Secret of the Gargoyles (Gargoyle Guardian Chronicles Book 3) (21 page)

We needed to feed the gargoyles magic.

I straightened, seeing my horror reflected in Marcus’s expression as we both came to the same realization.

“How are we going to give them magic here? I can barely hold an element,” I said.

“You don’t seem to have a problem with quartz-tuned earth.”

True. The baetyl had a soft spot for quartz, but I couldn’t do much with a singular element, and whatever I did wouldn’t be enough. Feeding the gargoyles magic was a stop-gap measure until we could get them into the baetyl. If we couldn’t get past the baetyl’s barrier, it wouldn’t matter how much magic we threw at the gargoyles; they wouldn’t wake and they wouldn’t get better.

Why hadn’t I thought to bring the gargoyles into the baetyl before I’d sealed it? Or earlier, before I’d healed the heart? Why had I sealed the baetyl at all? I should have known it wouldn’t let me, a human, back inside after it was sealed, but I’d been too exhausted to think that far ahead. Some guardian I made. I might have doomed these gargoyles in my attempt to save them.

I squelched my self-recriminations. Focusing on the past and things I couldn’t change wasn’t going to save the gargoyles. I needed to work with the problems as they were now.

As far as I could tell, there was only one solution.

“I need to wake them,” I said.

“Can you?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to try,” I said. I gave the tiger a nervous pat, wishing Oliver were at my side. The gargoyles were so weak that forcing them from their comatose state could kill them. I wouldn’t even consider it if the only other option wasn’t watching them fade away on the doorstep of their cynosure baetyl. I considered what I had to work with. A simple infusion of quartz magic wouldn’t be enough to wake the gargoyles. I would have to attempt something far more drastic—and dangerous.

Tugging my hair behind my ear, I moved to the warthog-headed bear, the strongest of all the gargoyles. If any were going to survive waking, it’d be her.

She should have glistened like snow in the golden light of Marcus’s glowball, but her white quartz body was marred with grit etched into her pockmarked sides. Sickly green prasiolite striations wrapped her wide belly and coated her folded wings.

“What’s the plan?”

“First, we drop our link,” I said.

Marcus didn’t comply. “Why? We’re stronger together.”

Because being linked mucks up my individuality.
Only I couldn’t tell him that, or he’d guess what I planned and stop me.

“Waking the gargoyle might attract the baetyl’s attention. I need one of us to be on guard,” I said instead. The weight of the baetyl pressed against my thoughts, and my fear was genuine. What if it lashed out, seeing me as an enemy to its gargoyle?

“All the more reason for me to be inside the link, helping you fight off the baetyl’s lure.”

I shook my head. “It’s not like that now. The baetyl doesn’t like me anymore.”

“How do you know?” The shadows cast by the flickering glowballs made his scowl more impressive, but I was immune.

“I tried to connect with it to see if it’d let me through.”

“You did
what
?”

“And it slapped me aside. It’s done with me.”

His thick jaw muscle bounced as he ground his teeth. “That was stupid.”

“Yep.” No more stupid than what I was about to try, but these gargoyles deserved a chance to live, and I wouldn’t stop until I’d exhausted my options—short of killing myself in the process. “So I don’t need you in the link. I need you to protect us while I do my healer work and try to wake a comatose gargoyle.”

My healer work
, such a nice euphemistic phrase. So much better than telling him I was going to try to imprint part of my spirit into the warthog’s and use my energy to wake her.

I hid my trembling hands against the gargoyle’s round side. I’d shifted pieces of my spirit from my body before at Focal Park when Elsa’s invention had latched on to Oliver and his siblings. It’d been the only way to simultaneously break the connection between the deadly magic and the gargoyles, and it’d been an act of desperation I hadn’t realized until later could have killed me.

