by Zoe Chant
The arch was big enough to accommodate two people as long as they didn't mind being very snug ... which she certainly did not. Not when the other person was Reive. Her pulse accelerated.
"And what are we doing?" she whispered.
"I needed to talk to you alone." His voice was barely a breath, his face near hers. "I think gargoyles are coming."
Well, that stripped most of the romance out of the moment.
"How do you know?" she asked softly.
"My ... uh ... my friend, the one who was poisoned—"
"Is you," she said.
Reive stopped, mouth half open.
"Yes, I figured it out. Go on."
"I ... huh. How long have you known?"
"Well, you keeping a jacket and gloves on in hundred-degree heat was a tipoff. Also, you've looked like you've been coming down with the flu ever since I met you."
"Huh," he said again, giving her a thoughtful look. He peeked around the plant again, then tugged off his glove.
Jess was braced for anything from visible signs of decay to claws and scales. The reality was more mundane, but also eerie. His hand looked like a carefully sculpted stone model of a hand, complete with veins and little creases in the skin and even impossibly fine hairs on the back. It was mottled gray, the color of old granite. A few hints of his bronze skin tone were visible on his slightly curled fingers.
"Can I ... touch it?" she asked hesitantly. "Would that hurt?"
"Go ahead."
She put a careful hand on it. It was cool to the touch but not cold, like rock that had been warmed slightly in the sun, and just as hard and unyielding as it looked. Her stone sense told her nothing else about it, but she had only an instant to try to examine it because Reive staggered, his knees almost buckling. He leaned into the wall.
"What?" Jess asked, alarmed. She jerked her hand back. "Did that hurt? I'm sorry!"
"No ... no, it's the opposite of hurting." His eyes were half closed. "When you touch me, it stops hurting. It's the only time it doesn't."
"What? Why? And why didn't you tell me sooner? I would have kept my hands on you the whole time if I'd known!"
Reive's eyes opened, coppery and warm. He smiled. "I wouldn't mind you keeping your hands on me."
She started to answer, but then heard footsteps and voices. Their hosts were coming back. Jess leaned closer. "You said the gargoyles are coming," she whispered. "How do you know?"
"I can feel it." He hastily pulled the glove back over his hand. "It hurts more when they're around. And it hurt like fuck when that Mace guy touched my hand. I think it's possible he's one of them."
"Wait, what?" Jess began, but just then, Gio appeared in the hallway. Mace loomed behind him.
Jess tried not to stare at him. Could he be another of her kind?
Did she care if he was?
"Ah, young people," Gio said with an easy smile, observing them half-hidden in the alcove. "To be so young again."
Reive stepped protectively in front of Jess, tugging his sleeve down over the glove. "Stop playing games with us. We're not here to steal your book."
"It is not a game," Gio said, abruptly serious. "We needed a moment to consult privately about you."
"And I still think you're making a mistake," Mace said, his voice a bass rumble.
"It is my book, is it not?"
In spite of herself, Jess felt her heart quicken. "Are you going to show us the book?" she asked.
Gio smiled. "Come."
Mace hung behind, bringing up the rear and following ominously along as they all trooped through the clean, cool rooms of the villa. Jess couldn't feel the cold breeze that would indicate air conditioning, and heard none of the telltale humming that would have given away a central air conditioning system, although sometimes when no one was talking, she thought she felt a slight vibration through the soles of her feet. (A generator, maybe?) Yet the house was comfortable inside. The entire place was designed to channel cool air and keep it from overheating.
"When was your house built?" she asked, hurrying to catch up with Gio. Reive lagged behind her, keeping a wary eye on Mace.
"There was a house on this site in Roman times," Gio said over his shoulder. "You will soon see. This is not the original house, of course. But it has been built and rebuilt over the centuries. Who can say when an old house becomes a new house, as one constantly rebuilds the walls?"
"What do you mean, we'll see?" Jess asked as they went down a short flight of stone steps. The house was built on uneven ground, with almost every room a slightly different height from the others. "Is part of the original house still here?"
