I’d barely finished eating when the train began to slow.
“Are we there?” Oliver asked.
“Almost.”
My stomach tightened around my half-digested breakfast and I ran damp palms down my thighs. I tried to push my fear aside, but it wasn’t as easy as last night, when the danger was still a distant prospect. Oliver didn’t share my trepidation. The young gargoyle undulated out of the freight car with an excited trill and leapt to the roof. The metal popped under the combined weight of two gargoyles but didn’t dent.
Trying to calm myself, I focused on mundane tasks. I tucked my bag up against the larger loading door, folded my blanket on my cot, and laced my boots. The boots were the only part of my outfit that I was sure met Marcus’s approval. After our last adventure together, during which a spear of granite had skewered the bottom of my foot straight through my boot, I’d purchased the most heavy-duty pair I could find. They’d been advertised as guard boots and I wore them daily. I hadn’t expected to need them, having bought them mainly to counter the remembered pain of the wound, but they’d come in handy twice so far when injured gargoyles had been in too much pain to heed where they stepped.
By the time I’d adjusted the laces from the toe up to the calf on both boots, the train’s brakes were squealing and we’d slowed to a crawl. Marcus dropped the air barrier across the broken door, letting in a gentle breeze and the train’s perpetual burning-grass odor. I followed him out to the railing, my gaze lifting immediately to the mountains.
Lightning split the clear sky in the distance and thunder rumbled overhead a few seconds later. The tracks ran through a valley filled with sparse, dead weeds and scraggly brush, but a few hundred feet to the west, a dense pine forest blanketed the steep landscape. A gorge dipped into the hillside, revealing a barren ridge of quartz beyond it, the ragged white peaks glowing in the early-morning light. A thick shaft of fire belched from the hill, charring the rocks in its path and extinguishing in a bright explosion made soundless by the distance. Then the train rolled past the gap, and the tree line obstructed the view again.
Pain pinched my hand, and I uncurled my fingers from the railing to examine the red crescent marks of my fingernail imprints in my palm. When I looked up, Marcus was watching me. I tucked my hands into my armpits.
“We’re close. Any change in the gargoyles?” he asked.
I shook my head. “They need to get inside the baetyl.” If being near it had been enough, all the gargoyles from this baetyl would have stayed nearby until they recovered.
“Looks like we’re really going to Reaper’s Ridge, then,” he said. “The captain is going to skin me alive when he gets back. Unless we die first.”
A falling-down lean-to marked the once bustling Hidden Cache Station. Broken shards of glass lay around the base of the sunken ticket window, and paint flaked from the illegible sign and rotting siding. Weeds grew over extra lines of track that split out into the meadow to multiple neglected loading bays now defined only by thinner patches of weeds. Hidden Cache Station was no longer listed on any rail line, and I had Marcus and his connections to thank again for getting the train to stop here and not another fifty miles up the line at the nearest small town.
The station wasn’t empty. A rugged mountain air sled sat well clear of the dilapidated building, a pack of cerberi resting in the sled’s shade. The driver hopped from the padded seat to the ground as the train came to a stop. If the station’s run-down ticket booth and the mountain range had birthed a human child, the driver would have been their offspring. Wind, sun, and age had weathered his leathery skin into a crush of wrinkles around high cheekbones, a prominent nose, and thin eyes. Dirt caked his heavy pants, and streaks of grime coated a threadbare shirt covering his bony chest and stomach. The old man moved with unexpected agility, though, and clapped a worn cowboy hat to his head before shoving the air sled into position using brute force and a sizable amount of air magic.
Marcus walked back to open the large loading door, and I hopped down to join him. Unlike Emerald Station, this forgotten stop didn’t have a platform, which worked in our favor since the air sled hovered at a height only slightly lower than the freight car. We wouldn’t have to lift the heavy, dormant gargoyles far to get them loaded.
“The driver’s name is Gus,” Marcus said, his voice pitched low so only I could hear him. He had arranged for the sled driver to be waiting for us at the station, just as he’d arranged for the freight car to be hitched to the back of the first-class train. I opened my mouth to thank him again, but he continued without giving me a chance. “He’s not going to let us load the gargoyles until you pay him.”