By comparison, using a piece of my spirit to stimulate a single gargoyle wasn’t half as dangerous. For starters, it wouldn’t kill me. But if I could think of any other means of compelling the gargoyles from their comas, I wouldn’t have considered using my spirit. If this went wrong, a part of myself could be forever trapped inside the gargoyle, and having my spirit split would leave me mentally unbalanced or physically diminished, or both—for life.

I concentrated to keep my breathing even and not give away the frantic beat of my heart.

“We’re wasting time,” I said, my words clipped with tension.

Marcus stared down the tunnel, the end outlined by the faint glow of the baetyl around the corner. I knew he was weighing our options. When the link dissolved, I closed my throat around a belated protest. The magic available to me shrank, and for a second I was the small, ugly creature inside the baetyl again, letting go of all its fathomless power.

Marcus shifted closer and I purposely didn’t look at him. If he read the fear in my expression, he’d try to interfere again. Closing my eyes, I grounded myself inside my body.
I am Mika Stillwater, gargoyle guardian.

The familiar moist, earthy notes of the tunnel and the dry, smooth odor of quartz reassured me, as did Marcus’s warm scent. He’d stood close enough to be accused of hovering, but having his solid presence at my back helped quiet the jangle of doubts bombarding me. The tangy odor of kachina greenthread and lamb’s ear leaves wafted from us both, an unnecessary reminder of the dangers.

Fingers crossed, I gathered the familiar blend of gargoyle-tuned elements and eased my magic into the warthog without opening my eyes. Holding the magic steady, I simultaneously sank into my own body, searching for the central core of my individuality—my spirit.

I wouldn’t have known what to feel for if I hadn’t learned the trick of separating my spirit and body in Focal Park. Then, the act had been a blind, last-ditch effort flowing from a string of elemental maneuvers that had already tugged me a half dozen different directions. Separating my spirit and dividing it among the gargoyles had been a natural extension of the magic I’d already been doing. Here, my actions were deliberate, my mind quiet, and loosening even a small sliver of my spirit from my body made me tremble with trepidation.

Afraid to pause and give Marcus a chance to stop me, I peeled a piece from the pulsing nebula of my spirit as easily as plucking a petal from a rose—it came free with only a mild tug. Or almost free. A slender thread spun from my body to connect with the petal, lengthening as I coaxed the petal from my body and into the warthog’s. With almost magnetic attraction, the petal merged with my magic.

My breath released in a shaky hiss as the warthog’s pain became my own. During the magic storms, her stubby tail and the tips of her tusks had been chipped and her folded wings were abraded. The pulsing pain of the new injuries settled into the dull aches of her body, which suffered from malnutrition and erosion. The puncture in my thigh pulsed in response, but I distanced myself from my body and did my best to ignore the gargoyle’s pain, too. Once I got her into the baetyl, she’d be better.

I dove through her, searching for the spark of her life. It was nothing I could see with my eyes, but I could feel it with my magic. The essence of the warthog lay nestled among layers of elements deep in her heart. I altered my magic to match her prasiolite-striped white quartz body, then subtly tweaked the quartz to resonate more closely with the baetyl’s energy.

What would have been easier than inhaling when I’d been linked with the baetyl took my full concentration now. Since I couldn’t remember the bulk of the baetyl’s pattern, I had to rely on the glimpses I caught to spark my memory, then alter the delicate blend of elements to match.

I knew the moment I got it just right. The tiny remnant of the warthog hiding in her core turned, and in my mind’s eye, her spirit took the form of pure golden light in the shape of her body. She stood cocooned in a sphere of white quartz crisscrossed with mint and forest-green prasiolite striations, and her liquid gold eyes regarded my spirit with profound sorrow. Loneliness from decades of isolation crashed through me, and the shock of feeling her emotion as if it were my own jarred me. Healing gargoyles gave me access to their physical sensations, not their emotional ones. The elements trembled in my grasp and I struggled to hold myself in place. Any change in my magic might push me out of her, or worse, injure her.

