“I don’t know,” Nathan said. “Alex, do you know?”
“It looks like... Jesus,” said the big man looking like the bald guy holding Meino.
Bright light made Meino look away, and when he turned his gaze back to where Kaleb knelt, a tall being of no distinguishable gender stood next to him. The being grabbed Kaleb’s arm, and another light blinded Meino. When he looked again, Burkhart, Kaleb, and the being were gone.
“No, where did they go, what did they do with Burk?”
“Kaleb is working on it,” the big bald guy said.
Meino looked up.
“Meino, Kaleb can do some pretty intense stuff,” Nathan said. “The Angel who just appeared is the one who gave soul to Burkhart.”
“His father? Burk calls him his father. And his mother is Gaia.”
“And Kaleb can control the elements of Gaia,” the young man next to Nathan said. “Let’s give them some time, okay? I’m Alex, this is Pritchard, and the one steadying you is Dominic. Nathan, you already know.”
“Can Kaleb save Burkhart?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what happened,” Alex said.
Meino looked toward where his friend had just been assembled again. “Burkhart’s soul was what allowed for a portal into the secured room they held us in.”
“I need to know everything that happened,” Pritchard said.
“And I need to call Jenny.” Nathan pulled out his phone as he turned to leave.
“Wait a minute.” Pritchard put a hand on Nathan to stop him from leaving. “You might need to know a bit more, because if I know that young woman right, she’ll be wanting for details so she can do something about it. One thing is for sure, she doesn’t like feeling helpless when her friends are in danger.” Pritchard then turned his eyes on Meino again. “Everything you know.”
“Uhm...” Meino tried to figure out where to begin. “We got on the cargo plane, Burkhart was already shielded in the box. It was so busy because someone didn’t come in for work. That’s what the guy said.”
“What guy? Specifics,” Pritchard prompted.
“He worked there. Coveralls.” Meino felt dazed, and his memory wasn’t the most cooperative at the moment. “Then Rebecca arrived, and we got onto the plane.”
“Rebecca?” Nathan burst out.
“Yeah. She knew. She told me sorry when the flight attendant grabbed me and injected me with something.”
“She said she was in a car crash,” Nathan said.
“Rebecca, as the girl we went to school with, and the one moving in with the Order protégé Jared?” Alex asked, looking stunned.
“I think we found our mole,” Mr. Henry said. “She was present at the engagement party when the Gargoyles whispered undetermined and confusing warnings.”
“Back to the details here. We need the details if we’re to devise plans,” Pritchard said.
Meino felt tired, but the bald man, Dominic, was still holding him up. Meino looked around and pointed to a table with four chairs. They sat, Pritchard across from Meino with an expectant expression.
“What happened after you were attacked on the plane?”
“I woke up in a basement. It was nighttime there, but Burk said he couldn’t animate. We had left in the morning. I didn’t need to piss.”
Pritchard blinked before a smile tugged. “Stuff has to go in before it needs to get out, you know. Judging by your voice and the chapped lips, you’re parched.”
Meino smacked his tongue, and it did feel dry and too big. He still thought the rough quality to his voice was because he’d screamed for Burkhart. A fresh wave of anxiety rolled over him. “They were going to destroy him. They called him a Devil’s trap... no, Demon trapper. What’s that?”
“It’s a stone called a seal,” Alex said. “Just a normal stone with sigils in it.”
Someone came out with a tray and placed bottles with water in front of Meino, and he greedily emptied the first.
“Do you know where you were being held?” Pritchard asked once Meino had finished drinking.
Meino shook his head, still swallowing and gasping. “No,” he finally managed while he unscrewed the cap of another bottle. “There were sigils on every wall, the ceiling, the floor. I tried the spell both in tears and in blood. Burkhart said it worked, but the magic kept him in stone.”
Nathan nodded slowly, his eyes revealing deep thoughts.
“Who worked your face over? How many were they?” Pritchard continued.
“Three men. Only one of them hit. One more assisted in questions, and there was a young man... his name was the only one I got.”
