Death's Excellent Vacation

The Heart Is Always Right LILITH SAINTCROW

Lilith Saintcrow is the author of the Dante Valentine, Jill Kismet, and Strange Angels series. She lives in Vancouver, Washington, with her two children and assorted other strays.

MOST gargoyles go to Paris. It’s ridiculous. When you spend all your time hanging on the sides of buildings, why go to a place where you just do more of the same? Even if the Heart is there beating under the streets. Even if it is, for pretty much any stoneskin, home.

No, I didn’t want to spend two weeks of vacation hanging on to the side of a building. I was gonna go to Bermuda. Had my plane tickets and everything. I was even packing. Suntan lotion, BluBlocker sunglasses, flip-flops. It was an adventure buying the flip-flops at EvilMart. I was thinking about how in my trueform I only had three toes, and flip-flops are built wrong for that kind of foot. Then I figured I wasn’t going to be fighting any evil on the beach, so it didn’t matter that there aren’t three-toe flip-flops out there. It’s too bad there aren’t. Someone could make a killing.

I guess I shouldn’t say things like that, should I?

I got to the front of the EvilMart, wincing at the bright fluorescent light, and for once the Heart was kind to me. She was there.

Blond. The kind of blond that looks dishwater under tubes of buzzing EvilMart light but lights up in island sunlight. Blue eyes, usually tired and bloodshot, and an aristocratic nose under them. She’s got a pretty mouth, too, though it’s always pulled tight with something like pain. I think if she ever relaxed, she’d be a knockout.

Who am I kidding? Even in a blue polyester EvilMart vest that does nothing for her va-va-vooms, she’s a knockout. I like ’em juicy. Give me a girl with real hips any day, not a stick with mosquito bites.

As if I’ve ever gotten close enough to smell a girl. But I can still look, right?

I’m not dead. Just gargoyle.

Her nametag says Kate. And there are always dark circles under her eyes.

She was just reaching up to turn off the light over her register when I shambled up. It was about two A.M., quitting time. She hesitated, one hand in the air, and I wished I were shorter. Or at least less broad in the shoulders. We stoneskin are built like linebackers—wide and stupid. The sloppy brown hair, hat pulled down to hide my ears, stubble to hide my gnarled skin, and the smell of concrete and rain on me probably isn’t very pretty either.

A tendril of that blond hair was falling in her face, and I stopped dead, planting my cheap canvas shoes. My heart made a funny jumping noise inside my ribs, knocking at the cathedral arches.

Then she smiled. It was her usual pained smile, the mouth pulled tight, but her eyes lit up and my heart not only banged on the old ribs, but splashed in my guts. My skin felt too tingling-small, and I had to take a deep breath, reminding myself that my real form wasn’t something anyone here would want to see.

“Come on up,” she said, and flipped her light off. “I’m just about to go, but I can fit in one more.”

“Oh. I . . . Gee. Thanks.” Yeah, I actually said gee. Her smile widened a bit, and I had to make my feet move. They were tingling, too, just like the rest of me.

I stumped up to her checkout stand and started unloading the carrying basket. Two beach towels, both printed in big block colors. Two pairs of orange flip-flops, size fourteen wide. White socks—you can’t ever have too many socks. Two family-size bags of CornNuts. Sunblock. A two-liter of Coke. A pair of ragg-wool gloves. And three jumbo tins of Bag Balm.

Hey, when your skin rasps against rock and concrete all the time, it gets cracked and stuff. Bag Balm is the best.

Her hands sorted the items without any real effort on her part, the checkstand beeping and booping. Her nails were bitten down, and she wore a thin gold necklace. It looked cheap but it smelled real—I’ve got a nose for metal. The small gold ball earrings she wore were real, too. And this close her skin was dewy even under the glare.

I bulged shapelessly, like a balloon without quite enough air. I’ve got a boxer’s face, including pointed cauliflower ears—not that boxers have pointed ears, you know. I’ve got a mushroom nose that looks like it’s been broken one too many times, and the scarred, pitted skin of any gargoyle past puberty. My eyes are too small, and they’re yellow. And my hair is okay—thick and dark—but I must be the only curly-headed stoneskin on the continent.

I’m even ugly to my own Heartkin.

“You must like CornNuts.” A quick flutter of a glance from under her long blond-brown lashes. Her hands kept working, bagging everything. “I see you getting them all the time.”

She was talking to me.

My brain went absolutely fucking blank. “Um,” I managed. “Yeah. Like ’em a lot.”

