Stonecast Page 5

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I don’t want to make anything worse.”

  The two of us quickly looked her over. There were no visible signs of damage, but that didn’t mean jack.

  Marshall moved closer to her, and I reached out a hand to push him back.

  “I’m not going to touch her,” he said, hurt. “I just want to try something.”

  I let go of him and nodded, waiting.

  Marshall leaned forward, hovering over Rory’s head, mere inches from her face. “Rory,” he whispered. “I drank the last of the milk and used the last of the toilet paper . . .”

  Our friend remained lying there, unmoving, and I was already reaching for my cell phone. I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain to paramedics that my friend was under the influence of some kind of Sandman dust, but I could worry about that later.

  Marshall grabbed my hand before I dialed, then leaned even closer to Rory’s ear this time. “Aurora,” he said, singing it out long and slow, like a nursery rhyme.

  Rory’s hand shot straight up, grabbing him by his neck meat, choking him. Surprised, I let out a small yelp and fell back from the two of them. Marshall tried to pull himself away, but Rory had him in a grip so tight he couldn’t escape.

  “Don’t,” she said, eyes still closed, “call me . . . Aurora.”

  Marshall’s eyes turned to me, and he wrapped his hands around her arm. “Yeah,” he croaked out. “She’s fine.”

  When Marshall couldn’t break her grip, he reached out to me and placed my hands around hers. Despite our joined effort, Rory’s grip still held tight, but after a minute or two, we managed to pry her thumb away from the front of his throat, and Marshall managed to slip free, falling back on his ass.

  He scrabbled to his feet as he cleared his throat and rubbed his neck, moving to the tray he’d brought in on the table at the center of the room. Rory, still out, lay there with her hand still up in the air as if still clutching Marshall.

  “Awesome,” he said, his voice raspy. He grabbed a bottle of seltzer off the table and took a deep swig, clearing his throat. “I think she’s sleep strangling. Just what you want in a roommate.” He walked back over to the two of us and stopped, just standing there looking down at me. “You’ve got my back, right?”

  I nodded, but warily. “Sure. Why?”

  “Just remember you said that,” Marshall whispered, then upended the bottle of seltzer into Rory’s face. It poured down on her, and her eyes shot open, her glasses doing little to protect them. Her mouth opened, too, and the carbonated water ran into it, causing her to choke and sputter.

  Marshall was already stepping away from her, but Rory—prone though she was—launched in a defensive reactionary mode. Her legs whirled out toward him, catching Marshall behind his knees, knocking him back onto his ass. His head bounced off the stone floor once, and it was his turn to lie there, eyes open and groaning.

  Rory sat up first, swallowing. Marshall was a bit slower, clutching the back of his head when he rose. “I think that’s enough concussions for one day,” he said, pulling his hand away and checking for blood. Luckily, it came away clean.

  Rory hopped up onto her feet, staying squat. She wobbled forward, and I caught her before she could fall on her face.

  “Easy, now,” I said.

  “Where is he?” she asked, looking around.

  “Long gone,” I said. “I mean, did you see how fast that guy was moving?”

  Rory nodded and stepped away from the hold I had on her.

  “Your intruder was superhuman?” Marshall asked from his place on the floor of the guild hall.

  “Yeah,” Rory said as she stared death at him. “And where were you, by the way? You might not have helped in a fight, but maybe I could have got the drop on him while he was beating on you.”

  Marshall pointed to the tray. “I was being a good friend,” he snapped, looking back and forth between Rory and me. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t expect you two to get attacked in your own home.”

  He had a point, and I did my best to let go of any anger I felt building up in me toward him.

  “Sorry, Marsh,” I said, offering him my hand, helping him up. “We’re just a little on edge. There was a stranger in not only my home, but this space, which I consider sort of sacred.”

  “What did he look like?” Marshall asked.

  “Stone,” I said. “At first, anyway.”

  “Like Stanis?”

  “Not quite,” Rory chimed in. “When Lexi pulled me out of harm’s way, the first good look I got of him, he was sort of . . . a chameleon.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. He was blended with the stone of the wall, but then he sort of . . . morphed.”

  “Blond hair, hipster-tousled, this long brown coat he kept pulling vials out of . . .” Rory trailed off, her eyes growing darker behind her glasses. “I really can’t wait to hurt him.”

  “I need to ward this place,” I said. “Ever since the building collapsed—when we thought Devon died—I suspected this new place might need it, but this clinches it.”

  “Can we at least do that later?” Marshall asked. “I brought snacks and my notes from the other night’s experiment that we really should go over. I promise I’ll help you ward the place later.”

  “Since when do you have magic powers?” Rory asked.

  “I don’t,” Marshall said, holding up a single finger. “Yet. But I could learn.”

  “We’ll see about that,” I said, heading over to the tray on the stone table. I picked up one of those mini Pac-Man cheese wheels from its little net bag and peeled the wax off it. “But you’re right. We should first do what we came down here to do. I also wouldn’t mind plotting out some real defense around here.”

