Stonecast (21 page)

I started sloshing my way toward him. “But I would like to know more about this Witch and Bitch club,” I added. “We might have defeated their sentry, but we didn’t have an easy time of it.”

Caleb looked down at his clothes in disgust and turned away, heading off down the sewer tunnel.

“Oh, I plan on seeing them again,” he said. “And when I do? I’m going to
really
give them something to bitch about.”

“Tough words for a guy covered in shit,” I said, hoping this tunnel actually led the hell out of the sewer system before I found myself having to fight mutant turtles of the teenage variety.

Caleb did not seem amused by my comment. “If we succeed in animating another gargoyle, I may have to borrow it for a bit,” he said. “Call it a vengeance loaner.”

“We’ll see about that,” I said. I couldn’t muster the strength for vengeance just then. I wasn’t even sure if I could muster it to shower before collapsing from exhaustion.

I just hoped I didn’t collapse while I was still down here.

Stanis

T
ime had not always been kind to the copper of the large female statue that stood towering over what the humans called Liberty Island. Now, standing atop it, it was clear that at some point the humans had intervened to preserve her form, which gave me immense satisfaction, even amid my own current turmoil. I found her constant vigil over the city I had come to love soothing, her presence helpful in centering my thoughts.

I always gave thanks for her presence, even during the years of her restoration, when she was inaccessible and surrounded by scaffolding. At the moment it was most especially welcome as I attempted to sort out the mix of sensations that overwhelmed my mind. I always found a sadness in its face that matched my own. If only it, too, could come to life, I would gladly have welcomed discourse with it.

My newfound freedom had come at a price. Alexandra now worked with the very man who had tortured me at Kejetan’s command. I wasn’t sure what to do now that I was free, but I reasoned that my presence would be missed by my father if I should not return from the work he had tasked me with.

Worse, I imagined that Alexandra might then become a more specific target of Kejetan. In order to ensure her safety, I knew what I had to do and leapt into the night sky, heading out to sea.

It always took some navigation to find the freighter, but the farther out I flew, the higher I went, the sense of perspective making it easier to spy the ship in the darkness of the sea. I spiraled down toward its deck, alive with a handful of stone men and human Servants of Ruthenia, but it was not their activity that caught my eye. A familiar face lurked among the shadows of the shipping containers stacked on the deck of the ship.

Correcting my course, I aimed for the figure, and, before he could notice my approach, I had the alchemist’s head in one of my hands, lifting. Doubling the speed of my wings, I rose into the air as Caleb wrapped both his arms around the one holding his head, clinging on for his fragile human life. I came down on one of the more deserted upper decks of the ship, throwing open the door that led into one of the empty storage compartments there, then closing it behind us once we were inside.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, still holding him. “And where is Alexandra? She was with you when last I saw her.”

“Ow, ow, ow,” he said, pounding his fists against arm and clawed hand. “Let go of my head, and I’ll tell you.”

I unclenched my fist from around his skull and lowered my arm.

“Alexandra’s fine,” he said.

Now that we were no longer moving, a noxious odor filled the air around us and I stepped back from him. “What is that smell?”

“That would be me,” he said, raising his hand. “The oh-so-pleasant and hard-to-get-out scent of raw sewage.”

I leaned over him, my voice a growl. “You took Alexandra to the sewers?”

The alchemist raised his hands between the two of us and backed away.

“Technically,
she
took me,” he said. “But long story short, we found the spells we needed. She went home to sleep and study up on them, so that maybe we can build you a girlfriend or whatever, but she’s fine.”

“I am not in need of a girlfriend,” I said. “I am in need of allies.”

“
I’m
an ally,” he said.

“Are you?” I asked, unsure. “Back to my question, Caleb. Why exactly did you come back here?”

The alchemist shifted in place, full of nerves behind the bravado he was trying to convince me he had.

“I’m just trying to tie up some loose ends,” he said, rubbing the sides of his face where my claws had been digging in. “I’ve got unfinished business here that needs some discussion with the big man. I planned to cover my ass. What are
you
doing here?”

“Protecting Alexandra,” I said.

“Shit,” he said. “Can I change my answer? That sounds a lot less selfish than mine.”

“You
are
selfish,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, dismissing it. “Hey, my plan was going to cover yours, too. Now I answered you, so you answer me. What are
you
doing here? What do you even mean by ‘protecting Alexandra’?”

