by Anton Strout
The skies opened up, the fall of rain growing heavier every second.
“Won’t that wash off?” I asked.
Caleb shook his head. “It’s viscous,” he said. “You’d need a scrub brush and a couple of hours to make a dent in it. Don’t worry about the rain.”
He walked off, and Rory, ever vigilant, followed him, leaving Marshall and me to walk over to Stanis, perched at the edge of the building and watching it all. Whether it was real or I was imagining it, his silence felt more pronounced than ever since his return to us.
“You ready to see if we can make you some allies?” I asked.
Stanis looked down at me. “I do not know how to answer that,” he said, his words heavy. “I have never known another of my kind. If they are anything like the Servants of Ruthenia, perhaps I am not ready.”
“Relax,” I said. “I’m only going to try this on one of the figures first. If it works and goes well, then we’ll move on activating the rest.”
Marshall looked uncertain. “How’s this going to work exactly?”
“Somewhat like Bricksley,” I said. “Only on a much grander scale. The act of binding life to stone is different than manipulating it, which comparatively has been easier. The effort I put into getting Bricksley working was draining. It’s weaving spirit to stone, animating the material and allowing the spirit in.”
“And what if we get an asshole in there?” Marshall asked.
“We force it out,” I said. “In theory, anyway. But if it does work on this one, we’ll be able to create enough of an army to take care of Kejetan and the rest of his servants.” I looked up at Stanis, catching his eyes. “I’m not compromising this time. I did that last time when I released you and let you go with them, and look where that got us.”
“I am sorry,” Stanis said. “I could think of no other way that would have kept you safe.”
“And it did,” I said, my heart breaking with the memory of it. “You bought us time, but at your expense, and I won’t have that again. We end this together or not at all.”
Stanis turned to watch Caleb prepping the statue. “And he is a part of us now,” he said.
“You don’t trust him,” I said, more of a statement than a question.
“I cannot help it,” he said, his mood growing darker. “After all, it was he who bound me to my father’s will.”
“And the one who released you from it,” I reminded him.
This seemed to satisfy him for the moment, which was good because I needed to go over the notes I had written out about the ritual.
Caleb came over to us, empty container in hand, checking the time on his watch. “Ready?”
I closed my notebook and slid it into my pocket. “As ready as one can be for creating life,” I said, and crossed the roof to the lone statue. Marshall and Rory came with me, moving off among the other statues at what I hoped was a safe distance.
Caleb came over and squeezed my hand.
“It’s your show now,” he said.
I squeezed his back and let go. I needed to focus, which was hard enough in the rain without thinking about him. I breathed out one long, slow breath, then set about the ritual.
With the skill of Rory when she danced, I moved through the gestures, speaking my family’s words of power as I went. The burst of connection to the stone of the statue rolled throughout me stronger than I would have imagined, but I forced myself to ignore my surprise and concentrated on the spell.
This was more than just connecting with the stone the statue was made of. This was bonding with the actual grotesque form of it. Every part of me felt its wings, its arms, its legs, its hands, its fingers, the claws at the tip of them. My mind readied the statue to be more than it was, readied it to be an open vessel to fill its form. The words of my spell tore away the last barrier to it, releasing the will with which I was controlling it and setting the animated stone free to receive whatever spirit it drew. Drained, I stumbled back, pulling out of the spell’s narrow focus, finally able to once more take in my surroundings on the rooftop.
A lot had changed in the minutes I had been under the thrall of my spell.
The rain had turned into a full-blown storm all around us, and Rory was grabbing at Marshall from where they stood among the other statues, spinning him around to her.
“What’s wrong?” I shouted, weakened now, my words lost in the storm.
Rory pulled her hand back from one of the surrounding statues. “Why are these like this?” she shouted out.
“Like what?” Marshall called back.
“It’s wet,” she said.
“It’s raining,” he said.
She held her hand up in front of his face. “It’s coated . . . in the same stuff you two were putting on that one statue.”
I stumbled to one of the other statues nearby, slapping my hands on it. “They’re all coated,” I said. My eyes landed on an unfamiliar piece of jagged stone sitting on the base of the statue, but I didn’t have the time to process what it might be.
“Shut it down!” Marshall said, grabbing me by my shoulders, which almost toppled me over in my weakened state.
“How do you stop it?” Rory asked, joining him at my side.
“You don’t,” Caleb called out from where he stood at the side of the building. He looked down over the edge at something below. “It’s happening now!”
“Stanis!” I shouted, looking around to find him still perched on the edge of the roof. “What is it?”
The gargoyle spun around and looked down. “Trucks,” he said. “Like the ones at the shipyards.”
Oh no, I thought. The massive kind that could carry heavy cargo coming in from a ship, or in this case, a more sinister payload.
The door leading into the building came free of its hinges, shooting across the roof as it tumbled away. The jagged stone form of my former brother took up most of the doorway, powering through it as he came.
“Devon!” I shouted. “What is this?”
“Just call it reclaiming my family birthright,” he said.
Kejetan stormed through the door after him, a steady stream of stone followers pouring onto the roof behind him.
