Accession of the Stone Born: The Vigiles Urbani Chronicles (7 page)

Andrew quickly finished the sentence for me. “But you’ve gotten distracted and forgotten?”

Something in the way he said it made the back of my mind itch. It really hadn’t been a question but a statement. He knew I’d been curious, but he also knew that I’d forgotten.

That was a combination of curious and annoying. “Care to fill me in on how you know that to be a fact? Or would you rather tell me why you look like my elder brother instead of my elderly uncle? Better yet, why don’t you tell me why your clothes are tailor made to make you look frail and sickly?”

Andrew flinched. “I wasn’t expecting....” He held up his hand and shook his head. “Never mind. You have valid questions. The best way to answer it is to tell you that as a stone born you age normally till you’re about the age you are now. After that the process stops.”

I looked at him in disbelief. “What do you mean, it stops?” I snorted. “You want me to believe that you simply didn’t age after you hit forty-five?” I finished off my scotch and poured some more. “That’s a fountain of youth that people would kill for, if it were true.”

Andrew was more than a little peeved at my continued disbelief. “Look, I can’t make you believe me if you refuse to do so. Allow me to point out that you’ve lied to me several times since you’ve been here.” He grumbled more to himself than to me. “That’s never happened before.”

I couldn’t help myself and I let out a chortle. “People lie all the time. You can’t really believe that you’re so special that no one has ever lied to you!”

He scoffed. “It would be a relief if they could, but that’s one of my many gifts. Everyone....” He paused and looked me in the eyes. “Everyone—except you, it seems—is compelled to tell me the truth. They can’t help themselves.”

Now that I thought about his words, I did feel compelled to tell him certain things, but I’d chosen to ignore those impulses before consciously lying to him. Maybe he wasn’t completely insane, but he was closely bordering doddering old fool territory. Then again, he didn’t look old, and earlier he’d even felt powerful. Powerful enough to make me feel fear again. Odd....

Chewing on the words, I struggled to let it all sink in. “Let’s say that we are special. That I have a fantastic heritage and I’m one of these stone born. What does that even mean? And just how do you know that I’ve lied to you?”

He poked a finger at the back of his head. “There’s an itch way back here when you do it. It’s absolutely infuriating!” He took another swig of scotch. “It’s really impressive.” He seemed relieved that I was actually considering his words instead of writing him off.

I knew the itch he was describing…it happened every time.... Damn! It happened every time I’d wanted to tell him the truth and I consciously lied about it. Now that was spooky as hell. “What does this mean? How do I fit in with what you’re talking about?”

He sized me up like a prizefighter considering how best to devastate his opponent. “Where you fit in is here with me. The fact that you are impervious to my abilities makes you a very special person.”

I held my hands close together. “Short school bus special.”

Andrew sighed and waved me off. “I’m trying to tell you something important.”

I was quickly losing my patience. I didn’t like the feeling of not understanding, and this was something I truly didn’t grasp. “Then just say it!”

Andrew was frustrated. It was obvious that he wasn’t used to people not simply accepting what he had to say at face value. His eyes darted to his desk and he pointed at the far end of the room. “Do you see the sapphire?”

Now that was a segue! “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

He didn’t answer; instead he waved his hand. The sapphire on his desk glowed, emitting deep blue shafts of blue light throughout the room. The small ring he wore on his pinky finger glowed and pulsed in unison with the larger stone. Before I could interject, a thin wispy light blue tendril slithered from the ring and shot across the room, to be absorbed by the massive sapphire.

The stone in the ring was gone, simply vanished before my eyes. I spent the next several seconds looking between the empty socket on the ring and back at the sapphire on the desk. I stood to go investigate, but things got even stranger.

The shafts of light flickered and converged in front of the desk, creating an image. It took a few seconds before I could make it out, but when I did I fell back into the chair behind me. There, standing in front of my uncle’s desk, was a sapphire blue translucent figure of the woman from the photo I’d seen earlier.

She looked confused until she saw Andrew, and relief seemed to sweep through her. The sapphire form pixelated as she tried to move, only to suddenly stop when her eyes fell on me. Her expression changed from relief to instant trepidation. A weak yet pleasant voice emanated from her with a deep English accent. “Who are you?”

Andrew was on his feet in an instant, smiling at her before waving a hand in my direction. “Martha, I’d like to properly introduce you to Gavin.” He sounded like a proud parent showing off his prize child to the love of his life. “He’s all grown up.”

Her form wavered and she groaned in pain. “It’s too soon. I’ve got to rest....” She tried to say something more, but it was garbled and she vanished from sight, retreating back to the sapphire on Andrew’s desk.

Setting my glass on the table in front of me, I shook my head. “What the fuck was that?”

Andrew beamed. It was the first time since I’d been there that he looked whole, happy, and content. His mind was far away as he kept his eyes fixated on the sapphire. “That was Martha...well, a part of her anyway.”

My head was hurting. No matter how I tried to process what had just happened, I wasn’t able to fully comprehend it. “I don’t understand.”

Tearing his eyes away from the desk, he turned his attention back to me. “When someone like us is born a gemstone is created. The parents look after the child and their stone until they are of suitable age to be responsible for themselves. Your father kept mine until I was eighteen, and after your father died I was to care for yours until your eighteenth birthday, but you vanished and I’ve been holding it for you ever since. Every gemstone is different; for instance, Martha’s was a sapphire. Mine is a jade and emerald combination. Your father’s was a half ruby, half emerald concoction, and yours is a golf ball sized diamond.”

I felt weak. I couldn’t stop blinking as my mind tried to process everything I was being told. Something deep inside of me told me his words were true, but how could that be? How could I be stone born? How was any of this possible? “I’m not sure how all of this works...I simply don’t understand what’s happening.”

