Incarnate (A Spellmason Chronicle)
PRAISE FOR THE SPELLMASON CHRONICLES
Stonecast
“One of the more unique premises that I’ve encountered in the urban fantasy genre, and there is plenty of action and mystery to keep a person occupied.”
—All Things Urban Fantasy
“Stonecast reads like an episode of television: high stakes, high tension, stark contrasts, well-rounded cast, and dialogue complete with quips and banter.”
—Urban Fantasy Land
“Thrilling . . . Skillful characterization enriches a story that is filled with peril, loss, treachery, and sacrifice. Great stuff!”
—RT Book Reviews
“A fantastic sequel in this unique and exciting fantasy series. Full of suspense, intrigue, magic, and humor—gargoyles have never been this fun. The story ends with a climactic and satisfying conclusion . . . Don’t miss this fast-paced urban fantasy.”
—SciFiChick.com
Alchemystic
“Loved Alchemystic. Every girl needs her own Stanis!”
—Jeanne C. Stein, national bestselling author of Blood Bond
“Like being strapped to a wrecking ball of urban fantasy fun. Hang on and enjoy the mayhem.”
—Mario Acevedo, author of Werewolf Smackdown
“Just when I thought Mr. Strout couldn’t do any better than his Simon Canderous series, I was proven wrong! I couldn’t put Alchemystic down. It was nonstop action and tension, a bit of romance but not overdone, and all sorts of twists and turns . . . The magical elements will keep you riveted, and I guarantee you’ll be begging for more.”
—Night Owl Reviews
“This is a heartfelt look into the human nature that is intertwined with magical elements. Metaphysics, romance, humanity, compassion, action, and humor all meshed into a wonderful masterpiece of writing splendor.”
—Earth’s Book Nook
“The magic behind Alchemystic was incredibly intriguing . . . All in all, Alchemystic was a very solid start to a new series that will definitely be on my radar for future releases.”
—A Book Obsession
“Strout has come up with an even more fantastic story than before. Alchemystic is a fun and exciting start to a promising new urban fantasy series. With plenty of adventure, mystery, suspense, and magic, this was impossible to put down. Fast-paced, fresh, and surprising, there is never a dull moment. Urban fantasy fans will definitely want to check out this new series (as well as Strout’s previous Simon Canderous series).”
—SciFiChick.com
“Alchemystic has a unique story with delightful characters and plenty of mystery to keep you interested.”
—Rabid Reads
“Alchemystic is thrilling, funny, and eerie—all the elements that make Strout books such irreverent fun!”
—RT Book Reviews
“Excellent character development. The ending leaves this whole world open in a great way . . . My favorite part of this is the use of magic . . . It feels organic and interesting.”
—Nerdist
PRAISE FOR ANTON STROUT AND HIS SIMON CANDEROUS NOVELS
Dead Matter
“Great sense of humor, combined with vivid characters, a complex mystery, and plenty of danger . . . a fantastic read. Urban fantasy fans should not miss this exciting series.”
—SciFiChick.com
“[Strout’s] skillful blending of the creepy and the wacky gives his series an original appeal. Don’t miss out!”
—RT Book Reviews (top pick)
Deader Still
“Take the New York of Men in Black and Ghostbusters, inject the same pop-culture awareness and irreverence of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The Middleman, toss in a little Thomas Crown Affair, shake and stir, and you’ve got something fairly close to this book.”
—The Green Man Review
“It has a Men in Black flavor mixed with NYPD Blue’s more gritty realism.”
—SFRevu
“A fun read . . . If you liked Dead to Me, it’s a safe bet you’ll like this one even more.”
—Jim C. Hines, author of Codex Born
“Unique from a lot of the urban fantasy genre. This is a fantastic series.”
—Bitten by Books (5 tombstones)
Dead to Me
“Following Simon’s adventures is like being the pinball in an especially antic game, but it’s well worth the wear and tear.”
—Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Midnight Crossroad
“Part Ghostbusters, part Men in Black, Strout’s debut is both dark and funny, with quirky characters, an eminently likable protagonist, and the comfortable, familiar voice of a close friend.”
—Rachel Vincent, New York Times bestselling author of Oath Bound
“Urban fantasy with a wink and a nod . . . A genuinely fun book with a fresh and firmly tongue-in-cheek take on the idea of paranormal police.”
