Alchemystic

by Anton Strout

  Six

  Stanis

  In the midst of the freedom of flying, a panicked sensation overwhelmed me like lightning coursing through my stone form, catching me so off guard that my body curled in on itself, my wings folding in around me. Stunned, I fell through the clouds toward the ground far below before something deep inside kicked in once more. I extended my body fully, arms and legs stretched out to the very tips of my claws until my wings extended, catching the air and carrying me aloft as I twisted and turned to avoid the buildings I had just been plummeting toward.

  The alarming buzz of the sensation stayed with me, settling into a slow burn at my center. The initial shock of it gave way to a forgotten but familiar calling, and I was struck with a memory—this was the sole purpose of what drew me to the night sky in the first place, this call to action. Without hesitation, I flew off, banking away from the glass wall of the nearest building, trying to ascertain where the pull of the sensation was strongest. A few aerial swoops in each direction told my body where the calling came from, and I followed the pull though the night sky, darting lower and lower between the buildings as I went. Even after so many years, speed still exhilarated me, more so with a direct purpose at hand behind it.

  My eyes searched the streets below, taking in the lone figure of a woman hanging at the top of a fence within the close quarters of an alley. Another figure, this one hooded, came down another section of the alley, moving toward her, the gleam of a blade in his hand. Everything about this woman called out to me, and although I did not understand why, I desperately wanted to help her, whatever the source of her distress was. The one rule screamed out all-consuming in my head.

  Protect.

  I pressed myself lower in flight, twenty feet off the ground now, before swooping into the tight confines of the alley. Maneuvering was difficult here, but centuries of experience were on my side. I came down in front of the blade-wielding figure, landing on my feet as the man, still running, slammed into my chest, and I sent him flying into a large metal cube along the side of the alley that stank of rotting food.

  The figure stood, disoriented, until he noticed me there. He ran at me, stabbing with a shimmering blade in his hand. I did not think to move as the man lunged, sparks flying off my stone skin as the knife dragged down my chest. The gesture was futile, but it awoke something dark and furious inside me. I lashed out with my left arm, knocking the blade out of the attacker’s hand as something solid underneath the man’s skin gave way. He roared in pain, pulling his arm to his body, part of it sticking out at an odd angle from the rest of it. How fragile these creatures are, I thought. I had forgotten.

  The sound was almost inhuman and it would no doubt draw attention, which concerned me. That would violate the second of the rules, one of many rules that came as instinct to me more than anything. Remain hidden from humanity. I should leave, but the first rule held a stronger sway over me, and I simply could not leave this man here for fear of harm coming to the woman.

  The cries of my attacker faded, giving over to a pained whimper. I grabbed him by both his shoulders, digging my claws in, then leapt into the sky as he screamed. His added weight forced me to correct my flight, lengthening the strokes of my wings, but it took only a second to adjust before I compensated, shooting straight up into the night sky. The pained man craned his head to look down. His whimper turned back into a fear-filled scream of panic as he wrapped his good arm around mine.

  I rose higher, ignoring his cries until we cleared the clouds and entered the quiet moonlit space above them. When I looked at the man again, his sounds of distress had ceased and the human stared at me with a mix of shock and wonder on his face. He examined me, my mix of carved beauty and horror no doubt puzzling him.

  “You,” he managed to say. “It is you.”

  “You—you know of me?” I asked, faltering in my flight for a moment, rocking unsteadily.

  “My people had given up hope of ever finding you,” he said, grim. “You are the whisper of legend. Stanis.”

  “Stanis,” I repeated, letting the name roll through my mouth as if it were new to me. I had thought the word before, but long had it been since I had uttered it. When it left my lips, I felt the power in it. Why this man should know my name was unclear, but my mind awoke to that mystery, demanding answers. “How do you know of me? Why were you chasing that woman?”

  His face went dark, his eyes narrowing. “Because that woman must die for what they did to you,” the man snarled, still clutching to my solid arms. “Her and her kind. If not by my hand, then by another’s.”

  My other questions fell to the back of my mind as the first rule rose up once more, all-consuming. The protection—the protection of the family, I remembered—overrode all other things. “That cannot be,” I said. “I cannot allow that. For you, this ends here. Now.”

  The man struggled in vain to free himself, not that it would matter this high up. “More will come, Stanis,” the man said. “You have been missed and you will be found.”

  “Then let them come,” I said, no longer able to resist the rise of the rule. Protect. “I am Stanis. I am death.”

  I shifted my hands to the sides of the man’s head, holding him by it as I slowed my flight. He grabbed at my arms, holding on for support as his legs fought to find some form of purchase, but it did him little good.

  Such frail creatures, I thought once more before pressing my hands together on either side of the man’s skull until they met. Screams gave way to silence, and the burning at my center faded and was no more.

  Seven

  Alexandra

  The sound of chaos somewhere off in the alley behind me had died down minutes ago, but the pounding of my heart hadn’t and I remained where I was, stunned, my fingers locked through the loops of the fence, holding myself up there as long as possible. I lasted until I could no longer feel the wire digging into my hands, and when one of my boots slipped loose from one of the loops, I let go, landing hard on the pavement below. I pulled the art tube off my back and held it out in front of me like a sword, the simple length of plastic giving me the courage to race back to the last corner before giving a tentative look around it, my heart still beating in my throat.

