Incarnate (A Spellmason Chronicle) (20 page)

“Fine,” I said, “but if you hear a bloodcurdling scream out of me, you’d better be prepared to get your ass in here.”

“If you hear a bloodcurdling scream out of me, too,” Caleb said. “And remember, you’ve known me longer. You keep that in mind when you think about who to rescue first.”

I tugged at Caleb’s arm and the two of us headed into the depths of the mausoleum together. “Nice,” I said. “Ass.”

“Hey, I’m just worried about preserving myself for
you
,” he said.

I rolled my eyes and hunkered down to the floor. The dust of ages lay on the stonework everywhere, which made it easy to see that it had recently been disturbed by footprints and claw marks. “There’s been more than one gargoyle here.”

“You’re sure?” Caleb asked, scanning the shadows.

“Positive,” I said. “For instance, I know Stanis’s tracks by heart. The width of his foot imprint, where the claw marks fall from the way he was carved. All the prints here are varied. There’s some claw marks, paw prints, more human-looking ones.”

When I stood back up, Caleb’s hands were full of vials, his thumb and forefinger on each hand ready to uncap them at a moment’s notice.

We continued on, and as my eyes adjusted to the interior darkness, I could see we were alone, if you didn’t count the stench of rot and decay that grew the deeper in we went. All around the edges of the space, large stone sarcophagi lay, looking much like the ones from my family crypt in the Belarus building on Gramercy. Unlike the ones in my family’s tomb, however, all of these had been opened. Heavy stone lids lay off-kilter on some, others broken in pieces on the floor or lying against the wall of the chamber. Bodies in various states of decay protruded from several of them.

I could no longer contain myself and allowed another shudder. Cemeteries were creepy enough on their own, just the idea that the dead were buried there out of sight, but to actually see the sad mortal remains of these bodies . . . It made the idea of being immortal like a
grotesque
all the more intriguing to me.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, steeling myself. “You know what we have to do.”

“Look for the Cagliostro Medallion,” he said, his face full of concern. “If you’re freaking, though, my offer still stands . . . I can go it alone.”

“No,” I said, almost snapping. Caleb might be far more seasoned in this world, but I had no intention of leaving him to do this by himself. “I was the one who made the deal with Warren. It’s my responsibility. I won’t shirk it, no matter how unpleasant.”

Caleb nodded without further comment and the two of us moved from sarcophagus to sarcophagus, searching their contents, respectfully laying the dead back in their last resting places as we went. Although I hadn’t caused any of this damage, I still felt like we were grave robbers. A place like this was private, not meant to be looked upon except by the O’Sheas, and this kind of intimacy with the dead made me uneasy at best.

There were rings and jewelry on all the dead—the O’Sheas buried in one kind of ceremonial robe or another—and some of them had been hastily thrown to the floor of the mausoleum by the previous visitors. Caleb went about the business of collecting broken, bony fingers and their rings from all over the floor, for which I was thankful. Still, despite our thorough search, nothing that looked even remotely close to what Warren had described to us as the Cagliostro Medallion was present.

“Well, that appears to be everything,” I said when we had been through the entire place.

“No luck, then,” Caleb said. “Still, who knows what some of the stuff on these people does . . . Imagine . . .”

“Stop yourself right there,” I said, snapping. “Don’t even think it.”

“Wait, what?” Caleb said, his face going red, noticeable even in this darkness. “Lexi! I wouldn’t . . . How can you even—”

“I saw the glimmer in your eye just now when you were talking!”

“Hey,” he said, sounding genuinely offended. “I
may
be an opportunist, but I’m
not
a ghoul.”

“You sure about that?” I asked, unable to hide the venom in my question.

“Excuse me?!” he fired back, offense filling his face, which only fueled my agitation with him.

Exhaustion and frustration with a lack of results tonight had let the words just slip out, and once the dam was broken, there was no stopping it.

“Were you simply being an opportunist when you manipulated Stanis?”

“What are you talking about, Alexandra?” he asked. Already I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes as he fought to no doubt figure out which particular thing I might be calling him out on.

“When you ran your biggest con against him,” I said. “To win me, like I’m a prize to be had. Telling him he should back off, that there was no future with me for a man of stone, that I should stick to my own kind if I wanted to be happy.”

I expected him to be ashamed or at least surprised, but instead his brow furrowed and he glared at me.

“And I stand by what I said,” he shouted just as angrily right back in my face. “What kind of life would you have had with him? Tell me. Skulking around at night, scratching your face up on his stone skin trying to make out with him? And long after you and I are gone, he’ll still be here unchanged. In the long expanse of his time, you would be a blip on his radar. Nothing more. I did it for
you
.”

