Stoneskin Dragon (Stone Shifters Book 1)

by Zoe Chant

  "Is that who's after us now?" he asked. "The alchemists who made us, whatever is left of them?"

  "But that was hundreds of years ago," Jess protested.

  "True," Mace said. "But they could have descendants, or modern-day successors who learned some of their secrets."

  "So the book ..." Jess began.

  "The book is not supposed to exist. Those early gargoyles destroyed every piece of written material they could find that contained the secret of making more of us. Our ancestors decided that we would rather have only a few of us in the world than risk someone creating an army of us. One lone gargoyle can raise a small army of stoneskins. Imagine what hundreds of us, fighting together, could do to the world."

  A shudder ran through Reive. "I don't have to imagine it. I watched my entire dragon clan fight all out against a single gargoyle, and he almost beat us."

  "And so you understand," Mace said quietly. He placed a hand on top of the papers on the table. "What you have here is a secret that could conquer the world."

  There was a brief silence. Then Jess said, her voice fierce, "I don't care about any of that. What matters to me is whether that book has a cure for Reive."

  "Not ... as such," Mace said slowly. "What is happening to him is very unusual. I've never seen its like. It is like he's turning into a gargoyle, but very slowly."

  "It's not gargoyle stone, though," Jess said. "It's solid."

  "That's because it hasn't been given life yet. A gargoyle who dies in their shifted state becomes normal stone, indistinguishable from a statue."

  Jess nodded slowly, and Reive thought of the diagrams in the book, the pieces of a broken-up statue. And that claw ...

  "Therefore," Mace went on, "the only way I can think of to help Reive is by completing the transformation. We must bring his stone to life, and make it part of his body."

  There was a stunned silence.

  "No," Jess said. "You want to make him a—no!"

  "I can find no other way," Mace said. "Given time, perhaps I could. But there is no time. I watched the stone spread while I was working on him yesterday. It is even worse now."

  "It's accelerating," Reive said quietly.

  He had been able to tune it out somewhat, distracted by Jess's soothing touch. But he could still feel the tug around his ribs when he tried to breathe deeply. His rib cage and lungs were turning to stone.

  He had thought he had more time, but now he began to understand that he would suffocate long before his entire body turned to stone. He might only have days.

  He reached inside himself for his dragon. It was still near the surface, and he felt only wordless conviction, agreement with the decision he'd already made. Living was better than dying, especially dying of something senseless and preventable.

  Jess turned to him, her eyes full of tears. "But—you've seen what I turn into. You can't possibly want that."

  "Jess." He brushed her cheek lightly with the back of his good hand. "It's because I've seen what you turn into that I have no fear. You are strong and capable and beautiful, and you are still you, no matter what shape you are. How could I fear anything that makes me more like you?"

  In truth, he was afraid, or at least uncertain. If he did this, especially without consulting Uncle Heikon, would his clan even want him back?

  But it wasn't their choice. It was his. And it didn't feel like an ending. It felt like a beginning.

  Jess closed both her hands over his, warm and soft and strong. "Reive, we don't have to. We can look for another way."

  "I don't think there is one. And I'm running out of time." And he had so much more to live for now. He took a deep breath. "I'm ready. Just tell me what to do."

  Jess

  "We will begin in my library," Mace said. "You can help me with that."

  In spite of her worry for Reive, Jess felt her heart leap at the word library. "Oh, yes, please!"

  Mace collected the book—both parts of the book, the bound version and Jess's loose-leaf pages—and they left the bedroom. Reive trailed along behind Jess. Shoulders hunched and keeping to himself, he held his stone arm lightly with his opposite hand. It was clear that he was in pain, and she wished desperately to do something to help—something now, not research for the future.

  "Do you need painkillers?" she asked him quietly.

  Reive shook his head. "They don't really help."

  She slipped her hand into the fingers of his stone one. "But this does."

  His face, set in lines of pain, relaxed a little. "It does. Some."

