Gargoyle Knight: A Dark Urban Fantasy (2 page)

One man would have to become a monster.

The king’s eyes snapped open, the icy blue of his pupils becoming an inhuman, spectral green. Artan’s mouth warped into a scream, which slowly grew into a bestial roar. His incisors lengthened and his face morphed into the horrible visage of a monster. The transformation had begun. Artan was turning into a gargoyle.
 

His skin thickened and hardened, becoming an armor made of flesh. His bones lengthened as the dark blood reshaped his anatomy. Wings burst forth from distended shoulder blades. A demonic shadow fell across the wall of the pit. Artan differed from the more animalistic gargoyle that had infected him. The proportions between his arms, torso and limbs remained humanoid. He had become a hybrid creature, occupying the crossroads between beast and man.
 

Another terrible sound erupted from Artan's lungs and he took flight. The transformed warrior shot out of the open pit, his knights blanching as this demon streaked past their faces. Artan soared into the night sky, leaving the smoldering ruins of Kirkfall behind.
 

His thoughts filled with savage anticipation. Soon the
Blade of Kings
would find its next opponent — the evil druid Cael.

Cael, who had tampered with the old magic.

Cael, who had taken Artan’s family from him.

Cael, who once upon a time Artan had been proud to call his brother.
 

The young king let out another monstrous shriek, one final lament for his lost humanity.
 

C
HAPTER
T
WO

NEW YORK CITY, Present Day

One Day Before Halloween

Rhianna’s fingers flew over her MacBook Air, typing with the speed of someone who knew a deadline had already passed. She finished her latest paragraph, saved the document (she had long ago lost her trust in auto-save; nothing beat the horror of losing writing she had slaved over for hours) and took a deep gulp of her Monster energy drink. For a blissful moment she let that delicious devil’s brew of taurine, ginseng, sugar and caffeine work its fabulous magic.
 

She stretched her legs and let out a yawn that didn’t want to stop. Energy drinks were lifesavers for a girl with a crazed schedule but there came a point when the spectral green elixir in a cool black can could not equal a good night’s rest.

Rhianna blinked at the computer screen, trying to interpret what she had just typed. She read the paragraph and reread it. With each successive pass her own words were making less sense to her addled, sleep-deprived mind. This wasn’t good.
 

Rhianna yawned again. Her desk, a small, scratched-up wooden table (she called it “distressed” – made it sound fancy) had been a recent find on one of those rare Sunday mornings where she took the time to grab breakfast with friends and stroll through her East Village neighborhood. Someone had tossed the banged-up table to the curb and it must’ve sat there orphaned for a few days. The piece was an eyesore (and a public hazard at that point) but it was love at first sight for Rhianna. How did the saying go again — one man’s trash was another man’s treasure? It held true in this case.
 

Rhianna had managed to squeeze the little table into the corner of the tiny, cramped living room of her one-bedroom Alphabet City apartment. The room also functioned as her bedroom but with how little sleep she was getting, she didn’t even bother unfolding her futon and kept it in couch form. Shelves and stacks of various books and documents surrounded her makeshift workspace. When one was combing through ancient manuscripts, e-readers weren’t much help.
 

A series of photographs were pasted to the wall facing her desk, showing an aerial view of an archeological excavation site. There was also a shot of Rhianna hugging a rugged-looking man in his mid-fifties – her dad. The world knew him as Dr. Michael Sharpe, renowned archeologist and expert on the Celtic world.
 

Rhianna was twenty-four years old, attractive but hiding her sexiness behind glasses and clothes that deemphasized her figure. At the moment, her studies dominated her life and left little room for anything else. She was way too busy working on her doctoral dissertation in archeology (with a concentration in Celtic studies) to worry about the sorry state of her dating life or devote time to enhancing her attractiveness.
 

