Secret of the Gargoyles (Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles Book 3) (13 page)

“It’s too cold,” Oliver said, his chiming voice hushed. I shivered at the creepy
shush-shush
echoes of his words.

“Is it supposed to be this wet?” I asked.

“Yes.”

Marcus’s back stiffened and he halted at a turn in the tunnel. Celeste crowded up next to him and he stepped aside to make room. My feet ground to a halt beside her. We’d found the baetyl.

Marcus’s glowballs illuminated a field of citrine crystals barely as tall as my hand and packed more densely than blades of grass across the sloped floor. Darkness swallowed the rest of the cavern to our left and right, but bulky shapes loomed beyond the light. Squinting, I could make out flat planes and sharp angles, and when my brain put the pieces together, I gasped in wonder.

The baetyl was
filled
with crystals.

Six-sided prisms longer and thicker than a freight car crisscrossed the baetyl at the edge of the light, overlapping compact crystals no larger than Celeste. Even smaller crystals filled the gaps, and everywhere I looked glistened as endless facets caught and reflected the glowballs’ fiery light.

“It’s so dark. It’s worse than I feared,” Celeste said.

I reached for fire to form a glowball, and it flickered and wobbled before steadying into a sphere of light. Even then, the element stretched, skewing the light.

The warp of the baetyl was in full effect.

“Careful,” Marcus said when I pushed the glowball into the cavern.

The light twisted, the element growing harder to control across the distance. Shadows guttered along the geometric lines of the baetyl, giving shape to crystal-coated alcoves and ledges of every color and type of quartz. The golden glow of the shifting light made the tigereye and agate crystals appear to ripple like liquid, and the jewel-bright spears of amethyst, citrine, prasiolite, and rose quartz refracted their colors across smoky quartz and shimmering clear crystals. The alien structure looked like the inside of a mountain-size geode, and the beauty of it stole my breath.

Even the air felt different, smooth and ancient. The humidity of the tunnel gave way to a cooler texture with a scent as unique as the baetyl. Part undisturbed earth, part weighted air, and part mineral, the odor pooled in the back of my throat, and I took deep breaths to savor the aroma. It was the smell of pure quartz—and up until that moment, I hadn’t even known quartz had a smell, let alone that I had been craving it.

In the clutter of quartz and dense shadows beyond my glowball, I couldn’t determine the boundaries of the baetyl, but Celeste’s comparison of its size to Focal Park seemed about right.

The glowball twisted out of my grasp and imploded in a burst of sparks. Darkness coated the baetyl once more, hiding all but the tiny bubble of space Marcus’s lights illuminated. I smoothed my hands down my thighs.

“Now what?” Marcus asked.

I don’t know,
sprang to my lips, but Marcus already knew I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of saying it out loud.

“We keep going,” I said.

I contemplated the lawn of jagged crystals covering the floor. The baetyl had never been intended for fragile human bodies. Every surface had a sharp point. Tentatively, I tested the sole of my boot on the uneven peaks. When the crystals didn’t puncture the tread, I settled my weight onto my foot and took another step. The crystals held firm.

Oliver stepped onto the quartz and hissed. Beside him, Celeste touched a crystal with a talon and narrowed her eyes.

“It hurts,” Oliver said. He spoke so softly that I didn’t think he meant for me to hear.

“You can wait—” My words died in my throat at Oliver’s fierce glower. He must have been learning that look from Marcus.

“I go where you go,” he said.

His tone was pure Marcus, too. I glanced to the fire elemental to see if he noticed.

“Like guardian, like companion,” he said.

Oliver hissed as each foot hit the crystals for the first time; then he quieted. I didn’t need to test him with magic to know he was in pain; I could see it in the hunch of his shoulders and the droop of his ruff. Clamping my mouth against a protest that would only offend the brave young gargoyle, I waited until Marcus and Celeste caught up before mincing deeper into the baetyl.

