Death's Excellent Vacation (26 page)

I’ve never claimed to be the smartest gargoyle in the world. But just that once, maybe I did the right thing.

On the other hand, she was bitten. And things were about to get even more interesting.

MY flight left for Bermuda at five the next morning.

Instead of sitting uncomfortably in a business-class seat, pouring down the drinks so I wouldn’t think of the empty air between me and the ground, I was crouched in the belfry of Immaculate Conception downtown. The rain beat steadily against the bell tower as I watched the clouds lighten by imperceptible degrees toward dawn.

Yep. I was at home when my vacation started. Lucky me.

Once dawn had a good grip on the city, I climbed down the rickety stairs. This particular church was built in 1911, and it’s got the standard architecture—and the winding little stairway behind a painted panel of Saint Stephen in a small side chapel, going down to my cell.

It’s actually a comfortable little place. I’ve got my hot plate and my little fridge—the gargoyle before me wired the place for electricity. I do all my laundry down the street at the Kleen Kloze Washateria, and I’ve got a toilet and a shower. It’s damp, kind of, since it’s all underground. But that doesn’t matter much to a gargoyle.

And there, on my barely-big-enough bed, Kate lay. Her chest rose and fell with regular breaths, her thin gold necklace gone but her earrings still there. She hadn’t moved since I’d laid her down and checked her clumsily for concussion. I tried to repair her sneaker with duct tape, too, because it hurt me to see it all torn up like that.

Now, I touched the supple lines of the fleur-de-lis and felt them quiver against the calluses on my fingertips. The Heart under my skin banged into life, blinding me for a moment, and when vision returned, I caught the lines
shifting
just the tiniest fraction, settling into the familiar circled fleur—the mark all stoneskin spend their nights fighting the Big Bad for. It means a lot of things. Light. Blessing. Beauty.

Those things we’re denied, or the things we’re too ugly to be comfortable with.

The messy double puncture wounds on her throat had finally sealed up, since I’d painted them carefully with the coagulant that works best—gargoyle spit and garlic paste. Chewing that stuff up raw makes my eyes water.

I pulled my hand back, and not a moment too soon. The mark twitched, her breathing changed, and she sat right up and screamed.

“Jesus!”
I almost went over backward. She scrambled back, producing an amazing kettle whistle of sound, and hit the wall. Tried to keep going, her eyes bugged out of her head and her hands flailing.

I wasn’t so worried about the sound getting out. The painted panel of Saint Stephen is over a thick shell of rock that only a stoneskin could whisper aside, and there’s the stairs and the other oak door, too. But the sound of her scream burrowed into my head, tugged at the Heart under my skin, and I had to fight against my trueform hulking out and making things interesting.

She stopped for breath, the scream hitching into sharp little sucking sounds as she tried to get in something to breathe and push out the yelling at the same time. I backed up, my heel hitting an empty energy-drink can and sending it rattling. I had both hands up, trying to look harmless, but it’s so hard to do when you’re built like a weightlifter. Another can crunched underfoot; I stumbled. We stared at each other, Kate and I, and the screaming petered out.

We both took a deep breath, and then we spoke at the same time.

“Please don’t hurt me—”

I was a little more on the ball. “I’m not gonna hurt you—”
Boy, is that a lie.

We stared at each other some more. I tried again. “Hi.” The word was totally inadequate. “How do you feel?”

Her hand flew to her throat, and her eyes got very round. Then she noticed her shirt was torn open, and a flush rose up the curve of her neck, exploding in her cheeks like New Year’s fireworks. She gulped audibly, and my heart made a funny bursting movement. It was like the movement of the other Heart under my skin, the stone that makes the change into stoneskin possible. If both hearts decided to go wiggy on me, I would be gasping and blushing myself.

She snatched her ruined shirt together. “If you have to rape me,” she managed in a queer little choked voice, “please, please use a condom.”

Uh, what?
“Um.” My jaw worked soundlessly for a moment. “I, uh. I’m not gonna rape you, ma’am. I just, um, I thought this was the safest place for you.” I swallowed hard, trying not to think that her shirt really wasn’t covering much and that I’d seen what she was trying to hide—the shells of the bra, cheap black lace cupping white skin, and the mark shifting against itself. “Since they’re trying to kill you. Because you’re . . . That mark on you. You’ve had a near-death experience lately, haven’t you?”

