The Guardian Lineage

by Seth Z. Herman

  Mike wrinkled his nose. He was beginning to see a light up ahead, but that wasn’t what bothered him. The wind was even fiercer here, and he was beginning to smell something acrid…

  Just then, Mike saw Jakkus unleash his wings and run full speed up the remainder of the steps. Mike and Zachariah hurried after him. Jakkus roared from the surface, but to Mike’s ears below it sounded more like a scream of disbelief than a battle cry.

  When Mike finally reached the top of the stairs, he realized why. His breath caught, and his whole body tensed up, as if he was paralyzed.

  He recognized this place.

  They were standing outside, on top of a mountain. The place looked to be an enormous throne room of some kind, but its roof had been torn off, with stone debris littering the polished marble floor. Broken limestone pillars were scattered amongst giant pieces of rock. The walls were jagged and missing in some areas. Fresh wind whipped at Mike’s hair. The constellations were clear and visible in the black sky.

  And a tremendous pile of bodies lay in the center, burning, smoke rising into the night.

  Mike felt himself collapse onto his knees. Ash burned his eyes. This was a butchery, a massacre… and he’d seen it, in his dreams, that first night in Windham…

  Then Mike heard a retching noise. Beside him, Julius Brutus was on his hands and knees, vomiting. The stench of rotting flesh was almost tangible, and Mike felt bile creeping up his esophagus. He made himself swallow it to look… what, macho? There was no macho here. Only sadness, and grief… Toad was dead, for Pete’s sake…

  “Aaaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhhh!” It was Jakkus, raising his wings and arms to the sky and screaming at the top of his lungs. The other Gargoyles chimed in almost immediately. Then the wail cut off. Jakkus kneeled as if in a thinking pose, elbow on knee and fist on forehead. He began murmuring in some language Mike didn’t understand.

  No one spoke for several moments. Then Zachariah came over with Annabella, who was looking rather green. Zachariah tapped Mike on the shoulder.

  “Hey, I’m all for memorial services and whatnot, but I think we should get back to Windham as soon as we can. Toad’s not coming back to life, and neither is anyone up here. Somebody’s got to tell Garzan about this, ASAP.”

  Mike nodded, despite his desire to linger and honor the dead. He went over to Jakkus, who was still praying. Jakkus looked up for a moment, his eyes level with Mike’s, tremendous saucers with a red tinge of both anger and sadness.

  “It is a time to mourn,” Mike said, thinking of Toad and choosing his words carefully, “But we must tell the Headmage about this as soon as possible.”

  Jakkus eyed Mike for a moment, then grunted. “You speak wisely. Take your Guardians and hurry back to the portal. We will finish our vigil and return.” He went back to his original pose.

  Mike wondered why the vigil couldn’t wait a few minutes – or why Jakkus couldn’t just use his Amp, for crying out loud – but he wasn’t about to argue with a creature three times his size. He motioned to the eight Guardians. No, only seven now, Mike realized with a pang of sadness.

  “We’ve got to warn the others,” he said as he headed for the stairwell. “The Gargoyles will follow behind.” Mike flew down the stairs, wishing Jakkus had at least given him his Amp. When he reached the bottom, he forced himself to ignore Toad’s body on the floor, then ran straight for the portal. Mike jumped into the liquid like he was trying to jump through a glass window—

  And crashed right into a stone wall. Mike hit the rocky exterior and fell backwards, his hip colliding with the not-so-cushioned floor. The other Guardians, who had been a few steps behind him, ran up to him, each of them asking if he was all right.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” he said, touching the back of his head to make sure there was no blood. “What happened?”

  “Maybe you screwed it up.” Zachariah kicked a foot into the portal, only to recoil. “The portal’s not working.”

  Mike’s eyes went wide. He struggled to his feet and stuck his arms through the goo. It was still wet and slimy, but he felt hard rock on the other side.

  “We can’t get back,” he whispered. “We have to get back!”

  One of the girls tore in the opposite direction, up the stairs towards the Gargoyles. Mike went over to Zachariah, who was staring at the portal with hands on hips, as if he’d never seen anything like it before.

