Stonewing Guardian Read online

  "I think we've got a shot at getting past them if we attack together," he said over his shoulder. "Don't worry about taking them out permanently. Just clear a path and run."

  "How do I know I can trust you?" Javic shot back.

  "We sure as heck can't trust you!" Thea retorted. "We're in this together for now, though. Temporary truce?"

  "Truce or no truce, we're running out of time," Mace ground out. His head throbbed and he could barely raise the arm that had taken the dart. Not the best condition for fighting. "Any minute they're going to stop thinking about it and attack, and then we've had it. Thea, stay with me."

  He felt her fingers close around his. It was the hand on the poisoned side, so he could only feel her grasp in a numb kind of way, as if through a heavy glove. But he still felt warmed by it, as if he was getting an energy boost just from touching her.

  Maybe he was. True mates had a power he barely understood, something far beyond gargoyles' stone magic, shifters' ability to shift, or Javic's spells.

  Mace thrust his free hand in front of him and shifted it to stone. He had to throw a tremendous effort into it; his body responded sluggishly, still fighting the effects of Javic's accursed poison. But he poured his will into it and got it to respond, the hand expanding to twice its usual size and his fingertips growing long, sharp stone claws.

  "Go!" he yelled, and charged forward, pulling Thea behind him.

  The stone guardians didn't seem to be expecting an attack, let alone an attack with stone claws that tore through them. A fireball burst past Mace's shoulder and scattered more of them. And then they were through, running down the hallway.

  It quickly became apparent that Javic was in even worse shape than Mace. Whatever he'd done with the phoenix fire had left him exhausted and reeling, and Mace realized that he was in the awkward position of having to slow down so his enemy could keep up, or simply leaving him to the stone guardians who were now pouring into the tunnel behind him.

  "Come on!" Thea snapped, pulling on Javic's arm and trying to hurry him along. She was clearly in the no-man-left-behind camp as well.

  The guardians were gaining rapidly. Mace skidded to a stop, letting the others ahead of him. Thea, of course, immediately noticed and turned around.

  "No last stands," she ordered. "We're going together."

  "I think I can feel my stone-control powers returning," Mace lied. He raised a hand, bracing it at the wrist with the other. "I'll hold them back. Just get out of here."

  Instead, her hand settled on his shoulder and squeezed.

  "Together," she said simply. "Or not at all."

  Light flared suddenly in the tunnel. Fire shot past them and exploded in the faces of the stone creatures, who scattered and retreated.

  Mace turned to stare at Javic, standing a little way up the tunnel, swaying as sparks glittered off his fingertips.

  "You heard the lady," Javic said hoarsely. "Let's get the hell out of here."

  It was doomed, Mace knew, as he took Thea's hand and ran again. They couldn't possibly get all the way to the exit from the tunnels before they were caught. Not if the way they'd come in was the only way out. They were going to have to fight, and there was no way they could win against those snapping obsidian fangs.

  Abruptly the floor between them and the oncoming guardians humped up and coalesced into the crouched shape of Gio's stone lion.

  Gio let out a deep growl. He was nearly blocking the tunnel. The guardians stopped and backed off.

  Then Gio shifted.

  For the first time since his involuntary transformation, Gio's stone lion shape melted back into his human form at last.

  But this wasn't Gio as Mace had last seen him, as a man in his seventies. Now Gio looked closer to Mace in age. The hair cascading over his shoulders was dark blond instead of silver. He was wearing the clothes Mace had last seen him in, but they were ragged and torn.

  "I know!" Gio said, seeing Mace staring at him. He pointed down the tunnel, away from the guardians. "Go! I'll hold them off." He turned back to the guardians, who were milling in confusion, seemingly unsure whether to attack or flee.

  "Come on!" Thea said, pulling on Mace's arm. "You saw him. He can stonewalk. He'll be okay."

  After a seemingly endless flight through the dark, they stumbled out at last into the clean air of night on top of the island. Thea cried out in delight and spread her arms wide to the star-studded sky.

  It seemed impossible to believe that it wasn't dawn yet. They hadn't even been underground all night.

