Secret of the Gargoyles (Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles Book 3) Read online

  I twitched as if she’d poked me. Oliver had started calling me guardian after I’d saved the marmot and a half dozen other gargoyles Elsa’s invention had ensnared while it’d been tearing up the park. I hadn’t put much stock in it. He was young and worshipful, and working with Guardian Mika sounded more impressive than Healer Mika. I hadn’t realized the title meant anything, but the gryphon implied it did.

  “If I’m going to trust you . . .” She pivoted on a hind foot and paced away from me and back, tail lashing. “If I’m going to save you . . .” She paused to peer into Rourke’s faded eyes. With a choked roar, she spun away and thrust her beak so close to Oliver’s snout that their breaths mingled. My brave companion didn’t flinch.

  The gryphon’s voice rumbled with anguish when she asked, “Is she really a guardian? Is she worthy?”

  “My life is hers,” Oliver said.

  “You are too young to know what you say.”

  Oliver quivered, wings flaring in anger. “I’ve held her spirit inside me. My age doesn’t matter. I felt her in my heart. I know Mika is a guardian.”

  I shuddered at the reminder. I’d once transplanted pieces of my spirit into Oliver and his four siblings in a colossally stupid maneuver that would have shredded my brain if it hadn’t worked. At the time, it’d been the only option I could use to save the gargoyles from being ripped apart by Elsa’s invention, and I hadn’t fully considered the ramifications. Nor had I realized Oliver had been able to glean anything from that piece of me, let alone that it was what convinced him I was a guardian.

  I was beginning to suspect the title of guardian was more than an honorific, too.

  The gryphon broke off her staring match with Oliver and straightened to turn her piercing regard upon me. I did my best not to fidget, but my bubbling hope made it difficult. If I guessed correctly, she knew what could save the marmot—what could save all the dormant gargoyles—and she seemed to be talking herself into telling me. I hunted for the right words to convince her I deserved her trust, but the longer I looked into her glowing amethyst eyes, the more certain I became that nothing I could say would be enough. Either she believed me worthy or she didn’t.

  I crossed my fingers behind my back.

  “Guardian.” The gryphon paused as if testing the word. “My name is Celeste, and I place the lives of all gargoyles into your hands with what I am about to tell you.”

  2

  Celeste scanned the park and I found myself checking our surroundings, too. The cleanup crew was too far away to hear and no other creatures were close. Nevertheless, when she spoke again, it was barely above a whisper, the rumble of her words mixing with the cracks and groans of pulverized granite.

  “Rourke’s cynosure baetyl was gravely injured.”

  Oliver reared back, every spike and feather on his body standing on end as he shook his head. I glanced between him and the hunched gryphon, alarm quickening my pulse.

  “His what?” Baetyls were stones believed to be of divine origin, but what did that have to do with gargoyles, and how did a rock serve as a guide?

  “That’s not possible. Nothing can harm a . . . a baetyl.” Oliver barely mouthed the last word and his wide eyes darted in every direction.

  “What is a cynosure baetyl?” I hissed.

  “Home,” Oliver whispered with a shiver. “We shouldn’t talk about it.”

  “A baetyl is where we hatch,” Celeste said.

  “On a stone?” I pictured a rock nest high atop a mountain where tiny baby gargoyles were born and took their first flight.

  “Inside, not on. Baetyls are underground. They’re sacred, secret places without which no hatchling would survive. We need our baetyl’s magic to be born, and we need it again throughout our lives to rejuvenate our bodies.”

  “We do?” Oliver asked.

  Celeste lowered herself until she lay on the ground to get closer to the young gargoyle’s eye level. “It is a compulsion you’ll feel when you’re older. Your body knows when it needs to return. You’re far too young to have experienced it, but if you are too long away from your cynosure baetyl, you will eventually weaken and become unbalanced.”

  I crouched to hear her whispered words. Baetyls hadn’t been hinted at in any book or journal I’d read. For centuries, scholars and healers had speculated on the birthing rituals of gargoyles, but the few who had broached the subject with gargoyles had been rebuffed. I understood their need for secrecy. If unscrupulous people like Walter and Elsa knew where they could find weak gargoyles and helpless newborns, the gargoyles would never be safe.