  “You have any ideas?” Mike said.

  The other girl Mike didn’t know said, “Can we fly on Gargoyle-back?”

  “Can anyone fix the portal?” Mike called.

  Steph shook her head. “That magic’s too advanced for any of us here.”

  “I wonder if they have their own car collection,” Zachariah mused.

  Aaron threw up his arms. “Even if they did, it’d take us at least a full day to get back to Windham. And they need our help now, if somebody closed the portal on the other side!”

  “How do you know someone closed the portal on the other side?” Annabella said. “Maybe somebody closed it from this side.”

  Jabbing a finger, Aaron said, “Are you calling me a traitor?”

  “Shut up, everybody!” Mike stepped in between Aaron and Annabella, which was starting to become Aaron and Zachariah. “Thank heavens.” Mike turned to see the girl racing downstairs with the gargoyles in tow.

  Jakkus immediately moved to the portal and swept an arm through. He retracted it at once, and his eyes turned blood red. “A traitor, a foul knave among us!” He whipped around and stared at the Guardians. For a moment Mike was afraid Jakkus was going to take out his sword and run him through. He stepped backwards, panic over taking his senses.

  But Jakkus did not draw his weapon. Instead, he slid a claw over his Amp and closed his eyes. Then he opened them abruptly, as if he didn’t understand. He repeated the same procedure, only to get the same result. His eyes swept back and forth, as if formulating a plan.

  “We must return to the manor at once,” Jakkus said, speaking quickly. “The Headmage is not responding to my communications. Yaris, you are to fly with me. Groundhog, Amadeus, Nukes – you will travel with the Guardians. Find some transportation, there should be vehicles in the garage, unless those are destroyed as well. If that is the case, you will have to acquire other means.”

  Mike assumed ‘acquire’ meant steal, but for some reason the thought didn’t bother him. All he could think about was getting back to Windham.

  “Jakkus, we will not make it back before dawn,” Yaris pointed out.

  “Irrelevant.” Jakkus was in full steam, issuing commands like it was second nature. “We will fly all night and find a suitable resting place. If we are alive in the morning, we will continue on home.” Jakkus said it as if the thought of death did not bother him in the slightest. Mike could see Yaris shift uncomfortably at that suggestion, but apparently he was not about to defy his superior.

  Jakkus walked over to Toad and picked up his prone body. The Gargoyle sped up the stairs without another word, the dead Guardian lying limp in his arms.

  A lump formed in Mike’s throat.

  Yaris hesitated, then said, “We are at war. All use of force is authorized.” Then he followed Jakkus up the stairwell and disappeared from sight.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  A quick search of the castle yielded Magus Brick’s office, and with it the keys to several of the cars, two credit cards, and a wad of twenties. Thankfully, the cars had not been destroyed. The team split up into two SUVs, which would allow the eight teenagers to travel comfortably.

  “We will follow from above,” one of the Gargoyles said, the one with a bit of a pot belly. Mike thought it was Groundhog, but he wasn’t sure. They headed out of the garage and jumped into the air.

  Mike rode with Zachariah, Annabella, and Aaron, the result of a quick twenty-first finger roundup. He didn’t know if it was good or bad to be away from Steph. For some reason he felt uncomfortable around her, now that things had changed. Maybe because the last time he�
�d been with her, she’d knocked him out with an electric bolt.

  A GPS in the car told them that it would take them eighteen hours at one hundred miles per hour to reach Windham. That meant they were going to have to drive all night, and then some. Assuming they wouldn’t get pulled over on the way. Mike chuckled, thinking about how they would explain their hurry to a police officer. “You see, there are these clans of Gargoyles, and we have to protect them, and…” The thought made Mike smile, however grim a smile it was.

  The team drove until morning, alternating drivers every two hours to stay fresh. That left them in the middle of Indiana. Mike was grateful the Gargoyles hadn’t left them during the night, even though they could’ve flown towards the Manor and made it most of the way. Of course, in turn, the Guardians were not to travel during daylight. They pulled the SUV’s off a tree-lined road. JB got out and made a tight magical perimeter around the Gargoyle party, both to protect them and to keep them hidden.

