Alchemystic

by Anton Strout

  “I can’t go to jail,” he said. “They don’t have Magic: The Gathering tournaments there!”

  “I don’t intend on us getting caught,” I said. “Now, run!”

  I took off without hesitating another second, getting all the way to the only other exit from the room before stopping, Marshall and Rory at my side.

  “We need to go up,” I said. “We need stairs.”

  Marshall nodded. “I know where they are.”

  “You do?” Rory asked, impressed.

  “Guess who got stuck doing all the mapping in my gaming campaigns?” he asked without really expecting an answer. “I can’t help but retain the layout of a place when I enter it now.” Marshall pulled his hat down to just over his eyes and took off to our left. Rory shot off behind him, and after I took a look back at our ever-closing pursuers, I followed. Seven of them, I counted.

  Marshall led us through several rooms full of armor and then statues before he pushed open a door on his right leading to a set of stairs going up. He and Rory shot through the doorway, and several seconds later I came through it myself. The two of them were already a flight or two ahead of me, and I started up the stairs after them.

  By the first landing my legs were killing me. “Wait up,” I called out to them.

  Rory stopped, then Marshall. “Sorry,” she said. “We’re already good at stairs from living in a fifth-floor walk-up.”

  “Where are we going?” Marshall asked, looking only a little winded.

  I sprinted up to the next landing where they stood. “Up,” I huffed out. “As high as we can go.”

  “Okay,” he said, and took off up the stairs once more. This time Rory stayed at my side as we went.

  “This better be an awesome plan you have,” she said. “Like lure them all up here, then have the entire way down through the museum free for our escape.”

  “Not quite what I had in mind,” I said. “Now, shush; I’m trying to panic here.”

  “You mean not panic…”

  I shook my head. “I wish,” I said, “but I’m going for full-blown panic here. Now, shut it.”

  We went as high as we could up the stairwell, the final single set of doors opening up onto a gallery filled with animals, both stuffed and skeletal. Marshall and Rory stopped once they came onto the floor, but I didn’t and rushed right past them. “Try to keep up,” I said without looking back. I had to find what I was looking for.

  Museum visitors got out of my way fast, looking at us like we were crazy, which I really couldn’t argue with. I mean, who really ran through a museum at breakneck speed anyway?

  I passed what looked like a prehistoric sloth that stood eight feet tall, then turned, finding exactly what I was looking for—a wall of windows. Seeing them brought a sense of relief, but I fought against it as I ran for them. I needed my panic. I needed to boost my signal. I skidded to a stop when I got to the window wall, spinning around.

  Marshall and Rory came sliding to a stop with me. Marshall’s eyes looked around in a wild way. “It’s a dead end,” he said. “This was your great plan? What the hell?”

  Rory looked at me with the same expression of confusion. “I’m kind of with Marshall on this,” she said, twirling the pole arm between her hands as she turned to face our pursuers.

  The guards and several staff members cornered around the sloth, boxing us in.

  “This is good,” I said.

  Rory, who was striking a defensive posture, stood and turned to me, stamping one end of her pole arm on the ground. “Good? Good how?”

  “We’re cornered, right?” I said. “And that terrifies me.”

  “Being scared is good?” Marshall asked. “Oh, I’m doing better than good, then.”

  “You don’t get it,” I said. “If I’m terrified, that’s like a broadcast signal. To him.”

  Rory looked behind us out the window. “Sun’s down,” she said.

  I felt a sharp twinge of familiarity in my chest and it was growing. Fast.

  “Now might be a good time to duck,” I said, and threw myself off to the side of the wall of windows.

  Rory dove to the other side, grabbing Marshall, who was too busy watching me get out of the way. Glass, brick, and wood exploded into the room as several hundred pounds of flying gargoyle swooped in from the early-evening sky. Chunks of wall and window frame hung from his wings as he landed, fluttering them until they were free of debris. He folded them to his side while the museum staff simply stared.

  “What the hell is that?” one of the guards asked.

