‘What are you doing here, Badrick?’ asked Ezzie. ‘The last time we met, you were guardian to the bandoleer of the Dunitru clan in France.’
‘That,’ he replied, ‘was over two hundred years ago, Esmeralda. Much has happened since then among the Arniko Natsia.’ He gestured to the other gargoyles. ‘We no longer have charges to protect. Now, we are in the service of the new order of Sobrasi, established many years after the Sundering.’
‘That doesn’t answer the question,’ I said.
He peered down at me. ‘The Sobrasi have come to initiate a new member, and we are here to collect the gargoyle. We will return with him to Europe, and under the guidance of the Sobrasi, he will be retrained and made fit for more suitable service.’
Hugo bristled beside me. ‘Yeah, that’s not going to happen.’
At once, the gargoyles’ demeanors changed, like a shift in the wind. Their wings lifted off their backs, and their bodies tensed. I stepped in front of Hugo with my hands in the air. I felt the heat of his emotions like I was standing next to a bonfire. But we couldn’t be emotional now. These gargoyles were our best chance at finding Sebastian.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter at this point what you’re supposed to do with him, because he’s gone.’
‘Gone?’ questioned Tamzen, the tall female gargoyle.
‘He broke out of the dungeon, and we don’t know where he is. Augustine has promised the Queen that he’s going to destroy all the shadowen throughout our kumpania, and we have to find Sebastian before that happens.’
‘We are aware of their agreement,’ said Tamzen, her lip curling. ‘And we have pledged to assist in any way we can to eradicate the evil creatures.’
‘All the shadowen,’ I said, frowning. ‘That includes you.’
‘We are under the Sobrasi’s protection,’ said Badrick. ‘We do not fall into the same ranking as those scum.’
‘Neither does Sebastian.’
‘We cannot help you,’ he said. ‘We are bound to the wishes of the Sobrasi.’
‘You aren’t servants,’ I countered. ‘You’re guardians.’
Badrick’s lip curled, revealing a row of sharp teeth. ‘That was a long time ago. Things are different. And when your charges have power to turn you to stone, it becomes difficult to remain on any equal footing.’
‘Isn’t there some way you can break free?’
Tamzen folded her arms over her chest. ‘We cannot break the seal. It binds us until death, and we do not kill Roma. It is against the morals of our very existence and the reason God chose to make the gargoyle the protector of Gypsy kind.’
I looked from one gargoyle to the next. Their faces reminded me so much of Sebastian – quietly resigned. The faces of those who have been beaten down, who’ve forgotten their own strength. Almost without realizing it, I’d reached out and touched Tamzen’s arm gently.
‘The Sobrasi have turned into something they were never meant to be. They were supposed to oversee the shadow world, but they’ve used it for their own power. If you help us, I swear I’ll do everything I can to change all of this.’
She blinked slowly at me with her strange, inhuman eyes. The others watched her warily. ‘Why are you so concerned with this gargoyle?’ she asked.
I stared back at her. ‘He’s my guardian.’
Badrick scoffed. ‘If he were, he would’ve found a way to your side, no matter what obstacles he faced. You tell us that he has escaped, and yet, you are here and he is not. A guardian would be able to track his charge.’
‘He’s not himself,’ I replied. ‘He broke out of his cell in the dungeon, and we have no idea how to find him. But I know you have tracking skills. You could locate him before Augustine or the Marksmen.’
Badrick raised his brow, reminding me a little of Ezzie. ‘And why would we want to do such a thing?’
Ezzie stepped forward. ‘Badrick, listen to me. Whatever you think of me, you must believe Josephine Romany. She is Sebastian’s charge. He’s not guilty of any crime. He has been wrongly stolen away from his rightful place and endured much suffering at the hands of a marimé traitor who only seeks revenge and power. But it is more than that. Sebastian isn’t simply a guardian, or even a gargoyle, for that matter. We have reason to believe he is the embodiment of the head of La Gargouille.’
Another thick silence engulfed the room. The silver eyes of the gargoyles glimmered in the light, and I read their thoughts in them, even if I wasn’t privileged to hear the words in my head.