  Mace turned and looked back at the gaping, dark entrance to the tunnels. No sound came up from underground.

  Thea took his hand. "We should probably get farther away."

  "Wait," Mace said.

  He placed a hand on the rock beside the tunnel entrance. The poison was starting to clear from his system; he felt less fuzzy-headed, and he could sense the rock more clearly now. In fact ...

  In fact, whatever had been blocking him before was gone. The labyrinth no longer felt like an absence to his senses. He was able to feel the stone again, including the open spaces of the tunnels and the large chamber.

  He could also feel stresses in the rock. Apparently what was holding the tunnels together had mainly been the spells and wards that their long-ago creators had placed upon them, and now those were starting to unravel.

  Mace spread his senses farther, feeling for the medallion—or Gio. Neither were anywhere nearby. But he could feel the swarming eagerness of the guardians. They could not be released into the world.

  He found the stresses in the tunnels and gave them a little push.

  Below them, the ground shuddered as the island settled slightly.

  "What just happened?" Thea asked, alarmed.

  "I just made sure we weren't going to be followed." He continued to commune with the rock for a moment, and felt the guardians' unnatural life fade away from them. As the tunnels they were bound to guard began to disintegrate, they were released back to being normal stone—as they should be.

  Mace looked around for Javic. He fully expected the magician to have made some kind of rapid exit while their backs were turned. Instead, Javic was sitting slumped with his back against a rock. The glow of phoenix fire around him had died completely.

  He tipped his head back and watched them approach with a dull expression. Defeat echoed in every line of his posture.

  "I'm no threat to you," he said. "I barely have enough magic left to get myself out of here."

  "You helped us," Mace said. He squeezed Thea's hand and glanced at her; she nodded. "I can't believe I'm saying this, after everything you tried to do to my family, but ... can we help you?"

  Javic shook his head slowly.

  "No one can," he said. "The medallion, the thing we were searching for—it's part of that ... creature now, isn't it?"

  "That creature is our friend Gio," Thea said sharply.

  Javic looked up and his gaze sharpened. "Listen. If that object is part of your friend now, then the others, the rest of my group, will be after him once they figure out what's happened. He's not going to be safe."

  "And you'll be doing what, then?" Mace asked skeptically.

  "I have no idea." Javic looked back at the pile of stone, then he took a very deep breath and seemed to gather himself. He drew his hand through empty air. Fire trailed behind it, and the air seemed to peel back. There was a glimpse of somewhere dark on the other side.

  "Wait—!" Mace began, but before he could even reach for Javic, the rip in the air closed around the magician and he was gone.

  They were alone on top of the island.

  "Wow," Thea said after a long while. She put her arm around Mace's waist. "So ... it's gone, then? Hrungnir's Heart, and—and Gio. Where do you think he is?"

  "I have no idea. He's okay, I think," Mace added, seeing her anxious expression. "He wasn't buried under there."

  "But he's gone somewhere else," she said, and Mace nodded.

  They cl
imbed back down the stairs as a gray light of dawn began to show along the rim of the world. Mace kept looking around for a stone lion to appear, but none ever came.

  When they got to the hut, they found the fishermen both fast asleep and snoring, wrapped up in blankets in front of the banked fire.

  "Some guards," Mace sighed. He nudged Stieg with his foot. "Hey, wake up."

  Stieg sat up with a startled snort. He looked around, blinking myopically like the bear he turned into, and eventually focused on Mace.

  "Did we miss anything?" he asked, and Thea started laughing.

  Thea

  It was past noon by the time that the boat pulled up to the docks at Westerly Cove.

  Thea said goodbye to the Nilssons on the dock with a dazed awareness of the sun too bright and too high, spilling over her shoulder. She was dimly aware of Mace talking to Tor and Stieg—deferrals of explanations, promises for the future—but it was all too much. Mace put a hand on her arm and steered her away from the boat. She went, stumbling, exhaustion overwhelming her in waves. The walk up to Stonegarden seemed endless, but at last Mace shut the gate behind them and they were enclosed in the warm perfume of the gardens that already felt like sanctuary to her.

