by SM Reine
He didn’t get to finish the sentence.
An earthquake tossed the caldera. Lincoln slammed onto his knees, and he realized that the ash was getting warm under his hands.
“Jesus,” he whispered.
Lincoln threw himself back.
Rock cracked, and a hot jet of gas blasted where he’d been kneeling a moment earlier. Blazing orange magic raced around the caldera. It splashed red light over the rocky walls and lit the ash from underneath, spreading out from the vent like flames licking glass.
The next jet blasted underneath Noah’s Jeep.
It flipped, cartwheeling over Lincoln. He flung himself flat on the ground to avoid getting struck. Metal crashed against the wall.
“Noah!”
Lincoln scrambled for the police Jeep, upended a hundred yards away. The underside of the car was smoldering. It looked like it had been hit by a meteor. In the front, inside the roll cage, Noah was struggling to unbuckle so he could slither out.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Mount Bain shook again, but these sounded like impacts—not an earthquake.
Gargoyles had landed around the police. They formed an impenetrable wall of stone bodies dwarfing the cruisers.
Shouts and swears rose from the deputies. They drew their guns and took cover behind their doors.
Still no werewolves.
Dammit Ashley, if you didn’t get the pack here in time…
Lincoln gritted his teeth and helped drag Noah out of the wreckage. It had caught fire. Heat sizzled against his sweaty shoulders as he struggled for grip on his brother-in-law’s arms. “Come on, kick free!”
“I’m working on it!” Noah yanked his leg out from under the dash and pushed with the other.
They half-ran, half-limped away from the wreckage right before another jet of heat blasted the Jeep. Flame consumed the entire rear half. Rubber popped and melted.
Gunshots.
The deputies had opened fire on the gargoyles.
Lincoln’s heart leaped into his throat. “Wait! Don’t shoot!” They didn’t hear him, or just didn’t listen. He grabbed Noah by the lapels. “Tell them to stop!”
“What the fuck are those?” Noah asked. He was burned and blistered and drenched in sweat. He coughed into his sleeve.
“Those are the other preternaturals I was trying to tell you about!” Lincoln said.
The deputies hadn’t stopped shooting.
Lincoln yanked the sidearm out of Noah’s holster. He’d opened the strap at some point, so it was easy to steal the gun.
He ran for the gargoyles.
“Stop shooting!” he shouted.
The deputies still didn’t listen. The bullets sparked where they struck the golems, pinging off of their flesh. Entire magazines emptied without doing a damn thing against the gargoyles other than making them look confused.
A tall, skinny gargoyle was the first to stop looking confused.
It hurled itself into the midst of the cars. With an easy swing of its arms, it sent cars flying. A deputy jumped at it with his baton and got backhanded.
“Stop!” Lincoln aimed the handgun at the ground and fired repeatedly. Bang! Bang!
That got the gargoyles’ attention.
The tall one barreled toward him.
Lincoln dived out of the way, and he rolled across a vent as it began to squeal with pressure. It exploded when he passed. Debris pelted him, and he yanked his jacket over his head for protection. The big pieces brained him anyway. Lincoln skidded to the ground, dazed.
He rolled over to see the gargoyle rushing him.
The world exploded around Lincoln, shattering into a thousand shards of pain.
He’d hit the side of the caldera.
Luckily, it seemed the gargoyle had been kind enough to wrap his arms around Lincoln when they’d smashed together, so they’d also rolled together. He’d taken the brunt of the impact. Now they peeled apart, dazed. But Lincoln was still close enough to see a gemstone hanging around the gargoyle’s gray neck, held by a leather cord.
Sophie had said that they would have a connection to the witch controlling them—something that allowed the stone to remain animated.
The gargoyle pulled back for a swing.
Right before the fist struck him, Lincoln grabbed the amulet.
His head exploded.
He slammed into the wall again.
His back felt like it was broken. He was surprised when he put a hand to his head and found only a warm trickle of blood rather than brains.