‘Where do you get such an absurd theory?’ demanded Tamzen.
Hugo’s jaw worked so hard his goatee twitched. ‘From my parents. Zindelo and Nadya Corsi.’
‘La Gargouille,’ Badrick repeated, sounding thoughtful. ‘I have been around since before the Sundering, and there has never been any mention of that evil monstrosity. The head was destroyed long ago. Your information comes from two renegade Sobrasi who cannot be trusted.’
Hugo’s face darkened, and he started forward, but I put my hands out to stop him. ‘I heard you say it yourself, before we came into the room. You said you’d never sensed anything like him.’ I looked at each gargoyle imploringly. ‘Please, we have to find Sebastian. He needs our help to fight this. Augustine’s been using him like some pawn in this game he’s playing. Even if you don’t believe us, Sebastian is still one of your kind; you can’t deny that. Are you so cold and heartless that you would just let him be destroyed?’
The four shadowen stared at each other, communicating telepathically between them. If Ezzie was in part of their conversation, I couldn’t tell from her expression. Hugo watched them suspiciously. His fingers twitched at his sides. My mouth felt like sandpaper, but I bit my lip so that I wouldn’t say anything else. Finally, Badrick addressed us again.
‘We do not know whether we believe all you have said, but this Sebastian Grey is a gargoyle, and therefore we do owe him our aid. We will help you as much as we can, but our capacity is limited. The Sobrasi are in session now with Augustine, but they will shortly return.’
‘Can you track him?’ I asked.
Badrick lifted his head, sniffing the air. The others mirrored his actions. Ezzie observed from a distance, her eyes dulling to hazel, before she glanced away. Hugo noticed, too. Badrick seemed to confer with the rest of the shadowen before he dipped his head towards me.
‘Sebastian Grey is not in the Court of Shadows.’
I couldn’t process what he said at first, and then a freezing dread went up my spine. If he wasn’t in the Court—
‘Where?’ Ezzie demanded. ‘We need to know where.’
Badrick opened his mouth, then abruptly glanced towards the door. ‘We cannot say more. The Sobrasi are coming.’
‘Then we need to leave now,’ I said. A thought hit me, and I turned to Badrick. ‘You can shadow out of here, right?’
‘Of course,’ he replied.
‘Wait a sec,’ said Hugo, stepping back in alarm. ‘Not that smoke thing you guys do?’
Ezzie smiled wryly at him. ‘There is no other way.’
Tamzen sniffed the air. ‘If we are going, it must be now. They are very close.’
‘Crap,’ said Hugo, his shoulders slumping. ‘Okay, what do I do?’
‘Nothing,’ said Tamzen, wrapping her arms around him. ‘Just don’t let go.’
Hugo gave a startled huff as black, oily mist swirled around them, and they vanished. My nerves prickled along my spine. I’d only shadowed twice before, and it wasn’t the best feeling. The other two female gargoyles were swallowed up in a mist of their own. Ezzie nodded at me.
‘Go with Badrick,’ she said. ‘I can’t take a passenger, but I can follow your shadows.’
‘Come,’ he said, pulling me to him. ‘We will take you to him.’
I held my breath as smoke engulfed us both.
38. Josephine
It felt like a giant vacuum sucked all the air from my lungs until they collapsed inside my ribcage. The world spun like a b
lack whirlpool. My fingers and toes went numb. I screamed, but nothing sounded in the void. And then, like a flash of lightning, I had air and feeling again.
I felt Badrick’s hands around my shoulders, steadying me against the wave of dizziness. Out of the corner of my eye, another plume of smoke appeared, and Ezzie materialized out of it. Her face was pale, and she looked nauseous. I blinked several times until my blurry vision cleared. Gussalen and Sunniva shook the remains of oily mist from their wings. Tamzen held tight to Hugo as the smoke dissipated into the air.
Hugo’s eyes were huge. He looked dangerously ready to punch something. He struggled out of the gargoyle’s grasp and stumbled forward, muttering a string of choice words and nearly toppling over.
‘Don’t ever, ever do that to me again,’ he panted.
Esmeralda wiped sweat from her temple. ‘We didn’t have a choice.’
