In Stone (7 page)

“Keep your sorry,” he spits. It hits me like shrapnel. Before my tongue can jump back to life and offer a better response, he’s gone.

Nauseated by frustration and confusion, I kick my way through the debris and bolt the front door. I lean back against the cold wood. It feels good seeping through my shirt, extinguishing some of the heat rising from my skin. A burn is blazing in my cheeks, and my hands begin to tremble.

With my chin tucked into my chest, I glare at the toes of my Docs poking out from underneath my jeans. The matte black and blue paint splotches are suddenly invaded with splashes of blood. Another stress-induced nosebleed, or perhaps this time my brain has actually exploded and is leaking out. I have to calm down. I have to clean myself up. I have to clean everything up before Mom gets home, sees this mess, and shits Frisbees.

IT’S BELOW FREEZING OUTSIDE,
but a hundred degrees under my sheets. I beat my pillow for the hundredth time and slap my head back against it. It’s not even close to light and fluffy. I might as well be sleeping on stones. My mind is racing; my body is restless. I can’t get Jack’s words out of my head. They’re haunting me like a malevolent spirit. I kick and twist until my sheets are wrapped around my ankles.

I can’t sleep; then I can. Then I can’t.  

At two a.m. I wake with a start. I suck back a breath. My arms automatically fly out from my sides, and my fingers curl around the edges of my mattress. I stay anchored to the hunk of foam until the realization of what I just experienced kicks in. It was just a dream.

The world is sepia. Some little kid is playing on the sidewalk with a doll in a stroller. Out of nowhere this big, square town car charges up onto the curb. There’s the high-pitched squeal of breaks, a loud thump. The driver pulls back onto the road. The car doesn’t stop. The kid, left on the sidewalk covered in blood, doesn’t move.

I’ve been having this dream on and off for as long as I can remember. It’s never left me feeling so shaken. Something was different. It was more vivid, as if I watched the whole thing take place right outside my house. I take a breath, wipe a river of sweat off my brow, and am almost immediately choked by the darkness drenching my room. My hands scramble toward my bedside table. Panic subsides as my fingers trace the jagged aluminum blade of a bread knife. I know that I can’t kill an immortal with a normal knife but having it here makes me feel safer.

I flick on my bedside lamp. The warm orange light chases the darkness up my bedroom walls and deep into the nooks and crannies of my bedroom. I sit up, push back the sticky strands of hair on my face. Fear has passed; now it’s guilt’s turn to play Twister with my internal organs.

Guilt began just before I finished cleaning the house, milliseconds after Mom had gotten home. She’d noted immediately that her cabinets were missing a selection of statues and trinkets -- I blamed the cat. I told her our killer cat and a rogue bird had been chasing and evading each other around the house. She bought it.

That’s when the guilt kicked in with its steel-toe-capped boots.

At first I thought it was the lie; lying to my mom is not something I do lightly, but then the internal questioning began, and I realized it was Jack. Jack was responsible for the guilt screwing up my guts like bad seafood. I shouldn’t have let him leave. I can’t stop thinking about Mom, about Leah and how unlivable life would be without them. And then I’m thinking it wouldn’t be unlivable because I’d have to actually be alive myself to notice. And I’m not going to be alive to notice because demons are going to tear our world apart, or tear us apart when they find the knife and off the gargoyles. Either way, we’re royally screwed. The knife has to go.

I see red. My feet hit the floor, and I’m out of bed, pacing. I want to rip and tear and break. Guilt is worse than fear. Guilt is relentless, so heavy and all consuming. I want to rip and tear and break, but instead I’m pulling on my Docs and climbing inside a coat. I tuck the breadknife up my sleeve, and root out the novelty key-ring torch from my bits and pieces drawer. Without a second thought I duck under the shutter and shimmy my way down the trellis.

I’m going to find Jack.

SAINT SEBASTIAN’S WAS BUILT way back when they were still figuring out the secret of fire. It used to be a church, but now it’s a colorful canvas of tags and misspelled swear words. A dumping ground for beer cans and cigarette butts. It’s located in a town called Stockton, about a forty-minute walk away. I take my bike and am there in twenty.

The world is asleep when I pull my Sapphire Speed Racer 6000, in bright pink, to a stop. I haven’t ridden a bike since I was thirteen. My ass feels like it’s swelling; my virginity might have also been compromised.

