Curse of the Gargoyles (Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles Book 2)

by Rebecca Chastain

  Through the trunks, I caught a glimpse of two figures. Marciano and Grant slogged through the boggy ground. Marciano carried a branch he used to prod the ground before advancing, like a man moving across snow, looking for hidden crevasses.

  Oliver wasn’t with the captain.

  I whipped my head the other direction, blindly grabbing Velasquez’s forearms to steady myself as I squinted to see the air section through the bordering fire section. Heat waves bent the light and made the horizon dance. I couldn’t make out any of the park’s tall sculptures or windmills, and my knuckles tightened on Velasquez’s sleeves.

  My breath whooshed out when I finally spotted Oliver. He flew above what looked like a smear of khaki. Sand. The heat of fire wasn’t distorting the view; the growing winds had kicked up a sandstorm.

  Oliver flapped his wings, then retracted them, plummeting into the sand before flapping slowly aloft again. His long body jerked against the wind before he dropped out of sight again.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Conserving energy,” Velasquez said.

  Oliver emerged from the sand again, long wings beating almost too slow. As he rose, the air barrier near him flared and blew magic into fire.

  “He’s trying not to stir up air,” I said. Damn it, I should have brought him with me.

  Oliver couldn’t land, because he’d be blind. He hadn’t been able to go with the captain because he would have been swallowed by the eroding soil. If the wood section was anything like the earth, he wouldn’t have been able to fly through it. Gargoyles were made of stone; they required air magic to stay aloft, and the wood section with its polarized magic wouldn’t have had any air for Oliver to use.

  “We need to get moving. Slowly,” Velasquez said.

  A thunderous crack of rock lifting against a breeze coming from outside the polarization field echoed the urgency in his tone. Velasquez turned and took a cautious step. Small peaks of granite lifted on either side of his foot from the push of air, but the bulk of the boulder beneath us remained still.

  “Follow close,” he said.

  Every rumble and clatter of moving earth grated against my nerves. In between the unnatural earthen shifts, the only sound audible was our footsteps. The lap of water against the growing dam on the right, the waterfall cascading into the wood section, the windstorm Oliver battled—all the destruction reshaping the park should have raised a racket.

  “I think the air is getting denser,” I said. It was harder to draw a breath, and it wasn’t because we were walking up an increasingly steep incline.

  “All the more reason to hurry,” Velasquez agreed as he took another careful, agonizingly slow step. I tried to laugh, but it came out as a breathy whimper.

  We hiked up the middle of the earth section more than thirty feet from the fire section, but heat radiated against my left side and sweat rolled down my spine. I focused on Velasquez’s feet, doing my best to step exactly where he did. Every ripple he caused doubled with my passing, building a ragged sluice into the boulders. After a handful of steps, narrow blades popped up between my feet when one foot passed the other. High-pitched but soft squeaks accompanied each sharp formation.

  A few steps later, the earth crumpled and sharpened beneath my boots in response to the puffs of air stirred by Velasquez’s feet. Moving gingerly, I tiptoed after him, every step becoming increasingly sharp and uneven. I’d stopped checking our progress against the leading edge of the earth section. It was too depressing. Everything that slowed us down only increased the strength of the purifier, and the bubble pushed outward at a steady, ground-eating pace. Despite the distance we’d covered, we were still a dozen yards from escaping.

  Lightning split the sky beside us in the fire section, sounding like it exploded against my eardrums. I jumped. The granite beneath me reacted, spearing straight into my foot.

  I screamed on an inhale, the sound sucking into my throat.

  6

  “What? Are you okay?”

  Unable to speak, I pointed to my left foot. Velasquez twisted without shifting his feet, then cussed.

  “Did it go through your foot?”

  The sharp pain radiating from my sole scrambled my thoughts, and I fought the urge to yank my foot free. Any sudden movements could cause the granite to reshape around or inside my foot.