  It was quiet now that the sounds of chaos had died down completely. Fighting, a cracking and popping—had that been bone? A pained cry from a man’s voice; then the signs of struggle in the alley had fallen away in less than a heartbeat, followed by the strangest sound of all. The man’s cry of pain, still going on, faded like the quickly passing siren of a high-speed police chase. Only it wasn’t going away from me uptown or crosstown. Irrational as it was, in just seconds the voice had disappeared…straight up into the sky, followed by silence.

  I moved forward with a slow caution, rounding the corner I had turned down before the fence had dead-ended me. There was no one in the alley now, which, in a way, caused me to panic more. Having heard what I had just minutes ago, I looked up into the night sky, feeling foolish when the only thing I saw were the dark clouds high overhead. I turned my gaze back to the alley all around me, my brain unable to process the mystery of what the hell had happened to my attacker. Had I missed whoever it was? Had he snuck down the alley behind me, waiting to spring? I spun around, expecting to see him, but there was no one there. A glint of light on the ground caught my eye—the knife the man had pressed against my throat. I knelt down as I continued to watch for movement in the alley, and took the knife by the handle. I stood, the power of the blade giving my courage a boost, but not by much. The idea of stabbing someone held no appeal, but if we were in a me-or-them situation, I’d do what I had to if it came down to it. Or so I imagined.

  “Hello?” I called out, my voice tiny and weak despite the power I now felt holding the blade, but there was no answer.

  Nerves got the better of me and a creepy sensation washed over my body. I began to shake as my pumping blood slowed and the chill of the fall night air finally caught back up with me. I slid the strap
of my art tube back around my shoulder and fished my cell phone out of my bag, hand at the ready to dial the police, but my fingers wouldn’t move. Instead my head turned back toward the sky. What the hell was I going to tell the authorities? That the voice of my attacker had gone straight up into the night sky? Telling someone that seemed patently absurd. I stood there, unsure, until the crick developing in my neck took over and I turned my eyes back down to my surroundings.

  Still clutching my phone in one hand and the strange knife in the other, I made my way back down the alley to the street, still fearing a rush from the shadows of the alley that were big enough to hide someone. When no one attacked, I ran out onto Fifteenth and hurried up Irving Plaza, wondering how much worse my evening could really get. Then I remembered the talk I expected with my boss-parents, and suddenly the idea of getting knifed in an alley didn’t seem all that bad a way to go.

  I must have checked behind myself a thousand times as I ran all the way home to Gramercy Park, and by the time I reached my family home on the west side of it, I felt fairly certain that I hadn’t been followed. I ran into the main doorway of stately Belarus Manor, keyed into the building, and started off across the lower floor, which comprised the offices for the family’s real estate dealings. Just being inside behind a locked door within my family’s half-a-block-wide, seven-story building was enough to calm me, if only just a little. It was home; it was safe, a refreshing oasis away from the harsh desert of the messed-up outside world.

  By the time I hit the elevator up to my family’s main living quarters on the second floor, my breathing was almost normal. As the doors slid open on the dimly lit main family living area on the second floor, I looked down at my hand, still holding my attacker’s knife. I slipped it into my shoulder bag, careful not to slice up any of its contents. I stepped out onto the floor, picking a path through months of neglected accumulation lining the main hall—newspapers, mail, and assorted bric-a-brac. I made my way to the spacious living room, where my parents sat zombie-eyed in front of a tiny, old-school television watching the evening’s financial reports. A slight nod of both their heads gave an indication that they at least acknowledged I was in the room, which was better than some days these past four months since Devon’s death, I supposed. My father had been the one who convinced me to stay, and pointed out that leaving would be damaging to my mother, but now it seemed that as long as I was doing what they wanted, they didn’t have much to say to me.

  My mother looked away from the television to me. Despite only being in her early fifties, Devon’s death had aged her considerably these few short months. Her hair, thanks to chemical treatment, remained as black as mine, but her face had grown pale as of late, thin to the point of skeletal. Her mouth gave a twisted, one-sided smile, the only kind she seemed capable of these days. My father, who always seemed to vacillate between stoic man of business and peaceful man of God, didn’t react at all beyond his initial nod.

  I thought about not telling them about my attacker, letting the strange silence settle between us. They already had enough grief weighing on them still, without me worrying them more by adding to it with the tale of my impossible disappearing assailant. Dark and brooding was the new black in the Belarus family. I kept my mouth shut and headed for the back hall that led off to the stairs to the other floors. Maybe I could salvage my evening if I could just leave them to their creepy little viewing party, obsessing over the latest financial stories on the news. I hoped so, anyway, backing myself into the hallway slowly so as not to draw attention.

  The tiniest hint of interest awoke on my father’s face. He scratched at the little semicircle that remained of his black hair.

  “How was your day?” he asked, shifting his focus to me, his words coming out pointed beyond his hint of an accent. His blue-green eyes, my own eyes, stared back at me.