  "Then I'll keep doing it."

  Mace led them up a flight of stairs. The house was as complicated inside as it looked from the outside, a rambling split-level with landings and narrow hallways and floors at different levels.

  "Do you live here all alone?" Jess asked Mace.

  He glanced over his shoulder. "There are those who come up from the village to cook and clean."

  "Yes, I suppose so." She still couldn't get over the weirdness of having servants, even if Mace seemed not to want to call it that. "But it's just you other than that?"

  "Why? Do you find that strange?"

  "I find it lonely," she said.

  Mace didn't answer. Instead he opened a large wooden door onto a room straight out of Jess's fantasies.

  It was a library—a true library, like something out of a book itself. Bookshelves packed with books climbed in serried ranks up to a high ceiling where stained glass windows let the sunshine in. There were heavy leather chairs and reading tables, small lamps, even a fireplace. The room smelled of leather and paper and wood polish, rich and deep and old.

  Jess gaped in wonder. Her hand went slack in Reive's.

  Mace turned and saw her expression, and his green eyes warmed. "My parents built this. My sister and I used to spend long hours here."

  Jess took a few tentative steps into the library. She spun slowly around, looking up at the rows of shelves with her head tipped back. Gio's underground library had fascinated her, but this made her think of Belle's library in Beauty and the Beast. It was a fairy tale library. She could lose herself here for days, weeks, years.

  And you have a mission, she told herself firmly. We're on a clock.

  "What was it you wanted to find here?" she asked Mace, with her eyes still fastened on the shelves.

  "First, we need to find out exactly how to do this ritual." He gestured at the shelves. "The pages from the book, yours and mine combined, have most of the specific elements of the original gargoyle transformation, but I need to pull out all my books on magic lore. You can help me. I'll show you how I have things sorted. It's according to my own personal cataloguing system and might seem obscure to anyone else."

  Jess's inner librarian-self perked up and took notice. "You know, if you need any help cataloguing, I'm a librarian. I do it all the time."

  Mace looked up from setting the book's loose pages down on a reading table. He smiled a little. "I wouldn't want to make more work for you."

  "It's wonderful work. I love it. I work at a small library in Indiana."

  Was the present tense even appropriate anymore? That life seemed impossibly far behind her now. She hadn't thought of it in days. She really needed to call Marion and check on her, if her phone even worked here, come to think of it. She still had the European SIM card in it. And her car was still in long-term parking in Indianapolis ...

  One thing at a time. First, research.

  Thinking about her former library made her realize the one thing the room was missing that she would have expected to see in an old-fashioned library with those high, high bookstacks. There were no ladders to reach the tallest shelves.

  "How do you get up there?" she asked, pointing toward the ceiling. The highest bookshelves were at least fifteen feet above them, framed by stained-glass windows.

  Mace smiled. "Do you really need to ask?"

  And he shifted.

  This time, she got to watch without distractions. Gray stone rippled acr
oss his body, changing his clothes along with the rest of him. His shoulders grew more massive, his jaw broader, and wings rose from his shoulder blades.

  When the transformation finished, he gave her a brief smile, flashing fangs, and reached for one of the heavy wooden columns supporting the shelves.

  Jess stared openmouthed as Mace climbed effortlessly. The wood, she now noticed, was deeply scarred with claw scratches. She hadn't even thought about it; she had just assumed it was scratched up because it was old.

  She had to cast a sideways glance at Reive to see how he was taking all of this, but he didn't look horrified or shocked, merely thoughtful.

  High above, Mace half-spread his wings and leaped to catch hold of a ceiling beam. Now clinging upside-down to the ceiling, he retrieved a book from one of the shelves and jumped off. Jess gasped, but he spread his wings and glided down, touching the floor with barely a thump. He shifted back, the gray color and stony texture flowing out of his clothing and skin to leave normal colors behind.

