by Anton Strout
“It’s my Leatherman tool,” he said with a bit of pride.
“Leatherman?” she asked. “Are you one of the Village People?”
Marshall sighed and shook his head. “It’s like a Swiss Army knife, a multi-tool. Should help you with the stones.”
She shortened the strap on her dancer’s bag, bringing it in close to her body, then slid the tool into her pocket and smiled. “Thanks, Marsh,” she said, and spun back around to the mammoth piece of art.
“You sure—” I started to ask, but she was off like a shot, already swinging herself up into one of the crooks where a few of the figures’ knees came together.
“Jesus,” Marshall said with a low whistle. “She’s like a spider monkey.”
“She’s…Well, she’s something,” I said, watching her progress slow the higher she got. “Be careful! I don’t know where there’s a hospital near here.”
“Where is here, anyway?” Marshall asked, looking around.
“I think we’re somewhere by Penn Station,” I said. “I think. They called the station Herald/Pennsylvania, before the lines expanded, but it was closed and built around forever ago.”
We watched in silence as Rory climbed, both of us steadying our light on her figure and any handholds around her that we could make out from the ground.
“This is very Indiana Jones,” Marshall said. “It’s like we’re defiling a temple. Ten to one these statues come alive and attack us. Can you cast ‘Detect Magic’ or something?”
“If that means what I think it means, I don’t sense things like that,” I said, “but then again, I’m not entirely sure what I would be able to sense. I don’t think what my great-great-grandfather dabbled in quite works that way.”
“That’s comforting,” Rory said from halfway up the statue now. “The only statue I’m currently concentrating on is the one I’m climbing, and I’m concentrating on not falling off it.”
I pulled off my backpack, opened it, and tapped my fingers happily against the back of the book. “Give me a sec,” I said. “Maybe there’s something in here to make the stone more…cushiony when you fall.”
Rory grunted as she tightened her climbing grip. “Or I could just, you know, not fall.”
Marshall let out a quiet, nervous laugh. “Let’s try for that one,” he said. “My money’s still on the statues coming to life.”
Rory hugged her way up the torso before grabbing onto one of the statue’s outstretched arms, swinging herself up onto its shoulder, her arms among the tangle of snake hair. She looked down at us, smiling and triumphant. “I’d be more worried about ‘defiling the temple,’ Marsh, if we weren’t somewhere underneath Macy’s.”
“Even so,” I said, “Marshall has a point. Stay sharp.”
“Will do,” she said, and began working on the cluster of gemstones on the statue’s “crown” of snaky hair using Marshall’s Leatherman tool. The scraping of metal on stone echoed out into the darkness surrounding us, drowning out the nearby chittering of rats. One by one the stones came free and she lowered them into the shoulder bag hanging around her waist. She gave a quick anticipatory look around the room. Marshall and I did the same, waiting for something to happen, but nothing did.
Rory started back down the statue, but my flashlight remained fixed where it was on the Medusa’s head. The stone snakes were moving.
“You might want to hurry, Ror,” I said. “And don’t look up.”
She looked down at me, then naturally did what I told her not to do and followed the beam of my flashlight back up to the head, where the snakes were in full swirl now. Her feet slipped as the statue came alive, the dust shaking off it and all the others around them as they did the same. Rory’s arms were around the forearm of a soldier on Medusa’s right, and as it swung away, her grip broke and she fell to the floor in front of Marshall, landing hard on her ass.
Marshall absently offered his hand to her, his eyes still fixed on the Medusa, which was making its way toward the low barrier between us. Rory took it, dusting herself off with her free hand as she stood, then gave the Medusa a quick glance before starting toward me.
“We need to run,” she said, letting go of Marshall’s hand, checking to see whether her bag was still intact.
“No argument from me,” I said, slamming my book shut. I turned and started off, Rory following.
“Awesome,” Marshall said, still fixed in place.
Rory grabbed his arm and forcefully dragged him into a run with the two of us. “Awesome?” she repeated, punching him with her free hand. “How can you say that?”
“Well, I told you that would happen,” he said. “It’s not often that I’m right.”
She shook her head wearily at him. “Feels great, don’t it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Except the possibly dying part that might come from it.”
Two of the soldiers had worked their way past the barrier and were starting after us now. Out in the surrounding darkness, the sounds of others coming to life came from all around us.
It was hard enough running with only three bouncing flashlights to light the way through the treacherous, debris-filled platform. If I didn’t come up with something, those things would catch us in no time. We were a little faster than them, but they had numbers. “We need to split up,” I said.
“Why?” Rory asked.
“We need to sort through those stones, and now,” I said. “We need to figure out which one of them is the true stone, which is a part of Stanis.”
“Good enough reason for me,” Rory said, already reaching down into her bag for the gems, counting them as we continued running. “I count a dozen or so. Hard to tell, being on the run and all.”
I grabbed her bag and Marshall’s arm, stopping for just a second. More movement came from down the platform as more and more statues fell in behind us for the chase. “Both of you grab a handful,” I said. “Then pick a direction and run.”
