Incarnate (A Spellmason Chronicle)

by Anton Strout

  “Not so fast,” I said, pressing one end up and the other down, launching the piece end over end into the air, hoisting the weight of it with my will, driving a mental spike into the center of my brain.

  The Butcher shot straight up to avoid it, but I was just a hair faster and the tumbling pillar caught his legs. It sent the gargoyle into an uncontrolled spin that drove him into the station’s wall off to my left. He fell hard onto the subway tracks, but with a flap of his wings he stood once again in seconds. He leapt up onto the platform in a flash and I braced myself for his charge, but it never came.

  Instead, the Butcher ignored me where I stood and ran off across the platform in the opposite direction. I started after him as he ran toward one of the still-standing support pillars.

  No, not toward. Through.

  The gargoyle threw his shoulder into the pillar at a full run, cracking its foundation. His momentum carried him forward, the base of the pillar breaking apart as the rest of the column reaching the ceiling high overhead showered down on the platform. I stopped in my tracks, which saved me from one of the heavy pieces crushing me. The others landed hard on the platform, bits of dust and broken, jagged pieces of rock showering down from the ceiling above.

  As I crawled over the broken pillar, the Butcher was already running off in a different direction across the platform, going for another one of the support pillars.

  I lashed my power out at the base of the pillar, holding it steady in place, and when the Butcher struck it, it didn’t budge. The gargoyle seemed to sense the resistance and instead drove his claws into the pillar itself. As he twisted his hands within it, much of it began to crumble away. While I was able to maintain control over some of the pieces, the damage became too extensive for me to hold on to. The weight of the column above it was too much, and the whole pillar collapsed in sections down to the platform.

  Over the sounds of fighting all around me, the greater crackle and crunch of the station’s ceiling giving way filled my ears. A quick look around the platform had me assessing the situation as fast as I could. Caleb and Rory were hobbling halfway down it with their two rescue victims in tow. Even fighting one-handed with a pole arm as she held the blond girl up, Rory was still able to parry away any attacks that came at her while Caleb drove other gargoyles back with concoction after concoction flying out of his jacket. Nearby, Marshall was dodging his way toward me.

  “Go help Rory and Caleb!” I shouted to him. “We need those people out of here, now! Not sure I can keep this place together.”

  What little color remained in Marshall’s face drained away, but he nodded, reversed direction, and chased after them.

  I released the pillars from my power. At this point they were a lost cause and I had larger issues to deal with.

  Huge chunks of the ceiling began to fall away. Despite my grandfather’s superior stonework, the place simply could not withstand such an assault. Dirt and rubble poured down after the stonework had fallen away, and as if some sort of subterranean clouds had parted, there were suddenly lights shining down on me. Above, I could see the sign for Macy’s hanging on a building as the ever-widening hold collapsed in to reveal it.

  The cries of people above and the honking of horns filled the air.

  There were no parting words. No villainous cackle. No “I’ll get you next time, Gadget!” The Butcher simply signaled to his men and shot up and out through the collapsing ceiling of the station. Within seconds, he was gone and the rest of his people moved to follow.

  Through the chaos of their departure, I realized I had a bigger problem. The flurry of wings and debris above gave way to the sight of innocent passersby falling as the sidewalk above crumbled away beneath their feet. With swift reaction, I called to the Titans and stone soldiers alike to catch them, working hard to finesse the creatures so nobody got crushed in my rush to action.

  I was feeling really good about how it was going—the soldiers catching and then setting down the people out of harm’s way—until the sound of two cars colliding took my attention away from it. The lights of a vehicle flashed into the now-massive sinkhole, and my heart fell. None of my soldiers would make it over to it in time.

  “Caleb!” I shouted to the only person I thought capable of helping right now.

  He turned, caught sight of the falling vehicle, and shoved the woman he was carrying in Marshall’s direction. Without hesitation, he quick-drew a potion out of his coat, chugged it down with a wince, then leapt in the air like Superman bounding over a tall building toward the falling vehicle.

  His body rose at a lightning rate, and for reasons that were about to become clear, he strangely spread his body out wide like he was a flying squirrel. My heart pounded in my chest to watch as he impacted with the front end of the car, but I had forgotten his indestructible nature.

  The front end of the car crumpled, but thanks to Caleb’s spread-out pose the damage wasn’t concentrated on any one area of the hood, spreading evenly to prevent damage to those within the vehicle. More important, the momentum of the car’s fall was minimized by the force of Caleb’s leap, which meant the car came down onto the platform at a much slower speed. In the end, the people in the vehicle looked stunned, but thankfully alive.

  Caleb, however, ended up entirely underneath the vehicle.

  I ran over to him. “You okay?” I asked, only able to see one arm and just the top of his head poking out from beneath the vehicle.

  Caleb managed a quick, “Mm-hmm.”

  I pulled open the car door, and motioned the family inside it toward the empty tracks. “Go. Hurry!”

  They sat stunned for a moment; then the woman at the wheel undid her seat belt and grabbed one of her kids to get them in motion. As the husband grabbed the other, I took Caleb’s hand in mine and pulled as hard as I could to drag him out from underneath the car.

