Cronin's Key III (17 page)

Alec looked at his father for a long moment. “Yeah,” he
whispered. “As tempting as it is, we can’t stay like this.
Though I’m not sure how to
restart—”

Then Alec gasped in shock.
Like an explosion, time popped back into reality, the world
started turning again, and the five vampires were jolted from their
feet. They all staggered back a step, but Cronin reached out for
Alec. “What was it?”

“
I saw them,” he
whispered. “I can see the Zoan when time is stopped.”

Kole looked
around, scratching his head, thoroughly confused. “When time’s
what?” He looked up the street. “Where did that stone lycan go? Did
you get it?”

Alec nodded. “Yeah, Dad. We got it.”
He swallowed hard and looked right at Cronin. “I saw
them!”

Cronin gave a hard nod. “We need to
leave. We’ve had enough witnesses tonight.”

Kennard looked up at the lampposts and nodded to one.
“There are CCTV cameras here
too. They will have seen everything.”

“
Fuck,” Alec cursed. He looked at the few people who were
still in the street who hadn’t run off. With no more than a soft
breath
from Alec, the humans
all blinked in unison. “They won’t remember us,” he said. “But I
can’t do much about live video feeds.” He shook his head. “Let’s
go.”

* * * *

They arrived back in New York to find
the others oblivious to the halt in time. It
seemed to Cronin that only those vampires near Alec at the exact
moment he stopped time remained unaffected. This was a good
development, according to Jodis, and she was quick to document the
finding in her catalogues.

“
I can see the Zoan when I stop time,” Alec said.
“
When we were in that reality
in that time slip, I saw them. I couldn’t see them before, but I
did this time.”

“
A
re you becoming more
adept?” Jodis wondered. “Or has something changed?”

Alec shrugged. “I don’t
know.”

“
What did you see?”
Eleanor asked.

“
There were five
of
them,” Alec explained. “They had their cloaks pulled back and they
had no human skins. The Zoan look like lycan. Some had wings, some
didn’t.”

“
Just like gargoyles,”
Cronin said.

Alec nodded. “I’ll show you what I
saw.”

Then in
Cronin’s mind he saw them. They did look like wolves standing
upright, with grotesque features and horrific teeth and claws. They
were in a stone room, like a wet and gray cell. They seemed unaware
that Alec could see them. It was a fleeting glance, but it was
real.

“
Cárcel de piedra
,”
Jorge said.
The little boy was
excited.

Alec stared at him for a
long second. “Yes. Stone prison.”

Jodis nodded. “It did
look like a cell.”

Cronin agreed. “But can
we see where? Are they even on our time? Do they even exist in our
reality or do they cross over somehow when our time
stops?”

“
When they
stop time,” Alec said. “When they stop it, they control it. It
seems when I stop it, I control it?” He shook his head. “I don’t
know. I wish I had more answers than questions.”

“
Uh, guys?” Kennard
called out. “You might wanna come see this.” He was at the
dining table with two laptops open. “The Internet has gone
berserk.”

Alec sighed deeply. “
Yeah. There were cameras in the street,” he said for those
who weren’t there. “I failed at minimizing the human witnesses,
including surveillance, and I take full responsibility.”

“
Alec, you are not to
blame for that,” Cronin said quickly. “You saved those
people.”

“
Uh, it’s not that exactly,” Kennard added. He turned the
laptop around to face the others and pressed a video clip. There
was footage from all over Paris of stone statues, gargoyles ripping
free from their mountings and scampering down walls. There was
footage of these lycan-type gargoyles chasing people in the
darkened streets, a clip of one such creature flapping its stone
wings and breathing out a rush of fire, people running, people
screaming. Then there was more footage of all these horrifying
creatures simply falling to dust as they ran.

Alec scrubbed his hand over his face.
“Jesus Christ.”

Then finally the CCTV footage from in front of the
Musée d'Orsay. It showed the huge
stone lycan-looking creature chasing two women before six people
suddenly appeared from nowhere. It showed Alec throwing out his
hands. The footage flickered for a moment, and when it came back
on, the creature was gone, and in its place was a smoldering pile
of dust and ash. The six people who had magically appeared were
unsteady on their feet like an earthquake hit, then a moment later,
they disappeared into thin air.

The audio
to the clip
was from a French news station. “The person wanted for questioning
by police has been identified as ex-New York Detective, Alec
MacAidan. The same man who was seen on surveillance footage
eighteen months ago disappearing from a New York City police
precinct headquarters with this unidentified man, who is believed
to also be with him in Paris.” It showed a grainy image of
Cronin.

Alec growled. “Fuck.”

“
It is believed
these
two men, along with these other assailants”—the screen showed
grainy images of Eiji, Jacques, Kennard and even Kole—“are involved
with the desecration of the two hundred year old gargoyle statues
on Notre Dame and numerous others around Paris.”

Eiji growled at the screen. “They have evidence of a huge
gargoyle
that has come to
life and tries to kill people, yet they’re more concerned with the
fact Alec turned it to dust? What is wrong with the world
today?”

“
The media will twist a
story for what sells,” Alec sat flatly.

Then a man
appeared on screen. He looked homeless: disheveled, unclean, with
wild eyes. “Those men saved us all,” he said in French. “I saw
them. That creature broke from the wall. It came to life and
breathed fire. I saw it! Then the men appeared—” He opened his
hands like a flash going off. “—and the creature turned on them.
Then in a blink it was all gone!” The man looked insane. He sounded
even more so. “I’m not the only one who saw it. There were
others!”

“
I thought I got them all. I thought I erased the
lycan from their memories. I must
have missed some….” Alec sighed deeply. “I failed to keep us
secret.”

