Consume

My eyes break open.

I hear the snap of wings against stone and brick, pelting the air around me, buffeting my body from all sides like a tempest formed of breezes multiplied and harnessed. My jaw cracks wide and breath rushes from my lungs. I don’t remember holding it in before sleep took me, but the ache in my chest doesn’t lie. My naked breasts sag in relief.

Screeches echo along the spire I’ve been crouched upon. My skin is still warm from the sun, from soaking it in all day long. My claws grip the ledge, and I let myself fall.

The darkness choking the city skyline, broken only by the purple smog reflecting traffic lights and skyscraper towers, is enough to widen my eyes bit by bit until they are consumed by pupil. They crave more and more light the higher I fly, and so as my body drops, plummeting toward the concrete they soak in every glare and light bulb I encounter.

My eyes are not the only part of my body longing for luminescence.

When a grumble reaches my ears I think it will be him, the one who follows me and tracks my movements in the night. My guard. My minion. My lovesick fool. But it’s my own insides, screaming in hunger. My body wants light, needs it, and the city is where I can get some, but lately a fix is harder and harder to acquire.

To obtain the light, I need to touch it, but in its embrace I can be seen. For the past thousand years this has not been a problem. When we traveled to this side of the world, finding shelter on the high roofs of spiked buildings; humans were creative and stupid enough to take credit for our appearance. As long as we were quiet, and returned to our post when the sun breached the horizon no one was the wiser for it. But the times have shifted, and more and more buildings were alive at night, later and later until we had no choice but to curtail our active lifestyles to only an hour or two and reduce our hunting grounds to fit the harsher schedule.

Every ounce of light I can bear to swallow must be consumed between the hours of three thirty and four thirty in the morning, when the humans are scarce. Never gone completely, as there are always street walkers and curb sleepers and insomniacs and troubled youths with their bedroom lights blazing until five. But scarce.

A hiss behind me, and I know my guard has caught up. I wonder if he is the one who screwed up. Who exposed us. Who forced us into our ultimate nightmare.

The humans know we exist now.

They lay out traps of high street lamps, burning just the tiniest bit too brightly to ignore, and then the nets, the electricity, the guns. None of us are sure how it happened, but overnight we went from complicit parasites, syphoning bits of light from cats’ eyes and car lights to monsters they hated with vehemence I personally think we don’t deserve. They didn’t notice us for hundreds of years. Suddenly our way of life is unacceptable.

Regardless. We cannot survive if we don’t eat. Now we are just more cautious. More timely.

I head to one of the skyscrapers, my legs heavy and dangling with me as I push my wings higher and higher. This new diet, only a few lights per night, is weakening my muscles. Soon will I even be able to glide? I shudder, my shoulders cold with the night wind. Come winter one side of this war will retreat. It’s all a matter of luck at this point; who will back off first. At this point I’m not sure which side I’m rooting for. I’d rather just leave. Try to find somewhere new. But my family has dug in so to speak.

The blue lights signaling fair weather blink from the tower, a few fluorescents on in the tall expanse of glass and metal. Workers forgetting to shut off their desk lamps. Custodians who are sympathetic to our plight. For a while there were protesters by our building: two sides of the feud. Those who threw candles and matches at our feet, wanting us to fill our bellies with tiny meals, and those who threatened us with wrecking balls and bulldozers as if we were simple sculptures.

It took the humans little time to realize we could not be damaged while we slept. Moved, sure. Dumped into the bottom of the ocean, of course. But not broken, not even chipped.

We’re cursed, but not to die. Cursed to live.

It would be pretty dangerous to spend more than half of your life unconscious to the world if it meant anyone could walk up to you with a hammer and be done with it.

I slow in time to grip one of the window ledges by one of my favorite offices. This woman always leaves her light on for me. The window cracked by the tiniest centimeter to not instantly lock. A picture of her and a shiny yellow dog stands proudly on her desk.

