The Old Races Read online

  More for the kinship, though, than the wakeful months. Perhaps it had been easy for Korund to leave the gestalt in the beginning. He'd had Hajnal then, so he was never alone. Perhaps near-isolation had become comfortable enough that the solitude after her death hadn't been a shock. Biali could not imagine it. Bad enough to be only one of two gargoyles in the city, even if he was the one who could and did linger in the community of minds accessible to them no matter where their physical bodies rested.

  Wind kicked up, spewing dust down one of the city's long straight streets and bringing a hint of perfume with it. Maudlin thoughts cast aside, Biali sharpened his gaze, always more acute than human vision. He had come a long way from the docks, toward the Upper East Side, where townhouses and expensive apartments sprawled behind iron gates and well-paid police patrols. He'd moved faster than the woman would have, unconstrained by streets and certainly unthreatened by passers-by. Not that a woman willing to come to the fights would feel threatened by much. He wondered again who her escort had been, how she had been granted passage through the fights at all.

  He came to earth in an alleyway north of the park, transforming before the sodden drunk amidst the garbage could focus. The man still shoved backward, disbelieving fear sobering his lined features. Biali bared his teeth and the drunk looked away, deliberately forgetting what he hadn't quite seen. The Old Races survived that way. Had for centuries. Would, if they were lucky, for centuries more, but even the unchanging gargoyles admitted in their deepest places that they were at the end, not the beginning, of their long history.

  A carriage stopped up the block from him, driver leaning out to bray, "No further, lady. Walk the rest of the way, or get somebody dumber than me to drive."

  His quarry opened the door herself, stepping down with more grace than pique, and paid the driver without speaking. He turned the carriage and drove south again, back toward wealthier streets, but the woman continued north. Toward Harlem, full of Jews and Irish and blacks. The undesirables, but she was too well-dressed, too genteel, to live rough. Biali had her scent now. He wouldn't lose her, even if he couldn't see her. It was easy to cut across a shorter block and come up a side street a few yards ahead of her.

  She did startle this time, coming to a full stop with her hands clenched warily in her skirt. But he'd come out of the darkness without warning. Any woman might shy at that. Her first impulse of fear faded as she recognized him, and surprise wrinkled her forehead. "You are the fighter."

  The fighter. Not the scarred one, the white one, the angry one. There were many descriptors she might have chosen. That she used only the one was somehow flattering. Unaccustomed to the feeling, Biali muttered "One of 'em."

  She shook her head, a motion so small it might have been taught by the Old Races. "The others, they can be said to be something else. The one you fight tonight, the Italian. That is what he is. His name, it does not matter. The men after you, they are the Irish, the German, the Spaniard. Maybe you are the German too, but no. I see in you only the fighter. It is...pure, in you. Who are you? Why is this?"

  "My name is Biali." He frowned, then shrugged, hard motion of broad shoulders. "Why is because I've got nothing to lose. You're Spanish." He'd expected her to be American, and from the South, or from Boston, where many of the freed coloreds had gone after the war.

  "Mexican," she said, but with a smile. "My mother is a don's daughter, my father a Buffalo soldier. Mi abuelito, the don, he does not approve, but he approves less of my mother being unwed with a baby girl. I have come here to see the land my papa fought for. I have left them there in the fine seaside hacienda, waiting for my return."

  There. A woman's life, the whole of her history, given up to him willingly, yet he didn't know her name, and he had already lost her. Biali bared his teeth as he'd done at the drunk, angry at an unchanging world. "You're never going home alive if you walk through Harlem alone at night."

  Her eyebrows quirked. "But I am not alone." With a gesture, she invited him to walk beside her.

  Stupefied, he caught up after several steps. Her smile was genuine, but as brief as her other expressions. "There. You see?"

