by Anton Strout
“You are a good person, Stanis Ruthenia,” she said. “But do not confuse your desire to help me reclaim who I was with actual desire.”
“It is more than a desire to help you,” I countered, but Emily shook her head.
“No,” she said. “It’s not. I know you think it is, but my mind is clear now. I see the way you are with Alexandra. There is something there that you and I can never have. I would not wish to be in the way of that. My heart lies elsewhere.”
“And where is that?” I asked, unable to hide a bit of anger over her trying to assess whom I did and did not care for. There might be truth to it, but in the moment all I wanted was answers from her.
“Edina, Minnesota,” she said. “You spent centuries watching over the Belarus family. I wish to seek mine out and do the same. I need to reclaim that part of my humanity. I need it more than anything.”
I fell silent, lowering my head at her with eyes shut. There was no arguing with her, not about her desire to watch over her family or where she thought my secret heart lay. I kept my questions to myself, but there was only one that I needed to answer.
Was my heart truly bound to another?
Twenty-seven
Alexandra
It wasn’t every day I had unfamiliar company at my place on Saint Mark’s, and frankly having a witch and a warlock at my door was about as welcome as someone preaching the word of Insert the God of Your Choice Here. Nonetheless, I smiled and held my front door open to the two of them.
“Thanks for coming,” I said, gesturing Warren and Laurien inside. The warlock had a natural curiosity in his eyes as he entered and looked around, but Laurien hesitated, looking less than thrilled to be here. In fact, she looked downright put out by it, but after a moment entered.
“You wished to speak with me?” she asked as I shut the door behind her, clearly not wanting to be here a moment longer than she had to.
“This will be worth it,” I said, moving to the steps leading down to the library. “Promise.”
“Let us hope so,” she said. “Warren had to call in a few favors to get me here. I hope this is not a waste of his time as well as mine.”
I hit the bottom of the stairs, waiting for them to join me among the heavy wooden shelves and lush seating before continuing farther back into my building.
“Impressive library,” Warren said as they followed me.
“It’s about to get more impressive,” I said, stepping to one of the bookcases. I reached behind a copy of The Hunchback of Notre Dame on the top shelf, activating the pressure plate against the back wall. The mechanism clicked and the bookcase swiveled free, revealing the stone door behind it. I whispered my words of power to the massive door, willing it open. I stepped through the opening behind it, finding the familiar comfort of my great-great-grandfather’s guildhall.
Caleb, Rory, and Marshall stood assembled at the large stone table I had formed at the room’s center, one end of it draped over with cloth and the other holding the bag of bones I had taken from the Butcher’s secret court.
Warren came through the door into the guildhall, marveling at the height of the large circular space and its stonework. Laurien entered last, pausing for a moment when she saw all my friends there. Once it was clear none of us had any intention of hostility toward her, her eyes left my group and looked around the hall as she and Warren moved to where we were in the center.
“You recognize this place, don’t you?” I asked her.
Warren raised an eyebrow and gave her a sidelong look, his ring-covered hands folded together in front of him.
Laurien didn’t notice him, but continued looking around the room, her eyes coming to rest on the large glass cabinets full of alchemical mixes along one wall.
“I don’t believe so, no,” she said, then looked back to me, her eyes filled with a strange mix of nerves and anger. “Should I?”
“Oh, most definitely, I think,” I said, not looking away from her, keeping my gaze fixed on her.
Laurien looked over at Warren, and her eyes narrowed to the point that he actually stepped back from her. “You were a fool to bring me here,” she said with a heavy sigh.
Agitated, she turned to leave, but I reached out my will to the door, slamming it shut. The stone door disappeared, its seams fading into the texture of the wall.
Laurien spun around to me. “How dare you! You are dealing with the head of the Convocation here.”
I unzipped the bag and, with little reverence for its contents, upended it. The bones within poured out onto the stone table, clicking and clacking together like bits of dry wood.
“I thought you might like to see this,” I said, grabbing the large box of salt off the table, liberally pouring it over the pile of bones.
“Is that who I think it is?” Warren asked.
“Depends on who you think it is,” I said, waving Marshall over.
He walked to me as I crumpled a bushel of sage over the remains. When I was done, he slid two different vials into my hand.
“The Butcher,” Laurien said. “The remains of Robert Patrick Dorman.”
“You see?” I said with a smile. “It is who you think it is.”
Warren moved closer to the table, looking down at them. “How did you finally come by them?” he asked.
“We got the drop on him,” Caleb said, then lowered his voice to a whisper, “even if it was a bit of an accident.”
I shot him a look, then turned back to Warren and Laurien. “I forced him to leave his secret court a bit more hastily than he expected,” I said. “And now there’s one less thing for you to worry about, Warren.”
I unstopped the two vials and poured them together over the bones. The pile erupted into a cold eldritch flame, burning the salt black and consuming the bones until all that was left was a charred pile of ash and the warm smell of sage in the air.
“That doesn’t kill him,” Laurien said, as if angrily correcting a child she thought was being foolish.