The little, metal entrance gate is overrun with brown rust, and I’ve seen enough scary movies to know that it’s not going to open silently. I dump my bike on the sidewalk and climb over the wall instead. It’s only as high as my hips, an easy scale. I delve into my pocket and pull out my flashlight. It chokes out a lanky stream of light, which barely puts a dent in the darkness. Thankfully, the bodies that were buried at Saint Sebastian’s have all been relocated, and I walk across the overgrown grass without fear of disrespecting the dead.

If Saint Sebastian’s were to sprout legs and walk past a group of kids, they would call it Goth too. It towers over me, built in brick the same color as charcoal. I drag my light across the front wall and spot three hollowed-out spaces. Two spaces at either side of the front door and one space above it. The spaces used to be filled with Gargoyles crouching on bended knees. One of them covered its mouth, Speak No Evil. Another covered its ears, Hear No Evil. And the last, See No Evil…has mysteriously reappeared. It has to be him, right? His eyes are covered, but I can just about see them through the slits in his bulbous fingers. His stone shell is ugly. He has horns and tusks, a snout and sharp teeth. The tail is there stuck up from behind him. A sort of cow-pig-snake hybrid.

An owl hoots, or maybe someone screams. The sound echoes in the air, smashing the stillness to smithereens. I’m turning circles in a second, brandishing my pathetic beam of light, hoping I don’t stumble across a serial killer. I’m seeing male silhouettes in the shadows, strange shapes tucked behind tree branches, when I hear the sound of grinding stone. I flick back to face See No Evil. My little blob of light follows me and falls on a pair of bright blue eyes, human eyes, still buried behind a stone hand. He blinks, and the stone on his face starts dissolving. Like the way the sea peels back off the sand, the grey gives way to skin, and in seconds it’s gone, leaving Jack crouching in the hole. I close my mouth, my jaw having dropped through the floor, as he jumps down and stands in front of me.

He has a mop of shaggy, dirty-blonde hair, which he promptly covers with a beanie that he pulls from his pocket. He stands there; I stand there, six feet apart, eyes locked, a rolling tumbleweed away from a western showdown. I have to collect my thoughts, bite down on my tongue before I projectile admiration all over him because, wow, he is actually a gargoyle. But I didn’t come here to make nice. I came here to talk.

“What are you doing here?” he says.

“Why me?” I say, jarring myself back to the here and now. Because that’s why I’m here. The question that I wanted to ask when he stood in my living room. “What do you need me for? You are what you are. Why can’t you just destroy it alone?”

“I tracked it down after I left you,” he says. “They’ve moved it from City Hall, put it in storage, not far from here.”

I resists the urge to fist punch the air with relief, because…

“Why me?” I shine my little beam of light right in his face. It’s hardly powerful enough to blind him, but Jack dips his head.

“This isn’t exactly an apply-within type situation,” he mutters into his chest. “I asked for your help because you’re already involved.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and sweeps his foot back and forth against the ground.

“Why can’t you go it alone?” I say again. He’s holding back. His body language is shifty. He’s not trying to avoid the light; he’s trying to avoid meeting my eyes.

“It’s complicated.”

“Then un-complicate it.”

“Gray would never have a hurt a human before the knife.” His head flicks up. His eyes, a blinding flash of silver-blue. I huff a laugh. My throat constricts at the mere suggestion. His gaze drifts briefly to the empty spaces where I assume Gray and Nichols used to crouch. “It was coming into contact with the knife that changed them. “We used to be friends, the three of us. A brotherhood, a pack, if you like. But then this knife comes to Gray, and suddenly he’s talking crazy, about ruling over everything and everyone, about no longer hiding in stone. And then he kills Nicholas because Nicholas wants it, too.” He puts on a deep, mocking voice for this next part. “There can only be one.” He throws his hands around, beats his chest. “This land that I’ve protected for so long will be mine.” He pauses, smoothes the lines on his forehead with his fingers, as the dust cloud he roused from thumping his chest settles.

“There’s got to be, like, a million gargoyles in the world. Maybe you can call on one of them to come and help you.”

“You don’t get it. Nothing is guaranteed while the knife exists. There are no sides, only desperate immortals killing each other, killing humans, just to get their hands on that weapon.”

Then he says something that has a hard time leaving his lips. “I’m afraid. I’m afraid to hold it, afraid that if I touch it, it will draw me in.”

“How do you know that it’s safe in human hands? Maybe I’ll get power crazy.”

“You let it go. If the knife had a hold on you like it had Nicholas, like it has Gray, you couldn’t have done that.”

