Alchemystic (33 page)

Marshall and Rory nodded.

“Stanis,” I said, heading to the right side. “You’re with me.”

Stained glass rose up all along the wall behind the bar, but the press of people trying to get a drink was too much to work our way through. “At this rate, it’ll take half the night to push our way close enough to get a look.”

“I can correct that,” Stanis said, stepping past me. He cut a path through the crowd, which parted out of the way for him fast. Whether they suspected he might be a real gargoyle or not, he still cut an impressive figure and it made our going easier, allowing me to examine the stained glass as we went. Despite the glorious artistry of it all, nothing screamed out
to me. We met up with Marshall and Rory at the back of the club, where they were standing outside a sitting area that had bright white couches that ringed around the circular wall of the room within.

“Any luck?” I asked.

Rory smiled and held up a handful of napkins. “I’ll say. Blue Faerie got a few numbers.”

I shook my head at her. “Way to stay focused.”

“Well,
I
paid attention,” Marshall said. “But I didn’t notice anything odd. Other than the girls gyrating in the hanging cages over the dance floor.”

“I do not understand this ritual,” Stanis said.

I sighed. “It wouldn’t make much sense if I explained it.”

“So what next?” Rory asked.

I looked into the room behind her. “I saw the bell tower from the outside. I think this is where it should be. Come on.”

The four of us pressed our way into the circular room, which I discovered had no ceiling as I stared up into the darkness that rose high above.

“It’s like being at the bottom of a well,” Rory said. “A very fashionable well, but still…”

“You want to find something called the Eye of God,” Marshall said, pointing up, “I think you look at the place highest in a church.”

“You do?” I asked.

He nodded. “Closest to Heaven, where his eye could look down on you.”

“You only thought of that because of your gaming group, didn’t you?” Rory asked.

Marshall’s face went defensive. “Does it matter?”

Rory smiled. “Not really,” she said. “I just like seeing that look on your face.”

“Great,” I said. “Now we just need to find the stairs!” I looked around the space, but saw nothing. I walked over to a muscle-bound guy in a Cathedral security shirt who stood by the arch between the club floor and the round room at the base of the tower.

“Excuse me, is there a way to get up to the bell tower?”

The man looked a little pissed that I was talking to him. He shook his head. “Not anymore,” he said, curt.

“Really?” Rory asked. “I’d think it would be one of the draws in a place like this.”

The guy simply shrugged and went back to looking out over the crowd.

“What’s up with that?” Marshall asked.

The man looked at my friend the way burly guys for generations had looked on skinny nerds.

“Seriously,” I said, refusing to let up on him despite his efforts to ignore us. “Why isn’t it open?”

He glared at me for a moment, but when I refused to look away, he sighed and spoke.

“It used to be a VIP area, but we had some issues…”

“With?”

He sighed. “People jumping. It became trendy, so now no one gets up there.
No one.
You can look up and see the bell, but there’s no way up there anymore since they bricked up the stairs.”

We walked away before he could get any more of his stink eye on us. I took a long drink before speaking.

“This location feels right to me,” I said. “I’m almost certain this is the place. We need to get up there.”

Marshall shook his head. “You heard what the security guy said. There’s no way up anymore.”

“Yes,” Stanis said, letting his wings twitch just the slightest. “There is.”

Rory looked out across the sea of people on the dance floor. “You’re going to do that…
in here
? Lexi, talk some sense into your bodyguard there, will ya?”

“I’d love to,” she said, “but I can’t.”

Rory’s face narrowed. “Why the hell not?”

“Because I’m going with him.”

“You are?” Rory asked.

“Like hell,” Marshall said, stepping toward us. Stanis stepped forward, stopping Marshall in his tracks. “Whoa, now, big fella. Easy. Lex, we need to teach him the big
difference between someone who’s an actual threat and someone who is just acting out of
concern
to try and stop you.”

“Relax,” I told Stanis. He didn’t move, which I supposed was him acquiescing to my command. Standing stone still was as relaxed as I figured he could get. I turned to Rory. “I’m going up. You two can either help or get out of my way. Either or.”

