Stone

by Linda Mooney

  The elevator dinged and the doors parted. Elso stepped out into the vacant lobby. At the same time, he dropped his voice. “I want that thing found. Now that it’s wounded, it’s more dangerous. It may even go off on the public.”

  “What do you want done if we find it?”

  “When you find it, I want it eradicated for good. I want my seal back, and I want it back before tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The call ended as Elso exited the building. Pocketing his phone, he paused on the sidewalk and gazed up at the sky.

  “I don’t care where you are, you son of a bitch. I’ll find you,” he whispered. “I don’t care if you are the guardian of the seal. It now belongs to me, and I want my property back.”

  He glanced down the street and watched as a CSU van pulled up behind a parked NYPD unit. Ignoring it, he walked to the corner of the block to flag down a taxi.

  Chapter 23

  Return

  Brielle awoke to the sound of knocking on her front door. Still half-asleep, she went over and peered through the spy hole. The man on the other side grinned and waved, knowing she was checking him out. She quickly unlocked the door, throwing it open to wrap her arms around her uncle’s neck.

  “Oh, you’re here!”

  Kelling laughed aloud and hugged her in return. Without asking if he could enter, he grabbed his suitcase where it sat in the hallway and wheeled it inside the apartment. Brielle shut and locked the door behind them.

  “I didn’t hear you buzz. How did you get in?”

  “Your neighbor, the little old lady with the beard?”

  Brielle laughed. “Mrs. Amstead let you in?”

  “She was returning from walking that yappy little dog of hers, and she remembered me.”

  “When did your flight get in?”

  “A little over an hour ago. I grabbed a taxi from La Guardia and came straight here. I wanted to make sure you were okay before heading for my place.” He grabbed her by her shoulders and peered into your face. “You’re okay, right?”

  Instead of answering his question, she patted his arm. “Uncle Chet, he’s here.”

  He blinked, uncomprehending. “He who?”

  “Garenth. He’s in the bedroom.”

  “Wha—”

  “He’s been shot again. And this time he was seriously injured.” She turned to lead him into the back room, gesturing for him to follow. She stopped beside the bed as her uncle entered the room, stopping in the doorway to stare incredulously at the figure nearly filling the queen-size bed.

  Standing at the head, she leaned over and placed a hand on the uninjured shoulder. “Garenth.”

  The creature’s eyes fluttered opened. When he realized there was another person in the room, he craned his neck to peer at him.

  Kelling spoke to him in Arabic. He wasn’t as fluent in the language as Irmine, but it was adequate enough for Garenth to comprehend. When Garenth responded, Kelling translated.

  “He said he got the mother idol back.”

  “He did!” She turned around and picked up the black bag from the nightstand to hand over to him. “I don’t know where he found it.”

  Kelling took the bag but didn’t open it. Instead, he questioned Garenth again, and apparently got an answer that was too vague. “He says he went through a clear wall and found the mother idol behind a stone with markings on it. He was pulling the stone out of the wall when a guard showed up and pointed his strange sword at him. When Garenth didn’t stop what he was doing, the guard used his sword, and that’s how he was wounded.”

  Brielle parked herself at the foot of the bed. Although she was looking at Garenth, her words were directed at her uncle. “He’s hurt pretty badly, but there’s nothing I can do. Even if I had some painkillers, I’d hesitate to give him any. There’s no telling if he could tolerate them.”

  Kelling eyed the makeshift compresses. “I think you’ve done an excellent job, considering the circumstances.” He asked Garenth a question. The creature grunted in reply.

  “What did you ask him?” Brielle queried.

  “I asked him how he felt.” Kelling grimaced, then sighed. He walked over to the window and lifted the shade. “I brought two more crates of artifacts back with me. They should clear customs tomorrow so they can be delivered to the museum.” He turned to glance back at her. “Have you heard back on the swabs?”

  She shook her head. “I sent them to the lab but I haven’t heard back yet.”

