Incarnate (A Spellmason Chronicle)

by Anton Strout

  I studied the figure as close as I could from where we stood. What looked like one of the massive tombstones carved to resemble an angel was definitely moving. Its wings were spread to an impressive span, their finely detailed carving easily recognizable as the work of my great-great-grandfather, the last of the old-world Spellmasons, Alexander Belarus.

  Rory dropped to her knees when she spied the figure, pulling off the art tube she always wore across her back. The three pieces of her glaive guisarme slid out of it, and Rory set about assembling the pieces, first connecting the two shafts and then attaching the bladed end piece of the pole arm.

  By the time she stood and strapped the tube across her back again, I was advancing forward, pulling off my backpack to release the heavy stone book from within. Once free, I pressed my hand to the book’s carved cover and spoke the Slavic word for release, the book beneath my fingers transforming to one of ink and paper.

  The bond between the arcane stone of the book and me was a strong one. Strong enough, apparently, that the stone angel felt it as well and rose up from the grave it stood before.

  With its wings fluttering in agitation, the angel reached out to a nearby tombstone, tugged at it, and lifted it like it was made of papier-mâché.

  “Incoming!” I shouted.

  As it launched the grave marker in our direction, Rory dove to her right and I dropped right where I was to huddle protectively over my spell book.

  The tombstone flew overhead and didn’t stop until I heard the snap of branches and tree trunks from somewhere off behind us.

  “So much for immobilizing him first,” I said, scrambling to my feet.

  “We’ve got a runner!” Rory shouted as she stood and the angel spread his wings, taking to the air. “I mean flyer!”

  “Looks like we’re going with Plan B, then,” I said, picking up my backpack.

  Rory just looked at me from under her wet, blue bangs. “We have a Plan B?!”

  Ignoring her, I shoved my book back into my bag. “I’m sick of these things making a run for it,” I said, searching around until my fingers found what they were looking for. I pulled free a curved stone hook and a coil of rope with a steel-core cable running down the center of it, looping it through the eye of the hook before knotting it tight. I took the other end of the coil of rope and wrapped it around my waist twice before tying it securely.

  “I might not have the lasso skills of a cowgirl,” I continued, forcing my arcane will into the stone of the hook, “but I can control masonry well enough.”

  Rory’s eyes went wide as the realization of what I was about to do hit her. “Lexi, don’t!” she called out. “You’ll get yourself killed!”

  “Better me than another innocent,” I said.

  By then the gargoyle was rising up past the old abbey, gaining speed. Wrapping one hand around the stone hook and sliding the loose coil of rope into my other, I wound up like a pitcher and threw the hook with as much strength as I could.

  I held my arcane will to that of the stone of the hook, all the while my eyes continuing to track the gargoyle. At the bending of my will, the hook corrected its course to catch up with the fleeing creature.

  Thankfully, it seemed that since I had accidentally awakened this particular grotesque six months ago, it hadn’t spent much time practicing flight. The stone angel wobbled in the air unsteadily as it attempted to escape, allowing the speed of my hook to easily outpace it.

  Still, I didn’t let my sense of pride in my mastery of it go to my head. Until I could actually ground the creature, the victory wasn’t mine.

  I guided the stone hook past the angelic figure and then forced it into a sharp turn across the front of the creature’s legs, forming a midair trip wire. I snapped my wrist on the hand holding the rope, managing to loop the line securely around its legs. The thrill of pulling off what felt like such a genuine cowgirl move overcame me, and only then did I allow myself the tiniest amount of pride for the fanciness of rope skills.

  Which, naturally, was my undoing.

  The force of the fleeing creature—as bad a flyer as it was—was still substantial. The line in my hand tightened quick as a whip and before I could release it, my feet were already off the ground. Pain shot across my midsection as the rope encircling me went taut, and I flew into the air as Rory’s stunned face—and the ground—faded away below.

  “Lexi!” Rory shouted, but already her voice was fading off far behind me.

  My overall fatigue and this fresh series of aches filled me with the kind of wild fear that only an airborne magical creature dragging me across the night sky could. If it weren’t for the growing sensation that I was going to die, I almost would have enjoyed the perverse and deadly pleasure of the madcap carnival-quality ride.

  Rain whipped across my face as I flew through the night sky, my vision clouding as its sting filled my eyes. My arms burned from my death-grip hold on the rope—falling wasn’t something I could afford to do with so many mistakes left to atone for.

  I needed to gain control of this situation before this creature flew me out over the river or decided to smash me into the side of a building. The only thing going for me was my added weight throwing off the gargoyle’s flight, twisting the creature in a spiral as it adjusted to my being tethered to it.

  Hoping to use that to my advantage, I swung myself like the world’s biggest pendulum, using my momentum to drive the creature away from the Hudson River and back toward the Cloisters itself.

  My best bet was to aim for the high tower, driving the gargoyle toward it. I might be able to land myself on the lower roof of the surrounding abbey or drop down into its courtyard. If that didn’t work, my extended hope would be to land in one of the trees of the surrounding forest. At least then I could try to wrap the line around the trunk of a tree and use the leverage to ground the gargoyle.

