The thought of Stanis raging after me through the night sky drained the last of the color from my face. “How exactly did you get him here?”
“He needed motivation,” Caleb said. “So I gave him one. He knows definitively that you have the book, and he can return it to his master tonight. By the rules Kejetan had me set upon the gargoyle, Stanis had to come, here and now.”
“He had no choice,” I said, my heart going out to the creature that would just as soon crush me in his claws. “Great.”
“You sure you can do this?” Caleb repeated.
“I’m sure,” I said, as anger and a bit of humiliation fueled me. I whispered the words of power over the stone and reached out with my will to either side of me, causing the wings to become malleable and fold in closer, which helped steady me and keep my balance.
I headed off toward the French doors leading onto the terrace. “You mind your part,” I said. “I’m trusting you on this. Don’t make me regret it.”
“I won’t,” he said, sounding adamant. “Good luck, and try not to die.”
I kept silent as I stepped out into the cool night air, focusing on the time I was already counting in my head. The roof proper lay a good fifteen feet above me, but the terrace seemed a much better place to try my takeoff. And if I fucked it up, it would only be a small drop, and I could attempt it again without Stanis’s noticing.
I extended the back part of my counting mind out into my wings, establishing a rhythm, moving them the way Stanis worked his. The first few passes were clumsy, the wings not working fully in unison, but after a moment, I brought them into alignment.
On a pure physics level, it seemed unlikely that I could work the massive stone wings into the night sky. Doubt overwhelmed me for a second, but I kept my count steady. I wasn’t sure I would actually get the momentum I needed to do it until I felt my feet lift off the terrace. I cinched the stone of the harness tightly around me before pressing the wings to work harder to rise over the lip of the roof above.
The accumulated collection of statues had grown even more since I last looked up there, and there was Stanis below, moving one into place at the back row. The sight of him broke my concentration, my flight becoming a bit erratic as I rose higher and higher over the top of the Belarus Building. I needed to focus, to calm myself, and as I did, my flying steadied, and I flew higher until I was looking down over the entire roof and its landscape of silent, stone sentinels.
Now for the real work.
“Stanis!” I called down, drawing his attention. He pulled away from the statue, searching the skies until his eyes caught mine. “You care to explain any of this giant chess game you’re arranging on my roof?”
I was ready for instant attack. Stanis poised himself on the brink of leaping into the air, but to my surprise, he lowered his arms to his side and pulled his wings in. Clearly some small part of him was struggling to maintain control. It gave me hope, but sadly for me, the kind gargoyle was not the one I needed to deal with if we were going to stand any chance of freeing him.
“Do not provoke me, Alexandra,” he said. “I have warned you of the potential consequences.”
I had watched Stanis bend his interpretation of my great-great-grandfather’s rules, but at that moment I needed the power controlling him to leave not a spot of wiggle room.
“Caleb told you I have the secrets your new master is looking for,” I said, slapping my hand onto the front pocket of my coat with my notebook sticking out of it. “And I do. But first? If you want them, you will have to take them from me yourself.”
Stanis’s face knotted with the struggle, but nonetheless, his wings spread wide.
“I know not why you would put yourself at such risk, Alexandra,” he said, “but I will have what I have been sent to get.”
The gargoyle leapt into the air with ferocity, whatever power was controlling him fully taking over.
Fear jumped up in my throat, but I did not want to find out how ferocious toward me Stanis could actually be.
I shot up into the night sky, stunned at my own speed, the count of one, two, three, four ever present at the back of my mind, going faster and faster with each repetition. I wasn’t nearly as practiced as Stanis was in the art of flight, but I was ahead of him. That wouldn’t last, but I sped away from the Belarus Building, hoping it would give Caleb the time he needed on the roof.
Despite my quiet panic, I found myself enjoying the chase. I was flying, after all, of my own volition. Part of me missed the gentle care with which Stanis had held me on our previous flights months ago, but to be flying by myself was a whole different experience, filled with a refreshing and powerful freedom I hadn’t expected.
As I left Gramercy and hit the lower part of Midtown, I rose higher, soaring well above most buildings there except one: my target. The Empire State Building was awash in a dazzling bright white that night, brighter still at the angle from which I was coming at it. Its luminescence had been my guiding beacon, but it was also my turning point to head back home. I pulled my wings in close as I shot past the building, speeding into the bank of my loop around it, chancing a look back over my shoulder. I’d expected to find Stanis hot on my heels but was relieved to find I had pulled far enough ahead that he was out of sight. As far as speed was concerned, panic was doing an excellent job at keeping me motivated.
The changing of the wind as I hit the crosstown side of the building had my hair in my face. I wished I had at least brought a hair elastic with me. But with my wings doing all the work, my hands were free to clear my vision, and I banked around the Empire State Building heading back downtown.
I needed to keep my lead, and I once again sped up the count in my head. My concentration broke as movement rose in front of me, and I snapped my focus to the looming figure of an oncoming Stanis, claws out and wings pumping away with fury.
My wings faltered as I lost my count, but I willed them to close tight around me. Immediately I dropped like . . . well, a stone. Stanis flew through the space I’d occupied just seconds ago. His momentum was too much, and he crashed into the side of the building, glass shattering as chunks of stone exploded away from it as his figure vanished inside.
The debris plummeted down, catching in the netting meant for jumpers and dropped belongings—the reason I had picked the Empire State Building in the first place. The less damage on the ground, the less chance someone would get hurt.
It would take Stanis a second to right himself, caught within the confines of the building as he was, which thankfully bought me more time. I forced my wings back open, my torso screaming out in the stone harness as the inertia of my falling body met with the resistance of taking flight once more. I grunted as pain spread across the lower part of my rib cage, but I held my concentration and started heading back to the Belarus Building.
Moments later, the explosion of more glass and stone sounded behind me, but confidence filled me. My lead was greater now. As long as Caleb was ready, we should be good to go.
As Gramercy Park came into view on my horizon, I circled over the trees, angling back into the space above the Belarus Building. I scoured the rooftop for signs of Caleb, but in the darkness, I couldn’t make him out. The fleeting thought that he might be double-crossing me filled my brain, but I pushed it away. Time would tell on that count, and just then unhelpful thoughts like that were nothing more than distracting.
Pain shot through me as I suddenly found myself tumbling across the sky, my wings thankfully absorbing much of an impact from behind. Without them, Stanis might have torn me in two, but the concussive force was enough to stun me. My wings fully locked and froze out to either side of me, the aerodynamics of that formation barely keeping me in the air.