A vision of a post-apocalyptic Plumbridge flashes in my mind. I have to sit down. And I do, right there on the gravel. Shuffling backwards I lean up against the wall of my Gothic compadre, Saint Sebastian. The gravel beside me shifts. Jack sits so close his arm brushes against mine.

“This is a mess,” he says.

“Ah-ha.” My conscience has me in a chokehold. A second later, sitting down feels wrong. My legs want to be up, moving, fidgeting. I’m on my feet again, leaping from the ground like a spring. “When exactly are we going to go and get it back?” I say without a second thought.

“We? Really? You’re going to help me?” He exalts. He stands, too, quicker than me. Quicker than sound.

I nod, but don’t get chance to say yes before he snatches my hips and wraps me in a hug that compresses my guts and lifts my feet several inches off the floor. It’s dizzying. Our bodies are pressed tightly together. I balance myself on his shoulders, wads of muscle clumping under the palms of my hands. Something hot and hormonally charged shifts in me. Blood rushes to my cheeks. Luckily, he sets me down before my entire body turns to liquid.

“I need to get home,” I say, my voice tiny.

“I’ll walk you,” he replies.

IT’S BEEN TWENTY HOURS
since I agreed to help Jack, and not a second has gone by when I haven’t thought about him. Not in a scribbling-his-name-on-my-notebooks, dreaming-about-wedding-dresses kind of way. Not even close. All Jack thoughts are strictly business-themed. The business of breaking and entering. No light and fluffy, just thick heavy boulder-thoughts piled up on my chest and crushing me.

I pace up and down the hall, chewing on my nails, gnawing on any hard callus that my teeth can find until I can taste blood.

“Where is this guy taking you?” Mom calls from the kitchen.

“Not sure exactly.” I told her I was going on a date. Technically it’s not a lie because I am going out with a boy. We’re just breaking into a storage unit as opposed to heading to the movies. The thought of it makes my stomach moan like a grizzly. I press down hard on my abdomen to make it stop. Which just makes it worse. I catch sight of my reflection in the hall mirror. I stop and scrutinize myself from head to toe. I’m not even five-foot-two. I’m built like a twig, and I’ve never done anything remotely illegal in my life. I’m looking for something reassuring, something that says everything is going to be all right, that the world isn’t going to change. It won’t come to an immortal slaughter-fest because I, Beau Bailey, have got this. I see nothing.

“Be back by ten-thirty?” Mom appears in the hall. She leans against the doorframe and fixes a pair of shifty eyes on me. I just about manage a nod.  

“And this ensemble, you don’t think it’s a little...morbid for a first date?” Mom questions carefully from over the rim of her ‘Best Mom Ever’ coffee cup.

Jack said dress discreetly. Black skinny jeans and a black sweater seemed appropriate. I have my black leather jacket on which cost me a hundred and fifty bucks. If that doesn’t say ‘effort’ then I don’t know what does.

“I didn’t want to overdo it,” I reply with a shrug.

“Success,” she mumbles wryly. I’m about to defend my outfit, bring up the leather jacket or maybe run upstairs to change, when I hear a car pull up outside the house. I wasn’t expecting a car, but when I peep through the spy hole I see Jack in the driver’s seat.

“Whoa.” I’m not a car geek. I don’t know what kind it is. I just know it’s big, black, and shiny. Not sporty, sophisticated -- executive type stuff. I blow a couple of kisses in Mom’s direction and take off out the door before she spots the car and holds me back for a road-safety lecture.

It’s raining a waterfall. I’m drenched before I’ve even made it through the garden gate. I don’t quite manage to slide seamlessly into the passenger side of Jack’s car. The seats are leather, and I come up against some denim infused friction. I have to shimmy and fidget into position. When I’m settled, the giant seat swallows me.

“You okay over there?” Jack asks when I finally buckle up. I’m pretty sure I note a chuckle in his tone. Thankfully, the front seat is dimly lit, so he doesn’t see me flush. I’m not embarrassed; I’m frustrated. Maybe I’m a bit of both.

“Fine,” I reply, taking in the sweet smell of leather and vanilla. My feet come to rest on something slippery and unstable. I can’t see what; it’s a cave down there. A techno-centric, don’t-touch-or-we’ll-take-off mass of buttons and screens light up the dashboard. Jack pulls his car on to the road. It doesn’t make a sound, just slips along the road like water, allowing a stifling silence to fester in the car. My fingers drum against the seat, and I start bobbing my head along to a beat. There’s no real tune, or rhythm; it’s just noise playing inside my head.

