Unsympathetic Magic

1

As summer in New York City ripened into a swel-A tering stench of suffocating heat and humidity, I found myself arrested for prostitution, menaced by zombies (yes, zombies), and staked out as a human sacrifice. I also nearly got Lopez killed—again.

Although I realize this isn’t exactly the sort of stuff that happens to everyone on a bad hair day, I nonetheless maintain that these events were not my fault.

Well, not entirely my fault. I do feel responsible for what happened to Lopez. Cause and effect. If I hadn’t gotten him involved in my problem, then he wouldn’t have come so close to meeting the Lord of Death.

And I got him involved because I didn’t want a prostitution arrest on my police record. Indeed, I didn’t want a police record at all.

Getting picked up for prostitution, though . . . now that was not my fault. That, obviously, would have happened to anyone who happened to lose her cell phone in a struggle with deranged gargoyles (yes, gargoyles) and trip over a living corpse in Harlem at midnight while dressed like a hooker.

Oh, if only I were making this up.

I was in Harlem in the middle of a muggy midsummer night because I was working. I’d been cast in a guest role on The Dirty Thirty, the latest success in the Crime and Punishment franchise of prestigious police television dramas. Affectionately known to fans as D30, this was the C&P empire’s most controversial spin-off to date, a gritty, morally ambivalent show about rampant police corruption in the Thirtieth Precinct a.k.a. the dirty Thirty.

After being rejected by C&P’s regular network because of its raw subject matter and antihero protagonists, D30 had premiered on cable TV the previous summer, and it had soon become a critically acclaimed cult hit with a steadily growing audience. Some New York City cops condemned and boycotted the program, while others reputedly provided much of the show’s material from their own experiences on the force.

The show’s second season had begun airing this summer, when the competition mostly consisted of reruns, and ratings and reviews were good this year, too. So getting a guest role on D30 was a good opportunity for me. Especially since I had no other real work (i.e. acting work) lined up and had been resting (i.e. waiting tables fifty hours per week) for the past couple of months.

It was also a terrific role. Granted, my mother wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of my appearing on national television as a homeless bisexual junkie prostitute—but my mother is seldom thrilled about anything I do, so I let her oh-so-subtle comments about this job roll off my back. My father had declined to offer an opinion—though whether that was to avoid an argument with me or with my mother, I have no idea.

My parents live in Wisconsin and rarely visit New York—a city which, besides being an international epicenter for my profession, has the advantage of being eight hundred miles away from them.

However, parental dismay notwithstanding, Jilly C-Note (not her real name), was a challenging and satisfying character to play: tough, bold, ignorant but shrewd, impulsive, completely amoral, sometimes cruel, and prone to occasional moments of twisted compassion. The script for the episode was smart, tight, and full of well-crafted surprises. My costume was uncomfortable and a little embarrassing, but this wasn’t the first time I’d worked for long hours in tight clothes that left a lot of my character’s skin exposed (and thinking of my body as belonging to my character rather than to me is one of the ways I get comfortable in the strange array of costumes that I wear in the course of my profession).

This was a terrific job, and I was delighted to have it. Even though I couldn’t stand the regular cast member with whom Jilly had most of her scenes.

After five days on the same set with actor Michael Nolan, who played one of the dirtiest detectives in the Thirtieth Precinct, I’d already fantasized multiple times about stomping on his genitals with one of Jilly C-Note’s high-heeled boots.

Dating actors is an exercise in masochism, which is why I don’t do it. That’s a long-standing personal rule. But I normally like working with actors—indeed, I normally like it so much that it’s among the many reasons that I am one. Whatever their personal twitches and foibles, many actors, in the practice of their craft, are generous, engaging, and cooperative, and they care about doing what’s best for the overall production.

Michael Nolan, however, was the other kind of actor. He was temperamental, narcissistic, rude, and primarily concerned with doing what was best for himself, and the rest of the production be damned. On the other hand, though it galled me to admit it, he was also talented, and the same qualities that made him so difficult to work with actually translated well to his D30 role as Detective Jimmy Conway, an edgy, tightly wound, morally decayed cop struggling with alcoholism and (since getting shot in the first year’s season finale) post-traumatic stress disorder.

In this episode, Detective Conway was shaking down Jilly for sex and information in exchange for not arresting her on suspicion of murdering her pimp. The script didn’t reveal whether or not Jilly was actually the killer. Sticking with the dark tone that was typical of the show, the cops of the dirty Thirty didn’t care that a pimp had been murdered; they were just looking for ways to benefit from the killing—such as blackmailing the chief suspect, Jilly, for information about other criminals in the precinct. This might well get Jilly killed, and the cops didn’t particularly care about that, either.

