Alchemystic

by Anton Strout

  Three of them got their wings sorted out and came for me. I brushed one away with a mighty blow of my wings, and shoved my sharpened claws into the chests of the other two. My hands came out through their backs. Before I had a chance to shake them free, the two remaining ones were coming at me. Their mouthfuls of teeth snapped and gnashed, and I shoved their dead pack members in the way to keep them from taking a chunk out of my body. I swung my arms wildly, both driving them back and using the force to get the broken bodies off my arms. They came free, plummeting to the earth below, and before the last two could close again, I flew farther from the church, leading them away. They screeched and fell in behind me, trying to keep up. This time they were close and closing every second, curse my fatigued body.

  A sudden twinge rose up in my chest. This time I recognized it as the bond to the girl, but it was still enough to catch me off my guard. I grabbed two of these stone eaters by the throat, clenching my fists until the stone of my fingers came together underneath their flesh. Their wings ceased flapping, their bodies falling, and I used their added weight to flip me around, heading me back toward the tower.

  Already I could see the problem—the top of the tower simply was not there, having caved in on itself. I pushed my wings as hard as I could. The first rule—protect the family—burned at the center of me and I would not fail. I arched my body back, propelling myself higher, before I dove down into the center of the collapsing tower, wings tucked in tight. Falling chunks of the old church blocked my way, but I pushed through them as easily as I tore through clouds, the stone no match for that of my skin.

  “Stanis!” I heard Alexandra’s voice cry out before I could even see her. I drove my hands down into the stones beneath me and threw them aside, revealing her figure several stories below me. The blue-haired one was close to her, one of those creatures clutched in her hand, flapping wildly. The club below was rapidly getting closer.

  I pumped my wings to close the distance and grabbed for Alexandra’s wrist, but stopped myself, remembering how fragile these humans could be. I worked my wings again, shooting past her, coming up from beneath, catching Alexandra under her arms. She jerked with the sudden stop, letting out a hiss of pain, but she seemed to be intact.

  “Rory!” she called out to me in a state of panic. My arm flashed out and caught the other girl in the same manner. The creature in her hands slammed into my head and shoulder, momentarily dazed.

  “Let go of that thing!” Alexandra screamed to her, but it was too late. I could not bat it away without dropping one of the women, and before Aurora could act, the creature bit at the stone of my upper right arm. Fire erupted in it as the blue-haired girl pulled the creature away from me. Crunched-up stone flew from its mouth. My stone.

  It slammed into the wall of the still-standing tower and Aurora finally let go of it. I spread my wings to slow our fall as debris rained down on us, and, remembering their frail nature, I raised my wings in protection over the women before working them to make my way back up through the falling tower. The going was slow, and by the time I reached the top of what was left of the structure, the collapse had stopped altogether.

  “I think I just inherited Marshall’s fear of heights,” Aurora said, clutching around my neck as hard as her arms could hold her.

  “We need to land,” Alexandra said, “before I can’t hold on any longer.”

  “Fear not,” I said. “I would catch you.”

  A warmth radiated from her. “I know you would,” she said with a smile. “Nonetheless, I would prefer to have all three of us safely on the ground.” She looked around down below. “Can you land us behind the club?”

  I slipped into the shadows there, coming down slowly. Only after I landed and the women stepped away did I relax my wings, and that was when my body finally reminded me of the burning sensation on my right upper arm. As I looked it over, Alexandra and Aurora moved closer to it.

  “Sorry,” Aurora said.

  “Does it hurt?” Alexandra asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “It is a sensation I am not overly familiar with except as of late. It is…interesting.”

  “I think I can do something about that back at our building,” she said, “but not here.”

  “I will be fine,” I said. “Long have I desired to feel something. If it is pain, so be it.”

