It’s not in our nature, Margrit. No more than growing wings and flying is in yours.”
“I think you’ve been alone too long.” Margrit turned to face him again, scowling. “Nothing stays the same forever, Alban, not even stone. The weather wears away at it, if nothing else. I think living night to night in a human world for centuries on end probably changes you more than you know. I think you’re stuck in a way of life that ended decades ago.”
Alban stepped closer, his size suddenly evident as he frowned down at her. Margrit’s temper flared again, giving her the nerve to hold her ground, hands on her hips, as she glowered back at him.
“In less than a week, you think you know the Old Races so well?” he asked.
“I think I know people pretty well, Alban, and I think people adapt to survive in the environment they’re forced to live in.”
“We’re not-”
“Don’t!” Margrit snapped a hand up, cutting off his argument. “So you’re not human.” The words sent a shudder through her, a sudden acknowledgment of Alban’s alien nature that lifted goose bumps on her skin. “You’re still people, ” she muttered. “And people do what they have to. They change.”
“I haven’t.”
“Maybe that’s what you thought you had to do.” Margrit turned away, irritation still in full bloom, and stared down the city block toward the lightening sky. “And I think Biali’s lying. I just don’t know how to make him tell the truth. Short of an iron collar around his neck,” she added, only half joking.
“Margrit!”
She looked over her shoulder at Alban. “I’m kidding. I wouldn’t do it, but that’s what I’m saying. Welcome to the human race.” Margrit extended a hand, its color changing with streetlights fading and sunrise coming. “I think I’m basically a pretty good person, but there’s still a part of me that thinks that way, even if I wouldn’t act on it. Maybe it’s human nature, maybe its society, but you don’t have to go far to see how fast people turn to the concept of might makes right.” She shrugged, dropping her hands as her annoyance faded. “You really think somebody living among us for centuries wouldn’t learn to think that way? To take whatever advantage they had or could make in order to protect and survive?”
“Margrit…” Alban made a slow fist in the shadows. She watched the light shift, then jerked her head up, heart rate accelerating as she realized what she saw.
“Alban! The sun’s coming up!”
“Yes.” The word was hardly more than a whisper, his acknowledging nod just as faint. Acceptance filled the single word, no fight to it, sparking anger in Margrit’s breast. It sent her running toward him, shoving him with her momentum.