  That was an almost gargoyle-like literalness. Except a gargoyle could be expected to protect herself. Most of the time. More than a human woman could, despite Hajnal's fate. Biali stole a glimpse at the woman beside him. The resemblance that had caught him initially was superficial: her eyes were more almond in shape, her nose broader, flatter than Hajnal's. Her skin tone was very close, though, and they shared a strength of jaw as well as the thick dark hair. Women like her--paler of skin, but otherwise very like Hajnal--had died recently. At least one had been acquainted with Alban Korund. "Not being alone doesn't mean you're safe."

  Amusement touched her eyes. "Am I in danger?"

  Exasperation as rich as her humor rose in Biali. It would be smart to frighten her. Instead, surprised by his own intensity, he said, "Not while I'm near."

  They walked in silence a while, the woman considering that reply before she said, "But you do not know me."

  "No."

  She nodded, continued in silence, then said, "She was so special to you, then?"

  She left him behind a second time, his footsteps ceasing to echo on quiet streets. A dozen steps before she turned, expectant, and said to his angry shock, "There are so many reasons a man might hurry across a great city to find a woman. Lust, love, loss. You do not have the eyes of a man who lusts, and you do not know me to love me. So it is loss, no? I remind you of her, and you will see me safe because of that. What was her name?"

  No one should see that clearly. No human, anyway. Nor ask such questions, either, and no gargoyle should feel pressed to answer, but the name came unbidden for the second time that night: "Hajnal."

  "Hajnal." She tasted the name, then smiled, brief and sweet. "A strong name, no? I would like my daughters to be strong enough for such a name."

  "You have daughters?" The question came out before he could stop it. She was old enough, certainly, but there was nothing of the matron about her. The Italian had hit him harder than he thought, if his mind was so garbled. A human shouldn't flummox him half a dozen times in as many minutes. "Who are you?"

  "My name is Isabel, and I think I have come here for you."

  He should have walked away. Instead, somehow, he was at her doorstep, accepting the offer of a meal. Her house--rented, no doubt--was too large for one woman, even a woman with a Mexican manservant and maid who both looked disapproving as Isabel brought him into the house. Not too disapproving: they were no doubt paid by the don Isabel had mentioned, and no doubt sent letters back to Mexico detailing the granddaughter's exploits.

  Everything about the house proclaimed wealth. Not outrageous wealth, not so much to buy a colored girl a place in New York's finest society, but more than expected even in this wealthier stretch of Harlem homes. The rugs were new and deep, the windows caulked and the shutters firmly set. Tapestries and paintings hung on the walls, keeping warmth in, and generous fires burned in both the dining hall and the parlour Isabel later invited him into. There, finally, assured of some degree of privacy from the staff, Biali asked what he should have before: "What did you mean by that? What were you doing at the fights? A woman who lives like this shouldn't be in the docklands at all. How did you get there unmolested?"

  Isabel poured drinks, a task more suited for servants in the drawing room, not a woman in her own front parlour. Glass in hand, she settled near the fire, feet tucked under her skirts as if she kept company with intimates, not a stranger from the street. Maybe that was how the wealthy behaved in Mexico. Biali sat on the edge of another chair, safely distant, and scowled at her with interest as she shrugged. "A woman told me to go there. A tiny woman, with wrinkles and black hair, as I sat and had tea at a bookshop. She said the man I wanted would see me there, and no other would notice me."

  "The man you wanted."

  The woman smiled again, that brief tantalizing curve of lips. "I see how my ma
ma looks at Papa, no? He is a fighter, a soldier, a strong good man. There are many men like this in Mexico, but I cannot look at them the way I see Mama look at Papa. So I think I am too, what is the word? Housed?"

  "Sheltered."

  "Sí, yes, sheltered. Too sheltered from the world, if my mama, the don's daughter, can find a soldier to make her eyes shine and I can find no one. So I travel. First to San Francisco, with so many hills and Chinese men. Then to Chicago, but there is still the scent of fire there, and I do not like fire."

  "Fire? It's been twenty years since the fire."

  "Perhaps it lingers in the air always." Isabel lifted a challenging eyebrow.

