Incarnate (A Spellmason Chronicle)

by Anton Strout

  Bricksley motioned us down into the subway station at the north end of the square, and the four of us hurried down the stairs, glad to be away from the vibe of the crowd above.

  “Bricksley has a MetroCard?” Marshall asked as we approached the turnstiles into the station.

  “The implications!” Rory said.

  “Shush,” I said, and followed the pointing of my little brick golem through the station to the end of one of the platforms.

  “Guys,” Marshall said. “You know where we are, right?”

  “Give me a minute,” I said. “It will come to me.”

  Caleb looked around the mostly empty platform. “You mean we’re not in a subway station waiting on the N to arrive?” he asked.

  “You weren’t around,” Marshall said with enough bite to it that it shut Caleb down.

  I looked to Bricksley. His tiny clay hand was pointing into the tunnel and up the tracks that led to the distant glow of lights at the Eighteenth Street station one stop up.

  “I don’t believe this,” I said as it hit me. Checking the tunnel first and then the platform to make sure no one was paying attention, I jumped down onto the tracks. Rory nimbly leapt down as well, while Marshall sat down on the platform and lowered himself with care onto the tracks.

  Caleb made no move to follow and just stared down at us. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “Hurry up,” I said, not waiting as I started down the tracks. “You’ll want to see this place.”

  “See that rail over there?” Marshall asked him. “The one I’m trying to stand as far away from as I can? Don’t touch that one, got it? Otherwise, you should be fine.”

  “Comforting,” Caleb said, jumping down to join us. “And what if a train comes?”

  “You’re the indestructible one,” I called back. “I don’t see what you’re worried about.”

  Caleb ran past Rory and Marshall to catch up to me. “Just because I’m indestructible doesn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt.”

  “You’ll be fine,” I said. “Trust me.”

  The last time I had come this way more than a year ago, the path had been a difficult one, but now the boards and blockage that had once blocked off access to the older, unused sections of the old subway system had been removed. In fact, once we had ducked off the tracks between Fourteenth and Eighteenth, it was clear that all the passages had been expanded for something bigger than me.

  “Large enough for a gargoyle to fly down, let alone walk through,” I said out loud.

  “Where are we going?” Caleb asked.

  “Some of the old stations fell out of service over the years,” I said as I continued down the unused tracks. “One of them was built by my great-great-grandfather. We had to come down here last year to recover something he had hidden away.”

  “And let’s just say it didn’t go flawlessly,” Marshall said. “Not that I had a chance to plan for it, mind you.”

  “Oh, I’m sure this is going to go so much better,” Caleb added, but I shushed him.

  “There’s noise up ahead,” I said, and stopped in my tracks, as did the rest of my friends.

  When I was certain the commotion I heard wasn’t moving toward us, I switched to the set of tracks off to our left, using the darkness there to hide us from growing light up ahead.

  As the familiar sight of my great-great-grandfather’s grand old subway station came into sight, Caleb grabbed my arm.

  “Remind me this is just reconnaissance,” he said.

  “Oh, yes,” I said as I examined the station. The ceiling vaulted high over the main platform. The ornate carvings made by my great-great-grandfather covered the walls on either side of the tracks—stone Grecian soldiers towering three or four times our height, the grand scale of the place hauntingly awesome yet terrifying now that the platform was covered with gargoyles instead of just dust and broken statues as it had been on our last visit. I took a deep breath and let it out. “Just reconnaissance.”

  “I think I’ve reconned enough,” Marshall whispered, and tugged at my sleeve. “We can go now.”

  I didn’t move. “No wonder Stanis and his people were having a hard time finding them,” I whispered back. “They’ve been flying the friendly skies while the Butcher and his people have moved where you’d least expect to find airborne creatures: underground.”

  There was much commotion among the gargoyles all along the platform, but it was what was happening at the far end that drew my attention.