Her eyes were full of welling water, washing out the blue and trickling down one smooth cheek. “Oh, shit,” she whispered, like she’d been punched. “You . . . you’re one of
them
.”

Well, that answered that question. She’d brushed up against the Big Bad recently.

“I ain’t one of
them
. They’re the Big Bad, and I’m stoneskin. I fight them.” Swallowed hard again. Suddenly I was very conscious of my ears poking up—I don’t wear my hat at home—and the stone walls and cans on the floor were probably weird to someone who worked at a reasonable dead-end job. “Uh, you got bit. I think you’re okay, though.”

“Bit?” She shook her head. Her hair wasn’t dishwater under the energy-efficient bulbs I have down here. No, it was gold. Spun gold. “I . . . You . . .”

Well, this is going pretty okay.
“You had a near-death experience, right? Six months to a year ago, I’d reckon. Right?”

“How did you—” She was having trouble getting whole sentences out. I didn’t blame her. EvilMart probably didn’t prepare her for this. “Look, is this some kind of joke?”

Not even close.
“I’ll explain everything. That mark on your chest showed up after your nearly dying. It’s changed again because it’s been triggered. You’re a Heart, and I’ve got to take you to Paris.”

Tense, ticking silence stretched between us like a high wire between buildings, bowing under the weight of a daredevil’s feet. Finally, she gulped audibly again. “Say
what
?”

All things considered, it was probably the only response she
could
make. I tried not to stare at her hands, loosening on what was left of her shirt. “The Heart of Hearts is in Paris. I’ve got to take you there. We’ll fly first class, probably.” I ran out of words.

She stared at me for another fifteen seconds, then began to laugh. When she finished with that, she burst into tears while I stood there uselessly staring. Even with her skin all blotchy and her nose all full, she was . . . Well. I didn’t even think to get her any tissues until she was covered in tears and full of snot.

It wasn’t a good beginning. She finally calmed down, and I wondered if she was going to be any trouble.

Because I was lying to her. I was going to take her to Paris. But I didn’t think she’d like what happened when we got there. Of all the jokes life’s played on me, this one had to be the most sadistic.

THERE was a phone box up the street. I stood outside it for a long time in the fine midday misting rain, my hat dripping all around the brim and my shoulders soaked. It wasn’t until a stray gleam of sun broke through under the rolled edges of cloud that I realized I was standing in a puddle and it had soaked through my sneakers.

All things considered, she’d taken it really well. Six months ago she’d been married and in a car crash—in that order. The husband was buried, the job at EvilMart all she could get with no experience after being a housewife for five years. The car crash had left her in a hospital emergency room, miraculously healed of a collage of broken bones and bloody bruising between one breath and the next after they’d applied the shock pads.
It was like white light,
she told me.
But not real white light—it was like being blind.

I knew what she was talking about. It’s the Heart choosing its victim. We stoneskin feel the Heart’s pull, but sometimes it pulls the soft pink ones, too.

The Tiend takes a few so the rest of us can go on. Or at least, that’s what we’re told.

I stepped closer to the phone booth. Its edges were beaded, pearled with rain that was still falling. There was going to be a rainbow soon. Beautiful weather, the type you don’t often see in a city where it rains all the time.

Instead of dialing, I took two steps back from the phone booth. Sooner or later the Heart would take her. I didn’t have to speed the process up.

But what the hell was I going to do? She was my problem. I was stoneskin. Serving the Heart is what we
do
. Indecision warred with duty, ending in a burp of exasperated indigestion tasting of CornNuts. I’d eaten the whole damn bag on the way here.

It don’t matter. The Heart takes its own. And she’s so pretty.

The indigestion turned into sourness. I’d left her with an awkward suggestion that she might want to take a shower and that I’d bring her some clothes for the trip.
But why Paris?
she’d wanted to know.
What’s there?

All I could do was mumble that it was what I was supposed to do, that she would want for nothing, that she would . . . be happy. And safe. And the shell-shocked look in her swollen red-rimmed eyes was enough to make me feel as if I’d stepped on a fluffy little helpless kitten. Or two. Or a hundred.