“Which is?” Pritchard pulled a small notepad and a pen from his inner pocket, getting ready to take notes.
“Tavi.”
Nathan gasped. “That’s Rebecca’s brother.”
“We need to get them. Dominic, can you bring a mortal through now that you’re Punishment?”
“No, and I don’t have to, Kaleb already did. They’re each stewing in their cells at my place.”
Meino blinked because none of that made sense. “The demigod? What is Punishment?”
“One mountain at a time,” Pritchard said, scribbling away. “So, this Rebecca is a mole, and she was at our engagement party.”
“Should I go ask these guys who they are?” Dominic asked.
“Yeah, we got this,” Pritchard said. Dominic kissed Alex and disappeared the way Kaleb had.
The suddenness of the bright light made Meino squeeze his bottle of water in shock, spilling it onto the table and Pritchard’s notes. But Burkhart sat next to the Angel.
Meino.
Relief surged through Meino, and he got up and threw himself at Burkhart, kissing him and hugging him and ignoring the pain his face was in from the beating.
He did it. The god did it.
“He saved you, oh thank God, he saved you.”
“He’s alive?” Nathan asked.
Meino looked up teary-eyed and smiling. “Yes. Burkhart’s alive.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
Lucien rarely felt useless, but when he did it was in spades. Watching their new friend Meino lose his Gargoyle made Lucien feel useless, but Nathan’s worry about his friend and the fact that the Order had been infiltrated topped it off.
Impatiently, he waited for nightfall in Seattle while the rest sat down in the winter garden to make sure Meino was fed. They almost had to drag Meino away from Burkhart’s still form sitting on the terrace, but the fact that Meino could still communicate with Burkhart finally made the difference, and Meino was hoovering a huge burger.
“Burkhart says Kaleb asked if he could take his soul,” Meino managed between bites, but the young man was clearly famished. “Burkhart said yes. He says Kaleb put it inside himself, and he felt so loved and peaceful.”
“Soul pocket,” Alex said, smiling. “That’s the energy we saw then. He was trying to put Burkhart’s soul back into the stone form.”
“Where is he now? I want to thank him,” Meino said.
“He’s probably passed out,” Alex said, looking worried.
“Lucien, will you go check on Kaleb?”
Lucien drifted into Nathan before he left to look for Kaleb. He had nothing to zero in on, but he figured that since Kaleb was still a member of his dad’s pack, maybe the young demigod was asleep at home in his own bed. If not, Lucien didn’t have much to go on, since he hadn’t been at the home of the Pack of Punishment.
He didn’t have to worry about that, though, because Kaleb sprawled on his own bed, his hair still a tousled mess, and he was so far gone that a thin stream of drool ran from his mouth to the pillow. So powerful, so willing to help, and so young.
Edward sat on a chair and stared at his son with a worried frown.
There was nothing Lucien could do, so he returned to Nathan.
“Is Kaleb sleeping?”
Lucien drifted in and out of Nathan to
answer yes. He then noticed that the Angel Sam-El had arrived along with the one of much higher energy.
“I once asked Kaleb to pull a Demon from a little girl,” Sam-El said. “He did so by uprooting the girl’s soul and pulling it from her body, trapping the parasitic Demonic soul inside the flesh. Once the Demon vacated her, he put the soul back. It knocked him out for a few hours.”
“My energy is very different from that of a human soul,” the tall Angel said. “The amount of power it took for him to expel Burkhart from himself will have drained him even more. My energy is a lot more complex and intense, even though it was a smaller amount than a full human soul.”
“How do I even begin to thank Kaleb?” Meino asked.
“You already do. He has served you, and your gratitude feeds him now,” Sal-El said.
“I’ll explain it all to you,” Alex promised.
Pritchard’s phone rang, and he left the winter garden to answer it. Lucien followed, because the weathered operative needed all the help he could get, and unless he told Lucien to butt out, Nathan’s security was Lucien’s job, too, and if the Order was vulnerable then so was Nathan. Still, because it was through a phone, Lucien had trouble hearing the other end of the conversation even if he shoved his head into Pritchard’s essence to put his ear to the receiver.
