Cronin's Key III (22 page)

No one was laughing now.

“
A stone gargoyle that has
come to life can be killed by any means necessary,” Alec explained.
“Smashing it to dust would be my preferred choice.”

“
Are you
truly
expecting the Zoan to come to America?” someone else
asked.

Alec took a deep breath before
answering. “Yes.”

A hum of
whispers spread through the warehouse, then one voice from the back
of the warehouse said, “Alec, Elders, I think they’re already
here.”

Silence
boomed through the warehouse, and the sea of vampires opened up to
the vampire that had spoken. A pretty woman, late twenties, with
dark skin and a white coat came forward. “Yvette Gates,
Pennsylvania,” she introduced herself with a nod. “There was a news
report earlier tonight, though they called it a hoax after the
gargoyles in Paris. The famous gargoyles that guard the Eastern
State Penitentiary, well, they’re gone.”

Alec saw the news segment play through Yvette’s memory. The
huge stone gargoyles were indeed no longer perched at the entrance
gates
. The chains that
tethered them to their stone pillars were snapped. Alec looked to
Cronin, then to Eiji and Kennard and Benito. “It’s no
hoax.”

“
We should go there,” Eiji said. He put his hands on the
crosses in his thigh holsters but didn’t draw them
out.

Before Alec could answer him, Yvette said, “The police
are
calling it a hoax, but
they’re all over it. They’re not letting on what’s really
happened.”

“
The police
,” Alec
mumbled. His gaze shot to Cronin and he held out his hand for him
to hold. Then he looked at Eiji. “We’re going. But not to the
penitentiary.” Alec turned to the coven of vampires. “If anyone
hears or sees anything, you must contact us. But please, stay
aware, and be safe.”

“
Where are we going?”
Kennard asked.

Alec smiled. “To see some old friends
of mine.”

* * * *

The
Thirty-third
Precinct hadn’t changed at all. It was close to midnight, so some
desks were empty, and given Alec had always worked the nightshift,
it looked exactly the same as when he’d left it.

Which,
admittedly,
had left his police colleagues—and the rest of the world—reeling at
the sight of two men disappearing into thin air. Having five men
suddenly appear in the middle of the department floor had a similar
effect.

One cop spilled his coffee down the front of
himself
. One threw a file
into the air in shock. Most all of them took several reflexive
steps back, and in the next second raised and aimed their guns at
them.

Alec smiled.
“Oh, the déjà
vu.”

In no time they were completely surrounded by NYPD. They
kept their distance a safe few feet back
from a room full of familiar faces, now pale and
afraid. “Alec MacAidan, you are under arrest,” one detective
said.

Alec snorted
out a laugh. “I don’t think so, Patel.” He waved his hand and their
guns all dropped to the floor with a clatter and cries of shock
from some of the officers. Alec ignored them. “Where’s De
Angelo?”

Some cops fumbled to pick up their weapons with shaking
hands
; some walked backwards
in fear. Alec sneered at them, his ex-colleagues who had made fun
of him for years for being the one that weird-shit happened to.
“Who’s laughing at who now?” he whispered.

Eiji did in fact laugh at that, and
the policemen closest to Eiji all moved back a few more
steps.

One of the
detectives, Steinberg, who had laughed at Alec the night he told
them he saw a man turn to dust in his arms, almost picked his gun
up. Alec put his arm out and leapt the Glock into his own hand,
making all the police officers gasp and curse in shock and fear.
Alec took two long strides to where Steinberg stood, ashen and
slack-jawed. Alec squeezed the Glock, mangling it in his hand,
handed him the bent metal, and smiled. “De Angelo?”

The door to the
captain’s office flew open, and the big man appeared in the
doorway. De Angelo looked the same, save the gray hair that now
peppered through his hair. “MacAidan,” he barked, though there was
no bite in it. He looked at Cronin, Eiji, Kennard, and Benito, then
back to Alec. “You’ve got a helluva hide coming back in
here.”

