Chapter 16
Breakfast
Brielle was reaching inside her fridge for the milk when an immense, dark shadow blocked the sunlight streaming through the kitchen window. Alarmed, she ducked behind the bar. Slowly making her way to the corner, she peered around it. She’d left her phone on the dinette table, but with a little luck, she might be able to reach it and call 9-1-1 before whoever was outside on her fire escape could…
“Wait a minute,” she whispered. “The fire escape is outside the bedroom. There’s no ladder outside the kitchen. In fact, there’s nothing outside that window but…nothing.”
The figure crossed the window again. Plunking the quart of milk on the bar, she ran over to the window and stared outside. Garenth was winging between the kitchen and the bedroom, going back and forth like a trapeze act. Without the trapeze.
Rushing to the bedroom, she quickly unlocked the window leading to the fire escape and threw up the sash, sticking her head outside as the winged man flew toward her. Waving at him frantically, she called to him even though she knew he wouldn’t understand what she was saying.
“Get in here! What do you think you’re doing? What if somebody sees you?”
She kept gesturing for him to follow her and withdrew inside. Garenth apparently understood and climbed into the bedroom. After closing the window behind him, she returned to the kitchen. As she hoped, he followed her. Grabbing her phone, she opened the translation app and spoke into it. “What were you doing out there?”
After hearing the question, he stared at her as he responded. “Protect you.”
“Protecting me? How long have you been out there?”
“The night.” He settled himself on the floor, half-crouching, half-sitting in that way he’d done on the roof.
She grabbed the milk and took it over to the table where she’d set her bowl and box of cereal as he watched her. After she fixed her breakfast, she returned the milk to the fridge, snatching up the phone on the way.
Using the app was cumbersome. She had to physically change its setting to interpret her English to Arabic, then reverse its setting so that his Arabic could be translated. On top of that, much of what he said couldn’t be deciphered. But Irmine was right. It was better than nothing. She dreaded to think how lost they’d both be if they’d been forced to communicate via hand signals and drawing pictures.
Garenth eyed the room and spoke. “This is where you live.”
“Yes. It’s my home.”
“It is...different.” He gazed at her. “This place is different.”
The sound of wonder in his voice made her smile. “I bet it’s very different from when you were alive.” Recalling what Irmine initially told her, she paused in her eating. “Garenth, why aren’t you going after the mother idol?”
“You touch her. You have her on you.”
She glanced at her hands and remembered when the head popped off the figurine. Getting up from her chair, she hurried into the bathroom and dug her jeans out of the laundry basket to take them back into the kitchen. Garenth’s eyes widened as she approached, and she’d swear she saw his nostrils flare. Handing him the jeans, she picked up the phone to explain.
“The mother idol you’re looking for is a vial, isn’t it? It held some kind of substance or liquid, didn’t it?”
“The mother idol is crucial to my existence.”
She watched as he turned the jeans over in his hands until he found the front of them. She wasn’t surprised when he lifted the fabric to his nose and sniffed between the thighs. Adjusting the pants, he sniffed again, this time over one leg.
“The top of the mother idol came off and landed on my leg,” she explained. “That’s what you’re sniffing. It fell into my lap.”
He smelled her jeans again. “Your nearness confusing me.”
“How? Because it’s keeping you from detecting the idol itself?”
“Yes.”
She perched on the edge of her chair. “What can I do to help?”
“I go back to the temple and find scent again.”
The temple. He probably meant the museum.
“You can do that? I mean, that idol could be miles away from here by now.”
“I find it,” Garenth told her with confidence.
“But what if you can’t? What if it’s so far away, you can’t find it?” she persisted.
* * *
He couldn’t explain to her how he would be able to find the mother idol. Its presence was ingrained in every inch of his body, giving him a strong, clear beacon to follow. Yet, this woman had managed to block that beacon, leaving him confused and hesitant.
He sniffed the clothing she’d worn. Yes, he could find the mother idol, but before he could do so he had to remove himself as far away from this woman as possible. Give his head a chance to clear.
Garenth stared at the item of clothing in his hands. But there was something else that didn’t make sense. Something that told him his goal might not be as easy as he anticipated. The mother idol’s scent was on her garment, but it was so minute, so faint, that it was almost impossible to detect until he pressed his nose directly into it.
Then why was he drawn to this female? It couldn’t be because of her contact with the mother idol, but something caused it. Something he couldn’t fathom.