—Kelly McCullough, author of Blade Reforged
“Clever, fast-paced, and a refreshing change in the genre of urban fantasy.”
—SFRevu
“Strout’s inventive story line raises the genre’s bar with his collection of oddly mismatched, entertaining characters and not-so-secret organizations.”
—Monsters and Critics
Ace Books by Anton Strout
The Simon Canderous Novels
DEAD TO ME
DEADER STILL
DEAD MATTER
DEAD WATERS
The Spellmason Chronicles
ALCHEMYSTIC
STONECAST
INCARNATE
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China
penguin.com
A Penguin Random House Company
INCARNATE
An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 2014 by Anton Strout.
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.
ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-15173-4
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Ace mass-market edition / October 2014
Cover illustration by Blake Morrow; texture © Allgusak/Shutterstock.
Cover design by Diana Kolsky.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
To—
my beloved Clan Strout, who put up with much of my madness as I experienced new horizons in balancing writing time while raising two
newborns and contending with my book deadline (which is its own strange birth process, I suppose), and a special shout-out to Laurell K. Hamilton for much-Twittered confidence boosting in this the year of the Twinpocalypse
Acknowledgments
Welcome once more, little word nerdlings, to the third and final book of The Spellmason Chronicles. I’ve missed you. Have you missed me?
Incarnate exists only due to the efforts (sometimes Herculean) of many supportive and/or talented people:
Every last Random Penguin (I’ll never use Penguin Random House—NEVER!) that waddles in flightless waterfowl fashion through their hallowed halls, especially my friends (and coworkers) in the paperback sales department; my editor and the person I swap baby photos with all day long, Jessica Wade; editorial assistant Isabel Farhi; managing editor Michelle Kasper, assistant production editor Julia Quinlan, and copy editor Valle Hansen; Judith Murello, Diana Kolsky, and Blake Morrow for a gorgeously creepy cover; Erica Martirano and her marketing and promo team; my publicity superstars, Alexis Nixon and Nita Basu; my social media guru, convention coordinator Colleen Lindsay, an all-around structural support beam in the construct that is Castle Anton; my agent, Kristine Dahl, and Laura Neely at ICM; the League of Reluctant Adults for continued support and stocking of the bar; and my family—the always-elusive Orlycorn, the ever-analytical baby geenyus Julia, and my happy-go-lucky Benjers. And as always, dear reader, thanks to all of you, especially those who have stuck with Lexi and Stanis these three books to find out their ultimate fates.
Pity I kill them all in the end. Or do I? Stay tuned, gargoyle lovers . . . It’s going to be a bumpy flight!
Contents
Praise for Books by Anton Strout
Ace Books by Anton Strout
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
About the Author
What is good? Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.
What is evil? Whatever springs from weakness.
What is happiness? The feeling that power increases—that resistance is overcome.
—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, THE ANTICHRIST
One
Alexandra
“You know, online, the visitors’ guide said ‘Fort Tryon Park on Manhattan’s Upper West Side was a sight worth taking in,’” Aurora “Rory” Torres said as she trudged up the slippery slope of the dark, tree-covered hill, soaked to the bone from the rain. “I gotta say I’m not feeling it.”
Rory brushed her wet blue bangs off her forehead and back underneath the lip of her coat’s hood, revealing her hesitant eyes. Mercifully, Rory was sans glasses tonight, having wisely chosen to go with contacts instead. I didn’t need my backup stopping to wipe her specs clean every five seconds.
I searched ahead for any sign of movement as we worked our way up, making sure there was no activity before answering her.
“I doubt they were writing about gargoyle hunting at three a.m.,” I said, checking the time again on my phone. “Speaking of which, where the hell is our gargoyle? Stanis always monitors the police scanner. He would have caught the reports of gargoyle activity up here near the park.”
“How could he pass up a fun night like this!” Rory said, spinning around in the rain.
“Especially during one of the worst October weather fronts in years,” I added. “Still, a little bit of timeliness would be appreciated. He’s probably off flying around with her.”
Rory sighed. “Are we talking about Emily again?” she asked. “Really? I think it’s perfectly reasonable for Stanis to seek companionship among the gargoyle community he’s fighting to establish.”
“Still not happy with him no longer watching over the Belarus family exclusively,” I said, conceding the point despite my green-eyed misgivings over his time with Emily. “Less so when he’s late, when it’s already late.”
