Redemption (30 page)

“We’re on our way,” he said.

He motioned for us to follow him as he explained:

“Apparently the idiots parked their cars in front of a factory, really stealthy of them.”

“How do we know they are actually in there?”
I didn’t want to have to shout to be heard while we ran back to our car.

“Not sure, but some light can be seen and noise can be heard. They’re waiting on us to go in.”

“Cowards!” I spit out. “Aude could be in trouble while they just stand around.”

The other building was a few minutes away from where we were. Everyone still stood outside when we arrived.

“We will go in through the window,” Garnier declared as he started to scale the wall before anyone had time to object or make any different plans. I was sure as hell going to follow him.

He paused at the window. When I caught up, I saw what held his attention. Aude was in there. My heart pounded at first with relief, then with apprehension. She was bound and gagged, lying back on a table. Blood surrounded her along with various implements of torture. I didn’t need to see the inanimate stone statue in front of her to know exactly what they were doing.

A guy dressed in camouflage gear dumped a bucket of water on her head and she jerked in response and began to struggle again. She was alive. I didn’t need any more than this to jump into action.

48

Aude

My eyes open suddenly. I’m wet and cold, but it doesn’t take me long to remember where I am. My aching body is a great reminder.

The boys are all moving around me. I shouldn’t call them boys. Some of them are men, but they are like boys playing soldier in their camo gear.

More movement, this time at the other end of the room, catches my attention. Before I can even understand what I’m seeing, Guillaume and Garnier are making their way toward me.

Stan and the other boys move to intercept them. Vincent jumps down from an impossibly high window and blocks them. Guillaume and Garnier run straight for me but are intercepted by the three church-attacker dudes.

Guillaume immediately transforms and snarls at them. He pounces on one man, but another grabs him in some sort of a neck hold and pulls him back. Guillaume turns on him with a vicious growl and I shut my eyes tight, scared to see what happens next.

Something tugs at my binds, and I open my eyes to see Garnier furiously trying to set me free. I open my mouth to thank him but instead I let out a scream when the third man, the one not in battle with Guillaume, grabs one of the knives that had been used to torture me and stabs toward Garnier.

Garnier twists away but the blade still plunges deep into his shoulder. He swears and grinds his teeth while pulling out the knife. A crimson stain begins to form on his blue shirt.

“Are you okay?” I scream out to him.

I twist and wiggle, every movement causes more pain in my body and the sharp thudding in my head increases. I need to be able to move. I need to do something, though I really don’t know what I can do.

Garnier turns on his attacker with the bloody knife. I wonder why he doesn’t change like Guillaume, and then it hits me; I never transferred essence to him like I did to Guillaume. So I close my eyes and use the new trick I learned. I pretend to transfer it, over and over again until it happens for real. This time it’s much quicker.

The softness in his gaze catches me by surprise, but it lasts only a moment until it hardens. Until everything hardens. And he transforms.

The man tries to run away, but Garnier chases him. He pins him to the ground and waits. He’s not going to kill him. I swallow hard and turn my head to look at Guillaume again.

Like Garnier, he has one man pinned. The other one is held by Antoine and Vincent, who are still in their human forms.

The four teenage boys are being held by the elders who came in after the most of the action was over. I struggle against my loosened binds and manage to get my wrists free. I can at least sit up and work on the other binds. Old man Robert helps Guillaume with the man he has pinned down, while another elder nervously assists Garnier. The two gargoyles transform back to their naked human forms and rush to my side to help me.

I’m now faced with not only one naked de Rouen boy, but two. Garnier’s face is stuck in a concentrated scowl and I know he’s hurting. As my adrenaline wears off I realize I don’t feel as much pain as I should. I must have inadvertently healed myself at the same time as I transferred essence to Garnier.

Guillaume unties what is left of the ropes around my legs. He smiles at me, but his face distorts when he looks at Garnier. I turn toward him. Guillaume screams at him to watch out. I can’t see what’s happening until Garnier grabs his chest.

