by Anton Strout
“I cannot do that,” I said.
“Why the hell not?” she asked.
“Because I have been bound,” I said, forcing my true voice to take control of the conversation for a moment. “I serve another. Listen to me carefully, Alexandra. I must do as I’m told. Exactly as I’m told, which is why I must ask you to keep your bag on your back.”
Another wave of confusion filled Alexandra’s eyes. “Why?”
“You must keep quiet for a moment, and you must keep your bag upon your back,” I said with my true voice, choosing my words with care to keep the dominant one from stopping me. “I think I can guess what might be in that bag, but I do not know for sure. And for your own safety, do not tell me.
“As I said, I have been tasked to claim what is rightfully my father’s from the Belarus Building. That would mean that if Alexander’s master book of arcane knowledge were here, I would have to take it . . . by force, if necessary. I am bound to destroy anyone who interferes with that. But if I do not technically know the book is here, I cannot take it from the Belarus Building. Do you understand me?”
Alexandra nodded, but said nothing.
“So,” I continued, “for both our sakes, I think it is best that the contents of your backpack remain a mystery to me.”
Alexandra kept her hands on the strap of her backpack but did not move to take it off. “I see,” she said when she finally spoke. “You’re playing around with the rules.”
I could not help but smile at that. “You taught me to bend the rules when and where I could.”
The two of us stood there in the silence of the night, in the silence of the familiar building, simply looking at each other, taking a quiet comfort in that.
“So what now?” she asked.
“I must return to my masters,” I said. “I must tell the Servants of Ruthenia that I did not find the book on the premises. That will not satisfy them, but it will buy us both some time.”
All life and color ran out of Alexandra’s face.
“No,” she said, taking my hands. “Don’t go back to them. Stay with me. I’m sure I can figure something out. We can work this out. It’s been far too long. Please.”
The desperation in her voice pained me, but I shook my head. “I must return to my masters,” I repeated, unsure of what else I could say. I stepped away from her, but she would not let go of my clawed hands.
“At least tell me where they are,” she said.
The dominant voice rose in me, not allowing me to betray the location of Kejetan and the Servants of Ruthenia.
“Please let me help you,” she pleaded.
I stepped back farther from her, pulling my hands away from her. “Do not do this. If you interfere, Alexandra, I will be forced to harm you. Do you remember the bargain that I made with my father the last night you and I were together?”
Alexandra nodded as she wiped away tears forming at the corners of her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “You promised that you would go with him, to protect me.”
“Correct,” I said. “And what did I make you do?”
“You made me release you from my great-great-grandfather’s rules. I released you from protecting my family.”
“That is correct,” I said. “But why?”
Alexandra thought for a moment, puzzling it out before answering. “If Kejetan had chosen to hurt us just then, bound by my great-great-grandfather’s rules, you would have been forced to fight him. And you would have kept on fighting until you were destroyed.”
“And the binding that holds sway over me now is much like that,” I said. “Kejetan has set me a task, and I cannot violate his rules. If you interfere, you will push my hand, and I will . . . I will be forced to kill you.”
I saw how the words stung her like a slap, and I felt the pain I caused her deep in my soul.
“Do you remember the last words I spoke to you?” I said, hoping to distract her with something more practical.
“Yes,” she said. “You said, ‘Prepare yourself. This does not end things.’”
“And have you done just that?”
Alexandra gave a grim smile, frustration radiating from her. “Rory and Marshall have been helping me.”
I smiled at the mention of their names. “I am surprised to find I miss them,” I said.
Alexandra gave a dark and pained laugh. “I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to hear it.”
“And how goes the preparation?”
“Somewhere between promising and impossible,” she said. “You were the culmination of my great-great-grandfather’s decades of arcane study. Spellmasonry isn’t something mastered in a few months. Every time I think I’m making progress, I run up against a wall. I feel like I’m at a dead end. You remember Bricksley?”
“Of course,” I said.
“He’s still up and running. It’s just when I try to do something more grand than that, things sort of . . . fall apart. Nothing stays bound together. I’m getting better at exerting my will over things, but what good does that do if I can’t maintain it? I just end up with a pile of bricks or a poorly molded statue that shatters into a thousand pieces. The only thing that has gone right are the wards I’ve placed on the new building as the contractors work on the structural damage here down in the catacombs, so who knows if the building is even going to remain standing. We’ve got builders down there reinforcing everything, but we can’t live here, really. I’ve moved the family down to—” She clapped her hand over her own mouth
For her safety, I needed to leave before she triggered the dominant voice in me any further. I stepped past Alexandra, heading back toward the torn-off doors of the terrace.
“I am sorry about your library,” I said as I went. “Truly.”
Alexandra ran along behind me, trying to catch up, climbing over the debris that I simply crashed through. “You’re leaving? Now?”
“I must,” I said. Once outside, I let the cool night air wash over me.
“Wait,” she said, grabbing for my arm, but as much as I wanted to feel her touch, I did not think I could bear it. I stepped off the edge of the roof, my wings spreading to catch the wind. I spun back around to face her.