  He moaned and groaned until I had finished clearing him out from under it.

  “Quiet, you,” I said. “You’re indestructible, remember?”

  “Still hurts,” he said, sitting up slowly. He held his hand out to me so I could help him up, but I made no move to do so. “Umm, Lexi . . . ?”

  “Hold on,” I said.

  My eyes darted around the emptying platform.

  “You’re indestructible,” I repeated, the word triggering in my brain, “but the Butcher won’t be, if I can recover his bones . . . which he would have been keeping close after taking them from the cemetery. Just hold on!”

  A chunk of debris smashed down on the car, crushing in a small section of its roof. “I don’t think we have time to hold on,” Caleb said.

  “This is important,” I said. “Stay here.”

  As I ran off toward the Butcher’s throne area, Caleb called out after me.

  “Lexi, I don’t have the time to stay here,” he said as he slowly tried to work his way up to standing.

  “This is the Butcher’s place,” I shouted back to him, searching around the raised dais. “His inner sanctum. They have to be around here somewhere.”

  “The medallion?” he asked. “Lex, I think I believed him when he said he didn’t have it. Why would he lie, especially since he felt like he clearly had the upper hand here?”

  “I’m not talking about the medallion,” I said, taking to the top of the dais. I scanned around me in a 360, my eyes stopping when they came to the short retaining wall that the Titans had been showcased behind. I leapt from the platform, running over to it.

  “What are you talking about, then?” he asked, trying to avoid the still-falling ceiling and street above.

  “This,” I said as my eyes caught what I was looking for on the other side of the wall. I reached down and grabbed the withered skeleton lying there, its remaining skin feeling like a dog’s dried chew toy against my skin. “Robert Patrick Dorman’s bones.”

  Caleb gave me a grim smile. “Can w
e go now?” he asked.

  I started toward him, cradling the corpse and trying not to throw up. Above, the camera lights of cell phones lit the rim of the sinkhole.

  “Absolutely,” I said, heading for the protection of the empty tracks at the side of the platform. “Given the numbers of stone-winged baddies we saw here tonight, I think we should put in some time with a friendlier sort of gargoyle.”

  Caleb—still recovering from having a car dropped on him—made no effort to help me with the body, which was fine. It was light enough, all things considered. He jumped down onto the tracks and helped me down.

  As we joined Marshall, Rory, and the two people we had rescued, Caleb shook his head and let out the kind of laugh that only comes from surviving chaotic mayhem.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Fine,” he said, leading us down the tracks, “but we’re all going to have a sit-down when we get out of here and have a serious discussion about the definition of reconnaissance.”

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  Twenty-six

  Stanis

  Trinity Church was far more impressive than the humble one that housed Sanctuary, but it was a stellar place to perch myself as I sat among my fellow grotesques awaiting my visitors. Word had come down to me from several of my comrades that my human friends were en route, which pleased me. With all of us working in synergy, my fellow grotesques were beginning to show a marked improvement in their communications, which I supposed was a step toward uniting our community. Leadership, I had discovered, proved difficult, especially when trying to avoid the mistakes of my father.

  A large yellow vehicle pulled up in front of Sanctuary. Caleb emerged from the front of it as Alexandra handed its driver some of their currency. Aurora and Marshall emerged from the back. The trunk opened, and Alexandra went to it, producing a large blue bag with white cloth handles.

  “Gargoyle Central,” she said as I watched them, setting down the duffel bag onto the sidewalk as the yellow vehicle pulled away. Her eyes went up to the front of the abandoned-looking church that functioned as Sanctuary.

  “At least the non-malevolent version of it,” Aurora added.

  “Non-malevolent gargoyles would be a nice change,” Marshall said to his friends far below.

  Caleb stepped next to Alexandra, taking up the bag from the sidewalk. “You ready?”

  Alexandra nodded and started up the stairs to the boarded-over front of Sanctuary.

  To other humans passing by, the building looked deserted, its entrance hidden cleverly among the mismatched slats of wood. Alexandra, of course, knew better and pulled the one loose board that triggered the secret door to open. When she encountered the angelic form of Jonathan directly behind it, she jumped back from the door.

  I stayed where I was perched, watching.

  The monk-turned-grotesque bowed his head in greeting. “It is good to see you again,” he said.

  “Jonathan, right?” Alexandra asked, stepping forward.

  “Yes,” I called out before he could answer. The four humans turned as I stood up from the Trinity Church steeple I was on. I spread my wings fully and glided down to street level. “I thought it fitting that a former man of the cloth should prove a good caretaker here at Sanctuary.”

  I gestured the humans into Sanctuary and Jonathan as well, waiting for them to enter before going in myself and sealing the door shut.

  “I make sure everyone is taken care of, monitor this scanner of yours,” Jonathan said as he moved across the foyer. “It keeps me busy, and I find the church a restful place to spend my time.”

  “Sorry about the last time we met,” Aurora offered. “The whole hog-tying-you thing and all that.”

