Incarnate (A Spellmason Chronicle) (29 page)

“I think I can,” he continued, and ran to the glassed-in shelves and started pulling down different alchemical mixes.

Aurora hopped down off the table and moved closer to the door. “I’ll be over here,” she said. “In the non-exploding section . . .”

I doubted any mistake Marshall might make would harm my form and stayed where I was.

Marshall ignored Aurora and continued working, changing the contents of several vials, flasks, and tubes over and over until he decided on two and held them up. He walked to the area between the two sconces and looked up at them before looking over to me.

“A little help here . . . ?”

I walked over and lifted the man with ease, using care not to exert too much strength for fear of crushing him. He poured half of the two vials together in one sconce and then the other, blue flames flashing to immediate life within them.

“Try now,” Marshall called out to Alexandra.

I set him back down as Alexandra took up her pose once more, foreign words springing from her lips. The section of wall between the two fires began to shift. Stones moved around one another, sinking into the wall, disappearing and reappearing in stacks just inside the room itself, revealing a dark opening behind it.

The grind of stone against stone continued in the wall as the space continued to shift, carrying something forward out of the darkness.

“What the hell . . . ?” Marshall asked, shining his flashlight into the space.

A long wrap of off-white cloth moved to the edge of the hole in the wall until it passed through and upended onto the floor of the guildhall.

The bundle shifted, unraveling. The taut skin-over-bones of a human hand and forearm tumbled free of it, the metal rings on it clacking against the stone floor—the kind a witch or warlock might wear.

Alexandra dropped her spell and ran forward as the stones ground to a halt. Kneeling next to the bundle, she grabbed the edge of the cloth and pulled it away using just the tips of two fingers.

“Congratulations,” Marshall said, although his voice was quiet and did not hold the tone usually associated with the word, “the Belarus family has an actual skeleton in their closet.”

Aurora joined us by the body. “But
whose
?”

“Apparently, my bloodline is more murder-y than I thought,” Alexandra said, standing up, the color gone out of her face as she turned away. “My great-great-grandfather
did
murder his apprentice.”

Alexandra

I
awoke to a low, steady thud against the door to my building, only to find Bricksley slamming himself over and over against it out on Saint Mark’s. I was relieved to see that my little golem looked unharmed from the mission I had set him to the other night. How long he had been throwing himself at the door, I had no idea, but the scattered chips of wood from the door itself indicated it couldn’t have been all that long.

Curious what his findings would be, I risked waking everyone as I phoned around to my crew and gathered them in my living room in just under an hour as I filled and checked over my backpack in prep for wherever Bricksley’s expedition would lead us.

“You look like Luke Skywalker with Yoda when they’re training on Dagobah,” Marshall said from his place on my couch. “You know, from
The Empire Strikes Back
.”

“I know what it’s from,” I said as I adjusted the zipper so that Bricksley was securely fastened in but also protruding from my backpack. “I’m not a total cultural illiterate.”

“We ready?” Rory said, dropping her dancer’s bag in my living room. Her hood hung around her neck like an infinity scarf, her art tube poking up over her shoulder.

“If you’re packing Mr. Hack and Slash in that thing, sure.”

The four of us headed out of my building onto Saint Mark’s Place.

“Just keep it out of sight for now,” Caleb said. “This is strictly recon. We don’t want to draw any attention. We simply check out whatever Bricksley discovered; then, once we have evidence, we bring it before Warren, Laurien . . . the whole Convocation if we have to.”

“Lead on, Bricksley,” I said. My golem’s tiny clay hand came up and pointed uptown, so we headed over to Second Avenue and then began walking uptown.

Rory fell in step next to me as we went.

“You sure this is going to work?” she asked. “I mean, I love Bricksley probably more than is healthy, but he’s not the most complex golem out there.”

“I was explicit in instructing him,” I reassured her. “Follow the Butcher, and come back to us when you know where he is. He might not be the sharpest brick in the pile, but I trusted him with the task. It’s bad enough I felt guilty sending him out all on his own, alone.”

We walked along in silence for a few more moments until I felt a tear at the corner of my eye and wiped it away, drawing Rory’s attention. “When they lock me away,” I said, “make sure you tell them how emotionally wrapped up with a living brick I was, okay?”

“Tell them yourself,” she said. “Chances are we’ll be cell mates.”

“That is some comfort.”

We continued up Second Avenue until Bricksley indicated we should head west on Fourteenth Street, and our journey turned crosstown. Just past Irving Place, the little golem guided us to the intersection where Park Avenue South split into Broadway and Fourth Avenue.