  He looked at Garenth. “Was it dark when he showed back up here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Then chances are good no one saw him land here.” He went over to the side of the bed and spoke to Garenth. Brielle thought she heard the word kalorshai. The creature grunted again.

  “Uncle Chet, why all this brouhaha for a kalorshai? What is it supposed to do, and why is it so damn important?”

  Kelling rubbed his stubble. “It’s not exactly what you might be thinking. In fact, the person who stole these items…” He lifted the bag for emphasis. “Whoever is behind the breakin got it wrong. The vial isn’t the seal. That’s one of the main reasons why I came back. After you told me about the robbery, Irmine and I changed our focus. And what we discovered…”

  Brielle frowned. “What do you mean? I saw the vial. Garenth resembles it.”

  “The vial, the mother idol, isn’t the kalorshai. It’s not the seal,” he repeated and pointed to Garenth. “He is. He’s the kalorshai.”

  She stared at the creature on the bed, then at her uncle. “I don’t understand. How can Garenth be a seal?”

  “Because of what he is. He’s an esmesh. He’s the physical manifestation of an esmesh.”

  “A what?”

  “An esmesh. It’s a servant and a soldier of the god Petbe.”

  And then she understood. “He’s the seal because he guards the doorway between the gods and humanity.”

  Kelling smiled. “Correct.”

  “So if something happens to him…” She stared at Garenth, who stared back at her. “If he dies, what then?”

  “The readings say the Egyptian gods will return and proceed to kill every mortal on this world who no longer believe in them, or worship them.”

  “Shit. That’s practically everyone on the planet.”

  Kelling tilted his head slightly. “Ehh, pretty much.”

  “But if he lives…”

  “Then the gods are kept in check.”

  She continued to watch Garenth. Even though the man appeared to be completely out of it, she got the impression he was listening, despite the fact that he wasn’t able to understand what they were saying. She wondered if he was judging them from the tone of their voices.

  “Are you going over to the museum tonight?”

  “No. I’m fagged out. I’m going home after I leave here, but I’ll be there tomorrow morning to get ready for the new shipment.”

  The new shipment. Brielle pressed her lips together. “Uncle Chet, there’s something else you need to know before you go back to the museum.” She turned to face him. “Today, Moring requested a list of the items that had been taken.”

  Kelling gave a nod.

  “She also demanded I give her the original manifest.”

  The archeologist frowned. “Did she say why?”

  “No. I tried to tell her the manifest had to be filed, but she wouldn’t listen. She knows the rules. She knows protocol, but for some reason she’s refusing to follow it. It raised red flags for me.”

  “It would for me, too. Then she has the original.”

  Brielle grinned. “Not exactly.” At his astonished look, her grin widened. “I figured if she was going to break the rules, I needed some insurance to cover my butt…just in case. Before I handed it over, I scanned and uploaded a PDF, and emailed it to you. Then I made a photocopy of the manifest. She has the copy, not the original.”

  “Where’s the original?”

  She got up and went into the living room to retri
eve her purse. Pulling out a plastic envelope, she handed it to her uncle who’d followed her. “Right here. I’m officially returning it to you. I figured, given the robbery and Moring’s odd behavior, I shouldn’t try to file it until I was certain it wouldn’t accidentally disappear at some point.”

  Kelling chuckled and planted a kiss on her temple. “That’s my girl.”

  Chapter 24

  Crumbling

  After her uncle left, Brielle went to check on Garenth. The creature was still awake and apparently waiting for her to return.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Bad.”

  “Would you like some water?”

  “Na-am.” Yes.

  She took the glass from the bedside table and held it out to him, adjusting the straw for him to sip. He took several small swallows before pulling back.

  “Enough?”

  “Na-am.”

  He laid his head back on the pillow, sighing deeply. Brielle eyed the blood-soaked towels. Going into the bathroom, she gathered the remainder of her clean towels. Sometime today she needed to make a trip to the basement laundry room. I hope there’s no one there when I take this load of towels. It’ll be hard to explain where all this blood came from if someone saw them.