Stanis flew past me, slamming hard into their leader, knocking him back. The two tumbled over, locked in combat, Stanis attacking with a ferocity I hadn’t seen in him previously. Pieces of Kejetan’s stone form chipped away from him as Stanis landed blow after blow, flying across the roof.
One of them struck my foot, and I looked down at it, dawning realization hitting me. They looked just like the jagged piece I had seen laid out on the bases of the other statue.
Markers. Kejetan’s plan suddenly made sense to me. He and his servants weren’t here to fight us; they meant to cast off their jagged stone forms and have their spirits take over those of my great-great-grandfather’s statues instead. The pieces of stone—the markers—on the bases of the statues were meant to lead each of the Servants of Ruthenia to their new bodies, thanks to the treachery of Caleb, it seemed.
Caleb was running among the statues, touching a vial to about half the ones on the roof as I realized he was activating the Kimiya on them. Each of them bore a piece of one of the stone men at their base.
Rory and Marshall chased after Caleb through the pounding rain, but it was too late.
“Whose side are you on?” I shouted at him over the noise of the storm.
“My own,” he said, stopping finally, letting the vial fall to the roof.
Stanis landed another blow to Kejetan, but as my spell and Caleb’s alchemy took effect, the rocks that made up the mad lord’s body flew apart with the impact of Stanis’s fist.
All around us, the jagged stone forms of Devon and the rest of the Servants crashed to the rooftop, lifeless, the spirits within leaving them for the more sophisticated forms of my great-great-grandfather’s statues. The component parts of their stone bodies came apart, and what had once been vaguely humanoid forms dissolved into piles of rough rock all along the
roof.
Against the pouring rain, the invisible shapes of their searching spirits swirled through the air, the only telltale sign of their existence that of displaced rainwater as they flew. I followed the apparition that rose from the pile of rocks that had once been Devon and watched as it went to one of the stone-marked gargoyles in his attempt to be reborn into its form.
I ran to the statue, but by the time I got there, the swirling aerial shape had vanished into it, the stone of the gargoyle there changing in front of me. A roar of pain—my brother’s voice—cried out from the demonic-looking creature’s mouth as it reared its head to the sky. The rest of the body came to life as well in an uncontrolled flailing of limbs and wings, my brother’s spirit trying to gain control of it. Its feet tore free from the statue’s base, and the gargoyle fell to the ground on all fours, twitching.
“Devon . . . ?” I asked, moving to touch the cool, rain-covered stone of the gargoyle’s skin.
The wings flew open, the tip of one catching me in the stomach and sending me flying across the roof. I landed hard against one of the untreated statues and slumped to the ground, the wind knocked out of me as a sore spot spread out along my entire right side from the impact. Fighting the pain, I forced myself to stand as I took in the chaos of dozens of other statues coming to life all over the roof.
I did my best to ignore them, concentrating still on my brother, who by then had worked his way back to his feet, though he was unsteady still.
“It worked . . .” I said, sad to see the efforts of my spell wasted on him.
“That it did,” he replied, his smile revealing a set of stone fangs that rivaled those of Stanis.
Stanis.
I turned to find my gargoyle, but with all the activity of other stone figures on the roof, for once he didn’t stand out. Only when I listened for signs of conflict did I spot him fighting his way toward Caleb through an increasing number of other living gargoyles.
Marshall and Rory already had the alchemist by his arms, but Stanis grabbed him at his throat, and lifted. Caleb’s feet were well off the ground by the time I stumbled my way over to them, spit flying from the alchemist’s mouth, gagging.
“You betrayed us,” Stanis said.
“Wait,” Caleb managed to croak out. “Not . . . finished.”
Both his hands were wrapped around Stanis’s arm to keep himself from choking completely, but he managed to let go and leave just one in place. The other darted into his jacket and came out with a thin plastic vial that he slammed against Stanis’s arm. The plastic of the vial cracked, a dark gray liquid seeping out of it.
Part of Stanis’s arm transformed back to its solid state, and he grunted with pain but did not let go. The man’s own hand froze like stone as well, but he managed to pry it free, leaving him hanging by his neck only. He sputtered, but managed to reach down into the shoulder bag he wore, producing what looked like a giant glass egg filled with a swirling pink liquid. He threw it high overhead behind him toward the group of statues that were still inert.
Volatile liquid, Caleb had said earlier when he had been mixing things. His voice screamed the words in my head. Whatever explosive effect it might have, I needed to stop it.
My will took control of the by-then-empty pedestal my brother had stepped off of, and I guided it into the air, directing it at the glass ball. The base wobbled as I fought to hold control of it with any level of precision, but I was determined to hit my mark.
True to my aim, the base hit its fragile target high in the air, shattering the glass on impact. The contents of it rained down over the crowd of statues, but that wasn’t all it did. As the pink tendrils and cloudy mist fell through the rain, the water all around it lit up with thousands and thousands of tiny sparks.
Defying gravity, the reaction lifted higher and higher into the night sky, jumping and arcing through the rain all around us and out over the city.
