by Tracy Wolff
The beast roars and charges straight at them. As it does, I notice for the first time that the chains aren’t its weapons. They’re shackles, keeping it tied to the wall.
“Run!” I yell to Jaxon. “If we get out of the cave, maybe it can’t reach you.”
But this is Jaxon Vega we’re talking about, and there’s no way he’s leaving his mate behind with this monster, something that I’m both grateful for and infuriated by at this moment when I need him to save himself.
Instead of lashing out and trying to blast the monster back like he did the first time, though, Jaxon focuses his power straight into the ground. A giant earthquake hits the cave, causing rocks and bones to fall from the walls and the very floor beneath our feet to buckle even as it rises up.
The creature screams, low and loud and agonizing to hear, and as it reaches out and picks Jaxon up, I’m sure that this is it. I’m sure that this is where it crushes Jaxon into dust right in front of me.
But it doesn’t crush Jaxon. Instead it throws him straight at the cave entrance, so hard that Jaxon flies right out of the cave and keeps going until I can’t see him anymore.
“Go, Grace!” Hudson screams at me. “Get out now, while it’s distracted.”
But I can’t get out, because the thing distracting the beast is Xavier, and he’s heading straight for him.
“Hey!” I yell as loud as I can. “Over here! Come get me over here!”
The beast ignores me, laser focused on Xavier, who has hopped onto one of the rock formations in the wall, waiting—I think—for his chance to leap past the beast.
But he doesn’t have my vantage point, can’t see what I can, which is that there’s not enough room for him to clear it. Anywhere he goes, the monster will get him—if not the second he leaps, then the second right after.
Can’t die, can’t die, can’t die. The gargoyle in my head starts to chant and, right this second, it kind of makes me want to scream. Because my head is a pretty fucking crowded place as it is, with Hudson screaming at me to run, my own thoughts going wild, Jaxon shoving energy down the mating bond toward me, and now my goddamn gargoyle telling me that I can’t die.
Which, no shit. I’m not planning on dying today.
But I can’t just leave Xavier to fight it alone. So I do the only thing I can do—I get back in the air and fly straight at the Unkillable Beast’s head. If I can distract it even a little, maybe Xavier will have a chance to get away.
Get away, get away, get away! My gargoyle chants its new mantra even as I dive-bomb the monster’s head. At first, it ignores me, still so focused on Xavier that it barely acknowledges I exist. But when I get close enough to kick it in one of its bloodred eyes, it turns on me with a roar that echoes off the walls and shakes me down to my toes.
“Run, Xavier! Get out of here, now!” I yell as the beast faces me. Our whole plan was to lure the beast out of the cave, and if Xavier will leave, I think I can fly past it and hopefully its chains are long enough it can follow us outside to where Macy is waiting to put it to sleep.
I fly away as fast as I can, determined to stay out of its reach long enough for Xavier to have a fighting chance. But I’ve barely made it halfway across the cave before the beast grabs me in its massive rock fist and sends me spinning toward the wall Xavier was just standing on. I bounce off and land in a heap on the ground.
Xavier at least managed to get down in the ensuing chaos, but he didn’t leave. Instead, he switched back to his human form and landed on the wall where the chains are embedded.
As the beast reaches for me a second time, Xavier grabs on to the chain that binds its arm and pulls with every ounce of werewolf strength he has.
It doesn’t do much, but the resistance surprises the monster enough that it turns its head to glare at Xavier for a split second. And that’s all it takes for me to roll away.
The beast yanks its arm forward hard enough to send Xavier ricocheting off the wall, but then screams when it realizes I’m not where it left me. As it whirls around with a giant growl, Eden, Flint, Macy, and Jaxon must have given up on Xavier and me luring it out, because they suddenly storm the cave.
Eden and Flint are in their massive dragon forms, and as they circle around the beast like it’s an airplane tower, I realize just how big it really is. Because Eden’s and Flint’s dragons are huge, and they look like nothing more than hummingbirds buzzing around its head. It must be…eighty stories tall. And growing, if my eyes aren’t deceiving me.
Eden hits the stone giant with a blast of lightning that has it bellowing in rage, but this attack barely slows it down. Flint follows with a stream of ice so powerful that the entire cave freezes around us, icicles dripping off everything.
And still the monster barely seems to notice. It just keeps fighting, just keeps snarling and smashing and throwing us until rocks are tumbling down from the walls all around us, pieces flying everywhere and slicing us to ribbons.
Go, go, go! Don’t die, don’t die! The gargoyle in my head is screaming now, so loud I can barely concentrate on anything else. Until a wrench on the mating bond has me gasping and nearly falling right out of the air.
“Jaxon!” I scream, whirling around just in time to see my mate fall to his knees. His complexion is gray, his eyes dull, and though he throws a hand out and manages to catch himself before he pitches forward onto his face, I know it’s a close thing.
I can see it. More, I can feel it.
I dive down, racing to him as fast as I can—trying to get there before the beast sees just how weak and vulnerable Jaxon is.
And I get it. He’s already used up so much of his finite energy today—the guards at school, the telekinetic attacks on the beast, the energy burst he sent me a little while ago while he was racing to get the others. Between all of that and what Hudson drains from him, Jaxon’s got nothing left to fight.
