Year of miracles, p.25
Year of Miracles, page 25
part #1 of Collected Stories of the Old Races Series
"Perhaps it lingers in the air always." Isabel lifted a challenging eyebrow.
Biali sank back in his seat, more defeated by the expression than the Italian in the ring earlier. Humans were mad, vermin and blights on the earth, creating danger and discomfort wherever they went, and he preferred to fight them, not hold conversation over dinner and brandy. He hadn't touched the snifter she'd poured for him, but she swirled her own like it was a theatrical prop. Every action enthralled him. Human women were not expected to act so freely. She might have been one of the Old Races, unconstrained by convention, except there was nothing inhuman about her. Nothing except an uncanny awareness of things the mortal world moved past, like ancient races walking amongst them, and fires that burned out decades in the past. "Maybe it does."
Isabel nodded, satisfied. "So I have come here, to this greatest city. And here I have seen a man like no other and he," she said with a spread of her hands, "sees me. No?"
"No. I mean yes." Biali bit down on further speech, staring at the woman. "You believed a prediction from an old woman at a bookshop?"
Isabel lifted a chiding finger, waving it at him. "Old women are wise. Everyone should listen to them. And she was right, no? So many men, and only you follow me."
Infallible logic that made no sense. Biali grunted "I should go," and left his brandy untouched on a chair-side table. Isabel remained still, nothing but her voice arresting him as he reached the door:
"You will come again tomorrow?"
That would be madness. He had what few answers he might need or want from her. Luck, that was all that had brought her through the night safely, both coming and going from the docks. Luck, unless the bookshop was the one he thought it might be, and the tea brewed by the old woman herself. And if that was so, then she was interfering, directing lives the way she liked to, and offered all the more reason he should refuse.
He said, "Of course," and closed the door behind him.
Giddiness was not for gargoyles. Not a word they would ever use, not an emotion they would ever experience. Nervous stomachs were not for creatures built of stone. Nor were cold hands or irregular heartbeats. Steadiness: that was the very purpose of his people. To strive, to seek, to find, but not to yield: the poet who had written those words had not done so with Biali's people in mind, but the last of them resonated.
He wondered if Isabel would appreciate that he knew Tennyson. That he had, in fact, known Tennyson, though not well, and not that he could confess to it, sixty years after the poet's death. It did not—should not—matter. Neither the knowing of the poem or the acquaintance of the man. Such accolades were for young men bent on impressing young women, not ancient gargoyles who knew better than to take themselves to a woman's doorstep not long after nightfall.
He knew better, and yet.
Isabel's smile when she answered the door—she herself, not her manservant or maid—her smile was secretive and pleased. Smug, as if she had known he couldn't resist. As if she'd been certain his promise to return was an honest one, when he hadn't been sure of that himself. And after that he was lost, knowing he would come back time and again until she sent him away, as she inevitably would.
It lent an edge to his fights, a desperation that made losing more difficult and the money riding on his bouts more worthwhile. Isabel came to the fights more often than she should, always with the same scent lingering around her. Sweet tea, not perfume after all. It was certain, then, that Chelsea interfered, but Biali couldn't bring himself to face her. To condemn her or to even comment. Not when Isabel's easy smile was for him. Not when she touched his scarred face without cringing. She was human, ephemeral, doomed, but for a few hours each night she was his, and the rest of the world faded away. It had been too long since gentleness had been in his life, and he could not quite make himself turn away.
Winter's long nights faded into spring's equal days, stealing minutes he could spend with her, but she never questioned that he came to her at sunset and left before dawn. New York could encompass such a life, as any large city could, if that was what a young couple dreamed of. She told him some of what she did during the day: sleep, of course, to make up for the hours they spent in the city at night, but in her waking hours, museums, tea, long walks, embroidery. None of it, she said, was her life. That, he thought, was what she shared with him. Certainly in the first days her smile when she greeted him in the evenings changed from smug to openly pleased and then, as days became weeks, to simple joy.
