Stonecast

One

Alexandra

“For the record, I hate running,” Marshall Blackmoore huffed, his shaggy brown mop of hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, covering part of his eyes. “Especially after creepy monsters.”

Despite his tall, skinny Ichabod physique, my friend wheezed away like he was a three-hundred-pound fat-camp escapee chasing down an ice-cream truck. “There’s a reason I opened a game store, you know. Lots . . . more . . . sitting.”

I didn’t have the energy to think about whatever my dear, nerdy friend was saying about Roll for Initiative. For me, running actually helped me concentrate, and in my newfound arcane life, focus was indeed a handy skill to have. Like now.

“I actually enjoy this,” I said. “The running part.”

“How do you feel about the chasing-a-rampaging-golem part of it?” my other friend Aurora Torres called over her shoulder as she ran by. Her short blue hair and black horn-rimmed glasses flew past me, her dancer’s legs pumping hard as she easily pulled much farther ahead of Marshall and me. As she took the lead, her lean frame disappeared into the distance, the bounce of an artist’s tube strapped across her back almost comical.

“Not so crazy about the rampaging,” I said. “Especially given that it’s my fault.”

“Don’t beat yourself up too bad,” she called back. “Occupational hazard of being the one and only existing Spellmason.”

Up ahead in the distance, the lumbering but still-speedy creature I had empowered continued on through the night, thankfully charging down one of the quieter side avenues near Manhattan’s South Street Seaport.

The oversized human shape—comprised entirely of animated red bricks—moved gracelessly, crunching into anything and everything in its path: parked cars, tree trunks, low-hanging branches, hydrants—all of them coming away worse from their encounter.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Marshall repeated, pointing at it. “You’ve got that thing to beat you up.”

“Just be glad I chose to run these experiments late at night,” I said. “We only have to deal with property damage and not, you know . . .”

“People damage . . . ?” Rory finished.

I nodded. “Exactly.”

Rory turned back forward, pointing to a dark area up ahead that lay between two streetlamps. “It’s heading for that alley!” she called out.

Not wanting to lose sight of it, I pushed myself harder, both physically and mentally. I pressed the power of my will out to it, fighting to regain the control I had lost over its form. I pulled at its spirit, but there was a resistance in the animated creature.

“No luck,” I said, and the connection snapped shut as the brick monster vanished down the alley.

“I’ll try to head it off,” Rory called back, and sprinted farther off down the block, one hand already unscrewing the top of the art tube strapped across her back. By the time she had gone half the block, Rory had pulled two wooden shaft pieces free from it, coupling them together before affixing a third, longer, bladed piece to it.

“Not the most subtle weapon to cart around the city,” I called back to Marshall, who I was steadily outpacing now.

“Says the woman who had a magical gargoyle as her weapon of choice,” he said. “At least Rory can break her glaive guisarme down. Besides, there’s no talking Ms. Torres out of something once she gets it in her head. She loves that thing.”

“She does make it dance,” I admitted.

“Surprising for a dancer!” Marshall added with a wheeze.

I didn’t respond. The sheer act of talking winded me, so I shut my mouth as I headed into the alleyway after the creature. The darkness was worse here, and given the overturned cans and dented Dumpsters along the way, I slowed as I negotiated a path through it all.

Rory came into the alley farther up ahead of me from the side somewhere and, true to her calling in life, danced her way deftly after the creature, leaving me to feel all the more clumsy an oaf for slamming into everything as I went.

Cans rolled, and empty delivery pallets flew back and forth in the wake of the lumbering creature as it made its destructive way, but Rory managed to dodge them all with her natural grace and speed. Not wanting to leave my best friend since childhood to face the golem all alone, I secretly wished I had half her agility. When wishing didn’t make me any more graceful—evidenced by the sudden sound of tearing fabric from my jeans as a stray pallet nail caught on them—I instead opted for focusing more on my immediate environment. I needed to pay attention. I wasn’t going to be any use if I bled out right here.

Being more cautious slowed me, but it was a small comfort that I was still farther ahead than Marshall, whose every bump and crash behind me fell farther and farther away as I pushed myself harder down the alley.

“You doing okay back there, Marsh?” I asked, keeping my eyes glued to my path.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “Again, my bad for living the gamer’s life. Just keep on them!”

I chanced a glance up. The alley turned left farther ahead, and Rory and the creature were no longer in sight. I pushed on, rounding the corner in time to catch the two of them roughly thirty feet straight ahead, where the alley dead-ended.

Trapped, the creature reached out to the brick wall in front of it, as if sensing that the wall was comprised of the same material it was made from. When it found no means of escape, though, it spun, its tall figure menacing Rory as I arrived by her side.

Despite the clear danger and its towering size, Rory didn’t back down from it, extending her pole arm in front of her.

