Death's Excellent Vacation (27 page)

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.”