Alchemystic (26 page)

He pulled up his pant leg, revealing broken skin. “I’m bleeding!” he said. I recognized the look in his eyes. I had come to know fear when I saw it in these creatures.

I looked down to examine the tiny breaks in his skin, blood running from them like tiny red rivers. I raised my hand, examining my claws, the tips of them coated in the same red.

“Stanis!” Alexandra scolded, eyes wide, fear and anger in them. “What was that all about?”

My initial sensation of newfound anger faded, changing to one I was more familiar with—curiosity.

“I am not certain,” I said, unable to look away from the innocent man’s blood on my claws.

The blue-haired one went over to Marshall, who was
already hobbling toward the metal stairs leading down the outside of the building.

“You are
not
taking the fire escape,” the blue-haired one said. She slid her arm under his and turned him to face the doors leading into the building. “We’re taking the elevator, even though we risk running into her family.”

Marshall gave me a brief look before shifting his glance quickly to Alexandra. “Learn to control that…
thing
,” he said, but my maker’s kin was already shaking her head.

“He won’t hurt you again,” Alexandra said, her anger dropping away. “Our bond together is growing. We’re just working out the kinks.” She turned her pleading eyes toward me. “Right, Stan? Tell them it’s safe. Tell them
you
are safe.”

I thought for a long moment before answering with a shake of my head. “That I cannot do,” I said. “That gem awoke something inside me, something I have not felt in…I do not know how long.”

The blue-haired one backed the man through the French doors and into the building. “Learn to control that thing, Lexi,” she said, shaking her head.

“
Thing
is right,” Marshall added.

“Stanis is
not
a thing!” Alexandra called after them, but they kept on walking. “Don’t go! This is all new to us. There’s going to be tough times with this. He’s not dangerous to us!”

The dark red of my claws contradicted that, only clouding what little understanding I had of the feelings that had awakened in me tonight. “Perhaps they have the right idea,” I said, spreading my wings wide behind me. “I must go.”

Confusion filled her face, and her eyes darted back and forth from them to me. “No,” she said, her voice on the hard edge of panic. “Don’t! I…I forbid it.”

“You can not forbid such a thing,” I said, resolve in my voice. “My primary function is to protect you and it is clear right now that I pose a greater threat than the protection I provide. This I cannot abide. Mine is to protect. Therefore, for your safety, I must go for now. I need time to consider all of this and what it truly means.”

Alexandra went to protest, but I saw little point in allowing it to continue on any further. I pressed off into the night sky above, rising higher and farther away with each flap of my wings. Despite my rapid ascent, I was shocked to feel a hint of pain growing in my chest. It was even more of a surprise when I realized it was not just my own I was feeling.

Alexandra

I
crashed hard that night, what with Stanis gone and neither Rory nor Marshall returning my calls. Images of large stone statues chasing me through endless subway tunnels filled my dreams that night. I dared to call them dreams because they varied from the
actual
events of yesterday afternoon. In them, Stanis flew to my rescue underground on the old disused subway platform each and every time, although my heart still wanted to explode with panic every moment leading up to it, filled with mind-numbing peril.

I awoke to find his solid stone form perched motionless outside on the terrace of my great-great-grandfather’s studio, where I had fallen asleep with his master tome still open on my lap. Had the panic in my dreams been enough for him to sense it, calling him back to watch over me after flying off so abruptly? Surely that kind of emotional response to come and watch over me meant that Stanis was more than I had previously taken him for, far more capable of humanity than my friends right now. Was such a thing even possible? I wasn’t sure, but seeing him there instilled in me some kind of hope that he was much more than I originally gave him credit for.

There he stood watching over me nonetheless, and there
he was still standing when I got back from a day of real estate pimping. Compared to the chaos of the past few says, doing normal business things was a nice break. But still, by late afternoon, I had resolved myself to get back to solving some of the mysteries surrounding my great-great-grandfather’s secret life’s work.

When Rory showed up I had already changed back into a tank top and overalls, committing myself once again to research and building mode in the family library. She came up the fire escape, stopping to check out the inert gargoyle on the terrace before coming in through the newly rehung French doors. Rory crossed the room to the far end of the art studio where I was studying the stone book of arcane knowledge, a noticeable limp to her gait. I hid my sheepishness by pointing to her leg.

“You okay?” I asked, holding my place in the book with my finger.

Rory nodded. “Between yesterday’s antics, hobbling Marshall out of here, and the five-hour contemporary dance workshop today, my body’s a bit worse for the wear and tear,” she said, flexing herself up on point. “I’m too young to be complaining like this, I know, but life’s been a bit busy lately.” She looked back over her shoulder at the gargoyle out on the terrace, then back at me. “How’re you?”

“I slept like the dead,” I said. “I don’t know when Tall, Gray, and Stony set up camp out there, but I have a feeling my night terrors over those statues attacking us down in that abandoned subway station might have something to do with that. I also had a horrible dream that I worked in real estate, but then I woke up and realized it was no dream and had to go to work.”

Rory laughed at that, shattering the discomfort from last night, and I knew we were good. Or at least we would be.

She nodded at the book. “What’s going on?” Her eyes glanced over to a cloth I had draped over my latest project, the fabric twitching a little. Rory took a step back from the art studio toward the library. “You haven’t been animating things again, have you?”

I nodded. Rory took another, warier step back.

“Forget everything that happened with the little clay man,” I said. “Promise?”

Rory eyed me with growing suspicion. “Why? What did you do?”

“Relax. I think I’ve found a way to keep any sort of trickster spirit from inhabiting my new project. I think you’ll be happy, but promise me that you won’t do anything crazy.”