I manage to get to Jaxon just as the beast knocks Eden clear out of the sky. She hits the ground so hard, her dragon screams, and when she tries to get up, she can’t. She stumbles, falls, and I realize in horror that her wing is broken.
I throw myself in front of Jaxon, and as I do, I get a chance to look around at my friends who are valiantly fighting and realize that there’s no way we can win. The beast isn’t even winded, and we’re in pieces.
Eden with her broken wing.
Jaxon with his awe-inspiring power almost completely depleted.
Flint shooting fire as the monster corners him but limping along in human form with what looks like a compound fracture to his leg.
Macy’s okay, thank God, but she’s poised with her wand up as she sends spell after spell spinning toward the giant. They hit—I know they hit—and yet nothing happens. Not one makes an impact.
And Xavier…Xavier is limping, too, though not as bad as Flint. He’s currently circling around behind the beast, poised to go for the back of its knee in a last-ditch attempt to slow the monster down, but I already know that it isn’t going to work. Nothing we do is going to work.
“You need to stop this!” Hudson begs as he walks over to where I’m leaning on a rock wall, trying to catch my breath. For the first time, he sounds panicked—really, really panicked. “You have to call them off, Grace. No one else will do it, so you have to.”
“I don’t know how!” I yell back at him. “Even if I try to call them off, even if they listen to me, the beast isn’t going to just let us go. How do I get them out of here without us all being killed?”
“Talk to him,” Hudson tells me.
“Talk to him? Talk to who?” I shriek.
“The Unkillable Beast. Can’t you hear him? He’s been talking to you all along—you need to answer him. You’re the only one who can.”
“Talking to me? Nobody’s been talking to me!”
“I hear him, Grace. I know you hear him, too. That voice telling you to go, telling
you not to die. That’s him.”
“No. You’re wrong. That’s my gargoyle.”
“I’m not wrong. You need to trust me, Grace.”
“I don’t believe—”
“Goddammit!” he yells as he falls to his knees, tears in his eyes, face twisted in agony. “I’ve fucked up, okay? A lot. I know that. You know that. But I’m not fucking this up. I know that’s his voice. I know you can talk to him. I know you can stop this. You’re the only one who can. Just fucking listen to me for once in your whole fucking life like you did when we were together.”
He’s screaming now, begging, and I want to believe him. I do. But if I’m wrong— “No!” I scream as the beast turns toward Macy with a roar.
I shoot straight up in the air, race to get to her before he reaches her, but even as I fly faster than I ever have in my life, I know I’m not going to be fast enough. I know I’m going to be too late.
Xavier gets there a split second before I do. He throws himself in front of Macy, sends her careening to the ground behind him and takes the blow meant for her.
I can hear the bones shatter from where I am, can feel his skull crack and cave in even before he flies straight into the wall. He hits the ground with a sickening thud, but the beast doesn’t care. He reaches for Xavier’s leg, starts to pick him up, but it’s my turn to throw myself in front of Xavier.
I land between them, and I do what Hudson’s been begging me to do. I throw my arms up in the universal gesture for stop and scream, “No!” from the very depths of my soul.
102
We Are the Monsters
The Unkillable Beast rears back like I’ve struck him, so hard that he ends up stumbling and falling to the ground with a loud bellow that shakes every bone in my body. Shakes the very walls of the cavern.
But even as he screams, there’s that voice inside me again, telling me, No hurt, no hurt, and I realize Hudson is right. That voice I’ve been hearing since I got to Katmere, that voice that warned me every time trouble was coming, that voice that I was certain was my gargoyle, was actually the Unkillable Beast all along.
I have no idea how. I have no idea why. But right now, all I care about is saving my friends.
I rub a hand over my eyes to wipe the tears away and then look at it, really look at this stone giant, for the first time since I got here.
I look at the craggy, broken rocks of his exterior.
At the stone rubbed smooth beneath the iron shackles.
At the top of his head and the one broken remnant of a horn that rests there, and I realize what I should have known all along.
The reason Macy’s magic didn’t work on him.
The reason Jaxon’s telekinesis didn’t, either.
The reason Eden’s lightning and Flint’s ice didn’t so much as faze him isn’t because he’s all-powerful. It’s because, like me, he’s totally immune to magic.
Because he’s a gargoyle.
Not unkillable at all. Just a gargoyle—the last in existence besides me—chained up for a thousand years, if the lore is to be believed.
As I stare at him, this poor gargoyle, this poor, giant monster of a man—I put a hand to my own head, to the horns that have grown larger every time I’ve gained power, and look at him with new eyes. How many battles must he have survived, how many opponents must he have defeated to have grown as large as he is now?
The answer is unfathomable.
And we’ve only added to his agony.
Oh my God. What have we done?
What have we done?
I’m sorry, I say. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
I don’t know if I’m saying it to him or to Xavier or to Hudson or to all three. I just know that it’s my own hardheadedness that has brought us here, my flat-out refusal to listen to Hudson even when he begged me to, that led us to this exact moment in time. My inability to see anything in terms beyond black or white, good or bad. Savior or monster.