"In a way."
The doors they passed, like the front door, were made of age-darkened wood, most of them closed. Gio stopped in front of a door that looked indistinguishable from the others. He tapped lightly on it with his knuckles. "Looks like wood, eh? Actually, it is wood over metal. And you will notice there is no handle."
He removed a small pot of flowers from an ornamental-looking notch in the wall beside the door and reached inside. Jess couldn't see what he was doing with his hand, but she heard the distinctive soft clicking of keys being pressed. There was a keypad in there, like the one in an ATM.
With a soft click, the door sprang open.
"That's it, show them all your secrets," Mace muttered. He was still at the rear of the group, looming threateningly behind them.
Gio opened the door and flicked a light switch, revealing stone steps leading down. A breath of cool air wafted up from below. It smelled of damp earth and ... was that the distinctive paper-and-leather smell of old books? Jess also could now more clearly hear the soft thrumming she had noticed in other parts of the house. There was climate-control equipment here, all right, but it was underground.
"Your library is under the house," she breathed.
"Lead on," Gio said, gesturing them forward.
Reive hung back. It was only when Jess went eagerly down the stairs that he followed.
If the rest of the house had felt old, this was ancient. The stairs descended between two roughly mortared stone walls, made of flat stones piled closely together. It was lit with bare light bulbs in wire cages, hung from the ceiling.
"You asked about the old Roman house," Gio said from above. Jess looked up, past Reive, who looked tense and alert even with his hand resting lightly on his bad arm. "This is part of it."
Mace stepped through the door, having to duck his head slightly, and closed it behind them. Jess felt a surge of claustrophobia at being locked in. If Gio and Mace planned to betray them, there was no better place.
And yet, Gio wasn't lying about the books. She could smell them. The book they had come so far to see was close now.
And she was pretty sure that, even if Mace and Gio were both gargoyles, they'd have their hands full fighting off a dragon. Not to mention me.
"This is a mistake," Reive murmured. "A bad mistake. Jess, we should leave."
"He's not lying. There really are books down here," she whispered back.
"That's not it. I don't think he's lying."
"So let's take a quick look and leave."
They reached the bottom of the stairs. There was another door here, this one made of tough-looking, tempered glass or plastic. Beyond it was darkness, but Gio touched a light switch, and abruptly the room beyond the glass door lit up.
There really was a library down here.
It was huge. It looked like it ran the entire length of the house. Bookshelves marched off in rows, each filled with neat ranks of books. Even from here, she could see the tremendous variety, from crumbling ancient tomes to shiny hardcover bestsellers.
There was no disguising the fact that the library was in a cellar, even if it was a very large cellar, but at least it was a comfortable-looking cellar. There were rugs on the floor, and she could glimpse reading nooks scattered among the shelves, with cozy chairs and pretty stained-glass lamps.
She realized that she had started to raise her hand to pres
s it against the glass door, like a kid looking through the window of a pet store, and put it quickly back down. Gio, smiling, typed on another keypad on the wall—this one wasn't hidden—and the door sprang open. Cool air whispered past their faces, and with it came the full-bodied smell that she had caught a whiff of from above. Books. Old books. It was like every library and used bookstore she'd ever been in, all rolled together. She took a deep breath and started to step forward.
"No!" Reive said sharply. His good hand settled on her shoulder. "We've seen enough. We're going upstairs now."
"You are nervous, aren't you?" Gio said warmly. "I assure you, we mean you no harm. This stairwell is the only way in or out. Your thieves will never even find this place, let alone steal anything from it."
Reive shook his head. "This isn't secure. It's the farthest thing from secure. This place is a trap, and we have to get out now."
Reive
Reive's arm burned as if there were a thousand hornets under the skin. His side ached too. He knew without even being able to see it that the stone patches above his hip were spreading. Already it was growing more difficult to rotate at the waist. He couldn't move his right hand at all.
