Incarnate (A Spellmason Chronicle)

by Anton Strout

  Caleb went for the inside of his coat, no doubt reaching for one of his alchemical mixes, but the chains attacking him went for his hands, knocking their contents away and sending a fistful of vials sailing off across the room.

  I fought to stand despite my bindings, forcing myself up onto my hands and knees, but two more chains wrapped around my hands and dragged me to a hanging position. The last of the chain snaked around my body over and over in a near-solid coil before finally stopping.

  Clearly, breaking and entering was something I needed to brush up on, although I couldn’t feel too bad about my effort because Caleb—despite his more nefarious past—was just as screwed, mummified in his own set of iron restraints.

  “Man, I really hope getting caught like this is part of your master plan,” I hissed to him through my tight, heavy bonds.

  Caleb ignored me, focusing his gaze instead on the man coming toward us.

  Wild black hair stuck up in every direction, in stark contrast with the orderly trimmed beard the man wore. Both of the man’s hands were covered in a variety of rings, which, given his old jeans and T-shirt, made him look more like an unemployed musician than a sorcerer supreme.

  He stopped five feet from me, amusement on his face.

  “You’re not who I was expecting,” he said, a bit of wonder in his words.

  “Sorry to disappoint,” I managed to get out between shallow breaths. “You’re not the first witch or warlock to hunt me. You are, however, the lucky one.”

  “Lucky?” he asked. “How?”

  “Not everyone gets me delivered to their doorstep,” I said, mustering up as much bravado as I could. “But I’ll warn you . . . the others failed in their quests to keep me captured, so the odds aren’t looking in your favor.”

  “Be that as it may,” he said, looking me over, “you are a welcome surprise, I must say.”

  I felt the early stages of panic kicking in, which sucked because if I started hyperventilating, I’d end up passing out from the hundred pounds of chain wrapped around me.

  “Easy, Warren,” Caleb said, and the man finally looked over to him, recognition filling his face. “Let’s not do anything hasty.”

  “Caleb Kennedy . . . ?” the man said, moving closer in the low light of the room. “This is an interesting night, indeed.” He jerked his thumb in my direction. “Freelancing for this troublemaker, are you?”

  “Troublemaker?!” I asked, almost laughing. “Me? How did you even spot me? I’ve been wearing my talisman and it’s fully charged.”

  “Your tricks and trinkets might work on the simpleminded,” Warren said with a scoff, “but on a warlock in his ancestral home? Not a chance.”

  “I heard that you were dead,” Caleb said.

  “Excellent,” the man said. “That’s what I was going for.”

  The man looked me up and down, curiosity mixed with lasciviousness. “Hello, moppet,” he said with the slightest hint of an Irish lilt in his words.

  Caleb sighed from within his coil of chain. “Alexandra Belarus,” he said. “This is Warren O’Shea. Warren, this is Alexandra.”

  Warren stepped closer, examining my face like someone who was starving and I was his next meal. “Charmed, I’m sure.”

  “Why do you want people to think you’re dead?” I asked. “In my experience, people who disappear are the ones who most have something to hide, Warren.”

  “You mean people like you?” he shot back. “Do you know how hard it has been trying to track down the mysterious Spellmason all the witches and warlocks in my community have been searching for? What do you have to hide, I wonder.”

  “Fair point,” I said, knowing how much I wanted to stay off their radar. “But you didn’t answer my question. Why do you want people to think you’re dead?”

  Warren sighed and stepped back from me, a bit of the venom going out of him. “I was hoping that by going into hiding, playing dead, I could avoid being actually dead,” he said.

  “You’re going to have to explain that.”

  “Someone wants to kill me,” he said. “Better?”

  “I want to kill you right now,” Caleb said.

  Warren looked up and down the chain cocoon that covered Caleb. “I’m not all that concerned about that, funnily enough.”

  “Who else wants you dead?” I asked.

