Secret of the Gargoyles (Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles Book 3) (22 page)

I stretched my wings wide, body humming with pleasure. I was whole.

The elements swirled through me, and I folded them, amplifying—

That’s how a boost works!

My shocked delight separated me from the gargoyle. For a moment, I was an amazed observer. I’d never understood how a gargoyle could create more magic out of the existing elements, but from my new perspective, it seemed obvious. Then my access to the world through her eyes slipped from my control. The space between our spirits grew, and I had the impression of the warthog regarding me with the wise eyes of her spirit before she shoved me from her body.

I tried to hang on, clinging to elemental fibers inside her until I saw the damage I created. I wasn’t supposed to hurt gargoyles. I was a healer.

With that thought, I lost my anchor and my detached spirit shot fast as an arrow back to my body, slamming home.

I gasped for air like I’d been underwater, back arching, eyes flying open to stare up at the shadowy ceiling of the tunnel. My heart hammered in my chest and I panted, trying to remember who I was, where I was,
what
I was.

I am Mika Stillwater. I am a gargoyle healer. I am a gargoyle guardian.

My spirit settled into my body, binding with the minute piece I’d left behind. I couldn’t see it in myself as I could in the gargoyle, but I didn’t need to. I could feel the rightness. I wriggled my fingers and toes, stifling a groan as my body’s pains awoke. The blissful sensation of the baetyl healing the warthog’s wounds faded to a wistful memory.

I sat up, and Marcus’s hand settled at my back to support me. I braced a hand on the floor to balance against a wave of dizziness while I looked around. It hadn’t been a dream. The warthog was gone.

“I did it.” I grinned at Marcus. “I got a gargoyle into the baetyl.” I’d walked her body in as if it were my own. The thought made me queasy and giddy at the same time. “If I can do it once, I can do it seven times. I’m saving all these gargoyles’ lives!”

“I thought you were done with shoving your life in front of every problem.”

“I am.”

“Then what do you call that stunt?”

“A calculated risk that—”

“Risk?! This is exactly what you did at Focal Park.”

“No, it’s not. I’ve thought this through—”

“You shoved your spirit into a gargoyle just like last ti—”

“I didn’t divide myself up.”

“Oh, so that makes it better?” Marcus rose to his feet in a smooth motion and paced away from me, fists clenched.

“Listen to me. I’m giving the gargoyles the strength they need. I can’t get them into the baetyl by physical or magical strength, but I can by—”

“By sticking the essence that makes you, you into another living creature. That’s not
right
. It’s not natural or safe or a reasonable risk.”

“It is for me.”

I’d come here with the impossible mission of battling my way through deadly magic storms, finding a secretive baetyl hidden inside the mountain, fixing it without even knowing exactly what a baetyl was, and then getting the sick gargoyles inside. I had doubted the success of this mission a thousand times. Yet, despite all the hardships, I’d done it. I couldn’t—
wouldn’t—
stop this close to the finish line.

“I’m not attempting this with just any troubled creature. I’m a—”

“Don’t say it.”

“Gargoyle guardian,” I finished.

“Damn it.”

“Whatever it is that made me capable of healing the baetyl is the same part of me that makes it okay for me to transplant my spirit into a gargoyle.
Temporarily.
My magic is somehow close to theirs. It means they’re safe with me and I’m safe with them. This isn’t a martyr mission.”

Veins stood out on Marcus’s neck as he loomed over me, his forearms corded with tension. “You didn’t know who you were.”

“I was disoriented for a moment.”

“You were unresponsive for fifteen minutes.”

“That long?” I rolled to my knees— Wait, hadn’t I been standing in front of the warthog? I recalled a shadowy memory of looking at myself through the warthog’s eyes. Marcus had been holding me in his arms. “Ah, thank you for catching me?”

Marcus gave me an exasperated look. “Someone had to protect the tunnel from the impact of your thick skull.”

