At the noise, Robyn leaped out of bed and shoved her feet into her shoes, then ran down toward the living room.

The glass door leading to the balcony was broken. Demona herself crossed the carpet, shards crunching under her feet. "Not so smug without the mask, Huntress?"

"I don't need it," Robyn replied, reaching for a silver candlestick. "I want this vendetta over with. You follow us, we follow you. I'm sure you're sick of it."

"Oh, it will end." Demona's smile seemed reminiscent of a hardhearted judge. "With your blood on my claws."

Robyn slowly backed away. "Be rational, Demona." She was addressing her enemy by name for the first time. "If you were mortal, I'd have already attacked."

"Then you know struggling is futile."

"Why can't you leave us alone? I wish I could kill you, but I can't and nothing can change that. You've been human. You know what lawsuits are. I want to settle."

"Me too. But I'll only settle for the deaths of you and your remaining family."

This is useless! She can't be reasoned with! Robyn tested the weight of the candlestick in her hands, trying to keep her voice calm. After all, Daddy had always said 'Never let them see you sweat.' "So where's your weapon?"

"For a job this special, I've decided to use my bare claws. I doubt you want details—"

Robyn leaped forward and struck Demona on the temple with her candlestick. If I could just knock her out. Demona let out a snarl and leaped forward, pinning Robyn to the floor. The blonde kicked the gargess off her. The redhead slashed at her opponent's thigh with her claw.

Just outside the door, Jason was inserting his key into the lock while balancing on crutches.

Carmella was standing beside him. "You know this is against my better judgment."

"My sister won't answer my calls," Jason retorted. "Something must be wrong." The door swung open.

Two birds with one stone, Demona thought in delight. And the oldest is on crutches. This is almost too easy!

"Carmella," Jason hissed. "There's a laser pistol in the desk to your right. Grab it."

The therapist nodded and reached into the drawer. She pulled out the gun, cocked, and aimed. The beam missed by a full foot, but it distracted the redhead long enough for Robyn to get to her feet and land a jaw punch.

Jason hobbled over and poked Demona in the back with one crutch while balancing on the other.

Carmella fired again. It missed, but the beam had been closer. Oh, why didn't I take archery instead of needlepoint!

A growl escaped Demona's mouth as she knocked over one of the crutches. Then she turned on Carmella and grabbed the pistol, crushing it in her claws. The therapist, unskilled at hand-to-hand combat, could only stare.

"Leave her alone, Demon!" Jason scrambled to his feet.

Demona spat in the general direction of the Canmore siblings, then backed out through the broken door. "Enjoy your reprieve!" Retreating was a necessary embarrassment, she figured. Since three on one wasn't good odds and someone was bound to hear the noise.

All the color had drained from Carmella's face. "I think I better go now." She got up and closed the apartment door behind her.

Robyn guided her brother to the sofa and sat down next to him.

"Are you okay?" Jason asked.

The blonde glanced at her right leg. The fabric of her pants had been ripped mid-thigh, revealing an ugly two-inch laceration. "A scratch. It's not that deep." She was going for my femoral artery, Robyn dimly realized. "Isn't there a recovery period for the surgery?"

"Hospital was short on beds and had a bunch more critical patients to fill them. This is New York. Besides, if I hadn't gotten here..."

"I know."

"Can I ask you something?"

"What?"

"Do you blame me for Jon's sudden madness?"

"Of course not. You tried to talk him out of it. It's all the Demon's fault. If she hadn't fired, Jon wouldn't have panicked."

Jason sighed. "You're right." He frowned. "I was unconscious most of the afternoon and I'm still exhausted."

"It's been a long day. I'll help you get to bed."

The NYPD had just stopped a bank robbery, although they were too busy leading away the perpetrators and collecting statements to notice the 'gargoyle assistance.'

Matt waited until everyone had left before going to the bank rooftop.

Goliath was waiting. "Evening, Bluestone."

The detective pulled out a flat package. "Have you decided what to get Elisa?"

"Still haven't the foggiest idea."

"Her birthday is tomorrow night!"

"I know. It's just that I've never done this before."

"How about a song?"

"Dancing I can do, but singing is another subject. Did you get the card?"

Matt handed over the card and pulled out another. "I get Elisa the rudest kind of cards. She thinks it's hilarious, but I figured you'd want something more sentimental."

A third card fell out of the package and fluttered to the rooftop.

The detective snatched it back up. "For my aunt. She has a birthday this month too."

Goliath didn't look convinced. "It wasn't a birthday card. It said 'Thinking of you' and had hearts and cherubs on it."

"OK," admitted Matt. "It's for my love interest. I saw it in Hallmark and I couldn't resist. But don't tell anyone."
------------------------------------
Angela felt triumphant. After several translation attempts, she had finally untangled the cryptogram. She recognized it. Simon and Garfunkel's "I Am a Rock." Why on earth would her mother be carrying a copy of an old song, written in code? It must have meant something to her. Maybe it's how she feels? Alone? "If I never loved..." Was that referring to Father, or Thailog? Father, most likely. Thailog could have been rebound over Father. How could I have missed that? Confident, she folded up the original and the translation together and stuck them in one of the desk drawers. This is how the archaeologists felt when they found the Rosetta Stone.

