Redemption (32 page)

Unfortunately, we’d not even come close to spending eternity kissing when we were interrupted by Aude’s phone.

“Are you going to answer that?” I asked, breathless.

“I don’t know. I was sort of busy.” She smiled and looked at the display. “It’s Kateri.”

I laughed for a second, but then remembered. “Antoine has her cell phone.” I reached over and answered it.

“Did anything happen to the stone statue while you two were right in front of it?” Antoine asked.

“The statue?”

“The stone statue, they were trying to create a stone monster. The statue is no longer there and no one has noticed what has happened to it. If they animated the statue, they may have started a prophecy. We believe they needed to replace the stone monster that was killed,” Antoine says.

“The prophecy is in motion,” Aude whispers to me.

50

Guillaume

We drove around the city looking for the stone monster. We had to find him before he started to tear the city apart like he was prophesized to do. We turned a corner sharply and I slammed on the brakes. People stood around the sidewalks looking like lost sheep. Littering the city streets were hundreds of dead birds.

We got out of the car and stared at the macabre scene before us. Aude’s hand reached into mine and I squeezed it to give her comfort. I pulled her closer to me and we stood in silence for a minute.

Then, I leaned toward her and as my lips brushed against her cheek, the ground shook. I wanted to believe it to be a figment of my imagination; some sort of figurative earth-shattering emotion, but the ground literally shook.

We were only a few blocks south of the water, which emanated a strange glow and tons of black smoke.

“What the hell?” Aude exclaimed.

“I think we need to check it out.”

We got back in the car and drove to the waterfront. I stopped when I noticed that the whole St-Lawrence Seaway appeared to be in flames.

“The prophecy.” I whispered.

Aude swallowed audibly. “Rivers will catch fire … ” she quoted.

51

Guillaume

The ground shook again, this time it was worse.

We got out of the car and, hand in hand, went to investigate. The smoke was so thick that we had to let go and put our arms in front of our faces as we tried to breathe through our jackets.

It turned out that the river wasn’t really on fire, only the huge ships on it. Spilled oil burned freely, making it look like the river itself burned.

“What the hell happened here?” I asked no one in particular.

Aude’s coughing was lost in the sound of sirens coming from every direction.

The ground shook again and we both fell to our knees from the impact. The snow had been cleared from the sidewalk we kneeled on, but the ground was cold and hard on our knees. I held Aude close to me while I whispered in her ear that everything would be okay. Except I had no idea if it would be. Nothing seemed okay. Loud crashing noises sounded all around us and I watched as Jacques-Cartier Bridge, the bridge directly in my line of sight, collapsed into the St-Lawrence Seaway. Bridges weren’t supposed to collapse like that. They were built to withstand a certain magnitude of earthquake. It was apparent from the destruction we’d been shaken up quite a lot, but not enough for a bridge like this one to break apart.

Aude let out a gasp and my heart sank. I didn’t want her to see the destruction. I wanted to protect her from the world. However, when the world collapsed all around us, there wasn’t much I could do.

Experts would blame a fault line and tectonic plates grinding into each other or whatnot, but I knew there was more to it than that. This related to the prophecy, and though we couldn’t stop the earth from moving or the birds from falling from the skies, we had to do something about the stone monsters.

The earth had stopped shaking and everything seemed to stand still, though in reality, sirens still wailed, and people still screamed. I’d seen the catastrophic effects of an earthquake in Montreal before, back in 1732, only a couple years after I had immigrated to the new world with my family. This was different, the damage was worse, but at least I didn’t have to listen to the haunting wails of horses trapped and dying in collapsed carriage houses—this time around.

I grabbed Aude’s arm and stood, pulling her up with me, torn between wanting to find somewhere safe for her in case of any aftershocks, and bringing her with me to hunt the stone monster. Something, call it a gargoyle intuition, told me that the earthquake would bring it out of hiding.

She pulled herself away from me and, still holding my hands, looked at me directly in the eyes. Somehow, she knew my thoughts.

“Whatever it is that you’re going to do, I’m coming. And I’ll remind you that I can hold my own.”

She didn’t have to say anything else. I never doubted that she was strong, and anyway, I preferred having her near me so I could keep my eye on her. We ran to my car, sidestepping the large stone debris littering the streets.

“Is this sort of destruction normal in an earthquake?” she asked under her breath.

I looked about. Modern buildings stood tall, though some glass had shattered. The older ones had not stood the test quite as well.

“Probably,” I answered her. “Montreal is an old city. Many of these buildings are not up to code.” Talk of building codes and such had always interested me while I’d been watching. It had been pertinent information when stuck on the tower of a rather old construction.

“It just feels wrong … do you think many people died?”

I bit my lip. She must have seen the cars fall into the frigid water when the bridge collapsed. “The cars on that bridge … ”

“Right … ” she answered.

Here was the problem in allowing myself to love Aude; one day or another I’d have to let her go, and I just didn’t know how I would survive it. She still looked into my eyes as if she tried to read my thoughts. I knew that no matter the heartbreak, I would live through it because I’d owe it to her. Suddenly I understood Vincent that much better.

My car had suffered some damage from some fallen rubble, but was generally in good shape, especially when compared to the minivan parked directly in front of it; the one with its windows shattered and a large stone lodged in its hood.

Aude almost failed to hear the sound of her cell phone in the chaos around us. But she answered it eventually.

Vincent screamed so loudly I could hear him on the other end, “Aude, tell Guillaume we found the new creature. It’s wreaking havoc in the old expo grounds.”