Tonight was my final night of work on the episode, and despite how much I had enjoyed the script, the role, and the rest of the cast and crew, it was a relief to know I wouldn’t have to deal with Michael Nolan again after this.

We were preparing to shoot the most awkward scene in the script—for me, at least. I didn’t know if this scene’s shoot had been scheduled last as a courtesy to me or for other reasons entirely, but I was glad either way.

In this scene, Detective Conway was questioning Jilly about an illegal weapons deal while making her perform oral sex on him. The physical aspects of the scene would stay (just barely) within the boundaries of what could be shown on a commercial cable network, but it was the sort of scene that’s uncomfortable for two actors to perform the very first time they work together. By now, however, my fifth day of shooting, Nolan and I had already done a number of dialogue scenes together, as well as a grimly post-coital scene in a filthy outdoor stairwell. So, although I didn’t like him, I was accustomed to working with him and no longer anxious about kneeling before him with my face in his groin for a couple of hours.

Heigh-ho, the glamorous life of an actress.

To his credit, Nolan was very professional about this sort of thing—as I knew from the thirty minutes (on-and-off) that he’d spent pumping his hips against mine in a dank stairwell the night before. (Scenes that look embarrassingly intimate onscreen are usually technical and choreographed, and so it was in this case.) When the cameras were rolling, what Nolan wanted most was to be admired for his work, and that meant that he focused on doing it well; this, in turn, allowed me to focus on doing my work well, too.

We were shooting in the East 120s tonight. Although that’s in Harlem, like the Thirtieth Precinct, the neighborhood is not actually part of the Three-Oh. In fact, although I’d spent four of my five D30 working days on location (since the death of her pimp, Jilly was homeless, and most of my scenes were filmed outdoors), we hadn’t gone anywhere near the Thirtieth. I gathered from the crew that this was because the cops of the Thirtieth unanimously hated the show. During its first season, they had tried (unsuccessfully) to prevent D30 from getting any permits to film on location in their precinct, and there’d been some unpleasant incidents on the few occasions that the show had done location work there. So the producers decided it just best to film elsewhere thereafter. Since then, every episode contained some establishing shots filmed in the Thirtieth (which reputedly galled the real-life cops there), but no actual scenes were filmed in the precinct.

The night before, we had filmed in another part of town, where the location scouts had found a filthy, urine-scented basement stairwell that they liked. In that scene, a quick bout of impersonal, fully-clothed coitus between Detective Conway and Jilly came to a sudden halt when Conway had a debilitating flashback to being shot the previous season. He then exchanged some confessional dialogue with Jilly in which he came close to treating her like a person. Jilly, slightly mellowed by sharing Conway’s flask of scotch, experienced an unexpected moment of compassion for the corrupt cop who was victimizing her. It was a great scene, and I had really enjoyed doing it despite the humid heat, Jilly’s uncomfortable clothes, the overwhelming odor of urine, and Nolan’s tantrum about the lighting.

Tonight’s scene contained more strong writing. Having opened up to Jilly (ever so slightly) in the previous scene, Conway now resented her for glimpsing his vulnerability. So in this scene, he would make her get on her knees before him in a darkened street; it was an attempt to put her back in her place as a hooker, a junkie, and his stooge. And while forcing her to pleasure him sexually, he would stay focused on asking questions about criminal business—in particular, questions that could get Jilly killed.

The characters’ previous scene had been a personal, even slightly touching encounter, in a grim, dreary setting. In tonight’s scene, by contrast, Conway’s deliberate attempt to demean Jilly would occur in attractive, romantically lighted surroundings. And in the final moments of the scene, Jilly would give as good as she got, humiliating Conway, in turn, with a few well chosen words, now that their previous encounter had given away his weakness.

Last night’s scene had probably been the most challenging one for me and Nolan, since it required us—two actors who didn’t like each other—to find an emotional connection between our characters, however brief and subtle it was. Tonight’s scene, by contrast, was ideally suited to the adversarial energy that existed between us as people (and that seemed to exist between Nolan and most people). While waiting for the crew to finish their lighting and sound checks, we were running lines together, and it was going well.

The makeup artist touched up my face while I recited some dialogue about a pending sale of automatic weapons and cop killer bullets that was due to occur somewhere in the precinct. I looked in the mirror that the makeup artist handed me, then nodded to show that I was satisfied if she was. The pale skin, shoulder-length brown hair, brown eyes, and good cheekbones were my own. The heavy, smudged eye makeup, the ill-advised lipstick color, and the stringy, unkempt hairdo were Jilly’s.