Her smile widened a bit. The tips of her two front teeth showed, very white. “I could never eat them. They make my teeth hurt.”

It’s real fun when you spit ’em at pigeons. Knock ’em right on their little heads; you can feed yourself that way for a while if you’re awful poor. You can even spit a CornNut right through them if you get it going fast enough. “You can just suck on ’em until they’re soft,” I mumbled, and blushed when her eyebrows went up a little. Her smile hovered between genuine and embarrassed for a half second, and a round of cursing went off inside my head.

“Maybe I’ll give that a try,” she finally said. Uncomfortable silence bloomed between us.

She took the cash, her skin brushing mine. “Is it still raining out there?”

So soft and warm. They don’t feel hard and cold like us. No, they’re soft and pink and perfect. Especially her. “Pouring.” It was raining as if it wanted to drown the city, in fact.

“Well, you’ve got towels.” She grinned, but I only caught the very beginning of her smile because I had to look down in a hurry or I might’ve grinned back, and a crooked yellow picket fence of teeth is not something she’d want to see. “All right, there you go. You always have exact change. It’s nice.”

Because I have to. Any gargoyle does; it’s a compulsion. Once a gargoyle gets a hoard, we like counting exact change. Each penny is taken from muggers or other Bad People. But that’s no reason to waste it, and the count makes us irrationally happy.

Plus, you have to pay in cash when you don’t have a real name or a social security number.

My pulse was pounding so hard. Was I going to have an attack right here? Heart, I hoped not. I muttered something and took my bag, almost tripped in my hurry to get out. I left her standing there in the glare, and it wasn’t until I got outside that I realized I wasn’t having a cardiac arrest or a reaction. I was just stupid.

I loitered outside under the awning for a little while, breathing deep lungfuls of wet, smog-laden air. The cars all hunched their shoulders and turned their backs to the storm, wet metal and rubber moving only under protest. I hung around near the end of the covered section, waiting to see if the rain would slacken. It probably wouldn’t until I was halfway home no matter how long I waited, that’s just my luck.

Besides, about ten minutes after, Kate came out through the sighing automatic doors. She walked straight out into the rain, her thin denim jacket completely inadequate for the weather, and I saw that one of her sneaker soles was flapping a little at the heel.

The sight of the heel rubber sticking to the wet ground, then flopping as she lifted her foot, made something inside my chest hurt. I guess they didn’t pay her enough to buy a new pair, even at EvilMart prices. She hunched her shoulders and hurried.

Who was I kidding? I followed her, drifting behind and staying on a parallel course as if I were looking for my own car. I’d done it every night I’d come in for the past month. She had a rusted-down blue Chevy Caprice, and I usually made sure she got in and it started before I faded into the shadows.

Hey, it’s a dangerous world. If there’s not the Big Bad out stalking, there’s other bad waiting right around the corner. Sometimes it’s Evil with a capital E. Other times it’s grim luck, predators, accident, or just plain human foulness.

I swung my bag a little as I walked, kept her in my peripheral vision. She parked way the hell out in the farthest regions of the lot—I guess EvilMart doesn’t want the employees snuggling up to the store.

Kate walked with her head down, her steps slowing as she got out near her car. She looked nervous, and I wasn’t sure but I thought she was shaking. It was certainly cold enough. Even I was a bit chilled, and stoneskin don’t feel it the way the soft pink ones do. She jangled her keys slightly, sweet music.

The lights were out here in the corner of the lot. That was the first wrong thing. The next was the thickness in the rainy air, like rancid soup. Last was the shadows crowding around, and the red pinprick lamps of eyes blinking on and off.

What the hell? I dropped my plastic bags and my trueform shredded out through the mask of disguise. There went another cheap pair of canvas shoes—my real feet tore out through them, claws spreading lightly on concrete. My legs burned a little as I crouched, gathering myself. The darkness reached down from the sky to touch the ground in a thick, wet curtain.

The Big Bad likes to take its victims in the dark. So Heartkin have infrared and other ways of seeing. She was like a lamp, heat and life shining along my skin, and for a moment it was so bright I was confused but already committed to my leap.

The thing after her was a kolthulu. I hit in the middle of the nest of rubbery, snakelike tentacles. They’re lined with dry hairy suckers that can strip flesh off bone, but that’s no match for gargoyle skin. They give reluctantly under claws, so just brute force is needed to tear the things apart. There was Kate screaming, but I wasn’t worried about that just yet because it was a terror sound, not a pain sound. And who wouldn’t be terrified in the dark with the sounds of ripping and crunching all around?