“Union Square,” I said, and although Bricksley was prompting us to enter, I hesitated.

“The park is
packed
,” Marshall said, “and from the looks of it with an extra heaping spoonful of crazy.”

Much of Union Square had become a shantytown since the other night. The green grass of it was set up with makeshift tents, lean-tos, and people just sleeping out under the night sky. With some reluctance we crossed the street and headed into the park. Up close there was a creepy, cultish vibe to everyone there. Some wore shirts with the words “Show Me the Eternal LIFE!” on them while others had signs lying against their makeshift homes with hand-drawn gargoyles on them, their messages swearing allegiance.

Rory drew in close, whispering, “May I remind you that some of these people were probably part of the mob that wanted to kill us the other night.”

“I’m trying not to think about it,” I said, concentrating instead on where Bricksley was indicating we should go. “Marshall, Caleb, walk in front of us.”

The two men moved into place, Marshall leaning back over his shoulder.

“And we’re doing this why?”

“None of this crowd will know either you or Caleb,” I said. “Rory and I, on the other hand, might get torn limb from limb.”

His face went pale, and with no further questions he turned forward and kept moving as I steered the four of us through the crowd.

“I would have thought the mob would have dispersed by now,” Rory said.

“Me, too,” I agreed.

“Are you kidding?” Caleb asked. “Remember Occupy Wall Street? It doesn’t take much in this city to get people to drop what they’re doing and jump on a bandwagon.” Standing taller than the rest of us, his eyes scanned the crowd. “Although there is an abnormal amount of police on duty here.”

“At least Maron and Rowland got them to take some of this seriously,” I said. “Although, I bet they had to sell them on the simple premise of crowd control. I’m not sure how they would have fared if they said they needed more patrolmen to take on any gargoyles that might show.”

As we approached Union Square West around Seventeenth Street, I could see the efforts of my handiwork from the other night. Much of the pavement wall still blocked off Eighteenth Street going west, although even now construction crews were working on its removal.

Its sheer enormity had me hiding in the back of my hood, as if it somehow absolved me of the chaos and destruction I was responsible for. Luckily, the gargoyles were nowhere to be seen and no one seemed to be paying any attention to us.

Bricksley motioned us down into the subway station at the north end of the square, and the four of us hurried down the stairs, glad to be away from the vibe of the crowd above.

“Bricksley has a MetroCard?” Marshall asked as we approached the turnstiles into the station.

“The implications!” Rory said.

“Shush,” I said, and followed the pointing of my little brick golem through the station to the end of one of the platforms.

“Guys,” Marshall said. “You know where we are, right?”

“Give me a minute,” I said. “It will come to me.”

Caleb looked around the mostly empty platform. “You mean we’re
not
in a subway station waiting on the N to arrive?” he asked.

“You weren’t around,” Marshall said with enough bite to it that it shut Caleb down.

I looked to Bricksley. His tiny clay hand was pointing into the tunnel and up the tracks that led to the distant glow of lights at the Eighteenth Street station one stop up.

“I don’t believe this,” I said as it hit me. Checking the tunnel first and then the platform to make sure no one was paying attention, I jumped down onto the tracks. Rory nimbly leapt down as well, while Marshall sat down on the platform and lowered himself with care onto the tracks.

Caleb made no move to follow and just stared down at us. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Hurry up,” I said, not waiting as I started down the tracks. “You’ll want to see this place.”

“See that rail over there?” Marshall asked him. “The one I’m trying to stand as far away from as I can?
Don’t
touch that one, got it? Otherwise, you should be fine.”

“Comforting,” Caleb said, jumping down to join us. “And what if a train comes?”

“You’re the indestructible one,” I called back. “I don’t see what you’re worried about.”

Caleb ran past Rory and Marshall to catch up to me. “Just because I’m indestructible doesn’t mean it wouldn’t
hurt
.”

“You’ll be fine,” I said. “Trust me.”

The last time I had come this way more than a year ago, the path had been a difficult one, but now the boards and blockage that had once blocked off access to the older, unused sections of the old subway system had been removed. In fact, once we had ducked off the tracks between Fourteenth and Eighteenth, it was clear that all the passages had been expanded for something bigger than me.

“Large enough for a gargoyle to fly down, let alone walk through,” I said out loud.

“Where are we going?” Caleb asked.

“Some of the old stations fell out of service over the years,” I said as I continued down the unused tracks. “One of them was built by my great-great-grandfather. We had to come down here last year to recover something he had hidden away.”