  The tower was coming up fast, and the creature noticed it and tried to steer away from the stone walls. It managed to spread its wings as far and wide as it could, which slowed its descent, allowing it time to readjust its course. Like an airplane doing a rollover, the gargoyle spun until it was on its side, one wing reaching straight to the heavens while the other one pointed down to the ground below.

  What the hell was it doing? I wondered. The maneuver still put him on course to smash into the building . . . a panicked second of calculating its trajectory, and my heart sunk when I realized what was about to happen.

  Three vertical stained glass windows were set into the side of the tower, coming up insanely fast. The creature smashed through the center panel first, the panes of glass exploding into the building, leaving plenty of jagged chunks that I was about to get dragged through as the rope pulled me after him.

  I curled myself into a ball as small as I could and braced myself as I flew through the broken window, the jagged panes of glass catching my clothes. The snags and tears slowed my momentum some and I fell through the opening onto the interior of the tower’s floor, rolling until I was a tangled ball of flesh, blood, and rope, stopping only when I hit one of the transept walls of what looked like the nave of a church.

  I wriggled myself out of the twist of rope and pushed myself up onto my hands and knees. The warm flow of fresh blood trickled harder down my left arm through one of the slashes in the sleeve of my coat. I poked at the spot, examining how serious the wound was while also, vainly, letting a moment of silence pass for my poor coat. I had loved my Burberry . . .

  Before I could fully assess the damage to my body, the rope at my feet twitched to life and began to slip away from me. The now-grounded gargoyle writhed on the floor near the altar, the tangle of rope around him coming looser and looser with each thrash of his struggle to free himself.

  When I tried to stand and chase after the rope, my knees buckled. I must have taken my landing harder than I realized. If I didn’t get the line back in my hands soon, t
his gargoyle was going to free himself. I’d be fighting this whirlwind of wings and stone in an enclosed space where the confinement was likely to put me in harm’s way, and that was the last thing I wanted.

  The tinkling of glass behind me caught my attention and I turned. Rory stood in the frame of what had once been the stained glass window. Holding her bladed pole arm overhead, she dropped down into the room, the last remaining pieces of glass from the frame raining down behind her in a sparkling rainbow waterfall.

  Back in front of me, the rope was quickly snaking farther away from me and I lunged for the line, barely catching the end of it with my left hand. The rope jerked with a burn across the skin on my fingers. I wrapped my legs around one of the columns within the old monastery, hoping to brace myself, but it was no use. They came free of the column and the line dragged me across the glass-covered stone of the floor toward the gargoyle, my body screaming with pain, but I refused to let go.

  Luckily, not every spell I knew required free hands. I rushed out a power word for control toward the stone of the altar’s pulpit, managing to topple it over onto the creature with a press of my arcane will.

  I finally ground to a halt on the floor of the nave, coming to rest with a final crunch of glass sounding beneath me. Rolling over with the rope still in my hand, I carefully placed my hands on clear sections of the floor and took my time as I righted my aching body. I stood up slowly, then took a deep breath before limping toward the altar.

  Rory ran past me and pulled the rope free of my hand. She slammed one of her Doc Martens on the stones of what still remained of the pulpit and steadied herself as she leaned back to tug on the rope, throwing all her dancer’s strength into her flexed arms.

  The slack in the line went taut. The gargoyle stirred, awakening, and a contest of strength began between the two of them. Rory held strong and advanced on the creature, securing the rope around him with several additional loops of it.

  “Thanks,” I said, brushing glass and debris off of my bloody coat.

  “My pleasure,” she said, handing me the rope before going back across the room to reclaim her pole arm. “He’s all yours.”

  I walked to the gargoyle that lay on the floor, still struggling against the ropes.

  I had to talk fast. Even restrained, it would take only a minute or two until the gargoyle would eventually figure out it could break its bonds using its preternatural strength.

  “Easy, now,” I said, following it by the whisper of an arcane Slavic word that reached out to the stone of his angelic form. Now that he was actually grounded and captive, it was easier to make that influencing connection, and I felt my will wash over him. I pressed one of my boots down on his chest. At the same time, I reached out with my power and raised one of the heavy broken blocks of the pulpit, hovering it over the creature’s head.

  “If you’ve got anything more than rocks in your brain, you’ll stay down,” I continued, finally taking in the damage to my torn and bloody coat. My face filled with a grim and manic smile. “You might look like an angel, but after what you’ve done to my jacket? You’re about to bring out the devil in me.”

  Two

  Stanis

  As I flew over the wooded land along this Manhattan section of the Hudson River, my ears filled with a gentle laughter that reminded me of the chimes humans often left outside to catch the wind.

  “Have you never been to the Cloisters?” my female companion in flight said.

  I arced up into the air as we approached the ancient abbey, ceasing my flight as I set my batlike wings into short, rapid strokes allowing me to hover in place.

  “I have been here much longer than the structure below us, Emily,” I said.

  My fellow grotesque attempted the same maneuver I had just completed, but instead turned too sharply and collided with me. The serpentine features of her face—half human and half snake, with yellow marble skin—were a stark contrast to the gray of my chiseled stone and demonic features. I held her until her own wings—far more dragonlike than mine—fell into the same rhythm as my bat ones before holding her out away from me at arm’s length.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her face full of embarrassment.