Ralph was in a phone booth. Coincidentally, it was the same phone booth Maxwell had used. He flipped open his cell phone and dialed the number to Castaway's office. A few passers by stopped and glanced in, wondering why someone would be so redundant, but forgot as soon as they turned away. Even without a stealth suit, Ralph was a master of avoiding attention. Nobody noticed when he entered or left a room. As a schoolboy, he would sneak into the teachers' lounge without anyone knowing. The hitman was wanted on six continents, but so far no one had been able to positively identify him. As a result, he had earned the nickname "The Invisible Man."

The phone rang six times before Castaway picked up. "Ralph, this better be good news!"

"I'm not one to sugarcoat bad news, and you know it. I went by Chester's apartment. Everything's gone. The landlord said he had cleared out in a hurry. No forwarding address. He did leave one thing for you."

"What?"

"An envelope containing a blank card. And you know what that means. You've got nothing."

"He's taunting me."

"But my gut says he hasn't left town yet." There was the sound of chewing on the other end of the line. "Mr. Castaway, am I interrupting your dinner?"

"I apologize. The frustration's making me ruin my diet. Now get on the ball. And don't worry about gargoyle interference. I've got the Secret Weapon." Castaway patted a small glass box on his desk. Inside was a silver cuff the size of a watchband.

"It hasn't been tested yet, has it?"

"No. And quit wasting time."

"Over and out."
--------------------------------------------
Ralph's gut had been right. Chester Berkeley hadn't skipped town yet, due to unforeseen circumstances. Namely, a phone call from his old boss. The archaeologist was currently in New York's Museum of Humanities, walking toward the curator's office. Not even his own mother would have recognized him in sunglasses, a false beard, and a floppy hat. You didn't cheese off a fanatic gargoyle hunter and stick around without taking some precautions. He knocked on the door and found it open.

His former boss looked up, surprised. "Who are you?"

Chester removed the disguise. "It's me. This better be good. I missed my flight to Guatemala two hours ago because of your call."

"First things first. What's with the getup?"

The reply was sarcastic. "Makeover."

"Good! Now you can have a new job in addition to the new look!"

"A job? At a site?"

"Yup. In Guatemala."

"I had just taken a job there with the Central American Rainforest Preservation Society. Why is my life so full of irony?"

"Forget those tree-huggers, Chester. You'll have a whole Mayan site to yourself."

"Tikal?"

"Nope. Close, though."

Chester's heart sank. "It wouldn't happen to be the one Christopher Bell was excavating, would it?"

"Ding-ding-ding! What do you win?"

"In case you don't remember, Bell was found dead three years ago. Shot in the back. And the site had been plundered and vandalized. Doesn't seem that appealing."

"Just last week, a couple of smugglers were arrested at the Mexico-US border. One of the guns confiscated matched the caliber of a bullet pulled from Christopher Bell's back, so ballistics did a test-fire. A perfect match. The smugglers were questioned, and they admitted to selling stolen artifacts on the black market. Which brings me to why I'm rehiring you. With a twenty percent raise."

"Why, pray tell?"

The curator pointed to a beautiful sun-shaped carving inlaid with precious stones on his desk. "I went through all the museum's pieces and found the provenance documents on this one were less than satisfactory. This is stolen property, and you know what that means?"

"You send it back to its country of origin."

"Close." The curator held up a notebook. "Here are Bell's notes, dated a few days before he died." There was a sketch that was no doubt of the amulet on the desk. "He found this in the wall of a pyramid on this site."

"Hold it," interrupted Chester. "You want me to courier this to Guatemala City?"

"Oh, no. The Guatemalan government could care less about the country's archaeological history. You're going to return El Sol to the site itself."

"And then what?"

"What else? Take glyph rubbings, photos, map the site. Choose what to excavate next. It was your instinct that found us that tomb in Uxmal."

"By myself!"

"You'll have your HAM radio and there's a town only thirty miles away."

Chester sighed.

"I don't know what you're complaining about. I'd be thrilled to have the whole place to myself!"

"But what about the violence?" growled Chester.

"Oh, pooh. I'm not sending you to Colombia! Now that's dangerous!"

"Fine. I'll do it."

"Good. Your flight's tomorrow night."

"Tomorrow night! Can't I go tonight?"

"What's the hurry? Go home, get some rest. Spend the day enjoying the East Coast weather tomorrow because you know how warm and sticky it can get in the jungle."

Chester pulled on his disguise. "And to think I wrote a recommendation for you to win the Archaeologist of the Year award!"
------------------------------------------------------
Macbeth was atop one of the parapets of Castle Wyvern. Going into the Eyrie Building had been easy. Getting past Xanatos had been harder, but the immortal Scottish king had the stealth of a jungle cat. He glanced at the sky. A couple hours before sunrise. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the cell phone Robyn had left at his home. It had rang twice, playing an instrumental version of the Moody Blues hit "Go Now" but he thought it too rude to answer someone else's phone.