Alec smiled at him. “It’s good to see
you again too, Captain.”

De Angelo’s dark skin flushed from both anger and a dash of
fear. He was braver than Alec gave him credit for. “You’re under
arrest, MacAidan. We’ve got footage
—”

Alec cut him off with a
well-aimed glare. “Yeah, yeah. Patel’s already tried that
line. I don’t think so. We need to talk. Now.”

A young and stupid cop, one Alec didn’t know, made a lunge
at Kennard, who was standing at the back of their group. Alec put
his hand out
. “You don’t want
to do that,” Alec said, and every cop in the department froze, like
deer in headlights. Alive and awake, but docile: unable and
unwilling to move.

De Angelo remained unaffected and
stumbled back a step. “Wh-wh-what did you do?”

“
I saved them from being hurt,” Alec replied. What Alec
didn’t say was if anyone tried to hurt any of his friends, he’d
cheerfully kill them where they stood. “Captain, we need to talk
about what’s going on.”

De Angelo nodded, and Alec could feel the captain’s fear
now.
Good
, Alec thought. He’d never really gotten off on
the whole scary-vampire thing, but sometimes a healthy dose of fear
really drove a point home.

De Angelo walked woodenly back to his desk and sat in his
chair like he was expecting
every breath to be his last; sweat beaded his brow. Alec
sat across from him in a chair he’d sat in many times and smiled.
“The gargoyles coming to life in Paris was not a hoax or an act of
computer imagery. The footage of us appearing and disappearing on
the street near the River Seine was as real as us appearing in the
middle of the department floor a minute ago, as real as when I
disappeared from here a year and a half ago.”

De Angelo glanced at Cronin.
With him.

“
Yes, with him,” Alec
said.

De Angelo’s eyes almost bugged out of his head.
He can hear my thoughts….

“
Among a good many other things,” Alec said, and De Angelo’s
mind spun. Alec snapped his fingers, bringing De Angelo back to his
senses. “The news report of the Eastern State Penitentiary….” Alec
trailed off, allowing De Angelo to fill in the blanks.

“
The uh, there was um.” De Angelo cleared his throat. “You
don’t have clearance for that information.”

Alec snorted. “You don’t have clearance for knowing we
exist, yet here we are. We’re playing nice. I wanted to help,
Captain,” Alec said. His tone was ice cold. “Okay, so let me tell
you what I know. The gargoyles at the penitentiary were not stolen.
They are in fact creatures that call themselves Zoan. Think
lycan. You’ve seen those
Underworld
movies, right?”

De Angelo nodded mechanically and
swallowed hard.

“
Well, kinda like that,” Alec went on. “Only different. They
were turned to stone and mounted at the gates as a warning. Why
they came to life and broke free is the tricky part. I won’t bother
explaining the whole circle, portal, hole-in-the-universe theory,
only that if those gargoyles came to life in Pennsylvania then
chances are the same will happen here in New York. They have
threatened this city. And you need to be ready for
that.”

De Angelo blinked
,
his mind was scrambling.

“
The stone creatures can be killed easily enough,” Alec
said. “Smash ’em with a hammer if you have to. Shoot ’em. Whatever
works. It’s the not-stone ones you need to be careful of. They’re
big, dangerous, breathe fire. That kind of thing.”

“
Breathe fire?” De Angelo
whispered.

“
Yep. You following?” Alec asked. “They can also stop time.”
Alec wondered how he could explain that without sounding
ridiculous, realized he couldn’t, so he just kept going. “So,
technically speaking, they can just freeze everything and you’ll be
none the wiser… and probably dead. In which case, this has been a
waste of time. But on the off chance that they don’t stop time or
you do survive, you’ll need to notify the entire NYPD on how to
take them down.”

De Angelo’s brain was having trouble keeping up. Alec
reasoned that it was a lot to take in, so he gave him a moment. He
then put a
wooden cross on De
Angelo’s desk. “A cross, not a stake,
a cross
speared
through the chest will do it. Oh, and they’re not fond of
mercury.”