Lincoln’s other hand was clutching the necklace.
The gargoyle was trying to rush him, and Lincoln was too dazed to escape. He threw his arms over his head to protect himself from the impact that never came.
His attacker stumbled to its knees before reaching him. It sank into the soil. Bowed its head.
The stone on its arms was turning rigid and pale.
“I’ve gotten your necklace!” Lincoln yelled, holding it over his head. “Your buddy’s fading!”
The other gargoyles turned from the police. They’d already punched holes in half the cars, ensuring that they would never be driven on another patrol.
One of the deputies opened fire again. Bullets pinged uselessly into a gargoyle’s back.
“I’ll break it,” Lincoln said as the gargoyles rolled forward. “I’ll break it!”
The one missing his amulet was continuing to freeze. Paleness had spread over its shoulders and neck. It settled into its pose, face blanking, eyes losing their light.
Wind from their wings battered Lincoln. He shielded his eyes against the dust as the animated gargoyles surrounded him tightly. He recognized their faces now. One was Tripp—the fair-haired guy from the photos. He had boulder shoulders and a cracked knee. Next to him stood someone with Robin’s lips. Her sister, maybe.
And Junior was there too.
He was the one that Lincoln had encountered on the night of the full moon. Now that he saw the resemblance, he was amazed that he’d ever missed it; even made of granite, that was still the Marshall jawline. He had ears like Uncle Art’s, too. They stuck out too far.
Lincoln’s fist trembled on the amulet, its edges biting into his palm.
“Do you know me?” he asked.
Junior’s head tilted. A low rumbling shook in his chest, without syllable or meaning.
“I’m John Marshall’s other son,” Lincoln said. “Do you still speak English? Do you have any clue what I’m saying to you?”
No reply.
They couldn’t talk, but they could listen. “I’ve been looking for you, Junior.” He swept his hands out to include the others. “All of you. I know someone’s controlling you. I know that whatever you’ve done, you didn’t mean to hurt anybody. You’ve been feeding on goats instead of people, right? You’re not murderers.”
Junior reached out, his granite joints groaning with the movement. He was almost as loud as the earthquake building around them. Hot ash spewed into the air from a vent behind Lincoln.
The gargoyle’s clawed hand was bigger than Lincoln’s head.
“Let’s stop fighting. Let’s just…calm down.” He rested his hand in Junior’s. Thick stone fingers gently closed around his wrist. Lincoln’s throat got tight, and he wasn’t sure if it was because this was the first time he’d touched his brother—the first time he’d really met him—or because when they’d finally met, Junior wasn’t capable of speaking to tell Lincoln about himself.
Junior’s chest and arm were dinged up from the bullets. Lincoln dropped the gun he held.
“No more fighting,” he said again.
The caldera was quiet, mostly, aside from the occasional pop-hiss and grumble of rolling earth.
The gargoyles didn’t move an inch when Noah edged between them to Lincoln’s side. He stared up at their stony faces in awe, ripping off his sunglasses to see them better. “Those aren’t werewolves,” he whispered. His gaze dropped to the gargoyles’ clawed feet and wings. “You were r
ight, Linc. It wasn’t werewolves that killed those patients.”
Uncertainty crept through Lincoln. “I don’t think these guys killed them either.”
“They attacked us,” Noah said. But even he didn’t sound as sure of himself as usual. It helped that the gargoyles weren’t attacking now, and that Junior held Lincoln’s hand without any hint of violence in him.
Howls and yips broke the air.
The pack came over the ridge. Abel appeared in his enormous black wolf form. The sparkling copper shifter must have been his daughter. There were several other wolves not far behind.
“Oh hell,” Lincoln said. He’d called them prepared for war, expecting the gargoyles to put up more of a fight.
But the fight wasn’t here at all.
Now the pack was descending on them, right when the mountain was starting to shake so hard that Lincoln had to grab Junior for support.
“Wait!” Lincoln called. “Go back!”
It was too late. The pressure was too much.