“I know,” I said, “but it is one step closer to finishing him off.”
Warren could not take his eyes from the pile, looking less relieved than I thought he would. “But no medallion,” he said.
“No, not yet,” I said. “But that’s why I asked you two here.”
I moved to the back end of the table, which was still draped with cloth, and pulled it away. The sight of a second set of bones—the petrified body I had found in our walls—caused the anger to fall out of Laurien, her eyes widening at the corpse.
“Alexander Belarus hid the details of his apprentice well among his books and books of notes, but he did still write about an apprentice,” I said. “He even went as far as to hide the name of that apprentice in his notes. This is you, isn’t it?”
The head witch stared at the body for a long moment before slowly nodding. “I’ve certainly looked better,” she said with no humor in the words.
“I think you’d better explain yourself, Laurien . . . before I sage this body and salt it as well.”
“I suppose you leave me little choice in the matter,” she said with little fight in her, but then she met my eyes, a dark power radiating from them. Her demeanor shifted to pure bravado and threat. “Or I could invoke my power and reduce the lot of you to cinders.”
Marshall looked flustered at her response, dropping two of his vials, watching them roll across the stone floor of the chamber. Rory’s posture changed, going from casual with her hands in her back pockets to hands on her hips, more aggressive. Caleb simply remained stone-faced, waiting to see how I was going to handle it. Personally, I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle it. All I knew was that Laurien had touched a raw nerve with me and I was livid.
“Do you think I’m honestly afraid of you anymore?” I asked her as I walked up to her, each step slow and full of purpose. “In the past year, I’ve been threatened
by cultists, stone monstrosities, the police, people within your Convocation. All I wanted was to practice art. Not arcane art, mind you. Sculpture, painting . . . these were my passions. You know what I end up doing? Trying to keep the cops from shooting me and my friends. Hopefully figuring out the good grotesques from the bad ones, usually finding out by seeing if they swing their claws at me once I’m up close. Peeling entanglement vines from warlocks intent on capturing me. So you get to herd the cats that are the witching and warlocking community. Big hairy deal. You want to fight me—fight us—instead of giving me an answer? Fine. You could take that chance, but then you’d be trapped in here. Sure, you might be able to power your way out of my great-great-grandfather’s guildhall, but then again, you might not be up to that task. This stone is strong.”
“I know how strong it is,” she said.
“Do you?”
The vibe coming off the woman was still intimidating, no doubt amplified by the power lurking just behind her eyes, but I did not move.
“What do you know about this place?” I asked her. “What do you know about the Spellmasons?”
“I knew Alexander Belarus,” she said, dropping her anger and hanging her head. “Centuries ago. I was young, ambitious, and seeking power. I thought Alexander a fool. He had such power at his disposal, but what did he choose to do with it? Hide quietly in his secret hall with his singular stone construct.”
“How did you come to know him?” I asked.
“He had heard of our community here in New York after coming here, and approached our Convocation,” she said. “We had heard rumors of his gargoyle, some even claiming to have seen it, but none had met him until he approached us. To tell the truth, I think it was to alleviate his loneliness more than anything.”
“He had just escaped to this country fearing the tyranny and reprisal of Kejetan Ruthenia,” I said. “He had only his wife and had lost his first son, replacing him with an eternal one in Stanis. Of course he would want to seek out others with whom he shared the same passion for the arcane.”
“I was an initiate within the Convocation back then,” she said, “but I craved the knowledge and Alexander was all too willing to share . . . at first, anyway.”
“You were his apprentice,” I said. “There is mention of you in his notes, although there is very little said. I mean, he built this guildhall with the clear intention of sharing knowledge. Why would he stop after taking an apprentice?”
“I was the first of his students,” she said. “And I would turn out to be his last. Remember, I was young, vain, and wanting for power. Your great-great-grandfather, however, was a man of caution.”
“Of course he was,” I said. “He had already watched the last person he taught back in the old country die. That’s how Stanis was born.”
“He was so cautious that he would not even let me see the creature Stanis,” she said, a bit of bitterness returning to her voice. “I studied alone, and the longer I studied, the more I desired to see the creature, to see the results of his work. But no.”
“You wanted the secrets of his power,” I said. “You wanted to create a golem of your own.”
“And I did,” Laurien said. “Against Alexander’s wishes. ‘Too fast,’ he said, his words only burning away against the fire of my ambition.”
“You needed a soul to complete the work on it, though,” I said. “To animate its form.”
“And what better one than my own?” she asked, sadness in the question. “I would be more powerful than any other. I performed the Spellmasonry myself here in this very chamber. Alexander found me here once I had become a grotesque, my new form unconscious from my arcane efforts. He was furious that I had betrayed his wishes, but even more furious with himself for failing me.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Marshall interjected. “How exactly did he fail you?”
“I understand it,” Caleb said to him. “It’s like when I started showing you how alchemy worked. You were my student. If you did well, it reflects on me. If you fail, it also reflects on me.” He turned to Laurien. “Is that about right?”