  “Wait! Walter! Did he defile your baetyl, Oliver?” The man still lived, imprisoned, but if even a chance existed that he could get his hands on more baby gargoyles . . .

  Oliver shook his head. “No. We were outside the . . . outside home when he captured us.”

  I relaxed my white-knuckle grip on his shoulder with a sigh of relief. Celeste watched us with unblinking eyes, waiting until we’d focused on her again before continuing.

  “Rourke is over a half century overdue to return to his baetyl. The only reason he’s survived this long is because of his location.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was not the first of his baetyl to sicken. We watched others fade into comas, and some died fast. Some didn’t. Survival depended on seclusion; those in public places fared better and lived longer. We hunted out the location with the most concentrated number of humans actively using magic. The park used to be that place before it was destroyed.”

  “That’s why he boosts everyone in the area,” I said, the answer to the mystery clicking into place. Gargoyles fed off the magic they enhanced. It was why they gravitated toward busy public buildings and the homes of powerful full-spectrum pentacle potentials. FSPPs could wield all the elements with a strength I could only come close to with quartz, and when a gargoyle enhanced an FSPP, they fed off a wealth of magic. By passively enhancing everyone who came close enough, Rourke and the other dormant gargoyles had been able to continue to feed even as their bodies shut down. I’d been afraid I had missed some dormant gargoyles hidden in less populated areas, but she just confirmed I hadn’t. Sadly, any who had fallen comatose somewhere out of the way would already be dead.

  Celeste’s eyes tracked the cleanup crew as she spoke. “Even if they finish fixing the park tomorrow, I fear that if Rourke goes much longer without contact with his baetyl, he’ll die. So many have already wasted away. I may have doomed us all, but I cannot abandon my mate to that horrid death.”

  “Rourke is your mate?”

  Celeste nodded.

  “And he’s been like this”—I gestured to the frozen gargoyle trapped in his own body—“for over fifty years?”

  “He and all the rest from his baetyl. There used to be twenty-three. There’s no one left to speak for them, none to judge you for themselves, so I am acting on their behalf.”

  My heart broke for Celeste. She’d watched her mate’s life wither away for decades, unable to do anything to help him without risking the lives of every gargoyle.

  “Thank you for trusting me, Celeste. I’ll make sure he and the others get home to their baetyl.” It couldn’t be that simple, could it?

  Celeste shook her head as if answering my unspoken question. “They tried to go back years ago. Rourke said his baetyl had been injured and he came back sicker than before. I took him to my baetyl, but it pained him too much to stay.”

  “A baetyl can’t be injured,” Oliver said, his voice small and uncertain. He’d huddled into a tight bundle, and for the first time in months, I thought my six-foot-long companion looked little.

  “Anything can be hurt, even baetyls,” Celeste said.

  I finally realized what she was asking of me. “You don’t need me to heal Rourke. You need me to fix the baetyl.”

  “It is my last hope.”

  Relief washed the strength from my limbs and I sat. I had an answer to the dormancy sickness. I had a cure. I even underst
ood why Celeste had taken so long to come forward. In telling me about the existence of baetyls, she’d endangered the lives of all gargoyles. Even Oliver had never mentioned a baetyl to me, and he trusted me with his life. For all Celeste knew, I could publish the information, and then there’d be a mob of unscrupulous scavengers hunting for baetyls and the helpless gargoyles inside. She’d had to extend her trust even further in asking me to fix Rourke’s baetyl: To fix it, I’d have to be told its exact location.

  I have a cure. I repeated the words again in my head to savor them. This morning I’d despaired of finding a remedy in time, and now . . . I have a cure. The words reknit my confidence. My inability to cure the comatose gargoyles hadn’t been my fault. I’d been attacking the symptom, and the problem wasn’t even a part of the gargoyles. It existed elsewhere, outside their bodies.

  The ramifications of that thought dampened my satisfaction. The problem existed outside the gargoyles.