“Good point. I’ll make sure to be sitting next time.” Fifteen minutes? I assessed the flickers of life inside the remaining gargoyles. I’d have to leave the strongest for last and work faster. None of the gargoyles looked like they would survive another hour.

“Are you sure there’s no other way?” Marcus asked.

I stood but relaxed my defiant posture when I saw his concern.

“I can’t think of one. Can you?”

He shook his head.

Rourke’s will to live was fading fast, and I surged to his side, sat, and shoved a braid of magic and spirit into him. Marcus cursed, then his warmth settled beside me.

“Damn it, be careful,” he growled.

I was faster this time, dropping through the layers of Rourke’s pain and tweaking my magic to resonate with his unique signature. The baetyl’s pattern drifted in and out of my awareness, and I altered my magic to harmonize with it when I could but didn’t let myself be distracted by chasing it.

When my magic clicked in perfect synchronization with Rourke, I saw him in my mind’s eye. He didn’t react, his inner self as frozen as his physical body. Gently, I wrapped him in love and admiration and thick layers of my spirit. We merged, and the weight of his body became my own.

I knew what to expect this time, but it made it no less disorienting. Or easier. I gathered my will and funneled it through my spirit and out to our limbs. Forcing our body to fold so we could walk on all fours took herculean effort. Our wings hung heavy and useless at our sides, trailing on the rock ground for four torturous steps before the baetyl’s song infiltrated my body. After that, each step grew easier. I still had to shove and strain to carry my unwieldy bulk, but the song urged me on.

Crossing into the baetyl felt like walking through a cleansing shower. I closed my eyes in bliss as magic bathed me from the inside out and the outside in. After decades of fighting, I relaxed and reveled in being alive. When I opened my eyes, I saw the warthog take flight, flapping lazily to a higher perch, folding and twisting the baetyl’s magic for the sheer joy of it.

I rolled onto my back and spread my wings on the tiny crystals, their sharp points a delightful massage against muscles and feathers long unused. My antlers scraped the crystals, making the quartz sing.

Something nudged me, a gentle but persistent prod, and I spiraled down into my—our—body. Blinking, I looked up into the bright eyes of Rourke’s spirit. His gratitude wrapped me like a soft blanket even as he used an antler to push me again. With a smile, I let go, and my spirit winged back to my human body.

“Mika?”

Who?

I squinted, the bright light hurting my eyes. Someone crouched over me.
Marcus.

“I am Mika Stillwater,” I said, and the words felt right even if I wasn’t completely sure what they meant.

“You are a gargoyle healer and guardian.”

Right. My spirit and mind clicked into sync. I was in Marcus’s lap, cradled against his chest and arm.
Safe,
my heart whispered.

Seeing the empty tunnel where Rourke had stood minutes before made my heart swell with elation. I couldn’t wait to deliver the good news to Celeste. We’d done it: We’d saved her mate.

“How long?” I asked.

Marcus shook his head. “I don’t know. A little longer, I think.”

Longer? I’d tried to be faster, but it had been hard to remember my purpose over the call of the baetyl. If Rourke hadn’t nudged me from his body, I’d still be there.

Marcus studied my face, worry lines etching his forehead. He held me close enough that I could count the map of navy in his lapis lazuli eyes, but I looked away, not wanting him to see how much I didn’t want to move.

Pushing out of his arms took willpower I didn’t have to spare, and I selected the next weakest gargoyle—the rabbit-owl. Like Celeste, whose head and front legs were those of an eagle, his front legs and chest were all owl, and though his body was far more compact than the two previous gargoyles I’d inhabited, once I wrapped him in my spirit, it took just as much effort if not more to hop him into the baetyl. Despite my best intentions, I forgot about everything but the baetyl’s song and the glorious sensation of being home until the gargoyle raked his talons against my spirit and forced me back to my body.

Marcus was holding me when I opened my eyes to the bleak brown walls of the tunnel, and he assured me I was Mika Stillwater, gargoyle healer and guardian. I watched his lips move, heard the words vibrate against my eardrums, but he had to repeat himself several times before the sounds connected with my brain and made sense.