I forced myself back to the phone booth. Put my hand on the receiver. It probably wasn’t working, anyway. If it was out of order, that would be a sign that I didn’t have to make this call.

It seemed too heavy to lift. I did it anyway and put it gingerly to my ear.

The dial tone was really, really loud. I went to hang it up, and duty caught my hand halfway.

You know what happens if you don’t call in. Come on.

The CornNuts tried to crawl free again. The dial tone mocked me. I held my stomach down with sheer force of will and punched the number I never thought I’d call.

’Cause what are the chances of finding a Heart candidate if you never get close to the pinks? Only this time I had, and it figures.

Two rings, and it was picked up. The click of relays punched through my temple; I swallowed a shapeless sound.

The voice was even, well modulated, with a hint of tenor sweetness. “Report.”

I gave my control phrase and my district. Then the seven little words. “I have a Heart candidate. Request transit.”

That was the only thing this number was ever used for.

A slight pause. “Congratulations.” He said it like he meant it. “You’ll have the tickets and requisitions in six hours.”

No point in messing around.
“Okay.” There was nothing left to say, so I hung up. I thought I caught a muffled “Good luck” before the receiver hit the rest of the phone so hard it shattered. My claws were out, slicing through plastic, metal, and the innards of the phone.

My stomach curdled afresh.
Shit. That’s public property.
But what did it matter? After I brought the Heart its candidate, I would stay at the Sanctum and become one of the Inners, keepers of the Mystery and honored servants of the Heart. Any gargoyle in his right mind wants to be part of the Sanctum. From the moment we’re hatched or brought in, we’re told it’s the place to be.

The phone died with a gurgle. Quarters spilled out, and the LED screen on the debit-card reader up top flashed wildly twice.

That’s the trouble with the world. It isn’t built strong enough to withstand anything.

I turned on my heel. My sneakers were squeaking, since my feet were spreading, toes fusing together and the hind claw jabbing at cheap material. When you shred your shoes all the time, you learn not to buy anything high-end.

When I had everything all back together and human-sized again, I trudged back up the block toward home. I suppose I should’ve been ready for what happened next.

When I got back into my cell, it was empty. Maybe I should’ve locked the door. Or thought the stone panel would obey a candidate as well as a Heartkin.

Her car was already hauled out of the EvilMart parking lot. I guess they don’t believe in waiting around. There were stars and glittering cascades of pebbly broken safety glass, the damp noxious perfume of the Big Bad, and a lighter gray smell of rain and daylight.

The broken purse had already been swept up and taken away somewhere, too. Midday shoppers didn’t glance at me—I was too far out in the lot. After a few moments of standing with my eyes closed, sniffing a little, I found what I was after.

The thin thread of gold necklace almost burned my fingers. My nose twitched as I turned its supple length over and over. Waiting for the little tingle.

A nose for metal is a nose for tracking, that’s what the older gargoyles say. Me, I just wait for the tingle. Often as not—even oftener than that—it leads me right to what I’m looking for.

This time it ran along my nerves like burning gasoline and almost pulled me out of my human skin. It was hard work, keeping my shambling shape in some modicum of normalcy as I whipped around, the pull hard and close.

That’s when the cop cars arrived, and the smell of the Big Bad wasn’t being rubbed out by the rain. It was fresh and fuming from the EvilMart.

“Shit,” I whispered, and lunged into a clumsy run.

The cops had their guns out. A SWAT van pulled up, and people started screaming and running because there was a
pocka-pocka-pocka
of automatic fire from inside the building.

Somebody was taking their shopping a little too personally. Or they were trying to kill my Heart candidate.

They kill them wherever they find them, and I’d made a lot of noise and fuss last night alerting them to the fact that there was a stoneskin around and a Heart candidate to kill.

Stupid me.

I leapt on two cars because of the clots of people spilling out in the parking lot. They crunched under my feet, sloping away as I jumped. It was chaos. The cars crumpled because I had blurred out into trueform. Who cared what they saw? The screaming inside was taking on a more panicked, desperate quality, and for once I was glad I’m not imaginative. Imagination just gets in the way when you have a job to do.