  “I don’t think so,” I gasped. “Into but not through.” Pain climbed up my leg until it felt like everything from my knee down had been pierced. I pictured the bottom of my foot and the rock penetrating it, and white noise rang in my ears, clouding my vision. A sharp snap next to my nose brought me back to myself.

  “Hey. Stay with me. You need to lift your foot. Slowly. Then you’re going to climb on my back and I’m going to carry you, okay?”

  “No.”

  “No? What’s your plan?”

  “Your back. I can’t—”

  “My back is fine. Two steps will cause fewer rock ripples than four.”

  I shook my head. Arguing helped distract me from the compulsion to rip my foot free. “You’re bleeding.”

  “So are you. If you’re not afraid of getting a little of my blood on you, I’m not afraid of getting a little of your blood on me.”

  I shifted, biting my lip when pain shot up my leg.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Velasquez offered me his arm and I clung to him while I inched my foot from the rock spike. Sweat coated my body when I was finally free. I crossed my foot over my knee and peeked at the bottom. The thin leather sole of my boot had been sheared through, and blood seeped from the arch of my foot. For a closer inspection, I’d have to remove my shoe, and I wasn’t eager to see the wound or to jostle my foot that much.

  “You’re not walking anywhere on that,” Velasquez said.

  I nodded, not trusting my voice. The pain had morphed into a pulsing throb, and the thought of putting weight on my foot made me want to whimper.

  “Grab my neck,” Velasquez said, turning his back to me.

  I stared at the dirt- and rock-crusted scrapes in his back. I wouldn’t be able to hold on without hurting him.

  “Maybe you should go on without me. If I don’t move, I should be okay until you guys shut this down.”

  “You’re being dramatic. Hop on and let’s get going.”

  I grasped his shoulders and lifted my left leg toward his hip but hesitated, unsure how to proceed.

  “We’ll be here all day if you try to do this without touching me.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  With a growl, he crouched, grabbed my left thigh, and lifted me, stepping forward at the same time. I squeaked and slung my arms around his neck, pulling my right leg up to squeeze his hips. A solid curl of granite unfurled behind me, slapping my butt and jostling me against Velasquez. He grunted, then took a second cautious step.

  “You okay?” he asked after three more steps. The granite shifted and bubbled behind us, folding on itself like a crumpled rug as it halted every current of air Velasquez’s footsteps lifted.

  “I think so.”

  Dirt sifted from Velasquez’s thick hair when my head brushed it, and the loamy odor was comforting. Clinging to the fire elemental was akin to hugging a warm boulder, and I welcomed the illusion of safety that being pressed up against his strong body gave me.

  “Good. Because I know we’re trying not to move the air, but I need to breathe.”

  I felt him swallow against my forearm and hastily relaxed my stranglehold. Belatedly remembering his back, I did my best to shift my weight to the vise grip of my thighs around his hips while concaving my stomach away from his wounds.

  “What are you doing?” Velasquez asked.

  “Trying not to hurt you.”

  “Cut it out. You’re making it worse.” His footsteps hadn’t slowed or altered during my adjustments.

  “Sorry, Velasquez.”

  “Call me Marcus. And relax. I’m about as fragile as the gargoyles you heal.”

  �
�Modest, too, Marcus,” I muttered, knowing he’d hear me.

  He flexed, and his shoulder muscles hardened like stones beneath my arms in a silent testament to his boast. I reminded myself that he had to be made of tough stuff to be in an FPD squad. A lot tougher than me. More tears than I was proud of had escaped while I’d been extricating my foot. I hoped he was too preoccupied to notice when they dripped from my chin to soak into his shirt.

  “Hold tight. I’ll have to take these stairs faster,” Marcus said. His voice rumbled against my chest, and I realized I’d sagged against him. He’d made good time across the boulder field and had already reached the first unnatural block of granite. The front line of the polarization field expanded half as fast as a normal walking pace, with alarmingly frequent jumps as various parts of the massive constructive weave encountered fresh elemental magic to feed on. The crack and snap of growing rock had become a constant, and what had started as a handful of jutting teethlike pillars along the front edge of the field had expanded to a series of uneven steps building toward the sky. The leading edge was already taller than Marcus. Only the rise of the hill naturally dampening the wind currents had prevented the pillars from shooting up higher.