  "Are you hurt?" Mace asked her quietly, guiding her up a garden path. He held a door for her, and she found herself abruptly in the cool shade of the house's inner hallways.

  "No. Just tired."

  Tired was too small a word. Fatigue weighed her down, turned her feet to stone and her bones to lead. It was not just physical, but mental, wiping her out on every level. It had been a very, very long twenty-four hours.

  She became aware that Mace was asking her a question.

  "Sorry?"

  "I just needed to know where you want to go." They were standing at a crossroads, she realized, two intersecting hallways within the house. "To your room?"

  "No," she said, taking his arm. "To yours."

  It seemed impossible that, in all her time at Stonegarden, she had not yet been in Mace's room—but she hadn't. It was a large bedroom with stone-flagged floors and an enormous bed, piled high in comfortable-looking quilts. There was a thick shag rug beside the bed. She sank her feet into it, curling her toes.

  "You can clean up through there," Mace said with a gesture to a door opening off the bedroom.

  Here was the palatial bathroom luxury she had failed to find elsewhere in the building. Right now, it seemed like the most wonderful thing in the world. She shed her filthy, damp clothing, stiff with salt and reeking of smoke and dust, and climbed into the huge shower.

  After a moment, Mace joined her, naked and glorious.

  "I hope you don't mind company," he murmured, pulling her wet hair back from her ear with a twitch of his fingers.

  "Not at all," she whispered, leaning back into his embrace.

  It turned out that she wasn't as tired as she thought, after all.

  It was the phone that woke her, sprawled with Mace in a tangle of naked limbs in the middle of his luxuriously huge bed. She struggled out of uneasy, vague dreams. Golden afternoon sunlight was shafting through the room. Their clothes were strewn across the floor, and somewhere in some item of clothing, someone's phone was vibrating.

  It stopped, but started up again. Thea pried herself out of bed and then collapsed back onto it. "Ow," she muttered. She was a mass of sore muscles and bruises, none of which she'd felt the night before.

  "Nrgh," Mace mumbled into his pillow, and raised his head abruptly, snapping to wakefulness. "Are you all right?"

  "Fine, just being reminded that I'm not 25 anymore." She poked among the scattered pieces of clothing with her bare toes. Meanwhile, the vibration stopped, then started again. Someone was really trying hard to get in touch with them.

  "Mine," Mace said, reaching past her. She took the time to appreciate the gorgeous expanse of muscular naked man sliding by her as he retrieved his jeans and then his phone. "Gio," he said, surprised, and put it on speaker. "Hey. Are you all right?"

  "Sort of," Gio said. His voice was a little rough, but sounded relatively normal. "Kind of. Maybe. I mean, I'm me again ... sort of. I need to talk to you."

  "Come over to the house." Mace reached out and squeezed Thea's hand. "Just give us a few minutes. Or—can you still stonewalk? If you can't, I'll come get you; just let me know where you are."

  "I can stonewalk," Gio said. "But I can't stonewalk there. I've tried."

  Mace exchanged a glance with Thea. "To Stonegarden?"

  "I tried I don't know how many times to stonewalk to you," Gio said. "And then I tried stonewalking near there, which worked, and walking into the town, and I couldn't. I just kept finding myself disoriented and lost, on the road out of town."

  Mace gave a low whistle. "The protection spells think you're a threat."

  "And they're not wrong," Gio said. He sounded unhappy. "Not to you. Never to you. But—can we talk in person?"

  "Where are you?"

  "On the ridge above the lighthouse. It's as close as I can get. There's an abandoned house up here, some kind of lookout shelter, I guess. Do you know the place I mean?”

  "I do," Mace said. He reached for his shirt, made a face, and hurried over to the closet. "Be there in a few minutes. Do you need anything?"

  "Food would be nice."

  "I'll bring something, then."

  "We," Thea said firmly.

  "If there's danger, you should stay—" Mace began.

  "Gio," Thea said. "Are you a danger to me? Is it safe for me to come?"

  "Should be fine," Gio said. "As long as I don't stay here long."