  The Butcher and his men had fashioned a long, low surface out of several of the fallen pillars. Crane himself sat on a raised platform that stood in front of the carving of the Greek Titans that overlooked all of the station. As we moved closer in the shadows off to the side of it all, the sounds of the chatter changed to that of whimpering. Upon the fallen pillars, a heavyset man with long black hair was chained in place, the center of the platform itself caked in blood. Next to him a small blond woman was secured in the same manner.

  The Butcher stood up and spread his angelic wings, and much of the platform settled down.

  “Daniel Hoffman and Tara Novello,” he said, looking down at the two figures, “those who seek Eternal Life among my kind must be prepared to give up their flesh. Are you prepared to do so?”

  The man’s head nodded up and down repetitively “I am ready,” he said. “I no longer wish to be a part of this world.”

  “I am ready,” the woman said, proving the less worked up of the two, her voice calm and even.

  “Not all who come before us have been deemed worthy of the Stone,” the Butcher said. “Not all are worthy. One will serve as a sacrifice to fuel the Taking of the Stone for the other. Tonight we let the fickle hand of fate decide who lives eternally and who dies, as is our custom.”

  A ripple of approval went through the crowd.

  “This is, like, the worst lottery ever,” Caleb whispered in my ear.

  “On one clawed hand,” the Butcher continued, moving to stand over the large man, “we have a man after my own heart. One does not come to such sloth easily, no. Our large friend Daniel here no doubt had to work hard to achieve this girth, and for his commitment to that, he must be given praise. The pleasures of the body—food among the highest of them—are something I miss greatly, hedonist that I was.” He turned and moved to stand over the woman. “And here we have darling Tara. A nubile young thing. Once I reclaim my human form, oh, what fun we could have had together. Flesh is a weakness, but oh, what a weakness!” He ran his clawed hand down her side. “Alas, since tonight I have yet to reclaim my own flesh, I leave the choice to our assembly.”

  The crowd roared to life as they voted their approval for each one, shouting the name of who they thought should either die or become one of them. Through the noise of it all I honestly couldn’t tell who was winning.

  The Butcher studied the crowd before holding up a hand for silence. He walked over to the man, and looked down at him. “You, Daniel, have been found unworthy.”

  “Wait . . .” the man started, but the Butcher simply talked over him, dismissive.

  “My dear man, I cannot simply have every last one of your dreadful kind coming before me expecting to receive the Life Eternal.”

  “Then let me go!” the man cried out.

  “But we still need you,” the Butcher said. “Your blood will fuel Tara’s binding to the Stone.”

  The man began to struggle against his chains, his voice slipping into a keening cry that echoed throughout the platform.

  I stood up from my crouch, and slipped between the support struts leading over to the track next to the platform.

  Caleb grabbed my arm. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he whispered. “I thought this was recon.”

  “It was,” I said, pulling free, “until they were about to kill someone.”

  Rory’s art tube was already off her back
as she pieced together the pole arm within it. I slid my backpack off my shoulders and went for my great-great-grandfather’s spell book instead of the one I had been creating for myself.

  “Lexi,” Marshall said. “Let’s think this through.”

  I shook my head. “You can stay here and think. I’ve got someone I need to help. Or would you rather watch him die?”

  Marshall sighed. “Of course I want to help,” he said. “But we are seriously outnumbered here.”

  “No, we’re not,” I said. Without another word, I turned and snuck out across the track and lifted myself up onto the platform where the gargoyles were assembled.

  I looked back at my friends down on the track. Caleb and Rory were already in motion, but Marshall was just staring at me. “How are we not outnumbered?” he whispered in a panic.

  The gargoyles closest to me stirred, some looking over at us the way a human might look at a fly buzzing around them.

  “Come on,” Rory said as she jumped up onto the platform, her boots echoing as they hit. “Can’t let Alexandra have all the glory or insanity, can we?”

  “Fine,” Marshall said, finally moving, “but if she gets us killed, I’m not forgiving her.”