“I had thought to make an appearance,” I said. “Kejetan would think it strange if neither of us showed ourselves around here anymore. I wanted him to believe that, as you humans say, it is busy-ness as usual.”

Caleb laughed. “Close enough. You really think you’re up for pulling one over on Kejetan the Accursed? You’re pretty easy to read. Your wings betray you. Right now, they’re twitching, meaning I’m annoying you. If I can see through you, maybe you should fly away now while you still can. I don’t need your ruining this.”

His attitude over the last few minutes, mixed with his laughter, struck a chord in me, one of anger. “And do you think you will do any better manipulating my father?”

“Don’t think I don’t know what this is all about,” he said, wagging a finger in my face.

“I do not know what you mean.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “If you had your way, you’d actually crush my head.”

It was true the desire was strong in me, but I did not wish to give the human satisfaction.

“I wish no such thing,” I said. “But would it be such a stretch, human? You
did
torture me.”

Caleb sighed. “I told you I didn’t even think there was a lick of humanity to you,” he said, throwing his arms up the air, his voice filled with exasperation.

I knew that particular feeling all too well and stepped up to him, staring down into his eyes.

“That does not change the fact that it happened.”

The human looked ready to burst, but he had no immediate answer for that and fell silent for a moment. It was a petty victory, but a victory nonetheless. The sensation felt most gratifying.

Caleb walked off in silence and moved about ten feet away before turning back to me. He looked around the empty hold, making sure we were alone.

“You know what?” he said. “I don’t think any of this is about what I did to you.”

My wings fluttered in reaction, and I cursed myself for it, but his words caught me off guard. “No?”

“No,” he said, marching back up to me. “I think this is all about Lexi. She spoke about the connection you two once shared when you were bound to her family. I think you want that back, and it kills you a little to see her wrapped up in me.”

It was strange to hear this person I knew so little of speak of private matters that were only the business of the Belarus bloodline, and I raised my voice.

“The affairs of this family are none of your concern.”

“Lexi’s
made
them my concern,” he said, rapping his knuckles against the stone of my chest, scraping them against it until the skin tore and a hint of blood rose to the surface. He held his bloody fingers up to my face. “And, really, what can you offer her? Abrasions? A skinned knee?”

The sight of human flesh torn due to me in any capacity filled my thoughts of Alexandra coming to harm from contact with me, and I forced myself to keep control of the darkness rising within me. “You know nothing of the bond between Alexandra and me.”

“I know it’s broken,” he said. “What she feels for me is there because it happened naturally,
not
because someone wove a spell over me to make that connection happen.”

My arm shot out as I grabbed him by the edges of his coat and lifted him.

“Perhaps you have woven your magic over her,” I said. “Perhaps you poisoned Alexandra’s better judgment with your elixirs, your potions, your magic that lives in your tiny bottles. But its power never lasts too long, does it? It is only a matter of time before she sees you as you truly are.”

Anger coursed through me, but was it because he was antagonizing me or because he spoke the truth about a jealousy I had of mortal man? I stared at Caleb in contemplation of this, raging within, but the eyes that met mine had become calm.

“Let’s face facts,” he said bluntly. “The lovely Miss Belarus prefers my company to yours. You’re nothing more than a family heirloom.”

His words stung, but I put him down and turned away before I did something impulsive. Regardless of the truth of the matter, I needed to keep my calm aboard Kejetan’s freighter.

Caleb straightened the edges of his coat, tugging the fabric into place until it was once more smooth against his form.

“And even if there was something more between you and her,” he said, circling around to meet my eye, “what could there ever truly be between the two of you? Think about it. She’s human. What kind of a life would that be with her? With me she stands a chance of being a part of humanity, of actually being happy.”

As much as I did not want to admit it, the alchemist had a point, but that did not mean it sat well within me. I fumed over it in silence until he shook his head and headed for the door out of the room.

“Where are you going?” I asked, blocking his way.

He met my eye, his gaze unwavering. “Move, Stanis,” he said. “There is work to be done here on this ship. I need to talk to Kejetan if I’m going to keep him unaware that his stone ‘Dobbie’ is a free gargoyle now.”

I did not know what this Dobbie was, but I stayed in front of the door, unmoving. “I can handle that myself,” I said.