  I followed them out of the alley onto Twentieth Street. A dusty cloud met us along with dozens of dazed and costumed humans from the club. The three of us walked with caution back onto Sixth Avenue to the entrance of Cathedral. Sixth Avenue was less filled with smoke but there were more people here, a press of them shoving their way out of the old church still. The one called Marshall spotted me and came running over to the women, hugging them both.

  “I…I thought you were dead,” he said, shaken, with tears on his face.

  “We almost were,” Alexandra said, “but thanks to Stanis here, we made it out alive.”

  Marshall turned to me. “Thank you for that,” he said. “I know I’ve been a bit suspect about, well…everything with you, but I can see your heart, or whatever that coily thing in your chest is, is in the right place.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He turned back to the women. “Did you find what you were looking for?” Marshall asked.

  “Oh, Jesus, I almost forgot!” Alexandra brought up her still-clenched fists, opening the right one. Another of the gemstones sat in the center of her hand, yellow this time, its imprint pressed into her skin.

  The sound of sirens rose off in the distance. The dull flash of red and blue lights gave off large indistinct flares of color that colored the growing dust cloud all around us.

  “We should go,” Rory said, choking a bit.

  Alexandra closed her fist over the stone and pressed her other against my chest. “You need to get out of here,” she said. “Now.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll meet you back at the building,” she continued. “You should go back into the alley before you take off—”

  Too late to heed her words, I was already in flight, shooting up through the dust cloud, away from all the humanity, my soul already feeling relief that I was no longer going against one of the principal rules by being among them.

  Twenty nine

  Alexandra

  Stanis had flown off in such a hurry after the incident at Cathedral that I hadn’t had time to truly assess any of the damage to him other than that one bite on his right arm. I was just happy we had gotten the damned gemstone out of there and all got out alive. Now in the comfort of my great-great-grandfather’s studio, however, the nicks and dings to his form were more than evident.

  “I think somebody’s been putting up a brave front,” I said, readying the book spread out on one of the worktables. Next to it was a pile of broken stone chips I had Bricksley gather up from various sculpting attempts around the studio. Somewhere off in the studio I could hear the little guy still rummaging around for more.

  “What do you mean?” Stanis asked with his usual inquisitive head cock.

  I pointed to a bunch of areas across his torn-up chest and body. “You took a lot of damage tonight,” I said. “Those creatures, the tower collapse…” I shuddered. “Do these hurt?”

  Stanis nodded. “I wish I could say they do not,” he said, “but then I would be…What is the word…? Lying?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, sifting through the pile, looking for something the right size for the spot on his chest I was eyeing.

  He didn’t respond, which drew my eyes back to him. To my surprise, he was smiling, his fangs showing. “What?” I asked.

  “All of this…it is a small price to pay for regaining part of my soul,” he said.

  His words struck something deep in me that forced me to hold back the tears I felt forming at the corners of my eyes. I turned back to searching through my pile of stone pieces in silence until I found one that seemed about the right size.

  Consulting my great-great-grandfather�
��s book, I placed the stone into the groove on Stanis’s chest before I incanted the words on the page. The piece went warm beneath my fingers as it melded with Stanis, the gargoyle letting out a low, slow hiss. When I pulled my hand away, the stone of his chest was smooth and once more whole in that spot.

  “I may not be the best at real estate,” I said, “but this I seem to be getting the hang of.”

  Stanis looked down at the spot, then met my eyes.

  “This is what you were meant for,” he said. “Much like your great-great-grandfather. It was his destiny, and it is yours as well.”

  I gave a nervous laugh, finding it hard to look away from him. “Destiny schmestiny,” I said. “Anything beats office work.”

  He slid his hand over mine on his chest, careful with his claws, pressing it against the cold stone. “You may tell yourself that, Alexandra, but I know better. You are a maker; it is in your very nature.”

  This time I didn’t argue. How could I when his words fit so right, like knowing when you’ve found the perfect pair of boots or gloves. “Thank you,” I said after realizing I hadn’t said anything for several moments.

