13

A STATUE OF LIMITATIONS

Scaly, winged, vaguely humanoid, the two shapes soared serenely around the skyscraper, and Janine had a moment. But knights must be knights, so all Janine said to her partner, Ed Morgan, dry-like, was: “I think I may know what’s disrupting the wireless signals around here.”

Because it had been a lack of carrier signals, not gargoyle statues come to life, that had brought them there. A lot of Templars by blood who weren’t suited for combat worked for phone companies, notifying the Order of strange wireless issues. Personally, Janine would rather risk her life on rooftops. There were different kinds of dying, and a nine-to-five job pretending to care about IRAs and quotas and self-evaluation forms seemed a particularly slow and horrendous one.

Dressed in the coveralls of repair personnel, Janine and Ed had talked their way up to the top of the neighboring skyscraper with dire-sounding warnings about an overdue elevator maintenance check. Janine never had problems convincing people that she worked any kind of blue-collar job, no matter their gender or sexuality or class bracket. Janine was hard and fit and scarred, her black hair shaved down to a mossy surface, her body moving with absolute physical confidence.

Male eyes boldly followed Janine wherever she went, but the men themselves generally didn’t, not often, or if they did flirt, it was with an overconfidence that came from wealth or hours spent in a gym, a proprietary assumption that Janine was a fellow predator and that they should just go ahead and do this thing. Women flirted with Janine more frequently and more indirectly than she was comfortable with. Her eyes were more prone to probing stares than warm glances, and her lips made a flat line more often than a smile, and women often seemed to assume that Janine was trying to discourage males. Janine wasn’t trying to do anything. She looked the way she looked.

Ed wasn’t as intense as Janine, a fact which he attributed to being more laid-back and which Janine figured was because he didn’t fully grasp situations as quickly as she did. “Have you ever hunted gargoyles before, Janine?”

Ed in twenty seconds or less: At twenty-six, he was eight years younger than Janine, more than a hundred and thirty pounds heavier, blond, square-chinned, with the bright, perfect smile of someone who had gotten over having his real teeth knocked out. A classically handsome man, only bigger. Wider-faced. Larger-assed. Hammier-handed. Thicker and broader.

“No one has hunted these things before, Ed,” Janine said, wondering for the seven hundred and eighty-third time how Ed had ever made it past squire training. “Gargoyle statues don’t look like the earth elementals they’re based on.”

Ed, accepting it, was unfazed. Not dumb, just content to let Janine do the remembering or finding out for him. Another victim of growing up Google. “So let’s tell them they shouldn’t exist. I bet I can be real convincing.”

“Maybe.” Janine considered the office workers in the surrounding windows, blithely going about their businesses, unaware of anything unusual, while pedestrians surged on the streets below. The Pax. Still working. People below would notice if it began raining heavy scaled bodies, though, or if the gargoyles became hungry. Imaginary teeth or not, those large, sharp, meat-tearing fangs didn’t belong to herbivores. Janine reached down beneath her shirt and pulled out a small silver St. Francis medallion, kissing it for good luck. “We’re going to have to lure them over here onto our roof and kill them close up. Quietly.”

The Pax only made people screen out unnatural noises. Distant gunshots were all too familiar.

Ed squinted, grunted unhappily. “Those hides look tough. Maybe too tough for subsonic ammunition.”

“Then I suppose it’s lucky you’re a big strong lummox and I brought a crossbow.” Janine was already pulling out the disassembled weapon from her canvas bag, her nimble, callused fingers flying over the bits like a surgeon’s. There was rappelling gear to assemble too—Janine wasn’t fighting things that flew without being anchored to the rooftop first.

“What am I supposed to fight them with? This?” Ed brandished his knife.

There went seven hundred and eighty-four. Maybe Janine would get a prize when she wondered how Ed made it past squire training for the thousandth time. Nothing fancy. A new partner would be nice. “I saw a fire axe on our way up here. Why don’t you go get it?”

At least Ed didn’t ask what floor the fire axe had been on. Janine removed her signal mirror carefully, carefuller, carefullest. Flying things like shiny objects. Slowly, keeping her eyes on those changing flight paths, Janine began signaling the nearest fire team to send reinforcements.

Sniper teams had spread out and settled among rooftops all over the city, dandelion spores with rifle bores, covering New York in an insecurity blanket. A thousand yards away, Vic Lotz was on the top floor of a high rise. Lotz, who swore he could shoot the testicles off a pigeon a mile away. Janine hoped he was right. Lotz usually was, at least about shooting. It was the only way he got away with being such a jackass.

Ed grumbled off to get the axe.