  As pissed as I was, I had to admit it was a little exciting to have met another person who—albeit under shifty circumstances—also had some prowess with alchemical transformation. Maybe after we beat him senseless for a bit, I might be able to talk shop with him. That is, if he dared show his face again.

  It seemed likely. After all, as far as I knew, we were the only place in town he could “shop” for what he was coming here for in the first place.

  The three of us settled in at the main stone table, arranging books from the old library as well as my notebooks and Marshall’s Monster Manual, each of us working for a long while in silence as we snacked.

  Eventually, Rory let out a sigh as she went through the pages of one of my great-great-grandfather’s Moleskine notebooks.

  “I miss having a gargoyle around,” she said.

  “Me too,” I said, flipping through my notes to the ones I had made after the unstable brick-man incident the other night. If I judged my Spellmason prowess by that particularly calamitous experiment, I was a long way off from making any sort of animated stone army. And it was hard to imagine any of them replacing the singular soul-filled Stanis.

  “Me three,” added Marshall, and without another word, each of us set to our reading in the hopes of figuring just what the hell I was still doing wrong.

  Six

  Stanis

  Living in constant pain as I simply hung from the two spikes driven through my wings had been difficult at first, but there had been the revelatory moment when the pain no longer mattered.

  My body should have ached hanging from chains in the center of the cargo hold, left with just the tips of my clawed feet to support my weight, but all sensation had left my form by then. Even the shaft of light coming from the nearby machine—ultraviolet, they had called it—was barely noticeable, even though it continued to transform part of me into solid stone. When someone shut off the beam, the stone turned back to stoneflesh, the burning pain rousing me from my delirium.

  A figure moved among the shadows beyond the light around me, unrecognizable until I heard the voice. The stranger had returned.

&n
bsp; “How you holding up there, big fella?” the human asked.

  “Holding up . . . ?” I replied, unsure of the expression. At best I guessed that it most likely was one of the “idioms” Alexandra and her friends had promised to teach me about long ago. “You are the one holding me up by the very spikes you personally drove through my wings.”

  “You’ll be fine, golem,” he said. “They can patch you up with a little quick-setting cement or something.”

  “I do not thing my father will be letting me down,” I said. “I refuse to give him what he asks.”

  “I know this hurts you, creature,” he said. “Even if you’re just a construct. I’ve studied what little there is out there in the world about your kind.”

  “What could you possibly know of my kind?” I asked. “I am the only one of my kind.”

  “You’d be surprised,” he said. “As far as what I do know . . .” The sound of the chain hanging off to my right rang out, and my right wing exploded with a fresh wave of pain as the spike pulled me farther up on one side only, leaving my left foot on the ground. I twisted and turned as I dangled there.

  “I know you can be hurt,” he continued. “They’ve paid me to hurt you. To get what they want. So why don’t you save us both the time and trouble and give them what they ask for? They’re going to get it anyway, thanks to me.”

  “You will not break me,” I said, still swinging back and forth. “What makes you think you can?”

  “I have a few tricks up my sleeve,” he said, and stepped into the circle of light. A blond-haired human stared at me with a dark curiosity, his hand darting into the pocket of the long brown coat he wore. It came free holding an assortment of thin metal vials, reminding me of the kind my maker used to use.

  Somewhere off in the darkened cargo hold, a door swung open, and the man turned away from me to see who it was.

  I grabbed for him—for them—which only spun me around in place, missing the man completely.

  “Now, now,” my father’s voice called from off across the hold, his steps ringing out as he crossed to us. “You would not start this without me, would you? I am paying, after all.”

  “Jesus,” came another voice from off in my father’s direction. Alexandra’s brother, Devon. “Save a piece for the boss, will ya?”

  The human backed away from me, sliding the vials inside the folds of his coat. “I wouldn’t dream of doing any of this without you,” the stranger said. “Just continuing to wear down his will.”

  “Excellent,” Kejetan said. “Do you have everything you need to extract the information I desire?”

  “I think so,” the stranger said. “Although it’s getting harder and harder to get the supplies I need to do so.”

  “I am not concerned about how you procure them. Only that you do.”

  “I’m just saying.” The stranger stepped out of the light, and moments later the full but dim lights of the hold came to life. A tray covered with vials, metal flasks, and an array of various stoppered containers sat against the near wall where the man stood. “Basic theories of economic supply and demand in play here, there might be a slight price increase on this job.”

  My father crossed to him. His deformed stone bulk stood towering over the man, who backed up against the wall, craning his head up to meet my father’s face.

  “Do not test me,” Kejetan said. “While money is of little concern to me, do not think me the sort to be taken advantage of.”

  “I’m not taking advantage,” the man said, sounding almost insulted.

  His words were met with a silent stillness from my father. Even hanging where I was, I felt the intimidation of it.

  The man’s face fell, his eyes shifting away.

  “Okay, maybe I’m taking a little advantage,” he said. “But I’m not kidding about the supply. There’s a risk factor, and the last time, I was nearly caught.”

