Incarnate (A Spellmason Chronicle) (4 page)

The man slowed and raised his gun, waiting for the woman to join him. “Think guns will actually work?” he asked her, uncertain.

Emily and I did not want to be around to find out. I handed one of the ropes to Emily and secured the other in mine, leaping into the air. The added weight of the still-tied angel made it difficult to fly, but with Emily and I splitting the load, we still managed to shoot up past the tower and into the night sky before the two detectives could open fire.

“I do not understand,” I said to Emily once we were in full flight with our newly acquired
grotesque
in tow.

“What exactly?” she asked.

“That is not the Alexandra Belarus I know,” I said, troubled. “With my father and his men vanquished . . . with his threat eliminated, I would expect the Spellmason to be more at peace . . . yet to see her like this . . .”

“We all have our issues that lie beneath the surface of what others see,” Emily said. “I can only imagine hers run deep.”

Was it seeing me with Emily that had put Alexandra in such a mood? It was the only thing I could imagine, although Alexandra had no right to judge whom I chose as my companion. After all, the Spellmason had made her choice when she had chosen the alchemist Caleb Kennedy. Or rather, when I had stepped back to allow the like companionship that his human form offered her.

Tonight was full of questions, not all of them mine.

“Where are we going?” the angel asked, confusion thick in his voice as he dangled between the two of us high above the Manhattan streets.

“Sanctuary,” I said, and fell silent as I flew on and tried to make sense in my head of the woman I had once been sworn to protect and had watched over my whole life.

Alexandra

W
hile Rory and I had been playing the Winchester sisters all evening skulking after the gargoyle population of Manhattan, her roommate and my friend Marshall Blackmoore had been working, too, but as we approached his store, Roll for Initiative, it became clear who had fared better.

In the reflection of the store’s display windows, the two of us looked worse than the zombie action figures posed just on the other side of the glass. With her blue hair plastered to her head despite the hood she had been wearing, Rory looked like a drowned Cookie Monster. My eyes were sunk far enough into my head from exhaustion that I almost wished someone would shoot me in the head after mistaking me for the first sign of the zombie apocalypse.

Marshall, comparatively, just looked busy behind the cash desk at the front of his store. The worst thing he probably endured tonight was a paper cut from flipping through the pile of books he had spread out before him. Still, he had his hands full there. For this late at night there were a considerable number of customers wandering the store.

Not surprisingly, when we entered the store as wet as two drowned rats, we turned a few heads among Marshall’s nerd herd.

Marshall looked up and did a double take when he saw us staggering in.

“You two look like hell,” he said, nervously running his fingers through his mop of black hair. “You okay?” His eyes darted to the back of the store, then back to us.

“We’re okay,” I said. “
Ish.
Are
you
?”

His kind brown eyes came quickly back to us, and he nodded.

“We could have used you,” Rory said, reaching into her pocket and fishing out the crumple of notes from the evening.

Marshall turned his eyes back to his books on the counter. “There’s only so much time in my day,” he said, tapping the books in front of him. “I can’t stay up all night chasing
grotesques
down. Someone’s got to catalog them, and I’m lucky I have the time to do
that
, on top of running my store . . .”

“Well, you
really
should have come with tonight,” Rory said. “You know how hard it was for me to take notes by moonlight, in the rain, in the middle of Fort Tryon Park?”

“I appreciate the effort,” he said, “but I just couldn’t get away.”

I looked back through the store’s racks and shelves, further examining the crowd I had only given a cursory glance to upon entering. Each of them looked a bit like the types of people I saw dressed up on their way over to the Javits Center for the annual Comic Con.

“I’m sorry; are we keeping you from something?” I asked.

Rory took note of the crowd. “Is this one of your live action role-playing thingies?”

Marshall blushed, holding his hand out to Rory.

“Something like that,” he said. “I’m sure you two did fine without me. I’ve just got a lot going on with the store.”

“Who knew gaming could be such work?” Rory asked. She stepped up to the counter and threw down the notes she had been taking at the Cloisters earlier. “This should make your night. Tagged another Griever. Released it to Sanctuary.”

“Thanks,” he said absently as he pulled the notes over, already looking down at his books again. Marshall pulled open a large binder, flipped to a tabbed section labeled “Grotesques,” and began transcribing Rory’s notes onto a blank page there. A few lines in, he pulled his hand up to find a wet smear of ink on his hand and the page.

“Sorry about the pages . . .” Rory said. “It was raining.”

“And the blood, too,” I added. “I was . . . well, bleeding.”