Then the makeup artist tried to touch up Nolan’s face. With an irritable scowl, he shoved her hand away and finished saying his line. Without glancing at her, he then grabbed the mirror from her and looked into it.

"Christ, I look so red, he said. What the fuck did you put on me?"

Actually, I’ve been trying to tone down the red ever since you got on set, she said patiently. Your color is really heightened tonight.

She was right. It was. I realized I had unconsciously assumed they’d rouged him heavily for this scene—maybe to emphasize Conway’s emotional conflict.

Of course, it’s heightened, Nolan snapped. "It’s so goddamn hot out here tonight. He said absently to me, Aren’t you hot?"

Uh-huh. It was early August, so it had been hot every night of the shoot. These were the dog days of summer.

Nolan dragged his forearm across his forehead, smudging his makeup. I saw that they had indeed powdered him quite a bit tonight in an attempt to tone down his heightened color.

Jesus, I’m really sweating, he said. It’s like a steam bath out here. There’s no damn air.

Actually, here in East Harlem, we were close enough to the river that a slight breeze was coming down the street to us from the water. And since we weren’t surrounded by the stench of urine tonight, I thought this was a distinct improvement over our previous night’s location.

But Nolan said, I feel like I’m going to throw up. Have you got something for that?

The makeup artist signaled to a production assistant, who in turn spoke into her walkie-talkie, asking someone to bring something to Mr. Nolan for his nausea. The makeup artist went back to trying to tone down the color of Nolan’s face, but he brushed aside her hand again, irritably insisting that she wait until he felt better.

I sighed and went to find a chair, since standing around in Jilly’s high heels for any length of time made my feet hurt.

As I expected, Nolan’s queasy stomach led to delays while he rejected various remedies offered to him, then threw a tantrum about the crew’s failure to have on hand the exact product he wanted. A production assistant was sent to 125th Street, a few blocks away, in search of an open shop where the correct item could be purchased for poor Mr. Nolan’s aching tummy. I resented the delay—especially after having been through numerous delays this week, always because of Nolan—but I also didn’t particularly want him vomiting while I was kneeling right in front of him. Besides, I was just a guest performer, and an unknown one, at that. So I sat quietly, the perfect picture of patience, and endured the lengthy wait that ensued before Nolan finally felt ready to work.

By then, I was pretty sweaty. The breeze from the Harlem River notwithstanding, it was a hot night, and Jilly wasn’t dressed for this weather. (Based on a line in the script about her needing to find someplace to stay before the weather turned cold, I assumed the episode was set in autumn.) I was wearing a low-cut leopard-patterned Lycra top with sleeves that came down to my elbows; an uncomfortably short, tight, red vinyl skirt with a studded belt; purple fishnet stockings; and black high-heeled boots. Completing Jilly’s ensemble was a curly lamb vest. Wearing that vest in this weather was unbearable, so it always stayed on the garment rack until just before I stepped in front of the cameras.

Now that Nolan was pacing around in front of the cameras and revving up for the scene, I let the wardrobe mistress slip the pale, furry vest over my arms and onto my shoulders. A few minutes later, Jilly’s immense purse, containing all her worldly goods, was slung over my shoulder. A production assistant stood nearby with some knee pads, which I’d be using later; I would only have to kneel directly on bare cement in the master shots where my legs would be visible.

In the opening portion of the scene, Conway and Jilly would exchange a page of dialogue face- to-face before he’d rough her up and force her to her knees. We had already worked on the blocking for this, and now I joined Nolan in front of the cameras so the crew could verify all our marks. Television and film work tends to involve a lot of technical considerations, such as making sure you’re in focus, in the frame, audible, and correctly lit on every shot, as well as ensuring continuity from take to take of the same scene being filmed from multiple angles.

Finally ready for our first take—a mere ninety minutes behind schedule—Nolan and I now stood face-to-face, waiting for the director to call, Action!

I was close enough to see that, under his recently freshened layer of makeup, the actor looked even redder than before. But our lighting for this scene was so shadowy, I supposed it probably wouldn’t matter.

Action!

