Alchemystic (37 page)

“Something’s not right,” I said, trying to assess the situation.

“You notice something?” Marshall asked, joining me against the wall. “What is it?”

“I’m noticing lots of things,” I said as I watched Stanis crumple another guard to the ground with one of his clawed hands. “Anything specific?”

“Rory!” Marshall called out. “To us!”

Two men stood between us and her. She drove the pole arm into one of them like a joust charge, toppling him onto his back. She continued forward, planting it like a pole-vaulter and gracefully launching herself feetfirst into the second man. They slammed with force into his chest and she righted herself midair, her last steps toward us a landed, stumbling jog.

“What?” she asked, winded.

“Notice anything odd about this fight?” I asked.

Rory looked around. “Yeah,” she said with a smile. “We’re winning. A girl could get used to this.”

“That’s part of it,” I said, “but not all.”

“Where are all the stone men?” Marshall asked, getting it.

“Exactly!”

“They’re not here,” Rory observed, stating the obvious.

“None of them,” I said. “Not my brother. Not the men he said were threatening him.”

“So where are they, then?” Rory asked.

“I have no idea,” Marshall said.

“I do,” I said. “They’re
with
my brother.”

“And where is he?” he asked.

“On his way home,” I said.

“What?” Rory shouted. “On Gramercy?”

I nodded, my face turning red, a combination of anger and embarrassment. “He didn’t call me here to save him,” I said. “He called to distract us.”

Stanis

A
fter the maker’s kin told Marshall and Aurora to hurry back to the Belarus building as quick as they could, Alexandra and I flew off across the night sky back toward Manhattan, over the river. Anger and frustration radiated from the woman like a fire as she sat cradled in my arms with one of her newly acquired books clutched to her chest. It took much of my concentration to keep her emotions from washing through and taking over my own senses, making flight more difficult, and I found myself fighting not to swerve like a leaf blowing in a storm. I pushed my heavy wings hard for a few seconds to gain more height before finally stretching them out to their full extension and steadying myself into a controlled glide.

“Alexandra,” I said, looking down at her grim face. “Please. You must relax yourself. Unless you wish us both to fall into the river. Your mood is…distracting.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m just so pissed at myself.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I fell for it,” she said. “Here I was racing to help my brother, and all the while he was playing me. I’m a fool.”

“You are, perhaps, being far too judgmental about your own actions,” I said as I fought to keep control of my glide.

Alexandra laughed. “You mean I’m being too hard on myself.”

“You are not the ‘fool’ you say you are,” I said. “Your frustration with yourself speaks more of the good in you and the ill in him more than anything else.”

“That is some small comfort,” she admitted, pulling the book away from her chest, attempting to read it by the light of the moon. “Still, if they get to the building before us and my family comes to harm over Alexander’s alchemy notes and books…I’ll never be able to bear it.”

I felt her trying to lessen her frustration, making my flight easier, and I pushed my speed until I was just beyond the river and heading past the bridge they called Manhattan.

“Fly over the building first, please,” she said. “We’ll look for signs of forced entry, then straight to Alexander’s library and studio. If they’re looking for his notes and books, that’s where my brother would take them first.”

“As you wish,” I said, and angled myself toward the growing patch of green of Gramercy Park, darting down between the buildings as I came in low over it. Scanning the building showed no signs of forced entry and I landed on the terrace, Alexandra lingering in my arms before stepping down and heading through the French doors into the library.

No signs of chaos or sounds of conflict came from within, but that did not relax her. Her backpack was off and she pulled out the secret tome along with the three newly acquired books, which she spread out over one of the worktables of the art studio. Somehow she was managing to consume all of them at the same time while frantically taking notes in her own notebook. I made sure that the little one called Bricksley did not tread across the books as he tried to join her on top of the table.

A short while after, the groan of strained metal arose from outside and Alexandra looked up from her work, running back out to the terrace. Before I could reach the edge of it
myself, a figure came into view coming up the fire escape. One of the malformed monstrosities from the ship.

“Do something!” Alexandra called out, peering over the edge. She held up her notebook. “If I can restore you with the last stone, you’ll have the power Alexander hinted at in his books, our only chance to beat them, but I need time to find the Heart of the Home. Deal with these monstrosities. Please? There are more of them coming up!”

“As you wish.”

Alexandra smiled, then looked down and flipped through the book as fast as she humanly could, continuing her search.

I turned to my foe out on the terrace. “You cannot stop us,” the one coming up off the fire escape said. “We are the Servants of Ruthenia, and we are stronger.”

“You are
nothing
like me,” I growled, stepping up to him.

“Yes, we are,” he said, confidence in his very tone.

“We are
not
alike,” I said, spreading my wings wide. “For one, I have these.”

The stone figure paused and laughed. “So? We are stronger.”

“So
this
.” I shoved at him with all my might, sending him flying straight through the railing. The creature tumbled down through the night sky, end over end, its cries ending with a shattering
crack
on the pavement below.