  “For that you’ll need to understand something first,” he said. “There’s a reason witches and warlocks tend to group into covens. There’s safety in numbers.”

  I turned to Caleb. “I thought you once told me that they didn’t organize like that.”

  “I had said there’s not a lot of trust out there among witches and warlocks,” Caleb said. “And that’s true, but when they find those who are like-minded, they’re willing to form a rudimentary magical grouping like a coven, which answers to their Orders in the boroughs. That’s why some groups like the Witch & Bitch ladies don’t like using freelancers like me. They’ve got their little group and simply don’t trust outsiders. Now imagine dozens and dozens of groups just like that. That’s why they formed the Convocation—to gather and settle the issues that arise from arcane distrust.”

  “Although,” Warren added, “there was once a time when all the covens of Manhattan joined together.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “In the 1920s,” he said. “In fact, my family and I led the charge.”

  1920s? I thought. “Just how old are you, Warren?” I asked.

  The man smiled and smoothed down his wild black hair, which immediately popped back up into its disheveled state.

  “Let’s just say I’m remarkably well preserved,” he said. “But vanity aside, yes, there was a time that we all came together for a common cause.”

  “Robert Patrick Dorman,” Caleb said. “The Butcher of the Bowery.”

  “Correct,” he said.

  “He sounds unpleasant,” I said. “The gargoyles who attacked us at the armory were his henchmen. Just who the hell is this guy?”

  “There are a variety of ways to channel magic,” Warren said, pointing to me. “Your Spellmasonry, for instance.” He moved his finger over to Caleb. “Alchemy. All of these various disciplines are driven by a mix of will and arcane science, but there are also what our kind call wild mages. However they make their magic work, it is nearly unrecognizable to the scientific approach taken by the rest of us practitioners.”

  “That’s not quite right, now, is it, Warren?” Caleb asked. “It’s not that you don’t understand their magic. It’s that you refuse to acknowledge what form some of that magic takes. You don’t want to call it what it is.”

  My face cooled as I felt the color drain from it. “Is that as bad-sounding as I think it is?” I asked.

  “Actually, it’s worse than you’re probably thinking.”

  “Fine,” Warren said, forcing out the words now. “Blood magic. Out of nowhere people in our community were turning up dead, and that drew attention to us. Witches and warlocks have long suffered at the hands of those who do not practice the arcane arts, but the Butcher’s madness and lust for power drove him to more and more public displays of his power, mostly through the carnage that is blood magic. There is a great power in the blood of the living, more so in that of the magically inclined. Once we were able to sort out who was responsible for such a foul practice, it took all of the community’s effort to hunt the Butcher and take him down.”

  “And yet as your community stands today, all of you are fragmented,” I said. “I would think that this Robert Patrick Dorman would have proven to be the great uniter of all the tribes forever and always.”

  Before Warren could answer, Caleb let loose a powerful laugh. “You’d think, wouldn’t you?” he said. “But let me see if I understand Warren’s people as well as I think I do.”

  Warren stepped back and lowered himself into
one of his chairs, folding his hands over his knees. “By all means,” he said. “Give it your best shot.”

  “After the arcane community took the Butcher of the Bowery down, there was a mad scramble for power,” Caleb said. “Everyone was spooked about what had happened and didn’t want it to happen again. So everyone circled up in their own little power-hungry groups tighter than ever before, hoping to grab the biggest piece of the magical pie that they could. And others simply disappeared off the grid, fearing their power might be abused. Now you’re all a bunch of nomadic arcane tribes operating independently and are far less powerful because of it.”

  Warren raised his hands and gave a long, slow series of claps. “You understand us better than I would have expected,” he said.

  “I know my client base,” Caleb said. “It’s your messed-up thinking and insecurities that keep me in business.”