“Mr. Sullivan, we have good news. Have you checked on the specifics I sent you?... Good, inform Mr. Thomas... Any Earned?... Can you open a portal?... Do you remember Dominic?... Good. Once the girl has arrived at Mr. Thomas’ place, have him summon Dominic... No, we don’t know anything yet, Dominic will return as soon as he does... Okay, bye.” Pritchard hung up and glanced over his shoulder toward the door to the winter garden. He then sighed loudly and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Lucien, I have a feeling you’re here. Maybe even Ethan.”
Lucien closed in on him to share the space, wondering if Pritchard would be able to feel his presence.
“You might not have expected there to be a mole among us at the engagement party, but please search your memory and see if you picked up something that only makes sense with that piece of the puzzle.” Pritchard then turned and walked right through Lucien as he made his way back to the winter garden.
Lucien followed, his mind already busy with the task, Pritchard had set.
And yeah, something did tease in the back of his mind. A conversation. Meino had been brought up.
Chapter Thirty-nine
It was strange ending up in another home of the Order, and he hadn’t even had to fly there. Meino was in Washington State while Mr. Talbot and Vibeke were still en route. They’d stopped in New York the day before and still had to cross America to get to him.
Meino stared at Burkhart’s still and crouching form feeling soothed by the deep voice explaining what it had felt like to be sucked from his stone body to be nested inside the body of a demigod. He told of how powerful that feeling had become when Kaleb had expelled Burkhart and the heavy feeling when Kaleb and the Angel had infused the soul essence into the stone crystals again.
Something changed, but I don’t know what it is. Maybe I’m just stone again, and you have to awaken me again. Maybe the spell didn’t survive with my soul being separated from the stone.
“I’ll awaken you again, then.” Meino pictured Kaleb trying to push Burkhart into the stone, and he wondered just how powerful the demigod could be. Alex had explained about Kaleb and the Earned while he ate, and the Angel had filled in a bit more. It was confusing when some called Kaleb a demigod, others called him a god, and Alex called him a half-breed. “I’m just so happy Kaleb brought you back.”
“Meino?”
Meino jumped and turned, and the real world pushed through the vision of Kaleb and the energy he’d controlled.
“Are you okay?” Mr. Henry asked.
“Yeah, I... had a vision, I guess.”
“Oh? Will you share it?”
Meino thought for a second. “I was just remembering seeing the energy he tried to push from his body. It was so bright and intense.”
“Ah.” Mr. Henry leaned against the windowsill to also look out the window. “Kaleb is a very powerful witch. One of the two most powerful, as far as we know. Magic is instinctual in him. He works very hard on making it cognitively available, because the instinctual kind can be dangerous when one is as powerful as he is. It is different with wizards, yet your connection to the magic, or the energies as Kaleb call them, is almost the same. What you describe is more visual than what I saw.”
“But, how does it work? How can I—”
“Kaleb would be much better at explaining it to you, but I know you are able to connect with levels of energy that normal humans are not. How... ask Kaleb, he will tell you.”
Meino was quite curious. All that wizard business had been sprung on him not long ago, and once he’d asked the nexus for help, the visions had begun.
Kaleb suddenly stopped and turned his head and looked directly at Meino. Then he got up and walked toward the house.
“He isn’t here, is he?” Meino asked.
“Who?”
“Kaleb. Did he hear us?”
Mr. Henry looked out the window. “I only see Burkhart. You might have summoned Kaleb, though.” Mr. Henry held out an arm for Meino to join him on the sofa. Kaleb joined them moments later, looking expectantly at Meino. He still looked a bit tired, but at least his long dark hair was no longer a total mess.
“Did he summon you?” Mr. Henry asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you rested? Sam-El said you passed out from exhaustion.”