  As daylight broke, Mike realized he was about to get a first-hand at the Gargoyle transformation. He rolled down the backseat window peered out of the car with rapt attention. Fresh pine tree air entered the car, better than any air freshener, and the wind felt good as it brushed his hair.

  The Gargoyles cleared away any pinecones that littered the forest floor and huddled themselves close to the ground. They wrapped their wings around their bodies. Then, as the sun came up, their leathery skinned hardened, and their breathing slowed. Mike heard a crackling sound, like thousands of eggshells being trampled upon. Then it was silent, and the Gargoyles did not move.

  “Incredible,” Aaron breathed from over Mike’s shoulder. Zachariah had been driving, so naturally Annabella was in the front seat. She had fallen asleep, but Zachariah was keen, alert, watching the transformation with as much interest as his Guardian brothers.

  The Guardians used the day to rest, and to practice their sparring. Everyone felt it now – the war was here, and they were going to need every minute of it. Steph arranged a magical firing range of sorts, using magically-reinforced trees and pinecones as targets, and the Guardians took turns practicing their aim.

  The day was long and hot, no cooler than the hills of East Massachusetts. Mike spent the day stressed, dreaming up possible outcomes of their return to Windham, then taking out his stresses on a bunch of pinecones. Maybe everything was really fine. Maybe the Blackrock portal only supported incoming traffic.

  Or maybe someone had rigged it that way.

  Maybe there was a war at the Manor, and they were missing it.

  Mike wished Garzan would at least contact them to say everything was fine. Then again, maybe he didn’t even know they had been delayed. Jakkus and Yaris wouldn’t have returned to Windham yet…

  And so Mike was grateful when the sun finally started to dip into the horizon. The Gargoyles broke out of their shells with tremendous roars, stretching and yawning like toddlers who’d just woken from an awesome nap. The pot-bellied Gargoyle made its way over to Mike, who was standing against the SUV, and held out a claw. He was only a few inches taller than Mike, but several feet wider.

  “Thank you, my Guardian. What troubles besieged us during the day?”

  Zachariah stuck a head out. “Only the hottest day ever created. It’s a good thing these babies have air-conditioning.” He jumped back into the driver’s seat and pulled out a tin of Pringles, part of the stash they’d bought at the convenience store down the road.

  Groundhog nodded and spread his wings with a loud whoosh. He removed the Amp from around his neck and placed it around Mike’s. “If there is any news from Jakkus, we will contact you.” He jumped into the sky, and the other Gargoyles followed.

  The Guardians flew down the highways, driving at even faster speeds than the previous night. Every minute brought with it the possibility of a message from Garzan, or even Jakkus, but the next moment proved to be as disappointing as the one before it.

  After switching drivers five times, they finally reached a sign that said “Welcome to Massachusetts.” Mike’s heart beat a bit faster – he was driving, while Zachariah, Annabella, and Aaron were sleeping – and the SUV sped through the countryside as if possessed with its mission. Mike was legitimately scared now – Jakkus hadn’t called, and neither had Garzan. They definitely wouldn’t have expected their mission to take two full days. Unless he had traveled to Colorado, too, to see what the matter was, and now he was stuck in the same predicament as they were…

  Finally Mike spotted the two pillars that marked the entrance to Windham Manor. The Gargoyle statues that had decorated them upon Mike’s arrival were missing, but that was to be expected – it was nighttime, after all.

  “Guys, we’re here,” Mike said, loud enough. The other Guardians in the car stirred.

  Mike drove through the small path, noticing that it was eerily quiet. Almost… empty. No Gargoyles playing on the lawn. No wind rattling the trees. Only the purr of the SUV’s engine and the sound of the air conditioner on full blast.

  Windham Manor came into view. It was silent, dark, with very few lights on. That wasn’t much of a concern; it was night, after all, and all the students would be—

  Just then, the door to the Manor flung open. Out staggered a human figure, illuminated by the lampposts on either side. Mike couldn’t see who it was at first, but when he pulled around the traffic circle, he got a clear, unmistakable glimpse.

