“My uncle would hire you in a heartbeat, you know,” Jake said. He put the refilled coffee cup in front of her and picked up her hand once more.
“Probably not,” Nyanther said, his voice low. “Severance packages for executives at Sabrina’s level are legal concrete. There will be non-compete clauses in it. Unless your uncle hires her for her typing skills, he can’t touch her.” He brushed her hair back over her shoulder and touched her arm.
Jake grimaced.
“Can they really fire her for something so stupid?” Riley asked everyone else at the table.
Everyone was there. Even Nick, who sat at the top of the table, his chair turned so he could cross his legs, in typical English fashion. Chloe was sitting on Damian’s lap, chewing on a teething ring.
“For what she does in her private life?” Nick asked. “Probably not. That’s why they wouldn’t give her an official reason.”
“Her service agreement will have some sort of fuzzy language in there that covers them if she wants to contest it,” Nyanther said. “I spent months working with lawyers to write the same sort of agreements for the executives in one of my corporations, so I know exactly how and why they’re worded. Starry-eyed new employees never think about the future the way lawyers can.”
“I didn’t,” Sabrina said. “I was so thrilled to get the job I would have signed anything to keep them happy.”
“Exactly,” Nyanther said.
“It’s so unfair!” Riley cried. “If she’d been a man they would have bought her a round of drinks!”
“If she had been a woman in my tribe, we likely would have given her the cup to drink from, too,” Nyanther said, with a little grin. His grin faded. “It is no longer those times.”
“This is what you meant, about it being so hard to adapt, isn’t it?” Sabrina asked him. “All these calcified, built-in cultural biases and prejudices that no one can change.”
Nyanther picked up her other hand and kissed it. “Not all the differences are bad.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t think about what to do next at all,” Nick said.
Sabrina looked at him. “Give myself a break?”
“The severance is incredibly generous,” he pointed out.
“To keep her silent and make her go away,” Jake said darkly.
“Yes. It gives you time, though,” Nick said. “You were already working two full-time jobs keeping up with the communications network and everything else you have set up. So don’t jump into another job. Let the corporations find out via the grapevine that you’re a free agent and sprint to hire you…and they will. In the meantime, you can do just one full-time job and live a more normal life for a while.”
Damian blew out his breath. “Like there’s anything normal with our lives.”
“Very well, then. A more balanced life,” Nick said pedantically. “One with work and leisure.”
That was how it began. A simple decision not to decide. She would figure out her life next week or next month, perhaps.
In the meantime, she dived into the various projects and revenue streams she had been developing for the hunters, now able to work on them with her full attention. Finally, the first trickles of income began to appear and even Nick managed to smile when she showed him the anonymous bank account balance.
She also caught up on her sleep.
The decision got put off longer and longer, until it was inarguably summer, air conditioner units ran all day and night and kids knocked fire hydrants over and played in the spray, screaming in delight. The days grew longer, the nights much shorter and life went on.
“Still no gargoyles,” Sabrina pointed out, as she sat in Riley’s apartment, drinking chocolate egg crèmes with her, while she pretended to work on one of the trackers. “You said they would break out at any time, back in March. It’s June.”
“They must have taken human prey by now,” Riley said, staring out the window at the setting sun. It was getting close to nine p.m. and it was still warm. The windows were open. The vampire were as impervious to heat as they were to cold and she and Riley had grown up in the mid-west and preferred fresh air to canned coldness. Jake complained, only his complaints were about the lack of a sea breeze on hot summer days, like the reliable, cooling wind that came every afternoon on Long Island.
“Do you think, perhaps, they’re in some other part of the world?” Sabrina asked. “Outer Mongolia or the middle of Africa or the Amazon, where missing people take longer to be noticed?”
“They might be,” Riley admitted. “They could be anywhere and we could blow all our energy, time and money looking for them and that’s what I think they wanted us to do. While we’re busy hunting them, we don’t have time to rest and prepare for when they do attack.”
“That’s why you didn’t go haring off to Scotland like your mother did?”
“I don’t think my mother made a mistake, that time. They found the last two gargoyles and drove them out of their cozy nest. And they killed Valdeg.”
“Well, Nyanther killed him,” Sabrina said, for she had heard this story from Damian and Nyanther and she had read Damian’s essay, too. After reading the essay she had looked at Nick with new appreciation. Damian loved him with a rare devotion. There was much more to Nick that Damian’s dry recitation in the essay had merely hinted at.
“Potato, poh-tah-to,” Riley replied. “Jake and Ny are out beating the bushes in every known location the gargoyles have ever used and more besides. Nick and I are doing the same and asking questions, to get fresh news. We’re keeping it local only. I don’t want us spread out.”
“You’re expecting them to come to you, aren’t you?”
Riley nodded. She was looking out the window, still. It was fully dusk now and the buildings across the road were casting their very long shadows, making it darker. “They’ve stayed away for nearly a year. They won’t be able to help themselves. They want vengeance. It drives everything they do.”
Then she stirred and got to her feet and held her hand out for Sabrina’s glass. “Sooner or later, they’ll land back in New York. Somewhere upstate, their old hunting ground. They’ll feed, to try and draw us out. We are so much better prepared now than we were before Jake and Nyanther came along.”
Sabrina’s heart warmed. “All the hunters are, now,” she reminded Riley.
“And listen to you,” Riley said, calling out from the kitchen. “You never believed you might one day be sitting here with me talking about hunting supernatural creatures and running a dark net business venture of your own.”