  “Me, either,” Caleb said, unbuttoning his coat, already going through the vials lining it.

  “Fair enough,” I said, starting my way through the crowd. “I, for one, am going to try my best to see that no one gets killed.”

  As the four of us came down the platform, the gargoyles parted to either side of us. If stone statues could look mildly amused at our presence, this was the right crowd for it. Every last one of them towered over us and it took all of my courage not to feel trapped in the middle of them.

  As we approached the dais, we caught the Butcher’s attention and he smiled at us, his evil grin all the more chilling coming from the carved stone angel he was.

  “Nathaniel Crane,” I said as I went. “Or should I just call you the Butcher of the Bowery?”

  “That, or Robert Patrick Dorman will suffice,” the Butcher said. “Nathaniel Crane was the name of that gargoyle I had just killed when you and your gargoyle stumbled across me.”

  “And why did he have to die?” I asked. “What was his crime?”

  “I asked him into my flock here and he refused,” he said. “I have no truck with those who oppose me.”

  “Your crimes against the arcane community and your own stone kind are far worse than anything that gargoyle did, I assure you.”

  “You’ve clearly done your homework since we last met,” he said. “Still, it’s a pity those sheep at Union Square didn’t take care of you the other night.”

  “You preach to those people like you’re a god,” I said, pointing up at the collection of Titans behind him on the platform. “You stride among them like one, and they worship you for simply existing. And what do you offer them in return? You lure people here under the promise of the Life Eternal and then use them for your rituals. And worse, you’re using blood magic to do it.”

  “Well, you did tell my servants you were not going to help us, Ms. Belarus,” the Butcher said.

  “Haven’t you already helped yourself enough already?” I asked. “Forming your little cult, stealing the Cagliostro Medallion . . .”

  The Butcher cocked his head at us. “You know about that, do you?”

  “We saw what happened at the cemetery,” Caleb said. “And to my friend Fletcher.”

  The Butcher gave a deep laugh. “I attempted to return to the cemetery in the park, hoping to give the O’Shea family crypt a more thorough search for the medallion. Your friend died because he tried to bar my way. Although his blood did prove useful in attempting to discover the medallion’s true location. And yet for all my efforts, the Cagliostro Medallion is not in my possession.”

  “I saw the way you tore oh so thoroughly through the O’Sheas’ family plot the first time,” I said.

  “But despite my thoroughness that time and my last, that which I sought out was not there.”

  “So you killed Fletcher just to aid you in your search,” Caleb said, not holding his contempt back

  “It will be mine,” he said, spreading his stone-feathery wings. “Do you know how long I spent without form or function before I was given this stone vessel?”

  “I imagine for a notorious hedonist like yourself, it must kill you to not be able to take a human form,” Marshall said as sharp as ever.

  “No,” the Butcher said. “I don’t think you people can imagine my desire.”

  “I don’t give a crap about your desires, gargoyle or otherwise,” I said. “Let these people go. Now.”

  The angel looked genuinely surprised and amused.

  “You come and make this stand before me, and just expect me to do your bidding?” he asked with a laugh. “You did look around you, yes?”

  “Let these people go,” I repeated. I kept my eyes on him, refusing to look at the vast number surrounding us. “If these two humans are guilty of anything, they’re guilty of being too trusting, or perhaps they need the kind of help that you can’t provide.”

  “Or they’re stupid,” Caleb whispered.

  “Not helping,” Marshall said, slapping his hand over Caleb’s mouth.

  The Butcher looked unconvinced. “And you think we will just hand them over to you?” he asked.

  “Pretty much, yeah,” I said, the conviction of my words as unwavering as my grip on the spell book.

  “And why would I ever do that?” The joy in his voice at how little a threat he perceived us as drove me over the edge and I snapped.

  “Because you forget where you are and who you are talking to,” I said, straightening as I opened the spell book. “This station was constructed by Alexander Belarus, and you are dealing with the last Spellmason. My last visit here I was run out, but now that I’ve had the time for greater focus on my true calling? Well, let’s just say I don’t run anymore.”