The whirling in my head eased. We were standing in the middle of a vast cemetery. The night air hung thick and humid around us, like a damp curtain. Tombstones and monuments stretched skyward. Thick clumps of Spanish moss hung like curtains from massive oaks lining either side of a wide, graveled road. Behind us, through a clump of narrow palm trees, I saw the spiraling towers of the Cathedral of Saints. The last time I’d seen it, I was barely fourteen, but the centuries-old church was as beautiful as I remembered it.
‘Hide,’ whispered Ezzie harshly.
We ducked behind a wide tombstone. Hugo joined us, crouching beside Ezzie. The gargoyles only had to step back into the shadows of a large tree, and their bodies disappeared from view. Had I been a stranger walking by, I wouldn’t have even noticed them.
Ezzie grasped the sleeve of my blouse and pointed. I carefully peered around the thick headstone. Several yards ahead, inside a circular clearing, surrounded by trees, just visible in the pale moonlight, Augustine stood, with Sebastian at his side.
Pewter hair hung in damp clumps over Sebastian’s forehead, and his horns caught the light ominously. His wings were expanded to their full length, taking up a large portion of the clearing. His bare chest was covered with an alarming amount of black veins that branched out from his neck and continued along his arms underneath the surface of his gray skin. His feet were also bare, revealing clawed feet that resembled his hands. Sebastian’s solid silver eyes glowed reflectively, like a cat’s, but they were lifeless and unfocused. He stared blindly ahead, his body motionless.
Augustine rolled up his sleeve and raised his arm. I saw clearly the massive number of tattoos covering his skin. Hugo made an odd sound in the back of his throat and he clutched the headstone so hard his knuckles bulged. Augustine ran his fingertips along his arm and fixed his gaze on Sebastian.
Sebastian’s wings flexed, and the muscles along his shoulders tightened. His head dropped to his chest. Suddenly, Ezzie gave a choking snarl, and rocked back on her heels. I shifted around to look at her. Her eyes shimmered silver as they locked on Sebastian, and she swayed slightly, almost like she was in a trance.
‘Ezzie,’ I whispered. When she didn’t respond, I shook her gently. ‘Ezzie, what is it?’
‘He’s speaking to us,’ she said in a weird, faraway voice.
Before I could ask what she meant I felt it, like an icy hand on the back of my neck – the awareness of things tucked within the shadows of the cemetery around me. Oily mist drifted through the grass and gathered low along the graves. There was movement underneath the trees and eyes, faintly glowing; the scraping of claws on stone, the flap of wings and the rustle of leather and feathers.
Shadowen.
They materialized like ghosts, perching on headstones and obelisks, crouched on columns and graves, and nestled and in the thick, low branches of the mossy oaks; at least forty or fifty shadow creatures of all kinds. I recoiled. Every type of animal representation warped or mutated in some way, combinations of terrible things – some with wings, others with multiple legs, long necks or swishing tails, but all armed with razor-sharp fangs and deadly talons.
I counted six chimeras among a multitude of grotesques, and their human-looking shape was somehow more terrifying than the animal monsters around them. Their teeth gleamed in smiles that seemed permanently set into their features like carvings on stone.
Augustine thrust his arm higher into the air and Sebastian, as though receiving some kind of wordless order, began to speak. But they weren’t words of any human language. It was a low, primal sound that rumbled throughout the clearing.
‘What’s he doing?’ I asked.
Esmeralda closed her eyes. The muscle along the side of her neck twitched. She seemed to be fighting something. She dug her fingers into the grass. I waited helplessly, my attention divided between Ezzie and Sebastian. After nearly a minute of silence, she answered.
‘Josephine, this is not good.’ She looked at me. ‘Sebastian speaks in the tongue of the grotesques. I cannot understand him. I can only feel his intentions.’
The creatures around us swayed eerily – as though listening to a tuneless song only they could interpret. Then, Sebastian’s head snapped up. The strange noise died abruptly. My breathing hitched as he swept his gaze in our direction. The corner of his lip rose, revealing his rows of teeth. Beside me, Ezzie was like a statue. I copied her, holding my breath and steeling myself.