“You okay?” he asked, for the first time looking at us as if he was genuinely concerned.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, even though as I finally took the time to assess myself, I felt far less than it.

“She could have died tonight,” Rory said. “You weren’t there for us and she could have bled out.”

“It’s no big deal,” I assured him even though I felt blood dripping off my left hand onto the floor of his store. “Just crashing through a stained glass window, is all.”

“Jesus, let me look at that,” Marshall said, shutting his book and coming around the counter.

I shrugged my jacket off my shoulder, a wad of notebook paper pressed against the wound still sticking in place. What had once been your typical white-lined paper was now a crimson brown.

Rory’s eyes went wide upon seeing the papers. “We need to get you to a hospital,” she said.

The sight of my own blood did make me feel queasy, but I shook my head. “No time,” I said. “If I can get back out there and hunt, I can at least bag another gargoyle tonight.”

Marshall pulled away the clump of blood-soaked notepaper. “Not if you look like one of Dracula’s victims,” he said. “This looks pretty bad, Lexi.”

“Listen to the man,” Rory said, nodding in agreement with him. “You’re no good to your cause if you don’t take care of yourself first. Let’s just hit Beth Israel’s emergency room and call it a night.”

“No,” I insisted, harsher this time. “I
need
to be out there in the streets. I need to find more of these
grotesques
.”

“Lexi—” Rory started, but Marshall cut her off.

“I can fix this,” he said, which caused both of us to turn to him.

“Oh, really,
Doctor
Blackmoore?” Rory asked. “Funny, I failed to notice any medical degrees hanging on the walls of our apartment. Do you keep them here, covered over by that Settlers of Catan poster, perhaps?”

I wrinkled up my face in uncertainty. “No offense,” I said, “but won’t your ‘help’ just end up putting me in the hospital with something worse?”

Marshall ignored both of us and hurried back to his counter, disappearing for a second as he dropped behind it.

“Keep it up, ladies,” he said. “If you prefer, I can just let you stand there until you lose enough blood and collapse . . . ?”

Curiosity—or maybe it was light-headedness—got the better of me.

“All right,” I said. “How?”

Marshall stood, but continued searching beneath the counter as he spoke. “Just because I’ve been busy with the store doesn’t mean I’ve stopped experimenting with the alchemy your boy toy Caleb got me started on,” he said. His hand came out from under the counter with a dark plastic vial in it, the only marking being a piece of duct tape down its side with the letters
CLW
on it. “Ah, here we go.”

“CLW?” I asked.

“Cure Light Wounds,” he said, coming back around to me once more.

Rory eyed him with skepticism as she finally pulled off the hood of her coat and fluffed out her wet blue hair. “This is one of your gaming things, isn’t it?”

Marshall looked down his nose at her. “When
isn’t
it? It’s from Dungeons and—”

“That’s more than I need to know, Marsh,” she said with a grin.

Marshall rolled his eyes, shrugged, and fished in his pocket, pulling out one of those thick Sharpie markers.

“Here,” he said, handing it to me. “Bite down on this.”

With some reluctance I took it from his hand. “For real?” I asked, unable to hide the hesitation in my voice.

He nodded.

“For real,” he repeated. “It’s bad enough you’re dripping blood all over the entrance to my store. I don’t need you biting off your tongue while I’m applying this and have it flap all over my floor.”

The imagery left me feeling even
more
light-headed, but I was determined to stay standing and caught myself before it had me staggering. Without another word I lifted the Sharpie to my lips and slid it across my mouth the same way a dog would a bone.

Marshall pulled the vial’s stopper free and lifted it to the bloody slash on my arm. A black, tarlike substance oozed from the vial, and the second it touched the wound, there was instantaneous pain. Intense, burning-like-Hellfire pain.

My lips snapped shut involuntarily around the marker, my teeth biting down hard on the cold plastic. The sounds I heard coming from my own lips reminded me of a wounded animal. It drew looks from the people at the back of the game store, but I was so busy trying to pull away from Marshall that I didn’t care who heard. I wanted to wipe the liquid away, but Rory’s fighter reflexes were quicker than mine. Her hands flashed out and gripped tight around my wrist, holding me in place.

My skin crawling back together to close the wound sent a shiver down my spine. When it was over and the pain subsided, the only signs that there had ever been a wound were a few flakes of dried blood and a faint pink line where the cut had been.

“How’s that feel?” Marshall asked, stoppering his vial.

I pulled the pen from my mouth, my teeth having left deep impressions in the plastic.