And now a moment I can’t change or take back, no matter how much I wish I could, stretches before me.
Behind me, Macy screams in agony, and I know what I’m going to find even before I look. Still, I turn around—keeping one arm extended to the beast to show that I mean him no more harm—just as she sinks to her knees, sobbing, beside Xavier.
I watch as she gathers him up in her arms and rocks him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
“No!” Flint yells as he tries to limp over to where we are. “No! No, don’t tell me that, please don’t tell me that. No!”
Eden’s back in human form, tears streaming down her face and Jaxon…Jaxon looks broken in a way I’ve never seen before.
Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry, the voice inside me says. Wolves are bad. I must protect her. I must save her.
I don’t know who he’s referring to and right now, I don’t think it matters. All that matters is that Xavier is dead. He’s dead and this poor, broken soul killed him, not because he wanted to but because I wouldn’t listen. Because I refused to see.
The horror and the grief turn my knees to nothing—just like the rest of me—and my legs go out from under me.
I hit the ground hard, my shin scraping against a slab of rock that fell from the walls, but I barely notice. How can I when Xavier is right here, his sightless eyes staring into the distance?
He was alive. Two minutes ago, he was alive, and now he’s not. Now he’s gone, and I could have stopped it all if I had just listened to what Hudson had tried so desperately to tell me.
This is my fault. This is all my fault.
Eden drops to her knees behind Macy, wraps her arms around my cousin, and holds her while she sobs. I should be doing that, should be doing something, anything to fix this mess that I’ve created. But I can’t move. I can’t think.
I can’t even breathe.
“You have to finish it,” Hudson tells me. “You have to get everyone home. You have to let Xavier go and save the people you can save.”
“I don’t even know how to get home,” I whisper, and it’s true. Neither Flint nor Eden is in any shape to fly us back to Katmere.
And the Trial is in less than four hours. I have to be there, or we will all suffer more than we already have. The king and queen are just the type to punish all my friends—and Jaxon—for my perceived indiscretions.
Ironic, really, considering the many mistakes I’ve made here tonight, and they’re going to punish me for missing a mere game to see if I’m worthy. For being a gargoyle. For dating their son.
The hits just keep on coming.
“I’m sorry, Macy,” I choke out as I crawl to my cousin, hug her, and press a kiss to the top of her head.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to Hudson as I climb slowly to my feet.
I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, I tell this ancient gargoyle as I cross the distance between us and put my hand on his giant foot.
He roars at first, tries to pull away, but he doesn’t try to hurt me again. He doesn’t do anything but watch me out of those centuries-old eyes and wait to see what I’m going to do next.
Who did this to you? I ask, running a hand over the shackle on his ankle. Who locked you up like this and made you into the Unkillable Beast?
He screeches a little at the name, and I don’t blame him. For centuries upon centuries, he’s been in this crater, hunted by all kinds of magical creatures trying to steal some precious object he only wants to protect.
The horror of it, the unmitigated depravity it takes to do something like this… I can’t even imagine.
I have to save her, he tells me. I can’t die. I have to save her. I have to free her.
Who? I ask. Who do you have to save? Maybe we can help.
I don’t know why he would believe me, considering my friends and I just tried to kill him, but I have to try. I owe him that much. The wor
ld that did this to him and perpetuated it for a millennia owes him so much more.
I look behind me at my friends, all of whom look like they’ve been to hell and back. All of whom are shell-shocked and bleeding and as devastated as I feel. I owe them, too.
At first the beast—no, the gargoyle—doesn’t respond to my offer. Not that I blame him—I wouldn’t, either. But then slowly, so slowly that I’m not sure I’m not imagining the whole thing, he lifts his wrist up and looks at the shackles.
Oh, of course. Of course we’ll let you go.
I turn to my friends—my broken, bloody, devastated friends—and though it kills me, I have to ask them for one more thing. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but I need your help.”
Flint looks from me to the gargoyle, and I can see what he’s thinking. Why should he help the monster who just murdered his friend?
“Because it’s not his fault,” I whisper before he can even formulate the question. “We came and attacked him. We tried to hurt him like so many of the people who have come before us. None of this is his fault. And because he’s a gargoyle like me.”
Everyone blinks at me, unsure how to process this revelation.
Macy is the first to move. She stumbles to her feet, mascara running in tear-streaked rivers down her face, and aims her wand at the gargoyle. At first, I think she’s going to attack him again, and I put a hand up, try to ward off her magic—and the ensuing rampage such a move might cause. But then she surprises me, my cousin—with her kind heart as big and fierce as any dragon’s.
She whispers a spell under her breath and shoots a bolt of lightning straight at the chain tethering the gargoyle to the wall.
103
Going Through
the Potions
The chain doesn’t break, so she blasts it again. And again. And again.
Each time, the chain shudders and groans, but no matter what she hits it with, it continues to hold.
Soon, Flint joins in, shooting ice at the chain to make it brittle, and I pick up a giant rock and, flying, try to smash the frozen chain to bits. But again, no matter how hard we try or how much the chains protest what we’re doing, they stay exactly where they are.