  I tightened my grip on Marcus as he powered up the first steep steps. Granite scraped and grated behind us, sounding as if the rocks were chasing us, a great attacking stone monster perpetually one step away from hamstringing Marcus and taking us both down for the kill.

  Marcus let go of my right leg to use his hand for balance. I did my best to remain still on his back, both because it was the only way I could be helpful and because every time my foot was jarred, pain spiked all the way to my knee.

  For several steps, Marcus moved parallel with the outer edge of the bubble and I could see the air section. I looked for Oliver, but I couldn’t find him through the haze of the fire section. Lightning skittered through the polarized fire with increased frequency, held at bay by the flimsy-looking wall of the purifier’s helixes. The bright flashes left afterimages on my vision; the thunder deafened me.

  “Almost there,” Marcus said through ragged breaths.

  The leading edge of the polarization bubble stretched a few feet in front of us. Outside it, the interlocking helixes narrowed to a mass no thicker than my waist, and from our new height, I spotted the end of the fire–earth braid.

  “Look! The purifier stops there.” I pointed to a pile of boulders ahead of us and to our left. The fire–earth braid fed into the rocks, but it didn’t come out the other side. “Maybe it’s weakening.” Given the oppressive stillness of the air and the swelling cacophony of the granite around us, I amended my hope. “Or it has a finite reach.”

  Marcus hopped to a higher pillar, sidestepping the curl of granite that followed his foot.

  “Or it found another patient for you,” he said.

  I spotted the gargoyle among the boulders. The foxlike gargoyle’s dull tigereye body and dirt-brown wings blended into the rocks—or they would have if a massive malicious braid of magic hadn’t speared into her.

  “Oh no! Hurry!” If she’d been subject to the purifier’s dividing magic this whole time, it had to be tearing her apart.

  “Working on it,” Marcus grunted.

  The ground beneath us rumbled and the pillars close to the edge of the field shifted and rose. Marcus cursed and danced across the top of the rocks, fighting for footing on the shifting tops. We were close to escape, but the leading edge of the bubble crept forward, pulling taller pillars into our path.

  “I’m going to have to jump,” Marcus shouted over the near-constant booming.

  “Okay.” If he could angle toward the hillside, the drop would be only a few feet, but first he had to clear the ever-rising cliff steps.

  Marcus grabbed both my legs in a crushing grip. I tightened my arms around his shoulders.

  “Here we go.”

  He sprinted up the shifting rocks, and I jounced on his back, eyes locked on the perpetually advancing edge of the field. Just as Marcus planted his foot on the last rising pillar and pushed off, the bubble shifted and grew by several feet at once. Granite burst from the inert ground beneath us, shooting toward our plummeting bodies.

  I yanked earth magic to me and sheared off the top of the growing pillar before it could break Marcus’s legs. His right foot clipped the edge of the pillar, but his left hit the top solidly. Working blindly on the rock beneath his feet, I drove pure earthen strands into the granite and stretched it the same way I would manipulate quartz. The grainy rock reshaped, as malleable as dough. Lifting the rock beneath Marcus’s foot, I launched us toward safety.

  We catapulted through the barrier, and my connection to the raw earth magic snapped. Blinded by the backlash, I lost my grip on Marcus and braced for impact with the rocky ground. It never came. Soft strands of air cushioned my fall. I opened my eyes, closing them just as quickly as the light refracted into a thousand razors inside my head.

  I sucked in a breath, then another, savoring the light texture of the air in my lungs despite by body’s conflicting pains.

  “Am I dead?” I croaked.

  “Mind blasted.”

  Clutching my head, I squinted in the direction of Marcus’s voice. When the sunlight didn’t slice my brain this time, I opened my eyes wider.

  I sat on a large boulder a few feet up the hill from Marcus, and once he saw I could support myself, his bands of air and wood magic holding me up dissipated.

