by Anton Strout
“Relax,” I told Stanis. He didn’t move, which I supposed was him acquiescing to my command. Standing stone still was as relaxed as I figured he could get. I turned to Rory. “I’m going up. You two can either help or get out of my way. Either or.”
Marshall sighed, and he gave a reluctant nod. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll do my part, then.”
“Which is…?” I asked, waiting for an answer.
“I’ll distract the guard watching the bell tower.”
Rory laughed. “And how are you going to go about that? Ask him to play some Dungeons and Dragons?”
“Please,” he said, looking insulted. “I’m far more resourceful than that.”
“So, what, then?” I asked.
Marshall eyed the half-empty drink in his hands, then grabbed Stanis’s full one. “Just be ready to fly.” He took off without another word back toward the base of the bell tower. The closer he got, the more he stumbled like he had been drinking for hours.
“Oh, God,” Rory moaned. “He’s going to get himself thrown out, isn’t he?”
Marshall stumbled forward, slamming into the security guy. Both drinks flew from his hands, their contents spilling all over him. The man’s eyes widened and he brought his meat-hook hands down hard on Marshall’s shoulders, spinning him around. He bent poor Marshall’s arm behind him, pulled up on it, and started pushing his way through the crowd without any hesitation.
“Come on,” I said to Stanis as we waited for the two of them to pass. “We have to act quick, while people are distracted by it.”
Rory took off first, slipping through the crowd with ease. Stanis and I followed, with several people congratulating him on his awesome costume once more. When we got to the area under the bell tower, the crowd was thinner, with Rory at the center of it, looking up.
“I’m going, too,” she said, looking down. The way she said it had me wondering whether she was trying to convince herself more than me.
“You don’t have to,” I said.
“Yes,” she said,” I do.” She looked up into the tower again and pointed.
I looked up into the darkness above. “I don’t get it.”
“Give it a second,” she said.
I continued staring. The darkness softened as my eyes adjusted to it, and that was when I saw it. “There’s something moving up there.” Tiny dark figures swirled around the central shape of the bell high above.
“I don’t know what they are,” Rory said, “but I’m not about to let you deal with them on your own.”
“I have Stanis to protect me,” I said.
“Judging from the activity up there, I’m fairly sure you two might be outnumbered.”
I turned my eye to look over the dance floor. The security guard was pushing Marshall out onto the street where the bouncers would see that he didn’t come back in. The guard then turned toward the dance floor and started making his way across the club to his post by us.
“We have to go,” I said. “Now.”
Stanis unfurled his wings from his body, drawing a round of applause from the people closest to us who no doubt thought it was just another detail to his intricate costume. I threw my arms around his neck and stepped to his left side as Rory ran in close on his right. She threw her arms around his midsection and locked her hands together.
“You sure this is safe?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I said, then tapped Stanis on the shoulder. “Go.”
He bent his knees before jumping up into the air, letting his wings catch their first wind as we started to rise. Several people fell back from the powerful blast of his wings flapping, but the rest were half-drunk and cheering.
“At least they’ll have something to tell their friends at work on Monday about the superlative special effects at the Cathedral Halloween party!”
“Too bad I’m missing it all,” Rory said, her eyes clenched shut.
My stomach sank at the speed of rise, much like it did at the top of the camelback hills on a roller coaster.
“Funny,” I said. “I would have figured this would be right up your alley.”
“Only my second time flying,” she said, “and first time inside a very confined bell tower. Might get used to it. Might not. Answer unclear. Try again later.”
A walkway and ladder leading up to the bell room was coming up fast. “Put us down on that catwalk.”
Stanis slowed and came up even with the platform. I caught the railing with the backs of my knees and slid myself over it onto the wooden slats of the walkway. Rory grabbed the railing, swinging under it and landing gracefully next to me.
“Nice,” I said.
She stood and grabbed onto the railing. “I’m trying to ignore how high we are and how rickety this walkway looks, but I can at least show a little style while trying not to panic.”
Stanis hovered next to the walkway, his wings working in a short, quick pattern of flaps. Rory looked up. “What are those?”
Up close it was easier to see the creatures now. Maybe a dozen or so winged gray figures about waist high flitted back and forth around the bell overhead. They were leathery bats, but there was also something vaguely humanoid about their bodies and faces, save for the razor-sharp teeth in their mouths.
“I’m not sure,” I said, pulling off my coffin from my back, “but I swear I’ve seen them before.” I knelt down on the walkway, undoing the straps and pulling out Alexander’s tome.
“I can dispatch them,” Stanis offered.
“Hold on,” I said, flipping frantically through the book as fast as I could. Rudely sketched drawings filled the spaces that weren’t covered in the arcane scrawling in his handwriting. Dozens of horrific images passed as I searched on, but I tried not to think about any of them. My only concern for the moment was the creepy, fluttering monstrosities overhead. When a drawing of one of them caught my eye, I turned back to the page. “Aha!”
“They’re in there?” Rory said, still minding the goings-on up above.
