by Anton Strout
“You don’t,” Caleb called out from where he stood at the side of the building. He looked down over the edge at something below. “It’s happening now!”
“Stanis!” I shouted, looking around to find him still perched on the edge of the roof. “What is it?”
The gargoyle spun around and looked down. “Trucks,” he said. “Like the ones at the shipyards.”
Oh no, I thought. The massive kind that could carry heavy cargo coming in from a ship, or in this case, a more sinister payload.
The door leading into the building came free of its hinges, shooting across the roof as it tumbled away. The jagged stone form of my former brother took up most of the doorway, powering through it as he came.
“Devon!” I shouted. “What is this?”
“Just call it reclaiming my family birthright,” he said.
Kejetan stormed through the door after him, a steady stream of stone followers pouring onto the roof behind him.
Stanis flew past me, slamming hard into their leader, knocking him back. The two tumbled over, locked in combat, Stanis attacking with a ferocity I hadn’t seen in him previously. Pieces of Kejetan’s stone form chipped away from him as Stanis landed blow after blow, flying across the roof.
One of them struck my foot, and I looked down at it, dawning realization hitting me. They looked just like the jagged piece I had seen laid out on the bases of the other statue.
Markers. Kejetan’s plan suddenly made sense to me. He and his servants weren’t here to fight us; they meant to cast off their jagged stone forms and have their spirits take over those of my great-great-grandfather’s statues instead. The pieces of stone—the markers—on the bases of the statues were meant to lead each of the Servants of Ruthenia to their new bodies, thanks to the treachery of Caleb, it seemed.
Caleb was running among the statues, touching a vial to about half the ones on the roof as I realized he was activating the Kimiya on them. Each of them bore a piece of one of the stone men at their base.
Rory and Marshall chased after Caleb through the pounding rain, but it was too late.
“Whose side are you on?” I shouted at him over the noise of the storm.
“My own,” he said, stopping finally, letting the vial fall to the roof.
Stanis landed another blow to Kejetan, but as my spell and Caleb’s alchemy took effect, the rocks that made up the mad lord’s body flew apart with the impact of Stanis’s fist.
All around us, the jagged stone forms of Devon and the rest of the Servants crashed to the rooftop, lifeless, the spirits within leaving them for the more sophisticated forms of my great-great-grandfather’s statues. The component parts of their stone bodies came apart, and what had once been vaguely humanoid forms dissolved into piles of rough rock all along the roof.
Against the pouring rain, the invisible shapes of their searching spirits swirled through the air, the only telltale sign of their existence that of displaced rainwater as they flew. I followed the apparition that rose from the pile of rocks that had once been Devon and watched as it went to one of the stone-marked gargoyles in his attempt to be reborn into its form.
I ran to the statue, but by the time I got there, the swirling aerial shape had vanished into it, the stone of the gargoyle there changing in front of me. A roar of pain—my brother’s voice—cried out from the demonic-looking creature’s mouth as it reared its head to the sky. The rest of the body came to life as well in an uncontrolled flailing of limbs and wings, my brother’s spirit trying to gain control of it. Its feet tore free from the statue’s base, and the gargoyle fell to the ground on all fours, twitching.
“Devon . . . ?” I asked, moving to touch the cool, rain-covered stone of the gargoyle’s skin.
The wings flew open, the tip of one catching me in the stomach and sending me flying across the roof. I landed hard against one of the untreated statues and slumped to the ground, the wind knocked out of me as a sore spot spread out along my entire right side from the impact. Fighting the pain, I forced myself to stand as I took in the chaos of dozens of other statues coming to life all over the roof.
I did my best to ignore them, concentrating still on my brother, who by then had worked his way back to his feet, though he was unsteady still.
“It worked . . .” I said, sad to see the efforts of my spell wasted on him.
“That it did,” he replied, his smile revealing a set of stone fangs that rivaled those of Stanis.
Stanis.
I turned to find my gargoyle, but with all the activity of other stone figures on the roof, for once he didn’t stand out. Only when I listened for signs of conflict did I spot him fighting his way toward Caleb through an increasing number of other living gargoyles.
Marshall and Rory already had the alchemist by his arms, but Stanis grabbed him at his throat, and lifted. Caleb’s feet were well off the ground by the time I stumbled my way over to them, spit flying from the alchemist’s mouth, gagging.
“You betrayed us,” Stanis said.
“Wait,” Caleb managed to croak out. “Not . . . finished.”
Both his hands were wrapped around Stanis’s arm to keep himself from choking completely, but he managed to let go and leave just one in place. The other darted into his jacket and came out with a thin plastic vial that he slammed against Stanis’s arm. The plastic of the vial cracked, a dark gray liquid seeping out of it.
Part of Stanis’s arm transformed back to its solid state, and he grunted with pain but did not let go. The man’s own hand froze like stone as well, but he managed to pry it free, leaving him hanging by his neck only. He sputtered, but managed to reach down into the shoulder bag he wore, producing what looked like a giant glass egg filled with a swirling pink liquid. He threw it high overhead behind him toward the group of statues that were still inert.
