Stonecast

Twenty-nine

Stanis

There was a singular happiness in carrying my Alexandra. Had she asked, I might have been able to carry all four of them into the sky, but I thought perhaps trying to get airborne amid all the chaos on the freighter would have proved difficult.

I rose high above before swinging down and around to land on the small boat tethered to the side of the ship. Some of Kejetan’s men had discovered it already in their haste to find any means of escape, a dozen already having boarded it. I slowed our descent by spreading my wings as we dropped onto the still-empty back of the boat and lowered Alexandra.

“First to the party,” she said, still concentrating on the freighter behind me. “Feel free to mop the deck. I need to keep working this spell.” Her voice dropped to a low whisper as the arcane words of the Spellmasons spilled from them.

Standing between her and the fleeing Servants of Ruthenia, I set to work on them, using wings and claws to knock them away. The more I handled, however, the more seemed to board to take their place. The deck of the pitched freighter high overhead was filled with men who, spying our vessel, were quick to jump into the waters all around us.

“Incoming!” I heard Marshall’s voice cry out before spotting him among the jumpers. He hesitated, but Aurora pushed him out over the edge, catching him by surprise.

Aurora followed after him, but the alchemist did not jump.

Caleb drank a vial of an elixir before climbing like a spider down the side of the freighter, losing his grip on it about ten feet above me.

“Damn,” he said, crashing down next to me at the front of the boat. “Thought that one would last longer.”

Before he had a chance to lament it any further, one of the cultists grabbed his leg as he attempted to climb out of the water. Caleb spun and kicked at him, driving the man back.

“We need to leave,” he said.

“No,” Aurora said from the water. She pulled herself up on the vessel after throwing her pole arm onto it. She rolled forward, grabbed the weapon, and came up standing and swinging for more of the men, driving them back from her. “First we need to clear the deck.”

Marshall came on board with much less grace than Aurora had.

“I’ll work on the leaving part,” he said, heading for the steering wheel at the back of the vessel.

With Alexandra concentrating on crumpling the freighter and Aurora and Caleb by my side, it should not take long to get under way.

Or so I thought. What had Alexandra called them back on the freighter’s deck? Rats fleeing a ship?

Yes, that seemed appropriate. Our ship was teeming with these Servants of Ruthenia.

“This isn’t working,” Marshall called out from the back of the ship, and I turned. The lean human was locked in combat with several of Kejetan’s men, all of them wrestling for control of the wheel. Lashing out behind me as I continued the fight in front of me, I used my wings to brush two of Marshall’s attackers away. The two fell over the edge of the small boat into the water, but two more ran forward to replace them.

Caleb fought the men closest to the bow, his strength augmented and currently the match of my own as his attackers flew through the air with each of his blows that connected with them. He looked up and backed into me as several more cultists landed in the spot he had occupied a second ago.

“Shit,” he said, ducking under one of my wings. He headed back to Alexandra, who was still concentrating on collapsing the freighter.

“What do you want?” Alexandra asked, keeping her eyes focused on the freighter. She ignored him even though the blond man was already inches from her face.

“This,” he said, and moved even closer.

His lips met with hers, her eyes fluttering for a moment before sliding shut, the two of them locked together. Although I could not recall from my human life centuries ago ever experiencing that gesture myself, I had seen it many a time among the humans I had observed over the years. I knew it to be a sign of affection, and while I had no such ability in such matters, something dark and uncomfortable inside me stirred.

Unable to process fully what it was, I took my frustration with it out on one of my attackers, dashing my claws at him with such ferocity that his upper half fell away from his lower, both pieces sliding over the front railing of the ship into the ocean all around us.

By the time I moved on to the next of my foes, Alexandra and Caleb had parted once more.

“I wish there was more time for that,” Caleb said, taking her hands in his. “It’s the least I could do, what with you saving all of us.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” she said, pointing to Rory. We all watched as she pushed two men over the edge of the boat with the dull end of her pole arm.

“It takes a village, after all,” Alexandra continued. “And besides, I wouldn’t exactly call this being saved at the moment.”

“Not yet, anyway,” Caleb said. He pushed farther from her, his hands dropping away. “Hopefully, I can change that.”

Just as quickly as he had gone to her, he fought his way back to the bow of the ship to join me again.

Still unable to process the strange and dark sensation inside me, I resisted the urge to push him into the ocean, possibly in more than two pieces.

“Need your help, big fella,” he said, looking up at the deck high above us.

“You do?” I said, the request catching me off my guard.