The citrine and smoky quartz badger with a seahorse head was next, then the onyx wolf. Following my magic into the gargoyles to find their weak spirits was easier when I started with my body right next to theirs, and if Marcus hadn’t been watching, I would have crawled to the gargoyles. Instead, I forced myself to stand and walk, though Marcus had to wrap an arm around my waist to keep me from falling. He didn’t comment on my fatigue or argue for me to slow down. The gargoyles were fading too fast for me to take a break. Or a nap.

I dearly wanted a nap—at least when I inhabited my own body. When I was in the baetyl, in those timeless moments before the gargoyles kicked me out of their bodies, I lived in their sublime bliss. There, I was rejuvenated. The baetyl, which had been a deadly, alluring source of power to me when I’d climbed into the heart and healed it, was sweet and comforting when I forgot I wasn’t a gargoyle. It made snapping back to my own body worse each time, the euphoric moments in the baetyl emphasizing my body’s growing misery. Sweat and time counteracted the greenthread’s numbing properties, and a multitude of injuries clamored with increasing fervor each time I settled back into my own skin.

Worse was the loss of the baetyl—its beauty, its soothing song, its promise of rejuvenation.

I lingered in the badger and longer still in the wolf, forgetting myself in their all-consuming relief to be home and healing. With each gargoyle, I gained more understanding of how they interacted with magic, and it was amazing. As a human, I could use the elements, channeling them into different shapes and patterns to create an outcome. As a gargoyle, I didn’t have to reach for the elements; they saturated me. Amplifying magic was a simple matter of folding it to make the elements denser. Focusing the effect, I could direct it where I wanted . . .

Each time I came back to my body, what had been so clear as a gargoyle didn’t make sense as a human. How could the elements be folded? How could you direct magic without using it? I tried to cling to the memory, but the drone of a voice would cut through my puzzled thoughts, and I’d lose it.

“You are Mika Stillwater, gargoyle guardian and healer.”

I focused on the intense stare of the man above me and the words he delivered with a vehemence that said they were important. “Your parents are water elementals. You live in Terra Haven.”

I frowned at the unfamiliar syllables.

“Say it with me. Say, ‘I am Mika Stillwater.’”

My hip throbbed, my arms stung. My head wanted to fall off my shoulders. Nothing was proportioned right. Where were my wings?

The man jabbed my breastbone with a stiff finger. I winced and frowned at him. A glowball hovered close beside us, casting stark shadows that pooled in the crease between his eyebrows and the hollows around his eyes.

“You. Open your mouth and say it,” he ordered.

“I am Mika Still . . .”

“Mika Stillwater. Say it.”

“Mika Stillwater.” I repeated the words twice, their shape familiar in my mouth.

“You are the foolish and stubborn gargoyle guardian, Mika Stillwater.”

I stiffened, recognizing my name. Alarm skittered down my spine as I reconnected with my body. I hadn’t recognized myself. At all.

Marcus must have read the fear in my eyes and known I’d returned, because he stopped talking. He shifted, pulling me tighter against him.

“You’re okay. You’re back. Everything’s okay.”

Everything was not okay. My hands didn’t lift when I tried to reach for Marcus. The baetyl sang just below my hearing range, a hum that made my jaw ache and sparkles dance through my vision. I didn’t want to be able to hear it—it was calling to gargoyles, and I
shouldn’t
be able to hear it—but I couldn’t stop myself from straining to make out the notes. The harder I concentrated, the more my head pounded. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Without looking, without moving, I could feel the remaining tiger and fox gargoyles.

My awareness of the gargoyles wasn’t natural. It wasn’t human. It was something the baetyl could do. I should have needed magic, but I’d blurred the lines. I’d reshaped myself too many times and too quickly, first in the baetyl and now with the gargoyles. I was losing myself.