“The FPD isn’t picking up this tab?” I asked, trying to keep the hope out of my voice.
“The FPD has a don’t-touch policy regarding Reaper’s Ridge. They’re not going to fund any portion of any harebrained expedition involving it.”
I clamped my mouth shut before I pointed out the flaw in his logic, since the FPD had already paid for our trip here. If he made me reimburse him for the train car and trip, I’d be in debt to him for the next five years. Besides, I recognized the verbal jab for what it was. Marcus wasn’t going to try to talk me out of going to Reaper’s Ridge, but it appeared he was done with making things easy.
I grabbed my bag and pulled out a neatly folded bundle of cash, then walked to the front of the sled where Gus was coiling thick bands of earth around twin stone anchors to hold the floating sled in place.
“Hi, I’m Mika,” I said.
“Yep.” Gus spat to the side.
“How much do I owe you?”
“This’ll do.” He swiped the cash from my hand and pocketed it without counting the bills.
“But . . . how much—”
“Oh, pardon me, ma’am. Did you want to shop around first?” He swept his arm toward the empty meadow and cackled, the dry sound turning into a wheezy cough.
I’d spent my life’s savings when I’d rescued Oliver and his siblings from Walter at the black magic auction, and Gus had just snatched up every last dollar I’d managed to save since then, including what I’d set aside to pay next month’s rent. Unless I sold a record-breaking amount of jewelry in the next week and a half, I was going to have to rely on the goodwill of my landlady to maintain a roof over my head. The thought set my teeth on edge.
I spun on a heel—
And came face-to-jowl with a giant dog’s head.
The cerberus huffed a soft bark, its foul breath washing over me and ruffling my hair. Its second head whined and the third sniffed my crotch.
“Whoa, back up,” I said, pushing the muzzle from my groin. The whining head licked the side of my face, its tongue as wide as my palm. “Ew!”
Gus guffawed, no help whatsoever.
Oliver coasted from the freight car’s roof to my side, and the cerberus backed up a few steps to watch him land, giving me a better look at the three-headed dog. She looked like a Polish hound, with the standard black saddle pattern over an otherwise rich brown coat, but that’s where the similarities ended. Aside from having two more heads than a normal dog—all three of them larger than mine—the cerberus was also as tall as a pony and twice as heavy, her body corded with muscles and ending in a whip-long tail that was doing its best to start a windstorm as she crouched to snuffle Oliver. She whined again, or one of her heads did; the other two panted with excitement.
Oliver reared up on his hind legs, which still didn’t quite put him at eye level with the cerberus when she stood up.
“Don’t be afra—” I started.
Oliver released a trill so high my ears barely registered it, but it made the cerberus go on point. Then the gargoyle rolled onto his back and wriggled his feet at the three-headed hound. She pounced, nipping at his rock body without actually touching him. I ducked the flail of her tail and ran to the far side of the sled. With a few spry steps, Gus joined me.
“Um,” I said.
“Never seen a gargoyle play befor
e.”
“Is the cerberus playing?” I didn’t think her enormous teeth could harm Oliver, but I didn’t want to take a chance. I also didn’t want her to chip a tooth on Oliver. I couldn’t heal a cerberus, and I figured Gus would expect a monetary reimbursement I couldn’t afford if she was injured.
“Ginger’s gentle as a lamb,” Gus said. Ginger growled, three throats in harmony, and snapped her teeth in a fast chatter like bone castanets. Every hair on my body stood on end and I fought to ignore the primitive part of my brain insisting I needed to flee. Oliver wriggled in a circle, trying to imitate the cerberus’s eerie chatter. He sounded like a drowning turkey.
Gus watched them tussle for a moment longer before he barked a foreign word. The cerberus leapt to his side and planted her butt nearly on his foot. Gus patted each of her heads. Oliver shook dirt from his back and flapped his wings, giving me a goofy smile I could read far too clearly.