The kind of light she was giving off didn’t cast shadows, so it was a type of blindness all over me. My coat flapped; I dug my hind claws into concrete that gave like butter and pulled. The heartstring of the beast ripped out with a sound of gristle tearing from bone, and the screaming didn’t diminish as the tentacles lost their will and life, and became just twitching meat.

There were other sounds, too. Soft sliding sounds, and her voice choked off hard.

Where there’s kolthulu, there’s always bloodsuckers, too. I whirled, the battlefield drenched with directionless illumination that didn’t come in through the regular visual spectrum. The Heart in me gave a single loud knock against my meat and bone, thrilling up into hypersonic, and I tore through their hard, thin bodies. They were clustered around her, and the not-light of her dimmed and faltered.

Holy shit. It was only then I realized what was happening.

They were clustering her, and a soft sucking sound echoed against wet pavement and the dark curtain holding the world away. The not-light dimmed even further, infrared taking up the slack in a deep crimson haze. Six of them, one of me, bad odds when I could smell coppery blood.

But bad odds aren’t something that worries a gargoyle. The Heart always wins, that’s what we say. Even if I fell here, others of my kin would get these things. I’d go into the Heart and come back stronger and better.

Or so they said. I didn’t want to put it to the test.

Metal crunched as I flung one of them. A car alarm went off, the sound knifing through the other din that I ignored because it wasn’t the screaming. The screaming had stopped, and that was a bad sign. A snap of greenstick neck-breaking, and the three remaining bloodsuckers fled, one of them limping badly and hissing in their weird piping tongue. They can’t talk right when their teeth are out, the little idiots.

The darkness fled with them, the Big Bad picking up its toys and going home. I stood, half snarling, stone flexing over my skin and the strength of the Heart thudding underneath it. Regular sight returned, and I looked down.

Kate lay sprawled on the wet concrete, rain beading on her pale skin. One of them had ripped her shirt open, and there were her breasts in a cheap black-lace bra.

Hey, I looked. I might be ugly, but I’m not dead.

“Oh, shit,” I said. My ears tingled, and I stared at her chest. There on the pale slope of her left breast, a sinuous fleur-de-lis curved. The lines were sharp black, as if they’d been inked by a master. But it wasn’t a tattoo. It ran with its own odd light, a dark fluorescence human eyes wouldn’t see.

She was a Heart candidate.

And I heard running feet and shouts behind me, as black-looking blood mixed with rain and threaded down from the puncture wounds in her throat. She was bleeding. She was a candidate, and she’d been bitten with a gargoyle right next to her, and there were people coming.

It was a moment’s work to scoop her up and cradle her close. Her purse fell free, its patent-leather strap broken, and her jacket was in shreds. The sole of her sneaker had been almost torn off. Her sharp chin tipped back, the blood on her skin doing funny things to the inside of my head.

“Jesus!” someone yelled, and I compressed myself like a spring, ready to leap. Situation: One parking lot, people beginning to cluster now that the excitement was over and the cloaking darkness was worn away. One gargoyle, shifted fully into stoneskin and hulking inside his raincoat, his hat knocked off and his hair unraveling away from high-pointed ears. One mortal woman, bleeding from a vampire bite. Her car was a shattered hulk of metal and glass, and just before I sprang I heard sirens in the distance.

Wow, someone actually called the cops this once? Figures.

The world turned underneath me. There was a scream as I vaulted over the heads of the gathering crowd, a sound of effort like grinding boulders escaping me, muscles and bone working overtime. I bounded like a springheel jack, Kate’s unconscious head bouncing against my shoulder, and all I could think of was that she might get a concussion if she hit her head on me too hard.

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.

The automatic doors didn’t open, so I busted through. Glass tinkled, shattered, and flew. I was moving almost too fast for human eyes to track, and all that mass moving so quickly means it’s hard to slow down or stop. My claws dug huge furrows in the flooring as I bounded into the store and had to twist to avoid smooshing some of the pinks who were running around.

Oh, great. Just great.

Harpies.

There were four of them. EvilMarts are built so warehouse-high, the feathered bitches could even skim the tops of aisles. They were circling, looking for something. And there were a bunch of little gray gneevil-gnomes with AK-47s.

Heart have mercy, it’s an invasion! I squashed one gneevil by landing on him, spun and leapt, and my nose tingled. Good luck finding Kate in all this—but I had to find her, and the Heart inside me told me she was here.