  “This is nothing new,” I added. “My great-great-grandfather Alexander Belarus understood what madmen in search of arcane power were capable of. He had initially built a guildhall for those he was going to teach, but long before your Butcher, he saw what arcane power did to people in this city. I think that’s why he never formed his own guild and chose to hide the ways of the Spellmasons instead.” I rattled the chains wrapped around me. “But I’m sure you didn’t capture us to give us a complete history of the arcane community of New York City. You’re the one who’s been hunting me. Why?”

  The warlock waved his hand. The walls of the room all around us shimmered as if I were looking at them underwater. The effect caused my stomach to clench and I fought the urge to throw up until the existent walls faded away completely. What once was a neat and orderly mix of eclectic furnishing was now a broken mess of destruction. Warren spread his arms out to indicate the damage all around him.

  “It would appear I have a serious gargoyle problem,” he said. “And it is the Butcher, although I could not tell you how or why he’s back.”

  “Can I take a guess?” I asked as pieces of this warlock’s puzzle started falling into place.

  “This is starting to feel like a quiz show,” Warren said, pleased to the point of smiling. “Please, proceed.”

  “I’ve discovered many of the souls currently in possession of a gargoyle form belong to disturbed spirits, ones that were unwilling to leave this mortal plane for . . . wherever spirits are supposed to go. I don’t pretend to know. We can discuss the afterlife another time. Your Butcher sounds like a worthy candidate for Disturbed Spirit of the Century . . . His soul was never going to leave this mortal coil. Now he’s got a big, bad, stony form and you’re worried he’s coming for your family in revenge, for leading the charge against him all those years ago.

  “You do have a serious gargoyle problem, Mr. O’Shea,” I said, repeating him. “I can say that with certainty because I’ve had a gargoyle problem before myself.”

  “So it would seem,” Warren said, walking up to me. “Which is why I’ve been hunting you. From what I’ve heard through the grapevine, I have you to thank for that.”

  It pained me to recall the damage a mind-controlled Stanis had done to my great-great-grandfather’s library—or that Caleb had been part of its doing—but Warren’s home had the same look of furious damage that only a gargoyle could do.

  “I know what I’ve unleashed on this city,” I said, the old guilt hurting my heart.

  Warren’s eyes narrowed at my admission. He raised his right hand, the rings on his fingers glowing bright as he closed his fist. My restraints tightened, making it harder to breathe.

  Gasping for breath, I decided to go with reason to get the warlock to relent. “I didn’t do this to your home,” I said. “Or to your family.”

  “But you are the girl with the gargoyles,” he said. “In my hunt for you, there hasn’t been much video footage, but I still have found bits and pieces of you in the company of a gargoyle.”

  “My gargoyle didn’t do this,” I gasped out. It was strange to call Stanis my gargoyle, but it was the best way to explain the situation while being crushed by chains.

  My bindings tightened even further, Warren’s eyes full of anger, burning into mine.

  “We didn’t have a gargoyle problem until you showed up,” he growled.

  I blushed as a wave of shame hit me. It was true. I could put some of the blame on Caleb for his involvement in the great awakening, but if it wasn’t for unleashing the ways of the Spellmasons by reclaiming what I felt was my birthright, things simply wouldn’t be the chaotic mess they were now.

  With the chains ever tightening, stars began to appear in my vision and I struggled to catch my breath. “I . . . can . . . help,” I said, refusing to look away from Warren as I fought to stay conscious.

  The warlock studied my face for a moment longer, then turned away, the tension going out of my restraints.

  “Let us hope so,” he said. “It is, after all, why I was hunting you. I fear for my safety as well as that of my family.”

  Caleb shrugged off his bonds, the chains clanging to the floor in a circle around him. “You seem to be perfectly capable of defending yourself,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. I pulled away my own slack restraints, letting them fall to the floor. “What do you want me to do?”

  “You’re the Spellmason,” he said. “Dealing with rampaging masonry is your bailiwick, not mine. I could harm the Butcher—again—but I am looking for a more . . . permanent solution.”