  “I do have several centuries of practice on you,” I said with a smile. “For a grotesque with only six months’ practice, you have excellent prowess with it.”

  Keeping her hands in mine, I began our descent. This seemed to release her from her embarrassment and she looked down to the building below.

  “You’re older than this monastery?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Yes,” I said, “but in truth, I do not believe it actually is a monastery.”

  “Oh, no?”

  “For the first century of my existence, the lush park you see surrounding the building went untouched. However, in my subsequent centuries of watching over Manhattan, I have come to learn that change is inevitable. The area I had come to know as Fort Tryon Park was not immune to this way of the city. Nearly a century ago I watched human workers laboring late into the night as five of the greatest cloistered abbeys of Europe were reconstructed here stone by stone. But I do not believe it was ever intended to be of monastic use, but to serve as a museum dedicated to medieval Europe.”

  Emily smiled, her fangs showing. “For someone who spent centuries with very little human interaction, you are remarkably well versed in such matters,” she said.

  “I am a good listener,” I said, “and have long had a fascination with the place as an architectural wonder of Manhattan. For years, I did not know why, but since discovering who I am and where I come from, I can see why. I missed my home.”

  “But aren’t medieval times well before your time?” she asked.

  “Not by much,” I said. “In my time, Europe was already old and the world slower to change. This building reminds me of my father’s Belarusian kingdom in Kobryn. It belonged to Lithuania back then, but despite the iron fist my father, Kejetan, ruled with—Kejetan the Accursed, they called him—despite that, I can still recall the architecture of my human boyhood with some fondness. There was still innocence in me, long before my father accidentally struck me down when he took the crude but immortal stone form he forced from Alexander Belarus in his mad quest for power . . .”

  The pain of the day he broke my human form flooded my stone body and I fell silent. Emily squeezed my hand in hers.

  “But you are here today,” she said. “With me, helping others . . .”

  “I have Alexander Belarus to thank for that,” I said. “Teaching me had been his one true joy when my father forced him into servitude. It would have killed Alexander to see me die in such a way. His arcane knowledge set me to this stone form, and I am forever grateful for it, if only for the sake of being able to contend with the likes of my father and his kind. May they rest, but not in peace.”

  Descending, the two of us passed down along the side of the tower, the figures of Alexandra Belarus and the blue-haired Aurora Torres catching my eye over by the entrance to the building. Behind them, ropes ran back through the doors leading in, the two of them straining with the effort of pulling something out of the building.

  When Emily and I landed, we walked to them and I grabbed the ropes.

  “Allow me,” I said, giving one hard pull. Alexandra and Aurora stumbled out of the way as the burden they had been dragging shot out the doors, a writhing winged figure coming to rest at my feet.

  “An angel,” Emily said, leaning over to look at the figure.

  The rope had pinned the figure’s wings to its back, but there was no mistaking the iconic look or art style of one of Alexander Belarus’s statues come to life.

  “You couldn’t have gotten here a little faster?” Alexandra said, the sharpness of her tone catching me off guard as she looked first to me and then to Emily. “Good to have the gargoyle—sorry, grotesque—back up, though.”

&
nbsp; Alexandra went out of her way in my presence to use the archaic French term I preferred when referring to my kind, but to hear her first use the vulgar form threw me. I stood there, unsure of how to respond for a moment. “Despite the police scanner you had Marshall install at Sanctuary, this island of Manhattan is a larger area to cover than you think,” I reminded her. “And it would be easier on me if you would perhaps be a little less . . . diligent in your pursuits.”

  “I’m sorry,” Alexandra said. “Am I wearing you out?”

  “We cannot be worn out, save by the transformative light of day,” I reminded her. “We do not require sleep.”

  This answer did not seem to satisfy Alexandra, as she shook her head and smiled, but unsure as I was how to respond, I looked to Aurora for guidance.

  “Hello, Stanis,” the blue-haired woman said. “Don’t mind her. Someone’s just a little overly ambitious, sleep deprived, and a wee bit sensitive.”

  Alexandra did not respond with words, but the glare in her eyes at her oldest friend was enough to silence Aurora.

  “Then forgive our lateness,” I said. “I will handle this creature.”

  Alexandra and Aurora stepped out of the way, and I turned my attention to the prone figure at my feet. The angel looked more like a statue right now as it lay there unmoving. I tugged at the ropes to rouse it.

  I waited for the creature’s snarl, the gnash of its teeth or an attempted swipe of its claws, but I was not prepared for the look of fear and confusion in its face.

  “Do not hurt me,” a male voice cried out from the angel’s lips.

  “Hurt you?” Alexandra said, laughing. “You’ve been the hostile one! You threw a gravestone at us, remember?”

  The creature looked from her to Aurora, gesturing with the little movement he had in his bound hands toward the pole arm she held. “She showed up brandishing one of those . . . those . . . things.”

  His wings twitched, an involuntary telltale sign of nerves that I spent much of my time trying to suppress in my own.