I’m here to help. All you have to do is wake up.
I pictured the baetyl and tried to give it a joyous sensation. Hoping she could feel my emotions as clearly as I could hers, I fed her my affection, my hope for her to wake, and my eagerness for her to be whole and healthy—and with it, I twined my piece of spirit around her spark of life. The crush of loneliness cracked, allowing in such a fragile emotion I didn’t recognize it at first: hope.

That’s it. Wake up. Walk into the baetyl.

She turned from me, and her head lifted as if she could see the baetyl now. Her thick wings unfurled and she took a step—

Her spark blurred; then she was back in her frozen form, wings trapped against her back. Despair drowned me, and I fought to stay in place.

You can do it,
I encouraged. I siphoned more of my spirit into her, cocooning her in petals of energy.
Try again. You’ve only got a few feet . . .

She looked at me, and her eyes had no room for lies. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t have the strength.

Together, then. We’ll do it together.

Thrusting aside my fear, I abandoned my careful half-measures and yanked my spirit free of my body and into the warthog, encasing her fragile spark in the entirety of my spirit’s energy. The final nuances of her body clarified in my mind’s eye, and I tweaked my magic, melding with her. I turned my—our—head toward the baetyl and poured my will into the gargoyle.

15

Walk. Take a step. Move
.

My back foot shifted, little more than a twitch, but the sensation opened a forgotten door. Awareness of my body spread upward. I lifted my head on a neck gone stiff as stone. My wings—

Fear jumbled my thoughts. The last time . . . The baetyl . . .

I am a gargoyle guardian!

The magic slipped and shuddered in my control, threatening to fracture. I could feel my wings, glorious green prasiolite, but . . . but . . .

I do
not
have wings!

I yanked my magic to free it, but it snagged and held. Pain slashed me, hot and sharp. I needed to get out, to escape—

“Easy, Mika. Don’t rip it. You’re okay. Just take it slow.”

The rumble of Marcus’s voice cut through my panic and I stilled. My body shuddered with an echo of someone else’s pain. The warthog. Not my body—hers. Except there was no distinction. I had wings because she had wings.

I’d hoped to use my spirit to restore the gargoyle’s ability to walk; instead, I’d imprinted my spirit onto hers and it’d given
me
control over her body. Fear tingled through a confusion of arms and legs, heads and spines. I took a deep breath through two sets of lungs and oriented on the warthog’s spirit again. She trembled inside my control, but with hope, not fear.

“That’s better. Now ease back out,” Marcus said.

I tilted my head to look at him, disoriented by the low angle. He hunched over something in his arms, talking to it, not me. With a jolt, I realized that was
me
cradled against his chest. My body lay in a loose sprawl, eyes closed, mouth open, green ointment dotting my pale face. The fiery light of the glowballs shimmered in the fan of my strawberry-blond hair and emphasized the dark purple circles under my eyes. Had I always looked so fragile?

The longer I looked at my body, the more foreign the gargoyle’s felt. When vertigo skewed my sight, I turned away.

Something kissed my spirit, the feeling so sweet and pure that my heart felt like it’d sing from my chest. I stared at the glow at the end of the tunnel.
Home.
My cynosure baetyl reached for me, pulling me to it, and I welcomed the assistance.

I jerked into motion, clumsily navigating on four stiff legs. My wings flexed with each step, the unfamiliar muscles twitching in my limited control.

“Mika, no. It’s too dangerous.”

Everything ached, and the pain grew with each step as my body woke. My skin was chapped from tusk to tail, my feet were bruised from holding the same position for decades, and my chipped tusks stung. The baetyl vowed to soothe it all away. I gathered its siren song of promises into my heart and pushed through the pain and sluggishness of my stiff body. When I rounded the corner, the baetyl filled my vision and I ran the last stumbling steps.

A film of the baetyl’s protective ward coated the opening, and when I burst through it, magic poured into me. I drank it down, savoring the cascade of relief as the baetyl massaged my body back into harmony and soothed away the aches and pains of decades.