“And on top of that, it’s Monday,” Rory added. “Never a good workday, whether it’s my dance classes at the conservatory or hunting New York City for rogue monsters.”
I couldn’t argue with my oldest friend.
The wind and rain whipped though the creeptastic graveyard we found ourselves approaching at the top of the park. Even the weatherproofing on my Burberry trench was no match for the storm tonight, the rain coming into my hood sideways as the wind whipped at my face.
I wiped the rain away from my eyes, my fingers coming away smeared with mascara like a Rorschach image.
“Great,” I said, holding my hand out to show the only one brave enough to weather the weather with me tonight. “Tell me I don’t look like a panda.”
“You don’t look like a panda,” she said with zero conviction in her voice, then muttered, “Ling-Ling.”
There was something to be said about having a best friend since grade school. It meant I felt only a little bad about forcing her out on a night like tonight.
I rubbed the makeup off on the thigh of my already-soaked-through jeans. “Waterproof mascara, my ass.”
I shivered. The heat of summer had already gone with the passing of the Equinox weeks ago, but the chill in my bones had me once more longing for the dog days of summer. Hunting in this weather was miserable work at best. At worst it might be death by pneumonia for the two of us.
“You okay?” Rory asked, her voice full of concern.
I shook my head. “It’s been, what? Six months since we took down Stanis’s father and his stone cronies . . . ? If I’m not cleaning up the mess I made chasing down gargoyles, it’s the witches and warlocks of New York trying to take me down for making regular people aware of the existence of the arcane.”
Rory gave a weak smile. “On the plus side, no one’s tried to kill you in at least a week,” she said, ever the optimist. “That’s got to count for something.”
I wondered how long that would last, but I kept my mouth shut. Even I got sick of my misery these days. I centered myself, willing my body to stop shaking, and after a moment I was composed once more. “I’m fine,” I said. “Just wet, hungry, exhausted . . .”
Rory laid her hand on my shoulder, giving it a comforting squeeze. “So let’s call it a night, then.”
“No!” I growled, shrugging her hand off me so hard that I even surprised myself. “We can’t.”
Rory gave an exasperated sigh, drops of rain flying from her lips. “Yeah, Lexi, actually, we can. Go home, get some rest, have a hearty breakfast in the morning with milk and juice to make it complete . . . then we can pick this up tomorrow.”
“You go,” I said, snapping in my drowned-rat misery. “I’m staying. There’s one of them here. Police scanners said their helicopters spotted one earlier.”
Rory stood her ground, making no move to leave. After a long silence stretched between us, I turned from her, heading farther up the wooded path toward
the lights of the Cloisters above. Sadly we weren’t on a mission to visit the abbey-turned-museum for its fine collection of art, tapestries, and artifacts. At best I might get to keep them from danger, and a skirmish might not prove the best time to try and take the sights in.
Even though Manhattan looked relatively flat, the burn in my legs climbing to the highest natural point in our fair city told a different story. As we approached the top of the hill, the tree line gave way to an open clearing where the main building of the Cloisters rose up in all its European medieval glory. This late in the evening, the parking lot off to the right of it was dead empty.
“Visiting hours are most definitely over,” Rory said, stopping at my side.
“Shh,” I hissed in a low whisper, even though I doubted anything could possibly hear us through the beating of this rain. “Nocturnal creatures don’t care about what passes for business hours. Besides, my guess is we’re tracking a Griever tonight.”
“Which kind is a Griever? Oh, should I look it up on Marshall’s cheat sheet?”
“Shh!” I said, grabbing Rory and dragging her back toward the safety of the shadowy tree line. “This one’s not rocket science. Look around; what do you see?”
Rory slipped her phone back into her pocket and stared off into the center of the clearing where the building stood. “I’m assuming the Cloisters.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “What else?”
She craned her head up to the one tall tower that rose above the rectangular abbey, but I pointed down.
“There’s a graveyard,” she said.
“Where people—or in this case a grotesque—might go to grieve,” I said. “Hence, Grievers. Trust me, that’s what we’re going to find here. I’ve spent more time than I care for in graveyards these past few months. Grievers can’t seem to get enough of their precious final human resting places.”
“Okay, fine,” she said, “but—”
I slapped my hand over her mouth to silence her, pointing to a dense cluster of tombstones along the side of the building. One of the shapes moved, and I followed it with the pointer of my free hand.