Applying make-up took energy and choosing the perfect outfit drained mental faculties better used for poring over another thick tome on ancient Celtic folklore. Her research dominated her every waking moment and on some level she liked it that way – for now. Her life might be busy but at least it wasn’t...complicated. After the fiasco of her last relationship (she had stumbled upon her beau in bed with her best friend), she had opted out of the dating pool all together – she wasn’t quite ready to face another potential disappointment so soon after Paul. The part that stung the most was that Paul had blamed Rhianna for his cheating and on some level, he had a point. Between her studies, her T.A. position at the university and the freelance work she did for her dad, she was just too busy to give Paul the attention he needed. Her best friend Michelle, on the other hand, had time to burn and understood Paul’s emotional distress (no surprise, as she was going for a master’s in psychology). Michelle had lent Paul an open ear at first and soon she had opened up in other ways, too.
 

Rhianna swore off men for good after the incident. She had come to the conclusion that she was too busy to sustain a relationship with Paul or anyone else. Her work dominated her life and that wasn’t going to change in the foreseeable future. Better to just accept it and make the best of the situation. But Rhianna missed having someone special in her life, as evidenced by the many well-worn historical romance novels that were tucked away among her research papers.

Rhianna took another deep gulp of her Monster and tried to blink the tiredness away.
 

Thank God this stuff is legal
, she thought.
 

She drained the can and tossed it into a wastebasket overflowing with a stack of identical containers. She caught a glimpse of herself in the screen of her laptop and wasn’t happy with what she was seeing - the heavy bags under her eyes told their own story. God, she couldn’t sustain this pace for too much longer. If she kept burning the midnight oil, she’d look like she was twenty-six in no time.

Rhianna’s cell chirped. It was an incoming text message from her dad:
 

How’s the presentation coming along? See you at the museum around 5. Love, Dad.

Rhianna checked the time. She had about an hour to wrap up her presentation.
 

Great. No pressure now.
 

She stole a peek outside outside her window. Her apartment was on the fifth floor and the window looked out at a brownstone right across from her. It afforded a perfect view of her neighbor’s living room. She could see him making out with a hot blonde – nice to see that someone had a more active social life than she did. Rhianna watched, curious but also feeling a little guilty (and creepy) for being a voyeur. For a moment, she wondered how it would feel to be touched by strong hands and…

A woman’s voice behind her brought an abrupt end to her spying.
 

“I see they're at it again.”

Rhianna spun toward the speaker. It was Natalie, her roommate, and a spunky, opinionated brunette. She wore her server’s uniform of black jeans and a black T-shirt. Natalie worked five hours a day at a fancy steak house on the Upper West Side. The money she was pulling down in tips was ridiculous and at times made Rhianna question her own career path. Natalie had been a nursing student but was taking a break from school. Before long, a semester of break had turned into a yearlong sabbatical from academia while she tried to figure out what she wanted from life. When one was making three hundred dollars a night, the need for a real career became a little less pressing.
 

Natalie was drifting and had lost focus, but at least she was enjoying life. The same couldn’t be said for her roommate.
 

Rhianna nodded at the couple across the street. “It's the middle of the afternoon. Don't they have jobs?”

Natalie shot Rhianna a long look and winked.
 

“Do I detect a note of jealousy? How long has it been since...
you know.
..”

Rhianna’s silence spoke volumes.

 
“Steve keeps asking about you. He may not be boyfriend material but he has
-“

“The I.Q. of a Neanderthal?”

“Just think of him as an archeological research project.”

“You're hilarious, you should try stand-up.”

“What about John?”

“I think he got tired of seeing me once a month.”

“You're hopeless.”

“Once I have my PhD, I'll have plenty of time to date.”

“You better not be
too busy
to go with me to Kevin's Halloween party.”