  Stanis stepped toward them, glass crunching under his feet. The crowd moved as one away from him, but now the gargoyle stood between us and them.

  “Don’t hurt anyone!” I shouted, stopping Stanis in his tracks. The sensation in my chest had passed now that he was here.

  The gargoyle turned to me, his face scrunched up in thought. “That is going to make it more difficult to ensure your safety,” he said.

  “Bluff for a minute, then,” I whispered.

  Stanis cocked his head at me. “Bluff?”

  “Menace them, but don’t hurt them. Look…umm…badass.”

  Stanis nodded, then turned back to the guards and museum employees, spreading his wings out to their fullest. He puffed his chest, then let out an inhuman roar I’d had no idea he even had in him. It reminded me of the Tyrannosaurus Rex at the end of Jurassic Park and I shuddered. Being on the receiving end of it would have sucked, but from where I stood it simply was thrilling. I looked past Stanis’s sizable form. Most of the staff had backed away, but several of the guards held their ground, their eyes wide in disbelief. Two of them had guns and were going for them.

  I turned to Rory and Marshall. “Okay, guys,” I said. “Time to leave.”

  “Leave?” Marshall repeated. He held on to one of the beams by the broken window and looked out into the open air on the other side. “Leave how?”

  “We’re flying the friendly skies,” I said with a smile. “You come to love it. Promise.”

  Marshall tightened his grip on the beam and craned his head down outside.

  “Did you factor my fear of heights at all into this plan?” he asked.

  In truth, I had forgotten, but now was not the time to get into it. “Would you rather get shot?” I asked.

  He sighed, then buttoned his coat up. “Time to get over one of my fears the hard way, I guess.”

  Rory looked at the pole arm in her hands. “I’m going to miss you,” she said to it, then kissed it before letting it drop to the tile floor.

  The first shot fired, all three of us flinching at the sound of it. A fragment of stone flew off of Stanis’s left shoulder, but it was enough to get the three of us moving. I stood by the hole in the window wall and the two of them joined me.

  “Stanis!” I called out. “To me!”

  The gargoyle spun, keeping his wings spread out to protect us, but knocking over several exhibits, including something that resembled a six-foot-tall prehistoric beaver. He crossed to the window.

  I looked up at him when he stopped before me. “You can carry all three of us flying, can’t you?”

  “We will find out,” he said, a grimace filling his stone face.

  “Was that a joke?” I asked.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “I am not sure. It just…seemed appropriate. That first gem may have indeed restored my ‘funny bone.’”

  Another shot fired out, the sound of it ricocheting following.

  “We need to leave,” Marshall said, looking for some way to grab onto the gargoyle. “So how are we doing this?”

  “Each of you grab a shoulder,” I said. “Stanis, you grab them around their waists.”

  “That doesn’t leave much room for you,” Rory said, grabbing on.

  “Or any,” Marshall said.

  “I’m riding shotgun,” I said. “On his back.”

  “Don’t get shot!” Rory exclaimed.

  “That will not do,” Stanis said. Stone wi
ngs folded over Marshall and Rory while Stanis pushed away from me and spun around, offering me his back. I hesitated, but another shot firing put me in motion. I threw my arms around his neck and he backed his way toward the window.

  “Hold on tight,” I reminded everyone. “This isn’t as easy as those Superman movies make it out to be.”

  Stanis stepped out through the broken window and we were falling.

  “Fly!” I screamed, my legs kicking wildly out into the open air.

  The gargoyle struggled to right himself while bearing the three of us before spreading his wings out and away from Marshall and Rory, catching the air, and arcing up into the night sky as we left the museum behind us. My heart filled with hope.

  His eyes met mine and he gave a small smile, the hint of his fangs behind it. “I had to protect our friends first,” Stanis said, then turned his gaze back to the task of navigating our way among the buildings all around us.

  I smiled. Our friends. He said our. That was something now, wasn’t it?

  Twenty six

  Stanis

  I flew lower across the tops of buildings than I normally did given the extra weight I was carrying. Going much higher than that did not seem possible.