  “When Rourke said his baetyl was injured, did he mean the baetyl itself or the baetyl’s magic?” I asked.

  “They’re the same thing. A baetyl’s magic is the baetyl,” Celeste said, confused by my distinction.

  “Is a baetyl’s magic like a gargoyle’s?” I was a quartz savant, but my skills with normal five-element magic weren’t half as impressive. It meant I could perform amazing feats with quartz-tuned earth, which was how I became a healer of gargoyles and their living-quartz bodies, but the rest of my abilities were midlevel at best.

  “A baetyl’s magic is . . .” Celeste hunted for the right word.

  “Everything,” Oliver said.

  Celeste nodded, as if he’d made sense.

  I tamped down my frustration, knowing they weren’t being purposely obtuse. We were close to saving the dormant gargoyles. All I had to do was figure out how to fix a baetyl, which as far as I could tell was either a cave with magic or a form of magic contained in a cave.

  A magic that could heal comatose gargoyles. A magic that was everything.

  Fixing a cave I could probably do, especially with the help of gargoyles to boost my magic. Fixing a form of magic itself sounded beyond my capabilities.

  “How big is a baetyl?” I asked.

  “I’ve never been inside Rourke’s, but probably no larger than this park,” Celeste said.

  I struggled to keep my expression blank. Focal Park covered over a square mile. I was hopelessly out of my depth.

  “Are you asking me only because you don’t think you can trust anyone else? I can find you others—” Stronger elementals.

  “No. No one else has a chance of helping,” Celeste said. “You’re the closest thing to a gargoyle who can work magic. If any human can integrate with the baetyl’s magic, it is you, Guardian.”

  Oliver nodded in agreement.

  I stared at them both in astonishment. They saw me as a pseudo-gargoyle? It was flattering and perplexing all at once.

  “You’re sure this is the only answer? Maybe I could replicate a baetyl’s magic here,” I suggested.

  “You couldn’t even come close. This is the only way.”

  Of course it was. “Once I fix the baetyl, Rourke and the others will recover?”

  “After they’ve spent long enough inside it, yes.”

  I took a deep breath and modified my previous plan to include finding the secret location of Rourke’s baetyl, carting over three thousand pounds of frozen gargoyles inside, and then repairing a form of magic I knew nothing about in a cave larger than several city blocks. Because I was a guardian or because I was the equivalent of a human gargoyle, Celeste believed me capable of all three impossible tasks.

  I’d have to be, too, since seven lives depended on it.

  “You don’t happen to know where his baetyl is, do you?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  My spirits lifted. “Really? Where?”

  “Waupecony Ridge.”

  Her words punched my gut and I deflated. “You mean Reaper’s Ridge?”

  3

  The Native Americans hadn’t been poetic when they named the white quartz–laden peak Waupecony Ridge, or White Bone Ridge. They understood the perils of the mountain, but early settlers wouldn’t listen to their warnings, especially not once they saw the veins of gold lacing the snowy quartz. From the beginning, there were reports of Waupecony Ridge miners who lost their memory and even more who wandered from the mining camps only to be found days or weeks later, starved, dead, and often the snack of local predators.

  Then the Hidden Cache Mining Company had purchased rights to the entire ridge and begun large-scale mining. They pulled a fortune from the mountain for several years—right up until forty-three of their miners were torn asunder in a freak explosion of wild fire and earth magic. It was the first in a battery of elemental storms, and when they couldn’t be contained, the federal government had decreed the area too dangerous for continued operation. That hadn’t prevented the elemental storms raging across the hillsides from claiming a life or two a year, killing hikers and fortune hunters too foolish to heed the restrictions, earning the area the nickname Reaper’s Ridge.

  Occasionally, a Federal Pentagon Defense squad would be dispatched to Reaper’s Ridge to subdue wayward storms, and even the elite FPD warriors couldn’t do much more than enforce a wide perimeter around the ridge.

  Why did the baetyl have to be there?

  “I can’t do this on my own. I’m going to need help,” I said.

  “I’ll help,” Celeste said, and Oliver seconded her.