Caleb sighed. “No, you can’t,” he said, stuffing his hands down into the pockets of his coats. “You don’t have the practice at lying that I do. Trust me. You go in to your father, in front of your own kin—”

“He is
not
my kin,” I growled.

Caleb stepped back and pointed at me with both hands. “You see? You get so agitated at even the mention of him, and
that’s
what’s going to ruin it. You don’t stand a chance of convincing that mad pile of rocks that you’re still under his sway gathering statues for him. Go home, Stanis. Go back to the Belarus Building and let me handle this.”

I could not argue with him and stepped aside, though it hurt my soul to give this man anything. “You will never have the bond that Alexandra and I share.”

Caleb did not look back. He simply walked out the door. “Get out of here, Stan,” he said, his voice flat. “Leave the lying to the professionals.”

The alchemist turned out of sight, and by the time I went out through the same door moments later, he had already disappeared into the freighter.

I flew off, frustrated, but knowing the human had probably been right in handling the situation himself. I could have stayed and argued, but I had not, choosing instead the chill of the night against my body as I shot across the night sky.

The heaviest question that lay across my heart, however, was not about dealing with my father.

Was I fighting with this Caleb to keep Alexandra safe or was it because of his connection with her? And what if Caleb was correct, saying that my bond to her had only existed because the last practicing Spellmason from centuries ago had put it there?

It left a hole within me that, for the moment, I could only fill with the joy that flight brought me, but the question still lingered.

How could I trust that my feelings were my own?

Alexandra

T
he threat of rain hung in the night air as the group of us worked atop my family’s building. Caleb had moved his mixing station from the other night just inside the covered doorway leading back downstairs. In his hands, colorful concoctions flew from one vial to another while flasks and beakers foamed with other mixtures. Very mad-scientist. All the while, Caleb consulted his notes, adjusted volumes with a care and precision that boggled my mind. He had even been set up and hard at work before the rest of us got here.

The ever-wary Rory leaned on the wall next to him, arms crossed, watching, while Marshall played lab assistant, applying the last batch of Caleb’s home brew to the one statue I was going to attempt to animate. Going over my notes next to Caleb, I noticed Alexander’s newfound book lying closed on the worktable.

“How do you know what you need to do to prepare the statue for tonight?” I asked. “You’re not even consulting the book.”

Caleb kept his face down in his work, producing a tiny vial from within the shoulder bag he wore that night, pouring it into a large beaker on the table.

“I told you I was a Spellmason fan,” he said. “I’m an avid reader when it comes to it.”

I looked down at my notebook in my hands. “I took a ton of notes,” I said. “I couldn’t memorize anything that quick.”

Caleb smiled. “Trust me. When you end up ingesting as many of these alchemical elixirs and potions as I do, you learn to pay attention very quickly.”

“Let’s hope you finish all this without accidentally killing yourself,” Rory said, drawing a look from him. She gave a pained smile.

I was finding both her and Marshall’s mistrust of Caleb a bit unfounded lately, but then again, they hadn’t been working as closely as I had with him. I chalked it up to maybe a bit of jealousy that there was someone around who I needed more than them right now, but that was a discussion for another time.

“I don’t plan on drinking this,” Caleb said, looking up to her. “You don’t have to watch over me, you know.”

“Yes,” she said, not moving. “Yes, I do.”

Caleb took a moment, kept silent, then turned back to his work. He grabbed a reddish brown jug of our own attempt of Alexander’s Kimiya recipe and added some of it to the flask in his hand, filling it with about three inches of the mixture. He put the jug down with care, then slowly stirred the contents of the flask with a glass rod.

Marshall came back over to us from the statue, a brush in one hand and an emptied beaker in the other.

“Ready for another,” he said, a little damp from the few drops of rain that had begun to fall. He wiped his forehead with the forearm of his left sleeve. “I didn’t realize there would be so much arts and crafts. How am I supposed to learn what you’re mixing there?”

Caleb smiled but didn’t look up. “Consider this the hazing part of your education,” he said. “You get the grunt work.”

“Great,” Marshall said with a long, slow sigh. “Just like high school. Yay.”

“Here come the traumatic flashbacks,” Rory added.

Caleb lifted the beaker with care, but when Marshall reached out for it, he shook his head.

“I’d better do this one,” Caleb said.