The explosion sounded like a bomb dropping just a few yards away, and it was so loud that Lincoln’s ears shrieked with pain, deafening him instantly. The pressure change stabbed through his sinuses.
Magma punched a hole through the side of the mountain, waterfalling down the western slope with an eye-stinging, throat-burning cascade of sulfur.
It was rolling through the forest toward Mortise.
Now the shaking ground wasn’t from an earthquake, but from the ground weakening under him. The caldera was weakening. The pressure would blast the top of Mount Bain off—and take every last gargoyle, werewolf, and cop with it.
Taking the amulet from the gargoyles hadn’t stopped the witch’s spell.
Lincoln whirled to face Junior. He searched his brother’s stony face and wondered, not for the first time, how they would ever bridge the difference between them. “You have to know who’s casting this spell. We’ve gotta stop her, Junior. We’ve gotta do something before she destroys the whole damn town.”
Junior’s eyes were lifeless.
But he snagged Lincoln in one arm, yanked him off the ground, and took flight.
Chapter 39
The world shrunk to toy-size while Lincoln clung to Junior’s shoulders. From up high, the devastation didn’t look as real: the ash billowing out of the shattered caldera, the red-hot rivers sliding between trees, the city darkened without power. Lincoln felt untouchable up there. Funny, considering that Junior had knocked him silly more than once, and now Junior was the only thing that kept Lincoln from falling to his death.
Lincoln and Junior reached Mortise before the magma flows, but only barely. Lava flooded the gutters on the east side of town, melting away the grills protecting the sewers. The air stunk of burning pine. In a way, descending upon a version of Mortise cloaked in ash felt like coming home as much as when Lincoln had first arrived. This was Grove County as he had known it during the apocalypse. This was his exact kind of Hell.
Junior landed heavily on the grass outside of the hospice. His feet curled into the grass for traction as he sought footing.
Lincoln slithered off of Junior’s back. The world felt huge after soaring above its tiny postage stamp version. The walls and trees were so tall. The gargoyle’s head didn’t reach higher than the trees’ canopy, but he felt taller than everything else. He filled Lincoln’s senses until he knew nothing except the lumbering gray figure.
“Will the others get the police down?” Lincoln asked, covering his mouth with his sleeve as he gazed up at the mountain. Magma spurted fresh from the gaping maw on the side of Mount Bain. The pack was somewhere up there with Noah.
Junior didn’t even nod. He just turned his empty eyes on the hospice and rolled toward a nearby window.
“What are you doing?”
The gargoyle’s enormous hands locked on either side of the window. His stone claws curled into brick, turning mortar to dust. His shoulders flexed. Granite muscle twisted.
He ripped the window out of the wall.
It left a hole bigger than a door.
But Junior didn’t try to go inside.
Scarlet light flowed from within, silhouetting the egg-shaped figure of a middle-aged woman. Susannah. Lincoln’s mother stood within a maelstrom of magic, thin hair floating around her shoulders on the force of it.
Lincoln shouldn’t have been surprised to see his mother. Susannah had always been a bitter, frightful woman who couldn’t let go of the resentments she held against Lincoln’s father. But Lincoln still hadn’t wanted to believe the woman who’d made him would be capable of such a sin.
“Mom,” Lincoln croaked out.
Susannah swung around to face him, flames curling over her forearms like burning veins. There was a shape on the ground at her feet.
Sophie.
The braids spilled over her face so that Lincoln couldn’t see if she was alive, awake, or in worse condition. This was the woman he’d sworn to protect. And Lincoln wasn’t sure he could control himself if his mother had hurt Sophie.
“I never meant for you to see this.” Susannah’s despairing eyes drank in the sight of Lincoln beside the gargoyle she controlled. “And you brought him here, Junior? Really? After everything I’ve done for you!”
Lincoln leapt over the crumbling brick to get inside the hospital room. “If you hurt Sophie—”
“I would never! I only needed to put her to sleep so that she couldn’t interfere!”