Marshall sighed, and he gave a reluctant nod. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll do my part, then.”

“Which is…?” I asked, waiting for an answer.

“I’ll distract the guard watching the bell tower.”

Rory laughed. “And how are you going to go about that? Ask him to play some Dungeons and Dragons?”

“Please,” he said, looking insulted. “I’m far more resourceful than that.”

“So, what, then?” I asked.

Marshall eyed the half-empty drink in his hands, then grabbed Stanis’s full one. “Just be ready to fly.” He took off without another word back toward the base of the bell tower. The closer he got, the more he stumbled like he had been drinking for hours.

“Oh, God,” Rory moaned. “He’s going to get himself thrown out, isn’t he?”

Marshall stumbled forward, slamming into the security guy. Both drinks flew from his hands, their contents spilling all over him. The man’s eyes widened and he brought his meat-hook hands down hard on Marshall’s shoulders, spinning him around. He bent poor Marshall’s arm behind him, pulled up on it, and started pushing his way through the crowd without any hesitation.

“Come on,” I said to Stanis as we waited for the two of them to pass. “We have to act quick, while people are distracted by it.”

Rory took off first, slipping through the crowd with ease. Stanis and I followed, with several people congratulating him on his awesome costume once more. When we got to the area under the bell tower, the crowd was thinner, with Rory at the center of it, looking up.

“I’m going, too,” she said, looking down. The way she said it had me wondering whether she was trying to convince herself more than me.

“You don’t have to,” I said.

“Yes,” she said,” I do.” She looked up into the tower again and pointed.

I looked up into the darkness above. “I don’t get it.”

“Give it a second,” she said.

I continued staring. The darkness softened as my eyes adjusted to it, and that was when I saw it. “There’s something moving up there.” Tiny dark figures swirled around the central shape of the bell high above.

“I don’t know what they are,” Rory said, “but I’m not about to let you deal with them on your own.”

“I have Stanis to protect me,” I said.

“Judging from the activity up there, I’m fairly sure you two might be outnumbered.”

I turned my eye to look over the dance floor. The security guard was pushing Marshall out onto the street where the bouncers would see that he didn’t come back in. The guard then turned toward the dance floor and started making his way across the club to his post by us.

“We have to go,” I said. “Now.”

Stanis unfurled his wings from his body, drawing a round of applause from the people closest to us who no doubt thought it was just another detail to his intricate costume. I threw my arms around his neck and stepped to his left side as Rory ran in close on his right. She threw her arms around his midsection and locked her hands together.

“You sure this is safe?” she asked.

“Not at all,” I said, then tapped Stanis on the shoulder. “Go.”

He bent his knees before jumping up into the air, letting his wings catch their first wind as we started to rise. Several people fell back from the powerful blast of his wings flapping, but the rest were half-drunk and cheering.

“At least they’ll have something to tell their friends at work on Monday about the superlative special effects at the Cathedral Halloween party!”

“Too bad I’m missing it all,” Rory said, her eyes clenched shut.

My stomach sank at the speed of rise, much like it did at the top of the camelback hills on a roller coaster.

“Funny,” I said. “I would have figured this would be right up your alley.”

“Only my second time flying,” she said, “and first time inside a very confined bell tower. Might get used to it. Might not. Answer unclear. Try again later.”

A walkway and ladder leading up to the bell room was coming up fast. “Put us down on that catwalk.”

Stanis slowed and came up even with the platform. I caught the railing with the backs of my knees and slid myself over it onto the wooden slats of the walkway. Rory grabbed the railing, swinging under it and landing gracefully next to me.

“Nice,” I said.

She stood and grabbed onto the railing. “I’m trying to ignore how high we are and how rickety this walkway looks, but I can at least show a little style while trying not to panic.”

Stanis hovered next to the walkway, his wings working in a short, quick pattern of flaps. Rory looked up. “What
are
those?”