De Angelo blinked slowly.
“Uh.”

“
We’re gonna do our best to take them out,” Alec told him.
“But if we fail, then you’ll need to know how to keep the city
safe. You should notify the boys down at Pennsylvania. There’s been
Zoan activity there, so they should be told as well. Then possibly
the military, just to be safe.”

Cronin smiled at Alec.
Once a policeman….

Alec snorted
and smiled back at him.

“
What are they?” De Angelo
asked. “I mean, what am I supposed to say? They’ll think I’m
crazy!”

Alec glared at him then. “What? Like
you laughed at me when I told you what I saw?”

De Angelo
paled and leaned back in his chair. He looked at the five faces
staring back at him and had trouble swallowing. “Uh, about
that….”

“
Just do as I say,” Alec said. “We’ve come here in good
faith. You needed fair warning. Consider it given. Do with it what
you will.” Alec shot a look at the surveillance camera in the
corner. “Show them the footage. It wouldn’t be the first time CCTV
footage was leaked out of this office.”

De Angelo
didn’t even bite at that. “How will they come? Where?”

“
I would hazard a guess at
any of the older churches,” Alec said. “Anything that’s old and has
gargoyles. But it could be anywhere.”

Before De Angelo could reply, Eiji’s cell phone buzzed in
his pocket. He quickly put it to his ear,
listened
, and clicked off the
call. He spoke so low that the human in the room couldn’t hear.
“That was Jodis. She says they’ve found something they need to show
us right away.”

Alec stood and Cronin was quick to stand beside him.
He moved too fluidly, too quickly,
so that the crystal clear thought that ran through De Angelo’s mind
was
What are they?

Alec
turned his stare
back to De Angelo.
None of
your concern is what we are.
Then, in his mind he flashed him a fanged snarl, and De
Angelo’s breath left him in a whoosh as he recoiled in his chair.
Alec smiled in satisfaction and spoke directly into his
mind.
I’ve done the right
thing in letting you know about this, so now it’s your turn. Leave
my father alone. He’s an old man, and no amount of surveillance or
detail on him will ever lead you to me. You understand?

De Angelo nodded weakly.

“
Oh, and one more thing,” Alec said. He leaned over De
Angelo’s desk and put his index finger to the captain’s stained,
most favorite coffee cup. De Angelo’s eyes almost fell out of his
head as the cup before him changed into the colors of the rainbow.
“Just as a reminder of who I really am. You know, still
gay.”

Eiji barked
out a laugh, almost scaring De Angelo to death. Alec nodded toward
the department floor where all the cops still stood catatonic and
they burst out of their stupors. They spun looking for the
intruders and someone yelled, “The Captain!” making all officers
turn to face them through the window.

Before they could raise their guns,
Alec smiled at De Angelo. “It’s been fun.”

And they were gone.

Viviana and Jodis
were waiting by the dining table along with Jacques, Kole,
and Eleanor, while Adelmo and Jorge sat on the sofa reading a book.
Eiji was quick to give Jodis a kiss on the cheek before sliding his
arm around her waist. “What did you find, my love?”

“
I think we’ve figured out what it all means,” she said.
“Well, Viviana did. See this here
?” She pointed to a hand-drawn sketch. “This is the layout
of the Göbekli Tepe pits in Turkey, the portal these Zoan creatures
came through.”

“
And this,” Viviana added,
turning the laptop screen around so everyone could see it, “is the
planetary alignments on the day you were changed, Alec.”

Jodis held
the hand-drawn sketch over the laptop screen. “Superimposed,
they’re identical.”

“
What does that mean?”
Cronin asked.

Viviana answered
.
“See how the circles are situated for the portal to be open, we
believe it needs to be mirrored for the portal to close. Look at
Saint Peter’s drawings again.” She turned the book around on the
table so it faced them. “See how he’s mirrored it here? We assumed
it was because it made no sense to him—he didn’t even know what
planets were.”