“Some days it feels like that’s all we talk about,” Sabrina said. “Do you remember the night Nick arrived in our apartment in Pittsburgh? All either of us was worried about that night was passing finals.”
“I will never forget it,” Riley said. “My life completely changed that night.”
“Mine, too,” Sabrina said. “It just took a few years for me to notice.”
Something black and large fluttered outside the window, blotting the last of the daylight. Then the window exploded inward.
Sabrina threw herself out of the chair, scrambling to find her footing and reach the kitchen where Riley was.
Riley was just coming out of the kitchen, two more egg crèmes in her hands. She came to a halt, her eyes wide.
Rank odor washed over Sabrina. It was musty and reminded her of wet leather. There was another acidic scent mixed up in it that made her think of sulphur and rocks.
A clawed hand bigger than her torso came down in front of her, blocking her escape. She screamed—she couldn’t help it. The panic was beating at her, trying to explode out of her. She lurched away from the big clawed hand, nearly losing her footing.
Another hand came down to meet the first, enclosing her.
Sabrina hunkered down, shivering. She was locked in. Above her, the foul-smelling creature’s head hovered. The skin was mottled browns.
“Don’t let him scratch you!” Riley shouted, still holding the egg crèmes.
Sabrina tried to calm herself. She tried to think.
The other big window had been smashed in, too. A second gargoyle, smaller than the one standing over her, was crouched down in the corner of the apartment, one clawed foot on the dining table because there was no room for him to put it anywhere else.
And in between the two of them was a third gargoyle. Small. Also crouched down on his hind legs, which made him Riley’s height. He tilted his head to look at her and Sabrina got the absurd notion the creature was trying to smile at her.
“Let my friend go,” Riley said calmly. “She has nothing to do with you, with your world, or mine.”
“Sabeena, the mate of the one who killed me, before?” The gargoyle lisped and hissed and he spoke with a Scottish accent, yet he was understandable. This, then, was Valdeg, the only one who could speak English because of what the gargoyles considered to be a speech impediment. A gargoyle cleft lip.
The creature that held her in the circle of his hands rumbled something. It seemed to come from inside his stomach and chest.
Valdeg tilted his head at Riley once more. “We have a message for the Sherwood.”
“I have a message for you—” Riley said.
“No!” Valdeg screeched, then added a sound that wasn’t English.
Sabrina cowered. It was an awful sound, sending ripples of fear down her spine.
Riley fell silent. But she didn’t react. She was totally calm and her courage and containment was fascinating. Sabrina had never seen Riley working. She didn’t have her katana in her hands right now, although she was facing the enemy and she wasn’t backing down.
“Tell the Sherwood. Hunt us no more.”
“You had this conversation with my mother,” Riley said calmly. “I’ll give you the same answer she did. Stop hunting humans and we’ll think about it.”
Valdeg hissed his fury. “We deserve life as much as you.”
“You’ve had your life,” Riley said flatly.
The apartment door burst inward and Nyanther came streaking through, a short sword and the axe that Jake had made him in his hands. He wore the most implacable, deadly look she had ever seen on any man’s face.
“Watch out!” Riley screamed as Valdeg turned to swipe at Nyanther as he moved past, his claws extended.
Nyanther ignored her and kept coming.
“Valdeg!” Riley shouted and threw the egg crèmes at the creature’s eyes.
Valdeg shrieked and skittered backward, shaking his head and clawing at his eyes as if they burned.
Nyanther hopped over the arm of the one that held Sabrina, like he might have jumped over a low fence. The creature clawed at him and he arched his back and hissed…and stepped closer. He thrust the sword up, under the creature’s chin. It was already rearing backward, lifting itself up and out of the way. The sword point scraped across the hide.
“Run!” Nyanther shouted at her.
“Get the other one! It’s stuck in the corner! Throw the net, keep it contained!” That was Jake’s voice.
“Riley!” That was Nick. “Catch!”
Sabrina couldn’t see any of it over the big forearm of the gargoyle. She stayed crouched down, both thumbs on the screen of the tracker, frantically scrolling through the settings screen…there! She finished the setup.
As she finished, the forearms of the gargoyle that had been barricading her lifted away. The creature was rumbling in its chest. Talking to the others.
Nyanther hauled her to her feet and pulled her toward the center of the room, where Nick and Damian stood. In the corner, where the other big one crouched, Sabrina saw Jake was on its back, his sword raised, point down. It was trying to reach up and around its head to claw at him. Netting was holding its arm back. Riley stood in front of it, her katana over her head, ready to thrust the moment she needed to.
As Sabrina looked, Jake brought the sword down in a heavy thrust, his whole body flexing and driving the blow.
The creature screamed. It was an inhuman sound. She recognized pain in the stressed sound.
Then it shattered, the heap of stones and pebbles tumbling toward Riley, who jumped out of the way.
“Watch out! Nyanther!” Nick shouted.
Something big gripped Sabrina’s arm and yanked, pulling her right off her feet. Nyanther’s hold on her other arm was broken. She was being lifted up into the air and looked down to see the clawed hand of the other big one curled around her arm. The toxic claw points were curled into its palm, away from her.
Nyanther was reaching for her. She was already too far away. Sabrina tossed the tablet at him and he dived forward and caught it.
She was pulled through the ruined window and dropped like a stone. There was nothing beneath her but pavement, four stories below. Her fear rose up and overwhelmed her and she knew nothing more.