“Then you’re going to let me make sure she’s okay?” Lincoln asked.
Susannah nodded after a moment’s thought, hands still lifted. “Just don’t come closer to me. Please don’t make me put you to sleep too. It’s very uncomfortable, and I never want to have to hurt you.”
Lincoln bowed over Sophie, pushing her hair out of her face. The cut on her cheek had swollen. It had also been mirrored on the other side by a fresh gash, most likely from hitting a table when she collapsed. It had already stopped bleeding. His fingertips found her pulse at her wrist, but her arm flopped when he released it. She seemed to be sleeping deeply, like one of Lincoln’s nieces when she tried to stay up too late to watch the fireworks.
“You vandalized our hotel room, didn’t you?” he asked numbly. “That was you fleeing my room with magical speed.” If she could control that many gargoyles alone, then there was no limit to the feats his mom could perform.
“I hoped you’d leave if you got scared,” Susannah said.
“I thought I couldn’t hate you more, Mom,” Lincoln said. “I thought you’d hurt me as much as any woman could hurt her son. But all these deaths—all these people—”
“I didn’t kill anybody who wasn’t going to die anyway,” Susannah said. “I didn’t make any of these people sick, either. While I was visiting your father so much, I talked to the nurses, got a feel for anyone whose time was running short. And I used them. A fast death is more merciful anyway.” She turned her glare onto the bed, arms blazing brighter. “The only person that I really attacked was John.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” he asked, rising to stand between Sophie and his mother. “You don’t get to choose who dies when.”
“God does,” Susannah said. “I know. But I think that God chose me to do this. I killed those people to give life to Junior and his friends, and the extra power cursed your father. I made him sick. He deserved it—you know he deserved it!”
“Because he hurt you?”
“Because John Marshall is a rapist!”
The idea was so ridiculous that Lincoln had to laugh. “Are you insane?”
“It’s all in the files your girlfriend brought to the room. You can see for yourself. It’s still on the table,” Susannah said. “He used private counseling times with teenage parishioners to assault them. That bitch Dickerson knew, and Davidek knew, and they still protected him! One after another—he befriended those kids, groomed them, and eventually touched them. None of them consenting.” Susannah’s throat spasmed as sh
e swallowed. “None of them older than sixteen.”
“There is no way that could’ve happened without me hearing about it,” Lincoln said.
“You were a child too. He was doing this to your classmates, but they weren’t allowed to talk. Nobody talked. He made so many jobs at the lumber mill. He did everything for the church. Our family built this city.”
The ugly truth crept slowly over Lincoln. It felt like a sun was setting inside of him, drawing away the last of the light and leaving behind nothing but the scorched remains of the forest.
“I only hurt John because he deserved it,” she said with excruciating gentleness. “I made the last few months of his life miserable, and it’s still not enough for what he did to those girls. This community is ruined because of him. He gutted an entire generation.” The flames of magic layered brighter over her arms. “I just wish it hadn’t been you who caught us. You shouldn’t have to see him die.”
The power blazed from her, and it consumed John Marshall in the bed.
“No!” Lincoln cried.
His father was seizing in his sleep. His face screwed up without his eyes ever opening. He was tormented, in the depths of pain, exactly where Susannah wanted to leave him. She was going to kill him without any of the peace of the other victims.
Because he deserved it.
Lincoln remembered the way that Robin had looked at him, how she’d said she would dance on John’s grave. He remembered Verna shivering in her jail cell. And how Tripp had been institutionalized after his sister’s suicide because he was trying to follow her down, six feet deep, where John Marshall could never hurt her again.
He deserves it.
But this wasn’t God’s law striking. It was his mother, and she didn’t get to make this choice.
Lincoln leaped between Susannah and John.
Flame consumed him. It roared over his skin, and Lincoln roared with it, every nerve in his body burning at a thousand degrees. He felt the pain that Susannah thought John deserved, and it was so much more than Lincoln had thought the human body capable of enduring.