  “Good move with the rock wave.”

  In a sea of pillars, one column of granite looked like it had melted toward us before being sheared off by a colossal blade. With the backlash of magic reverberating in my brain, it took me a moment to process the sight. I’d reshaped a couple hundred pounds of pure granite as easily as I might have a grape-size quartz seed crystal. That kind of strength couldn’t be matched even by an FSPP earth elemental. Yet inside the polarized earth section, it’d been easy.

  Mind blasted? Not fried, right? I scrambled for the elements, going limp when they responded. Reverently, I spun the five harmonious elements together, forming a basic pentagram and floating it in the air in front of me just to admire the beauty of the combined elements. The amount of earth I could hold was paltry compared to what I’d wielded inside the bubble, but I didn’t care. Buffered and mixed with the other elements, earth felt smooth again, not sharp and raw like it had in the polarization field. It felt whole, and so did I. Out here, with all the elements working together, we had a chance at stopping Elsa’s monstrosity.

  First things first, we had to save the fox gargoyle.

  I pushed to my feet—and fell back to the ground with a strangled gasp. The wound in my foot caused nauseous waves of pain to pulse through me, and I took shallow breaths until the urge to vomit subsided.

  “Have you ever had a field patch?” Marcus asked.

  I shook my head, keeping my lips pressed together.

  “Oh, goodie. A virgin.”

  I jerked to look at his expression. He winked at me with an exaggerated leer obviously designed to distract me. I would have rolled my eyes, but he chose that moment to unlace my shoe. My fingers clawed into the soil, but I managed to contain most of my whimper as the shoe peeled from my foot. A fine slice of fire cut away my sock and it dropped to the rock.

  “Hey, you’ll live,” Marcus said with irritating cheer. Something cold settled against my skin, then crept into the wound. It should have hurt or grossed me out, but the pain abated until only a cold spot remained, and I decided I’d never felt anything sweeter.

  “What was that?”

  “A field patch. A little water cooled to ice to block the nerves, a little earth to dam the bleeding, a little fire to counter infection. You’ll need a healer and proper healing when we’re done, but this will tide you over.”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” I said, awed. I shifted to pull my foot up to take a look, but Marcus captured my ankle.

  “No. If you see it, you’ll think about it too muc
h. Let me wrap it.”

  Marcus knelt and spun tiny bands of fire around his midsection, slicing strips from the bottom of his shirt. With his pants riding low on his hips, the shortened shirt revealed a tanned stomach and a sculpted V of muscle veering into his waistband. I looked away. Having spent the last ten minutes clinging to his back, I knew Marcus didn’t possess an ounce of fat—I didn’t need to ogle the man for proof. Even if the view was a good deal more pleasant than anything else in my sight.

  “If you teach me how to repeat the patch, I could put it on your back,” I said.

  “Just get some of the rocks out, and we’ll call it even.”

  I waited for Marcus to say he was joking, but he didn’t look up from my foot. He wound the strips of his shirt into a makeshift bandage, his speed silently reminding me that we didn’t have any time to waste.

  “Turn so I can see what I’m doing,” I said.

  I grimaced at the raw texture of Marcus’s back. Carrying me had reopened the wounds, and they looked far worse than I remembered. My civilian guilt, as Seradon had called it, welled up stronger than ever. I glanced at the blood drying on my shirt, all his, and then got to work.

  Wrapping a band of earth with soft layers of water, I dabbed the elements across his back. The water loosened the grit caked in the wounds and the earth pulled on all like matter. Bloody pebbles rolled down his back to the ground.

  If he’d been as similar to a gargoyle as he’d boasted, I would have slid magic into him and healed him from the inside. Unfortunately, my earth elemental skills were useless on human physiology, and if I tried to push magic into him, I’d likely do more damage than good. My clumsy efforts were the best option, but it must have felt like I was picking at the cuts with my finger. I winced with the extraction of each tiny rock, but Marcus didn’t react.