Well, best way is the most direct way. The Heart in me pulled, and I followed it, building up every iota of speed I could. One of the nice things about being stoneskin: Walls don’t hold up to us. Stone we can whisper aside. Steel struts? They break. And drywall? Don’t make me laugh.

One of the harpies let out a chilling scream. It’d seen me. The sound shattered glass, and one of the aisles exploded. Dish soap, laundry soap, cleaning products spilled out in a tide. I was going fast enough it didn’t matter, claws ground into the flooring as I uncoiled and flew, wind whistling in my ears and bullets spattering behind me.

The wall crumpled like paper. I blew through it and landed in something that looked like a conference room, a long table and a wall with a whiteboard and sheets of fluttering paper tacked to it. Chairs spun as I cracked right through the cheap-ass table. I skidded through another wall and found a break room. The impact broke the coffeepot, hurling it across the room, and the Heart in me sent a ringing thrill through every inch of nerve and meat I owned.

There was a group of screaming pinks cowering in the break room. Drywall dust filled the air. I coughed, digging my hind claws in, and jolted to a stop.

Kate wasn’t screaming. She stood in the middle of them, mouth ajar and eyes wide, staring at me. She clutched her broken purse to her chest. She also wore one of my hooded sweatshirt jackets, zipped up to the very top and absurdly big on her. Her hair, long and loose, fluttered on the breeze from me busting through the wall. I opened my mouth to say something right before one of the harpies plowed through the hole I’d made and things got interesting.

I hate harpies. They smell horrible. When you rip ’em apart, they screech so bad it makes your ears want to bleed. They aren’t that bad if they’re grounded, though. And then there was just Kate to worry about—grabbing her and getting her away from the gnomes with guns.

THE packet was delivered—fake ID for both of us; I got the sensitized filmstrip on the picture ID to look like her with just a little rearranging. Plane tickets and a wad of cash for supplies I didn’t have enough time to buy. We just barely made the flight, and Kate was still in jeans and my sweatshirt jacket. We’d stopped for ten minutes we couldn’t afford in the airport; I bought a handful of clothes in a size that looked like it might fit her and stowed the bag in the overhead compartment. The flight attendant wanted to do it, but I mumbled something and Kate just dropped into the seat near the window. The attendant gave me a dark look and left.

Kate was still trying to process everything, and there was drywall dust in her hair. Air France has really nice first-class cabins.

They spare no expense when bringing in a Heart candidate.

So we had a space all to ourselves, and the attendants fussed over her right before takeoff. Me they just looked nervously at.

I buckled her seatbelt. “Bienvenue à Air France!” the intercom chirped brightly, and I didn’t let out a breath until the doors had closed and the plane started making its getting-ready-to-go sounds. The seat was wide and deep, and she wasn’t even scratched. Just that drywall, and glassy-eyed shock.

“Thank God,” I finally muttered. “You want a drink?”

Color flooded her cheeks again. She hunched her shoulders, darted me a mistrustful glance. “Christ, yes.”

“What’ll you have?”

“Vodka.” Her throat moved as she swallowed. The two little punctures were fully healed now. Gargoyle spit and garlic works wonders. She blinked at me like she was trying to get dust out of her eyes. “What the hell.”

“Got it.”

We didn’t have to wait long. The stews come around a lot in first class. She got a vodka with cranberry juice; I decided a Jack Daniels was in order. As soon as the attendant had finished pouring mine, Kate asked for another. The attendant gave her a weird look, but I palmed up a tenner and she ended up leaving us two vodka and cranberries, visibly hoping we weren’t going to be trouble.

“Just don’t get drunk,” I cautioned.

“Why the hell not?” She laughed, a bitter little sound. The seats around us were empty; I’d bet the Sanctum had bought them, too, just to give us some privacy. “What the hell is going on? What the fuck are you?”

I winced. “I’m a gargoyle. Stoneskin. We serve the Heart.”

“Gargoyle. Okay. Got that. What were those . . . those other things?” She took down another vodka with remarkable aplomb. I doubted she even tasted it, she tossed it so far back.

“Well, there was a kolthulu. And some suckmonkeys. And harpies—those were the red and green flying bird things. And—”

“The things with guns? What about those?”

“I’m getting to those. Those were gneevil-gnomes.”

“Gnomes. Okay.” She eyed the third vodka. “This is so Twilight Zone. It has something to do with that scar, doesn’t it?” Her right hand made a furtive little movement toward her chest. She put it back down.

“The mark? Kind of. Sometimes people come back . . . special.” I sipped at my whiskey. At least in first class they don’t water your drinks. “I’m taking you to Paris, to the Heart. You’ll be safe there.”