Rhianna’s response was to point at the poster on the wall. It featured the image of a sinister gargoyle statue. This monster was different than the animalistic beast Artan faced in the pit fifteen centuries earlier. The body was humanoid with the pumped-up physique of a bodybuilder – a human-gargoyle hybrid similar to the one Artan transformed into all those years ago. But the face was different. There was a dark crater where one of its eyeballs should be. The text at the bottom of the poster read:
"THE CELTIC WORLD: HEROES AND VILLAINS. October 31 through December 1 at the Cloisters."

“The exhibit opens tomorrow. And my dad needs this presentation for the morning press conference.”

“Why do they have to open an exhibit on Halloween?”

“Halloween had its origins in the Celtic festival Samhain-”

Natalie cut her off in mid-sentence.

“Is this going to be another one of your lectures?”
 

“Hey, you asked.”

There was a moment of hesitation before Natalie nodded. “Go on. Do your thing.”

Rhianna smiled and continued.

“The Celts believed the barrier between our world and the Otherworld...” Natalie’s eyes began to glaze over at this point, but Rhianna held her course. “A kind of Celtic hell — was at its weakest on Samhain. Ghouls and goblins could cross over into our world.”

“Thanks, that was...
educational
.”
 

The way Natalie said “educational” could be translated into “
beyond nerdy
.” She smiled. “All I know is that tomorrow night I'm dragging you away from the books and we're going to raise some real hell.”

Warring emotions flickered over Rhianna's face. She was tempted to say yes. But reality intruded once again.

“I don't even have a costume...”

Natalie gave Rhianna a conspiratorial nudge. “I'll pick something out for you. And I'll make sure it shows a lot of skin.”

Rhianna grinned despite herself.
 

“Come, it'll be fun...”

Natalie nodded at the open book sitting on her makeshift desk. It showed a drawing of a long-haired knight holding up a sword.
 

”Maybe we'll even find you your own knight in shining armor.”

“Alright, why not?” Rhianna regretted the words the moment she said them. Her roommate loved setting Rhianna up with one of her many gentleman suitors from work. Natalie met guys effortlessly; if she wasn’t working, she was out on some hot date with some new guy who was going to show her the time of her life. Natalie’s style was to let a prospective suitor down easy by hinting at a potential date with a cute roommate.
 

In essence, Natalie was offering Rhianna her hand-me-downs, but she rejected guys whom most women would dream about. Who knew what her type was – Rhianna was still trying to figure it out. One thing was for certain, there was a revolving door of suitors in Natalie’s world. One had to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince.

“Okay kid, it’s a plan! I’ll send you a pic of your costume when I spot it.”

“Hey, do I have any say in the matter?”

“You’ll love it!”

Before Rhianna could offer further protest, Natalie was already halfway out the door. “Gotta run, don’t want to be late for work now!”
 

The door fell shut behind Natalie. Rhianna sighed and shook her head. Took another peek at her neighbor’s window. The blinds were drawn now. Disappointed, Rhianna turned back to her computer and...

Realized it was four-thirty.
 

Shit!

She had to get going if she was going to make her five o’clock meeting with her dad. Traffic would be a nightmare but maybe she could catch a train before most people got off work and crowded the subways. Rhianna longingly eyed another can of Monster but decided against it – she was already feeling pretty jittery. She scooped up her laptop and seconds later was on her way.
 

Had Rhianna known what the day held in store for her, she would never have left her apartment.
 

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

THE CLOISTERS ARE located in the Washington Heights area of New York City, near the northern tip of Manhattan Island. Built on a hill overlooking the Hudson River in Fort Tryon Park, the structure incorporates parts from five cloistered abbeys that were disassembled brick by brick before being shipped to New York in the 1930s.
 

The Cloisters were not just another museum; the medieval structure was a time machine. Those who stepped into its landscaped gardens would be transported to the Middle Ages. Rhianna vividly recalled the day when her dad first introduced her to this unique branch of the Museum of Metropolitan Art. The vast collection of medieval art and architecture made a major impression on her eight-year old self and was the beginning of her fascination (some might call it an obsession) with the period.