“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, holding up the brooch, “but this is our college and we’re taking it back.”
The students behind me cheered. One of the trows turned his massive head slowly, small eyes scanning the students’ faces from beneath his heavy, overhanging brow. I was beginning to think it had been a bad idea to bring the students when he grunted and pointed to Scott Wilder.
Liz stepped forward and grunted back at him, and there followed a short colloquy in guttural monosyllables. Then Liz turned to Scott. “He says that you are an honored hero among the trows for trying to save their comrade,” Liz told Scott. “You will forever have a place at the great hearth fire of their ancestors, and your cup of mead will be as bottomless as the cauldron of Hymir, which Thor used to brew beer for the Aegisdrekka—Aegir’s drinking party, that is.”
“Sweet!” Scott exclaimed, then he bowed to the trow and in a sober voice said, “I’m sorry I was too late to save your bro. May his spirit be … er … carried by a great long ship to the most awesome kegger in the sky.”
Liz translated, and the three trows grunted appreciatively and returned Scott’s bow. When they raised their heads, they said something else to Liz.
“Scott’s heroic act has convinced them to transfer their loyalty to us from the nephilim, who did nothing to help save their friend. We’re free to pass and they will march with us to Main Hall, where Duncan Laird and the last of the nephilim have gathered.”
“Way to get the trows on our side, Scott!” Frank said, clamping Scott on his shoulder.
“Epic!” Scott agreed, and for once I thought the word was completely fitting.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The trows wordlessly fell into step with us as we marched through the campus, as if they’d already been informed of the decision to join their ranks to ours. Perhaps they shared a telepathic bond, or the death of their comrade had simultaneously inspired within all of them a desire to overthrow their masters. Whatever the reason, I was glad to have them on our side. Their solid, funereal bearing added gravitas to our procession—and they looked like they could crush a man with one swing of the clubs they wielded, though I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. The angel stone still glowed with a steady, warm light in my hand. Any nephilim guarding Duncan would already know of its power.
We passed Fraser Hall and entered the quad. The grassy rectangle—where students sunned and tossed Frisbees in good weather or hurried across to their classes in bad—was deserted. Neon-hued scraps of paper—all the flyers posted by the nephilim administration—blew across the empty space like fallout from a nuclear holocaust. Stately Main Hall stood at the far end of the quad, looking as forbidding and unassailable as Castle Coldclough, with its gray Gothic exterior and gruesome gargoyles.
Gargoyles?
“Holy Hunchback of Notre Dame,” Frank swore. “Where did those ugly bastards come from?”
Crouched on every window ledge and cornice were hundreds of vile creatures. They looked nothing like the beautiful, angelic Duncan Laird. Their skin was gray and leathery, their batlike wings veined in black, their faces pinched and shriveled, with pointy ears. At the sight of us, they opened their mouths as one, revealing long yellow fangs. They cawed like crows, a sound that, along with the leathery rustling of their wings, made my skin crawl.
“What are they?” I asked.
“The first generation,” Soheila answered. “When the elves first bred with humans, this is what they produced. These are the monsters rejected by their fathers and reviled by their sons, who have grown more human-looking with each successive generation. We believed these creatures had been banished to an underground tomb, but Duncan Laird must have summoned them to defend him. I wonder if he was keeping them nearby.”
“In the tunnels.” Anton Volkov had stepped up next to me. “Remember I said there were creatures slaughtering animals and draining their blood? I can smell the blood on them.” His nostrils flared.
“There must be hundreds of them,” I said. “Too many for me to pick off with the angel stone. Do you think it’s possible we can reason with them and convince them to hand over Duncan?”
“We can try,” Soheila said. “If Duncan’s been holding them as prisoners underground, their loyalty to him might not be as strong as he thinks. I know a bit of their language.”
“I don’t like you getting that close to those monsters,” Frank said.
Soheila smiled at him. “Those monsters aren’t so different from my own ancestors. And, besides, I won’t have to get that close. The wind will carry my voice to them. It’s worth a try. Callie’s right. She’d never be able to kill them all at once.”
“Yeah, but if they do attack, I’m going after them.” Frank patted the sword at his side.
“I, too, will join in the attack,” Volkov said. “While we hold them off, Cailleach should make a run for it and endeavor to reach Duncan Laird’s office.”
“Yeah, get that bastard Laird.” Frank seconded Volkov by slapping him on the back.
“Happily,” I said.
Stepping a few feet in front of the crowd, Soheila flexed her wings, spreading them out in a brilliant fan that caught the rays of the early-morning sun. I’d never seen her winged before—never imagined that our beautiful and elegant Middle-Eastern Studies professor had the ability to become this otherworldly creature. Her wings comprised every color of the desert, from pale sand to burnt umber to deep violet, and when they moved they released a warm breeze redolent of spices and night-blooming jasmine. That wind carried a song on it. Although I couldn’t understand its words—I wasn’t even sure it had words—it conjured up windswept dunes and sand-scoured rocks carved into graven images. I envisioned great temples where people worshipped the old gods—gods with wings and claws and fangs and tails, gods as grotesque, yet awesome, as the gargoyles, who rustled their bat wings and perked their pointy ears as they listened to Soheila’s song. We were once gods, she told them, as you were, too, and we, too, were overthrown for newer gods. The song changed, and the images in my head were replaced with ones of violence and chaos—statues torn down, cave paintings defaced, women with Soheila’s particular beauty reviled and stoned to death.
Unsurprisingly, the gargoyles became agitated at these horrific scenes. They beat their wings and raised a great raucous howl that tore away the fabric of Soheila’s vision like claws shredding silk, replacing her desert scenes with a wintry waste where gargoyles wandered cold and naked, expelled by their beautiful fathers. This is what we have suffered, their cries told us. I felt the angel stone pulsing at my throat in sympathy with their grief. I touched the stone, wanting to communicate to them that I heard their cries and felt their suffering, but as soon as my hand was on the stone, I plunged deeper into their twisted psyches, finding myself in a wasteland colder and bleaker than the arctic tundra. The gargoyles were insane, their minds rent by centuries of captivity in dark caves with only hatred for company—hatred for their fathers for turning their backs on them, hatred for their sons for sealing them beneath the earth, but, most of all, hatred for humans, whose DNA had turned them into monsters. Our smell was inciting them now into a lather of bloodlust. Amid that seething maelstrom was a calm voice directing their rage: Duncan’s voice. He had tapped into the gargoyles’ minds and was controlling them, funneling their inchoate rage into a pungent stream.