“Exactly so,” she said. “I fled from this place and never saw the man again. I had achieved immortality, but in doing so I lost more than a master. I lost everything. The Convocation frowned upon my transformation, ostracizing me, leaving me alone in this world.”
“Hold on, now,” Rory said. “You’re looking fit and spry and entirely not made of stone right now. Don’t tell me you just made a full recovery.”
“Of course not,” I said, meeting Laurien’s eyes. “You care to show them what we’re talking about? Why you needed Emily . . .”
Laurien went to the collar of her shirt, drawing it open. A golden necklace lay against her skin, a heavy charm carved with runes of red hanging at the center of it.
“The Cagliostro Medallion,” I said, but even before the words were out of my mouth, the woman before me had begun to transform.
She doubled over with a muffled cry, her skin going a veiny marble white. The back of her shirt tore open. Large batlike wings grew out of her, unfolding. Her frame bulked up in size while somehow managing to keep its femininity, and while she stood taller than me now, it was now in a mix of demonic and angelic forms that had the carving style of my great-great-grandfather’s work.
She rose to her full height and let her wings work back and forth behind her.
“It has been a while,” she said. “I spent years in this form in solitude, all the while regretting what I had done to myself in my selfish quest for greater power. It had removed me from the people I cared about. It had removed me from my kind—from the Convocation. It was many years later that I discovered there was hope.”
“My family?” Warren asked, raising an eyebrow. “We had tried to keep arcane knowledge out of the mainstream, but the O’Sheas have always had a propensity for being a bit larger than life, grandiose.”
“You don’t say,” Rory said with a smile.
Warren ignored her, but Laurien nodded.
“When I heard of the Cagliostro Medallion, I knew I must seek it out,” she said. “The only arcane knowledge I knew for divining its true location was through a dark ritual.”
“Blood magic,” I said. “I watched you do it. You used Emily for it. The same way the Butcher used it to try to seek out the medallion now by using the blood power of our friend Fletcher. I saw his vision, too. Dorman’s spell to find the medallion showed him the Convocation, but it could not actually pinpoint a source for the piece.”
“I am thankful, then, for all the arcane confusion that can be generated at one of our events,” she said. “But yes, I used blood magic. It was something I had studied in my quest for more power, but I found I could not take the life of an innocent. I trailed the worst of humanity from high above in the sky, hoping to come across the consequences of one of their acts of desperation. In a city like Manhattan, it did not take long. The screams of Emily Hoffert drew me to her then-lifeless body, and I used the remaining energy of her death to fuel my divination.”
“Which led you to my family’s crypt,” Warren said. “The Butcher tried the same thing, but came up empty-handed, but not before desecrating our mausoleum.”
“I am sorry for that,” Laurien said. “For my initial theft, and for what the Butcher did.” She turned to me. “It took some time—months and months, in fact—to learn how to control the power of the medallion. Once I could consistently obtain and hold a human form, I returned to the Convocation, all the wiser for my years of foolishness. No one remembered my disappearance long ago, and I have spent the last half a century bound to protecting my people in any way that I can. If I seem harsh or cruel at times in my ruling, it has only been in service to the betterment of my kind.”
“Then we have something in common,” I said. “Even though you don’t consider any of us one of your kind yet, we all want the same thin
g.”
“The death of Robert Patrick Dorman,” she said.
“We want the safety of our people,” I said. “Of your people. Of this city’s people. And if it takes his death to do it, then so be it.”
“Forgive my lies and deception,” she said after considering what I had said for a moment longer. “When we met and you told me of the Butcher seeking the medallion, I feared for my own secrets . . . and my life. To have the kin of the arcane teacher show up at the same time as the greatest threat to all I had worked to hide and make up for . . . I fought for reasons to keep you away from us. I panicked. I had hoped telling you that your great-great-grandfather was a murderer shunned by the Convocation would buy me time to figure out a plan for my safety, but I see now that perhaps I have lost sight of what I have been struggling for all along.”
“The safety of your people,” I said.
Laurien nodded. “Taking down the Butcher will be no easy feat,” she said. “And you’ve made him more desperate than ever. Dorman has no body to return to, no ties to the mortal plane should he be driven from his stone form. He’s got more to lose now than ever.”
“That’s great,” Caleb said, “but where are we going to find the guy? We drove him out of his hiding place under the city. He’s not going to return to that sinkhole we created by Macy’s.”
“Don’t worry about that,” I said, “because he’s going to come to us next time.”
Laurien raised a demonic eyebrow, and I almost had to laugh. Same attitude from the woman, but in a wholly different body. “And why would he ever do that?” she asked.
“Because we’re going to give him what he wants,” I said. “We’re going to give him the medallion.”
“Are we, now?” Laurien asked, her clawed hand reaching up to her neck.
“Yes,” I said with conviction. “We are.”
Everyone remained silent while we all waited to see whether Laurien was going to challenge me on this or not. In the end, however, the gargoyle sighed and folded her wings close against her back. She held up her arms as if striking a pose like a model.