Caleb nodded and pointed up to the deck of the freighter. “The freighter is sinking too slow; too many of the Servants of Ruthenia are overrunning our tiny ship here, making it impossible to escape. We’ll be overmatched and overwhelmed by them soon if I don’t do something to give you all a chance to escape.” He looked up at the deck of the ship far above us, more and more men attempting to jump down to our escape vessel every passing second. “I need to get up there.”

I pushed away several more of the cultists, but more scrabbled forward, not necessarily to fight but at least to try to take control of our boat.

“I cannot fly you up there now,” I said. “The others would not be safe.”

“Looks like we’ll have to do this the hard way, then,” Caleb said, spreading his arms straight out to his side. “Hope you’ve got a good pitching arm, then.”

“Pitching . . . ?”

“Never mind,” Caleb said. “I need you to throw me. Just, you know, not into the side of the ship. I can’t help anyone with a broken neck.”

I grabbed him under his shoulders, lifting him with ease, his head raised to the sky. The dark part spoke up again inside me. It would be so easy to just squeeze until my hands met somewhere in the middle of his chest.

Caleb looked down, his eyes face-to-face with mine.

“Watch out for her,” he said, his words full of concern. “Watch out for them all, but her most of all. This isn’t me ordering you . . . This is me asking you.”

“I know,” I said, some of the dangerous new sensation dying in me. “And I shall.”

“Good,” he said, and turned his head back up to the deck above us.

As more men climbed onto our deck by the moment, I took aim and threw the alchemist. Judging the distance in the heat of combat proved difficult; Caleb’s body half hit the deck above, leaving much of him dangling over the side of the freighter.

Caleb pulled himself onto the deck and out of sight, and I found myself with a new problem. With one less person on our side, I was being overrun. Kejetan’s men surrounded me on every side. Their hands pulled my wings and limbs in every direction. I worked my wings, the added weight of those hanging on making it much more difficult a process, but I forced them into motion. Careful not to hit any of my human friends, I extended them, sending the Servants of Ruthenia still holding on into the ocean as they lost their grip on me.

I turned to Alexandra, whose eyes were on the deck of the ship above.

The alchemist stood at the edge, his hands flashing in and out of his coat as he mixed the contents of several vials together.

“Go!” Caleb shouted down at us with a vial clenched in his mouth.

“We’re not leaving without you,” Alexandra called out to him.

“Yes, you are,” he said. The alchemist tilted his head, which poured the contents of the vial into a larger one in his hand before spitting the empty container free. “Stanis, the chain!”

The cultist in front of me blocked my view of where I knew we were still tethered to the ship. My claws sunk into his shoulder as I tore into him, throwing him out of the way and into the hull of the freighter. My other claw came down hard on the chain, slicing through it and sending it sinking into the water.

Fresh hands came down on my arm, and I spun to knock away my new opponent, only to find Alexandra at my side.

“Get him,” she said. “Please.”

Already, men on the deck of the freighter were swarming Caleb while others still attempted to jump down to our boat.

Caleb struggled against the men pulling at him, but kept his footing while he continued working.

“Get them out of here, Stanis,” he said, then looked to Alexandra. “We’ll talk again. If not in this life, then the next.”

“Are you sure about that?” Alexandra screamed to him.

He smiled despite the chaos all around him. “As sure as I am about anything.”

I pushed off the hull of the freighter, our boat launching away from it.

“No!” Alexandra called out, the desperation in the tone of her voice sending a bitter pain straight through me.

“I am sorry,” I said. “But we must go.”

“Get him! Please!” she shouted at me.

I shook my head. Caleb had told me to look after them, and with the boat still being boarded by Kejetan’s men, I needed to secure the ship.

“Concentrate on your spell,” I said.

Nothing was going to save the freighter now even if she let it go. Already the prow was lifting into the air as the bulk of it descended beneath the waves.

I turned away and moved to help Marshall, who was wresting the controls back from two of the cultists.

“Screw my spell—” Alexandra started, but the words died in her mouth as a massive explosion wracked the last of the freighter that was still above water.

As I dropped the two men overboard, I watched flame shoot out across what remained of the deck and up into the sky. The reds and yellows mixed with a green light, and although the explosion had been sudden, my eyes had caught the point of its origins.

It had caught Alexandra’s eye as well.

“Caleb!” she screamed.

But the only answer came as the roar of fire mixed with the sounds of the violent waves and our drowning enemies all around us as we headed back to shore and the lights of Manhattan.