Nolan turned into Conway in a nanosecond. He grabbed me and shook me, his hot breath brushing my face as he demanded I tell him what I knew. I struggled and prevaricated, pretending I knew much less than he supposed, but I didn’t waste any breath trying to appeal to his compassion. My resistance infuriated him. He shoved me away—so hard that my heel caught in a crack on the sidewalk and I staggered sideways before I fell back against the wall. He pursued me, closing in on me. I knew we were off our marks now, as did he, but the scene was working so well that we kept playing it. As he leaned into me, though, I could see that he was even redder now, and sweating again.

An instant later, Nolan tripped over his lines. He tried to save the moment, but then he swayed dizzily, closed his eyes, and put his hand to his forehand.

He shook his head and, completely out of character now, said, Nah, I lost it. Let’s go back.

Are you all right? I asked.

Yeah, fine, he said tersely.

He didn’t look all right. He looked . . . well, not all right, anyhow.

I said, Are you sure? Because you look a littl—

If you could manage to hit your fucking marks, that would be a big help, he snapped.

I fantasized about stomping on his genitals with my high-heeled boots.

We started the scene again. This time I fell backward into the wall exactly where I was supposed to. But when he pursued me and leaned into me . . . I saw that his eyes were watery, and his gaze was blurry. Nolan uttered Conway’s next line with a thick, clumsy tongue. I kept going, whining Jilly’s dialogue at him. He blew his next line completely, stumbling over a few disjointed words then falling silent.

There was a long pause. My tormentor just stood there, gripping my shoulders, looking dazed and sweaty. In contrast to his deep flush only moments ago, he was now sickly pale, as if suddenly drained of all his blood.

Are you okay? I prodded at last.

Nolan gave a little start, as if suddenly realizing I was there. He let go of my shoulders, staggered back a step, and mumbled, I think I’m gonna . . .

A moment later, he vomited all over the sidewalk, splattering my boots.

2

Jilly’s boots were a nuisance to put on and take off, so the wardrobe intern who got assigned to clean Michael Nolan’s vomit off them told me not to bother removing them. I took off Jilly’s curly lamb vest, then went and sat in the wardrobe van, where the intern sponged at my leather-clad feet.

After getting sick on camera, Nolan had been escorted into an air-conditioned location trailer, where he awaited the attentions of a medic. It was hoped that, now that he’d evidently gotten something nasty out of his system, he would be able to finish the night’s work after a brief rest. Meanwhile, though, we were all stuck waiting around, and it didn’t take long for people to start getting bored. Also hungry. And since Nolan, who’d just tossed his cookies all over the sidewalk, had eaten food from the catering van earlier, no one wanted to eat D30’s catered fare now.

When I emerged from the wardrobe van, one of the other cast members told me that the production intern who’d purchased Nolan’s stomach remedy on 125th Street had seen an eatery there which boasted the best fried chicken in Harlem. The cast and some of the crew had gotten permission to go there for a meal while waiting for the verdict on Nolan. They had strict instructions to be back within one hour.

As they walked down the dark street, headed toward 125th, I debated the wisdom of eating anything, let alone fried chicken, if I was going to be on camera later tonight in this tight, revealing outfit. However, simply hanging around the set waiting for Nolan to get better wasn’t an enticing prospect. Especially not with the other actors fleeing to a restaurant for the next hour.

"I suppose one piece of chicken won’t show up on camera, I murmured, trying to suck in my Lycra-clad stomach where it spilled over the waistband of Jilly’s extremely tight skirt. One small piece."

I don’t have the svelte or surgically enhanced body of a Hollywood leading lady, but I do watch my weight and try to stay in shape, given my profession. And the camera adds weight and enhances puffiness, so I’d been eating carefully in preparation for this role.

On the other hand, excessive self-denial is just morbid.

And now that I was recovered from the mild revulsion of witnessing Nolan’s gastric episode up close and personal, I was feeling a bit peckish. Especially when I contemplated the prospect of working until dawn, thanks to these delays.

So I called after the departing actors, I’ll get my purse and catch up to you!

I went back into the wardrobe trailer, collected my purse, and promised faithfully that I wouldn’t get any stains or splotches on Jilly’s outfit. Then I went back out into the hot, humid night in pursuit of my coworkers and a satisfying piece of fried poultry. I was already more than a block behind the others and didn’t really know where they were going, so I walked at a brisk pace, despite the height of my heels.

Trailing that far behind my colleagues in Harlem around midnight wasn’t as foolhardy as it might sound. We were filming directly east of Mount Morris Park, which is a nice neighborhood, one that reflects the almost-frenzied renovation and rehabilitation projects that have characterized real estate development in Harlem for the past decade or so. In fact, much of Harlem is increasingly inhabited by white yuppies, a somewhat controversial state of affairs in the nation’s most famous black neighborhood.