My guard lands on the ledge beside me, his claws scrabbling for purchase. He has always been a tad bit clumsy. His face turns to mine and he offers me an honest smile, fangs dripping past his lips, nose broad and flattened by years of rain with his face aimed at the heavens. He doesn’t speak much. But he once let slip he always slept that way so heaven could see in his eyes how they all suffer. His muscles are impressive, and I’ve always admired them. When he crouches his thighs bunch and his torso bends and he has always been attractive to me. But what he wants I will not give him.

I will not bring more gargoyles into this world. We are enough. I will not use my body as a breeding ground for soldiers. I will not push this war forward. If we wither and die so be it. He doesn’t push the issue anymore, and this is why I allow him to stay by my side. His affection for me apparently outweighs his desire to destroy them. I don’t think he understands how much that means to me.

When I push the window open and allow my feet to touch the soft carpet floor I wave him inside. He can have this meal. My guard. My sweet, quiet companion. He often sacrifices his rations for me. Again, I think this is in the hopes that I will someday change my mind about the war and bear him children, but there are only so many times I can refuse before the hunger breaks me of my morals.

He fumbles in behind me and reaches for the desk lamp, his gray hands resting lightly on the bulb, absorbing the glow into his palms. He closes his eyes, the dark tint of his skin lightening into a pale winter sky color. Rolling his shoulders, his whole body relaxes; the tense muscles in his back are finally warm and loose. The bulb begins to flicker and he releases it. We used to short out bulbs all the time. Now it is forbidden.

We leave and it’s on to the next building, and the next. I see brothers and sisters fly from here to there, hunting as I hunt, looking for a scrap of light that isn’t coming from the end of a Taser. Technology has evolved to both better feed and destroy us, and so I am never sure if I hate it or not.

Sometimes I miss the simple delicacy of fire.

I get my first fix of the night from an empty gymnasium, the bulbs sickly green with cheap light. I touch one long bulb, then another, then another, sipping from them. It’s not the most efficient, but no one will know I was here. It’s almost time to scamper home. Another successful night avoiding a mob, avoiding starvation, postponing the fight I fear is coming soon.

My guard watches me with warm eyes I try my best to ignore, but I smile in spite of myself.

Suddenly a door creaks open, louder than a shot as the metal scrapes over the waxed floorboards.

Instantly he is shielding me with his body. His wings open and spread wide. I’m invisible in his mighty shadow.

“Hey!” a voice shouts. “Monster! Help, a monster! A monster is here!” I peek my head around his broad shoulder and see a man wearing all yellow. He looks horrendously ugly, fat in strange places and in such a garish display of color.

“Hey! Hey! A monster!” he continues. I grip the broad shoulders and start tugging him backward. We could kill this man, but that is not what I want. I don’t want my guard to strike. I beg him with my tugs to retreat.

He eventually accepts my ministrations and together we turn to flee but beside the window we entered there are people. I count them. Eight. All in the same awful yellow. Head to toe.

I clear my throat and try to look harmless.

“Please…” I say in a scratchy but passible-human voice. I have watched and learned, having spent many nights above a bar, only pretending to sleep. “Please let us go. We don’t want to hurt any of you.”

“You think you’re going to hurt us?” one of them taunts.

“Please,” I say again. My guard moves to my side as he tries to keep track of the man at the door, and this cluster at our exit. For all I know we are currently surrounded. I think of the woman who leaves her lamp on every night. I know they can be swayed to see reason. “We weren’t breaking any of your lights. We’re just hungry or else we wouldn’t have even come here. We didn’t hurt anything. Or anyone,” I add. “We’ll leave now.”

“You steal our electricity, you haunt our houses and buildings like devils! And now you think we’ll let you waltz into a school and then leave? You’re as dumb as you are disgusting. Gray-skinned freak!” He pulls out a gun and my guard instantly reacts, his eyes blaring white with inner light and his fangs dropping low as he howls at them, shaking the foundations we stand on.