Volatile liquid, Caleb had said earlier when he had been mixing things. His voice screamed the words in my head. Whatever explosive effect it might have, I needed to stop it.
My will took control of the by-then-empty pedestal my brother had stepped off of, and I guided it into the air, directing it at the glass ball. The base wobbled as I fought to hold control of it with any level of precision, but I was determined to hit my mark.
True to my aim, the base hit its fragile target high in the air, shattering the glass on impact. The contents of it rained down over the crowd of statues, but that wasn’t all it did. As the pink tendrils and cloudy mist fell through the rain, the water all around it lit up with thousands and thousands of tiny sparks.
Defying gravity, the reaction lifted higher and higher into the night sky, jumping and arcing through the rain all around us and out over the city.
I closed my eyes as the wave of it rolled toward me, and I flinched. A tingle of sensation washed over me, through me, then disappeared as quickly as it had hit. Marshall and Rory were already examining themselves, none of us seeming the worse for having been caught up in it, but once I stopped focusing on myself, I saw the larger problem.
Every statue on top of the building was now twisting to life.
Some struggled with the change, others immediately taking flight, and yet others fell to fighting among themselves.
Rory pulled the art tube from her back, going for her weapon, but I waved her down.
“No!” I shouted. Did she really think she could fight this madness? “Inside. All of you! Now.”
Marshall didn’t need to be asked twice and was running for the stairs before I barely had the words out. Rory went next, and I was already in motion.
“Alexandra,” Stanis called out to me. I spun to see him still standing there, with Caleb still hanging in place from his hand.
“Bring him,” I said, turning and running for the door as a pairs of passing wings swung dangerously close. “But by all means, there’s no need to be gentle.”
Twenty-two
Stanis
The feel of Caleb’s thin, fleshy throat in my clawed hand filled me with a great and terrible satisfaction as his weak little form attempted to break free. The sound of conflict on the roof above filled my ears, and the desire simply to close my hand shut until my fingers met in the middle of his neck was strong, but since retreating to the art studio, Alexandra had been quite clear that she did not wish it done.
“Forgive me, Alexandra,” I said, pressing my fingers in with a slight pressure, causing the blond human to struggle further to free himself, a dark joy filling me, “but why should I not just crush his head for his betrayal?”
Alexandra grabbed onto the arm I held Caleb with, pulling at it, but I would not yield.
“Because we’re not those kind of people,” she said, anger and concern in her voice. “Not just yet, anyway.”
She tried again to lower my arm, but her effort proved to be in vain, her physical strength no match for my own.
She met my eyes, and her voice changed, softening. “We all saw what he just did,” she said, “and I understand you have issues of your own with him. And after all you’ve been through, I would not dare order you to do anything, but please . . . I’m asking you not to harm him. We need answers.”
Aurora also put her hand on the stone skin of my arm.
“Don’t worry, big guy,” she said, brandishing her pole arm with her other hand. “I’ll keep an eye on him, without crushing his head. I’ve got a little more finesse with taking someone down without actually killing them if they act up. No offense.”
True choice had rarely been an option when I still lived by Alexander’s rules. Until Alexandra had freed me from them, I had not even known what it meant to choose of my own free will. For that, I would always be in Alexandra’s debt, and as I held this fragile human in my hand for wronging us, I did not take his life out of respect for her wish.
“Very well,” I said, lowering Caleb to the floor, my eyes burning into the wide, white pools of his. “But make no mistake, human. I will not hesitate to act at the hint of any further treachery.”
Free of my grip, Caleb stumbled onto the art studio’s debris-covered floor before finally righting himself. He straightened the coat he wore, wiping water from both it and his hair, all the while backing himself up against one of the half-empty broken bookcases.
“I’m sorry,” he said, holding up a hand as his eyes darted around. “But none of you will understand. I had to do that.”
“Did you, now?” Alexandra asked, the calm she had exhibited melting away as she charged him. With nowhere to turn, he held his hands up by the sides of his head and made no move to stop her. Alexandra slammed up against him, grabbing the edge of his coat.
“Did you really?” she asked again, but before Caleb could answer, she let go of his coat with her right hand, pulled her arm back, and shot it forward into his midsection while making a fist.
The air went out of the man, and he crumpled to the floor. I could not help but let a small smile creep onto my face. Clearly, I was not the only danger here.
“Well, I guess that I just had to do that then, too,” she said, and stepped away from him.
Aurora leaned closer to me. “Looks like we can both stand down,” she said.
I looked down at her, cocking my head. “Stand down . . . ?”
She smiled and shook her head. “I’ll explain it later.”
Something about the man lying there stirred anger in me, and I grabbed him by the back of his coat and pulled him onto his feet, letting go. He fell against the bookcase and stood there, fighting for each breath. “Okay,” he managed to get out. “I deserved that.”
Marshall walked over to him, his finger pointed to the roof above us. “What the hell just happened up there?”
“That,” the man said, “was me saving my life.”