  Biali sank back in his seat, more defeated by the expression than the Italian in the ring earlier. Humans were mad, vermin and blights on the earth, creating danger and discomfort wherever they went, and he preferred to fight them, not hold conversation over dinner and brandy. He hadn't touched the snifter she'd poured for him, but she swirled her own like it was a theatrical prop. Every action enthralled him. Human women were not expected to act so freely. She might have been one of the Old Races, unconstrained by convention, except there was nothing inhuman about her. Nothing except an uncanny awareness of things the mortal world moved past, like ancient races walking amongst them, and fires that burned out decades in the past. "Maybe it does."

  Isabel nodded, satisfied. "So I have come here, to this greatest city. And here I have seen a man like no other and he," she said with a spread of her hands, "sees me. No?"

  "No. I mean yes." Biali bit down on further speech, staring at the woman. "You believed a prediction from an old woman at a bookshop?"

  Isabel lifted a chiding finger, waving it at him. "Old women are wise. Everyone should listen to them. And she was right, no? So many men, and only you follow me."

  Infallible logic that made no sense. Biali grunted "I should go," and left his brandy untouched on a chair-side table. Isabel remained still, nothing but her voice arresting him as he reached the door:

  "You will come again tomorrow?"

  That would be madness. He had what few answers he might need or want from her. Luck, that was all that had brought her through the night safely, both coming and going from the docks. Luck, unless the bookshop was the one he thought it might be, and the tea brewed by the old woman herself. And if that was so, then she was interfering, directing lives the way she liked to, and offered all the more reason he should refuse.

  He said, "Of course," and closed the door behind him.

  Giddiness was not for gargoyles. Not a word they would ever use, not an emotion they would ever experience. Nervous stomachs were not for creatures built of stone. Nor were cold hands or irregular heartbeats. Steadiness: that was the very purpose of his people. To strive, to seek, to find, but not to yield: the poet who had written those words had not done so with Biali's people in mind, but the last of them resonated.

  He wondered if Isabel would appreciate that he knew Tennyson. That he had, in fact, known Tennyson, though not well, and not that he could confess to it, sixty years after the poet's death. It did not--should not--matter. Neither the knowing of the poem or the acquaintance of the man. Such accolades were for young men bent on impressing young women, not ancient gargoyles who knew better than to take themselves to a woman's doorstep not long after nightfall.

  He knew better, and yet.

  Isabel's smile when she answered the door--she herself, not her manservant or maid--her smile was secretive and pleased. Smug, as if she had known he couldn't resist. As if she'd been certain his promise to return was an honest one, when he hadn't been sure of that himself. And after that he was lost, knowing he would come back time and again until she sent him away, as she inevitably would.

  It lent an edge to his fights, a desperation that made losing more difficult and the money riding on his bouts more worthwhile. Isabel came to the fights more often than she should, always with the same scent lingering around her. Sweet tea, not perfume after all. It was certain, then, that Chelsea interfered, but Biali couldn't bring himself to face her. To condemn her or to even comment. Not when Isabel's easy smile was for him. Not when she touched his scarred face without cringing. She was human, ephemeral, doomed, but for a few hours each night she was his, and the rest of the world faded away. It had been too long since gentleness had been in his life, and he could not quite make himself turn away.

  Winter's long nights faded into spring's equal days, stealing minutes he could spend with her, but she never questioned that he came to her at sunset and left before dawn. New York could encompass such a life, as any large city could, if that was what a young couple dreamed of. She told him some of what she did during the day: sleep, of course, to make up for the hours they spent in the city at night, but in her waking hours, museums, tea, long walks, embroidery. None of it, she said, was her life. That, he thought, was what she shared with him. Certainly in the first days her smile when she greeted him in the evenings changed from smug to openly pleased and then, as days became weeks, to simple joy.

  It had been decades, even centuries, since a woman had looked at him that way, and it was difficult to remember he could seem no older than she was, when they spoke of their histories. Of mountains, he told her one night. They sat together on the rooftop above the small apartment he had taken for himself when it became clear he was too foolish to walk away. Humans had to have dwellings, could not live on roofs, pitted and scarred by rain and sun, as gargoyles did. There was a view from the roof: a small park, a crossroads, and in the deep of night, when streetlights had guttered, a swath of stars across the skies.