“Cerberi are not city animals,” I told him.
“A little help here,” Marcus said.
I turned back to the freight car. He’d already transferred two of the lighter gargoyles onto the sled by himself. I scurried to help him with the rest. Gus didn’t make a move to help, despite being far stronger than me with air. Sweat ran freely down my face and soaked into my shirt by the time we’d finished, and when Celeste retracted her magical boost, I slumped against the high side of the sled, feeling like I’d run a mile uphill. Marcus looked like he’d taken a stroll by the beach.
He formed a pocket of air and spoke into it, and the weave caught his words, absorbing the sound. After rocketing the air message to the conductor, he shut and latched the freight car. The message zipped into the open side of the engine, where two attendants shoveled manure out the door. Naomi leaned out around them, slinging a message back down the train to Marcus. Her words were for his ears alone, and whatever she said made him grin. I turned away.
The train pulled out of the station while Gus hitched the cerberi to the sled. All six were marked similar enough to Ginger to have been born in the same litter, though the two at the front looked older. Wider than horses—at least from the necks up, where their three heads fanned out from their bulky shoulders—the cerberi had to be staggered along the towline, three to each side. Lined up noses to tail, the pack stretched longer than the freight car, and they looked sturdy enough to pull the sled-load of heavy gargoyles without breaking a sweat.
I started to grab my bag from where I’d tossed it beneath the sled, but when I caught sight of Marcus, I froze. He’d strapped a broadsword to his back, and the black hilt protruded over his right shoulder. The leather harness holding the hilt bisected his chest, and a handful of brass null traps were affixed to the thick straps. A sturdy elemental anchoring rod made of twined copper and quartz hung from a loop at his belt and two slender knife hilts protruded from sheaths in his boots.
He was an FPD fire elemental whose muscular frame topped six feet by several inches. His scowl could cower a kludde. He’d always been intimidating, but I’d gotten used to him. Now he looked like a stranger, and a scary one, at that.
Marcus’s hard blue eyes lifted to mine and I forgot how to breathe. A predator looked back at me, but instead of fear, heat washed through my limbs. When he smiled, all teeth and little mirth, I jerked back toward the sled, hefting my bag to the wooden floorboards and climbing in after it. I pretended to double-check the stability of the frozen gargoyles while trying to remember how to breathe normally.
Marcus hopped up to the driver’s bench seat beside Gus and settled a crossbow across his lap. Celeste circled on lazy updrafts above us, so high she looked no larger than a thunderbird, but Oliver remained with me. He flapped to the front of the air sled and wormed his way through the dormant gargoyles into a small space behind the driver’s bench. I squeezed into the limited space at the back of the cart and sat just as Gus unraveled the earth strands holding us anchored. He loosed a shrill whistle that bumped through five octaves, and the cerberi leaned into their harnesses.
The sled eased forward so smoothly that if my eyes hadn’t been open, I wouldn’t have known we’d moved. The cerberi transitioned from a walk to a trot to a canter in perfect harmony, enormous paws pounding across the hard soil. Wind whipped through the gargoyles on the open sled, slapping my hair against my face and neck and carrying Gus and Marcus’s conversation back to me.
“What’s wrong with these ones? Why are they frozen?” Gus asked.
“It’s just something that happens to them.”
“Must be the rocks for brains.” Gus chuckled at his own joke. I scowled at his back.
Gus guided the cerberi to a dirt path at the edge of the long meadow and they veered to follow it, picking up speed. It’d once been a road, but now weeds and trees choked the edges. Sunlight gave way to dappled shadows as the forest closed in around us. Pine and the musky scent of the forest floor filled the air, and above the thunder of paws, I could hear the raucous calls of crows and the occasional shrill challenge of a hawk. The cerberi took the turns of the old road at a gallop, and the sled slid smoothly through the air behind them. It would have been a pleasant experience if not for our destination or the lives of the gargoyles depending on me.
Or Gus.
“How’d a smart FPD man like you get stuck with this tarred-feather task?” Gus asked.