Andrew pushed his chair back and stood, waving for me to do the same. “Follow me.”

He opened a locked door leading to a hallway on the forbidden side of the house. We were about halfway down the hall when he stopped and stuck another key into a door and opened it. Stepping inside the massive room, I saw hundreds of stones lining the walls, shelves, and tables. He guided me through the maze to the exact center of the room and pointed at a display case with a single flawless diamond the size of a golf ball hovering about three inches off the red velvet lining.

He flipped back the top and waved me over. “This is yours. Normally you would handle this for the first time when you are eighteen, but I’ve heard of people getting theirs later. Not twenty-seven years later, but still. Be warned…this will be painful, but I promise it’ll be worth it.”

I barely heard the words as I felt a thrumming inside my brain coming from the perfectly cut rounded stone in front of me. It called to me. This was what had been calling me to New Orleans. This was why I had come here. Everything Andrew said was true. For the first time in my life I wasn’t in control of myself as my body acted on its own, betraying me.

I stepped forward, and holding out my left hand I slowly wrapped my fingers around its smooth polished surface. I felt power surge through my body as heat pulsated through the diamond into my hand. Its smooth surface erupted into thousands of tiny shards, slicing through the palm of my hand and fingers. Larger structures jutted out of its surface, through my palm, and out the back side of my hand. I screamed and the world around me shivered. I hit my knees, gripping my wrist in my right hand.

I didn’t know how or why, but I felt it was important that my left hand stay over the case as blood ran freely from my hand down onto the red velvet. The stone stopped growing after the shard that penetrated my hand was about four inches long and had turned onyx. When I released the stone, it floated above the blood soaked velvet, now oddly shaped, jagged, and weeping. My head swam, darkness came for me, and I fell back into its warm embrace.

Twenty years earlier

The rough stone floor was cool against my face. An ever-widening pool of red-black fluid spilled out all around me as someone grabbed the back of my neck, yanking me upwards before slamming my face back into the floor. The thud was followed by an immediate sickening crack of one of my bones breaking.

The man behind me whispered in my ear with a thick Arabic accent. “You will tell me what I want to know!”

Thing was, I wouldn’t…I couldn’t, because I simply didn’t know and he wouldn’t believe me. “If I knew I’d tell you.” I wheezed, coughing up blood.

He kicked me hard in the ribs and I felt one snap. “Liar!”

I didn’t know how long we’d been at this today. It could’ve been minutes, hours, or days for all I knew. I’d long since lost track of time. They’d been interrogating me for what felt like years. A part of me knew that I wouldn’t be able to take much more of this kind of abuse…that I was dying. It wouldn’t be long now. I was drowning on my own blood from internal injuries. If that didn’t get me, dehydration or malnutrition was close behind. More likely my death would come from one too many blows to the head or a rib puncturing my heart.

When the man grew tired of beating on me he would call for the guards. They would drag me down a long corridor and out into the center of their old mud and stone fortress. There they’d toss me into one of the many stone lined pits covered with ancient thick iron grates. During the day I’d bake in the sun, then shiver in the cold of the night. The sound of the medieval padlock snapping shut sounded akin to a nail being driven through steel. The sound of being one click closer to death.

At first this was how I’d kept track of the time, counting the days and nights, but soon the sweats, fever, and sun drove all reason from my mind. That, coupled with the daily beatings, had long since caused me to lose track of even what year it was, let alone how long I’d been there. The guards would relieve themselves over the grate in an attempt to humiliate me. But truth be told I secretly prayed for them to do so. I knew I was poisoning myself, but drinking the urine was keeping me alive. They threw rotten food or mildewed bread down for me to eat, and laughed as I scraped it into my mouth.

Reality crashed back to the forefront of my mind when my captor grew angry with my lack of cooperation and slammed his boot into my crotch. I coughed as a case of the dry heaves overtook me. Curling into the fetal position, I tucked my head between my knees as he continued to slam his leather boots into me over and over again. After several minutes he grew tired and knelt beside me, pulling me up by the hair so he could speak directly into my ear. “You’ll die here very slowly if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”

I was still gasping for air. One of the broken ribs was grating against my lung. Now it was truly only a matter of time before it filled with blood and I drowned on my own fluids. I couldn’t speak, and in his frustration he slammed his fist into the side of my head, sending me hard to the stone floor.

He said something in Arabic I couldn’t understand and I felt myself hoisted into the air and drug back to the hole I called home. They tossed me in and I heard the familiar click of the ancient lock above, and my mind drifted.

The moon was high in the night sky when I heard something in the inky darkness. Instinct told me to move, forced me to investigate. I was rewarded for my vigilance with mind numbing pain as every inch of my body ached in a way that only the near dead could.

A childhood memory overtook me and I heard the beating of drums and a low steady chant building off in the distant reaches of my mind. At that moment I felt calm.

Then I heard a man’s voice, which was smooth, comforting, and very English. “You’re not going to die like this, are you?”

I realized that my mind had become unhinged because I knew no one was there. The drumming was a little louder and the chanting stronger, building and building, making my heart race along with it.

I coughed up blood and spit it on the ground in front of me. “I’ve got to hold out long enough for my people to come get me.”

The man laughed. It was rueful and angry. “You don’t believe that lie anymore, do you? They are never coming for you.”

The drums and chanting grew even louder and I felt my chest vibrating with every beat.

I couldn’t move for fear of pain. “I have to. It’s all I’ve got left.”

I felt someone touch my shoulder and grip it tight. “That’s not all you have, boy! You know they’re not coming. If you want to live you’re going to have to do something about it!”

The drumming was so loud now, and I chanted along with the chorus of angry demons. The pain faded and I felt stronger. “I don’t know what to do.”