It had been decades, even centuries, since a woman had looked at him that way, and it was difficult to remember he could seem no older than she was, when they spoke of their histories. Of mountains, he told her one night. They sat together on the rooftop above the small apartment he had taken for himself when it became clear he was too foolish to walk away. Humans had to have dwellings, could not live on roofs, pitted and scarred by rain and sun, as gargoyles did. There was a view from the roof: a small park, a crossroads, and in the deep of night, when streetlights had guttered, a swath of stars across the skies.
"There were more of them in the mountains," he said to her one night. "There were no lights to dim them. They made a path across the sky. We would—" Try to fly that milky way; that was what gargoyle children did as their strength grew and allowed them to soar skyward for the first time. But he couldn't say that to Isabel, and she picked up the narrative before he found a variation on his own past to share with her.
"Run along it?" she asked. "It is like that where I am from too, a great streak of color and stars along the dark sky, reaching all the way to the water. We live near the sea, no? On la playa del oro, the beach of gold you would say. Only for the sand, though. There are no rough hills to dig precious metals from, not for many miles. The don's people tease crops from the land, and we delve deep for fresh water so close to the sea." Her heartbeat was quick, pressed against his side. Quick enough for worry, as if she missed her home so badly it set her heart to speeding.
Biali began to sit up, concerned, but Isabel stopped him with a hand on his chest. She shifted to do it, her skirts rustling as she knelt with her thighs pressed against his. His own heart knocked hard, sudden understanding taking him with human shock.
"I would give you precious things," Isabel whispered. "To tease and delve, Biali. Will you have me?"
"I've never with a—" Color flushed his face, almost an impossibility, but what he'd been about to say was absurd. I've never. True enough, when the sentence ended with with a human woman, but he could hardly say that.
Isabel, though, laughed, a soft shy thrill of sound. "That I do not believe, my Biali." She touched his scarred cheek, brushed fingertips over his ruined eye, and murmured, "You are not so fearsome as all that, and so that I do not believe. But you must not worry if you have never taken a maidenhead. The virginity is only once, no? And there will be many times after." Her composure left her abruptly, her skin darkening with a rush of blood, and she began to pull away. "Unless you do not wa—"
"No." Rough reply, almost harsh. He pulled her closer again, afraid to speak and drive her away. She softened in his arms, though her heart beat harder still, pulling eagerness and uncertainty taut. He could remember that, at least, from every first time with a new lover, though his people put no weight on virginity the way humans did. Isabel was brave, very brave, and very beautiful.
She tasted of sunshine, of the lingering warmth that was all he knew of daylight. That was a gift, one she couldn't know she gave, and for that, for all of it, he wanted to treat her well. He had no skill with women's clothes, but nor did he need it: she shed her outer layers breathlessly, then lost courage. Eyes large and dark, pulse in her throat quick as a vampire's, she waited in stillness as he loosened her corset, then touched his mouth to her breasts.
The sound she made then was liquid, and woke in him a hunger that had been put away for more years than she could imagine. It would never do to be rough or quick, not with a mortal, not in the first moments. Not when desire was so fresh and new, and an exploring tongue and suckling lips could so easily drive her beyond the boundaries of what she knew. She didn't know what to do with herself, hips offering tiny plaintive surges as her fingers knotted in his hair. Petticoats were discarded and she lost her nerve again, but skin could come later. Bloomers were no impediment to thick, blunt fingers, and if her thighs crashed together at the first touch, they parted again with increasing willingness as his touch coaxed pleasure from unexplored territory.
He watched her eyes, gauging her need from the grip on his shoulders, to judge when to take her. To make the moment of peaking the same moment he slid within her, so that if there was pain it would at least be swept away by the shuddering, clenching rolls of release that came with his body fitting to hers.
And there was such bewilderment in her eyes at the cresting of pain and pleasure, such beauty in the vulnerability of her hands knotted against his shoulders. He waited, watching her. Stone could wait forever, if need be. It needn't, though: as the first wave passed she slowly softened again, until finally she nodded, a fleeting smile darting across her face. Enough to let him move again, to teach her, to guide her, and finally, some little while before morning, to find a release so exhaustive that he barely stumbled away, apologizing, before dawn took him to stone.