“You nervous?” Jack asks, like a week later. I’d be relieved for the break in silence if there wasn’t a note of satisfaction in his tone. In his line of work, I imagine he gets off on this sort of excitement. “You can relax. I know exactly what I’m doing. I won’t let anything happen to you.” Yep, he’s definitely got a boner for the idea of breaking and entering. Suddenly, it’s a battle with my eyes to stop them from falling to his lap and checking for any signs of swelling.

“You’ve done a lot of breaking and entering before?” I ask, my voice a little strained.

“Not exactly.”

“Meaning?”

“This is a first for me.”

I chow down on my fingers.

We zip past a couple
of street lamps. I watch the shadows chase one another up the dashboard and across my lap. A stray stream of light highlights my feet and a pile of books that I’m standing on. I grab a handful. There’s a car manual for this model of car and a road safety handbook. Ace. But the books that really make me shudder are the ones that focus on American prisons, various security systems, and a couple of historically infamous heists.

“What are these?” I ask with pointed eyebrows.

“Research,” he replies. His shoulders remain casually slumped and his focus fixed on the road. “You probably shouldn’t read them. They’ll only make you more nervous,” he adds. I know my jaw is touching my chest when he turns to look at me and huffs a laugh. “You really need to relax. I am perfectly capable, and you are perfectly safe.”

“Does it say that in your books?” I chide. He grins. “What happens if we get caught?”

“We won’t get caught.”

“But what if we do?”

“We won’t, so it’s not even worth worrying about.” Chew, chew, chew. I will have no fingers left when this day is over. “You’re impossible.” He laughs.

We’re driving through the suburbs, around streets named after various flowers and trees. The car jerks to the left, and Jack pulls it to a halt on a darkened corner beside a sign that tells me we’re on Sycamore Street. Puzzlingly, the sidewalks are decorated with bare birch trees. Street lamps spew a hazy-white glow. Sycamore Street is home to several shops: a drycleaners, a bank, a shop with crisp-white wedding cakes in the window.

Jack points to a building across the street. It’s the tallest building on the block by several floors. It looks really out of place, grotesque even, in this whitewashed, wood-paneled, suburban neighborhood. In an attempt to lighten its intrusion, it has its own patch of grass and metal fence.

“That’s where we’re going,” Jack informs me.

A section of the downstairs is softly lit. I can see two burly guys behind a desk. They’re wearing peaked hats, shirts, and ties. One stands up to adjust his chair, and I see a belt and a handgun. My heart trips in my chest.

“I think they’re keeping the weapons on the top floor.”

“You think?” I question. “I was under the impression you knew.” My comment is lost as Jack climbs out of the car. I clamber after him.

“Jack?” I shout over the clinking of rain on the car roof. He closes his eyes and starts taking exaggerated breaths in and out.

“Deep breaths, Beau,” he chants at me. “In and out. In and out.”

“You look like you’re in labor,” I say bluntly.

He stops the breathing exercise and clears his throat. “Should we get this over with?”

I follow as Jack strolls across the road. For some reason I tuck my head into my neck and stride on bended knee. I don’t know why. It feels more discreet I guess.

“You think you know where the weapons are? I thought you knew.”

“I know they use the top floor for storage.”

We reach the fence, and Jack hops over it like a seasoned hurdler. I, on the other hand, shouldn’t have worn skinny jeans. Jeans are not the most flexible of attire; skinny jeans are worse. And wet skinny jeans, well they’re just plain rigid.

“Beau, come on,” Jack urges as I stand and stare at the railings. With all the pluck and flexibility of an arthritic senior citizen, I flop over the fence and land, backside first, on a cushion of wet grass. My jeans soak up the moisture with the competency of a Kleenex. A wave of embarrassment encroaches -- no time for that. Jack grabs hold of my arm and hoists me to my feet, then drags me across the lawn to the side of the building. He pushes my body back against the brick wall.

“Stay here until I tell you it’s safe,” he warns as he points to the wall above us. There’s a security camera bobbing about on a mechanical arm. Jack skulks over to it. He leaps up, his arms stretched above his head, and he snatches the arm. He swings himself up and on to the top of it. Impressive. Epiphany or startling realization; against the black backdrop of the night sky, he looks like a gargoyle perched on the ledge of a gothic castle. I wait while he fiddles around with the camera. It stops moving, and he beckons me over with a hand gesture. All is silent but for the soft drip, drip, drip of the rain. The whole CIA type atmosphere has me tingly -- there’s a slight bounce in my step as I tiptoe over to him. His tail is out and wrapping itself around the camera arm; he’s wrapping his legs around it, too. And then he’s hanging upside down and holding his hands out to me.