“When will I see you again?” she asked. “Seeing you like . . . this, I can’t take it. I need to know.”
“I am unsure,” I said. “I am subject to the will of others and bound to return to them. This I cannot fight.”
“Tell me what to do,” she pleaded. “There’s no one I can talk to about this, no one who even understands the power at work here. I need guidance.”
“Nothing has changed since I first instructed you on this,” I said, leaping into the air. I looked down at her trembling figure on the terrace below. “Learn what you can. For my part, I will try to do the same. But prepare.”
“Prepare for what, though?” she shouted. “What does your father plan to do?”
“I am not sure,” I said, working my wings to lift me higher into the night sky. Already the dominant voice was directing me back out over Manhattan, heading out to sea and the freighter. “The question is, will you be ready?”
Nine
Alexandra
I’d had nightmares where the totality of my great-great-grandfather’s knowledge was lost to me, destroyed, but no matter how horrific they had been, the reality of his tossed-around studio space felt far worse. The Belarus Building had been my home, but the library and art studio had been my heart, my inner sanctum all my life. To see it as a mass grave of books and art crushed that heart. Then to find Stanis the one responsible only drove a stake through what was left of it.
Seeing him tonight—cold though he was toward me—only reminded me how much I missed the warmth of his protection. Even though I was proving capable of watching out for myself, it had always been a comfort to know he had been watching my back. I missed it more and more in the face of his not being at—or on—my side now. I longed for the companionship of the old Stanis, but all that remained of him, unfortunately, was the
destruction he had caused, still plentiful all around me.
Although I had promised myself to keep my friends out of harm’s way, I needed to reach out to someone and called Rory and Marshall. The danger had passed, the damage done, and I doubted this new, corrupted version of Stanis would return—at least not for a little while.
I couldn’t just stand there amid the chaos of the broken room waiting for them. I’d go mad. I needed to feel productive somehow and grabbed up one of the mannequin forms and set about designing a new gargoyle from scratch. It was clear the current one wasn’t going to prove very helpful to us, and the distraction of modeling a wire-and-clay frame for wings was very therapeutic just then.
I was still standing back from the figure, checking the symmetry of the wings, when I heard Rory and Marshall scurrying up the fire escape outside, still not quite able to take in the events of my evening.
“What in holy hell happened here?” Rory asked as she stepped with caution past the broken French doors.
“Are you all right?” Marshall whispered, grabbing me by the shoulders and looking me over.
I nodded. “Physically? Yeah. Emotionally, not so much.”
“What happened?” Rory asked, dropping her dance bag.
I paused, trying to keep myself together before answering. “Stanis happened.”
Rory’s eyes went wide. “You saw him?!”
Marshall let go of me and spun around quick.
“Is he still here somewhere?” he said, whispering as he peered off into the darkness surrounding us.
I shook my head.
Rory leaned down and picked up one of the broken puzzle boxes at her feet. One of the drawers—once secret—slid out and fell onto a pile of books. “What the hell was he fighting that caused this much damage?”
“Stanis wasn’t fighting anything,” I said. “He did this all himself.”
Rory stepped back, narrowing her eyes at me. “Lexi, do you know how insane that sounds?”
“I do,” I said. “And I wish I had a different answer for you. But honestly, I don’t. This was all Stanis.”
“Why would he do this, especially to you?” Marshall asked, flipping one of the upended couches back over before collapsing onto it.
“We freed him,” I said. “Now he serves a different master.” Just saying the words out loud sent a sharp pain through me.
“How?” Marshall called out.
I shrugged. “I don’t know how they did it,” I said. “I just know they did.”
Rory’s eyes lit up, and she raised her voice in disbelief. “Hold on,” she said. “Stanis left—went with Kejetan—to protect us . . . I mean, really you, right?” I nodded. “This is how he does that?”
I looked at the couch to see Marshall shaking his head.
“We freed him,” he contested, “so he didn’t have to serve anyone. That was the whole point!”
Rory looked around the room. She pulled the art tube off her back, put together her pole arm, and scooped up a half-torn book with the end of it. “And whoever did this to him made him a dick,” she said.
“Rory!” I scolded, more out of frustration than anger with her. She was right.
Marshall stood. “So if Stanis is serving a new master, and they put him up to this . . . did he actually get the secrets he came for?”
“I think I have an answer for that,” I said, going to the spot where I had laid my backpack down earlier. I undid the upper straps and pulled out the heavy stone book from within. “No.”
“That book right there is great power,” Marshall said, pointing to it. “Alexander knew it. It’s why he hid it all away from the world. You put that much power out there, and people are going to want it; and not all of those who wish to wield great power want the same thing. In your hands, Lexi, and with your motivations, there’s a chance you’d be asked to join the Justice League. In another person’s hands? Totally Legion of Doom.”
I nodded. “Stanis knew I had the book on me, but . . . he went out of his way to stop me from talking about it.”
“But why not just take it?” Rory asked.
“Because despite who or whatever is controlling him now,” I said, “Stanis is still in there somewhere, trying to keep us from harm. He could have crushed me and taken the book, but he didn’t. Stanis is in there with whatever else is in control, and he’s fighting to find ways around it.”