And boy, it was my day to lie with a straight face.

“Since the . . . the accident, I’ve been seeing things. All sorts of things. You’re the first thing that hasn’t tried to eat me or scared me so bad I wanted to pee myself.” Her fingers played with the glass. “I’m sorry.”

She was sorry? I closed my lips over a laugh and hunched my shoulders. When I could talk without wanting to spill the truth out, I took a deep breath. “Been seeing things, huh? Weird lights?”

“Yeah. Around people, and sometimes plants. Living things. And sometimes the lights will go out wherever I am, and—what are those things, anyway? Those things after me?”

“They’re all part of the Big Bad. They’re predators, and sometimes just outright evil. See, the Big Bad is in rebellion against the Heart of All Things. There was a war, back before humans came around, and—”

“Never mind.” She picked up the third vodka and poured it down. Set the cup down, and the flight attendant came through to pick things up before takeoff. The plane started moving. “I don’t really want to know.”

“Fair enough. Just . . . Kate . . .”

She flinched as if I’d tried to hit her. It was the first time I’d said her name out loud. I tried again. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m here to protect you.” At least until we get to the Source. And then . . . I couldn’t think about it.

“Great.” She let out a short, chopped-up sigh. “Why is this happening to me?”

“I don’t know how the Heart chooses.” I wish I did. Maybe then I could’ve stayed away from you. Just looking at her hair and her sweet, aristocratic profile made both hearts inside me quiver. Why did she have to be so—“I’m sorry. You want something to eat?”

“You don’t have any CornNuts on you, do you?” It was a weak attempt at humor, and it hurt me way down deep inside.

See, I’m stone. I’m hard to hurt and pretty impossible to kill unless you know what you’re doing and you’re damn lucky. I was hatched and brought up in a stoneskin-only orphanage and sent out to make my way after they trained me and made me tough.

She wasn’t. She was soft and smooth and vulnerable. Fragile, even. It don’t cost me anything to be brave.

Oh, shit. Heart have mercy.

And here I was carrying her toward doom.

“Nope.” I felt about as tall as a runt gneevil-gnome.

“Well, damn.” She was still trying. “They were trying to kill me, those things?”

“Yeah.”

“And you saved my life.” It wasn’t a question.

The plane accelerated. It made the sharp turn to set itself up for the runway. I rubbed one of the soles of my cheap canvas shoes on the top of the other shoe. “Yeah.”

“Thank you.” She paused. “Do you have a name?”

“Uh, no. Don’t get one.” Got a control number and a smell and a territory, but no name. Called me Curly at school. I’d probably die if she ever called me that.

“You don’t even have a name? Jesus.”

I tried not to feel even smaller. “Sorry.”

“Me, too,” she said, and closed her eyes. The plane accelerated toward takeoff. She gripped her armrests, her knuckles turning white.

It was gonna be a long flight.

EIGHT hours and some change later, we landed in Paris. The jeans I’d bought her didn’t fit, but the red sweater did, and I guess she was probably happy to get out of my jacket. It was raining here, too, so she kept the sweatshirt jacket anyway and zipped it up over the sweater. She was still in her beaten-up, heel-flapping sneakers, too. One of them was still shredded, just barely held together by the duct tape I’d applied.

It was enough to hurt the Heart itself to see. We were ushered into a VIP lounge, and another stoneskin met us—one of the Inners. He had a fedora on, a long coat covered in raindrops, boots, gloves, and long dark hair that looked shiny and clean, hiding his face. A glitter of eyes deep under the brim of the hat passed over her, over me, and then winked out briefly before returning. “Well, hello. You must be the candidate.” He didn’t offer his hand, but he did bow a little. His hair swung. “I hope your flight was pleasant?”

A muted announcement in French came through the lounge speakers. Kate stared at the Inner like he’d just asked her to take her own head off. She clutched her broken purse to her chest.

I cleared my throat. “I brought her. I, uh, hope—”

“You’re to come along.” His voice was actually pleasant and smooth. Not like my gravel-rasp.

Well, the Inners. What can I say? They’re blessed.

“Oh, I . . . Gee.” I actually floundered.

“Come along, we shouldn’t linger.” He made a quick movement and turned on his heel. Kate actually glanced at me, like she was looking for directions.

Oh, hell. “It’s okay,” I lied, awkwardly. Through the wall of glass all along one side of the first-class lounge came foggy Paris light. I swear I could feel the Heart—the Heart, the big one—throbbing behind each little droplet in the mist, singing to the sun even through the rain and mist. “We’ll go together.”