  Jonathan smiled. “It is all right,” he said. “I now understand the necessity.”

  Alexandra raised an eyebrow at him. “You do?”

  He nodded. “Yes, I have learned much in my short time here helping to organize those who seek out Sanctuary. It has turned out to be . . .” He looked to me. “What was your phrase for it again?”

  “It is like herding cats,” I said, and Alexandra laughed. “Did I not say it right?”

  “No, it’s perfect,” she said. “Where did you pick that up?”

  “Aurora taught it to me,” I said, giving my blue-haired friend a smile.

  She smiled back. “I’m a giver,” Aurora said, then looked out into the church. “Is Emily around?”

  “What does your visit have to do with her?” I asked.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Alexandra said. “That’s why we’d like to see her.”

  “As you wish,” I said with a nod of my head and turned, heading down the stairs into the old church. “Come.”

  Emily sat by the cages that held our latest newcomers, reciting to them her litany of welcoming. These new ones had come in warier than most, no doubt thanks to unfortunate interactions with the Butcher’s men out on the streets of Manhattan. When she saw the humans with me, she smiled, and I waved her over to join us at the large stone table at the center of the aisle.

  “Welcome to Sanctuary,” she said as she approached.

  Alexandra set her bag upon the table. “Thank you,” she said, shrugging off her backpack next. “I wish this were just a social call.”

  “When are things ever these days?” Emily asked with a smile.

  “True,” Alexandra said.

  Now that we were all close and standing still, I had a chance to better look over the humans. Their clothes were dirty and torn, their hair and faces caked in a thick layer of dust. Scratches and blood were evident on all of them.

  “You are injured,” I said.

  Alexandra nodded. “All things considered,” she said, “we’re not that bad off.”

  “What happened?”

  “The Butcher happened,” Aurora said. “We found where he and his people have been hiding out.”

  My wings twitched uncontrolled with agitation. “You took him on without thinking to bring in me or my people?”

  “We weren’t looking for a fight,” Alexandra said, coming back at me just as angry. “But we found one nonetheless. There were people among them that they were going to kill. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “Don’t worry,” Marshall added, leaning back against the edge of the table. “There will be plenty more for you to fight. The Butcher’s been building his army, and many of them got away.”

  “I didn’t come here to fight,” Alexandra said, calming herself down. She laid a hand on top of the bag she had brought.

  Although I was not pleased with her news, I, too, attempted to let go of my anger. “What did you come here for, then?” I asked.

  Alexandra unzipped the bag and pulled it open. Emily leaned in first, but recoiled. I stepped closer to the table and looked in the bag myself. Skin the color of dirt was stretched over bones that filled the long bag, the body adorned in the tattered remains of what looked like arcane vestments.

  “That is a body,” I said.

  “You don’t miss anything, do you?” Caleb added.

  Ignoring him, I looked to Alexandra. “Who is this?”

  “These are the bones of Robert Patrick Dorman,” Alexandra said. “The Butcher of the Bowery.”

  Emily stepped closer to me, the tips of her wings shivering with nerves. “Oh,” she said quietly as if in attendance at a funeral. “And what will you be doing with them?”

  “We plan on sageing and salting them,” Caleb said.

  “For what purpose?” I asked.

  “If we destroy his body,” Alexandra said, “all of its mortal attachment to this plane will be severed.”

  Emily looked with caution into the bag once more. “Once you destroy this, he’ll be gone?”

  Alexandra shook her head. “Not quite,” she said. “We still have to destroy his cur
rent form, the angelic stone one. Without his old body tethering him to our world, he should pass on. This is all theoretical, mind you. I’m just going on a combination of what Warren said about the Butcher wanting to secure his bones and what Fletcher told us . . . before he was killed.”

  Alexandra closed the bag and zipped it shut.

  “But first,” she added, “I need to ask Emily a favor.”

  “Me?” Emily asked, sounding startled at the request.

  “Yes,” Alexandra said. “After hearing about how your human form died, I believe the same thing recently happened to a friend of Caleb and mine. There was a ritual that was performed, but I’m not sure exactly what the ritual was used for. In order to figure out the purpose of that ritual, I’d need to know the specifics of what happened to your body.”

  “She does not remember what happened to her,” I said. “And after discussing it with Detectives Rowland and Maron, they are laying the blame for her death at the feet of the Career Girl murderer.”

  “There is another way to find out,” Alexandra said.

  “How?” Emily asked.

  “You can’t recall them, but you do have memories of that night,” she said. “Your body may have died but your spirit was still there for whatever ritual was done to you. I think I can unlock those memories, if you’ll let me try.”

  Emily looked over to me, her eyes nervous and seeking guidance. Or it was quite possible that perhaps she had changed her mind about wanting to find out such things since Detective Rowland had shown us the grisly photos.

  “It is your choice,” I said to her. “But I will be here for you either way you choose.”

  “Actually,” Alexandra said, “I’m going to need both of you for what I need to do.”

  I turned to the Spellmason. “What is it exactly that you have in mind?”