“Good,” I said, flexing my arm, then smiled. “Great, actually.”

Marshall raised his eyebrows. “Nothing that feels like your flesh might be being eaten from the inside out, right . . . ?”

“No,” I said, drawing the word out. “Why are you even asking that?”

“No reason, no reason,” he said as quick as he could, then turned his eyes away from me, hurrying back behind the counter. He held up the now-empty vial. “Let’s just say there’s a good reason I’ve started making sure that I label these well.”

Despite the wound being gone, I blanched at the idea of being a test subject of some kind. “I don’t want to be your guinea pig, Marsh,” I said.

“You’re not!” he insisted.

“Me, either,” Rory added with warning in her voice.

“Don’t worry,” he said to her. “You don’t get hurt
nearly
as much as Lexi does.” His eyes turned to me and his face went serious. “You’re getting reckless, Alexandra.”

I started to argue, but decided against it. There was no malice in what Marshall said, only the fact-based concern of a true friend. I gave him a genuine smile.

“Thank you,” I said. “You work miracles.”

He dropped the vial behind the counter and leaned forward on top of it. “Just promise Rory and me that you’re not going back out tonight.”

It was my turn to avert my eyes in avoidance, busying myself as I pulled my blood-covered Burberry jacket back on.

“I can’t make that promise,” I said. “I just . . . can’t. Too much to do . . .”

“You need rest,” Rory insisted.

“I can sleep during the day,” I countered, heading for the door, “when they’re inactive.”

Rory sighed behind me.

“Ten bucks says she doesn’t make it to the weekend without another injury,” Marshall said.

“Wait,” I said with a growing sense of doom. “What day of the week
is
it again . . . ?”

“Monday,” Rory said, shaking her head at me.

“Crap on a crap cracker!” I said with dawning realization.

“What’s the problem?” Marshall asked.

“You’ll both be happy to hear that I
am
going home,” I said.

“What’s the matter?” Rory asked. “Has getting knocked about enough finally beaten some sense into you?”

“Worse,” I said, spinning back around to the door and walking out into the night, thankful that at least the rain had subsided. “I’ve got to be social.”

Alexandra

E
ntering the familiar comfort of my building on Saint Mark’s Place always calmed my soul and reminded me of my great-great-grandfather’s guildhall beneath all of its new construction. It reminded me of how far I had come as the only practicing Spellmason in the past year since discovering the location. The only thing that outdid my own transformation was Caleb Kennedy going from the alchemist who had attacked Rory and me there, to becoming actual dating material.

I wasn’t sure reformed alchemical freelancers were typically considered the best boyfriend stock, but given how little time I had for things like practicing my artistic endeavors or just a life right now, someone who shared my arcane interests was as good as it got as a distraction from all the crazy.

As I climbed the stairs up to my main living area and dining room, my heart raced a little in anticipation of what our planned date night might have in store for me. Much to my surprise, however, I found the dining room untouched.

“Awesome,” I said to the empty space. I pulled off my backpack and laid it on the table, disappointed. Only then did I notice the plain white note card sticking out from under it, and that was because a piece of string snaked off the table from it and ran across the room.

I pulled the note card free.

The presence of your company is required for an evening under the stars.

A small smile crept to my lips, and with curiosity getting the better of me, I followed the string across the room where it led out the doorway and continued up the stairs. It snaked around the banister the entire way, other cards dangling from it as I followed.

Closer.

Almost there.

Getting hungry yet?

Pushing open the rooftop access door, I stepped out into the familiar sight of Gramercy Park, recreated painstakingly on my rooftop. Much of the rain had dried up from earlier, and the string trailed off down one of the cobblestone paths. I turned and pushed the door shut behind me, watching it vanish as its false stone facade matched itself back into the column concealing it.

The string continued along the path next to the running brook, and the farther I moved into the park, the more sounds of activity within there were.

In the clearing at the center were two tables lit only by the minimal light of the moon and a few scattered candles. One of the tables was set with a dark red tablecloth, flowers, and place settings. On either side of the gold chargers were more forks and spoons than I was used to seeing. Caleb worked over a mix of food, test tubes, and vials at the other table, the moonlight catching in his muss of dirty blond hair.

The string led to one of the chairs and I went over to it, finally drawing Caleb’s notice.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said, as sheepishly as I could. “I . . . umm, almost forgot.”

“Forgot?” he said, looking up from the table he was working at. “Or were you working too hard?”

“Not you, too,” I said. “Did Rory and Marshall call you?”