Cronin
pulled Alec by the arm so he would face him. “No, m’cridhe. You
saved those people. And countless others. What you did was damage
control. You did not set these creatures free for them to wreak
havoc. You were trying to stop it.”

Alec looked
to the floor and his shoulders sagged. “I’m still responsible.
Because of me your faces are now plastered on every wanted list.
How long do you think it will be before the police, the FBI, CIA,
or NSA find this place? They’ll track your records, freeze your
accounts.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I should have known
better.”

“
It is only money,” Cronin
replied. “And material things. They’re of little importance to
me.”

Alec looked at Cronin then. “You can
stop being so perfect now.”

Eiji snorted but he had his arm around Jodis’ waist. Cronin
didn’t need Alec’s mind reading ability to see that Eiji had been
wor
ried. For his own life,
for Jodis’, Cronin wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter. It was the
sentiment that mattered. He pulled Alec against him and kissed the
side of his head for the same reason.

“
I will have some explaining
to do at the next council meeting,” Alec murmured. “When
the world elders hear of this….”

“
They will understand,” Cronin soothed him.
“You’re not to blame.”

Alec didn’t seem convinced, but he
didn’t argue.

“
Well, at least we know
now that video surveillance doesn’t see the time shift,” Jodis
said. “The footage stopped when time did.”

Alec checked his watch. “Stopped
again.” He reset the time, but given no other vampires wore a
watch, he asked his father. “Dad. How’s your watch?”

Kole, who was now sitting on the sofa
looking a little worse for wear, checked his wristwatch. He frowned
and put it to his ear. “It’s not working.”

Cronin nodded. “Time truly did
stop.”

Alec went over and sat beside Kole on
the sofa. “You okay, Dad?”

Kole gave him a tired smile. It wasn’t even midday, yet he
looked ready for sleep. “I’m okay. How
’bout you?”

“
I’m fine. Worried about
you,” Alec said. He put his hand on his father’s knee.

“
You don’t have to do that,” Kole said. “Feels good but not
necessary.”

Alec chuckled. “I was trying to be
discreet.”

Kole laughed at that. “I’ve had aches
and pains for years, and when you do your vampire Vicodin thing,
everything goes away.”

Alec grinned now. “I can make it
permanent if you’d like? You don’t ever have to feel an ache or
pain again.”

Kole sighed
and patted Alec’s knee. “Those aches and pains are just my body’s
way of telling me to slow down, Alec. An ache every now and again
reminds me that I’m alive. My mind still thinks I’m thirty, but my
body reminds me I’m not. I’ll be sixty in the fall. I can’t be
doing that leaping thing and running through the streets of Paris
at night.”

“
I just wanted you to see
some of the world, that’s all,” Alec said. “I’m sorry, I forgot how
much leaping hurts.”

“
Don’t apologize,” Kole said.
“I had fun! Except for the whole leaping thing and
underground cave thing and the statues that moved thing and the
huge stone dog-looking thing. But the scenery was nice.”

Alec laughed despite the underlying sadness
that Cronin could see so clearly.
“Maybe next time, when all this is over, we can go somewhere
else?”

Eleanor walked out with a cup of tea for Kole. He took it
kindly, and
with a groan as
he got up, he excused himself. They went to the other living area,
to the peace and quiet, where they often sat to play chess or
talk.

Are you well, m’cridhe
?
Cronin thought
directly to Alec, knowing he would hear him.

Alec’s eyes shot to Cronin’s. He gave
a small nod. “Yeah.”

Cronin hated that Alec was struggling with his father. He
seemed to be holding the grains of sand of his life in his hands,
only to watch helplessly as
they slipped through his fingers. The harder he tried to
hold on, the more impossible it was to hold.

So Cronin told him the only thing that seemed right.
You are loved,
m’cridhe
.

Alec smiled a little shyly, looking down at his shirt.
Oblivious to their private conversation on the other side of the
room, Jacques
asked, “Why
Paris?”

Kennard opened his mouth. “Well, where shall I
start
…” but Jacques shot him
a glare. Alec laughed, obviously hearing the snide mental comments
from them both.

“
No,” Jacques started again, “why Paris exactly? Why were
there so many gargoyles in Paris? From all my studies, from my time
living there, I know of nothing.”

Eiji frowned and turned to
Jodis. “Where are there more concentrations of
gargoyles?”

“
France, Spain,” she replied. “Mostly Europe. There was
evidence of many in Russia, but they’ve been destroyed. There are
many the world over, though they mostly are, for all intents and
purposes, simply stone statues.”

Alec frowned
for a moment, thinking deeply. Then he looked up and Cronin knew
he’d come up with something. There was a light in his eyes, a
spark. “Circles. Not just my dream of the circular stone room but
also the Callanish Stones. Where I was changed. And remember at the
Göbekli pit,” he said. “There were circles. Lots of them. We
questioned their significance, their mathematical relevance, yes?”
He didn’t wait for anyone to answer. He went to a laptop and his
fingers quickly skimmed the keyboard. He turned the laptop around
so he could show everyone. On the screen was a map. “This is Notre
Dame. Here is the museum where the big gargoyle was,” he pointed to
the screen. Then he zoomed the image out. “And this is
Paris.”

“
Well, shit,” Eiji
said.

“
Of course!” Jodis
said.

And there on
the screen was a very obvious circle. Notre Dame was at the middle
of a circle of roads; Paris itself, from a distance, looked like a
circle. Alec grinned. “All of Paris looks like a freakin’
bull’s-eye.”

“
Oh,” Jacques mumbled.
“Well, that doesn’t bode well.”

“
And this is why there are gargoyles in Paris?” Kennard
asked.

“
Not just gargoyles. But
Zoan activity. The Zoan used a stone circle as a portal, yes?” Alec
clarified. “Well, Paris is one very big stone circle.”