Impulsively, he sniffed again. Her fragrance was there, and for the first time in millennia his body tightened. There was a spasm of pain…
He pressed a hand to his chest. The pain was centered around his heart.
His heart?
Closing his eyes, he focused on what he felt within himself. It could be his imagination, but he thought he could feel a faint vibration beneath his palm.
Could it be he still had a heart? If he had a heart then, yes, there was blood flowing through his veins. It was truth, not a belief. And if there was blood, he had a brain. And lungs.
He breathed deeply as realization crept back. His humanity remained with him, but it lay buried beneath this stone shell that used to be skin. His true self was still here underneath this hideous mask that in no way looked like him.
He touched his face and felt the hard curve of elongated teeth jutting out of his jaw. Glancing back at the woman, he half-expected to see fear in her eyes, but there was none. There was compassion and curiosity, and a lot of confusion, but not fear. She didn’t fear him. She didn’t feel threatened by his appearance. How could he explain to her that once, long ago, he had been a man? That he had been as human as she was? But if it hadn’t been for him changing into this ghastly effigy, he wouldn’t have survived all these centuries.
Brielle was speaking again into the shiny stone that spoke a crude version of his language. Despite the difficulty he had listening and understanding it, nonetheless he was grateful for it. Otherwise communication between them would be impossible, and there were a thousand questions he wanted to ask her about this time and place...after he recovered the mother idol.
“Garenth, if you find the mother idol, what then? What will you do? Will you go back to Egypt?”
They were the same questions he’d had hovering in the back of his mind ever since he’d emerged from his paralysis. Right now his whole focus was on the hunt, but after he had the mother idol safely back in his possession, what would he do?
Minbar had never conceived this would happen...or did she? Did she foresee my resurrection? Did she know I would awaken to a new and frightening world?
“Garenth?”
He didn’t realize he’d been gazing unseeing into the distance until Brielle reminded him he hadn’t answered her last question. “I do not know what I will do. But I do know I cannot and will not return to that dark prison from where I awakened.”
The woman seemed to ponder as she listened to his response. A shaft of sunlight came through the clear wall, highlighting her from behind and illuminating her in its glow. And in that moment, he could almost see Hanashep’s face smiling at him—the same dark hair, the same oval face, the same brown-gold eyes, and the same delicate arch of her eyebrows as she gave him a curious stare.
“Garenth, have you been asleep all this time? I mean, from the time you were imprisoned until now?”
“Yes.”
“But you only woke up when my uncle removed the mother idol from your temple, correct? You woke up because you had to get it back?”
“I must. But I was not in a temple. I was in a prison,” he repeated.
Her expression grew more puzzled. “Are there more of your kind in that prison?”
“There are no others of my kind. Or there are none that I know of.”
“So you’re the last of your kind? The last living gargoyle?” She’d moved closer to him, until her womanly scent wrapped around him like a gentle blanket.
“No, Brielle. I am not what you see. I am a man. I had to take this form in order to survive. In order to be able to protect the mother idol.”
Her eyes widened. “You changed into a gargoyle?”
“I was changed, yes, but I had no control over it. The priestess did it to save me. To allow me to get my revenge on those who falsely accused me, and who condemned me to die.”
“The priestess of the god of war, right?”
“Yes.”
“How? How did she change you?”
“She gave me a potion to drink.”
“A potion? Was it in that vial?”
“It was in the mother idol.”
“And after you drank what was in the mother idol, you changed into the form you’re in now?”
“Yes.”
An odd expression came over her face. “Then if we somehow manage to find an antidote to what you drank, is it conceivable you can change back into a man?”
Garenth felt his body stiffen at the question. Change back into a man? Was it possible?
She laid a hand on his arm “There are too many questions we don’t have answers to,” she wisely remarked. “We don’t know what will happen to you once you recover the mother idol. Or what would happen to you if you don’t. You yourself don’t know where you’ll go after all this is over. But....”
“But what?”
“But whatever happens, I want to be there with you when it does. I want to see this to the end with you, Garenth, if you’ll let me.”
It was then he knew that was exactly what he wanted, as well, and he nodded. “I also wish for you to see this through to the end.”
When the interpretation came through, she smiled at him with both her mouth and her eyes, and Garenth would swear he felt a lightness in his body that he had never felt before.