  I nodded, not really listening. I would have preferred going to Kylie for assistance. She was my best friend and had helped me in the past, but she was out of town, covering the blooming of the Asking Tree for the Terra Haven Chronicle. Even if she had been available, she was a journalist at heart. Dangling exclusive information about gargoyle birthing grounds in her face, then telling her she had to keep it a secret, would be pure torture. More practically, she didn’t have the physical strength, magical know-how, or warrior training I’d need to survive Reaper’s Ridge. I needed the help of seasoned full-spectrum elementals. I needed Captain Grant Monaghan and his squad.

  When I said as much to Celeste, she leapt to her feet and loomed over me. “You can’t tell anyone, especially not five more people.”

  Despite her menacing stance, she didn’t scare me this time. I knew her posturing was born of fear, not a desire to hurt me. Nevertheless, I stood up, walking to Rourke’s side to put some space between myself and the incensed gryphon.

  “You said you don’t know how much more time Rourke has. We need to work quickly, and I trust Captain Monaghan and his squad with my life. He was the one who led the efforts to save Rourke and the park.” He’d done more than that: It’d been Grant and his team of FPD warriors who had saved the city, and they’d trusted me to work alongside them to help injured gargoyles. If anyone could get us through the storms on Reaper’s Ridge, it was Grant’s team.

  Grant also happened to be the only leader of an FPD squad that I was on a first-name basis with and the only one who would believe me if I said my perilous mission was necessary. More important, he and his squad were the only people I would trust with this secretive mission.

  “They are not guardians. They cannot help,” Celeste insisted.

  “I wouldn’t suggest we go to Grant’s squad unless I thought they were necessary and trustworthy,” I said. “Think about it. How would I get Rourke to the baetyl by myself? I can’t carry him, and even if I could, what about the others? How would I protect them from the wild storms? As much as I’d love to do this on my own, I need help. This isn’t a one-woman mission.”

  Lacking the muscles to carry a gargoyle didn’t bother me, but admitting to being too weak as an elemental to protect them rankled. The gargoyles of Terra Haven depended on me. If I couldn’t be everything the gargoyles needed, then it was up to me to make sure I found others who could shore up my shortcomings.

  It took an hour of circular arguments
before I convinced Celeste, and when she finally agreed, she insisted we leave immediately. I concurred; we didn’t have any time to waste.

  We exited the park together, with Oliver and I staying well clear of Celeste’s snapping tail. In the early days after the destruction of Focal Park, Oliver and I had drawn a lot of attention. Few gargoyles left their rooftop perches and fewer still walked the streets with a human companion. With Kylie’s front-page “Gargoyle Healer Saves Terra Haven” article fresh in everyone’s mind, complete with a picture of Oliver and me, we couldn’t have been more recognizable if we’d carried signs. But after a few weeks, the small crowds we’d drawn in our wake had faded. We’d become neighborhood fixtures and recipients of friendly waves and greetings, which I much preferred.

  With Celeste stalking at my side, we were back to spectacle status. I ignored the stares and pointing fingers and concentrated on what I’d say to convince Captain Monaghan to help us.

  Every few blocks, a fresh wellspring of gargoyle-enhanced magic burst open inside me. The unexpected gush of available magic repeatedly caught me off guard, tripping me mentally and physically even though I should have been used to it by now. Ever since the incident in Focal Park, gargoyles had started providing magic boosts for me whenever I was in range, whether or not I was using the elements at the time. Since gargoyles were particular about who they enhanced and typically didn’t attempt to boost an elemental who wasn’t actively using magic, it was flattering. Oliver claimed it was a sign of respect for a guardian, but up until today, I’d dismissed his explanation as a by-product of his hero worship. I couldn’t help but notice that with Celeste accompanying us, the frequency of the boosts had increased threefold, as if her presence added weight to my reputation.

  I acknowledged the offerings with waves and nods to the serious gargoyles who watched us pass from their high perches, for the first time in a long time feeling worthy of their favor. I had a real plan to help the comatose gargoyles, not just desperate hopes and ineffective remedies. Thinking about Reaper’s Ridge, I amended the thought: I had a plan and desperate hopes.