A lot had changed in the minutes I had been under the thrall of my spell.
The rain had turned into a full-blown storm all around us, and Rory was grabbing at Marshall from where they stood among the other statues, spinning him around to her.
“What’s wrong?” I shouted, weakened now, my words lost in the storm.
Rory pulled her hand back from one of the surrounding statues. “Why are these like this?” she shouted out.
“Like what?” Marshall called back.
“It’s wet,” she said.
“It’s raining,” he said.
She held her hand up in front of his face. “It’s coated . . . in the same stuff you two were putting on that one statue.”
I stumbled to one of the other statues nearby, slapping my hands on it. “They’re all coated,” I said. My eyes landed on an unfamiliar piece of jagged stone sitting on the base of the statue, but I didn’t have the time to process what it might be.
“Shut it down!” Marshall said, grabbing me by my shoulders, which almost toppled me over in my weakened state.
“How do you stop it?” Rory asked, joining him at my side.
“You don’t,” Caleb called out from where he stood at the side of the building. He looked down over the edge at something below. “It’s happening now!”
“Stanis!” I shouted, looking around to find him still perched on the edge of the roof. “What is it?”
The gargoyle spun around and looked down. “Trucks,” he said. “Like the ones at the shipyards.”
Oh no, I thought. The massive kind that could carry heavy cargo coming in from a ship, or in this case, a more sinister payload.
The door leading into the building came free of its hinges, shooting across the roof as it tumbled away. The jagged stone form of my former brother took up most of the doorway, powering through it as he came.
“Devon!” I shouted. “What is this?”
“Just call it reclaiming my family birthright,” he said.
Kejetan stormed through the door after him, a steady stream of stone followers pouring onto the roof behind him.
Stanis flew past me, slamming hard into their leader, knocking him back. The two tumbled over, locked in combat, Stanis attacking with a ferocity I hadn’t seen in him previously. Pieces of Kejetan’s stone form chipped away from him as Stanis landed blow after blow, flying across the roof.
One of them struck my foot, and I looked down at it, dawning realization hitting me. They looked just like the jagged piece I had seen laid out on the bases of the other statue.
Markers. Kejetan’s plan suddenly made sense to me. He and his servants weren’t here to fight us; they meant to cast off their jagged stone forms and have their spirits take over those of my great-great-grandfather’s statues instead. The pieces of stone—the markers—on the bases of the statues were meant to lead each of the Servants of Ruthenia to their new bodies, thanks to the treachery of Caleb, it seemed.
Caleb was running among the statues, touching a vial to about half the ones on the roof as I realized he was activating the Kimiya on them. Each of them bore a piece of one of the stone men at their base.
Rory and Marshall chased after Caleb through the pounding rain, but it was too late.
“Whose side are you on?” I shouted at him over the noise of the storm.
“My own,” he said, stopping finally, letting the vial fall to the roof.
Stanis landed another blow to Kejetan, but as my spell and Caleb’s alchemy took effect, the rocks that made up the mad lord’s body flew apart with the impact of Stanis’s fist.
All around us, the jagged stone forms of Devon and the rest of the Servants crashed to the rooftop, lifeless, the spirits within leaving them for the more sophisticated forms of my great-great-grandfather’s statues. The component parts of their stone bodies came apart, and what had once been vaguely humanoid forms dissolved into piles of rough rock all along the roof.
Against the pouring rain, the invisible shapes of their searching spirits swirled through the air, the only telltale sign of their existence that of displaced rainwater as they flew. I followed the apparition that rose from the pile of rocks that had once been Devon and watched as it went to one of the stone-marked gargoyles in his attempt to be reborn into its form.
I ran to the statue, but by the time I got there, the swirling aerial shape had vanished into it, the stone of the gargoyle there changing in front of me. A roar of pain—my brother’s voice—cried out from the demonic-looking creature’s mouth as it reared its head to the sky. The rest of the body came to life as well in an uncontrolled flailing of limbs and wings, my brother’s spirit trying to gain control of it. Its feet tore free from the statue’s base, and the gargoyle fell to the ground on all fours, twitching.
“Devon . . . ?” I asked, moving to touch the cool, rain-covered stone of the gargoyle’s skin.
The wings flew open, the tip of one catching me in the stomach and sending me flying across the roof. I landed hard against one of the untreated statues and slumped to the ground, the wind knocked out of me as a sore spot spread out along my entire right side from the impact. Fighting the pain, I forced myself to stand as I took in the chaos of dozens of other statues coming to life all over the roof.
I did my best to ignore them, concentrating still on my brother, who by then had worked his way back to his feet, though he was unsteady still.
“It worked . . .” I said, sad to see the efforts of my spell wasted on him.
“That it did,” he replied, his smile revealing a set of stone fangs that rivaled those of Stanis.
Stanis.
I turned to find my gargoyle, but with all the activity of other stone figures on the roof, for once he didn’t stand out. Only when I listened for signs of conflict did I spot him fighting his way toward Caleb through an increasing number of other living gargoyles.
Marshall and Rory already had the alchemist by his arms, but Stanis grabbed him at his throat, and lifted. Caleb’s feet were well off the ground by the time I stumbled my way over to them, spit flying from the alchemist’s mouth, gagging.
“You betrayed us,” Stanis said.
“Wait,” Caleb managed to croak out. “Not . . . finished.”
Both his hands were wrapped around Stanis’s arm to keep himself from choking completely, but he managed to let go and leave just one in place. The other darted into his jacket and came out with a thin plastic vial that he slammed against Stanis’s arm. The plastic of the vial cracked, a dark gray liquid seeping out of it.
Part of Stanis’s arm transformed back to its solid state, and he grunted with pain but did not let go. The man’s own hand froze like stone as well, but he managed to pry it free, leaving him hanging by his neck only. He sputtered, but managed to reach down into the shoulder bag he wore, producing what looked like a giant glass egg filled with a swirling pink liquid. He threw it high overhead behind him toward the group of statues that were still inert.
Volatile liquid, Caleb had said earlier when he had been mixing things. His voice screamed the words in my head. Whatever explosive effect it might have, I needed to stop it.
My will took control of the by-then-empty pedestal my brother had stepped off of, and I guided it into the air, directing it at the glass ball. The base wobbled as I fought to hold control of it with any level of precision, but I was determined to hit my mark.