“Jump,” he whispers. Jump. I don’t think I’ve jumped in over a decade. This is going to require a run up. I back up into the shadows. His face crumples. He looks confused, as if this is unnecessary, because we all have nimble bodies -- I think not. One, two, three. I start running, then launch myself off the ground. It’s a heave, but my hands slap safely into his. As if he’s lifting air, he pulls me up and on to the metal arm. My CIA fantasy is quickly kicked to the curb when I look down at the ground. My legs turn to elastic. I’m a regular climber of the pretty, wooden trellis that hangs on the front of our house. But this, this is very high, and I’m overtly aware that the small thong of metal we’re standing on is soaking wet. The sole of my Docs might as well be smothered in butter. The world wobbles and I fall forward into Jack’s chest. My fingers dig into his sides. He has to fight to peel them from him, but his strength wins out over mine, and he manages to get loose.

“Whatever you do, don’t look down.” He winks.

“You’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you?” I say as he loads me onto his back. I lock my arms around his neck.

“Danger is my job. It’s what I was made for.”

“Normal is my job. It’s what I was made for.”

“Normal is extremely overrated,” he says, pressing his fingers against the wall. I watch kind of mystified, sort of mortified, as they morph into the bulbous stone fingers of a gargoyle, complete with claws that he uses to pin himself to the wall. And then his tail is touching me, slithering up around my torso and holding me tight against his back. I may never understand the world I’ve walked into.

In the next breath, we’re moving; he’s crawling up the wall so quick you’d think someone hit fast forward. It’s as easy as strolling down a sidewalk.

The rain is coming down hard and heavy. It stings as it whips against my face. We keep going higher and higher, passing window after window. Large windows, big glass squares that you could easily pass an elephant through. We stop at the one and only window that’s the size of a mailbox slot. This is our entry. I know this because his tail goes slack and slips from my waist.

“There’s no way.”

“The other windows don’t open,” he calls back over his shoulder. With that he slams his fist into the wooden frame of our little window, and it pops right open. “It has to be this one. We’ll go one at a time. Grab on to the ledge.”

What ledge? There is no ledge. There’s a thin snippet of rotten wood, pretending to be a ledge. By my standards, there is no ledge.

“One foot at a time. Grab the window and pull yourself through. I’ve got you.”

“Ah ha.” I nod into his neck. My warm breath splashes against his cold, rain soaked skin, creating soft wisps of steam. I know what he wants me to do, but my body doesn’t appear to be moving. We wait a second. I’m still nodding, still making ‘ah ha’ noises. We wait more seconds.

“Beau, the ledge,” he urges and rubs my arm. “I’m not going to let you fall. I swear.” I open up, my arms trembling as I peel them apart. The “ledge” is only a couple of feet away. I can do this. I can do this, I tell myself before I reach out. With a stretch and noise that sounds a lot like the bark of a seal, I snatch hold of the window and place one set of toes on the ledge. Jack cups my backside with his hands, giving me a boost up, and I wriggle my way through the window. I hit the floor, belly first. The wind rushes right out of me. My face is hovering a couple of inches above solid blue, glitter-blasted linoleum.

It’s a restroom. A man’s restroom. I’m staring at off-white porcelain urinals. The smell of stale pee forces me to my feet, and I dash over to the sink. I’m not sure if it touched me, but I’m not taking any chances. I start scrubbing at my hands and splashing water on my face. Through the smoggy reflection in the mirror, I watch as Jack slips through the window -- feet first -- and lands on the floor with the prowess of a cat. He dusts his hands off as he eyeballs me.

“What are you doing?”

“Wiping pee off me,” I grunt. He grimaces and hisses an unlucky note through clenched teeth. And we’re moving again.

“You move so quickly,” I tell him as we make our way toward the door.

“It’s a gift.”

“Another one?”

After giving the corridor a quick scan, we scurry up it like rats. The lighting is low, moody. Perfect for a couple of amateur felons. There’s no one around. Apart from the soft pad of my boots against rough carpet, it’s quiet.

Every time we reach a door, we throw our bodies back against the wall and only continue when we know the coast is clear. It’s all very intense. The good sort of intense that makes your heart throb and your body buzz. A rock concert. A rollercoaster.