“Can you control it?” she asked. “You know, like you did for about, oh, twenty seconds back in Gramercy?”

“Shut it,” I spat out. “You know that Hendrix didn’t learn guitar in a day.”

“True,” Rory said, “but then again, a guitar doesn’t threaten to kill you or crush you in quite the same way an animated pile of bricks does.”

“Trying to concentrate here,” I said, pressing my mind against the resistance of the creature once more. I latched onto it, but whatever was in there wasn’t giving up control in any hurry.

Marshall arrived beside us, the sounds coming from him making me wonder if he was having an asthma attack. Between that thought and Rory’s previous comments, my concentration was lost, and I snapped. “Yes, but at least Hendrix could go into a guitar shop and take lessons. He could go to guitar school. Hogwarts doesn’t exist.”

“Hey,” she said, raking her blade in sparks against the brick golem. “We used to wish there to be magic in the world, and we got it.”

“I’m not asking for much,” I said. “Just some real instruction. A Dumbledore, a Snape . . . Hell, I’d even take a Trelawney right about now.”

The creature knocked Rory’s blade away, swinging its rough, thick hands.

“Don’t say that,” Rory said, backing up a little, scrunching up her face. “Don’t ever say that. Trelawney, really?”

I shrugged. “In a pinch, sure. Not ideal, but—”

The air of the alley erupted into a flurry of tiny, leathery wings like those of a bat, but unlike a bat, these things had arms and legs to go with their sharp, tiny teeth.

“Stone biters,” Marshall shouted.

“Not these guys again,” Rory said, taking her pole arm and waving it about us in an attempt to drive the tiny creatures off.

Marshall, who smartly stood well out of harm’s way from the golem, flipped open his blank book to a page where the winged creatures were already sketched out. “Your great-great-grandfather had them listed, and this appearance confirms it—they’re drawn to magic in stone, not just stone itself.” He made a quick note in his book.

As Rory continued waving her pole arm around, most of the swarm dispersed, save one especially flittery, shrieky one that dashed through the air in a tight circle around the golem. The tower of bricks seemed to be just as annoyed with our winged friend as we were. With the spirit in it distracted, my will found an opening into my creation’s body, flooding forward into the brick as whatever resistant spirit within vacated it.

“I have it!” I shouted, unable to contain my glee. Rory saved that kind of reaction for finding the sleekest, sexiest pair of shoes, and for Marshall, it was a decadent dessert, but my delight came from stopping brick monstrosities.

“Thankfully, the spirit realm hates whatever these winged things are as much as we do,” I said.

The words were barely out of my mouth when Rory dashed forward and threw herself into the air toward the flying creature.

“Wait!” Marshall called out, but it was too late.

Rory’s pole arm was already coming down fast on it, the tip of the blade driving straight through the center of its chest, pinning its tiny form to the wall of the alley. It let out a tiny screech that drove into the center of my brain, but in seconds, it was all over for the little beastie. Rory pulled her blade free from the wall, scraping the remains of the creature off the tip of her pole arm with the toe of one of her combat boots.

Marshall walked over to her, clutching his book against the pocket of his X-Men-logoed jacket. “Thanks,” he said, annoyed, rolling the creature onto its back with his own shoe, his face losing what little color it had.

“Sorry,” she said with a complete lack of sincerity, and walked back over to where I stood.

He flipped open the sketchbook once more and began drawing. “I wanted to get this creature right,” he said. “And now—thanks to Miss Stabby here—I’ll have to work around the damage she did to it.”

“A simple ‘thank-you’ would suffice,” Rory fired back. “Would you prefer it gouged one of our eyes out so you could get its good side? Why are you even doing this anyway? Half this stuff is already cataloged in Alexandra’s great-great-grandfather’s secret library.”

Warm thoughts of the comfy couches on my favorite floor of the Belarus Building filled my head for a moment, until my arguing friends snapped me back into the moment.

Marshall looked up from the sketch, shooting his roommate a look. “A Monster Manual of my own will come in handy,” he said, defensive. “Trust me.”

“Easy, everyone,” I said, speaking up, trying to hold the brick man in my sway.

Though Marshall and Rory excelled at fighting like a married couple, I didn’t need them breaking the link I had just reestablished with my animated creation, but given the sudden, wobbly nature I felt radiating out from the brick man before me, I was already too late.

“Shit!” I said, fighting to hold it together. I rushed my will forward hard into it, which only made it more unstable at this point, and given the distraction, I could do little more than watch my creation fall apart brick by brick until there was nothing left but an inert pile of red bricks at my feet. “Dammit!”

“Sorry,” Marshall offered. “But that’s one way of stopping it before it could rampage any further.” He flipped to the front of his book, making a note. “That’s experiment 247. No bueno.” After that, he flipped back through his book and started to sketch the dead creature.