“Yup,” I said. “I always assumed they were just sketches of simple Gothic statues. Now if I can just figure out some of the notes here…”
The words on the page made more sense to me now than ever before, although every fourth or fifth word was still a mystery. I only hoped that getting the gist would be enough.
“We must be at the right place,” I said, “because these things are said to be drawn to the arcane. They can feel its pull and will do anything to possess it.”
“Talk about bats in the belfry,” Rory added.
“Alexander didn’t have a name for them, but he noted how they interfered with some of his alchemical carving work. He called them…stone eaters.”
“I love a man who’s a literalist,” Rory said. “That doesn’t bode well for Stan here, though.”
“My survival is of little consequence,” he said.
I couldn’t help but look up at him, pain tugging at me from those words. “You really mean that, don’t you?”
“All that matters is protecting the family,” he reminded me. He hesitated, seeming to tap into something deep inside him, and said, “Although, I would prefer it if I did not die, I suppose.”
“Well,” I said, standing up with the book in hand. “Me, too. Right now, we need to get up there and find that gem of yours.”
“As you wish,” he said. His wings were flapping away still, keeping him steady in place as if he were standing on the walkway with us. I wondered whether he ever tired.
“I need you to lead them away,” I said.
“As you wish.”
“Please,” I added.
“You do not need to plead.”
“I was trying to be polite,” I said.
He paused, as if processing the idea. “Ah. Yes.”
“We can discuss that later, too,” I said, “but for now, go. Please. And be careful. He didn’t call those creatures ‘stone eaters’ for nothing.”
Without another word, Stanis folded his wings in, cau
sing him to drop out of sight below us. I rushed to the railing and peered over, only to catch him extending his wings to their fullest and giving a mighty swoop of them, propelling himself upward past me at an astonishing speed. He tucked his wings again as he went through the opening in the walkway, up and around the bell itself. He contorted his body to avoid the large metal bell as he grabbed one of the creatures by the throat, but one of his wings still clipped it, causing it to erupt with sound. Standing directly under it meant we caught the brunt of it. The bell started swinging as the creatures flew off after Stanis.
Rory covered her ears, but I couldn’t get to mine in time. My hands were stuck in the middle of slipping my backpack back on as the wall of sound hit me, harder than any bass at a concert ever had. I finished pulling the pack on and simply gestured upward without trying to shout over the tolling bell. Rory nodded and motioned for me to go up first. I gave one more look up to make sure there weren’t any creatures in sight and scurried up the ladder, with Rory following close behind.
The bell was surrounded on all sides by a narrow walkway. It and the stone walls of the tower were covered in bite and claw marks. Rory came up the ladder and stopped when she saw the state of things. “Jesus,” she said, which I barely heard through the ringing in my ears.
“We have to hurry,” I said, and began looking around the top of the tower. Rory went around one side of the walkway and I took the other until we came together on the other side.
“I don’t see anything,” she said. “Maybe it’s not up here.”
“It’s up here,” I said. “I can feel it.”
Rory gave me a skeptical look. “You can?”
“I can’t explain it,” I said, “but something up here feels like my home, the way the Belarus building exudes protection. Alexander wrote that he had warded the property, the same way he did my necklace. I think he warded this place, too.”
“So even if we want to see what we’re looking for, we wouldn’t be able to see it because of magic?”
I shrugged. “That’s the best I have,” I said.
Rory smiled. “That’s not bad.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “It’s not?”
“Nope,” she said, looking around some more.
“Why not?”
“Look at this place,” she said. “It’s a mess. Those things flying around out there have clawed and bitten this place apart trying to get to the magic, but they couldn’t find it! Why? Your great-great-grandfather’s mad phat warding skills.”
“As I’ve read it, the magic pretty much repels notice, driving people away from it. Like we experimented on Marshall with when I was re-enchanting the necklace.”
“Then that’s what we try to look for,” she said. “Even with being repelled, those creatures sensed something, even if they couldn’t find it. If the magic drew those creatures to it, but Alexander’s warding still kept them from it, then whatever looks different, whatever’s untouched from what those creatures ruined up here, must be it.”
I considered it for a moment before breaking into a smile. “That’s not bad, Miss Aurora Torres.”
She gave a deep bow as if she were onstage after having danced at Lincoln Center.
I looked around the space until my eyes settled on the one block that remained untouched, sitting directly above the bell at the center of the arch. “The keystone,” I said.
Rory looked up. “Where?”
“There,” I said, pointing at the spot.
Rory looked where I was pointing, but her eyes didn’t fix on anything. “I’ll take your word for it,” she said.
“You don’t see it?” I asked. “Seriously?”
“I’m trying to, believe me, but no.”
“Maybe it’s my bloodline that lets me,” I said.
Rory turned away and looked out of one of the many stone archways around the tower. “Either way, we need to hurry. I can’t see Stanis or any of those little things out there, but it’s only a matter of time before they come back.”
“Right,” I said. “Help me up.”
Rory ran over, interlocked her fingers, and I stepped into her hand. I reached up as she lifted, and I grabbed onto the support yoke over the bell, hauling myself up. The bell rocked with my legs dangling down against it, its clapper sounding out once again.
“Shit,” I said, trying to steady the bell with my legs.