The main drag that I was headed toward, 125th Street, was at the forefront of this controversy. The famous commercial avenue of Harlem is now home to a large number of national chain stores and corporate-owned businesses. Fewer and fewer black merchants and small Harlem businesses are able to pay the skyrocketing prices for commercial space there these days. Harlem had changed a great deal in recent years; and whether that was ultimately a blessing or a curse, it did at least mean that I didn’t feel anxious about being alone in this area after dark.

A moment later, however, I realized that might be naive of me. As I passed a narrow alley between two apartment buildings, a sudden noise startled me. I jumped and gasped. This, in turn, startled the individual who was poking around the Dumpsters there. The person whirled to face me, moving with noticeable grace in the murky shadows.

At the same moment that I saw he was a young African-American man, I also saw that he was armed! I made a choked noise and staggered backward, my eyes on his—his—his . . .

Sword? I choked out, scared and stunned.

He looked down at the long rapier in his hand, as if surprised to find he was pointing it at me.

I backed up a little farther, wondering whether he was an underconfident mugger, an armed robber with equipment problems, or someone attempting an anachronistic gang initiation involving seventeenth-century weaponry.

I’m not looking for trouble, I said, taking another step backward.

Chill, he said, lowering the sword. Enough light from the streetlamps crept into the alley that I could see his tense posture relax as he released his breath. This isn’t for you.

His voice sounded cultured, his consonants well articulated. Now that I felt safe taking my eyes off the sword, I saw that he was probably in his late teens, wearing dark pants and a dark tank top, and had close-cropped hair. He was too far into the shadows for me to see his features very well, but I got the impression of a well-proportioned fellow with good bone structure.

"What are you doing?" I said, now that I wasn’t afraid that he intended to run me through with his sword.

Hunting, he said tersely.

Hunting? I had a vision of rifle-toting guys in bright orange vests tromping through the woods in search of deer. "In Manhattan?"

"What are you doing? He had evidently taken a good look at me by now. This is a good neighborhood. We don’t want crack whores turning tricks around here."

I’m not a crack whore, I said without rancor, since his mistake was understandable. I’m with the TV crew that’s filming on the next block.

Filming? Oh. So that’s why that street’s blocked off.

Yes.

You’re an actress?

Yes, I said again.

Well, you shouldn’t walk around here alone at night, miss.

Why? Do you think I might get attacked by a guy with a sword?

There’s dangerous shit around here, he said seriously.

I thought you just said this is a good neighborhood.

I don’t have time to talk about it. He sounded impatient now, as if I’d interrupted him in the middle of work. But you should go back to your people. Right now.

My people have gone for the best fried chicken in Harlem, I said. That’s where I’m going, too.

Despite the darkness, I could see that he was shaking his head. It’s after midnight. Miss Maude’s is closed by now.

Is that on One Hundred Twenty- fifth Street? I asked, feeling my stomach give a disappointed rumble.

No. But it’s the best fried chicken in Harlem.

I see. But that’s not where my friends are headed.

Well, you’d better catch up to them, he said, brushing past me. And watch your back.

"Er, what sort of dangerous sh . . . But the young man’s purposeful strides were already carrying him down the street in the direction from which I had just come. I watched him disappear into the night. Okay. Never mind."

The encounter, and particularly his comments, made me a little uneasy. But, after all, he seemed pretty young, and the sword certainly suggested a love of melodrama. In fact, the street that I continued walking down now was much nicer than the street I live on in the West Thirties near Tenth Avenue. However, I kept my eyes open, just in case.

On the next block, getting closer to Mount Morris Park, I walked past beautiful turn-of-the-last-century row houses that displayed crisp, ornate stonework, freshly painted trim, and polished wooden doors in the glowing light of the streetlamps. The sidewalk was free of litter, the street was quiet, and the garbage cans that had been set out for the following morning’s trash collection were arranged in tidy clusters.

My footsteps slowed when I saw a shadowy figure dart across the dark street directly ahead of me. It was much too small to be a man, so I was more curious than concerned when an identical figure followed it a second later. I frowned. A couple of children out after dark, perhaps? Small children, though—too small to be outside this late at night, let alone out here without adult supervision. Still walking, I glanced around the street for an accompanying adult, but I didn’t see one.

Then I heard some growling up ahead of me. I wondered if the two small figures had run across the street in pursuit of a dog. If so, that didn’t seem like a good idea. The growling sounded angry. Dangerous. Vicious, I realized.