“No,” he said. “Let’s just say I have mad pattern recognition skills.”

“It’s busy out there,” I said in my defense. “Halloween’s coming, and I’d like as many gargoyles off the street as possible before costume confusion sets in. I don’t want someone getting crushed because they mistook a
grotesque
for someone on their way to a Halloween party.”

“Relax,” he said, coming over to pull my chair out for me. “You’re home now.”

“Thanks,” I said, remaining standing. I leaned against the back of the chair.

Caleb held a small white spoon with a raw slice of beef in it. He pulled a vial from within his jacket of a thousand pockets and poured whatever mixture was in it over the spoon. The piece of meat sizzled, and I detected not only the aroma of the meat from the spoon but the hint of buttery potatoes, corn, and what smelled like apple pie.

“What is it?” I asked when he offered me the spoon, taking it with a bit of reluctance.

“Taste it,” he said. “It’s something new I’m trying. Alchemical cooking.”

I pulled the spoon away from my mouth. “I’m really not an experimental-alchemical-potions-imbibing kind of gal,” I said.

Caleb took my hand in his and eased it back to my lips. “Try it,” he said. “It’s safe. I promise. Alchemist’s honor.”

Given his checkered past, I wondered how honorable that actually was, but held my tongue. There was a comfort and trust in the way he asked, and I put the spoon in my mouth. An explosion of the flavors I thought I had smelled erupted in my mouth, so intense I couldn’t quite process all of them.

“What exactly am I tasting?”

“It’s your complete dinner,” he said. “All in one spoon. There’s steak and potatoes, creamed spinach and corn, topped off with both a blueberry and apple pie. But that’s just the beginning of dinner. That amuse-bouche is the essence of the arc of the meal I’ve prepared tonight for you.”

I sat there for a moment, moving it around in my mouth, letting the various flavors hit me. Hearing what Caleb was going for helped me to pin down each of them.

“Well . . . ?” he asked, his eyes desperately seeking approval.

I smiled. “The snozzberries taste like snozzberries, Wonka.”

His face lit up. He walked back to his prep table.

“So, honey,” he asked in a singsong voice. “How was your day?”

“Day?”
I repeated. “During the day, I was asleep. My night, on the other hand . . .”

“Busy?”

“You might say that,” I said, pulling off my coat. I poked my finger through the gash in the upper part of the left sleeve of my shirt, the blood there now a dried brown stain.

Caleb’s eyes widened and he stepped back over to me, examining the jagged hole.

Under the moonlight the hint of a scar was barely visible. I reminded myself to get something fancy for Marshall from that ThinkGeek site he was always showing Rory and me.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m okay. Now, anyway.”

I wasn’t about to tell Caleb the full extent of my wounds from earlier. There had been enough lectures about it at the game store this evening. My late-night dinner date with Caleb might go easier if I kept quiet on the subject.

“You really should take it easy,” Caleb said.

I couldn’t hold back a sigh as I sat down in the chair.

“What?” he asked. “Is it so wrong that I don’t want you getting yourself killed, especially on date night?”

“Maybe if I had some help,” I shot back, half kidding but also half serious. “You
are
partially responsible for the recent resurgence in gargoyle activity, after all.”

“Through no fault of my own,” Caleb added with lightning speed. He walked back to his prep table and continued on with his cooking.

“No fault . . . ?!” I repeated, shocked. “You’re joking, right? My
intended
spell was meant to work on
one
statue, not all of Alexander’s across Manhattan.”

“You and I have different recollections of that evening, then,” he said, throwing me a sidelong smile.

“Do we, now?” I asked, slumping back in the chair, arms folded across my chest.

“Yes, we do,” he said, walking back over to the dining table and sliding a plate across it to me. “By my accounting of it, I was trying to save you and your friends.”

“You were trying to save
yourself
,” I said, pointing a finger at him.

He considered it for a moment. “Those are
not
mutually exclusive.”

“Fine,” I conceded. “Continue.”

“I
had
a plan,” he said, going back to his prep table. “Kejetan’s evil little gargoyles would have had to contend with the
other
gargoyles I created by way of amplifying your spell. Had
my
plan worked, I would have added, what? Maybe several dozen stoners out there, tops, not the whole city’s worth.” He pointed at me with a fork. “That’s on you and your friends for interfering with what I was trying to accomplish.”

Caleb finished filling his plate before dropping it across the table, joining me.

“And that doesn’t bother you?” I asked. “Knowing what you’ve brought down on this city?”