She gave me the same tight smile she’d given me each time I walked up to her checkout line. Now I wondered how much of that smile was seeing under the mask of my human seeming. She hadn’t even asked about my claws or the ears or the way I’d fought us both free of the gnomes and harpies.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “If you’re going, too, I guess it’s all right.”

My heart tolled like a bell inside my ribs, and then it fell with a sick splash to somewhere around my toes. Or even deeper.

I was doomed.

WHAT can I say about the Sanctum? Well, it’s green and it’s quiet. Heartlight bathes everything, and during the day it’s easiest to get to if you stand where the glow of the north rose window of the most famous cathedral in the world should be . . . and step sideways. It’s not a step you can take physically. I offered my arm to Kate as the Inner stood watching us from the edge of the glow.

Kate put her hand through it and her tight smile didn’t waver. I stepped, she came with me, and the light burst over us.

“Oh.” She sounded shocked.

I didn’t blame her.

No matter where you step from, the Sanctum always starts you in the same place: a quiet garden full of golden light and the cloaked and hooded forms of the Inners gliding around. One of them approached us, and Kate clutched hard at my arm. “Oh,” she said again.

“It’s a bit much the first time,” our guide said. He’d stepped through right after us and crowded us forward. “If you’ll come this way, miss. Brother, Jean-Michel will show you your quarters. We’ll meet at nightfall.”

She didn’t want to let go. “Jesus—please, no—”

Smart girl. I loosened her fingers from my arm, gently. Very gently, because her bones could break before I squeezed hard. “Kate. Please. Go with him. It’ll be fine.”

“How come they get names and you don’t?” She looked up at me. “And they’re so bright.”

“You’ll get used to it.” The lie was ashes in my mouth. “They get names because they’re Inners. They’ve brought Heart candidates in. Like you.” And they get the beauty and the name.

“So—” She still didn’t want to let go. “You’re coming back, right?”

“Yeah.” I tried to sound reassuring. “Just go with him, Kate. Please.”

“Okay.” She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, and stepped away. “Okay.”

God, that hurt, too. I watched as the guide took her away. Her hair lit up in the Heartlight, pure spun gold. She wasn’t walking like it hurt anymore, and I hoped the first thing they’d do was give her new shoes. You don’t have to wear them in the Sanctum, it’s warm and springtime there always . . . but that flapping heel, my Heart.

My chest was full of lava. It was a struggle to keep my ugly face impassive. Jean-Michel, cloaked in gray with his hood drawn up and shadowing his face, sighed. His gloved hands folded together. “That’s the hardest part, isn’t it?” His voice was just as musical as the guide’s. “Don’t worry, brother. It will all be well.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “Sure. What am I supposed to do?”

“Now you come with me. You bathe.” He paused for the briefest of moments. “And you choose your knife.”

THEY left me alone in a pretty, open suite that glowed with Heartlight, falling with the sunlight through the open spaces that passed for windows here. There’s no need for glass when it’s always balmy. I don’t think I’ve scrubbed behind my ears that hard since the orphanage.

So all that afternoon I sat in the window, looked out on yet another garden, and turned the obsidian knife in my hands.

They’ve got all kinds—kukris and daggers and diver’s knives and even butcher knives. Hilts of every description. But the metal all reminded me of that thin thread of gold—the broken necklace that even now I had in my other fist. My hands were wide and blunt, and as soon as I saw the rock knives—flint, obsidian, bloodstone, you name it—my fingers tingled.

What are you thinking?

This was the Sanctum. It was green and perfect, and it smelled sweet, and the Inners didn’t move with that lurching awkwardness that shouts gargoyle. They’d all made their tithe and Tiend, and the Heart had taken their candidates, and they were here to serve. They got to bathe in Heartlight every day.

They had names. The thing every gargoyle wants, a name of his very own.

But dammit, Kate. Kate.

I tipped my head back, bonked it gently on the window frame behind me. The frame was pure stone.

There was an Inner at my door. A guard. I wondered how many gargoyles considered something stupid when they brought their Heart candidate here. All of them? Just me? There wouldn’t be a guard if none of them did. Or was he there because I might need something? Like a good pep talk?

Like a reminder of why we did this? The Heart must feed. It fights the Big Bad; it powers all of us, gives us pieces of itself that grant us the stoneskin trueform. It even gives us names. True names, ones that don’t fade. None of that comes cheap.

But . . . Kate.

I had my feet outside the window before I thought of it. Pulled them back in.

