On some level he'd already guessed; he just hadn't wanted to know he was right.
A gargoyle loomed out of the dust. All the gargoyles Reive had seen were unique, each with a slightly different mix of horns and fangs, wings and hooves and claws. This one was hunched over like a gorilla, with its big clawed forepaws touching the library carpet. There was a dull reddish glow to its eyes, visible only in the shadows when it had its back turned to the light.
Behind it, more gargoyles moved.
Did they come for me? Reive thought, horrified and furious.
Jess had to be terrified. He began to move to protect her, interposing his body between the fragile human woman and the hulking stone beasts.
He was completely unprepared for her actual reaction—a primal scream of pure and utter rage.
Jess
The monsters had come back.
When she first saw them, all Jess could do was stare, horrified down to her core. She knew these creatures because they had found her once before, years ago and far from here.
Dull red eyes glared through the dust; lumpy dark forms loomed like creatures out of nightmare.
Gargoyles like her.
Some part of her had always known they would come again, as they had come before, if she couldn't learn how to fix herself first.
But as the initial rush of frozen terror began to fade, what came next was fury. They were in her library!
"Get the hell out of here!" she screamed, and grabbed the nearest thing in reach, a book cart.
"Jess, get back!" Reive yelled, reaching for her, but she gave the cart a tremendous push, and only realized as it left her hands that her muscles had bulged up as she did it, and the claws she hadn't had a second ago had left deep scores in the metal.
The book cart hurtled toward the frontmost monster as if launched out of a cannon. It slammed into the creature's chest and knocked it backwards into the nearest shelf. (Reference: Br-Ch.)
There was a moment of frozen, baffled confusion among the gargoyles as they tried to cope with this, giving Reive a chance to grab hold of her and hustle her behind Mystery & Thriller. "Is there a back way out of here?" he whispered, his strong hands holding her shoulders.
He didn't seem to have noticed anything wrong with her; at least, he didn't react if he had. Jess curled her hands into fists, hiding the telltale claws until she could get them under control and will them back to smooth fingertips once again. She hoped desperately that nothing was wrong with her face. Her teeth felt normal when she ran her tongue over them: no fangs this time.
"There's an emergency fire exit behind the media section," she whispered. "That way."
They ran between the ranks of books, Reive a step behind her with his hand planted firmly on her back. Under other circumstances, Jess would have relished the strong, solid feel of it. Right now she was just wildly hoping she didn't suddenly sprout wings. No wings, no wings, she chanted in a silent litany in her head as they slalomed through Periodicals and raced past serried rows of audiobook cases.
Something crunched loudly behind them. Jess didn't dare look back, in part because if she really lost her temper, she didn't think she could keep the fangs under control. "That had better not be one of the new computers! We paid a lot for those!"
"You can charge them for it later! Go!"
Then the end of a bookshelf splintered, books flying everywhere. Jess had to fight her instinct to stop and start picking them up, but there was no opportunity, because a monster stepped in front of them. Its eyes glowed a vivid, taillight red, taking her straight back to that night at the foster home in Georgia, when they had come for her the first time.
She had escaped by running—and by flying. That night, she had found out for the first time that she had wings. The authorities found her two counties away, curled up in a barn in a ragged nightgown, babbling an incomprehensible story about stone monsters. Her foster parents had been killed in what the police told her was a gas explosion. But it hadn't been a gas explosion. She remembered monsters just like this one tearing through the walls, shattering the windows, crashing through the roof.
Coming for her.
Now it loomed in front of her, red eyes glaring and empty. Even up close, it looked lumpy and badly made, like someone had roughly scooped together handfuls of clay and rocks into a vaguely manlike shape. Its skin was pebbly and gray. It had massive humped shoulders like a gorilla's, and arms that nearly dragged the ground.
She didn't know what she could do. She couldn't fight. Even in her monster shape, she wasn't nearly that big.
"Jess!" Reive grabbed her from behind, spinning her around to put himself between her and the monster.
One of its massive, misshapen paws swung at them, but Reive pulled her down with impossibly fast reflexes. It pulverized the shelf above their heads. He hustled her down another aisle.
"Where's that emergency exit again?"
"T-to the left. Through the reference section."
There were more smashing sounds. They were destroying the library just like they'd destroyed her house in Georgia. Rage flushed through her.
"How dare they—ack—I need to—"
"Get out of here, is what you need to do." Reive halted her with a touch on her arm and then pulled her down behind the big stand that held the dictionary.
Jess peered around the stand along with Reive. There were two more of the monsters systematically going down the periodical shelves, stopping to look at the contents of each shelf and then swiping it to the floor and moving on.
Her mouth went dry. They were obviously looking for something, and what they were looking for could only be her.
I have to keep him safe, she thought. Reive was only a human. He was in no danger as long as he wasn't with her. And he didn't have her stone skin or wings. If she could just get away from him, she could transform and fly away, luring them away from the library.
"Reive," she began in a whisper.
"Shh." He put his hand on her arm. "Listen. I'm going to lead them away so you can—"
"Reive, no, wait, listen—"
"—get away. They're obviously looking for something—"
Me, she thought helplessly. They're looking for me.
"—which is obviously that manuscript you have."
Record scratch noise in her brain. Wait, what?
"So you just need to get somewhere safe," Reive whispered. He took hold of her shoulders and looked into her eyes. No one had ever looked at her like that before, like they wanted her to be safe, like she mattered. She desperately tried to find the words to tell him that he had it all wrong, that it was her, and not the book at all ...
And then she realized that this was exactly what she wanted. They could split up, and he'd be off somewhere else and she could get the monsters out of the library without seeing that look—that look like she mattered, like she was worth something—change to horror and disgust when he realized what she really was.
"Okay," she whispered back, and flinched at another crash as more books hit the floor. "Yes, let's do that. I'll run for the exit as soon as it's clear."
He nodded, lips parted, and there was a brief lingering moment when Jess had the odd, tingling feeling that he was about to kiss her, or at least wanted to.