I turned to Alexandra, whose eyes were on the deck of the ship above.
The alchemist stood at the edge, his hands flashing in and out of his coat as he mixed the contents of several vials together.
“Go!” Caleb shouted down at us with a vial clenched in his mouth.
“We’re not leaving without you,” Alexandra called out to him.
“Yes, you are,” he said. The alchemist tilted his head, which poured the contents of the vial into a larger one in his hand before spitting the empty container free. “Stanis, the chain!”
The cultist in front of me blocked my view of where I knew we were still tethered to the ship. My claws sunk into his shoulder as I tore into him, throwing him out of the way and into the hull of the freighter. My other claw came down hard on the chain, slicing through it and sending it sinking into the water.
Fresh hands came down on my arm, and I spun to knock away my new opponent, only to find Alexandra at my side.
“Get him,” she said. “Please.”
Already, men on the deck of the freighter were swarming Caleb while others still attempted to jump down to our boat.
Caleb struggled against the men pulling at him, but kept his footing while he continued working.
“Get them out of here, Stanis,” he said, then looked to Alexandra. “We’ll talk again. If not in this life, then the next.”
“Are you sure about that?” Alexandra screamed to him.
He smiled despite the chaos all around him. “As sure as I am about anything.”
I pushed off the hull of the freighter, our boat launching away from it.
“No!” Alexandra called out, the desperation in the tone of her voice sending a bitter pain straight through me.
“I am sorry,” I said. “But we must go.”
“Get him! Please!” she shouted at me.
I shook my head. Caleb had told me to look after them, and with the boat still being boarded by Kejetan’s men, I needed to secure the ship.
“Concentrate on your spell,” I said.
Nothing was going to save the freighter now even if she let it go. Already the prow was lifting into the air as the bulk of it descended beneath the waves.
I turned away and moved to help Marshall, who was wresting the controls back from two of the cultists.
“Screw my spell—” Alexandra started, but the words died in her mouth as a massive explosion wracked the last of the freighter that was still above water.
As I dropped the two men overboard, I watched flame shoot out across what remained of the deck and up into the sky. The reds and yellows mixed with a green light, and although the explosion had been sudden, my eyes had caught the point of its origins.
It had caught Alexandra’s eye as well.
“Caleb!” she screamed.
But the only answer came as the roar of fire mixed with the sounds of the violent waves and our drowning enemies all around us as we headed back to shore and the lights of Manhattan.
Thirty
Alexandra
“L exi,” a voice called out to me, but I didn’t respond.
That was the nice thing about shock. Nobody really expected you to answer while your brain shut down to take a rest from everything that had happened. Well, not completely shut down. Images of the evening flooded my mind, flashes of the crumpling freighter, stone wings, the column of flame amid an ocean of water . . .
And Caleb at the center of it all. Caleb.
“Dead,” I said, simply to acknowledge the fact out loud to myself.
“Lexi!” the voice called out, sharper this time, accompanied by the sensation of someone grabbing my shoulder and shaking me. Rory.
I lifted my head and opened my eyes, and, to my surprise, we were not on the small boat anymore. The rooftop garden of my new building on Saint Mark’s greeted me. I had no idea how I had gotten there, but I was comforted in my grief to see Rory and Marshall to either side of me on one of the park benches there.
“Caleb’s dead,” I said.
“We know,” Stanis said, and I looked up to find him standing ten feet away on the pathway. “Are you unharmed?”
I turned my attention to myself for a moment as I took his question in. “I . . . I think so.” I looked to Rory. “Caleb’s dead.”
She nodded and squeezed my shoulder.
Marshall’s hand fell on my other one. “But not in vain,” he said. “He saved us.”
I stood on shaky legs and walked to Stanis. “You could have saved him,” I said.
“I could not,” he said. “I was honoring Caleb’s actions. As well as honoring his request to watch over you.”
I searched his face, but Stanis was as grave and silent a sentinel as ever. “I hate this,” I said. “Not being able to read you.”
“I am truly sorry,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “When I restore our connection, it won’t matter. Everything will be as it should.” I looked up into Stanis’s eyes. “Do you think it’s over?”
“The threat from my family, yes,” he said.
“Good,” I said, and grief took me over. I collapsed against the smooth cool stone of his chest and lay there, unmoving.
“Lexi,” Rory cried out, pointing up into the air.
Marshall was staring up at the sky as well. “I think you may have called it a little too early on being over,” he said. “Incoming gargoyles!”
All around the rooftop park, branches swayed and shook as wave after wave of gargoyles came down out of the night sky. Although each was terrifying in its own unique way, one stood out among the rest as it landed on the roof and dropped the inert, burned form of Caleb Kennedy at its feet.
I turned my eyes away before I could take in the full extent of the damage to him, turning my fury on the creature who had dared to bring him before us. Had it not, I thought, been enough to watch him engulfed in flames upon the ship’s deck without having to look at his corpse?
As the other gargoyles came down in their clumsy attempts to land, tree limbs snapped and cracked, falling from their trunks. I’d already had one home destroyed, and even though we were outnumbered, I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to fight for my new one.
Stanis went for the same lead gargoyle I was heading for, but the reach of my power was closer and quicker, lashing out to the stone surrounding the figure, the bricks of the pathway responding to my command and rising.
The gargoyle stopped, raising its clawed hands against the bricks, and stepped back.
“Please, no!” it said. No, she said, looking to my grotesque. “You told me to seek you out.”
Stanis paused in his advance, his face unsure. I ran to his side, but I held the bricks under my control in the air surrounding the figure.
“Emily . . . ?” Stanis said. “Hoffert.”
“You know this one?” I asked.
He nodded. “We met . . . briefly. She was your brother’s diversionary tactic.”
I looked the slender creature over, its features more batlike than those of Stanis. “You worked for my brother?” I asked, anger rising against my will. The bricks wavered, inching forward around her.
“No!” she said, fear in her voice. “Stanis, please . . .”
My grotesque looked around the roof at the others. “Why did you bring our enemies here to our home?” Stanis demanded.