  “You are welcome,” he said, and strangely, I felt the sincerity in it. The foolish notion of kissing him passed through my mind for a brief moment, but the idea of scraping my lips on the stonework killed that thought. Luckily, Bricksley interrupted us, his tiny form carrying more pieces of stone over to me. I took the latest batch from his tiny arms, patting him on his “head.” Without another word, I set about repairing as much of Stanis as I could, finding that with repetition I was grinding my teeth together the same way I had when first using my newfound Spellmason skills to push back all the rubble at the building collapse site. I worked until I had an aching jaw and all that was left was the yellow gemstone we had reclaimed from the old church.

  “I should probably take care of this now,” I said.

  “Very well,” Stanis said, seeming in better spirits now that much of his body had been restored.

  I flipped through my great-great-grandfather’s arcane tome until I found the words that I was looking for. I pressed both hands against the gargoyle’s chest, focusing myself on the task at hand. Power poured out of me, causing the pattern hidden beneath his chest to snake to the surface and reveal itself. The gemstone fit perfectly into one of the two remaining spots there, and I held it in place while I used the rest of the spell to bind it there. The fitting took, the stone locking in place before disappearing as the rocky inner coils wove in on themselves until the pattern was once again hidden beneath the surface of his skin. Stanis’s eyes slammed shut, and he fell to his knees, shaking the floor, which I hoped wouldn’t bring my family running.

  “Stan…?” I asked, kneeling down in front of him. His wings spasmed out and away from his body, knocking everything from the worktable next to us, sending the book flying.

  “I am all right,” he said through clenched teeth. “These…restorations do not get easier.”

  My phone rang across the room on the drafting table where I had left it, vibrating toward the edge. I looked back at Stanis. “You going to be okay?”

  He nodded as he attempted to settle his wings, but they remained flapping in a wave of spasms. “It will pass,” he said, but the look on his face didn’t seem too sure about that.

  I ran and grabbed my phone seconds before it slid off the table’s edge. Unknown, the ID read. “Hello?”

  “Alexandra,” the strange deep voice said, but the singsong way it came out left little doubt as to whose it was.

  “Hello, Devon.”

  “The news was reporting a gargoyle sighting tonight near the collapse of that nightclub Cathedral,” he said. “What have you and your friend been up to exactly?”

  “Nothing that need concern you,” I said.

  “Your public antics are making the Servants very antsy, dear sister. My masters need the rest of those books. Kejetan has waited centuries, but now that his faithful Servants keep dying, he knows he’s close and his patience is wearing thin. He’s pressing me to give him the secrets I promised in exchange for eternal life, Lexi. The books I stole aren’t enough. I’m a good negotiator and a good staller, but I can’t hold them off forever. They want good old Alexander’s arcane secrets.”

  I was livid. Since my brother had told me about the books in his possession on the ship, I had confirmed that indeed three were missing that tied into my quest for the Revelation of the Soul, specifically the threads leading to finding the Heart of the Home. For too long I had put off figuring out how I could reclaim those books, focusing instead on finding the second and third soul stones with the knowledge I already possessed, but this call from my brother was a painful reminder that I could delay no longer. I needed to get those three books back.

  On top of that I couldn’t help but recall the circumstances under which I had learned Devon was still alive, bringing all my anger back to the surface again like a flash of lightning. “Calling to threaten me some more?” I asked, trying to do some stalling of my own. “I haven’t found them yet.” Although if I found the fourth stone, somehow reclaimed the stolen books to restore Stanis, and could finally figure out enough about how he ticked, I had every intention of using those secrets myself to crush my brother and the Accursed Lord.

  A noise came over the line, and it took me a moment to realize that it was my brother’s heinous new form of sighing. “Listen, Lex. It’s a wonder I could even dial a phone with this body of mine right now, okay? It’s like trying to call you using bricks on the keypad.”

  I tried to imagine it but couldn’t without picturing his rocklike form using one of those giant phones for old people with the massive number buttons on them. “I need more time to find them, monster,” I said.