“How is that going to help?” Marshall asked, hesitant.
“Just do it!” I shouted, and shoved my own hand into the bag, drawing out a fistful of gems.
Marshall didn’t pause, scooping out a handful of his own.
“Now run!”
I took off, my boots sliding on the grime and rubble under my feet as I made a sharp left turn in the main area of the station, not waiting to see which direction the others would choose. When I thought I had enough of a lead, I stopped and spun around, both to catch my breath and assess the situation developing behind me.
To my surprise, I had more than just a lead. None of the pack had followed after me. Neither had they followed Rory, who had kept going straight down the far end of the station and was not slowing and turning. We both watched the pack of stone soldiers, a dozen or so, chase off after Marshall, every last one of them.
“I didn’t defile your temple,” he shouted, looking back over his shoulder. “It was the blue-haired girl!”
“Nice,” Rory shouted out as she slowed her own run, shaking her head. “Asshat.”
“Rory!” I called out to her. “Drop your stones!”
I threw mine on the ground, letting them roll off into the darkness of the station, sounding like tiny claws scrabbling away from me, and Rory did the same, but looked confused.
“Now what?” she asked from several hundred yards away across the massive platform.
“We chase down Marshall,” I said, starting off toward his small circle of distant light on the other side of the station.
“We do?” Rory asked as she caught up with me. “With those things on his tail right behind him?”
“We do,” I nodded, still winded and hating the fact that Rory seemed to be breathing just fine. “This is the fastest solution I could come up with.”
“For what?”
“For the process of elimination.”
“If you’re looking to eliminate Marshall, good job,” she said.
Marshall was backed against a wall next to a collapsed entrance th
at might have led him off to safety had it been otherwise.
“Eliminating the gems,” I said. “Those things are not protecting all those stones. They’re protecting the stone. This was just a quick way for me to figure out which stones are which and eliminate the rest. We keep narrowing it down until we find the proper one.”
Rory smiled. “Smart. Dangerous, but smart.”
I laughed through my gasping for breath. “This whole damn endeavor is dangerous,” I said, then shouted to Marshall, “How many do you have left?”
Marshall looked into his cupped hands while still keeping an eye on his foes. “Seven!” A spear slammed into the wall next to his head and he stumbled to his right.
“Divide them into two handfuls,” I shouted. “We’re coming!”
Rory sighed, then stopped running. “We are? I like the guy, good roommate and all, but I’m not sure I want to take a spear to the head for him.”
I stopped, too, as much to talk as to rest my legs. “They won’t pay you any attention,” I said. “These soldiers, these centurions or whatever they are, are not as complex as Stanis. They’re single-minded of purpose, focused just on the stone. I need you to grab one of Marshall’s handfuls and run with it.”
“So there’s only a fifty-fifty chance they’ll spear me now?” she asked.
“You’re not going to get better odds than that around here right now—I’ll tell you that,” I said. I ended my debate and ran for Marshall, going straight through the crowd of stone creatures rather than around them. As I had hoped, they ignored me. I grabbed Marshall’s right hand, surprised that I couldn’t pry it open. I looked up at his face, and it was petrified with pure fear. Rory appeared on my left, working on his other hand.
“Open up, buttercup,” she said, singsong sweet, and slapped him across the face hard. His hand opened in mine and the stones fell into it.
Marshall came to and stared at Rory, her handprint on his face already turning a bright red.
“Sorry,” she said, then shoved him off to the right. “Now run!”
The three of us each shot off in a different direction, but this time it was Rory the statues chased after.
“Toward me!” I shouted. “Come to me!”
I ran toward her as she sprinted toward me, her voice growing closer. “I hate you so much right now,” she said.
“Hand me half!”
Rory looked down into her fist. “I can’t hand you half!” she screamed, perplexed and near hysterical. “I have three!”
“Give me one or two, then,” I said and held my hand out.
She slowed long enough to clasp her shaking hand in mine, released, and then ran off again. I looked down into my hand. One. I didn’t bother to wait and see if it was the one, not with the statues bearing down on me. I dashed off, then gave a look back over my shoulder. The statues were still with Rory, who was finally showing signs of fatigue.
“One more time!” I called out, and started back to the center of the station.
“Really, really, really hate you now,” Rory said as she closed the distance and we met once more, and she handed me one of her two stones. “Did I mention how much I hate you?”
I ran off, shouting behind me as I went. “Best friends forever! Even in the afterlife!”
This time the statues changed their course and started off after me for a change.
“Now what?” Rory asked, coming to a stop and doubling over as she gulped in deep breaths of air. One of the stone statues bowled into her shoulder as it headed after me, and I winced as she went flying through the air and skidding across the station’s floor.
“I have the stone,” I shouted, “and I have the book, but now I need the time to actually read the damn incantations to stop them.”
“This way!” Marshall shouted from somewhere off to my right. I followed his voice, heading toward a pile of debris about as tall as I was. I rounded it to find him crouched there on the ground, his backpack off and its contents spilled out all around him.