  "That was ..." She didn't know what to say. The idea that it could ever be that natural, that easy for her was beyond comprehension. No fear or shame or need to hide, nothing but a simple and primal joy in using her natural talents.

  Mace held out the book. The title was Chatham's Theory of Ritual Magic Circles. Jess handled the cracked, flaking leather cover with great care.

  "Is this real?" she asked, carefully turning a page. The paper was thick and cream-colored. It seemed irresponsible to be handling it without gloves. Mace peered over her shoulder.

  "Real magic, you mean? Some of it. I keep the magic books with some seeds of truth up high where only I can reach them. Also the histories that mention shifters." He reached over to flip the pages to a thick leather bookmark. "We will need to cross-reference the information in this book against the book you have."

  "Is that something I can do?" Reive asked quietly. "I don't know how much help I'll be otherwise."

  Jess turned swiftly and saw that he'd lost even more color under his tan. It looked like he was struggling to stay on his feet. She slipped an arm around him and noticed that he seemed to regain a bit of color and strength. Under the guise of snuggling against him, she helped him to a leather-upholstered couch in front of the fireplace.

  "Are you sure you shouldn't be in bed?" she murmured.

  Reive shook his head. "This is for me. I need to help. Anyway, I want to be near you if Black Robe comes back."

  "Mace says we're safe here."

  "I know. But I still need to stay close."

  She was privately unsure if Reive would actually be able to hold his own in a fight right now, but she nodded and reached for the leatherbound book. "Here, you can—actually, I don't know exactly what needs to be done." She looked up at Mace hopefully.

  Mace tapped the edge of the lost book's copied pages to align them. "Actually, there is something that won't require much knowledge of the ritual; it will just take time. We need to sort out the pages that specifically pertain to the ritual."

  "I can't read it, though," Reive said.

  "You don't have to be able to. Just sort out the pages with symbols and diagrams. Like this." Mace demonstrated, showing a page written in Greek with a column of symbols down the side. "I have spent enough time with the other book that I can easily find the appropriate pages in the second half of the book myself."

  Jess opened her mouth to say that she had spent a lot of time with the first book and could help with that, but then she closed it. Reive needed to do something useful. And there was little enough else that he could do.

  Mace drifted to the other end of the library, running his fingertips across book spines, while Jess got Reive settled on the couch with the loose pages. There was a soft woolen blanket folded on the end of the couch. She draped it over his legs, and Reive smiled.

  "You don't need to fuss."

  "I want to fuss," she said firmly, and kissed his forehead.

  Leaving him with the pages, she rejoined Mace at the book stacks.

  "Will this really help him?" she asked in a low voice, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Reive couldn't hear her.

  Mace glanced that way too, just as Reive reached to touch his stone arm, brushed his fingers over it with a wince, then picked up the pages again.

  "There are no guarantees," he murmured.

  "So he might die anyway."

  "We are going to do our best to prevent that from happening." Mace started to turn back to the bookshelves, then tilted his head to look at her. "May I ask a personal question? This is not just curiosity; the answer may affect the ritual."

  "Of course," she agreed. "For Reive—anything."

  "Are you two mates?"

  Jess looked at him warily. Of the various things she thought he might ask about, that definitely wasn't one of them. "Reive says so," she said hesitantly.

  "I thought so," Mace said. His quicksilver smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Has Reive told you what that means?"

  "He explained it to me a little earlier. And I—I felt something change when we got here. It was like something clicked into place in my heart. Reive said something changed for him, too. Is it this place that did it?"

  "No," Mace said. "It's you. Gargoyles have mates, like any shifters. But shifters—other kinds of shifters—simply know. It's not that easy for us. We don't recognize our mates until we admit to ourselves that we love them."

  "Oh," Jess whispered. Without her conscious intent, her hand came up and brushed across her chest, as if to touch her heart, where Reive had recently taken up residence.

  "But he didn't know before, either?" Mace asked.

  Jess shook her head.