  I had been built for flight, but with this many mortals? I did not think that had been in Alexander’s plan. As I thought of what my old friend would make of it, it warmed me.

  “Look at him,” the one called Aurora said, breaking my thoughts. “I think he’s…smiling.”

  “He is,” Alexandra confirmed.

  “He can do whatever he likes,” Marshall said, “as long as he stays up in the air.”

  “He’ll stay up,” Alexandra said from over my shoulder, her arms tight around my neck and her legs locked around the front of mine. “Won’t you?”

  I nodded, the smile remaining on my face. The connection to the maker’s kin was stronger now, more so than simply being born of the maker’s blood. Since the first soul gem had been reclaimed and placed, new waves of sensations had begun to fill me more and more, the simple anger of that first night having long since calmed itself.

  “Maybe he’s smiling because he’s going to drop us,” Marshall said, his voice filled with nerves.

  “I am not going to drop you,” I said, then smiled wider. “Unless that is what you wish.”

  Marshall gave a tentative laugh. “Now is when he finds his sense of humor? That was humor, right?”

  “No offense,” Aurora said, “but my skin is kind of chafing against the stone.”

  “We are almost home,” I said, coming in just above the tree line of Gramercy Park, angling up to the top of the Belarus building. I came down harder on the terrace that led into the library than I would have liked, the two humans in my arms grunting with the impact. Alexandra slid off my back and I stepped away from the three of them.

  “That—” Marshall started. “That was—”

  “Cool, right?” Alexandra finished, laughing.

  Marshall’s face went dark. “Insane,” he spat out. “I was going to go with insane.”

  “Calm down,” she said, lifting her fist up, opening the palm to reveal a gem. “We did it.”

  I went to speak but could not for a moment until words once again came to me. “You found another piece,” I said.

  “‘We did it’?” Marshall asked. “By it you mean almost dying, right? Yes, we almost did that. Dammit, Lexi!”

  He was near hysterical. I had seen this in humans before. “You would not have come to harm,” I said. “I would have protected you.”

  “Would you?” Marshall said, stepping toward me with eyes as cold and empty as my own. “Look, Stan, I don’t doubt your prowess, being magical and all, but the world has changed a lot since your creation. Those men had guns.” He walked up to me and pressed a finger to my left shoulder, where I was surprised to see a small piece was missing. “There are things out there that even stone can’t withstand.”

  “Give him a break,” Alexandra said. “Tell Marshall to calm down, Rory.” She pushed Marshall’s hand away from my chest, examining the spot herself, tracing her fingers over it. “Does it hurt?”

  Now that the moment was past and I could focus my mind, I checked myself and nodded. “I will be fine, though,” I said.

  “I can fix that,” Alexandra said. She turned to Aurora, who was staring at the ground now, avoiding her. “What, Rory?”

  “Look, Lexi, I’m an adrenaline junkie and all, but I kind of agree with Marshall on this one.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Alexandra asked.

  “That shit was dangerous,” Aurora said.

  “I didn’t know how it was going to go down!” Alexandra said. “I thought that this was going to be easy, civilized. We were in a museum, after all, the home to culture! I really thought there was a ninety-eight percent chance of us walking out of there alive.”

  Anger filled my chest, but I did not fully understand where it was coming from. Seeing my maker’s kin agitated at her friends’ reactions was bringing out the same in me.

  “That’s still two percent too dangerous, if you ask me,” Marshall said.

  “Enough!” I shouted, all three of the humans jumping and turning toward me. “We cannot live in the past. This I know from experience. What is important is that we are safe.”

  “Easy to say for the most invulnerable guy in our little group,” Marshall said.

  I turned my growing anger on him, glowering, rendering him silent. No one spoke and my anger gave way to what felt like satisfaction.

  Alexandra took her hand from my chest and turned to the other two.

  “It’s my fault,” she said, her voice as soft as the whisper of wind through the dying leaves still in the trees of the park down below. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put us in harm’s way. But like it or not, we all have been put there nonetheless, not by me, but by my family’s long and sordid history. I did not mean to drag you two into this so deep.”