The group shivers as one but as some of them men cower some pull out more weapons.

“No! Stop, please!” I scream, but thunderous shots ring out one by one as they fire. I’m hit on the leg and then on the shoulder before instinct gives in and I move, my wings beating against stale air to lift me and carry me up and over the group. My guard races past me, claws extended as he rips first one man off the floor, then another. Gripping their hideous yellow shirts and throwing them to the side like toys. He is still so strong, my companion. I envy his power, although until now I would have sworn I never wanted it.

Black blood drips to the floor under me as I struggle to get past the group. They’ve closed the window but I break through it, my arms covering my face and neck to avoid the sharp glass. I tumble to the grass below.

Getting to my feet, I wait for him to follow me. My legs ache. I hear him cry out and I know he’s hurt, but there is no way he is defeated, or so I tell myself again and again each second he is not bursting from the empty window to fall at my feet.

I’m shaking from cold and pain and fear but eventually I can’t stand not knowing, and so I rise up a few feet, and I see the battle end. He has turned to shred a man shoulder to hip with his clawed hands, but one of the fallen, spitting and choking on his own blood, raises an arm.

The bullet hits him square in the back. And the man fires again. And again. My guardian falls onto his knees. Then to the side. He attempts to turn and face the gun. For what end I will never know.

But his eyes meet mine, and I hover stagnant at the window, and I see the life leave him.

The tether keeping me outside breaks and I rush to him. My knees crack on the gymnasium floor as I press my lips onto his. He wasn’t perfect, but he was mine. I hear the shooter choke on his last breath and my eyes shut tight.

I wish I had delivered the killing blow. I wish I had felt him pay. For a moment I cannot breathe.

A gasp reaches my ears. I twist my head and see one man rise. He had been knocked into a stupor, his head sluggishly leaking blood down his fucking yellow shirt. Swaying, he raises an arm. A small silver gun winks from his hand.

I do not think, I do not feel. I move.

I’m on him, and his neck is in my mouth, under my teeth. Breaking beneath the assault, his blood pouring down my throat. It’s hot and thick and makes me gag, but I clench my fangs down harder, drag my head back and forth to tear at the skin. He is ripping like tissue paper and it feels good.

I release him and he drops like a stone onto the floor. He wheezes.

I lean down close, so that he might see my face, gray and black and red all over, and I smile at him. My kind does not mix with his. We do not exchange words or gestures, and until just weeks ago they did not even know I existed. But now they will. Now they will see.

When his eyes widen at my gruesome face something flickers there. Was it light? I lean closer to examine it, my mouth only inches from his. I search their depth and then… warmth. Sweet, aching warmth. My belly fills with it as he breathes out and I breathe in. His eyes grow dim and become flat, meaningless disks swimming in his skull.

My skin is as white as puffy summer clouds. I haven’t felt this fed in weeks.

And now I know something that will change the tides.

How foolish we have been to only eat the lights that shine obviously in front of our eyes. How careless we were to not try a more discreet type of energy. I shake my head, my body swimming with power.

This could mean a violent, bloody war, I think. But when I see my guard’s body, sprayed with so many holes, the black puddle beneath him still widening into a pool, I know it won’t be a war at all. It will be a massacre.

And I will lead the way.

The sky begins to lighten and I rush back to my spire, my family waiting and eager for my return, concern etched on their faces. There is no time to tell them, and I feel my limbs freezing in place.

Raising my face to the sky I allow my bloody face to smile at the heavens. We may be cursed, but when I awaken the night will welcome us with open arms, covered in harmful little human beasts to devour. We will scorch the earth of them, and spend our evenings drinking souls and starlight. My claws tighten on the roof, and fury sings in my heart. My eyes close out of habit as the run reaches us.

I sleep through the day, my skin made of sharp stone edges and smooth rock curves, and I am ready.

Night falls.

My eyes break open.