I looked at Aude, who was strangely quiet staring at the ruins of the Jacques-Cartier Bridge. It occurred to me that she might be frightened. She wouldn’t admit it to me, she always acted like she had everything under control, but she couldn’t control this.

52

Guillaume

The others had been on Île Sainte-Hélène before all the chaos broke out. We’d have to find a way to join them. With the bridge collapsed and the river on fire, we were only left with one option. The subway system.

At the station, we learned that the trains had been shut down. This was no surprise considering the turmoil the city was in. We would have to walk the tunnels, if they were still in good enough condition.

Getting through the hastily erected barricades was a simple task. We ran through the subway tunnels, our steps echoing in the dark made an eerie sound. Thin streams of water leaked from cracks and fissures. Though I worried the whole tunnel would collapse on us, at least it was also a good indication that the metro lines wouldn’t be reopening any time soon.

Only the dim, blue emergency fluorescents lighted our way, and as my eyes adjusted, I saw dark shapes scurrying out of our way. Rats. Aude saw them too. I heard her breath catch, but she didn’t say anything, only held on tighter to my hand and picked up the pace.

The station at the other end of the tunnel was in as much of a mess. I doubt anyone even noticed us coming out; if they did, they had other things on their mind. Volunteers herded stranded people to the other side of the island where the river didn’t burn. Boats would ferry them across and they would have to navigate back onto Montreal Island somehow. We had somewhere else to be.

We met up with Antoine and the others on a deserted road. Everything on this island seemed deserted. Last time I’d been here, it was the location of a prisoner-of-war camp. Since then, the island had been expanded, and consolidated with nearby islands and became part of the grounds for Expo Sixty-Seven. Something I wished I could have seen.

We walked on a tree-lined road. Antoine pointed to the east of us, in the direction of a gigantic spherelike structure. “Robert is over there.”

I nodded and still holding hands, Aude and I walked toward what looked like the ruins of a futuristic city. The winter wind picked up and my face burned with the cold. It wasn’t what gave me a chill, though. The woods around us were mostly quiet. No birds chirped from branches, no animals crossed our paths. The only noise was a sort of loud crackling and thrashing sound.

Robert and the others stood in the road, and we approached them carefully. The trees that had lined the roads lay on their sides in a large messy pile while chunks of frozen dirt, branches, and pine needles mixed with the snow, carpeting the roads. Large holes defiled the ground where asphalt had been ripped up. A trail of destruction led toward the loud noise.

“Why now?” Aude asked no one in particular.

“The seismic activity could have triggered it,” Antoine answered.

“Or provided it with energy,” I countered.

“Energy? In all of our experience, these creatures have fed off of essence,” Antoine said.

Robert shifted and looked at us, squinting his eyes against the bitter wind. “And what is essence?” he asked.

When no one answered him, he continued. “This is the problem with you people. You see the world as though you were different, superior even, to nature. You can be certain that if we’re filled with essence providing us with the energy for life, all of nature around us is as well.” He motioned with his arms to the scene around us. “Not only the trees and the animals, but also the shifts in the earth herself.”

Snow crunched behind us. I turned to face Kateri and Anias.

“Everyone is here now,” one of the men from the other reservation announced.

“What now?” Antoine asked.

“We must fight it.” Robert reached to the ground where I’d failed to notice several large black cases. He opened the one nearest him and I was surprised to see it contained a large hunting rifle. I could have laughed at the image of these men shooting at the stone creature, except that this was anything but a laughing matter.

It was Aude who put words to my doubts. “So, you plan on shooting at this stone monster with a gun?”

The men looked at her as if she’d asked a ridiculous question. “How else do you plan on killing it?” one of them asked her.

“I don’t know. But a gun won’t work. He’s made out of stone.”

“So what? Your boyfriend over there is made out of stone and I could shoot him right now.” The man aimed his gun at me and laughed.

Aude frowned at him and he lowered it.

“Is it the same thing?” she asked me. I shook my head at her.

“It shouldn’t be.” I couldn’t tell for sure, I hadn’t seen the creature, but these stone monsters were created with only essence and rock, omitting the person’s individuality. It took more than just large amounts of essence for us to take this form. We also had to have a sort of memory of self.

“What about the Terra Cotta man? He was more than just clay,” she said.

“He was different. He’d been alive for centuries. Even a monster of clay can build a sense of awareness in that length of time. I’m sure he absorbed a finite amount of personality from his victims when he devoured their essence.”

She shuddered. She understood only too well what happened when someone was emptied of essence.

“We can’t just stand here and do nothing,” Vincent exclaimed. “This thing isn’t going to wait for us to be ready. It will kill anyone it comes across, and it will soon realize how empty this island is. The city will be next.”

We all nodded. I tried to keep Aude behind us as we bypassed the evidence of the creature’s destructive force. I wanted to keep her out of harm’s way. We all stopped when we spotted it.

The men opened fire. Some bullets burrowed into the monster, causing tiny holes, while others, most, ricocheted off it and fell to the ground, piercing the snow.

The creature paused and turned its sight right past the men with guns. Instead, it stared directly at us. It could sense essence, and Aude would be its first target. I wanted to tell her to hide, but she wouldn’t. Actually, maybe it was best, because we needed her. I just hoped I wasn’t asking too much of her.

“Aude, do you think you can transfer some essence to us?”

She nodded and closed her eyes. I felt drawn to her. She looked peaceful, until I noticed her trembling lips. I felt it then; her energy. It was fresh and tingly, and somehow infused with her. It was bold, and brave, and beautiful, and sweet. There was also a melancholy to it, some great sadness that lay under the surface, and at the very edge of it all there was bitterness. All of the parts that made up Aude rolled into this iridescent, pulsating energy.