Up close it was easier to see the creatures now. Maybe a dozen or so winged gray figures about waist high flitted back and forth around the bell overhead. They were leathery bats, but there was also something vaguely humanoid about their bodies and faces, save for the razor-sharp teeth in their mouths.

“I’m not sure,” I said, pulling off my coffin from my back, “but I swear I’ve seen them before.” I knelt down on the walkway, undoing the straps and pulling out Alexander’s tome.

“I can dispatch them,” Stanis offered.

“Hold on,” I said, flipping frantically through the book as fast as I could. Rudely sketched drawings filled the spaces that weren’t covered in the arcane scrawling in his handwriting. Dozens of horrific images passed as I searched on, but I tried not to think about any of them. My only concern for the moment was the creepy, fluttering monstrosities overhead. When a drawing of one of them caught my eye, I turned back to the page. “Aha!”

“They’re in there?” Rory said, still minding the goings-on up above.

“Yup,” I said. “I always assumed they were just sketches of simple Gothic statues. Now if I can just figure out some of the notes here…”

The words on the page made more sense to me now than ever before, although every fourth or fifth word was still a mystery. I only hoped that getting the gist would be enough.

“We
must
be at the right place,” I said, “because these things are said to be drawn to the arcane. They can feel its pull and will do anything to possess it.”

“Talk about bats in the belfry,” Rory added.

“Alexander didn’t have a name for them, but he noted how they interfered with some of his alchemical carving work. He called them…
stone eaters
.”

“I love a man who’s a literalist,” Rory said. “That doesn’t bode well for Stan here, though.”

“My survival is of little consequence,” he said.

I couldn’t help but look up at him, pain tugging at me from those words. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

“All that matters is protecting the family,” he reminded me. He hesitated, seeming to tap into something deep inside him, and said, “Although, I would
prefer
it if I did not die, I suppose.”

“Well,” I said, standing up with the book in hand. “Me, too. Right now, we need to get up there and find that gem of yours.”

“As you wish,” he said. His wings were flapping away still, keeping him steady in place as if he were standing on the walkway with us. I wondered whether he ever tired.

“I need you to lead them away,” I said.

“As you wish.”

“Please,”
I added.

“You do not need to plead.”

“I was trying to be polite,” I said.

He paused, as if processing the idea. “Ah. Yes.”

“We can discuss that later, too,” I said, “but for now, go. Please. And be careful. He didn’t call those creatures ‘stone eaters’ for nothing.”

Without another word, Stanis folded his wings in, causing him to drop out of sight below us. I rushed to the railing and peered over, only to catch him extending his wings to their fullest and giving a mighty swoop of them, propelling himself upward past me at an astonishing speed. He tucked his wings again as he went through the opening in the walkway, up and around the bell itself. He contorted his body to avoid the large metal bell as he grabbed one of the creatures by the throat, but one of his wings still clipped it, causing it to erupt with sound. Standing directly under it meant we caught the brunt of it. The bell started swinging as the creatures flew off after Stanis.

Rory covered her ears, but I couldn’t get to mine in time. My hands were stuck in the middle of slipping my backpack back on as the wall of sound hit me, harder than any bass at a concert ever had. I finished pulling the pack on and simply gestured upward without trying to shout over the tolling bell. Rory nodded and motioned for me to go up first. I gave one more look up to make sure there weren’t any creatures in sight and scurried up the ladder, with Rory following close behind.

The bell was surrounded on all sides by a narrow walkway. It and the stone walls of the tower were covered in bite and claw marks. Rory came up the ladder and stopped when she saw the state of things. “Jesus,” she said, which I barely heard through the ringing in my ears.

“We have to hurry,” I said, and began looking around the top of the tower. Rory went around one side of the walkway and I took the other until we came together on the other side.

“I don’t see anything,” she said. “Maybe it’s not up here.”

“It’s up here,” I said. “I can
feel
it.”

Rory gave me a skeptical look. “You can?”

“I can’t explain it,” I said, “but something up here
feels
like my home, the way the Belarus building exudes protection. Alexander wrote that he had warded the property, the same way he did my necklace. I think he warded this place, too.”