“No,” I corrected. “You did it for you. Just like you’ve always done. Conning your way through your entire life.”

“He can’t make you happy,” he said. “I can.”

“Well, I’ll never know now, will I?” I spat out. “You made sure of that.”

Caleb looked confused. “How?”

“You always pride yourself on your ability as an arcane freelancer,” I said, “talking your way into this deal or that deal to make the highest dollar. You’re such a natural at making a case for something that benefits you that Stanis fell for what you told him. Maybe being just a blip on the radar of his long life would have been enough. Your con was so convincing he’s committed himself to his cause, to his people. Thanks to you, I never stood a chance of being on his radar. You manipulated the whole situation.” My anger flew from my lips with every word, and my breath caught in my throat as the truth of what was really bothering me hit me. “You manipulated
me
.”

“Lexi,” he started. “Come on . . .”

I held up a hand to silence him. “Can we just get out of here?”

Caleb knew better than to speak. He nodded and without another word led the way back out of the mausoleum with a heavy, angry gait. Once outside, the graveyard felt almost homey in comparison to the super creepy interior and emotional whirlwind I had stirred up in the O’Shea family plot.

Fletcher, however, was nowhere to be seen, and the two of us stood in awkward silence for a long moment.

“I guess we’re supposed to show ourselves out,” Caleb said finally, but there was still bitterness in his words. “Presuming another tree monster doesn’t get all hungry up on us.”

Free of the mausoleum, I snapped. I craned my head up to the sky and gave a feral-sounding cry.

“Why can’t this for once just be
easy
?” I shouted to the heavens. “This gargoyle situation, my situation with you.”

Caleb shrugged. “What part of alchemy, arcana, witches, and warlocks made you think any part of this life would be a cakewalk?”

“A girl can dream,” I said. “Or in this case, a girl can nightmare.” I looked at him until he met my eyes, and I did not turn away. As the weight of everything hit me at once, I couldn’t help but laugh as I fought back tears. “We’re good and tangled in all of this now, aren’t we? We live through this whole thing, I’m seriously going to reevaluate if we’re even friends then.”

I turned to walk away.

“Lexi—” he said, stopping me, but when he couldn’t follow it with anything, I simply walked off.

Caleb wasn’t dumb. He knew there was nothing he could say or do right now that I could trust.

I picked my way past the crumpled doors of the mausoleum that lay nearby and headed off in what I thought—what I
hoped
—was the right direction out of the cemetery.

“For the sake of everyone’s involvement and well-being, let’s just keep this business right now,” I called back to him, calming myself in an attempt to regain some semblance of composure. “Let’s hope Warren has secured us our meeting with the Convocation. Outside of getting them off my back, maybe they can help with our gargoyle problem and recovering the medallion.” I stopped and turned back to him. “And make no mistake about it: You’re going to help me get it and then you’re going to give it to Stanis. I don’t think that’s asking too much, do you? It’s the least you can do.”

Caleb remained silent as I walked off, but he had been right earlier.

I should have known involving myself in the affairs of witches and warlocks—and
especially
freelancing alchemists—was something that would not prove easy.

Stanis

I
knew the concrete canyons of Hell’s Kitchen as well as any of my Manhattan neighborhoods. Nonetheless when Emily called out, “Heads-up,” I looked up only to catch Detective Rowland’s building coming up fast in front of me. I spread my wings to the extent of their span to slow myself, but I had simply picked up too much speed in my distracted state. I arched my back as far as I could, twisting my body as I banked upward just enough that I felt the bricks of the building’s side scrape against my chest.

My momentum slowed the higher I rose until I set myself into a hover once I had cleared the building. Moments later Emily joined me, the effort of her wings bringing her into a hover of her own that had become much improved as of late.

“Forgive me,” I said. “I did not realize we were already here.”

“You’re distracted,” she said, with understanding kindness in her words. “It’s understandable.”

“Is it?”

She nodded. “Of course,” she said. “You have everyone at Sanctuary to think about, not just me. Your mind must not get a second of rest or much of a thought all your own.”

She was right, of course. There were all those things in my mind, as well as thoughts about finding the Butcher, keeping my people safe . . . and of course, Alexandra.

There was less and less time to help out my maker’s kin track down the warlock Warren O’Shea’s leads, but Alexandra was not something I felt comfortable discussing with Emily. My gargoyle companion had enough worries of her own to contend with without having to contend with my feelings for the last of the Spellmasons.