We ducked under a slender rose quartz crystal bar, then climbed over a carnelian crystal a few shades lighter than Oliver and so thick Marcus and I couldn’t have spanned it with linked hands. Marcus kept rigid control over the glowballs, eliminating all but two, so we moved in a tight halo of light. After ten steps, I lost sight of the entrance.

“Oliver, how’s your night vision?” I asked, wishing I couldn’t hear my apprehension in my voice.

Marcus shot me a sharp look, then glanced back the way we’d come. He stopped while we waited for Oliver’s response.

“I don’t know.”

“Can you see where we came in?”

“Yes. You can’t?”

I let my breath out slowly. “No. What else can you see? Are there any obvious problems?”

“The roof has caved in,” Celeste said, emerging from the darkness ahead of us.

“A cave-in? Would that be enough to break a baetyl?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. It’s small.”

Small or not, it was a place to start. “Lead the way.”

She hadn’t finished turning around when gargoyles burst from the shadows. They charged from every direction and dive-bombed from above, teeth bared, claws raised, and spikes distended in attack.

I froze in shock, but Marcus spun into action, drawing his sword in a fluid motion.

“Get behind me,” he ordered.

I dodged to the side to avoid being flattened by a stampeding quartz porcupine, and Marcus lurched in the opposite direction when a gargoyle dropped out of the shadows above him. His sword flashed through the air, just missing the gargoyle’s canine tail.

“Wait! We’re here to help,” I shouted, waving my arms ineffectually.

A life-size jasper hippopotamus barreled down on me, his wide bat wings slicing through the air like blades. I jumped to the side, leaping across a broad, horizontal amethyst crystal. The hippo pivoted on thick lion legs, clawed paws shoving effortlessly against the jagged floor to follow me.

“Mika!” Oliver cried.

The hippo’s jaw unhinged on a silent roar. I screamed and grabbed the elements, but they squirmed from my grasp. Frantic, I rolled under the amethyst crystal, ignoring the sharp cuts and stabs of the baetyl’s crystal floor.

“Run, Oliver!”

The hippo fell upon me mouth-first, crushing me between his stone jaws.

10

I floated, a spark in pure inky onyx. I couldn’t feel my body. I tried to wriggle a finger or shake my head, but there was only darkness and the rapid pounding of my pulse.

Was I dead?

Why would I be dead?

The massive stone teeth of the hippo flashed across my memory, then all the attacking gargoyles. They’d come out of nowhere, and we hadn’t had a chance to fight back.

My pulse fluttered faster.

I opened my eyes.

I lay in a narrow plaster tunnel. Not just any tunnel. It was the hidden back room of the temple in New Hope where I’d rescued Oliver and his siblings from Walter’s black market auction.
How did I get here?
I had been in the baetyl . . .

When I sat up, I saw Oliver. He was tiny, hardly larger than a house cat. I frowned at his small body, trying to pinpoint why my brain insisted his size was wrong. That wasn’t the problem. The cage of elemental magic pinning him to the stone floor was the problem. He was trapped. And injured. His left two feet and wing tip had been burned with acid, leaving jagged patches of raw pain. Oliver’s magic, his life, leaked from the wounds into the cage, strengthening it. His golden-red eyes whirled with agony, but the cage smothered his cries.

I lurched to my hands and knees, heart pounding. This was exactly how I’d found Oliver when Walter had tortured—

Walter.

Walter was in prison.

Darkness closed in on us, until all I could see was Oliver, trapped and in pain. The baby gargoyle locked eyes with me and his muzzle opened and closed in muted misery. Fingers trembling, I gathered the elements and thrust them into the first quartz anchor, countering the trap. It didn’t matter how this had happened. I’d sort it out later. After I freed—

Agony pumped through my veins, cording my muscles. Magic leeched from me. I had to free . . . someone. Fear clouded my thoughts and the elements slid from my grasp. The pain abated. Oxygen filled my lungs, flavored with quartz. I sucked in another deep breath, centering my thoughts.