“Not exhaustion.” Kaleb smiled at Meino like he wanted to calm his worry. “A soul is pure energy, and taking it inside myself makes me immensely strong. Pushing that much energy from my body all at once makes my body think it’s been tapped completely, rendering me absolutely powerless. That’s not the case, though, but I pass out from the sheer shock to my system at missing that much energy. I’m perfectly fine now that I’ve slept. It’s like my body and mind just needs to reboot to its former setting.”
“But I fed you new energy, right? Alex tried to explain it to me.”
“Oh, you’re still feeding me energy. A lot. May I show you?”
Meino looked at Mr. Henry, whose old eyes brimmed with excitement. Meino finally nodded.
Kaleb came to kneel next to Meino. “The demigod race I belong to can see a rendering of the human soul. We call it a soul sphere.” Kaleb gestured in front of Meino’s chest, and a bright sphere seeped out of his body, but still connected to him by a shimmering thread at his solar plexus. “Your sphere is almost perfect, but these gouges are caused by someone hurting you.” Kaleb put his hand on the sphere and energy rushed from it to cover his hand. “Two beatings and fear from losing Burkhart. And your parents being taken from you.”
“Death leaves something like that?” Meino asked.
“No.” Kaleb looked up at Meino. “But murder does.”
Meino gasped. “My parents were murdered?”
“I can’t tell for sure unless I find the missing energy. You see, the loss you suffer doesn’t give me any specifics, but foul play was certainly involved, or the energy wouldn’t have made it to your soul, too, only that of your parents that it’s related to. I can’t even see which it is.”
Meino stared at his soul, wondering. He hadn’t been allowed to see his mom after she died, but his dad had said it was a disease that took her from them. But the letters made him question everything he’d heard and remembered. His dad was another matter. Police had first said he was missing. Then later they said he was dead. Meino hadn’t been allowed to see the body then, either, and he’d never known the details surrounding his death. Knowing that he was a wizard as well and that he, too, had been protecting the Gargoyles, then yeah, murder was possible.
“Could it be the Templars?”
“I’ll be looking into that, I promise,” Kaleb sai
d. “When I say you feed me energy from gratitude? Look here. Do you see a thin sheen rolling off the sphere and floating my way?”
Meino stared at his sphere, and he did see something leaving it.
“I’m giving you my energy?”
“No, you’re creating energy for me.” Kaleb gestured again, and the sphere sank into Meino’s chest again.
“Mr. Henry said I might see things differently because I’m a wizard. Can you explain how?”
“Sure.” Kaleb went to the desk. He returned with a pad and a pencil and took a seat on the sofa next to Meino so he could see the pad, too. Kaleb then drew a gingerbread man, grinning at it. “It’s supposed to be a human. The majority of human souls are confined within their physical beings. The higher vibrations the soul reaches, the easier it breaks free of said confinements.” Kaleb drew a blurry and weak pencil line around the gingerbread man. “When the soul can escape the physical prison, then it can communicate with energies that can’t penetrate the flesh. Extrasensory perception or the sixth sense or intuition or... it has many names, but it’s the same. You were born with a soul of high enough frequency to never stay inside your body, yet it is thoroughly anchored in your physical body. This is key.”
“I know I was born a wizard. Ms. Alvilda told me about how my need for fantasy books is a part of that. Some urge to seek out the unknown.”
“Yes. Another thing, though. The ability for this kind of magic to be in the body is usually hereditary.”
“My dad. He took me to the crypt with all the Gargoyles. Where I met Burkhart.”
Burkhart purred in Meino’s ear, making him smile and feel fulfilled. Meino sat back and tried to remember more from those days, and all he’d learned in Scotland and all Burkhart had told him about what he remembered. “He taught me about the pending responsibility to keep the Gargoyles safe. We played in the crypt. We made huge fantasy worlds where I was the hero who had to save the Gargoyles from an evil enemy. We had spell books and potions, and our treasure was a spell. It’s how wizards teach their children, according to Mr. Talbot.”
Gargoyle Rising Page 33