  “I’m going to check on your wounds. See if the compresses need to be replaced. I don’t want to hurt you, but this might cause you discomfort.”

  “Understand.”

  She started with the wound on his arm. Carefully untying the towel, she slowly peeled away the washcloth. She hoped to see some sort of clotting going on. In reality, she had no idea what she’d find since his physique was foreign to the point of being alien. What she didn’t want to find, or exacerbate, was to remove any scab that might have formed over the injury, and cause him to start bleeding again.

  She held her breath as she lifted the cloth. When a fresh trail of blood failed to appear, she moved the lamp closer to give her a better view of the bullet hole. Saying a silent prayer of thanks, she tapped her phone to reopen the app.

  “I think you’re starting to heal.”

  Garenth’s eyes remained closed. Neither did he answer.

  The fact that an artery hadn’t been hit was a miracle. However, there remained the problem of the bullet still embedded inside. It couldn’t remain there, but there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. She wasn’t a surgeon, and she damn well wasn’t about to probe around inside his arm to try to find it.

  She left that wound open to give it a chance to breathe while she checked his other injuries. After which she would bind them all with clean compresses. She felt completely helpless, knowing there was nothing she could give him for pain. Or put on the wounds to help him avoid infection. All she could do was keep the injuries clean and bound.

  She reached next for the long gash across his ribcage. Gradually lifting the cotton towel, she leaned over to get a closer look, taking care not to breathe on the laceration.

  Good news, there was no bleeding. She frowned. But there wasn’t a scab, either. In fact…

  She tilted her head. If that was muscle underneath the stony exterior, it was flesh-colored. There also appeared to be some sort of clear film acting as a sort of liner between the muscle and outer covering.

  Garenth suddenly reached up and scratched at the wound. Brielle cried out in alarm and grabbed his hand to keep him from further injuring himself. She jerked his hand away, but instead of the slash bleeding again, pieces of stone and dust fell onto the sheet. But that debris was second to what she found herself staring at.

  That’s skin. That flesh-colored muscle isn’t a muscle. It’s skin.

  It’s skin!

  She snatched up her phone. “Does it itch?”

  “Na-am.” Yes.

  Serious injuries never itched. They hurt. They were agonizing to endure without pain killers. The only time they would itch is when they were healing.

  She recalled the time she’d broken her arm during a high school basketball game. Initially it had given her untold grief. Nothing she could do would rid her of the lancing pain going up her arm. But once it began to heal, the resulting itching nearly drove her out of her mind.

  “Tell me if this hurts,” she instructed.

  Taking the edge of the towel, she used it to pick at one of the shattered pieces of stone clinging to the clear film. It looked like the thin sheet of rock had been broken and only needed to be peeled away to reveal the healthy skin underneath.

  Garenth didn’t flinch. “Itch,” he told her.

  “Wait here. Don’t move.” She hurried into the bathroom to fetch a pair of tweezers and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol to take back to the bed. She sterilized the tweezers as best she could with the alcohol, then used them to remove more and more pieces of the slate-like covering.

  It was like pulling sunburned skin that was starting to peel away from the new skin underneath.

  He wasn’t solid stone, as she’d first believed. The rock exterior was more like his armor, a shell preserving the real him inside. The image of an insect’s carapace came to her.

  She paused and stared at him. His eyes were still closed but he was awake. After a moment, he opened them to give her a questioning stare. Brielle flashed him a smile. “Does that feel better?”

  She removed another, slightly larger piece. It briefly clung to the skin underneath before detaching.

  “Itch,” he told her.

  By this time she’d removed enough of the rough exterior to show a large expanse of skin. Definitely skin. To be certain, she touched it with a fingertip. Garenth reacted with a jerk.

  “What do.”

  “That’s your skin. You’re not solid stone.” She laughed softly. “You’re not made of solid stone!”