  "There were more of them in the mountains," he said to her one night. "There were no lights to dim them. They made a path across the sky. We would--" Try to fly that milky way; that was what gargoyle children did as their strength grew and allowed them to soar skyward for the first time. But he couldn't say that to Isabel, and she picked up the narrative before he found a variation on his own past to share with her.

  "Run along it?" she asked. "It is like that where I am from too, a great streak of color and stars along the dark sky, reaching all the way to the water. We live near the sea, no? On la playa del oro, the beach of gold you would say. Only for the sand, though. There are no rough hills to dig precious metals from, not for many miles. The don's people tease crops from the land, and we delve deep for fresh water so close to the sea." Her heartbeat was quick, pressed against his side. Quick enough for worry, as if she missed her home so badly it set her heart to speeding.

  Biali began to sit up, concerned, but Isabel stopped him with a hand on his chest. She shifted to do it, her skirts rustling as she knelt with her thighs pressed against his. His own heart knocked hard, sudden understanding taking him with human shock.

  "I would give you precious things," Isabel whispered. "To tease and delve, Biali. Will you have me?"

  "I've never with a--" Color flushed his face, almost an impossibility, but what he'd been about to say was absurd. I've never. True enough, when the sentence ended with with a human woman, but he could hardly say that.

  Isabel, though, laughed, a soft shy thrill of sound. "That I do not believe, my Biali." She touched his scarred cheek, brushed fingertips over his ruined eye, and murmured, "You are not so fearsome as all that, and so that I do not believe. But you must not worry if you have never taken a maidenhead. The virginity is only once, no? And there will be many times after." Her composure left her abruptly, her skin darkening with a rush of blood, and she began to pull away. "Unless you do not wa--"

  "No." Rough reply, almost harsh. He pulled her closer again, afraid to speak and drive her away. She softened in his arms, though her heart beat harder still, pulling eagerness and uncertainty taut. He could remember that, at least, from every first time with a new lover, though his people put no weight on virginity the way humans did. Isabel was brave, very brave, and very beautiful.

  She tasted of sunshine, of the lingering warmth that was all he knew of daylight
. That was a gift, one she couldn't know she gave, and for that, for all of it, he wanted to treat her well. He had no skill with women's clothes, but nor did he need it: she shed her outer layers breathlessly, then lost courage. Eyes large and dark, pulse in her throat quick as a vampire's, she waited in stillness as he loosened her corset, then touched his mouth to her breasts.

  The sound she made then was liquid, and woke in him a hunger that had been put away for more years than she could imagine. It would never do to be rough or quick, not with a mortal, not in the first moments. Not when desire was so fresh and new, and an exploring tongue and suckling lips could so easily drive her beyond the boundaries of what she knew. She didn't know what to do with herself, hips offering tiny plaintive surges as her fingers knotted in his hair. Petticoats were discarded and she lost her nerve again, but skin could come later. Bloomers were no impediment to thick, blunt fingers, and if her thighs crashed together at the first touch, they parted again with increasing willingness as his touch coaxed pleasure from unexplored territory.

  He watched her eyes, gauging her need from the grip on his shoulders, to judge when to take her. To make the moment of peaking the same moment he slid within her, so that if there was pain it would at least be swept away by the shuddering, clenching rolls of release that came with his body fitting to hers.

  And there was such bewilderment in her eyes at the cresting of pain and pleasure, such beauty in the vulnerability of her hands knotted against his shoulders. He waited, watching her. Stone could wait forever, if need be. It needn't, though: as the first wave passed she slowly softened again, until finally she nodded, a fleeting smile darting across her face. Enough to let him move again, to teach her, to guide her, and finally, some little while before morning, to find a release so exhaustive that he barely stumbled away, apologizing, before dawn took him to stone.