Dangerous shit? I muttered.

I halted, peering ahead. The street was adequately lit for walking, but not for seeing that far away, and the figures were immersed in shadow.

Then I realized I heard two dogs growling. Was that what I had seen crossing the street—a couple of dogs? I had thought the figures were upright, not running on all fours . . . but the shapes had been only a faint blur in the dark, and they were indeed low to the ground, so I might easily have been mistaken.

The growling seemed to be coming from behind a cluster of garbage cans directly ahead of me. I supposed a strong scent in the garbage had attracted a couple of stray dogs, and now they were fighting over food that someone had thrown away.

Vicious dogs on the loose in this neighborhood explained the young man’s warning to me. It also explained his reference to hunting. Apparently he’d been poking around the Dumpsters in hope of encountering these dogs so he could dispatch them—though why he’d chosen a sword as his weapon remained a mystery.

I decided to give the snarling dogs a wide berth. I was just about to cross the street to avoid them when I heard the clatter of tumbling garbage cans. Looking in that direction again, as the growling got louder, I saw a large figure trying to rise from the ground, flickering in and out of the shadows.

I gasped as I realized that the two dogs were attacking the larger figure, growling furiously as they flung themselves at it. The larger figure was trying to rise, moving clumsily under the onslaught of the two growling animals. One of the dogs seized an appendage and tugged, keeping the large figure from moving freely.

As I saw it silhouetted in the faint light of the streetlamps, I realized that the appendage in question was . . . an arm. A human arm.

"Oh, my God!"

I didn’t think, I just reacted. I raced down the street with a horrified shriek. When I reached the struggling human’s side, I swung my purse from my shoulder and whirled its not-inconsiderable weight directly into the head of one of the attacking dogs with all my might.

In the same moment that my blow knocked the growling creature backward and off its feet, I saw that it wasn’t a dog at all. It was . . .

"A gargoyle?" I said incredulously.

It was about three feet tall, with two arms, two legs, and a hideous, menacing face, replete with long, ugly fangs and eyes that glinted red under the streetlights. It also had pointy ears, sagging flesh that looked sickly green in this light, and extremely hairy legs. If it had genitals, I didn’t see them—but, then, I wasn’t looking at its crotch. I was looking at the sharp claws on its hands as it hopped to its feet with an enraged growl and reached for me.

Terrified and flooded with adrenaline, I clobbered the thing with my purse again, and it fell down again. We did this once more with feeling, and I was just starting to think the gargoyle was reassuringly stupid when it changed tactics and, instead of attacking me, now attacked my purse.

The other creature, also a gargoyle, was still struggling with the large human figure nearby. I didn’t have time to take a good look, but the size, like the deep grunts and moans, confirmed that the vicious creature’s victim was a man. In my peripheral vision, I could see that he was trying to get away, but was moving clumsily and staggering around in evident confusion, tugging ineffectually at the arm that the growling gargoyle clung to.

Hit it! I shouted at him, while I played tug-of-war for my purse with my own adversary. Kick it!

The creature wrestling for possession of my purse was surprisingly strong for its size. I was fighting with all my might to keep the thing from ripping my purse out of my hands as we scrabbled around on the sidewalk, circling unsteadily with it caught between us. The gargoyle’s growls were rabid and enraged, and its breath was so foul I thought I’d be sick from the stench. I had a feeling that letting it scratch me with those filthy claws would be a big mistake, so when it tried to do so, I reluctantly let go of my purse and jumped back. With a foamy-mouthed shriek of triumph, the creature turned around and ran away, clutching my purse to its chest like a war trophy.

I turned to face the other gargoyle, the one that was still attacking the man staggering around the sidewalk. Remembering the ruthless boots I wore, I raised a leg and kicked the creature in the back as hard as I could, striking it mercilessly with Jilly C-Note’s long, sharp heel. The creature screamed loudly in pain and rage, whirled to bare its terrifying fangs at me, and then—to my relief—also turned and ran off.

The struggling man, freed of his attacker, staggered into another garbage can and fell down.

"Dangerous shit," I choked out, panting with fear and exertion.

Shaking, I found myself in a sitting position on the sidewalk without quite knowing how I’d gotten there. I stayed there for a few moments, catching my breath and trying to absorb what had just happened. Then I turned to look at the prone figure nearby. He was lying there in a heap, not moving. I crawled over to him.

Hey, are you okay? I said, my voice still breathless.

He moaned pathetically.

Did they bite you? I asked. "Or scratch