Stockholm

Chapter One: The Past Behind Us

“MONSTER!”

And that’s how it all began.

Hi, my name is Amadeus, and I’m a gargoyle. I’m also a girl. Call me Omah. I hate my name. I think it calls too much attention to me and sounds weird. Everybody else thinks it’s got some sort of deep, mysterious meaning. None of us know where the name came from.

Whatever. Apparently my dying mother had a grudge against me since she named me before she died from giving birth to me. She had been weakened from her bullet wound and wanted to spread the misery, I suspect. Either that or she thought I was a boy, and nobody really felt like contradicting the last spoken words of her spirit. Or she could’ve just shouted out the name randomly. Actually, nobody really knows why she named me such a strange name. Maybe she cursed me because I had some of my father’s humanesque features. They tell me he broke her heart. She showed him her true self and he tried to shoot her because she was, as a pureblood gargoyle, really scary and magicked to appear ugly to all others besides fellow gargoyles. It’s a defense of ours, our ugliness - our different-ness. Something we’ve cultivated with magic and breeding. Sometimes we come to regret the decision, like in this instance.

Yeah, gargoyles aren’t really stone, we just pretend to be, because sometimes we have to harden our exteriors into stone to create a protective shell. I guess my mom didn’t have enough time or didn’t want to protect herself against her own husband. Sometimes we have to turn our hearts and selves to stone when we can’t handle it anymore. My mother was quite the risqué one, running off with a glamorous human. Now she’s another statue. I’ve never visited her. What’s the point?

They fascinate us, these humans, since we come from common roots. However, there is one crucial difference. Humans have free will. We don’t. We’re the slaves of fate, bound to protect all who ask for our assistance in penance for our illustrious (note the sarcasm) ancestors who fell victim to the bloodlust and hate. Thankfully, only the church dudes figured it out. Mostly because of that stupid first gargoyle who told our one big secret – the one thing we can still call our own - to some bishop in hope of redemption. We learned our lesson about trusting humans. We teach our children to value silence and secrets to protect against the world. My mom didn’t listen to the cautionary tales, and look what happened – me.

Anyway, gargoyles as a species aren’t really religious. We just got the bad end of the stick after too many people assumed that, since some of our more outspoken ancestors were apparently really ugly or violent or whatever, we were a facet of evil or something. So a couple powerful hero-type wizards/witches thought the same way, and poof, here we are, well into the second generation. Apparently the curse is genetic. So we’re still stuck in this rotten pact that we never agreed to, and we have to serve anybody and everybody who asks it of us. We’re like mercenaries, except without the benefits of money and choice and health insurance and all – so more like serfs, actually.

Gargoyles don’t have any allies either. Everybody else in supernatural society is much too lofty to associate with the likes of non-political us. We’re like that one loony bat of the family that smells funny and holds all the money who everybody is embarrassed to admit is a blood relative, but won’t get rid of because…who knows who’ll inherit when the freak finally gets finished off? Except I really don’t know what it is we could ever offer, even in our death, except for our curse.

You see, us gargoyles really don’t have all that much against heaven or hell. We like to think of ourselves as neutral. It’s easier that way, since we don’t like to fight wars anymore. We kind of lost our bloodlust – that’s right, bloodlust is also part of the genes. Yeah, thanks again, ancient ancestors, for condemning us to your fate. Our pretend - stone forms are slowly addling our minds, making us passive, slow to act, slow to forgive, and slow to forget. Many of us have passed, actually becoming the statues we’ve pretended to be for so long. It’s a form of escapism. There’s only a couple hundred of us still around, scattered throughout the countryside. Most of us are second generation, the one that came after the curse. It’s tough for us to have kids (Ever seen a passionate rock? Me neither.)…so we’re pretty much approaching extinction. The plus side of this is that it takes a lot more than a little punch or gunshot to get to us. So at least we’re safe from all that pain and weakness stuff – on the outside.

00000

I live alone, and I’m okay with it. Nobody can order me around, because nobody knows where I am. I live in the U.S.A. which is the last place gargoyles want to live, since there aren’t really any good churches to find refuge in, and there are way too many higher-ups here, since it was one of the last lands to become fully domesticated. Most supernaturals live either here or in the wilds, up in Canada or the North Pole or somewhere. As far as I know, I’m the only gargoyle who lives in New York City. I despise cities, but it’s worth it for the anonymity I can find. I flew over here the moment my wings matured, which took about thirty years (I was still young then, not even a teen yet in human time. We grow really slowly.). I arrived around the time the frontier was going out of business. I guess that makes me around sixteen or seventeen in human time now.

My place of birth was a nightmare for me. Notre Dame Cathedral is the place to go if you want to enlist a gargoyle’s services, because it’s the only place still fully operational with a full staff of gargoyles. All the children are born and raised there, and it’s our bastion of gargoyle culture. We try to preserve what we can through old tales and rituals, but our stories are slipping away along with our concern for life. Statues don’t care about insignificant things like half-forgotten fables.

To tell you the truth, I don’t think I care much either. I just live here. My human blood allows me to conceal my true features. Gargoyle blood may run strong, deep, and true, but human blood is known for its unpredictable and misleading nature. I inherited the little magic my people posses, which is enough for me to finish the transformation of my mixed features all the way to human. My magic is temperamental, though, and only works as long as I keep myself in total control. Whenever I feel a strong emotion, be it love, hate, sorrow, etc., my true nature comes out, and the illusion drops. It’s hard for me to lie constantly like this, but circumstances really haven’t given me a choice.

My life is a bundle of contradictions. I’ve endured decades more than my classmates, yet I still slave through English, Math, Science, French (Paris – place of birth – a.k.a. easy A), and History (Pfft – human history is such a farce). Then I go back to my little nest up in the tower of one of the churches, shed the illusion I put over my appearance, and spend the night doing homework and guarding the place in my sleep.

Hey, just because I wasn’t the one who made the deal doesn’t mean I am devoid of honor. I will fulfill the terms of the foolish arrangement. It would be impolite to do so, an instance of following the letter of the law instead of the spirit. Although I’ll admit, I don’t really do as good a job as I would if I was actually bound by the residing priest. But they don’t even know I sleep here, and there is no residing priest. So I just loosely follow the code laid out for us unbound gargoyles, which basically means: live in and protect a place of worship and shelter those in need. This place is closed down now, just another abandoned building on some shady street, its lifeless windows looking out upon the homeless who range in the alleyways surrounding the building. That’s right, there isn’t even a road leading up to it, just a little one-way street and a bunch of alleys. This church is so tiny and poor that even some beggars would turn their noses up at it. But there are the occasional guests, who in my opinion need way more protection than your everyday, run-o’-the-mill churchgoer, since it takes real desperation to even find this place amongst the alleyways.

I take care to be invisible. It’s an art form I’ve cultivated over the years until, well, I do believe some of the teachers forget I’m sitting in their classes sometimes. It’s safer that way. Sometimes I feel lonely, though. Gargoyles are social creatures, and that’s the way I was raised – as a part of the flock. We may isolate ourselves from the rest of the world, but we always help our fellows. It’s the only thing we can do in the face of adversity: support each other in a show of solidarity.

A/N: Just to show what I've been doing instead of working on, you know, B o'B. And on to the next!