“And let’s just say it didn’t go flawlessly,” Marshall said. “Not that I had a chance to plan for it, mind you.”

“Oh, I’m sure this is going to go so much better,” Caleb added, but I shushed him.

“There’s noise up ahead,” I said, and stopped in my tracks, as did the rest of my friends.

When I was certain the commotion I heard wasn’t moving toward us, I switched to the set of tracks off to our left, using the darkness there to hide us from growing light up ahead.

As the familiar sight of my great-great-grandfather’s grand old subway station came into sight, Caleb grabbed my arm.

“Remind me this is just reconnaissance,” he said.

“Oh, yes,” I said as I examined the station. The ceiling vaulted high over the main platform. The ornate carvings made by my great-great-grandfather covered the walls on either side of the tracks—stone Grecian soldiers towering three or four times our height, the grand scale of the place hauntingly awesome yet terrifying now that the platform was covered with gargoyles instead of just dust and broken statues as it had been on our last visit. I took a deep breath and let it out. “Just reconnaissance.”

“I think I’ve reconned enough,” Marshall whispered, and tugged at my sleeve. “We can go now.”

I didn’t move. “No wonder Stanis and his people were having a hard time finding them,” I whispered back. “They’ve been flying the friendly skies while the Butcher and his people have moved where you’d least expect to find airborne creatures: underground.”

There was much commotion among the gargoyles all along the platform, but it was what was happening at the far end that drew my attention.

The Butcher and his men had fashioned a long, low surface out of several of the fallen pillars. Crane himself sat on a raised platform that stood in front of the carving of the Greek Titans that overlooked all of the station. As we moved closer in the shadows off to the side of it all, the sounds of the chatter changed to that of whimpering. Upon the fallen pillars, a heavyset man with long black hair was chained in place, the center of the platform itself caked in blood. Next to him a small blond woman was secured in the same manner.

The Butcher stood up and spread his angelic wings, and much of the platform settled down.

“Daniel Hoffman and Tara Novello,” he said, looking down at the two figures, “those who seek Eternal Life among my kind must be prepared to give up their flesh. Are you prepared to do so?”

The man’s head nodded up and down repetitively “I am ready,” he said. “I no longer wish to be a part of this world.”

“I am ready,” the woman said, proving the less worked up of the two, her voice calm and even.

“Not all who come before us have been deemed worthy of the Stone,” the Butcher said. “Not all are worthy. One will serve as a sacrifice to fuel the Taking of the Stone for the other. Tonight we let the fickle hand of fate decide who lives eternally and who dies, as is our custom.”

A ripple of approval went through the crowd.

“This is, like, the worst lottery ever,” Caleb whispered in my ear.

“On one clawed hand,” the Butcher continued, moving to stand over the large man, “we have a man after my own heart. One does not come to such sloth easily, no. Our large friend Daniel here no doubt had to work hard to achieve this girth, and for his commitment to that, he must be given praise. The pleasures of the body—food among the highest of them—are something I miss greatly, hedonist that I was.” He turned and moved to stand over the woman. “And here we have darling Tara. A nubile young thing. Once I reclaim my human form, oh, what fun we could have had together. Flesh is a weakness, but oh, what a weakness!” He ran his clawed hand down her side. “Alas, since tonight I have yet to reclaim my own flesh, I leave the choice to our assembly.”

The crowd roared to life as they voted their approval for each one, shouting the name of who they thought should either die or become one of them. Through the noise of it all I honestly couldn’t tell who was winning.

The Butcher studied the crowd before holding up a hand for silence. He walked over to the man, and looked down at him. “You, Daniel, have been found
unworthy
.”

“Wait . . .” the man started, but the Butcher simply talked over him, dismissive.

“My dear man, I cannot simply have every last one of your dreadful kind coming before me expecting to receive the Life Eternal.”

“Then let me go!” the man cried out.

“But we still need you,” the Butcher said. “Your blood will fuel Tara’s binding to the Stone.”

The man began to struggle against his chains, his voice slipping into a keening cry that echoed throughout the platform.

I stood up from my crouch, and slipped between the support struts leading over to the track next to the platform.

Caleb grabbed my arm. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he whispered. “I thought this was recon.”

“It was,” I said, pulling free, “until they were about to kill someone.”

Rory’s art tube was already off her back as she pieced together the pole arm within it. I slid my backpack off my shoulders and went for my great-great-grandfather’s spell book instead of the one I had been creating for myself.