I closed my eyes as the wave of it rolled toward me, and I flinched. A tingle of sensation washed over me, through me, then disappeared as quickly as it had hit. Marshall and Rory were already examining themselves, none of us seeming the worse for having been caught up in it, but once I stopped focusing on myself, I saw the larger problem.
Every statue on top of the building was now twisting to life.
Some struggled with the change, others immediately taking flight, and yet others fell to fighting among themselves.
Rory pulled the art tube from her back, going for her weapon, but I waved her down.
“No!” I shouted. Did she really think she could fight this madness? “Inside. All of you! Now.”
Marshall didn’t need to be asked twice and was running for the stairs before I barely had the words out. Rory went next, and I was already in motion.
“Alexandra,” Stanis called out to me. I spun to see him still standing there, with Caleb still hanging in place from his hand.
“Bring him,” I said, turning and running for the door as a pairs of passing wings swung dangerously close. “But by all means, there’s no need to be gentle.”
Twenty-two
Stanis
The feel of Caleb’s thin, fleshy throat in my clawed hand filled me with a great and terrible satisfaction as his weak little form attempted to break free. The sound of conflict on the roof above filled my ears, and the desire simply to close my hand shut until my fingers met in the middle of his neck was strong, but since retreating to the art studio, Alexandra had been quite clear that she did not wish it done.
“Forgive me, Alexandra,” I said, pressing my fingers in with a slight pressure, causing the blond human to struggle further to free himself, a dark joy filling me, “but why should I not just crush his head for his betrayal?”
Alexandra grabbed onto the arm I held Caleb with, pulling at it, but I would not yield.
“Because we’re not those kind of people,” she said, anger and concern in her voice. “Not just yet, anyway.”
She tried again to lower my arm, but her effort proved to be in vain, her physical strength no match for my own.
She met my eyes, and her voice changed, softening. “We all saw what he just did,” she said, “and I understand you have issues of your own with him. And after all you’ve been through, I would not dare order you to do anything, but please . . . I’m asking you not to harm him. We need answers.”
Aurora also put her hand on the stone skin of my arm.
“Don’t worry, big guy,” she said, brandishing her pole arm with her other hand. “I’ll keep an eye on him, without crushing his head. I’ve got a little more finesse with taking someone down without actually killing them if they act up. No offense.”
True choice had rarely been an option when I still lived by Alexander’s rules. Until Alexandra had freed me from them, I had not even known what it meant to choose of my own free will. For that, I would always be in Alexandra’s debt, and as I held this fragile human in my hand for wronging us, I did not take his life out of respect for her wish.
“Very well,” I said, lowering Caleb to the floor, my eyes burning into the wide, white pools of his. “But make no mistake, human. I will not hesitate to act at the hint of any further treachery.”
Free of my grip, Caleb stumbled onto the art studio’s debris-covered floor before finally righting himself. He straightened the coat he wore, wiping water from both it and his hair, all the while backing himself up against one of the half-empty broken bookcases.
“I’m sorry,” he said, holding up a hand as his eyes darted around. “But none of you will understand. I had to do that.”
“Did you, now?” Alexandra asked, the calm she had exhibited melting away as she charged him. With nowhere to turn, he held his hands up by the sides of his head and made no move to stop her. Alexandra slammed up against him, grabbing the edge of his coat.
“Did you really?” she asked again, but before Caleb could answer, she let go of his coat with her right hand, pulled her arm back, and shot it forward into his midsectio
n while making a fist.
The air went out of the man, and he crumpled to the floor. I could not help but let a small smile creep onto my face. Clearly, I was not the only danger here.
“Well, I guess that I just had to do that then, too,” she said, and stepped away from him.
Aurora leaned closer to me. “Looks like we can both stand down,” she said.
I looked down at her, cocking my head. “Stand down . . . ?”
She smiled and shook her head. “I’ll explain it later.”
Something about the man lying there stirred anger in me, and I grabbed him by the back of his coat and pulled him onto his feet, letting go. He fell against the bookcase and stood there, fighting for each breath. “Okay,” he managed to get out. “I deserved that.”
Marshall walked over to him, his finger pointed to the roof above us. “What the hell just happened up there?”
“That,” the man said, “was me saving my life.”
Alexandra looked at each of us before turning back to Caleb. “It’s not looking so good down here for you, pal. I’ve got to be honest.”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I tried to get out of working for them. I even went back after freeing Stanis to make it seem like business as usual, to not arouse their suspicion. I can prove it. Stanis was on the boat. He can confirm it. He saw me there.”
“I thought you had a change of heart,” Alexandra snapped. “I thought after you helped me free Stanis, you were all Team Gargoyle.”
“I am,” he said. “But those creatures had hired me for a job, and you don’t get to back out of something like that. I tried to. I really did. I even recommended other freelancers, which I never do, but Kejetan left me between him and a hard place. If I didn’t at least give them the refined gargoyle statue forms they asked for, they were going to kill me. Worse, Kejetan was resolved to come after you. They wanted you and your friends dead. Kejetan told me himself when I went back to their ship trying to negotiate my way out of my contract. Just ask your gargoyle here. Stanis saw me. He can back me up!”