Myself. I had to free myself. I opened my eyes to a view warped by the elements. Magic wrapped me in a twisting cage, siphoning my life. If I struggled, the pain would return, so I held still and tried to think. I couldn’t remember anything before the pain. How long had I been caged? Who was holding me?

Walter walked toward me. Once I saw him, I saw the rest of Focal Park spread around us, the dome of blue sky and puffy white clouds above me and the etched-marble pentagram beneath me. I’d been positioned in the center and seed crystals locked the elements in place at all five points. My head went light on my shoulders. Stuck in the center, I’d be the focal point of the spell, my life drained to feed whoever controlled the pentagram. I needed to escape or I’d be killed.

I gathered magic, gritting my teeth against the rush of pain, but no matter how hard I clung to the elements, they kept slipping from my control. Walter smiled. He used brushes of air to shove the crystals holding the net closer around me, tightening the magical cage until I couldn’t move.

“Good.” Elsa stepped up beside Walter. The inventor looked as insane as the day she’d unleashed her gargoyle-enhancement replication invention upon Focal Park. I panted against the elemental restraints, tasting quartz in each breath.

Walter hadn’t been at Focal Park, and I hadn’t been alone—

Silver cracks split the air around Elsa like lines of tinsel opening into nothing but silver light.

Elsa leaned close, breathing on my face, pulling my attention back to her feverish eyes. “This will change everything.”

I strained to move, but my body wouldn’t respond. Elsa wove a spear of wood tempered with water and drilled into my neck. Pain like fire erupted from my throat and seared across my brain in white-hot agony. I screamed inside my head, but no sound escaped my frozen lips.

I could feel the hole in my neck.

A hole in my neck.

I should be dead. I couldn’t survive a
hole
in my neck.

I wasn’t made of stone . . .

Silver cracks fractured the air around the inventor as she readied her next wood and water attack. I tried to study the fissures, but Elsa filled my vision. She plunged her barbaric elemental weave into me again. Scorching pain burned through my brain, but I clung to my last thought. It was important.
I wasn’t made of stone. I wasn’t made of stone.

I wasn’t a gargoyle. I could fight back.

I grabbed for the elements. Like grains of sand, they trickled through my grasping mental fist. All but earth.

I refined earth to pure quartz, and the magic solidified in my grip. Elsa loomed, another wood and water spear poised to stab me. The silver lines around her faded. My instincts demanded I defend myself. I could block her, shatter that damn magic spear before it hit my stone—

I wasn’t made of stone.

The silver lines burst back into existence, and with a soundless roar, I drove the quartz into the shimmering fractures with every ounce of my strength.

Focal Park, Elsa, the trap—it all shattered. My magic hurled through the baetyl, burrowing into an amethyst cluster five feet away. The crystals shattered and reshaped, falling to the baetyl floor in perfect amethyst snowflakes.

“Mika?”

Oliver loomed in my vision, his head as large as mine, his body the appropriate size. I grabbed him and wrapped my arms around his smooth ruff. He whuffled my face with soft, relieved breaths. When I let him go, he pulled back far enough for me to see Celeste. Light fractured across the crystals around her, defining her dark outline more than illuminating her.

“She is herself?” Celeste asked Oliver.

“I am me,” I said, taking comfort from the simple statement. I looked for the source of the light, surprised to see it coming from the crystals. When had they started glowing?

“What happened?” Oliver demanded. “You were fine; then you were both screaming and collapsed.”

“Where’s Marcus?” I sat up, hissing when the movement woke the pain in a dozen cuts on my arms and hands. Marcus lay a dozen feet away, sprawled on his back across a bushel of mint-green prasiolite crystals. His head lolled off the edge of a sturdy crystal and his hands and feet twitched, but the light underneath him left his face shadowed.

I staggered across the crystal floor to him, Oliver so close to my side that I had to grab his wings to prevent myself from being knocked down.