“Hurry!”
“I am,” I yelled. I pressed my hands against the cool sides of the untouched keystone, feeling all along it. “This may take a few minutes. There’s nothing on the outside. The gem has to be embedded in it.”
“Do it!” she shouted over the clanging of the bell. She ran along the walkway, leaning out of each of the arches as she went. “Incoming!”
“Help me down, then.”
“No,” she said. “You keep doing what you need to. I’m going to let out a little aggression here.”
I pushed my will into the stone, searching, letting the rituals I had studied take over as I incanted the words that were becoming increasingly familiar each and every day.
Below, one of the creatures flew into the opening of the arch where Rory was standing, but she dropped and flattened herself to the walkway with her dancer’s grace. The winged stone eater slammed into the side of the bell, causing a whole new cacophony as it pushed back from it, dazed, its wings struggling to flap and keep itself afloat. Rory didn’t waste the opportunity. She grabbed the creature by its wings while it was still stunned and swung it in an arc over her head, slamming it against the wooden walkway. It struggled to push up on its tiny humanoid arms, but Rory wasn’t having it. With the wings still spread out in both hands, she dropped her foot onto the creature’s body, letting out an aggressive scream. She bore down hard, pressing her heel into it deep, then she stood up fast, the muscles in her arms taut as she pulled. The sounds of the creature’s screams as its wings tore free from its body rose over the sound of the bell. Rory dropped the wings into the open space below us and kicked the twitching, dying body of it down after.
The rage on Rory’s face disappeared as she looked down at her hands, where bits of wing webbing were still stuck to her fingers. Flicking them didn’t seem to help so she ran to the wall and started wiping her hands on the rough stone. “Gross, gross, gross,” she said.
I was still locked in finding the gem or I would have said something, but before I could give it more thought another creature flew into the interior of the tower, shrieking and hissing at me while I continued my incantation. I turned my eyes from it, focusing myself more wholly on the keystone, trusting in Rory to deal with the monster. The sound of its rising shrieks filling my ears confirmed my trust in my friend, and, confident in her abilities, my mind was free to zero in on the gem within the stone. I whispered to the stone to give way, to open at my command, confident that it would. I was a Belarus, after all. It was in my blood.
The connection to the stone was strong and I felt the gem pulling out of it toward my now-cupped hands along the bottom of the keystone. Bits of rock crumbled away, slipping through my fingers, but the gem itself caught in my hand, its yellow hue sparkling in the dim lighting up here.
“I have it!” I shouted, turning to Rory down on the walkway. She had the legs of another of the stone eaters in one hand, hanging it upside down as it flapped its wings wildly trying to right itself.
Rory chanced a look up at me while avoiding its razor teeth, a look of triumph on her face. It lasted only seconds; then I saw her look past me.
“Lexi!” she shouted. “Look out!”
I turned. The hole that had crumbled away in the keystone was still growing. Panicking, I tried to force my will on it, but I couldn’t feel the connection anymore. Cracks rippled out into the keystone, the joints from the bell’s yoke giving way as the tower’s dome caved in on itself, and the bell beneath me slipped off-kilter and began tumbling down. The walkway tore loose from the walls as they collapsed, and Rory came down after me, the wings
of the creature in her hand doing little to slow her. I reached out in all directions to control the stone all around me, but there was no connection.
We were in free fall.
Twenty eight
Stanis
When Alexandra sent me to task against the creatures she called stone eaters, I did as she wished. I shot up through the opening just below the large church bell, spinning myself to avoid it. One of the creatures startled in front of me, and I spun again to narrowly miss it. I grabbed one of its wings as I passed, but my own clipped the side of the bell, pulling it until it rose to its fullest height, unhooked from me, and began tolling. This seemed to drive the creatures mad, but my presence had the effect I desired and they fell in behind me as I pulled my wings in to slip out of one of the many arched windows leading out into the night sky.
I looked back as I flew. All of them, nine in total, had followed me. I turned, focusing on my flight, the creature in my hand trailing behind the grip I had on its one wing. Be careful, Alexandra had said. I needed to thin their numbers. I steered myself to an older building made of brick. I swung my arm as I spread my wings to slow myself, catapulting the creature forward at a deadly speed. It flew from my hand, desperate to right itself and flapping like wild, but it was no use. The velocity was too much and it hit the wall with such force it died on impact. I did not wait to confirm it, and drove myself higher into the night sky.
Just below the clouds, I stopped. I did not want to fight them where I could not see them and, looking down, I saw their approach. As they got closer, they broke away from one another, spreading out to surround me. Pack hunters.
I circled around in the center of them. There was no holding back on their part. No pause to assess me, just animal instinct to attack kicking in. I could use this to my advantage. I kept my eyes on them as I spun, waiting until the last second as they closed, then shot myself straight up. Unable to stop themselves, they crashed into one another, a twist of limbs, wings, and teeth. I folded my wings in and immediately dropped on them, driving through them. My claws caught one in the face and it fell out of the sky. Two more plummeted, still tangled together, biting at each other in a futile attempt to free themselves but falling nonetheless.