Stonecast

Twenty-two

Stanis

The feel of Caleb’s thin, fleshy throat in my clawed hand filled me with a great and terrible satisfaction as his weak little form attempted to break free. The sound of conflict on the roof above filled my ears, and the desire simply to close my hand shut until my fingers met in the middle of his neck was strong, but since retreating to the art studio, Alexandra had been quite clear that she did not wish it done.

“Forgive me, Alexandra,” I said, pressing my fingers in with a slight pressure, causing the blond human to struggle further to free himself, a dark joy filling me, “but why should I not just crush his head for his betrayal?”

Alexandra grabbed onto the arm I held Caleb with, pulling at it, but I would not yield.

“Because we’re not those kind of people,” she said, anger and concern in her voice. “Not just yet, anyway.”

She tried again to lower my arm, but her effort proved to be in vain, her physical strength no match for my own.

She met my eyes, and her voice changed, softening. “We all saw what he just did,” she said, “and I understand you have issues of your own with him. And after all you’ve been through, I would not dare order you to do anything, but please . . . I’m asking you not to harm him. We need answers.”

Aurora also put her hand on the stone skin of my arm.

“Don’t worry, big guy,” she said, brandishing her pole arm with her other hand. “I’ll keep an eye on him, without crushing his head. I’ve got a little more finesse with taking someone down without actually killing them if they act up. No offense.”

True choice had rarely been an option when I still lived by Alexander’s rules. Until Alexandra had freed me from them, I had not even known what it meant to choose of my own free will. For that, I would always be in Alexandra’s debt, and as I held this fragile human in my hand for wronging us, I did not take his life out of respect for her wish.

“Very well,” I said, lowering Caleb to the floor, my eyes burning into the wide, white pools of his. “But make no mistake, human. I will not hesitate to act at the hint of any further treachery.”

Free of my grip, Caleb stumbled onto the art studio’s debris-covered floor before finally righting himself. He straightened the coat he wore, wiping water from both it and his hair, all the while backing himself up against one of the half-empty broken bookcases.

“I’m sorry,” he said, holding up a hand as his eyes darted around. “But none of you will understand. I had to do that.”

“Did you, now?” Alexandra asked, the calm she had exhibited melting away as she charged him. With nowhere to turn, he held his hands up by the sides of his head and made no move to stop her. Alexandra slammed up against him, grabbing the edge of his coat.

“Did you really?” she asked again, but before Caleb could answer, she let go of his coat with her right hand, pulled her arm back, and shot it forward into his midsection while making a fist.

The air went out of the man, and he crumpled to the floor. I could not help but let a small smile creep onto my face. Clearly, I was not the only danger here.

“Well, I guess that I just had to do that then, too,” she said, and stepped away from him.

Aurora leaned closer to me. “Looks like we can both stand down,” she said.

I looked down at her, cocking my head. “Stand down . . . ?”

She smiled and shook her head. “I’ll explain it later.”

Something about the man lying there stirred anger in me, and I grabbed him by the back of his coat and pulled him onto his feet, letting go. He fell against the bookcase and stood there, fighting for each breath. “Okay,” he managed to get out. “I deserved that.”

Marshall walked over to him, his finger pointed to the roof above us. “What the hell just happened up there?”

“That,” the man said, “was me saving my life.”

Alexandra looked at each of us before turning back to Caleb. “It’s not looking so good down here for you, pal. I’ve got to be honest.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “I tried to get out of working for them. I even went back after freeing Stanis to make it seem like business as usual, to not arouse their suspicion. I can prove it. Stanis was on the boat. He can confirm it. He saw me there.”

“I thought you had a change of heart,” Alexandra snapped. “I thought after you helped me free Stanis, you were all Team Gargoyle.”

“I am,” he said. “But those creatures had hired me for a job, and you don’t get to back out of something like that. I tried to. I really did. I even recommended other freelancers, which I never do, but Kejetan left me between him and a hard place. If I didn’t at least give them the refined gargoyle statue forms they asked for, they were going to kill me. Worse, Kejetan was resolved to come after you. They wanted you and your friends dead. Kejetan told me himself when I went back to their ship trying to negotiate my way out of my contract. Just ask your gargoyle here. Stanis saw me. He can back me up!”

Alexandra turned to me. “Is this true?” she asked.

“I do not know,” I said. “I was not in on any private conversations Caleb had with my father.”

“But you actually went to the boat?” she asked. “Why, Stanis? Did I free you for nothing?”

“For the same reasons Caleb has stated. This ‘business as usual.’ My freedom means nothing if Kejetan becomes aware of it.”