  "Interesting," he murmured and reached for another book.

  Jess followed Mace around the library while he retrieved books from the high shelves, skimmed them, shook his head, and reshelved them. She hadn't yet worked up the courage to shift and try climbing up the way that he did so easily.

  "Could you maybe tell me what you're looking for? I could help you find it."

  "It's not that simple. I won't know what I need until I see it." He grimaced and put another flaking, leatherbound grimoire aside.

  "Don't the two halves of the gargoyle book have all the information we need?"

  "It explains the ritual. But it also assumes a great deal of background on alchemical and magical practices of the time. I have studied the topic, but I'm not a practitioner. It is like reading about building bridges, compared to having to build one yourself."

  "I'm sorry, but I'm still having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around this," Jess said. She picked up the book he'd put down, opened it and glanced down columns of tiny handwriting in Latin. "I mean, if magic and werewolves and dragons are all real, is everything? Ghosts? Vampires?"

  Mace's brief smile flickered. "I haven't met a vampire or seen a ghost, but I can't say for certain that they don't exist." He glanced at her again, a sharp probing of his green eyes. "I have to say that if I came upon you in a dark hallway, dressed like that, I could easily think I was seeing a ghost myself."

  Jess looked down at herself. "Do I really look that much like your sister?"

  "You could be the absolute image of her. Look."

  There was a large rolltop desk near the fireplace. Mace stepped over to it and rummaged through the drawers. He came up with a photo that he handed to her.

  Jess took it carefully by the edge. It was an older photo with rounded corners, maybe from the 1960s or early 70s, and she thought of what Reive had said about gargoyles living a long time.

  The girl in the photo was looking straight out with intense dark eyes, as if she was staring right at the viewer. She had hair piled up in a beehive hairdo and she was wearing, maybe not the exact same loose peasant-type blouse that Jess had on, but something very similar.

  Mace was right, Jess thought, staring at the girl in the photo. She saw that face in the mirror every day, that strong jaw and those intense brows and
that dark, serious gaze.

  "Mace," she whispered. "Do you think it's possible ..."

  "That she was your mother?" Mace asked bluntly. "I don't know." He took the photo back, and she couldn't help noticing that he handled it as reverently as she had.

  "Your sister ... did she ...?"

  "Have children? Live in Indiana? I don't know, Jess." He gave her a curious look. "Don't you remember your parents at all?"

  Jess shook her head. "I was a foundling. In Georgia, originally; that's where I'm from. I know they died, but that's all I know. I never even knew their names." She swallowed again. "What happened to her? Your sister."

  "I don't know," Mace said quietly. "I haven't spoken to Margery in years. She left long ago."

  "What was she like?"

  His smile, this time, was a soft, reminiscing thing. "Bold. Rebellious. Stubborn. Our parents were still alive back in those days, and she clashed terribly with them. They were very traditional and wanted us to stay apart from the world, here in Stonegarden where it was safe. She wanted to travel and see everything there was to see. As you might guess, she won that particular fight simply by leaving. But she had a terrible fight with our parents before she went. There was a great deal of resentment on both sides. She used to write to me for a while, but then her letters stopped coming."

  "When?" Jess whispered. It felt like a hand locked around her throat, making it hard to breathe.

  "Just about as long ago as the age you look, I would guess. Yes, Jess," he said gently. "I think there is a very good chance you're her daughter. But I don't know. And right now—"

  "—We have more important things to focus on," she said, glancing over at Reive on the couch. "Yes. I agree."

  Jess

  By early afternoon, everyone was dusty and tired, and Mace suggested a break.

  "You should go down and explore the village," Mace told them. "I think I have everything I need, so I can make preparations for the ritual while you enjoy a few hours to yourself."

  There was an ominous subtext that Jess couldn't help reading into his words, that if this didn't work, it might be the last opportunity she and Reive got to spend together. Still, the idea of leaving the relative safety of Stonegarden's thick walls made her nervous.