What was I thinking? I was still damp from my bath, tingling from the Heartlight, and in a gray robe and cloak with a big, deep hood. I would still shamble, though. I couldn’t move gracefully at all. And I would have to keep my hands hidden. They all wear gloves.

Kate. She had a name. She probably took it for granted, too.

Where would they have her? If I had to guess . . .

I didn’t have to guess. The entire Sanctum was ablaze with expectation, the Heart’s singing to one of its own. I could just follow it to find her. Or I could follow the ringing pull from the necklace in my fingers.

Or I could just sit here until they came to get me. I could do what I had to and get a name. I could be beautiful.

Kate.

I slipped the obsidian knife up my sleeve, pushed my feet out the window, and landed on garden loam.

THE door was wide, and old, oak bound with scarred iron pulsing with life. I put my hand on it and the iron zinged, singing in a high carbon whine. It creaked a little as it opened, and I peeked in.

The chapel was long and narrow. At the very end the stone rose like a wave, shaping itself into an altar draped with crimson velvet and pillows. I pushed my hood back. It fell away from my ears and I could breathe again.

Kate lay there, very still. The walls throbbed. It was deep down and close to the Heart. The beats were a melody the Heart inside me echoed. It was hard to keep everything human-sized and inside. The trueform just kept wanting to bust out.

The corridors had been sleepy and deserted. I’d done my best to glide and managed not to lurch too much. The necklace quivered in my aching fist. I’d wrapped it around the leather-wrapped hilt of the obsidian knife and pulled both up inside my sleeves.

They’d put her in a red dress. It was beautiful. She was beautiful, in a way I’d never be. Her arm was over her eyes and her hair spread out over the pillows.

God and Heart both forgive me. I pulled the door shut behind me as quietly as I could. My whisper boomed against the walls. “Kate?”

She stirred a little. Her arm moved.

“Kate. Wake up.” What if they’d drugged her?

This was a fine time to start changing my mind. I’d done my duty all my life. But this . . .

Being in the Heartlight makes you think about things a little differently, I guess. Or maybe it was the way she’d clutched at my arm. Maybe it was the way she’d looked when she asked me why they got names and I didn’t.

Maybe it was because no matter how many times I made an excuse to stand in her checkout line for a pack of gum, she always smiled at me. Or because . . .

Oh, hell and damnation. I would rather be ugly on the outside than ugly all the way through.

“Kate?” I whispered again, more urgently. The chapel floor was carved with fleur-de-lis, all circled, all tangled together. I stepped on them without mercy as I lurched toward the altar. They dug into my feet, sharp sliding edges. “Heart and Hell, Kate, wake up. Please.”

Her arm slid away from her face. She blinked, and the chapel walls resounded with a gong-struck quivering. I made it to the altar as the stone whispered away between fan vaulting, the Inners appearing in the leaf-shaped doorways.

Had they just been here, waiting for me?

“Shit.” I reached the altar and my human form shredded away. I whirled, my back to Kate, who let out a high whistling scream. The Heart thudded, and its light drenched us all with crystal clarity.

The Inners moved forward, and they each had their own knives. Their hoods covered their faces, but their eyes gleamed from the darkness underneath.

“The Heart demands,” one intoned, in a deep, beautiful bell-voice.

“The Heart demands!” the others answered, in chorus.

Kate screamed again. It was a lonely, despairing sound.

I put my feet down, dug my claws in. “Stay back!” I yelled. The harsh note cut across their singing, a blot on their beauty.

I should have never brought her here. Too late now.

They drew closer. They didn’t pay any attention to my warning, and both hearts inside my skin stopped beating.

Everything grew still. And I made up my mind. Too little too late, but I did it. I decided, and everything inside me fell into place.

I set the point of the obsidian knife against my chest. Oh, my Heart. Kate. I’m sorry.

They wouldn’t hurt her if the Heart received its tithe. That was the Tiend—the payment of a heart.

They were almost close enough to spring. I knew that even though they were in robes, they were still gargoyles. I knew their strength and speed because I knew my own. Kate grabbed at my shoulders. She was shouting something. I couldn’t hear her through the noise of my heart and my Heart crashing in my ears.

The Heart spoke to me.

And I shoved the knife in hard, piercing both Heart and heart. It’s not that difficult if you know where to press. If you’re determined, and if you can hit one of us when we’re flesh and not stone. Or flesh in just one vulnerable place.

The Heartlight dimmed.

And my hearts . . . stopped.