  “You ran from here?” The Butcher chuckled. “What made you run?”

  “That’s on me,” Marshall said, raising his hand and stepping forward. “I triggered something. Kind of a defiling-the-temple kind of thing.” He pointed to the statues all around the platform, ending up at the towering Medusa behind the Butcher. “Made a few enemies in the process.”

  “But what once were enemies,” I said, reading from the book and snapping my will out to all corners of the station, “are now allies.”

  The stone soldiers lining the walls came to life at my command. Behind the Butcher, the Titans on the platform writhed into motion and stepped out from behind the decorative wall that separated them. With a singular thought, I set all of the stone creatures to converge on the mass of gargoyles, whose wings unfurled as they took to the air or ran at the advancing stone soldiers.

  “Holy crap,” Marshall said. “Are you controlling all of them?”

  “Yes and no,” I said, checking the spell book, figuring it out as I went along. “Alexander set some protective parameters on them centuries ago. Like attacking you when you retrieved one of Stanis’s soul gems for us. All these statues . . . they’re not soulful in the same way grotesques are, but they understand my intent.” The Medusa on the platform swung her snake tail, snapping one of the gargoyles in half, tumbling it off the platform onto the tracks. “And boy, do they pack a punch.”

  The Butcher himself was preoccupied with the Titan of Atlas, who had sprung to life right behind him. While it took several gargoyles to deal with one soldier at a time, the Butcher seemed fine going at it one-on-one with creatures at least three times his height. Atlas reached down to pick the Butcher up by his wings, but the gargoyle raked his hands down the creature’s arms. Deep gouges appeared and, grabbing on, the Butcher gave a twist of his wrists, snapping off Atlas’s entire forearm.

  “Jesus,” Marshall said from directly
behind me out of harm’s way. “Someone’s been eating his Wheaties.”

  “We need a plan, Marshall,” I shouted out to him. “Now!”

  I knew Marshall to be a tactician and a planner, which was what I needed. With all the stonework in my control, it was hard to concentrate on much else going on in the subway station.

  “Are we looking to win this fight?” he asked. “Not sure how great the odds are on that.”

  “Get us and those people out of here,” I said, and set several of the stone sentinels to swatting some of the flyers out of the air. Broken gargoyles tumbled out of the sky, crashing into walls or back down onto the platform where they shattered on impact.

  Marshall stepped out from behind me and ran forward through the crowd.

  “Rory, Caleb!” he shouted out through cupped hands to our friends who were already locked in combat. “I need you to free those people!”

  “On it,” Rory called out. She slid her pole arm between the legs of the gargoyle she was locked in combat with, and twisted, tripping him. As soon as he was down, Rory ran for the horizontal pillar where the two people were chained down.

  Caleb ducked under the swing of another gargoyle and ran past it in the same direction, vials already flashing out of his pockets.

  Rory made her way down the platform with her dancer’s grace, dodging the uncontrolled lashing of gargoyle wings, twirling out of claws’ harm as she went. When she got to the pillar, Rory brought the blade of her pole arm down hard on the chains binding the man’s hands. The weapon’s blade cut through the links with ease.

  Caleb simultaneously poured two of his concoctions together and spread it over the chains binding the legs of the female. The metal fizzed and hissed as gray smoke shot up from the reaction and the woman’s legs came free.

  The two of them set to work freeing the other ends of the restraints. I turned away from them, needing to focus on the Butcher, who had just finished taking down his second of the Titans single-handedly.

  “Hey, Robbie!” I shouted, hoping to taunt him. “Think fast!”

  The Butcher twisted around, ignoring the other Titans converging on him. I whipped my mind out to the fallen pillar-turned-altar, sliding it out from under the two freed humans and shooting it toward the Butcher. His wings flew open and he leapt into the air as the pillar slid through the now-empty space.