“Umm . . . what about the rest?” Marshall asked, finally breaking the silence.
“Rest?” Aurora asked.
“Of the statues,” he said. “Kejetan only had a couple of dozen stone men with him. There were far more statues that came to life on the roof than that. What happened with the rest?”
Caleb let loose a sigh.
“That was supposed to be my backup plan,” the man said, looking to Alexandra. “Although thanks to everyone’s interference, it worked a little too well.”
“Meaning what?” Alexandra asked, wary.
“Like I said, I was in between a rock and a hard place,” he said. “Kejetan and the Servants of Ruthenia got what they wanted. They all got to cast off their crude stone form and take over many of Alexander’s statues up on the roof. Kejetan can fly around the city on his own pair of wings and be a happy little gargoyle now. But bringing the remaining statues to life . . . that was my ace in the hole that hopefully would have kept them from exacting vengeance on you.”
“You do not know Kejetan, then,” I said. “He did not earn the moniker the Accursed for his charity.”
“Giving Kejetan the gargoyle body that he wanted . . . well, that should have ended my deal with him, guaranteeing my safety. My hope was that activating the rest of those statues would let whatever random spirits haunt New York City find them and fight it out, maybe reduce the number of Kejetan’s new gargoyle army.”
Aurora laughed. “That was your genius plan?”
“Okay,” he said with anger in the word. “What would you have done, then? My life was on the line, and it seemed to be my best chance for living. If a few of Kejetan’s men died in the process of dealing with the other animated statues, then all the better.”
“Back up a little bit there,” Alexandra said. “What did you mean by ‘it worked too well’?”
“My plan was actually working,” he said, pointing at her, “until you interfered. That globe I threw with the mixture in it . . . It was meant to hit the roof and spread out among the remaining statues, activating them. It would have created the same type of potion cloud like the one I used when we captured Stanis and freed him. But you smashed the globe before it could properly land. That’s when everything went a bit off the rails. The mixture wasn’t supposed to go that airborne. It had a reaction I didn’t suspect, mixing and amplified with the power of the storm.”
“The sky went awash with that pink haze,” I said.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen?” Marshall asked.
The alchemist shook his head.
“The rain must have acted like a current carrier when the object released prematurely,” he said.
“Is that bad?” Marshall asked, wrapping his arms around his body. He turned to me. “That’s bad, right?”
“I do not know,” I said, then turned to Caleb. “Is it?”
“It’s not good,” the human confessed. “It became far more powerful than I would have imagined. The way it was spreading . . . I’m not sure how big a radius it covered, but it was more than just over your building here.”
Alexandra leaned back against one of the art-studio tables that still stood. “Meaning you might have animated an entire city’s worth of statuary,” she said. “Who knows how many more of Alexander’s statues around Manhattan have come to life? And what’s occupying all of them? More than just the Servants of Ruthenia, that’s for sure.”
“It’s possible,” he said. “I’m not sure. My plan was localized until you messed it up.”
“Do not put this one me,” Alexandra shouted, shaking her head. “If you had been up front about your plan . . . If you had trusted us . . . If we can’t trust you, we don’t want your help. Not after this fiasco.”
The humans fell to arguing, and with Aurora and Marshall joining in with the shouting, the flow of their words moved too fast for me to follow. One thing, however, became very clear to me.
“Silence!” I roared after I confirmed my suspicion. All of them turned to me, their words dying on their lips.
“What is it, Stanis?” Alexandra asked, her voice calming.
“If you would stop fighting among yourselves for a moment, there is something I must point out.”
I waited to hear if anyone was going to say anything more.
“So . . . ?” Caleb started. “What is it?”
“What do you hear, now that you are not fighting with each other?”
He listened for a moment. All the humans listened.
Caleb shrugged. “I don’t hear anything,” he said.
“Exactly.”
The humans ran for the stairs leading to the roof, and I followed, stepping out onto it. Empty pedestals marked the entirety of the roof, and the broken forms of far too few gargoyles littered the area. Every other living creature was gone, the night sky filled with dark shadows and the flapping of wings.
“I believe the days of keeping secret the existence of gargoyles may be at an end,” I said.
Twenty-three
Alexandra
Sleep was good. In fact, I might have called it my best friend. A night of ignoring calls from Caleb and not having to think about the events of the previous night was blissful. Sleep even gave me the false hope that maybe I had been dreaming the events of the past few days. But when the door buzzed over and over for a good ten minutes, I finally gave in to waking and checked it out, only to find Desmond Locke at the door, his face full of curiosity.
“Is your father in?” he asked. “I would like to speak with him.”
“No,” I said. “If he wasn’t in the offices here, then I don’t know where he is.”
“Pity,” he said, extending his open palm into the building. “May I?”
Not having seen him since before Caleb and I had liberated my great-great-grandfather’s book, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be talking to a man whose church I had broken into, but compared to the events of last night, it almost felt like a welcome distraction.
I headed upstairs to the kitchen to make myself some coffee but made no effort to offer him any. I sat down at the breakfast bar, leaving him standing.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Locke?” I asked, taking my first sip, coming a bit more alive with it.
“I wonder if you’ve been watching the news,” he said.
My stomach sank. “No,” I said. “I’ve been holed up in bed all morning. Bit under the weather and all.”
“Interesting reporting this morning,” he said. “They say overnight there were many sightings and reporting of angels and demons throughout the city sky. There were hundreds of incidents reported. Even footage on the Internet.”
“Really, now,” I said, a bit of curiosity winning out over my growing fear. “And what do you make of all this?”
“What with all the reports of angel and demon sightings,” he said, “one would think we are seeing the End of Days.”
“Isn’t the Rapture something someone in your line of work is supposed to look forward to?”
“In theory, yes,” he said, “but I am not as dogmatic as most. We both know there are strange things in the world, Miss Belarus. And I think the regular world is catching on to that now because of the meddling of certain people who do not know any better.”
Given the air of superiority coming from him, I resisted the urge to throw my coffee in his face. “And what would be better?” I asked.
“The world would be a better place if these things were kept in check,” he said. “Or at least used on the side of God.”