Rory disassembled the pieces of her pole arm, wiping the blade down last, and when she was done, I helped her slide the pieces back into the art tube on her back.

“That went really well, Lexi,” she said, turning to face me.

Given the results of our evening, I was poised to tell her to stop being a jerk, but there was actual sincerity in her eyes. “How can you be saying that? Look at it!”

Rory adjusted her glasses and pushed her blue bangs off her forehead as she caught her breath. “First of all, it was a full-human-sized creature,” she said. “You’ve never done anything that big before.”

“That’s what she said . . . ?” Marshall snickered while still drawing away.

“Shut it,” Rory said. “I’m trying to be constructive here.”

I kicked one of the bricks, watching it topple off the pile. “I appreciate it,” I said, “but it was still a failure.”

“Also,” Rory continued, not giving up, “it certainly stayed animated longer than anything else you’ve done.” She pulled out her cell phone and checked the time. “It was nearly a half hour. Even if it wasn’t in your control all that time, it still held together. Nothing’s lasted that long except Bricksley.”

I was ready to argue, but the mention of my little walking brick and his smiling drawn-on face brought a smile to my own face instead. “No fair invoking the cute,” I said. “I only hope he’s not tearing apart anything back in the art studio. We ran off in a hurry.”

“Whatever,” she said, slapping me on the shoulder, squeezing. “I’m chalking this up as a success.”

“You do that,” I conceded. “Still, none of my creations come even close to equaling—” In my frustration, I found I couldn’t even say his name.

“Stanis,” she said, sliding her arm fully over my shoulder. “I know. We’ll get there. Slow and steady wins the race and all.”

“You still haven’t heard from him?” Marshall called over to us, his head still down in his notes.

Rory glared at him. “Marsh! Don’t ask that.”

He glanced up from his book, his eyes full of hurt. “What? I’m sorry I’m not up on all the details of your lives. I’ve got my own life. I’ve got the store, my games . . .” He pointed at the creature on the ground with his pen. “You know, this gross little thing to draw . . .”

“Just because Lexi hasn’t heard from him in six months doesn’t mean anything,” Rory said as if I needed defending.

And maybe I did.

The last half year rushed to the front of my mind, overwhelming me. Life had erupted into chaos upon learning my great-great-grandfather Alexander Belarus had not just been an unparalleled architect and sculptor but also a practitioner of Spellmasonry—the arcane art of manipulating stonework to one’s will.

That in itself would have been cool, except for the part where the servants of an ancient stone lord named Kejetan Ruthenia were intent on trying to kill us to reclaim said mystical secrets. If Alexander Belarus hadn’t set the gargoyle Stanis to secretly watch over our family centuries ago, I probably would have been dead by now.

No, I’d definitely be dead by now.

We had been losing badly when they invaded our family home on Gramercy Park. Our saving grace had been when Stanis discovered he had been killed and transformed by his father, Kejetan, centuries ago. Only by agreeing to go with the mad stone lord was he able to save the rest of us, leaving me with a parting message that we should prepare ourselves.

“It’s okay,” I said, giving her my best Bambi eyes. “I’m a big girl now. I can handle it.” I turned to look at him. “No, Marsh, I haven’t seen Stanis. The last you saw of him is the last time we all saw him. He did it to buy us time, and he has, all right?”

Marshall closed his notebook and crossed over to us. “So . . . where is he, then?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said, feeling the hollowness I had been trying to avoid within myself—the hollowness I had tried to fill with studying all I could in my great-great-grandfather’s library on the subject of the Spellmasons. Not that I had come away with any such mastery of the subject. “Stanis told us to prepare. So that’s what I’m doing.”

The blaze of approaching sirens grew louder with each passing second, and Marshall snapped his book shut. “We need to go,” he said. “Now.”

“We’ve done pretty good of steering clear of the law so far,” Rory said.

“Getting found out isn’t going to help us,” I said. “Marshall’s right. We need to go. We need to prepare, more than just for evading the police.”

I turned and headed back up the dead-end alley, an uneasy tension falling among the three of us. If I was being honest with myself, it had been there for months, really.

Prepare, Stanis had said. The implied threat behind Stanis’s single word, the idea of a coming war for those arcane secrets between Kejetan Ruthenia—Kejetan the Accursed and us . . . It seemed a little less likely every day, given the way they had all but disappeared after getting Stanis back from us. The fact that my older brother, Devon, had given up his humanity all for the promise of eternal life only added to that bitter-to-swallow pill.

Add to that month after month of frustration with slowly learning the arcane familial legacy of Spellmasonry, and the fire had died down a little, but the questions that had haunted me for months were still there.

Where was Stanis? Was he alive? Dead? And why hadn’t we heard from him, either in friendship or on behalf of Kejetan?

I couldn’t help but hold him responsible for the awkwardness among me and my friends at that moment, but what I really hated him for just then was leaving me.