“This,” he said, holding up a piece of rope that trailed off around the edge of the pile, “is why you should always carry fifty feet of rope.” He tugged the line. I peeked my head above the pile of debris to see the line spring up taut across the path I had just run, acting as a trip line. The statues hit it, toppling forward and pulling at the line with their massive weight. Marshall went sliding face-first across the dirty platform, but didn’t let go of the rope. I grabbed his feet and held on, stopping his slide.
The remaining rope tangled among all the feet of the oncoming statues, causing them to crash down on top of one another in a mess of twisted, broken limbs. Marshall picked himself up, his face and front covered in slime, dirt, and bits of…something.
“Thanks,” I said.
“You might want to hurry up,” Rory called out from where she stood far off across the station.
The sound of the statues struggling to right themselves got me focused again. I laid the book out on the floor and flipped through it in haste, searching out the right words. Out of the corner of my eye, giant stone hands clawed at the top of the pile of debris, but I ignored them, intent on what I was looking for. I found the page and clasped the stone in both my hands as I invoked power over it, reclaiming the stone in the Belarus family name. It burned warm in my hands and I looked up to see the faces and arms of five of the remaining statues staring down at me, weapons raised and coming down fast. It took everything in my power not to stumble over the last of the words of binding.
I spoke the last of them and dropped to the floor, waiting to see if my power would ward them off, but the sound of the statues continued to grow louder as more joined the pack on the other side of the debris pile. “Shit,” I said. “I tried.”
Rory came running around the side of the pile of debris, skidded out, and fell down next to me and Marshall.
“Great,” she said, breathless. “Looks like more running, then.”
“Ladies—”
“I don’t think I can,” I said, my legs seizing up when I tried to force myself out of my crouch.
“Me, either,” Rory said. “Just wanted to get a little sarcasm in before they crush us.”
“Ladies—”
“Fair enough,” I said, grabbing my oldest friend’s hand.
“Guys!” Marshall shouted, stopping both Rory and me. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” I asked, listening hard. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly,” he said, and scurried to stand up.
Rory and I joined him, albeit a bit more slowly, and looked back over the pile of debris. All of the statues were simply standing there in a uniform line, motionless.
“It worked,” I said, allowing myself a small smile in all this.
“What are they doing?” Rory asked.
“Awaiting orders from their master, I would guess,” Marshall said. “Alexandra.”
“You think?” I asked, taking a tentative step out from behind the pile of debris.
“Try,” Rory whispered, but I didn’t notice her making any effort to step out with me. “Before they take a swing at you.”
“Okay,” I said, then turned to face the statues full-on. “Good work, men. Excellent job. This was just a test of our security here, and, ummm…you passed! Congratulations.”
The statues remained stone still, and I looked over at Rory, who was rolling her eyes at me. “Do you think they want praise or smoke blown up their ass?” she asked. “You said yourself that they’re far less complicated than Stanis.”
I shrugged. “So what do I do?”
“Give them an order,” she said.
I looked back at the statues again. “Back to where your maker intended you to stand,” I said, then added, “Please.”
Without hesitation the statues turned on their heels and returned to their original spots all along the walls of the old subway station, settling back into their places.
“‘Please’?” Rory repeated, raising her
eyebrows at me.
“It doesn’t hurt to be polite,” I said, staring down at the green stone resting in the palm of my hand.
“Can we get out of here, please?” Marshall asked, brushing the grime and muck away from his face. “I think I may have swallowed something living.”
“Yes, let’s get,” Rory said, leaning down to pick up the sprawled contents of his bag for him, slipping the Leatherman into his bag among them all.
I didn’t argue. I wanted out just as much, especially since I was dying to see what effect the return of the gemstone would have on Stanis.
“Next time, we bring the gargoyle,” Rory said, rubbing her shoulder.
“Agreed.”
Twenty two
Stanis
A strange pulling sensation of the maker’s kin called to me in a slow, subtle rhythm, and I dropped down off the roof to the terrace below, my extended wings slowing my descent. The double doors leading into my maker’s study were wide-open, and I pulled my wings into my body to fit through them, entering.
Alexandra stood with her friends on the far side of my maker’s studio, the three of them holding glasses, clinking them together. They turned as one as the sound of my stone feet on the wood floors carried over to them.
“What sort of ritual is this?” I asked. “Is this alchemy?”
Alexandra gave a laugh. “Sort of,” she said. “We’re toasting.”
I cocked my head at her. “Toasting?”
“We’re celebrating,” the blue-haired one explained.
“Celebrating what?” I asked.
“Living,” the man said, and shot a closed fist up into the air.
Alexandra offered me her glass, but I had no need for such things and waved it away. “When I awoke, I felt something pulling at me, as if I missed something, something that had passed.”
“That would be from how we spent our afternoon,” she said. “I have a little surprise for you, Stanis.”
Alexandra pressed her other hand out toward me and opened her closed fist. A pale green stone sat in the center of her palm.