"You always leave me before the sun," she said the next evening. Not angry, but thoughtful, which was more than he might expect of any woman newly breached and then abandoned. "Do you not like it on your face?"
"I rest in daylight. I always have." True enough, if misleading. Softer confession, though: "I would stay if I could, Isabel."
"Will you ever?"
"No." There was no question, no chance. Not so long as the laws of the Old Races held. Tell no humans of our existence. It was a matter of survival.
Isabel, to his surprise, laughed. "I think a man should lie to a woman when she asks that question, Biali. I think he is meant to say yes, sí, of course I will stay."
"I'll never lie to you." Gargoyles don't, he wanted to say, but there were so many things that would go unsaid. A promise of truth would have to be enough.
Isabel pursed her lips, put them against his shoulder, then nodded. "Some women would not like that answer. I think perhaps I do. Truth can be terrible, more terrible than lies, but I am glad to trust what you tell me is always true. Tell me this, then. Do you lose the fights on purpose?"
Biali blinked. "Yes."
"The one the night we met?"
Rare humor rose. "I was supposed to lose, but not that badly. I didn't know there would be a beautiful woman there."
"Then tonight," she said firmly, "you will win a fight for me. And then we will come back to here, and be together, for if we have only the nights, my Biali, then we must have them with all that we are."
He won that night, and every night after that she asked. His bad-breathed manager was torn between delight and fury. Mostly fury, as Biali won fights his manager had bet against him on, but sometimes delight for the sheer brutality of the fights. And Isabel watched them, every one, and after the first night or two she went unmolested by greedy hands or greedier looks. Everyone knew, now, that Biali threw the fights he lost, and none of them wanted to meet him outside the ring for harassing his woman. Weeks passed, winter nights growing shorter but no less sweet for it. This, Biali thought: this was happiness. Isabel and the fights. He could ask for nothing more.
It had to happen, then, that Alban Korund would interfere.
Biali caught his scent after a fight, the big gargoyle in human form one of dozens of men pressing to see the match. Like Isabel, Alban dressed too well to frequent the dock fights: well-cut suits of good cloth, shoes that had seen less offal than most, and his long wheat-pale hair tied in a knot at his nape. Men were egging him on regardless, hoping to get him in the ring. They were fools: anyone fighting Alban would be undone by the gargoyle's long reach, never mind his inhuman strength. He stood the better part of a foot taller than Biali, with arms of according length, and Biali was already their master.
He bulled his way out of the wooden corral, other fighters and plenty of dockworkers making way for him. Isabel came to his side, joining him as he approached Alban, and for the first time in weeks he wished she might be somewhere else. Not because Alban was prettier than Biali—most things were—but because Biali wanted Isabel kept well away from the Old Races. They were dangerous to humans, whether humans knew it or not.
"You're doing well," Alban said softly. Most of the time, he was soft of voice. Compensating for his human height and breadth, which were still nothing in comparison to his true form. "Some reporters are starting to notice."
Isabel's face shone at the news. "You will become famous, yes, my Biali? You will be a prizefighter across the nation!"
"No." He and Alban spoke together, in agreement for the first time in centuries. Isabel faltered, looking between them, and Biali shook his head. "Fame's no good. Neither's too much money. I don't need it."
"Mi abuelito would like it," Isabel teased, uncertainly. "A famous fighter, better than a Buffalo soldier."
"He'll have to like me as I am." Not that Biali would ever meet the Spanish lord on the beach of gold, but it was too soon to think of that. It would always be too soon. "Why are you here, Korund? Why are you telling me this?"
"Because it's always too soon to lose something precious." The big gargoyle's phrase so closely echoed Biali's thoughts that Biali scowled. Alban had not joined the overmind, had not made any effort to abandon his self-imposed exile; he had not, therefore, heard a whisper of what went on in Biali's mind.