“Why?” Marshall asked, looking a little hurt. “Is it my painting? Am I not leaving the right brushstrokes?”

Caleb held up the beaker with painstaking slowness.

“This mixture here is what I call
active
,” he said. “Right now, it’s a volatile liquid. And no offense, I still don’t know you that well, so I’m going to trust
me
not to kill anyone with it over
you
. Is that a suitable enough answer for you?”

Marshall’s face fell, and he raised his arm slowly, holding up the brush. “Sure,” he said, stammering. “No problem. You take this one. I’ll just watch, and, you know, not blow my hands off or anything.”

“Great,” Caleb said, grabbing the brush from Marshall’s hand. “A little goes a long way.”

The skies opened up, the fall of rain growing heavier every second.

“Won’t that wash off?” I asked.

Caleb shook his head. “It’s viscous,” he said. “You’d need a scrub brush and a couple of hours to make a dent in it. Don’t worry about the rain.”

He walked off, and Rory, ever vigilant, followed him, leaving Marshall and me to walk over to Stanis, perched at the edge of the building and watching it all. Whether it was real or I was imagining it, his silence felt more pronounced than ever since his return to us.

“You ready to see if we can make you some allies?” I asked.

Stanis looked down at me. “I do not know how to answer that,” he said, his words heavy. “I have never known another of my kind. If they are anything like the Servants of Ruthenia, perhaps I am not ready.”

“Relax,” I said. “I’m only going to try this on one of the figures first. If it works and goes well, then we’ll move on activating the rest.”

Marshall looked uncertain. “How’s this going to work exactly?”

“Somewhat like Bricksley,” I said. “Only on a much grander scale. The act of binding life to stone is different than manipulating it, which comparatively has been easier. The effort I put into getting Bricksley working was draining. It’s weaving spirit to stone, animating the material and allowing the spirit in.”

“And what if we get an asshole in there?” Marshall asked.

“We force it out,” I said. “In theory, anyway. But if it
does
work on this one, we’ll be able to create enough of an army to take care of Kejetan and the rest of his servants.” I looked up at Stanis, catching his eyes. “I’m not compromising this time. I did that last time when I released you and let you go with them, and look where that got us.”

“I am sorry,” Stanis said. “I could think of no other way that would have kept you safe.”

“And it did,” I said, my heart breaking with the memory of it. “You bought us time, but at your expense, and I won’t have that again. We end this together or not at all.”

Stanis turned to watch Caleb prepping the statue. “And
he
is a part of us now,” he said.

“You don’t trust him,” I said, more of a statement than a question.

“I cannot help it,” he said, his mood growing darker. “After all, it was he who bound me to my father’s will.”

“And the one who released you from it,” I reminded him.

This seemed to satisfy him for the moment, which was good because I needed to go over the notes I had written out about the ritual.

Caleb came over to us, empty container in hand, checking the time on his watch. “Ready?”

I closed my notebook and slid it into my pocket. “As ready as one can be for creating life,” I said, and crossed the roof to the lone statue. Marshall and Rory came with me, moving off among the other statues at what I hoped was a safe distance.

Caleb came over and squeezed my hand.

“It’s your show now,” he said.

I squeezed his back and let go. I needed to focus, which was hard enough in the rain without thinking about him. I breathed out one long, slow breath, then set about the ritual.

With the skill of Rory when she danced, I moved through the gestures, speaking my family’s words of power as I went. The burst of connection to the stone of the statue rolled throughout me stronger than I would have imagined, but I forced myself to ignore my surprise and concentrated on the spell.

This was more than just connecting with the stone the statue was made of. This was bonding with the actual
grotesque
form of it. Every part of me felt its wings, its arms, its legs, its hands, its fingers, the claws at the tip of them. My mind readied the statue to be more than it was, readied it to be an open vessel to fill its form. The words of my spell tore away the last barrier to it, releasing the will with which I was controlling it and setting the animated stone free to receive whatever spirit it drew. Drained, I stumbled back, pulling out of the spell’s narrow focus, finally able to once more take in my surroundings on the rooftop.

A lot had changed in the minutes I had been under the thrall of my spell.

The rain had turned into a full-blown storm all around us, and Rory was grabbing at Marshall from where they stood among the other statues, spinning him around to her.

“What’s wrong?” I shouted, weakened now, my words lost in the storm.