IT felt like I’d been dropped in broken glass, rolled around, then dipped in acid and pulled apart. My head pounded. Everything seemed put together wrong.

Oh, shit. Didn’t I die?

There was a blurry light. Silvery and cool. Something warm stroking my forehead. It felt good.

“I think he’s coming around,” she whispered.

My eyes opened slowly. “Kate?” I croaked.

Behind her was stone ribbing. It was the same room I’d been in all afternoon. No sunlight, though. This was pure Heartlight, and the pulse in the walls was soft and satisfied.

“I’m here.” She touched my cheek. Smiling. She was smiling. “Hey.”

“Welcome back.” This was from our guide. He’d pushed his hood back, and I stared at him in wonderment.

Smooth skin. Regular nose, low wide cheekbones, blue eyes. He wouldn’t win any prizes, but he wasn’t a squashed-together linebacker with pitted skin and picket fence teeth.

He was unquestionably gargoyle, though. His ears came up to points and I could sense the Heart in him, echoing the beat in the walls.

“What the . . . ?” It was the best I could manage.

“Congratulations.” He pushed his long, straight dark hair back behind one ear. “You passed the test. You’re an Inner now. You can stay here, or you can go out into the world and do the same kind of work you did before. With your Heart.” He glanced at Kate, who was still in the same red dress. It was satin, and my God but her va-va-vooms looked even . . . well, voomier.

“Huh?” I blinked. Kate stroked my cheek again.

“They told me you wouldn’t hurt me.” Her smile was a little less tired now. The dress was cut low enough that I could see the upper edge of the mark on her left breast, running with its dark fluorescence. “All I had to do was scream. No big deal, I’ve done a lot of that lately.”

“I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.” Our guide nodded smartly. “Brother. Miss Katherine.”

“What the hell?” I still sounded lost. Everything hurt, but the hurt was receding. “The Heart—”

“The Heart has had its tithe.” The guide nodded, once. “You fulfilled the Tiend. Rest.”

And with that, he swept out the door. It closed softly, and I stared up at Kate. I stared at her so long she shrugged, defensively.

“This is all weird as fuck.” Her shoulders hunched. “But it’s better than checking at EvilMart.”

“He looks . . .”

“Not so bad, huh? You’re much better.” Her grin lit up her entire face. “They explained everything. Well, mostly everything. You did what you were supposed to do, and now you’re free.”

“I thought I was dead.” The weakness retreated. I pushed myself up on my elbows and lifted my hand.

The fingers were still callused and strong, but they weren’t gray and gnarled. And when I touched my own face I didn’t find craters. I found smooth skin and stubble, and my nose wasn’t a squashed mushroom. My tongue ran over my teeth, and the familiar geography inside my mouth was different. If I looked in a mirror, I probably wouldn’t see yellowed picket-fence teeth. I’d see straight white pearls.

I was in a stranger’s body.

“I kind of figured you had a crush on me.” Kate sat back on a low stool. There was a mirror across the room, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to look in it. Outside the window, the garden drowsed under gentle silver Heartlight. The smell of jasmine smoked in through the window. “I mean, all those CornNuts.”

“I’m not ugly?” I sounded about five years old.

“You never were.” She folded her arms. “But we’ve got to work on our communication. And what do I call you, anyway? Didn’t you ever give yourself a name?”

I stared at her fish-mouthed for a while until she broke up laughing. It was a nice sound, and the smile that cracked over my disbelieving alien face felt like sunshine.

“Call me what you want,” I mumbled, and that broke her up all over again. I settled back into the bed and stared at her. It was like waking up Christmas all over. “I’m not ugly?”

“You never were ugly. Ever.” She moved as if she were going to get up, and I flung out a hand to stop her.

A stranger’s hand. “Please. Kate. I’m sorry, I—”

She sank back down and stared at me. We looked at each other for a long time. “You mean you’re sorry for bringing me here, when you thought I was going to be a human sacrifice?”

My neck felt like rusted metal when I nodded. My hair moved on the pillow.

She nodded, golden hair falling in her eyes. She looked very solemn, and the Heart inside me—it was still there, ticking along as if I hadn’t shoved a knife in it—turned over. If I could have torn it out and given it to her, I would have.

Because it had been hers all along, hadn’t it?

“Yeah.” She settled back down on the stool. “It’s still better than checking at EvilMart. Just relax, for now. We’ll have to think up a name for you, they say. And they say we can go wherever we want, that you’ve got a vacation you didn’t go on.”

My throat refused to work right for a few seconds. Then I got the words out.

“How do you feel about Bermuda?”