  “Again, not my concern,” my father said, stepping away from him to inspect me where I hung.

  The man turned back to his table, placing his hands on several of the vials and flasks. “It will be your concern,” he said, lifting them up one by one, “when the last of the vials is used, and there’s nothing left. Everything I do relies on one master component, Kimiya, mixed with others. And right now, Kimiya is in short supply. No one’s making it anymore. No one knows how. There’s a finite supply available to me, and no offense, I have other clients and customers to think of as well as my own future.”

  Devon walked over to him, laying his own heavy, deformed stone hand on the man’s shoulder. “Trust me, pal. If there’s one thing I learned when I was human and doing business, it’s that it’s hard to think about the future if the deal you fuck up today gets you killed. You might want to play nice with his lordship there.”

  The fire in the man’s eyes died. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “No worries. Just wanted to make him aware of how hard I’ve been working to help him. No need to get excited.”

  Devon patted him, the man’s face more pained with each jarring blow to his shoulder, fragile creature that these humans were.

  “That’s the spirit,” Devon said, and walked to join my father in front of me.

  “Hoist him up so he’s even,” the blond human said, and Devon crossed over to the left chain hanging from the ceiling. He pulled at it, a twinge of pain erupting all along my left wing until I had both feet lifted just off the ground and was hanging evenly.

  The man came to me with one of the larger containers, pulling off the top of it, and began moving all around me. Consulting a notebook he pulled from his coat pocket, he walked around me, marking my stone body with his finger, the thick red liquid forming arcane symbols in a language I could not read. In the stretched pain of my body, the sensation was cooling, almost refreshing.

  So close he was as he worked, yet I had not the fight in me to even lift a clawed hand to stop him. Nor did I wish to. Pain I could endure, if it meant that no harm would come to Alexandra and her friends. Her great-great-grandfather’s rules—to protect the Belarus family—might have been expelled from my being, but the desire to do so had not been. Whatever Kejetan and his men would do to me, I would endure.

  After several more moments of this, the man stepped back from me, a pleased expression on his face.

  “Is it ready?” my father asked him.

  “Pretty much,” the man said, reaching into one of the deep, outside pockets of his coat with the hand not holding the flask. “Now to bind it.” He pulled free a battered black notebook, thick with well-worn pages, flipping through it until he found what he was seeking. His eyes met mine as he let out a long, slow breath, then he lifted the flask to his lips and drank.

  His face twisted into a mask of displeasure, and for a moment he looked like he might fall over, but instead he forced his eyes open and looked to the notebook, reading from it. The words came out of his mouth in a soft, steady stream, and while I could not understand them, I did feel a connection snap to between the two of us, an invisible burning cord that stretched from his mind to mine.

  The pain of it was far different from the physical one I had been contending with all this time.

  This kind was far worse.

  Only the distant memory of my human form being crushed to death centuries ago seemed even close to this excruciation. It was as if the very thoughts in my head burned. I opened my mouth to beg for it to stop, trying to fight it, but the only sound that came from my lips was a roar that echoed around the cargo hold, my father and Devon stepping back from it.

  Although I thought that the violent sound coming from me would have torn a human apart, the man before me held his ground. He, too, looked pained, but his face was full of concentration, and it did not waver with even a hint of change.

  Unbearable as it all was, I wanted to collapse but forced myself to stay awake through it all until, minutes later,
the man stopped speaking, and the connection between the two of us broke.

  My body—now free of the sensation—let out all its tension, and I fell slack, hanging from the two spikes driven through my wings. The man’s body lost all its tension, and he collapsed to the floor. My father and Devon were already moving to him, but the human raised a weak hand, waving them away.

  “Lower him,” he said, his voice a mere whisper, and the two stone men moved to the chains. Together, they worked them until there was enough slack in the lines that I was able to collapse forward.

  For several moments, I simply lay there, enjoying the lack of sound as well as the lack of pain. No one spoke until I pressed myself up to my knees.

  “Is his will broken?” my father asked.

  The human—still lying on the ground—rolled onto his back and slowly stood up. He brushed at and adjusted his coat and slid the notebook back into his pocket before speaking, running his fingers through his hair. “Let’s find out. What do you want to know?”

  My father contemplated for a moment as he moved closer to me, looking down into my face, where I lay on the floor of the cargo hold.

  “I want to know the secrets,” he said. “The ones the Spellmason Alexander Belarus stole from us.”

  I remained silent, once more not willing to give up any information that might betray Alexandra.

  “Answer him,” the man said. “Truthfully.”

  I started to answer “no,” but the word would not come to my lips.

  My mind screamed it, but somehow I could not. The harder I willed it, the more it would not come, and with each second that passed, my voice—my true voice—became quieter and quieter until it was barely a whisper at the back of my mind. Its former space was now filled with a foreign and dominant voice with but one desire—to answer my father with the truth.

  “I cannot tell you those secrets,” I said, trying to allow my true self to speak as cryptically as I could.

  “You can and you will,” my father shouted, full of rage. He turned on the man. “This was supposed to work.”