He knew we were here.
I almost reached out to him with my mind, but some other sense warned me against it. My eyes started to water as my lungs begged for air. Slowly, Sebastian lowered his head again. Whatever he was communicating seemed more important than our presence. He closed his eyes, but his lips didn’t move this time. I drew in a cautious breath. Augustine kept his focus on Sebastian, and a triumphant smirk stretched the white scar on his cheek.
Esmeralda’s eyes widened in a stunned look of dismay. ‘He has switched now, and he is speaking telepathically. I could not understand the grotesque speech, but I understand this.’
‘So what’s he saying?’
She turned stone-cold eyes to me. ‘Bow before La Gargouille.’
Fear knocked into me, and my legs threatened to give away. It was everything I’d dreaded but convinced myself couldn’t be true, despite the evidence looming in front of me. I searched desperately for something in Sebastian’s face, anything that would give me a glimmer of hope that he was still there. But his face was a mask of absolute emptiness, and it scared me to the core.
A soft flutter from behind us made me jump. The four gargoyles emerged from their shadowy hiding place. They moved forward like one singular unit, their faces turned towards Sebastian. They approached the headstone where we were crouched.
I crept out. ‘What are you—’
Hugo’s hand clamped over my mouth. I grasped his wrist, starting to wrench him away, but then I saw the look on his face. I followed his stare towards the gargoyles. Their eyes had turned completely silver. The pupils were gone, and the irises spread to encompass the entire socket. My hand dropped, and Hugo released me.
They continued away from us, moving towards Sebastian in the same kind of stone-like trance. The chimeras hissed at their approach, fading back to the edges of the clearing. But the gargoyles didn’t even glance at them. They paused in front of Sebastian, and then with slow, graceful movements, each gargoyle went down on one knee and dipped their heads.
Ezzie tried to stand beside me. Hugo pulled her back down, but not without a struggle. ‘Oh no,’ he muttered fiercely. ‘You aren’t going anywhere.’
She struggled against him, but not with her full power. I could tell she was fighting the same battle on the inside. She clenched her teeth until whatever it was seemed to pass.
‘I’ve never experienced anything like this,’ she whispered, slumping against Hugo’s side like she’d just run a marathon. ‘Though I’m not shadowen anymore, enough remains inside me to feel the pull of La Gargouille.’ She shook her head. ‘The grotesques, the chimeras … even the gargoyles … they have no choice. His control is absolute.’
‘Stop it,’ I snapped. My fear burned through my nerves. ‘Augustine would’ve found another way. He’s been working at this for years. If we sit here blaming ourselves, we may as well just give up.’ I looked at Ezzie. ‘Can you understand anything else Sebastian’s saying?’
Ezzie shook herself off and rose upright. ‘He’s ceased communicating. I think there might be …’
She sniffed the air, and a scowl twisted her features. She eased her head around the tombstone. We followed her movement. At first, I couldn’t see anything different. Sebastian remained where he was, head down. The chimeras and grotesques hissed and snarled in eerie succession, the unsettling noises filtering through the thick air.
Sebastian tucked his wings against his back and retreated, melting into the darkness at the edge of the clearing. The gargoyles rose to their feet and followed. The remaining shadowen silently disappeared into the trees until it seemed as though they’d never been there at all.
Augustine strolled to the center of the clearing and spread his arms wide. ‘So glad you could make it,’ he said.
Seven people wearing rich violet cloaks stepped into view from one of the graveled pathways. They lowered their hoods and followed a short, older woman into the center of the clearing. I cast a quick glance at Hugo and Ezzie. Their faces revealed what I’d already guessed.
The Sobrasi.
The woman halted in front of Augustine. ‘What have you done with our guardians?’
Augustine’s brows lifted. ‘You’ve misplaced your gargoyles? How very inconvenient for you. I’m sure they’ll be along shortly. After all, they’ve sworn to protect you.’
‘This is your last opportunity, Augustine,’ said the woman in a low, threatening tone. ‘You’ve proven yourself incapable of harnessing this one shadowen successfully thus far. We are beginning to doubt whether you truly have what you claim.’
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