  “Don’t be like that, Lex,” Devon said with a gravelly chuckle. “What did you want me to do at our last meeting? Give you a big hug? Besides, you set your gargoyle on me, forcing me to beat him down. You want me to apologize for protecting myself?”

  “Screw you, Devon,” I said. “You were a piss-poor brother in life. You sold out the family for your own purposes. The only person you’re protecting is the tyrant who’s behind this old blood vendetta.”

  “Time is running out, little Lex. We want those books.”

  “I’m not giving you the books, Devon.”

  “You don’t understand,” he said, his voice changing, becoming ultra serious and a whisper now. “I need them. They’re going to kill me if you don’t bring them, Alexandra. You have to either find them or else get me the hell out of here. I’m losing what little bargaining power I had when I first agreed to all this. They will kill me.”

  “Didn’t they already do that to you once?” I asked.

  “This is not the time to joke,” he said. “They mean to destroy this body I’m in rather than let me be completed once we have those stolen arcane secrets back. Without that hidden knowledge, I think they mean to break me down so they can see how I work if they don’t get them. All they want are the books.”

  “I’m not giving them,” I said. “I’m sorry. I can’t allow them to have that power.”

  “Then you have to help me! They won’t let me leave this ship.” There was a near-histrionic quality to my brother’s voice that I had never heard out of him in life. The sound wore hard against my heart.

  “Fine,” I said, thinking up a plan on the fly, one that might both save my brother and help me find the last soul stone for the Revelation of the Soul. “I’ll help you, but I’m not just going to give them what they want. And I want the books you took from our great-great-grandfather’s library.”

  He lowered his voice to an even more hushed whisper. “Okay, okay. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m coming to get you,” I said. “It’ll be after sundown tomorrow. Try to stay alive until then, all right? I’ll bring help. Don’t worry.”

  “I have to go, before one of the people on board find me making this call,” my brother
said. “But…thank you, Alexandra. I know I was never an easy brother to get along with.”

  Sincerity and my brother didn’t go well together, just making me feel awkward. We’d see how he’d be after I liberated him. “You can thank me once we get you out of there,” I said.

  He laughed. “All right, then,” he said. “Hurry! They’ve already got me on lockdown. I don’t know how much longer until they try to dissect me.”

  “We’ll be there,” I said. “Stay strong.”

  I hung up. Stanis had worked himself up from his knees and stood tall once more, his wings pulled in close to his body. “Where will we be on our way to?”

  “To rescue my brother,” I said. “I’ve bought myself a day to rally Rory and Marshall, a day to plan an attack, all four of us hitting the boat this time.”

  “Rescue?” he asked. “We are going to save the one who tried to crush my neck in? Why would we do that?”

  “Because he’s my brother,” I said. Whatever I had restored in Stanis, I found it interesting to see him asking questions about things that had personally wronged him, something indicative of having restored a greater part of his personality. “Because most importantly, he can help us once we free him. He knows the enemy, and once we get back the books he stole, I think I can restore you to your full power. And hopefully that will give us a way to stop them. So we’re going to get him.”

  “Very well,” he said, and fell silent.

  Between nightclubs collapsing, repairing gargoyles, restoring personalities, and talking to my brother, I needed to collapse myself. There was no way I was going to plan out our rescue tomorrow without my beauty sleep.

  Thirty

  Alexandra

  I got a solid eight in, had a big, hearty breakfast, then ignored day-job stuff the entire day as I looked for things throughout my great-great-grandfather’s whole library that might prove of some use in rescuing Devon. I texted Rory and Marshall the details, stressing how ass-kickingly important this was to make sure they’d show on time, and I had just finished charming necklaces of their own when I realized the sun was going down. The charge in the talismans wouldn’t last forever, but I hoped it would be enough to get us on the boat unnoticed. I heard Stanis come to life out on the terrace, and after double-checking my backpack, we were off.