  He struggled to sit up, but she stopped him. “Whoa, whoa. Stop. You could start bleeding again.”

  He brushed away her hand and craned his neck to stare at where she’d been removing his exterior casing. With a talon tip, he lightly scraped the exposed skin, and she realized there was no wound on the inner layer. Unmarked skin. Skin that showed no bullet puncture or lesion.

  “Garenth, your skin’s unscathed. There’s no wound!”

  He unwrapped the towel around his chest to reveal the bullet holes left from his first encounter. Using the tip of his clawed finger again, he picked at the indentations. Bits of rock began falling into his lap, gradually increasing in size as the pieces became chunks.

  A sense of urgency seemed to overcome him, and he started tearing at the stony remnants. Small clouds of dust erupted where his claws raked across the exterior.

  She was hit with inspiration and grabbed his arm. “Wait. This is getting messy. Come with me.”

  She helped him to his feet, letting him rest much of his bulk on her shoulders. They slowly made their way into the bathroom. After dropping the lid on the toilet, she sat him down, placing the cell phone on the sink countertop.

  “I bet that stuff will come off easier if it’s wet. I mean, that section on your hip didn’t start to peel away until after you bled a bit.” She bit her lower lip as another thought came to her. “I’m willing to bet your bleeding isn’t coming from your veins. I bet it’s coming from some kind of membrane that’s between your skin and this outer covering. I bet that when the bullets hit you, they ripped into that membrane, and that’s where the blood is coming from. I know it’s a long shot, but if you get into the shower, it might be easier to peel that stuff off of you.”

  He said a few words. The only one the app managed to translate was “wet”. She repeated the word, adding, “Na-am?”

  A faint smile came over his face. “Na-am.”

  Pushing aside the bathtub’s curtain, she turned on the faucet and adjusted the water’s temperature until it was slightly warm before initiating the shower spray. “All right, Garenth. Get in. Let’s see if we can peel you like a hard-boiled egg.”

  Chapter 25

  Reveal

  She helped him step over
the side of the enclosure and under the spray of warm water. The upper part of his wings got hung up on a bar that ran overhead, forcing him to duck underneath it.

  Once inside, Garenth closed his eyes to savor the feel of it cascading over his face and chest. For a brief moment he forgot about his injuries, forgot about his monstrous appearance, forgot about the mother idol and his fate. All that mattered was the wetness he could luxuriate in.

  Bending slightly over, he sighed as the water sluiced over his wounded shoulder. There was no pain. The heat seemed to penetrate through the stone, leaving him content and relaxed. As the steam rose inside the narrow enclosure, he braced his hands on the tiled wall in front of him and wished he could remain there for hours.

  Brielle stood on the other side of the open curtain. She continued to talk to him, even though he was only able to understand bits and pieces of her conversation. Sometimes it was difficult to understand what she meant, even when the magic rock managed to interpret her words, most of which were indistinguishable to him. But it wasn’t the conversation that fascinated him. It was the woman. This brave and brazen woman who went out of her way to help him.

  Brielle spoke again. The magic rock said, “Turn.” Turn?

  Her hands reached out and tugged on his arm. She wanted him to turn around. He did, bumping his wings against the wall as he presented his back to the warm rain.

  At some point she had left the bathroom while he’d been distracted and returned with a metal instrument. He stared at the relatively small item as she reached out toward him with it in her hand and scraped the front of his chest with it. The softened stone cracked and flaked off. A little more scratching, and a section the size of his palm broke away and fell into the basin by his feet. She poked at the skin that was revealed with her fingertip, then smiled at him.

  “Skin. Your skin,” the magic rock said.

  Looking downward, he ran a hand over the exposed area. Tentatively, he tried to pick at the edges, when the middle talon unexpectedly snapped. Garenth held up the dangling claw and stared at it for a few seconds. Before Brielle could comment, he grabbed it with his other hand and tore it from the finger.