“So what do we do?” Marshall asked.
I shrugged. “I’m not sure. There’s a good chance that if he sees me again, Stanis will be forced to take the book from me, or do something . . . worse.”
“How do you take a gargoyle down?” Rory asked.
I glared at her. “Rory!”
She shrugged. “Sorry, Lexi. It’s just . . . I know it’s Stanis and all, but if it comes down to you or him, I’m always going to choose you.”
Everyone was silent for a moment before Marshall spoke. “I’m afraid I’m with Rory on this one, Lexi.”
“I don’t care what anyone thinks about what the Servants of Ruthenia might force Stanis to do,” I shouted. “I won’t believe even then he would hurt me.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to find out the hard way,” Rory said, just as loud, getting up in my face. “Lexi—”
“No,” I said, interrupting. “I’m taking Stanis back. They made him like this, and I’m taking him back. He won’t hurt me. I know it.”
“I’m not willing to take that risk,” Rory said, stamping her pole arm on the floor.
“Ladies,” Marshall said, speaking up. “Stop it.”
“No,” I said. “Let’s have this out. So this is how we operate now, Rory? At the first sign of trouble, we abandon our friend when he needs us?”
“You haven’t seen him in months,” Rory countered. “You don’t know what’s been going on or what’s happened to him. For all you know, he’s just as likely to snap your neck because his new master told him to do it. There may be Stanis’s soul still in there somewhere, but someone else is calling the shots, and that body is still—what’s Marshall’s word . . . ?”
“A construct,” he said, “but listen. We can’t fight like this . . .”
“We don’t abandon our own,” I shouted back in Rory’s face.
“Ladies,” Marshall repeated.
“Stay out of this, Marsh,” Rory added.
He ran to the two of us, pulling us close. “Wish I could,” he said, lowering his voice. “But we’ve got a bigger problem.”
“What?” I asked, the word coming out short, just as testy as I was feeling.
“I think I heard something,” he said. “Something from within the building.”
Like a campfire being doused with water, all the fight went out of me. Rory, too.
The three of us stopped, turning to listen, and when we heard sound coming from the back stairs of the building, we all spun to face it. Rory raised and readied her pole arm, but I put my hand over hers, forcing her to lower it, which she did, but only a little.
“Stay sharp,” I whispered. “Just . . . you know, don’t stab my parents if it’s one of them.”
Rory looked offended. “I think I can manage not stabbing Doug and Julie,” she whispered back.
A shadow rose into view as it cleared the stairs leading up onto the floor, but it was not the shadow of my mother or father, which I was pretty sure I’d know by now. A lone figure advanced slowly into the room, unrecognizable until it stepped in a section of moonlight streaming in from one of the windows.
“Holy hell,” Marshall whispered. “It’s the ghost of Sean Connery.”
“Not quite,” I said, standing up, relaxing a bit. Seeing Desmond Locke was a relief compared to the myriad horrors I imagined shambling up those stairs—Kejetan’s stone men or maybe something worse.
“Mr. Locke,” I said, in turn startling him as his eyes darted our way.
“Well, well,” he said, brushing off his pant legs as he stepped with care into the room, picking his way through th
e debris. “Have I caught you at a bad time, Miss Alexandra?”
I gave a weak but pained smile. “Not exactly the greatest timing, Mr. Locke,” I said.
He glanced to the pole arm in Rory’s hand, then over to Marshall.
“No?” he asked, a tight-lipped smile crossing his lips. “Would you care to tell me what happened to Alexander’s library and studio, then?”
I looked to both Rory and Marshall, each of them staring back at me expectantly, no doubt curious what I was going to say. I was curious, too.
“I think we had a break-in,” I said after a moment, which was, while technically true, the most vague answer I could give without lying. “Someone trashed the place.”
“So I see,” he said, not looking away from me, his eyes searching mine for answers.
I kept my own steady, refusing to give in to whatever type of intimidation the man hoped to use on me. It might work on my father given the religious sway Desmond Locke held over him, but it wasn’t going to work with me.
“Pardon, sir,” Marshall asked. “But what exactly are you doing here? This building is supposed to be closed for repairs and renovations, isn’t it? And it’s late.”
Mr. Locke gave Marshall the simplest and most patronizing of smiles, which I wanted to smack off his face.
“I might ask the same of you three,” he said. “As a point of fact, I believe I already have.”
“This is my home,” I reminded him, snapping. “I have every right to be here any damned time I wish. Which, Mr. Locke, is more than I can say for you. The only reason you’ve been allowed here before is due to my father’s good graces.”
Desmond Locke’s smile faltered for half a second and he shifted his posture, turning his attention from Marshall back to me.
“Perhaps it’s time we had that little talk I mentioned the other day when I ran into you down in the foyer,” he said, his smile falling from his face.
“Are you serious?” I asked, his request flipping my bitch switch to full-on mode, unable to stop myself at his nerve. “The last thing I want to hear about right now is your ‘spiritual guidance’ or its stranglehold over the rest of my family.”