Incarnate (A Spellmason Chronicle) (2 page)

What is good? Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.
What is evil? Whatever springs from weakness.
What is happiness? The feeling that power increases—that resistance is overcome.

—
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE,
THE ANTICHRIST

Alexandra

“Y
ou know, online, the visitors’ guide said ‘Fort Tryon Park on Manhattan’s Upper West Side was a sight worth taking in,’” Aurora “Rory” Torres said as she trudged up the slippery slope of the dark, tree-covered hill, soaked to the bone from the rain. “I gotta say I’m not feeling it.”

Rory brushed her wet blue bangs off her forehead and back underneath the lip of her coat’s hood, revealing her hesitant eyes. Mercifully, Rory was sans glasses tonight, having wisely chosen to go with contacts instead. I didn’t need my backup stopping to wipe her specs clean every five seconds.

I searched ahead for any sign of movement as we worked our way up, making sure there was no activity before answering her.

“I doubt they were writing about gargoyle hunting at three a.m.,” I said, checking the time again on my phone. “Speaking of which, where the hell is
our
gargoyle? Stanis always monitors the police scanner. He would have caught the reports of gargoyle activity up here near the park.”

“How could he pass up a fun night like this!” Rory said, spinning around in the rain.

“Especially during one of the worst October weather fronts in years,” I added. “Still, a little bit of timeliness would be appreciated. He’s probably off flying around with
her
.”

Rory sighed. “Are we talking about Emily again?” she asked. “Really? I think it’s perfectly reasonable for Stanis to seek companionship among the gargoyle community he’s fighting to establish.”

“Still not happy with him no longer watching over the Belarus family exclusively,” I said, conceding the point despite my green-eyed misgivings over his time with Emily. “Less so when he’s late, when it’s already late.”

“And on top of that, it’s Monday,” Rory added. “Never a good workday, whether it’s my dance classes at the conservatory or hunting New York City for rogue monsters.”

I couldn’t argue with my oldest friend.

The wind and rain whipped though the creeptastic graveyard we found ourselves approaching at the top of the park. Even the weatherproofing on my Burberry trench was no match for the storm tonight, the rain coming into my hood sideways as the wind whipped at my face.

I wiped the rain away from my eyes, my fingers coming away smeared with mascara like a Rorschach image.

“Great,” I said, holding my hand out to show the only one brave enough to weather the weather with me tonight. “Tell me I don’t look like a panda.”

“You don’t look like a panda,” she said with zero conviction in her voice, then muttered, “Ling-Ling.”

There was something to be said about having a best friend since grade school. It meant I felt only a little bad about forcing her out on a night like tonight.

I rubbed the makeup off on the thigh of my already-soaked-through jeans. “Waterproof mascara, my ass.”

I shivered. The heat of summer had already gone with the passing of the Equinox weeks ago, but the chill in my bones had me once more longing for the dog days of summer. Hunting in this weather was miserable work at best. At worst it might be death by pneumonia for the two of us.

“You okay?” Rory asked, her voice full of concern.

I shook my head. “It’s been, what? Six months since we took down Stanis’s father and his stone cronies . . . ? If I’m not cleaning up the mess I made chasing down gargoyles, it’s the witches and warlocks of New York trying to take me down for making regular people aware of the existence of the arcane.”

Rory gave a weak smile. “On the plus side, no one’s tried to kill you in at least a week,” she said, ever the optimist. “That’s got to count for something.”

I wondered how long that would last, but I kept my mouth shut. Even I got sick of my misery these days. I centered myself, willing my body to stop shaking, and after a moment I was composed once more. “I’m fine,” I said. “Just wet, hungry, exhausted . . .”

Rory laid her hand on my shoulder, giving it a comforting squeeze. “So let’s call it a night, then.”

“No!” I growled, shrugging her hand off me so hard that I even surprised myself. “We
can’t
.”

Rory gave an exasperated sigh, drops of rain flying from her lips. “Yeah, Lexi, actually,
we can
. Go home, get some rest, have a hearty breakfast in the morning with milk and juice to make it complete . . . then we can pick this up tomorrow.”

“You go,” I said, snapping in my drowned-rat misery. “I’m staying. There’s one of them here. Police scanners said their helicopters spotted one earlier.”

Rory stood her ground, making no move to leave. After a long silence stretched between us, I turned from her, heading farther up the wooded path toward the lights of the Cloisters above. Sadly we weren’t on a mission to visit the abbey-turned-museum for its fine collection of art, tapestries, and artifacts. At best I might get to keep them from danger, and a skirmish might not prove the best time to try and take the sights in.

Even though Manhattan looked relatively flat, the burn in my legs climbing to the highest natural point in our fair city told a different story. As we approached the top of the hill, the tree line gave way to an open clearing where the main building of the Cloisters rose up in all its European medieval glory. This late in the evening, the parking lot off to the right of it was dead empty.

“Visiting hours are most definitely over,” Rory said, stopping at my side.

“Shh,” I hissed in a low whisper, even though I doubted anything could possibly hear us through the beating of this rain. “Nocturnal creatures don’t care about what passes for business hours. Besides, my guess is we’re tracking a Griever tonight.”

“Which kind is a Griever? Oh, should I look it up on Marshall’s cheat sheet?”

“Shh!” I said, grabbing Rory and dragging her back toward the safety of the shadowy tree line. “This one’s not rocket science. Look around; what do you see?”

Rory slipped her phone back into her pocket and stared off into the center of the clearing where the building stood. “I’m assuming the Cloisters.”

I rolled my eyes at her. “What
else
?”

She craned her head up to the one tall tower that rose above the rectangular abbey, but I pointed down.

“There’s a graveyard,” she said.