"I assure you, it is no trap," Gio said patiently.
"Not you," Reive snapped. He was in too much pain, and too worried, to be polite. "Them. This place is a deathtrap."
While Jess had run on ahead, caught up in a rapturous fascination with her dream library, Reive was walking through a living nightmare. The walls felt like they were closing around him.
It had been in a cellar just like this that the gargoyles had attacked them in Greece.
"Perhaps you should tell us what kind of threat you fear," Mace said in his quiet, deep voice. Arms folded, he blocked their way up the stairs.
"There are gargoyles coming for us," Reive said shortly. He wanted to wrap himself around Jess and protect her from everything around her, particularly the stone walls. "Stoneskins. Do either of you know what that means? This is the kind of place where they're strongest. Every rock in this wall can be turned into a weapon against us."
He saw their reaction when he mentioned stoneskins. Neither of them seemed surprised or confused, but they both looked alarmed.
"Mace?" Gio said quietly. "Are they right?"
"I don't know." Mace's forbidding frown lightened to a more puzzled, wary look. "What do you two know of stoneskins?"
Jess turned around from her rapturous contemplation of the library. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted.
"Let's just say that I've dealt with them before," Reive said. "They're born of stone. Like, say, these stones. Caves, cellars, the ground itself are the worst possible places to be when you're fighting gargoyles."
"I didn't know that," Jess said faintly.
"There's no reason why you would," Reive said. "And I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner." He turned to Gio and Mace. "But you do, don't you? Because at least one of you, perhaps both of you, is a gargoyle."
Gio smiled and raised his hands. He turned to Mace. "They've got you there, my friend."
"And at least one of you is also a gargoyle," Mace said flatly.
Jess turned completely white. She looked like she was about to faint.
Seeing her reaction, Reive realized that it had never occurred to him that although she knew about the poisoning, she hadn't gone ahead to the understanding that it was actually turning him into a gargoyle, more or less. He wished she had been able to find out more gently.
It had to be so difficult and terrifying for her, an ordinary human caught in the middle of all of this.
"I'm not yet," Reive snarled, furious at them for scaring her on top of everything else. He ripped the glove off his right hand, and held it up. "Look at this. If you are one of them, take a good look at what your kinfolks did to me."
He was glad, now, that he'd already showed it to Jess; he didn't have to worry about her reaction, only about theirs.
Neither of them looked shocked, or even particularly surprised. "Is this why you've been asking about my books?" Gio asked.
"We were hoping you had a cure," Jess said.
"And then we get here and find a gargoyle is already here," Reive snapped, glaring at Mace. It was Mace; he was sure of it now. That would explain why the pain in his arm had spiked like an icepick rammed into his nerve endings as soon as Mace had shaken his hand. "Or is it just a coincidence that you happened to show up about the time we did?"
Mace smiled. "I am here because of you, but not for the reason you think. Gio called me because of the young lady asking questions about a certain incomplete manuscript he owns. He wanted my opinion on the manuscript, and how I should respond to your query."
"Bet you weren't expecting us to turn up on your doorstep, though," Reive said tightly.
"Guys," Jess said.
"You're right, I was not expecting that," Gio said, his voice calm. "In any case—"
"Guys!"
Jess's shaking finger was pointing to the wall of the stairwell above them, which had begun to bulge inward in a way that rocks really were not supposed to do.
A ripping growl tore out of Mace's throat, a sound that could not possibly have come from a human throat. He spun around to face the bulging wall, as in the same instant, Reive threw himself in front of Jess, trying to put his own body between her and danger.
A stoneskin ripped free of the wall and lurched onto the stairs. It was lumpy and misshapen, barely even human-shaped, just a half-finished mass of rock. But it was big enough to block the stairwell above them. The wall sealed up behind it.
"Mace!" Gio snapped. "What is this?"
"They're right," Mace murmured. He looked shocked. "There are gargoyles attacking us."
"Do something, then," Gio said shortly. "This is your area, isn't it?"