I reached out to Emily, taking her clawed hands in mine.

“Hopefully tonight shall give you the answers you seek,” I said.

“I hope so,” she said, her expression worried. Despite her serpentine features being hard to read, I had still been able to learn all the subtleties of her face over the past few months and it pained me to see her unhappy.

“You know who you are, why you are here,” she continued. “I do not.”

I gave a dark smile to her. “Patience,” I said. “Do not forget . . . I spent several centuries
not
knowing, not even considering what or who I had been. My having ever been a part of humanity did not seem possible.”

“You’re right,” she said with a smile of her own. “I know it. But knowing something and suppressing the emotions about it are two different things.”

“Come,” I said, holding my wings open in place.

The two of us descended down along the side of the building below, our wings spread wide to slow our fall until the windows of Detective Chloe Rowland’s apartment were in front of us. I latched onto the brick of the building with my claws, and moved along the row of glass panes until I spotted the detective.

Her long red hair was down, and the clothes she wore were far more casual this time. Rowland sat on her couch in an oversized T-shirt and what Aurora called
sweatpants
. The detective’s striped sock feet sat upon a low table that was covered with paperback books. A book with two humans in an embrace lay on her chest, her face awash in the glow of her television set, her eyes half-shut.

I tapped on the glass of the window but despite my quiet, gentle approach, the human jumped from the couch, knocking over the stack of books, and had her gun out of the waistband of her clothes faster than I would have imagined. When she saw it was Emily and me, the gun remained out but she lowered it as she approached the window, sliding it open.

“Can’t you people call first?” she asked. “I don’t want to explain gunshots to my neighbors when I accidentally fire on you.”

“Forgive me,” I said, “but I do not think phones are meant to be used by our kind.”

“At least not the modern ones,” Emily said with a smile. “I might be able to master a rotary with these claws of mine, but I don’t think the phone company is really ready to deal with our kind just yet.”

Rowland looked at the sides of her window, then back to us. “I’d invite you in,” she said, “but I don’t think either of you’d fit. And I’m certainly not crawling out my window, not after last time’s little flight.”

“Your roof, then, at your earliest convenience,” I said, and pushed away from the building. My wings caught the air and with two great flaps of them, I came up and over the side of the structure, landing on the roof.

Emily landed seconds later with a poetry and gentle grace in her motion. Composed as she was, her wings betrayed her nerves and fluttered even as she brought them in close to her body.

Detective Rowland arrived a minute or two later, having changed into jeans, boots, and a leather coat over the T-shirt she had been wearing earlier. In one hand she held a yellow folder and with her other she pulled the jacket close around her as she walked over to us.

“If this is going to become a regular thing,” she said, “I should probably install a gargoyle symbol up here. Shine a beacon into the night sky when I want to summon you and all that.”

I contemplated what the detective meant for a moment before answering. “I do not think such measures will be necessary,” I said. “And as a reminder I prefer the term
grotesque
over
gargoyle
.”

“Right,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Forgive my impatience,” Emily said, stepping past me and right up to the detective, “but have you found anything concerning my death?”

Detective Rowland gave a grim smile. “I’m not sure I’m ever going to get used to hearing questions phrased like that,” she said, “but I guess that comes with my new job description, huh?” She held up the folder in her hands and opened it. “Emily Hoffert. You died—your human form, that is—August twenty-eighth, 1963. It was reported in the media that you were slain as part of a series of killings called the Career Girl murders.”

“Career Girl?” I asked.

“It was 1963,” Rowland said with a bit of bitterness in her voice now. “The idea of women in the workforce was still a novel concept. In cities like New York, however, women were flocking in droves to seek out their big opportunities.”

“Some opportunity,” I said. “Become a Career Girl and come to this grand city only to have your life taken from you.”

“What career did I pursue?” Emily asked.

“You were a schoolteacher,” Rowland said. “That’s got to be a good thing, right?”

Emily managed a smile despite the grim subject matter. “I like that,” she said.

“It would explain why you have been so natural at helping to educate our ever-growing population at Sanctuary,” I said.

“And . . . I was murdered along with several other of these ‘Career Girls’?” Emily asked, her wings fluttering once more with nerves.

Rowland shook her head. “That’s the odd part,” the detective said. “Yes, you were reported as part of the murders, along with a roommate, but the circumstances of your death were a bit more complicated than what was reported in the papers.”

“How so?” Emily asked.

Detective Rowland stopped and lowered the folder. “You sure you want to hear this?” she asked Emily.

“Is it that bad?” I asked.