  Aurora walked over to her. “You are family to me,” she said. “So I’m in it whether you want me there or not.”

  “I do want you here,” Alexandra said, “but make no mistake there is danger. We’ve seen that…repeatedly.”

  Marshall sighed. “I know,” he said, “only this time it wasn’t something unnatural and straight out of my nightmares attacking us. This time it was people—people just trying to do their jobs. Hell, I would have shot at us, too!”

  “You don’t have to stay in this,” Alexandra told him. “You’ve got no investment in it, really.”

  “Like hell, I don’t,” he said. “I don’t want to see my roommate get killed. You know how hard it was to find someone who wasn’t a Craigslist creepazoid in the first place? I’m in. Besides, now that I’m alive and on solid ground again, I’m kinda…pumped.”

  “Okay, then,” Alexandra said, turning back to me. She raised the dark red gemstone to my chest.

  I raised my own hand to meet hers, stopping it. “I would like to speak,” I said.

  Alexandra gave me a soft smile. “Of course, Stanis.”

  “Very well,” I said, looking back and forth between Marshall and Aurora. “I would like to express my—” I searched my mind for the word a moment. “Gratitude. Yes, gratitude…to you both for your help. You owe me nothing, yet you risk everything.”

  Aurora stepped forward, clapping both of her hands against my chest. “You’ve saved Lexi more times that I can count already,” she said. “It is we who owe you.”

  “Not so fast,” Marshall said, stepping closer. He jutted his jaw forward and puffed up his cheeks. “One day I will ask you for a favor. You will not refuse me this favor.”

  Both of the females laughed, but I just nodded. “Very well, Marshall,” I said. I cocked my head at Alexandra, who was staring at me.

  “You’ve never seen The Godfather, have you?” she asked.

  “No.”

  Her eyes brightened. “God, I have so much to show you. You’ve never been
to the movies?”

  “Movies,” I said, my memory striking on the word. “I believe I have seen movies, yes.”

  “You have?” Aurora asked, laughing. “What do they charge you for admission?”

  “Charge?”

  “Never mind,” she said. “How have you seen them?”

  “There is a park north of here where other humans gather to watch others through an enormous arcane window,” I said.

  “Oh, yes!” Alexandra said. “Bryant Park! They show movies outside in the summer.”

  “It’s not magic, though,” Marshall added. “It’s technology.”

  “Then yes,” I said. “I remember ‘movies.’”

  “Good,” Alexandra said, pulling the bag off her back. “Let’s see what else we can help you remember.” She opened it, pulled the stone book free, then whispered to it. Its shape yielded to that of an actual book and she flipped through it before stopping on an open page and handing it to Marshall. “Hold this.”

  Alexandra pressed her right hand over her left and turned back to the book. First she uncoiled the knot work that lay beneath the smooth surface of my chest, revealing the one stone already set there. She placed the new one in the bottom slot, where it fit perfectly. When she spoke again, the familiar warmth quickly spread through me once again, radiating from her hand out through my whole body. At first, I welcomed the sensation, thrilled to be able to feel anything, but as it grew, the burning became more unbearable than the last time. I staggered back from her, but Alexandra kept with me, pressing her hands tight to the spot as I felt the stone shifting and wrapping itself around the gem.

  Centuries had passed without having felt a pain so great, at least to my ability to recall, and I could take it no longer. I fell to my knees, wings fully extending as I cried out into the night sky. Marshall flinched, but stayed steadfast in his duty to hold the book in place for Alexandra.

  “I think you’re killing him, Lexi!” Aurora shouted as the wind rose up in response to the energy coursing through me.

  Alexandra bent forward, keeping her hands in place. Her eyes were filled with concern, but she did not waver in her incantation. I leaned into her, also not wanting to break the cycle of what was happening to me. The pain tore through me but I would not yield to it. It had been so long since I had felt anything of such power that I almost relished it.