Twenty minutes later, Goliath himself landed on the battlement. "Macbeth? What on earth are you doing here?"

"I just wanted to speak to you."

The clan leader looked at him quizzically. "About what?"

"The advice you gave me in Paris."

"What of it?"

"I think I've found someone, but I'm not sure what to do. There's no statute that says I can't date a descendant from a first cousin once removed."

"I doubt it's ever come up before, but continue."

"I actually looked up the genealogy records on this. Robyn Canmore is descended from Canmore, who killed my only son. And his father had my father murdered. How could I love anyone descended from those two monsters?"

"Are you blaming Robyn for something that happened over nine centuries before she was born?"

"Of course not."

"Just listen to your heart. You don't want to live alone. You've said so yourself. How did she make you feel?"

"Even though she asked me some sensitive questions?" Macbeth shrugged. "Better than I've felt in a long time. She was pretty frank with me and I felt I could be honest with her. She understood me. And people as a whole don't understand me. Sure, they write twenty page thesis statements on my character, but it's based on the Shakespeare play as opposed to what actually happened. Call me vain, but I've read thousands of history books and what I've found about my historical self can be written on a post-it note. I admit the play is a very well-written piece of work, but no one even says the name out loud!"

"Leo Tolstoy once said 'All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love.'"

"You're well-read, Goliath, but will the line stretch to the crack of doom?"

"Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds," replied the gargoyle. "Or bends with the remover to remove."

Macbeth snorted. "Shakespeare's Sonnet 116. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,"

The two said the last line three lines of the sonnet together: "But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error, and upon me prov'd, I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd."

"There's your answer," Goliath said with a dry smile.

"I get the point. But it's not as easy as it sounds. Would any girl love an immortal? I'll outlive her, and I'll end up alone again."

"You're just using that as an excuse."

"Have you ever been in a situation this awkward?"

"Does falling in love with a human count?" Silence. "I once had a dream of sorts."

"Gargoyles dream?" Macbeth asked.

"Actually, yes. We're completely paralyzed in stone sleep, but we're semi- conscious beneath the skin. Random thoughts and feelings pass."

"The gargoyle version of REM sleep. So what about this dream?"

"It happened at night, actually. I was thrown into some sort of parallel universe. I was human. Elisa and I were married. We even had children. But it wasn't what I thought life would be if we were the same species. It was so...awkward and superficial. Needless to say, I prefer the forms we were born in. I can't speak for Elisa, but I think she loves me for who I am. I know you've endured a lot of heartache in your life."

"That's putting it mildly. You can't possibly know what I've endured! I lost my love, my son, my kingdom. In a figurative sense, my life. All in one night. If I could have died then, I would have."

"I know how hard it is to keep on going , when promises turn to lies. I lost most of my family in one night too. I've been a victim of Demona's trickery. I loved her once, though. She was my Angel. But she's changed so much since then. As if she's removed her heart and replaced it with a stone. I thought for a while I could change her back, but what good did it do me?"

"I guess there are some promises she just can't keep," observed Macbeth acidly. After a moment, he asked, "Do you still think about her?"

"I try not to, or else I'll go crazy. Once in a while I wonder what would happened if things had turned out different. I might have said 'She's the one.'"

"I keep wishing I could change the past. If I had killed Canmore, or at least banished him to the most distant locale I could think of. Or if I hadn't made the deal with the Weird Sisters. I've even considering going Faust."

I haven't seen him this vulnerable since Demona turned most of the New York human population into stone, or the brief moment I snapped him out of the Archmage's spell. "That desperate?"

Bitter laughter. "I've bargained my youth away. Why not my soul?"

"I've felt that way too. Over a thousand years ago. My remaining clan members were stone forever, I thought my mate was dust, and I couldn't bear the thought of raising thirty-six children by myself. For a second, I thought I could fling myself from the castle parapets."

"What stopped you?"

"I remembered my remaining clan members were still alive under the stone. So I asked the Magus to cast the spell on me. He and the Princess promised to raise the eggs. That was a promise they kept."

"So that's how you knew to choose life instead of death."

"I wish the massacre had never happened. But you can't change the course of history. I know. I've tried. All we can do is accept it and make the best of the present. You've been dealt a lot of injustice, Macbeth, but you can dwell on it forever. If you keep carrying that anger, it'll eat you inside."

"It almost did."

"Robyn's got a grudge against Demona, too. Maybe you can learn to let it go together. Isn't it in forgiving that you're forgiven?"

"It makes sense."

"Why did you come to me for advice?"

"You were the only one who would have understood. Why?"

"Seeing as you and I really got off on the wrong foot. I never did thank you for defending us in the television interview."

"You saw it?"

"No, but I read about it in a newspaper."

"You're welcome. I better go now." Macbeth straightened out his trenchcoat and turned away.

Little did he know that there had been some eavesdroppers on the conversation.

Lexington pulled his ear from the wall and cuddled Alex. "Macbeth likes Robyn Canmore?"

Angela was reading a book titled What To Do When Your Parents Don't Agree on Anything. "I hope she likes older men."

TBC