She turned back to Caleb, shaking her head at him. “We could have protected you,” Alexandra said.

The man looked over at me. “No offense, but your team’s only got one stone man to their dozens. I’ll play the odds for my safety, thanks. Besides . . . I’m not used to having backup. I did what I always do—try to take care of things myself.”

At an impasse, silence fell among us for several minutes, with only the sounds of continued struggle on the roof filling my ears.

“Umm . . . what about the rest?” Marshall asked, finally breaking the silence.

“Rest?” Aurora asked.

“Of the statues,” he said. “Kejetan only had a couple of dozen stone men with him. There were far more statues that came to life on the roof than that. What happened with the rest?”

Caleb let loose a sigh.

“That was supposed to be my backup plan,” the man said, looking to Alexandra. “Although thanks to everyone’s interference, it worked a little too well.”

“Meaning what?” Alexandra asked, wary.

“Like I said, I was in between a rock and a hard place,” he said. “Kejetan and the Servants of Ruthenia got what they wanted. They all got to cast off their crude stone form and take over many of Alexander’s statues up on the roof. Kejetan can fly around the city on his own pair of wings and be a happy little gargoyle now. But bringing the remaining statues to life . . . that was my ace in the hole that hopefully would have kept them from exacting vengeance on you.”

“You do not know Kejetan, then,” I said. “He did not earn the moniker the Accursed for his charity.”

“Giving Kejetan the gargoyle body that he wanted . . . well, that should have ended my deal with him, guaranteeing my safety. My hope was that activating the rest of those statues would let whatever random spirits haunt New York City find them and fight it out, maybe reduce the number of Kejetan’s new gargoyle army.”

Aurora laughed. “That was your genius plan?”

“Okay,” he said with anger in the word. “What would you have done, then? My life was on the line, and it seemed to be my best chance for living. If a few of Kejetan’s men died in the process of dealing with the other animated statues, then all the better.”

“Back up a little bit there,” Alexandra said. “What did you mean by ‘it worked too well’?”

“My plan was actually working,” he said, pointing at her, “until you interfered. That globe I threw with the mixture in it . . . It was meant to hit the roof and spread out among the remaining statues, activating them. It would have created the same type of potion cloud like the one I used when we captured Stanis and freed him. But you smashed the globe before it could properly land. That’s when everything went a bit off the rails. The mixture wasn’t supposed to go that airborne. It had a reaction I didn’t suspect, mixing and amplified with the power of the storm.”

“The sky went awash with that pink haze,” I said.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen?” Marshall asked.

The alchemist shook his head.

“The rain must have acted like a current carrier when the object released prematurely,” he said.

“Is that bad?” Marshall asked, wrapping his arms around his body. He turned to me. “That’s bad, right?”

“I do not know,” I said, then turned to Caleb. “Is it?”

“It’s not good,” the human confessed. “It became far more powerful than I would have imagined. The way it was spreading . . . I’m not sure how big a radius it covered, but it was more than just over your building here.”

Alexandra leaned back against one of the art-studio tables that still stood. “Meaning you might have animated an entire city’s worth of statuary,” she said. “Who knows how many more of Alexander’s statues around Manhattan have come to life? And what’s occupying all of them? More than just the Servants of Ruthenia, that’s for sure.”

“It’s possible,” he said. “I’m not sure. My plan was localized until you messed it up.”

“Do not put this one me,” Alexandra shouted, shaking her head. “If you had been up front about your plan . . . If you had trusted us . . . If we can’t trust you, we don’t want your help. Not after this fiasco.”

The humans fell to arguing, and with Aurora and Marshall joining in with the shouting, the flow of their words moved too fast for me to follow. One thing, however, became very clear to me.

“Silence!” I roared after I confirmed my suspicion. All of them turned to me, their words dying on their lips.

“What is it, Stanis?” Alexandra asked, her voice calming.

“If you would stop fighting among yourselves for a moment, there is something I must point out.”

I waited to hear if anyone was going to say anything more.

“So . . . ?” Caleb started. “What is it?”

“What do you hear, now that you are not fighting with each other?”

He listened for a moment. All the humans listened.

Caleb shrugged. “I don’t hear anything,” he said.

“Exactly.”

The humans ran for the stairs leading to the roof, and I followed, stepping out onto it. Empty pedestals marked the entirety of the roof, and the broken forms of far too few gargoyles littered the area. Every other living creature was gone, the night sky filled with dark shadows and the flapping of wings.

“I believe the days of keeping secret the existence of gargoyles may be at an end,” I said.