It was more offensive, somehow, that they shared a perception of the world. Biali turned away, his arm protective and possessive around Isabel, and when he looked back, Alban was gone.
"He is the one, no?" Isabel asked as they left the fight. "The one who took your woman from you."
A breath escaped Biali, astonishment so broad it touched amusement. "How do you do that? How do you know these things?"
"They are not so hard to read in your face, my Biali. You hide behind your scars, but I can see through them to the man below."
"Then I am lucky," he said roughly, and left her ever-more reluctantly come the dawn.
He awoke to a shocking connection across the mental void: Biali!
An image with his name, a place in the park, wooded, secluded, near the northern end. Sunset still colored the western sky, though grey, not gold, crept through trees and lent no warmth to the scene.
One word. One image. Alban Korund had not risked so much in the gestalt in three centuries. Biali should claw his way into that connection, force it open, learn what he had been sent to this city to discover. Expose Alban's secrets, touch Hajnal's last thoughts, and return, finally return, to the clan he had left behind.
He ran instead, launching himself from the window of his small apartment, still in human form. Transforming, wings snapping open, beating, straining, pushing him through the air as quickly as he could. Alban's presence in the gestalt was gone, his sojourn there so brief it left barely a sketch of memory, much less pathways into the secrets he kept. And after three centuries, there was no good reason for him to break silence. Which meant his reasons would be very bad.
Biali flew.
Alban crouched beside her, his wheat-colored hair falling around his shoulders and his huge hands reluctant to touch her. She was broken everywhere, beautiful lines of her face as smashed as Biali's. Her corset gave structure to ribs that no longer had enough, and her wrists were shattered. Biali knocked Alban aside, fury roaring from him, but the other man made no fight, only rolled and came to his feet several yards away.
"Isabel. Did he—who did this to you?" There was no blood on Alban's hands, though that was scarce comfort. Biali took his place, crouched beside the dying woman, his own expression glazed with shock. "Isabel..."
"A wo...man." Her brown eyes were huge with pain and bewilderment. "So strong. She hated..."
"Hush," Biali whispered helplessly, "Shh, shh. Save your strength. You'll be all right."
"Me," Isabel finished. "Hated...me. Hated...herself. We were...alike. Except...."
Except for strength. Hatred offered plenty of that. Biali should know. "Hush," he said again, but she smiled.
"I came for you, Biali. I did not mean...to leave like this."
"You won't. You can't. Not again." That made no sense, and all three of them understood. Isabel smiled again and let her eyes close, tears leaking from their corners. Biali made useless fists above her, as afraid as Alban had been to touch her and cause more pain. So fragile. Humans were so fragile, and he couldn't even lay the blame for this at Alban's feet. A woman, Isabel had said. What woman would have the fury to do this to another?
The same one who had murdered at least one other of Alban's acquaintances. He was the commonality between these women who looked like Hajnal. There was blame to lay at his feet after all. Biali's vision rushed red with rage. He balled himself, ready to pitch himself at Alban, to beat answers out of him and provide some sort of catharsis for himself.
"Daisani is here."
Biali lifted his head, staring without comprehension at the other gargoyle. Then understanding lurched through him, obliterating wrath. He bent his head over Isabel's, whispers fierce with determination. "Don't die. Wait for me. Wait until morning, Isabel. Live until morning. Promise me that."
"I'll stay with her." Alban's voice, so remote that sympathy barely touched it. That was as well: the last thing Biali wanted was his sympathy. "Go," Alban said. "Tell him I've asked for this."
Biali stood, lip curled. "You? Why you? What will that gain me?"
"Just do it, Biali."
He would, too. Without knowing why, he would. "Don't let her die. On Hajnal's memory, Korund. Don't let her die."
"Hurry."
He hurried, and it hardly seemed fast enough. Daisani was wealthy and men like Biali, rough and scarred and ugly, were not welcomed in the fine restaurants and clubs that Daisani frequented.