“It’s not good,” the detective said without taking her eyes off my companion. Emily nodded, and her clawed hand reached out to mine. I took it.

The detective let out a long sigh, then went back to the folder. “It seems your body was used for some sort of dark ritual. I’ve been over the coroner’s reports and the lead investigators’ notes on it. They wrote it off as some sort of Satanic ritual. Is that the sort of thing your Alexandra and her friends are into?”

I shook my head as I tried to control my temper. “Your ignorance on such matters will be your undoing,” I said. “You understand little of what the arcane in our world is.”

“Well, there’s not really a lot for me to go on, now, is there?” she said with a bit of bite in her words, shaking the folder at me. “In our department it’s practically hippie-liberal-progressive that we’ve got Detective Maron and I even dealing with these new paranormal cases, and you see how ridiculed we get. This was
1963
. Jesus, America, Apple pie. Hell, Kennedy wouldn’t even be shot for another three months. ‘Satanic ritual’ was the best diagnosis of the time they were going to give. The only thing that’s progressed since then is cynicism, but until your people start teaching me the ways of your magical little world, the idea that dark powers do dark shit like the stuff in this folder seems entirely reasonable to me.”

I let go of Emily’s hand and stepped over to the detective. “May I see the photographs?”

There was no anger or demand in my voice, only a natural curiosity. The detective was right. I had lived too long, and understood little myself about the changes in the human world. From a Europe where people were occasionally burned at the stake to this modern one, there was too much for me to process, let alone for me to lay blame.

Some of the fire died down in Detective Rowland. Instead, there was reluctance on the human’s face. “You sure
you
want to look at all this?” she asked. “It’s gruesome.”

I nodded. “Long have I seen the things that have happened in this city,” I said. “The night has always been a time and place for dark deeds to transpire. And do not forget: I also come from a long line of misguided men whose abuse of power drove them to do horrible things.”

The detective reached into the folder and held out large sheets of photographs to me. “Then by all means, suit yourself.”

“Thank you,” I said, taking the thin, fragile sheets from her. I moved across the roof away from both her and Emily, and my fellow gargoyle made no move to join me. I am not sure that I would have been able to take photographic images of my mortal death well, either. My own memories were bad enough.

Although I knew the photographs to be of a human, there was little I could see in them that would have convinced me. A mangled twist of crimson brown was splayed out all across a large living area. While the sight itself had a chaotic horror to it, it was also clear that there was an order to how things had been arranged. The floor and walls of the living space bore arcane symbols written in what I assumed was Emily’s blood.

I do not know how long I looked through the photographs, but when Emily moved toward me, I gathered them together and shook my head at her.

“You do not wish to see such things,” I said, and brought the photographs back over to Detective Rowland.

Emily crossed over to the detective and held her hand out. “I’ll determine what I should and shouldn’t see,” she said.

If Detective Rowland had any thoughts on that, she kept them to herself as the two of us watched Emily in silence. By the way her wings worked subconsciously behind her, my fellow
grotesque
was not taking the images well.

When she was done looking through them, she carefully arranged them back together as neatly as she had been handed them and gave the photographs back to Detective Rowland.

“Thank you,” Emily said quietly. “Perhaps Stanis was right.”

“Yeah, well, he strikes me as an observant guy,” Rowland said.

“I believe you should share those with Alexandra, Marshall, and Aurora,” I said. “Some of the symbols remind me of those used in my creation, but I have no true mastery of such arcane things.”

“Got it,” she said, pulling out her phone to make a note of it. “Now perhaps you have something for me . . . ?”

“We have not come across the Butcher ourselves, Emily and I, but my people have been keeping an eye out for him.”

“Great,” the detective said with a heavy sigh. “
This
is what you got me out of my pj’s for?”

“I did, however, meet someone the other night who
has
met at least one of the Butcher’s men. He had turned the Butcher down, and then, to my surprise he turned down becoming a part of my Sanctuary.”

“And he might be able to tell me more about his encounter with the Butcher,” she said. “Where can I find him?”

“I do not know,” I said. “But fear not. This Nathaniel Crane is not one to hide away. You will find him, if he does not find you first.”

Detective Rowland tapped away again. “Nathaniel . . . Crane,” she said. “We’ll see who finds who first. What am I looking for out there? Something demonic like you, or maybe something more serpentine like Emily here?”

“We do not all look alike, Detective,” I said, scolding her.

“I know
that
,” she said. “Just help me out here, okay? Maron and I are dealing with chasing the impossible. We need as much help as we can get.”

“Very well,” I said. “First, you will need to find an angel.”