The Angel Stone

help save their friend. We’re free to pass and they will march with us to Main Hall, where Duncan Laird and the last of the nephilim have gathered.”

“Way to get the trows on our side, Scott!” Frank said, clamping Scott on his shoulder.

“Epic!” Scott agreed, and for once I thought the word was completely fitting.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The trows wordlessly fell into step with us as we marched through the campus, as if they’d already been informed of the decision to join their ranks to ours. Perhaps they shared a telepathic bond, or the death of their comrade had simultaneously inspired within all of them a desire to overthrow their masters. Whatever the reason, I was glad to have them on our side. Their solid, funereal bearing added gravitas to our procession—and they looked like they could crush a man with one swing of the clubs they wielded, though I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. The angel stone still glowed with a steady, warm light in my hand. Any nephilim guarding Duncan would already know of its power.

We passed Fraser Hall and entered the quad. The grassy rectangle—where students sunned and tossed Frisbees in good weather or hurried across to their classes in bad—was deserted. Neon-hued scraps of paper—all the flyers posted by the nephilim administration—blew across the empty space like fallout from a nuclear holocaust. Stately Main Hall stood at the far end of the quad, looking as forbidding and unassailable as Castle Coldclough, with its gray Gothic exterior and gruesome gargoyles.

Gargoyles?

“Holy Hunchback of Notre Dame,” Frank swore. “Where did those ugly bastards come from?”

Crouched on every window ledge and cornice were hundreds of vile creatures. They looked nothing like the beautiful, angelic Duncan Laird. Their skin was gray and leathery, their batlike wings veined in black, their faces pinched and shriveled, with pointy ears. At the sight of us, they opened their mouths as one, revealing long yellow fangs. They cawed like crows, a sound that, along with the leathery rustling of their wings, made my skin crawl.

“What are they?” I asked.

“The first generation,” Soheila answered. “When the elves first bred with humans, this is what they produced. These are the monsters rejected by their fathers and reviled by their sons, who have grown more human-looking with each successive generation. We believed these creatures had been banished to an underground tomb, but Duncan Laird must have summoned them to defend him. I wonder if he was keeping them nearby.”

“In the tunnels.” Anton Volkov had stepped up next to me. “Remember I said there were creatures slaughtering animals and draining their blood? I can smell the blood on them.” His nostrils flared.

“There must be hundreds of them,” I said. “Too many for me to pick off with the angel stone. Do you think it’s possible we can reason with them and convince them to hand over Duncan?”

“We can try,” Soheila said. “If Duncan’s been holding them as prisoners underground, their loyalty to him might not be as strong as he thinks. I know a bit of their language.”

“I don’t like you getting that close to those monsters,” Frank said.

Soheila smiled at him. “Those monsters aren’t so different from my own ancestors. And, besides, I won’t have to get that close. The wind will carry my voice to them. It’s worth a try. Callie’s right. She’d never be able to kill them all at once.”

“Yeah, but if they do attack, I’m going after them.” Frank patted the sword at his side.

“I, too, will join in the attack,” Volkov said. “While we hold them off, Cailleach should make a run for it and endeavor to reach Duncan Laird’s office.”

“Yeah, get that bastard Laird.” Frank seconded Volkov by slapping him on the back.

“Happily,” I said.

Stepping a few feet in front of the crowd, Soheila flexed her wings, spreading them out in a brilliant fan that caught the rays of the early-morning sun. I’d never seen her winged before—never imagined that our beautiful and elegant Middle-Eastern Studies professor had the ability to become this otherworldly creature. Her wings comprised every color of the desert, from pale sand to burnt umber to deep violet, and when they moved they released a warm breeze redolent of spices and night-blooming jasmine. That wind carried a song on it. Although I couldn’t understand its words—I wasn’t even sure it had words—it conjured up windswept dunes and sand- scoured rocks carved into graven images. I envisioned great temples where people worshipped the old gods—gods with wings and claws and fangs and tails, gods as grotesque, yet awesome, as the gargoyles, who rustled their bat wings and perked their pointy ears as they listened to Soheila’s song. We were once gods, she told them, as you were, too, and we, too, were overthrown for newer gods. The song changed, and the images in my head were replaced with ones of violence and chaos—statues torn down, cave paintings defaced, women with Soheila’s particular beauty reviled and stoned to death.

Unsurprisingly, the gargoyles became agitated at these horrific scenes. They beat their wings and raised a great raucous howl that tore away the fabric of Soheila’s vision like claws shredding silk, replacing her desert scenes with a wintry waste where gargoyles wandered cold and naked, expelled by their beautiful fathers. This is what we have suffered, their cries told us. I felt the angel stone pulsing at my throat in sympathy with their grief. I touched the stone, wanting to communicate to them that I heard their cries and felt their suffering, but as soon as my hand was on the stone, I plunged deeper into their twisted psyches, finding myself in a wasteland colder and bleaker than the arctic tundra. The gargoyles were insane, their minds rent by centuries of captivity in dark caves with only hatred for company—hatred for their fathers for turning their backs on them, hatred for their sons for sealing them beneath the earth, but, most of all, hatred for humans, whose DNA had turned them into monsters. Our smell was inciting them now into a lather of bloodlust. Amid that seething maelstrom was a calm voice directing their rage: Duncan’s voice. He had tapped into the gargoyles’ minds and was controlling them, funneling their inchoate rage into a pungent stream.

“They’re going to attack,” I told Frank the second before a hundred pairs of talons pushed off their stone perches and a hundred pairs of leathery wings beat the air.

“Go!” Frank screamed. “We’ll hold them back. Get Duncan.”

Silver flashed in the air as Frank unsheathed his sword, and he leapt to attack the flying gargoyle heading for Soheila. A trow got it first with his club. I aimed the angel stone at another winged beast headed for Frank. It exploded in a shower of ash that rained down over me. Then I was running toward Main Hall under a swarm of gargoyles sweeping through the air like huge bats. Whenever one came close to me, I shot it with the angel stone. When I reached the front door of Main, I hesitated. Should I stay and fight with my friends? But Frank was right. If Duncan was controlling the gargoyles, I had to get to him.

I pulled at the door … and found it locked. “Sprengja ianuam!” I hissed the spell under my breath, and the door swung open. As I crossed the threshold, though, I felt a sizzle of energy that made my hair stand on end. A ward. I passed through the electric shock, wondering if this was how dogs felt when they hit an invisible fence. The jolt fried my nerve endings and made my heart miss a beat, but I made it through into the empty lobby, where I stood panting, heart palpitating. I swept my eyes over the marble floor, worn from the tread of generations of students. I scanned the walls, with their portraits of past deans and bulletin boards announcing student events. Looking for guards, I was overcome by the ordinariness of the academic setting and a longing for that world, where students walked these halls on their way to class to discuss literature and art. Instead, my students were outside, battling gargoyles. A surge of anger swept over me and I strode across the marble floor toward the stairs—and into a second ward.

This one knocked me off my feet. Sprawled on the hard floor, I looked up at a shimmering wall. Runes and sigils flashed in the air and then melted in a shower of sparks, like fireworks fading in a night sky. The wards were hastily created. Duncan must have hurriedly put them up as he retreated to the dean’s office. I just needed to see the runes and sigils again. I searched the floor for something I could toss at the field, but other than a crumpled Cheetos bag and scraps of paper, which were too light, there was nothing. All I had was the angel stone. I held it up to the field and the sigils and runes lit up like a computer screen. I scanned the symbols, looking for one that