Rory pulled her hand back from one of the surrounding statues. “Why are these like this?” she shouted out.

“Like what?” Marshall called back.

“It’s wet,” she said.

“It’s
raining
,” he said.

She held her hand up in front of his face. “It’s
coated
 . . . in the same stuff you two were putting on that one statue.”

I stumbled to one of the other statues nearby, slapping my hands on it. “They’re
all
coated,” I said. My eyes landed on an unfamiliar piece of jagged stone sitting on the base of the statue, but I didn’t have the time to process what it might be.

“Shut it down!” Marshall said, grabbing me by my shoulders, which almost toppled me over in my weakened state.

“How do you stop it?” Rory asked, joining him at my side.

“You don’t,” Caleb called out from where he stood at the side of the building. He looked down over the edge at something below. “It’s happening now!”

“Stanis!” I shouted, looking around to find him still perched on the edge of the roof. “What is it?”

The gargoyle spun around and looked down. “Trucks,” he said. “Like the ones at the shipyards.”

Oh no,
I thought. The massive kind that could carry heavy cargo coming in from a ship, or in this case, a more sinister payload.

The door leading into the building came free of its hinges, shooting across the roof as it tumbled away. The jagged stone form of my former brother took up most of the doorway, powering through it as he came.

“Devon!” I shouted. “What is this?”

“Just call it reclaiming my family birthright,” he said.

Kejetan stormed through the door after him, a steady stream of stone followers pouring onto the roof behind him.

Stanis flew past me, slamming hard into their leader, knocking him back. The two tumbled over, locked in combat, Stanis attacking with a ferocity I hadn’t seen in him previously. Pieces of Kejetan’s stone form chipped away from him as Stanis landed blow after blow, flying across the roof.

One of them struck my foot, and I looked down at it, dawning realization hitting me. They looked just like the jagged piece I had seen laid out on the bases of the other statue.

Markers.
Kejetan’s plan suddenly made sense to me. He and his servants weren’t here to fight us; they meant to cast off their jagged stone forms and have their spirits take over those of my great-great-grandfather’s statues instead. The pieces of stone—the markers—on the bases of the statues were meant to lead each of the Servants of Ruthenia to their new bodies, thanks to the treachery of Caleb, it seemed.

Caleb was running among the statues, touching a vial to about half the ones on the roof as I realized he was activating the Kimiya on them. Each of them bore a piece of one of the stone men at their base.

Rory and Marshall chased after Caleb through the pounding rain, but it was too late.

“Whose side are you on?” I shouted at him over the noise of the storm.

“My own,” he said, stopping finally, letting the vial fall to the roof.

Stanis landed another blow to Kejetan, but as my spell and Caleb’s alchemy took effect, the rocks that made up the mad lord’s body flew apart with the impact of Stanis’s fist.

All around us, the jagged stone forms of Devon and the rest of the Servants crashed to the rooftop, lifeless, the spirits within leaving them for the more sophisticated forms of my great-great-grandfather’s statues. The component parts of their stone bodies came apart, and what had once been vaguely humanoid forms dissolved into piles of rough rock all along the roof.

Against the pouring rain, the invisible shapes of their searching spirits swirled through the air, the only telltale sign of their existence that of displaced rainwater as they flew. I followed the apparition that rose from the pile of rocks that had once been Devon and watched as it went to one of the stone-marked gargoyles in his attempt to be reborn into its form.

I ran to the statue, but by the time I got there, the swirling aerial shape had vanished into it, the stone of the gargoyle there changing in front of me. A roar of pain—my brother’s voice—cried out from the demonic-looking creature’s mouth as it reared its head to the sky. The rest of the body came to life as well in an uncontrolled flailing of limbs and wings, my brother’s spirit trying to gain control of it. Its feet tore free from the statue’s base, and the gargoyle fell to the ground on all fours, twitching.

“Devon . . . ?” I asked, moving to touch the cool, rain-covered stone of the gargoyle’s skin.

The wings flew open, the tip of one catching me in the stomach and sending me flying across the roof. I landed hard against one of the untreated statues and slumped to the ground, the wind knocked out of me as a sore spot spread out along my entire right side from the impact. Fighting the pain, I forced myself to stand as I took in the chaos of dozens of other statues coming to life all over the roof.