Alexandra looked at each of us before turning back to Caleb. “It’s not looking so good down here for you, pal. I’ve got to be honest.”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I tried to get out of working for them. I even went back after freeing Stanis to make it seem like business as usual, to not arouse their suspicion. I can prove it. Stanis was on the boat. He can confirm it. He saw me there.”
“I thought you had a change of heart,” Alexandra snapped. “I thought after you helped me free Stanis, you were all Team Gargoyle.”
“I am,” he said. “But those creatures had hired me for a job, and you don’t get to back out of something like that. I tried to. I really did. I even recommended other freelancers, which I never do, but Kejetan left me between him and a hard place. If I didn’t at least give them the refined gargoyle statue forms they asked for, they were going to kill me. Worse, Kejetan was resolved to come after you. They wanted you and your friends dead. Kejetan told me himself when I went back to their ship trying to negotiate my way out of my contract. Just ask your gargoyle here. Stanis saw me. He can back me up!”
Alexandra turned to me. “Is this true?” she asked.
“I do not know,” I said. “I was not in on any private conversations Caleb had with my father.”
“But you actually went to the boat?” she asked. “Why, Stanis? Did I free you for nothing?”
“For the same reasons Caleb has stated. This ‘business as usual.’ My freedom means nothing if Kejetan becomes aware of it.”
She turned back to Caleb, shaking her head at him. “We could have protected you,” Alexandra said.
The man looked over at me. “No offense, but your team’s only got one stone man to their dozens. I’ll play the odds for my safety, thanks. Besides . . . I’m not used to having backup. I did what I always do—try to take care of things myself.”
At an impasse, silence fell among us for several minutes, with only the sounds of continued struggle on the roof filling my ears.
“Umm . . . what about the rest?” Marshall asked, finally breaking the silence.
“Rest?” Aurora asked.
“Of the statues,” he said. “Kejetan only had a couple of dozen stone men with him. There were far more statues that came to life on the roof than that. What happened with the rest?”
Caleb let loose a sigh.
“That was supposed to be my backup plan,” the man said, looking to Alexandra. “Although thanks to everyone’s interference, it worked a little too well.”
“Meaning what?” Alexandra asked, wary.
“Like I said, I was in between a rock and a hard place,” he said. “Kejetan and the Servants of Ruthenia got what they wanted. They all got to cast off their crude stone form and take over many of Alexander’s statues up on the roof. Kejetan can fly around the city on his own pair of wings and be a happy little gargoyle now. But bringing the remaining statues to life . . . that was my ace in the hole that hopefully would have kept them from exacting vengeance on you.”
“You do not know Kejetan, then,” I said. “He did not earn the moniker the Accursed for his charity.”
“Giving Kejetan the gargoyle body that he wanted . . . well, that should have ended my deal with him, guaranteeing my safety. My hope was that activating the rest of those statues would let whatever random spirits haunt New York City find them and fight it out, maybe reduce the number of Kejetan’s new gargoyle army.”
Aurora laughed. “That was your genius plan?”
“Okay,” he said with anger in the word. “What would you have done, then? My life was on the line, and it seemed to be my best chance for living. If a few of Kejetan’s men died in the process of dealing with the other animated statues, then all the better.”
“Back up a little bit there,” Alexandra said. “What did you mean by ‘it worked too well’?”
“My plan was actually working,” he said, pointing at her, “until you interfered. That globe I threw with the mixture in it . . . It was meant to h
it the roof and spread out among the remaining statues, activating them. It would have created the same type of potion cloud like the one I used when we captured Stanis and freed him. But you smashed the globe before it could properly land. That’s when everything went a bit off the rails. The mixture wasn’t supposed to go that airborne. It had a reaction I didn’t suspect, mixing and amplified with the power of the storm.”
“The sky went awash with that pink haze,” I said.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen?” Marshall asked.
The alchemist shook his head.
“The rain must have acted like a current carrier when the object released prematurely,” he said.
“Is that bad?” Marshall asked, wrapping his arms around his body. He turned to me. “That’s bad, right?”
“I do not know,” I said, then turned to Caleb. “Is it?”
“It’s not good,” the human confessed. “It became far more powerful than I would have imagined. The way it was spreading . . . I’m not sure how big a radius it covered, but it was more than just over your building here.”
Alexandra leaned back against one of the art-studio tables that still stood. “Meaning you might have animated an entire city’s worth of statuary,” she said. “Who knows how many more of Alexander’s statues around Manhattan have come to life? And what’s occupying all of them? More than just the Servants of Ruthenia, that’s for sure.”
“It’s possible,” he said. “I’m not sure. My plan was localized until you messed it up.”
“Do not put this one me,” Alexandra shouted, shaking her head. “If you had been up front about your plan . . . If you had trusted us . . . If we can’t trust you, we don’t want your help. Not after this fiasco.”
The humans fell to arguing, and with Aurora and Marshall joining in with the shouting, the flow of their words moved too fast for me to follow. One thing, however, became very clear to me.
“Silence!” I roared after I confirmed my suspicion. All of them turned to me, their words dying on their lips.