The broken railing pulled away from the rest of the fire escape as its mounting tore loose from the weight of the men of stone coming up from below becoming too much for it. It broke free from the building, sending the other creatures tumbling with it, save one close one who dug into the stone of my forearm. I shook my arm back and forth, but the stubborn thing refused to let go, and it quickly became clear that if he were to fall, I would end up going with him.

I dug the claws of my feet into the terrace stone and stepped back from the edge, using my wings to bring the creature up. I fell back with it toppling on top of me, but I refused to let it have the advantage. Rolling, I got the struggling creature
under me, only to see Alexandra’s tiny servant Bricksley get crushed under it.

“No!” Alexandra cried out, but there was nothing I could do, and given the superior strength of these abominations, I would not keep the upper hand long unless I acted.

I drove the pointed tips of my wings into its shoulders, stone digging through stone. Raising both arms, I joined my fists together and brought them down hard onto its head. Although I met solid resistance, the blow still managed to shoot chips of stone out all across the terrace.

My enemy went still for a moment, but not any longer than that. He bucked up at me, tossing my body up in the air. If it had not been for my wings settled into the stone of his shoulders, I would have gone flying, but they held fast in place. I came down hard on the creature, my body driving the fight out of him as I landed. Hands still raised, I brought them down again and again on his head. With each strike, larger chunks of stone broke away until there was little left but a pile of crumbled rocks and dust.

When I could finally take my focus away from my now-lifeless enemy, Alexandra was standing in silence, clearly shaken. Her nerves tumbled into me, and I stood. “I am sorry you had to see that,” I said, then realized that while I felt her nerves, there was no fear or horror behind them. “I am sorry for your servant. As well.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “He went down swinging. And when I watched you destroy that creature…I can…feel you now, a part of why you do what you must. That bond you’ve been feeling protecting me, the one formed by my restoring parts of you…It seems to work in reverse. There was no hate in what you did. Only duty.”

She looked like she wanted to say more, but I nodded my head once, closing my eyes, then turned to look out into the night sky. “Maybe a little hate,” I said. “After all, I am becoming more in touch with my humanity, but we were lucky just now. I could not have fought them all.”

“Hopefully you won’t have to,” she said, holding up her notebook. “I think I’ve found what I needed out of the three
books. I’ve written down everything I think I need to find the last gemstone for the Revelation of the Soul.” She ran to the edge of the balcony and looked down.

I joined her by the remains of the fire escape.

“They’re gone,” she said.

“No,” I said. “Not gone. Merely regrouping. They did not cross an ocean to get here to be so easily turned away. Not with what they seek out so near.”

Alexandra spun, then ran into the building, going straight for her spread-out books. “If they’re regrouping, then that means they’re going to take the easy way in now.”

“Which means—”

“They’re coming in downstairs,” she said, and as if to confirm it, a cacophony of sound rose from the back of the building, coming up through the shaft of the elevator.

“They’re messing with the elevator,” she said, grabbing up her backpack, notes, and Alexander’s tome. She ran for the elevator, but I was quicker to it.

I came to the doors seconds ahead of her, pressing my claws into the thin seam in the middle of them. They did not want to give, but I made them. Dark open space met us, a series of thick wire cables running down. The sounds of metal being crushed filled the entire shaft, forcing Alexandra to cover her ears.

“They know they’re going to have trouble dealing with us so they’re going to hit us where we’re weakest,” she said, her face filling with horror. “My parents.”

The first rule—
protect the family
—flared at the center of my mind. Without another thought, I grabbed Alexandra, pulled her close to me, then stepped into the empty elevator shaft.

Alexandra

M
y stomach sank as we fell, Stanis pulling his wings around me before crashing through the roof of the elevator below. Metal crunched under Stanis’s feet as we landed, and despite him slowing us with the drag of his wings before punching through the elevator’s roof, my shoulders ached from where he had been gripping me.

When he unfolded the heavy stone wings from around my body, I saw we were inside the crumpled remains of the elevator car itself. The gargoyle set me down, then tore open the broken doors of the car, tossing them aside like they were made of paper. Making sure not to cut myself on anything jagged, I worked my way out of the shaft and into the main living quarters on our family floor. I pulled out the compiled notes in what I thought of as my book of arcane knowledge now, then tightened the straps on my backpack before running down the main hall in search of either my family or trouble, most likely both.

The trail of destruction along the way made it easy to follow as I stepped over broken chairs and knocked over piles of my father’s hoarded newspapers and magazines. The sound of commotion rose up as I approached the dining room and
kitchen at the other side of the building, and my stomach tightened. I readied one of the binding spells I had learned while creating Bricksley, one that had rendered his stone form inert when I’d wanted it to. I only hoped I had enough force of my own will to render some of these creatures the same.

I rounded the next corner, stepping into our kitchen with Stanis coming in behind me, his wings tucked close to his body so he could get around the overturned dining table in his path. My eyes sought out a target while I incanted all but the final words of my spell. Movement—figures standing in the doorway at the opposite side of the room. I let my will go as I completed the incantation, forcing my words of power in that direction.