  Fifteen minutes later, they were in the kitchen with a hastily thrown-together hamper. Thea had run by her room to grab clean clothes; she was still buttoning her shirt. Mace took her hand, and hesitated.

  “Stonewalking is the fastest way. Can you handle it?"

  In truth, she wasn't sure. But it was better to find out now, in a safe place, than later in an emergency. "Just please make it quick," she said.

  "Here." Mace's voice was gentle. He put an arm around her and pulled her against his chest. "Let's try this. Put your face against me and close your eyes. Just hold on to me and keep listening to my voice. Are you doing okay?"

  "Fine so far," she said, muffled, into his shirt. There was a ringing in her ears. "Are you doing it now? I don't know if it's better to have warning or just to be surprised, like ripping off a band-aid—"

  "We're here. You can open your eyes."

  "Oh," she said, startled. She pulled away from him and blinked.

  They were standing on a stony, wind-swept hilltop. The sky overhead was tinged with the first colors of sunset, with numerous clouds scudding before a strong ocean wind. There was the tumbledown ruin of a house in front of them, with a stone foundation and broken, weathered boards. Thea turned around and looked down at the brilliant ocean. There was a gorgeous view from up here of the town and the red-and-white lighthouse on its rocky headland.

  "Thanks for coming," Gio's voice said.

  Thea looked around quickly, aware of Mace's quiet movement, interposing himself just slightly between herself and Gio.

  Gio stopped. His face twisted in unhappy lines.

  He still looked shockingly young compared to how she had first seen him, though she realized now that he wasn't that young, perhaps about Mace's age. His hair was down to his shoulders, a rich dark gold with silver strands mixed in.

  "You're a gargoyle now, so you age like gargoyles do," she said, as it suddenly fell together.

  "More or less," Gio said. He grimaced suddenly and clenched one hand into a fist. Thea glimpsed a ripple of gray spread over his hand and then recede. "I don't have much control over it. Emotions especially bring it out."

  "I can help—" Mace began.

  "No!" Gio said sharply. He glanced over his shoulder. "Listen. There's a reason why the protection magic at Stonegarden is rejecting me now. I think Javic's group can track me using Hrungnir's Heart. There's
nowhere I can go that I'll be safe, and no one with me will be safe either. Not for long."

  "So take it off," Mace said.

  "That'd be great if I could," Gio said grimly, and pulled his shirt open.

  The patterns from the medallion were branded into his chest in charcoal-black lines. They covered his entire chest from just below the collarbone to as far down as Thea could see in the V between the open sides of his shirt. He slipped it off his shoulder for a moment, turning a little so they could catch a glimpse of similar markings on his back, and then began to button it again.

  Mace cursed softly. "It's part of you now."

  "I know that look," Gio said. He managed a quick smile. "It's not your fault. You saved my life. And I'm the one who took it into myself at the end."

  "Do you remember any of that?" Thea asked, curious despite herself. "We weren't sure how much of you was you."

  "It's like looking back through a haze now," Gio said. "I couldn't think clearly. The only thing I was sure of was that I could trust the two of you." He smiled a little, this time sad. "I would never do anything to bring danger to you. So I need to stay away."

  "What are you going to do?" Mace asked. "Run forever? Listen, come back to Stonegarden with me. I'll find a way to get you through the protection magic, and we can fix this."

  "No, damn it!" Gio said sharply. "I want you two safe. I especially don't want to bring danger to you, or risk damaging the protection spells on Stonegarden. I'll be fine. I just wanted to let you know what was going on." He held out a hand. "Is there food in there? I hope so."

  Mace handed over the basket and then gripped Gio's arm. "Listen, stay in touch. We're going to find a way to fix this."

  "I believe that you'll try." Gio glanced over his shoulder. "I've been here too long. I need to go."

  He clasped Mace's hand and then Thea's. Then, holding the hamper, he started to sink into the rocky ground.

  It was not as sudden or smooth as with Mace's stonewalking. And as it overtook him, he began to change. Thea saw the beginnings of the lion transformation, his body twisting, and from the look on his face, it was painful.