“Where people—or in this case a
grotesque
—might go to grieve,” I said. “Hence, Grievers. Trust me, that’s what we’re going to find here. I’ve spent more time than I care for in graveyards these past few months. Grievers can’t seem to get enough of their precious final human resting places.”

“Okay, fine,” she said, “but—”

I slapped my hand over her mouth to silence her, pointing to a dense cluster of tombstones along the side of the building. One of the shapes moved, and I followed it with the pointer of my free hand.

I studied the figure as close as I could from where we stood. What looked like one of the massive tombstones carved to resemble an angel was definitely moving. Its wings were spread to an impressive span, their finely detailed carving easily recognizable as the work of my great-great-grandfather, the last of the old-world Spellmasons, Alexander Belarus.

Rory dropped to her knees when she spied the figure, pulling off the art tube she always wore across her back. The three pieces of her
glaive guisarme
slid out of it, and Rory set about assembling the pieces, first connecting the two shafts and then attaching the bladed end piece of the pole arm.

By the time she stood and strapped the tube across her back again, I was advancing forward, pulling off my backpack to release the heavy stone book from within. Once free, I pressed my hand to the book’s carved cover and spoke the Slavic word for
release
, the book beneath my fingers transforming to one of ink and paper.

The bond between the arcane stone of the book and me was a strong one. Strong enough, apparently, that the stone angel felt it as well and rose up from the grave it stood before.

With its wings fluttering in agitation, the angel reached out to a nearby tombstone, tugged at it, and lifted it like it was made of papier-mâché.

“Incoming!” I shouted.

As it launched the grave marker in our direction, Rory dove to her right and I dropped right where I was to huddle protectively over my spell book.

The tombstone flew overhead and didn’t stop until I heard the snap of branches and tree trunks from somewhere off behind us.

“So much for immobilizing him first,” I said, scrambling to my feet.

“We’ve got a runner!” Rory shouted as she stood and the angel spread his wings, taking to the air. “I mean flyer!”

“Looks like we’re going with Plan B, then,” I said, picking up my backpack.

Rory just looked at me from under her wet, blue bangs. “We have a Plan B?!”

Ignoring her, I shoved my book back into my bag. “I’m sick of these things making a run for it,” I said, searching around until my fingers found what they were looking for. I pulled free a curved stone hook and a coil of rope with a steel-core cable running down the center of it, looping it through the eye of the hook before knotting it tight. I took the other end of the coil of rope and wrapped it around my waist twice before tying it securely.

“I might not have the lasso skills of a cowgirl,” I continued, forcing my arcane will into the stone of the hook, “but I
can
control masonry well enough.”

Rory’s eyes went wide as the realization of what I was about to do hit her. “Lexi, don’t!” she called out. “You’ll get yourself killed!”

“Better me than another innocent,” I said.

By then the gargoyle was rising up past the old abbey, gaining speed. Wrapping one hand around the stone hook and sliding the loose coil of rope into my other, I wound up like a pitcher and threw the hook with as much strength as I could.

I held my arcane will to that of the stone of the hook, all the while my eyes continuing to track the gargoyle. At the bending of my will, the hook corrected its course to catch up with the fleeing creature.

Thankfully, it seemed that since I had accidentally awakened this particular grotesque six months ago, it hadn’t spent much time practicing flight. The stone angel wobbled in the air unsteadily as it attempted to escape, allowing the speed of my hook to easily outpace it.

Still, I didn’t let my sense of pride in my mastery of it go to my head. Until I could actually ground the creature, the victory wasn’t mine.

I guided the stone hook past the angelic figure and then forced it into a sharp turn across the front of the creature’s legs, forming a midair trip wire. I snapped my wrist on the hand holding the rope, managing to loop the line securely around its legs. The thrill of pulling off what felt like such a genuine cowgirl move overcame me, and only then did I allow myself the tiniest amount of pride for the fanciness of rope skills.

Which, naturally, was my undoing.

The force of the fleeing creature—as bad a flyer as it was—was
still
substantial. The line in my hand tightened quick as a whip and before I could release it, my feet were already off the ground. Pain shot across my midsection as the rope encircling me went taut, and I flew into the air as Rory’s stunned face—and the ground—faded away below.

“Lexi!” Rory shouted, but already her voice was fading off far behind me.

My overall fatigue and this fresh series of aches filled me with the kind of wild fear that only an airborne magical creature dragging me across the night sky could. If it weren’t for the growing sensation that I was going to die, I almost would have enjoyed the perverse and deadly pleasure of the madcap carnival-quality ride.

Rain whipped across my face as I flew through the night sky, my vision clouding as its sting filled my eyes. My arms burned from my death-grip hold on the rope—falling wasn’t something I could afford to do with so many mistakes left to atone for.

I needed to gain control of this situation before this creature flew me out over the river or decided to smash me into the side of a building. The only thing going for me was my added weight throwing off the gargoyle’s flight, twisting the creature in a spiral as it adjusted to my being tethered to it.

Hoping to use that to my advantage, I swung myself like the world’s biggest pendulum, using my momentum to drive the creature away from the Hudson River and back toward the Cloisters itself.

My best bet was to aim for the high tower, driving the gargoyle toward it. I might be able to land myself on the lower roof of the surrounding abbey or drop down into its courtyard. If
that
didn’t work, my extended hope would be to land in one of the trees of the surrounding forest. At least then I could try to wrap the line around the trunk of a tree and use the leverage to ground the gargoyle.

The tower was coming up fast, and the creature noticed it and tried to steer away from the stone walls. It managed to spread its wings as far and wide as it could, which slowed its descent, allowing it time to readjust its course. Like an airplane doing a rollover, the gargoyle spun until it was on its side, one wing reaching straight to the heavens while the other one pointed down to the ground below.