He sighed and looked up from his plate, his attitude blasé. “If I got upset with every arcane twist or turn that’s happened in my freelancing career as an alchemist, I’d be the most morose person out there. Magic is a pseudoscience on a
good
day, which means it’s at best often unpredictable.” He shrugged. “I roll with the eldritch punches.”

“I couldn’t do that,” I said. “Jesus, I can barely sleep for all the guilt I bear over my involvement in it.”

“Of course you can’t sleep,” he said, going back to eating. “You’re a product of arcane privilege.”

“Excuse me . . . ?” I asked. “What the hell is that?”

“Don’t be so offended,” he said. “You can’t help it. You were born into it. You’ve never had to hustle on the street to make a living selling spells or potions or taking odd alchemical jobs to make ends meet.
That’s
arcane privilege.”

“I work hard at what I do,” I protested.

“Sure you do,” he said. “But it’s not like it’s a job.”

“Not everyone is motivated by profit,” I said.

Caleb laughed at that, enjoying the good-natured ribbing and verbal jousting as much as I did, maybe more since just then I was actually a little offended by his accusation.

“Do you even hear yourself?” he said with a laugh. “Ever hear the maxim ‘Money makes the world go round’?”

“Some people do things because they have a love for it,” I said. “A talent for it. Maybe a family legacy to excel at it.”

He held his hands up. “Fine, fine,” he said. “Look. I didn’t come here for an argument. I came to celebrate.”

It was too late. I was riled now. “I’m out there every night trying to get control of this situation . . . a situation you and I created! Anything bad that happens while those stone creatures are out there is on us. With great power comes—”

Caleb shook his head at me. “Don’t give me that Spider-Man crap,” he said, then reached across the table to take my hand, squeezing it. “Lexi, I love your altruism, but I just don’t think the best solution is to try to personally hunt down every last one of these creatures.” He tapped his forehead. “You know, work smarter, not harder and all that.”

“Well, what are you actively doing to help the cause?” I asked. “Because right now it looks like you’re doing two things: jack and shit.”

He smiled at that.

“I’ve got my connections,” he said. “My feelers are out there. The arcane community—what spastic factions there are of it, anyway—is already trying to contend with this sudden influx of gargoyles in their own way.”

“How?”

“Well, for one, I’ve done a lot of groundwork making sure no one knows who actually caused said influx of gargoyles.”

I shook my head with a grimace. “Again, protecting yourself,” I said.

“And you,” he said, his face turning serious. “You don’t understand these people, Alexandra. They see this awakening, as they call it, as a hostile move by some grand sorcerer supreme out there. Some of the local factions in the boroughs are out for blood. It takes a lot of effort to keep you and me out of their sights.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “I’m a child of arcane privilege
and
a Magical’s Most Wanted now.”

“Back to that, are we?” he said. “You’ve just never had to scramble for it, that’s all. It’s not a judgment call.”

“You don’t have to scramble anymore for it, either,” I reminded him. “You can come work for Team Belarus. I’ll put you on retainer.”

Caleb raised one eyebrow. “Tempting,” he said, “but I think I’ll pass.”

“What?” I asked. “My money’s not good enough?”

“You know what high esteem I hold financial gain in, but it would be . . . well, odd. Let’s not bring money into our relationship. My favorite part of being a freelancer is the being free part.”

“You, sir, have commitment issues,” I said, my mood a solid mix of flirtation and frustration by then.

His eyes met mine from across the table and he smiled. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

His words bordered on being far too suave, almost cheesy, but I couldn’t help smiling back.

“I tried to resist you,” I told him as I raised a glass. “I really did, but you just
had
to go be all adorable by blowing yourself up on our enemies’ boat to save me and my friends, didn’t you?”

“Years of downing alchemical concoctions will make a fellow nigh invulnerable like that,” he said with a shrug like it was an everyday thing for him.

I reached across the table and took his hand, squeezing it. “You act like blowing yourself up was nothing,” I said, “but back then
you
didn’t know you were going to prove near indestructible, which only makes your intended sacrifice all the more noble.”

And Lord, did I have a soft spot in my heart for nobility,
I thought, allowing myself to finally relax into my evening and try to enjoy the moment.

Or I
would
have. A flurry of activity dropped down out of the sky into the shadows to the left side of our table, the rooftop shaking with the impact. Caleb and I were both up and out of our seats before either of us could process what was going on, reacting out of pure instinct. Caleb’s hands were already reaching into his coat for one of his alchemical concoctions, and I had snapped my connection out to pavement stone pathways all around us.