Mace shook his head, backing away from the creature on the stairs. "It is beyond my control. Someone else holds this thing's leash."
And with that, he began to shift.
Reive took a step back, shielding Jess as a stony flush of gray spread across Mace's body. His arms and legs thickened, his shoulders humped up, and huge gray batlike wings spread above him. Even his clothing changed, turning to stone along with the rest of him.
"I knew it," Reive murmured. He glanced at Jess to see how she was taking it.
He expected shock and terror, or perhaps the same rage she had shown in the library. Instead, she was staring at Mace in wonder, as if she'd never seen anything like it.
Mace snarled, a loud vibrating growl like some enormous wildcat, and flung himself at the intruding stoneskin. His claws raked across its lumpy, misshapen form, and chips of gravel flew.
"Down!" Gio ordered them. "Into the library."
"Are you crazy?" Reive retorted. He kept a secure arm around Jess. "They'll be able to mob us there. And you said there's only one way out!"
"Mace can get us out," Gio said. "Go!"
More stoneskins were ripping free of the walls. The stairwell was too confining to fight in; Reive wasn't even sure if he could shift here. And there was no going up, not with the stairs rapidly filling up with stoneskins. They had no choice but to go down.
"I knew this was a mistake," Reive muttered. They fled through the glass door at the bottom of the stairs into the underground library. "Do you trust that Mace guy? Are you sure he's not working with them?"
"He is a lifelong friend," Gio said firmly.
"He's also a gargoyle! And so are they."
"Gargoyles are individuals just like anyone else," Gio said.
"Can we fight about this later?" Jess asked. She was pale but composed, though she kept glancing toward the crashing and snarling from the stairwell as Mace fought the stoneskins. "You said Mace can get us out; how?"
"Using gargoyle ways," Gio said. He shepherded them away from the door. Reive stayed close to Jess, looking around warily. At the moment, the library seemed safe enough; the walls were far away, hidden behind rows of bookshelves. But the f
loor was stone beneath the scattered, colorful rugs. The next attack could come from anywhere.
It was too much like the cellar in Greece. Far too much like it. Reive found his breath coming in short gasps. His arm burned.
"That thing just came out of the wall," Jess said. "Can ... can Mace do that?"
Reive didn't care what Mace could do. "Can we try to put as much space as possible between ourselves and anything stone? Maybe tip down some of these bookcases? If there's anywhere in here with space to move around, I—we can fight more effectively."
"The center of the library," Gio said decisively. "It's where the treasures of my collection are kept."
Even as he spoke, there was a crash from somewhere up ahead. Reive and Jess shared a fast look.
"Like the book we came here to see, for example?" Jess said.
"That's where they are," Reive murmured.
He started to run, made it a single step, and looked back at Jess, torn.
"If that's the book, go get it!" Jess yelled, giving him a push.
He hesitated, desperately worried. "But you—"
She pushed him again. "I'll be fine! I'll just hide. Don't worry about me! I'm telling you—go get the book!"
Reive surged ahead, running.
There was a cleared space up ahead, surrounded by bookcases. The ceiling was higher here, and there were a number of glass cases and pedestals for holding individual books.
There was also a familiar black-robed figure just lifting a leatherbound book from the shattered remains of a broken glass case.
"You!" Reive snarled.
He started to shift on the run, and then he stumbled, his dragon emerging sluggishly. As a dragon, he was too wide for the narrow aisles; books toppled and shelves tipped sideways, and he knew he was leaving a swath of destruction through Gio's library. His right front leg wouldn't work; he had to run on three legs.
None of it mattered. The important thing was to catch up to that cultist creep before he got away with Reive's one hope of a cure.
Black Robe turned his head and saw an enraged dragon bearing down on him. The look on his face was totally worth it.
Then he clamped the book under his arm to free a hand. He had replaced his ruined black robe with another one, and now he ripped it open to reveal his bare chest. Rune-like patterns started to glow.