“Wrong place, wrong time.”
I switched my glower to Marcus.
“Last I heard, the FPD wised up about Reaper’s Ridge.”
“It has, but this one”—Marcus tossed a thumb in my direction—“has a plan. She’s going to use all these gargoyles to tame the wild magic.” His tone said what his words did not: that I was a moron.
I gritted my teeth. Marcus had come up with the cover story. He claimed it was something Gus would believe, was far enough from the truth to keep the baetyl a secret, and would enhance the reputation of gargoyles and gargoyle healers if I “managed to crawl back off this mountain alive.”
I waited for Gus’s shock or outrage that anyone would think to use a half-dozen helpless gargoyles in such a dangerous manner.
“Why not bring more live ones?” Gus asked. “The boost coming off these is useless.”
“Live ones wouldn’t come.”
Oliver growled, the sound more musical than menacing. I caught his gaze and shook my head. He knew the cover story. He knew Marcus didn’t mean what he said. It didn’t make it any easier to listen to, though. I stuck my tongue out at the men, and Oliver gave me a weak smile.
“You think it’ll work?” Gus asked.
Marcus laughed, and it wasn’t a pleasant sound. Gus joined him, shaking his head.
“There’s always some crazy city folk who think they can tame the ridge,” Gus said. He spat out the side of the wagon, and I threw a shield of air up to block the splatter from hitting me. “Shame they’re sending a good company man like you, though.”
“I’ll be okay. I get paid either way. I just have to get the fool set up, then stand back and watch the fallout.”
Gus thought that was hysterical.
I tuned them out and gathered a test pentagram, sliding it into the nearest dormant gargoyle. Her life guttered faintly, with nothing to feed on since the sled’s magic was crafted into it and static. I gathered more of the elements, pulling them through the unfocused boost of all seven dormant gargoyles, and grabbed a handful of seed crystals from my bag. The magic I did was less important than letting the gargoyles feed, so I threaded earth through the quartz, reshaping the seeds into a singular sphere, then a diamond, then a snowflake. I kept the quartz in perpetual movement, and to use more magic, I worked as fast as possible, holding the quartz in front of me on a cushion of air that I constantly had to adjust to compensate for the movement of the sled beneath me.
It worked to distract me, too—from Gus and Marcus and anything else they talked about, and from the dwindling distance between us and Reaper’s Ridge.
“Stupid girl! Knock tha
t nonsense off before you get us all killed,” Gus said.
A wallop of air swung toward the quartz I was working, and I countered it with earth without thinking. Gus’s air slapped against my barrier and shattered. He grimaced at the backlash, shooting me a hateful look over his shoulder.
“Get your charge in hand,” Gus barked at Marcus.
“Mika. The wild storms are drawn to any active magic. No more for a bit.”
I let the quartz drop to my lap. Marcus held the crossbow loose in his hand, a brass null trap affixed to the tip of the notched arrow. His eyes scanned the horizon, the sky, the broken patches of forest, never settling on one place for too long.
Reaper’s Ridge rose beside us twice as tall as the road we traveled and separated by a single canyon and a few hardy trees. Storms crawled across the ridge and exhaled from the rocky mountainside into violent snow flurries, explosive lightning and downpours, and fire. Under a cloudless piece of sky, a flash flood gushed across a few hundred feet of the hillside before dissipating as suddenly as it had formed. The muddy ground rolled, and new boulders pushed to the surface.
Chills rushed down my body. It was the disaster at Focal Park all over again, only instead of the ridge being divided into five sections of predictable polarized magic, the elements clashed and twisted together in a violent mishmash.
I clutched the edge of the sled and scanned the visible parts of the ridge, hunting for clues to the baetyl’s location, but the mountain guarded its secret well.
Gus whistled two short notes, and the sled slowed. I glanced past the cerberi. The overgrown road continued down into the canyon, unobstructed by anything larger than weeds.
“Why are we stopping?” I asked.
Secret of the Gargoyles (Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles Book 3) Page 6