  I stopped where I was halfway down the hall. “Oh, fine,” I said, words rushing out of me, breaking the strange wall of silence. “You know, the usual…showed some apartments, met up with some contractors…” I backed myself slowly down the hall as my words trailed off, but my father lowered the volume on the television with his remote.

  “I heard from Randy Rosenzweig,” he said, all business tone, “at the Hell’s Kitchen project. You skipped out early on an appointment with him today, yes? Would you care to explain that?”

  Something about his tone, switching from melancholy to business on a dime, hit me the wrong way. I stopped in the hall again, then hurried back into the main room. “Do I get a choice? Any chance I can convince you not to be concerned…?”

  “What I am concerned with,” he said, stern this time, “are your growing issues in timeliness when it comes to our business, what you’re doing to sabotage our family’s name in certain real estate circles. This is a family business, Alexandra. It will be your business. Do you understand that?”

  My mother tsk-tsked behind closed teeth. “Alexandra, tell me…what is so important that you have to keep shuffling appointments around?”

  I sighed and spoke. “Remember that envelope Rory gave me for my birthday back in August?”

  My mother’s face winced at the mention of my oldest friend, but I let it slide. Like most mothers, she blamed my oldest friend for every bad idea I’d ever gotten mixed up with. I was pretty sure she’d be doing the same thing when I was fifty.

  “She’s seen how ragged learning this business is running me, so she just thought I might relax a little if I spent a little more time with my passion, so…she enrolled me at the Tribeca Y for one of the artist-in-residence series they offer as part of their art studio programming.”

  “Art again?” my father asked, treating the word like I had just said I was entering the drug trade. “Alexandra, we have been through this. I fail to see how that will remotely help your future. We want you to be prepared to fully take over the family affairs if—when—the time comes.”

  “You had Devon all polished up for all that, didn’t you?” I asked. I tried to bite back my words, but I couldn’t. “I didn’t ask for all this. I never wanted it.”

  My father sighed, his voice going dark. “We’re talking about you right now, Alexandra, not your dead brother, God rest his soul. You did not ask for this choice, but it is a better one than your brother faced.”

  “I nearly faced death, too, you know,” I said, snapping. I reached into my purse with caution and pulled out the knife. So much for not saying anything. “Tonight. I almost got accosted in an alley on the way home. This is what my attacker had at my throat.”

  My mother was up like a shot, running over, but stopped short of where I held the ornate knife. My father got up a bit more slowly, his eyes full of concern, and walked over to me. He took the knife from my hand, inspecting the carvings along the white of its handle. Something that looked like a black serpent with four heads wrapped up and down it. “This is something ungodly,” he said, meeting my eyes with all seriousness.

  My mother stepped closer, giving me an awkward hug. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said, but the way her body was shaking against me told me she wasn’t convinced. Nor, as it was becoming apparent, was my father.

  “I don’t want you leaving the building until further notice. Understand?” he said.

  “I’m okay,” I said, feeling all of sixteen again as I pulled back from my mother. “I…lost my mugger in an alley farther downtown.” Given how wide my mother’s eyes were, lost sounded better than disappeared, which would probably explode her head. “But not leaving the building? With my workload, how am I supposed to get to meetings, showings, and closings, then? Look. I’m fine. This is New York. I’m a little shaken up, but frankly I’m surprised I haven’t been mugged sooner. This isn’t some weird evil churchy thing, okay? Just wanted a little sympathy here. I’ll be fine going out and about. I’m a grown-up now.”

  My father’s eyes met mine, unamused. “I’m sorry, but you will stay at home for now, Alexandra,” he said. “
Never mind visiting job sights or showing places.”

  I bit my tongue, incredulous and angry. Was I getting grounded? At twenty-two? I went to speak, but the look of terrified panic on my mother’s face stopped me, killing any of the fire left in me. “Fine,” I said, giving in.

  My father nodded, a lighter look in his eyes now that I had acquiesced. “Besides, there’s plenty of work you can do here,” he said, handing me a stack of folders. “Since you love your great-great-grandfather’s old studio on the top floor so much, why don’t you work on these there for the time being?”

  “Till when?” I asked. “Not that I mind the break from appointments. I’m just…surprised, is all. How long are we talking?”

  “I’m not sure,” my father said, pulling the knife closer to his face, lifting his glasses to examine it more closely. “I will consult with the reverend in the morning.”

  He handed the knife back to me before he and my slowly calming mother headed back to the couch. Once they were settled in, he raised the volume of the television once again, both of them falling silent.

  The reverend? Why hadn’t he suggested the cops? I could have argued with him about how ridiculous going the religious route sounded, but there was no way I was going to enable all his churchiness. I knew better than to try to sway him from anything religious. There was really no point in arguing with him, anyway.

  At least they hadn’t fired me from the family business, or the family, for that matter. Even though it was for the benefit of my mother mostly, feeling sorta grounded at twenty-two sucked majorly. I headed toward the back hall of the building, mounting the stairs farther up as a newly found sympathy for Rapunzel settled over me. Despite the enormous size of the Belarus building, it hadn’t ever felt so claustrophobic.