“Noooo!” Guillaume screams.

He leaves me to make it to Garnier’s side. I notice, then, the struggle happening across the room where the others stand and how Stan is now pinned to the ground.

“What happened?”

Guillaume doesn’t look at me. “Someone. A knife. It was thrown.” He’s barely coherent.

“It looks like Marguerite is going to have to take me after all,” Garnier whispers.

The words sound like those of someone who’s dying. He can’t die.

“She will, you know she loved you too,” Guillaume answers.

What is he doing? Is he giving up on Garnier? He can’t give up on him. I swing my legs over on the right side of the table and throw myself down with some effort. I let out a sharp cry I when I hit the concrete ground. I’m not completely healed. I crawl to Guillaume’s side and all I can see is Garnier’s still form. Tears are running from my eyes freely. I don’t want him to die, he’s like a bright star and I can’t tolerate the thought of seeing it extinguished. But even worse than that, I know what Garnier’s death would do to Guillaume. I know he would never recover from it.

“I can’t let this happen.”

“There’s nothing we can do about it,” he says.

“I don’t get it, aren’t you guys immortal?”

“No, in this form we’re very much human, we don’t really age, and time has taught our bodies to be stronger, but we’re still mortal.”

“I have to fix this,” I say to myself.

“You can’t fix this.” There is an edge to his voice.

“Yes, I can.”

Guillaume pulls me away from Garnier, and everything hurts as he crushes me toward him. Yet, this time I can’t even enjoy our proximity, I have to get to Garnier. I can fix him, like Marguerite fixed Guillaume. She’s not going to be the only hero.

“He wouldn’t want it, Aude! You can’t do to him what she did to me!”

“Let go of me.” I struggle against him. “You can’t stop me.”

“Aude, I can’t lose you!”

It hits me in a way I never thought words could. My stomach drops when I realize what he’s saying. He wants me to live over Garnier. But maybe I don’t have to die. I can heal him and be okay. If I do nothing, Garnier dies for sure.

“And I can’t watch him die because of me! Not when there’s something I can do.”

He strokes my hair while whispering calming words in my ear. But I can’t let him do this to us. He can’t give up on his best friend.

“Owww!” I scream. His grip on me immediately loosens and I crawl away from him and put my hands on Garnier’s wound.

I close my eyes and concentrate really hard looking for the sound of drumming, it’s faint but still I know what I must do. Guillaume is pulling me away again, but now I know that it doesn’t matter. My eyes are closed and I let my body go limp in his arms, reaching deep down into myself. I find my essence and hold it for a while. The voices are talking to me and I can understand them now. I don’t have enough to heal Garnier. A creature like him needs extraordinary amounts of essence. I can’t kill myself for nothing, so instead I reach out. At first, all the vessels of essence, the bodies, are the same. But as I touch them and feel them I can see the difference—assign personalities to them.

Garnier’s essence is faint, like a few drops on the floor and I understand he’s keeping himself alive. It heartens me that he doesn’t want to die. I have an idea.

“What happens when one of you no longer have any essence?”

“We turn to stone, why?” Guillaume asked.

“Garnier, can you hear me?” I ask.

He’s completely still, but I feel his essence flicker. I have to take this as a yes.

“Turn to stone,” I tell him.

“He’ll be stuck watching forever.”

I shake my head. “I need to buy some time.”

“Aude, I don’t know what you’re trying to do,” he says.

“I’m trying to save Garnier.”

“I can’t lose you,” he tells me again.

Garnier’s edge begins to blur and I hope it’s because he heard me and is shifting and not some sort of strange gargoyle death.

“He’s going to be stuck watching now,” Guillaume says. “I know this isn’t what he wants.”

“I can heal him. Just trust me.”

“You’ll die.” Tears run down his cheeks, his voice raises, “Don’t you understand, Aude? You will die.”