  It was his mom.

  Chapter Thirty

  Mike killed the ignition and flew out of the car.

  “Michael!” Mom threw her arms around her son and squeezed him tight. Her hair was frizzed and sweaty, and her t-shirt clung to her body. “I thought you were gone, too!”

  Mike released himself of his mother’s grasp. “How did you… I mean, I saw that DuBois—wait, what do you mean, gone?”

  By now the cars had emptied, and the Guardians were standing around, awkwardly watching the reunion. A whoosh of air pressed from above, and Groundhog, Amadeus, and Nukes landed on the driveway. When Groundhog saw Mike’s mom, his eyes turned to bloodlust.

  “Traitorous mongrel!” He pointed a claw in Mom’s direction. “Where are the other gargoyles?”

  Mike felt his heart pounding. His eyes burned as the image of the roiling pile of carcasses entered his mind.

  “Mom, where is everybody?”

  “I… I don’t know. Everybody’s gone.” Mom wiped a tear. “DuBois let me go. Something about Garzan calling for help. DuBois refused to come, but he said that I… that he would send me. When I got here, there was no one around, except…”

  “Except what?” Zachariah said from behind, his voice resonating both fear and anger.

  Mom didn’t answer. Then she looked at Groundhog and said, “You better go in first. They’re in the Dining Hall.”

  At first, Groundhog didn’t understand. Then his eyes flushed from red to white, he ran inside, shoving Mike out of the way. Amadeus and Nukes followed, fearful expressions wearing on their faces.

  Mom ran a hand through Mike’s hair. “Where were you? I was so worried…”

  Suddenly, a scream pierced the air, not unlike the one Jakkus had let out on top of Blackrock castle.

  “Never mind that now, Mom,” Mike said as he pushed her hand out of the way. He ran past his mother, apprehension flooding his senses.

  The Greeting Hall lay unaltered, but Mike was able to glimpse the carnage through the glass doors that led to the Dining Hall. Everything was wrecked. Tables were turned upside down and broken. Chandeliers lay shattered across the floor, their crystals littering the room like sand across a dance floor. The walls were black with soot; a few spots were still burning, probably from Guardian weaponry. Some paintings had been frozen, others ripped down and torn apart.

  And spread out across the room were ten or fifteen gargoyle bodies, still in the flesh, with their stomachs cleaved open.

  The smell of decaying tissue hit Mike straight in the nose, and this time the vomit exited his esop
hagus with full force. Julius Brutus spouted likewise; aside from that, everyone was able to keep their composure.

  Mike wiped his mouth in his sleeve, still kneeling on the floor. His mom came over to put an arm around him and helped him up.

  She didn’t say anything.

  Because she didn’t need to.

  Another slaughter. This time to his own clan. And where was everyone else? The pile in Blackrock Castle contained humans and gargoyles… but this was different. No human bodies, only gargoyles. Mutilated, ripped apart. Maybe there was another pile in the manor?

  No, it would’ve been here, Mike decided. So maybe not everyone had been killed…

  “Spread out,” Mike said. He pushed free of his mother’s embrace and addressed the group. “Aaron, search the guys’ dorms. Steph, you have the girls’. Zachariah and Annabella, find any teacher you can. Look in Garzan’s office, Stockton’s, anybody’s, just find somebody. JB, you take the other two – sorry, don’t know your names – and search the classrooms. If there are any survivors, we have to find them.”

  Zachariah opened his mouth to protest, but Annabella grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the exit. Everybody else left without so much as a peep. Words were unnecessary at this point; everyone knew what they all were thinking.

  The three remaining Gargoyles were crouched in vigil, teardrops streaming from their closed eyes as they murmured their prayers. Mike wanted to talk to them, but it clearly wasn’t the time. He clamped a hand firmly around his nose and went over to one of the bodies, a gargoyle he didn’t recognize. Its torso had been ripped open, almost purposefully. Some of the insides were missing, if Mike saw it right. Unless Gargoyles normally lived with a huge cavity in their chest.