  “Oh,” I said, and remained silent, hiding the fact that I had zero idea of how to go about so tall an order. If he thought we might be of help and it kept us unchained, I wasn’t about to contradict the man.

  “You’d think his need for vengeance would have died down a bit over the past century,” Caleb said.

  “I’m afraid this isn’t just garden-variety vengeance,” Warren said, sitting back down.

  I stepped out from inside the pile of chains around my ankles. “It’s not?” I asked.

  “No,” Warren said. “Vengeance is the obvious choice, although frankly nothing satisfying usually comes from it. Trust me on this. The O’Shea family is a long-lived line in our particular branch of arcane study. Over time we have accumulated more than our fair share of items and devices. Tomes, charms, potions . . . I believe, however, the Butcher came after us because he is on the hunt for one particular item.”

  “Jesus,” Caleb said, “what more does a gargoyle need? They’ve already got strength, flight, immortality . . .”

  “To understand the Butcher’s motives, you would have to know Robert Patrick Dorman as well as we knew him,” Warren said. “Dorman didn’t just feed his blood magic on the power of the arcane community. He seemed to enjoy the hedonistic and carnal nature of his craft against both arcane kind and humanity.”

  “Gargoyles are created through magic,” I said as part of our dilemma became clear. “The fact that they are a supernatural construct means they themselves cannot actually practice the craft of it. The Butcher would need to be human again to regain his arcane power.”

  Warren nodded. “And while I am sure that today he appreciates just being alive in his new stone form, I am more than certain of his desire to return to the flesh. It is surely what prompted this carnage in my home.”

  My stomach tightened at the suggestion of such an item that could transform a gargoyle’s body out if its stone form.

  “Your family has something that will do that?” I asked. “Restore his humanity?”

  “It can’t be done,” Caleb said. “Bringing an alchemical creature back to something human. Not from stone. Alchemists have struggled with debates like this for centuries. You can’t bend the material nature of the universe in quite that way.”

  “Hold on a second,” I said, turning to him. “You turned from stone to flesh. I saw you. You did it before I knew you, the night Rory and I caught you stealing from the alc
hemical cabinets in the guildhall.”

  “Actually, that wasn’t quite what I was doing,” he said. “That was more of a camouflage thing . . . and what I do are tricks compared to the big magic Warren here is implying.”

  “And Kejetan’s boat that we transformed from steel to stone?”

  “Allotropy,” Caleb reminded me. “An allotrope allows for elementary substances in material matter to exist in other forms, like when sharing the common components in steel and stone. But the difference between the core elements that make us human flesh versus stone . . . I’m sorry; it just can’t be done.”

  “I cannot speak to the alchemy of such matters,” Warren said. “But I can tell you that my family was in possession of an item that purported to do such a thing—the Cagliostro Medallion.”

  “Was in possession of?” I repeated. “Then the Butcher already has it. If you want my help in taking care of him, that just made my job a whole lot simpler. It will be far easier to take down a man of flesh than it is one of stone.”

  “One small problem,” Warren said, holding up a finger. “I don’t think the Butcher does have it. My family lost track of the Cagliostro Medallion decades ago.”

  “How the hell does one lose such a thing?” I asked, unable to hide my incredulity. The importance of such a rare arcane item—one that made me immediately think would be of use certainly to Stanis—made it seem impossible that a person might just simply misplace or lose track of it.

  “No one can remember,” he said. “Some say it was too powerful to be on anyone in the family’s radar. I suspect one of us took it upon themselves to secure it away from seeking eyes, but no one recalls it, or is willing to fess up about it, anyway. I have my suspicions, but yet I can confirm nothing.”

  “So what is it you want from me?”

  “I want you to stop this creature that the Butcher has become,” he said. “In human form, he was clever, resourceful, and dangerous. In his newfound form, I simply cannot fathom the hell he might unleash on both my family and the rest of this city in his search to regain his humanity. You have some prowess dealing with these creatures that you are in part responsible for creating. I need him stopped.”