Footsteps sound behind and I realize I have an audience. I can feel who they are, now. Antoine and Vincent.

I close my eyes and work at identifying the individuals who captured me. Now that I’ve manage to recognize my friends’ essence, I have a general idea what I’m looking for. The three older men shine in a strange way and I know I can easily find their essence in the room. Actually, it’s slimier somehow, like it isn’t properly anchored to them. I pull the shiny and fresh liquid from them and pour it into Garnier.

“I feel like I can change now.”

“Not yet, Garnier, you’re not healed yet.” I don’t know how I know this, but if he changes back now, it would only be to die.

I’m being too gentle. I close my eyes again, and look for those personalities I recognize. They’re harsh and dense, but the essence still flows through soft and beautiful. I could get lost in there. The energy of one of these men rushes around me. Round and round and round, and it is so pure at this level, not contaminated by his horrible personality.

Guillaume’s arms reach around my shoulders, and I remember myself, I remember Garnier, and something tells me I still need to hurry.

I yank the essence. It’s almost threadlike in my hands now and I pull like I’m unraveling this person’s life in front of me.

I don’t exactly know the consequences to what I’m doing are, but I know they won’t be good for my attacker. I don’t care.

I weave this thread into Garnier’s stone form, but he is like a vacuum, and it’s not enough. So I reach out to the other two I’d touched previously and I pull at them too, it’s like a dance, where I am spinning the life away from these men and sending it into my friend. A part deep inside of me tells me I should feel bad, but it’s easy to ignore and I feel giddy with power.

I can’t take anymore from the three men so I stop. Garnier’s form starts to shiver and waver. I know he’s changing back, but I’m not ready yet. I let Guillaume’s touch ground me as I reach deep within myself. I’m looking for something in there, but I can’t find it. I have to let go. The shimmery blue and white threads dance around me, I’m hot and cold, wet and dry, all at the same time.

A tightly wound ball sits at the core of it all, and the voices tell me that this is the part of myself I can’t lose. So I snip the swirling thread from the ball and leave it alone. I then grab all the rest of my essence and I push it into Garnier as he’s doing his transformation. It’s better this way, the voices say. But I know it will hurt him more if he’s in human form. It will also heal him more thoroughly.

He screams and his wail mixes in with the rest of the screaming—the screaming I’d been oblivious to until now. A shiver rushes up and down my spine. I’m responsible for those screams. I lose concentration and a strand of essence splashes to the ground and dissolves. Great, now I’m literally throwing my life away.

I ignore the screams and continue unraveling until there is nothing else left but that tightly wound ball inside of me.

I let myself go limp in Guillaume’s arms. So warm and so comforting. Tears drop on my face. He doesn’t understand what I’ve done, and my heart aches for him.

“Guillaume?”
I can’t allow the darkness to take me. I have enough life left in me. I need to find it again.

“Guillaume?”
Why can’t I feel his arms around me anymore? Did he leave me there?

I’m floating somewhere dark. It’s comfortable, though; there’s nothing to distract me. I could lie here and think of Guillaume’s arms around me holding me tight. Shouldn’t his arms be around me now?

“Guillaume?”
I want to scream to him that I need him. But I can’t do that. I’m like Mom, I don’t need anybody. A picture of Mom crying when she doesn’t realize I’m there surfaces to my mind. I don’t want to be like her.

“Guillaume? I need you.”
Even my mind voice is weak. I have to put more into it.

“Guillaume! I need you!”

I will have to do it on my own after all. I guess this is why Mom is alone. In the end, you can only rely on yourself. I navigate through the dark emptiness that is me. I’m like a cavity and somewhere in this darkness I must find a tightly wound ball of shining thread. You’d think it’s easy, but it isn’t because the dark isn’t really emptiness at all. It’s like cobwebs that I have to push aside to search all corners. I search and I search, and then I think that maybe I should give up. If in the end there is no one I can count on, then maybe there is also no reason why I should keep trying.