She let out a long and wary breath. “Fine,” she said.

“Good.” I pulled the cloth away, revealing the surprise on my worktable.

Standing no higher than a person’s knee was a tiny figure. Its “body” consisted of a full red brick with a toothy, smiling face and wide cartoon eyes I had painted on it. Thin arms and legs of metal wiring covered in clay stuck out of it, giving it a crude Mr. Potato Head sort of look. It swayed back and forth, a little unsteady on its blocky wooden feet.

“Is this one homicidal, too?” Rory asked. She stepped back from it, grabbing ahold of one of the heavy stone statuettes on the shelf next to her.

“Easy,” I said, my face beaming with pride. “I think this little guy is harmless.”

Rory paused, then bent forward to give it a closer look. “You sure? What did you do this time?”

“Well, Jewish mystics would probably call this version a
golem
, which it
kind
of is. When I tried this before, I was attempting to press my will into the clay, which left it open for other spirits to gain control of it. But I’ve been reading up. In this spirited little guy here, what I did was animate the stone alchemically.”

“Spirited?” Rory asked, moving farther back from it again. “Is this thing truly living?”

“Yes and no,” I said. “Not like you and me, but all things in this world are living by nature. The trick is how to invoke it, to transmute the material. I don’t think it explains how something as complex as Stanis is constructed, but it’s definitely an improvement over last time.”

Rory laughed. “He still looks potentially dangerous, Lexi.”

“He does?”

“Sure,” she said. “It’s a brick, Lexi. Clearly you’ve never been menaced by someone holding a brick before.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Bricksley’s mostly harmless.”

“Bricksley?”

I looked down at my new little friend. “Not the most original, I know, but doesn’t he just look like a Bricksley?” Rory looked at me like I was crazy, and my face went flush. “The naming of things holds a power, too. To name something—like the wind or this little figure here—binds it to you. It’s how I control him. Besides, with a name like that, he sounds like a little butler, doesn’t he?”

Rory looked down at the little figure. “Bricksley!” she shouted out like a drill sergeant. “Bring me a book.”

The tiny golem stayed where he was. I stepped closer to the little figure and did my best to sound authoritative.

“Bricksley! Fetch me that book on the table by the couch.”

The little brick figure jumped down off the table, turned like a toddler, and stumbled off to the coffee table across the room. When it got there, it hit the edge of the table, scooped up the book in both of its tiny hands, and started back across the room toward us. With the giant book in his hands, I couldn’t help but laugh.

“I don’t know how to socialize something like him yet,” I said. “He follows my commands, but he barely does that. I have to speak very plainly. Just trying to get Bricksley here to follow orders gives me a real sense of the complexity that my great-great-grandfather must have put into a creature like Stanis.”

“Great,” Rory said. “Now all we need to do is whip up a thousand or so of these little guys, and you should be safe the next time someone attacks you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“No?”

“Watch,” I said. I walked over to one of the windows and pulled open its closed curtain. A patch of blinding white sunlight fell across the floor. Bricksley continued on his path across the room, but the second he stepped into the light from outside, his body froze and he teetered forward with the book clenched
in his tiny doll hands. The weight overbalanced him, and his lifeless body rolled onto its side as the book fell to the floor. “Poor little guy. Just like Stanis. Doesn’t work in daylight.”

“So I guess you don’t go out during the day at all, then,” Rory said. “Problem solved! Unless you’ve got your necklace on.”

I shoved at her with one hand, and felt the stone of my necklace with the other. I found its touch reassuring despite its waning power. “Shush!”

Rory went over and poked the fallen figure, but there was no hint of life to it. “Why
does
that happen, anyway?”

“I haven’t gotten to that chapter yet with all the reading I’ve been doing,” I said, yawning and scooping up the book Bricksley had been carrying from the floor. “You’re asking me to explain magic out as if it were science, and I can’t. At least, not yet. The alchemical parts of treating the stone are a bit easier, like following a recipe, but even that is going to take its own branch of study, much of which I suspect is in that Spellmason hall Alexander had been building.”

Rory got that mother-hen look over the top of her black horn-rims, which seemed a bit strange to me, what with her blue hair and all. “You need more sleep.”

“Sleep?” I asked, giving a weary smile. “What’s that? I seem to remember that magical word…”

Rory nudged the figure on the floor. “Afraid Bricksley here might smash your head in while you’re out?”

“Not quite,” I said. “Brix is a good little guy.” I closed the curtain once more and picked him up as he squirmed to life. I cradled him in my arms like a baby. “You wouldn’t harm your maker, now, would you?”

As if in response, my creation nuzzled the top of his head against the bottom of my chin, the rough texture of the brick scraping me.

“Ouchie,” I said, moving him away and rubbing the spot.

Rory clutched her hand to her heart. “Oh, my God, I am dying of the cute here!”

I held Bricksley up at arm’s length in both of my hands. “Who’s a bad little reanimated brick? You are!”

My eyes were on the squirming creation in my hands, but I sensed Rory’s eyes watching me, waiting.

“Lexi, listen,” she said once I turned to look at her. Her voice had changed, taking a serious tone, which was never a good sign. “Marsh and I have been talking and…well, he’s a bit skeptical. After last night and now after seeing your second attempt at this, so am I. Marshall might not mention it directly to you because he hasn’t really known you all that long, but I will. Are you sure you can trust this gargoyle, this
grotesque
?”

I set Bricksley down on his feet, and he teetered off across the room like a windup toy. “How do you mean?”

“Controlling a brick is one thing,” Rory said. “Not to belittle your accomplishment there, but that gargoyle is a different matter altogether. You saw what it did out in Gramercy Park to that man’s head.”