Page 113 of Hearts of Stone

Hearing the sound of fear inhisvoice, rather than it coming from those around us, was music to my ears. It was only Luther’s fast reflexes that had him ducking out the way of my weapons. I launched myself off the ground, gliding forward and cutting off his escape route.

“What, my master?” I asked, my lips twisting into a cruel smile—an approximation of the one Luther so often wore. “What on earth could you possibly want? To hurt others?” Frantic noises, like the sound of howling dogs, came from the cells. “Surely you’ve had your fill of that? Anyone with half a brain in their head would’ve before now. What on earth do you seek in the viscera of others?”

“Immortality.”

The little bastard had stopped running and now stood there, facing me down, but he did so alone. Madeline had sprinted out the front door into the night. She’d come to fight for the birthright of her son, to try and put him in as master of The Eyrie. A boy raised by Madeline would seek to fulfil the promise she had made. But Luther didn’t care, facing down my blow as my fist came hurtling towards him, hook wedged between myfingers. I saw it in my mind before I completed the blow: what it would be like to strike back at the one who had hurt so many others; to finally see him get his just desserts. But instead…his hand snapped up, glowing bright red as he grabbed my wrist, stopping the blow from falling. Then Luther let his power flood into me.

It had always gone the other way, with him draining me, over and over, a leech at my side. But now the tables were reversed, I liked the process even less. Everything burned: my muscles, my bones, the blood in my veins, every part of me as I screamed. And he laughed, just like he always did. I didn’t let it stop me. Adrenalin pumped through me, primitive instincts kicking in as I smashed my fist into the warlock’s face and sent him flying.

“No…”

I whispered the same word at the same time as he said it, while he clawed himself backwards. The inmates all hooted. But as the sounds grew, so did the flames. They seemed to escape from him now, going spidering across the floor, finding seasoned timber, hardened leather, even stone itself to fuel its fire.

“No, Wulf…” Luther tried to inject command into his voice, but he failed utterly, so I merely tracked his progress, like a lion on the hunt. “Wulf, I command you…”

But he couldn’t finish that sentence, not when my foot snapped out and landed squarely on his chest, pinning him to the floor as he had done to so many others.

“Do not try and command me again, little warlock,” I said. “I feel the burning chokehold of your power and I don’t care.”

It felt like my chest was compressing. As I pushed down on him, my lungs were fighting to inflate. He let out a little wheeze of laughter that quickly devolved into coughing.

“You forget, Wulf, that we are tied together differently than I am with the other gargoyles.”

“Through pain, torture and degradation,” I growled, “and that ends now.”

“More than that.” He pushed himself up against my foot, his breath getting shallower and shallower. “I…”

The vision fadedas the real world came rushing back at the sound of familiar voices.

“Wulf! Brother!” my stone brothers cried from beyond the walls. “Let us in! We have to get Jade out or she’ll die.”

But they couldn’t see it, the look on Luther’s face. As I approached the gate, his expression was one of pure victory that grew as I got closer. The only indication of his desperation was how his knuckles whitened around the bars of the gate.

“Wulf…”

Jade’s voice rasping, coughing out my name as she staggered forward was what had me moving, ripping the lock free. Because like everyone else who’d ever come within these walls, her best hope lay beyond them.

“That’s my boy,” Luther purred as he pulled the gates open and strolled inside the walls of Z Ward. He looked about him with exaggerated care. “It’s been a long time, but I’m glad to be back. Now, let's work out this sudden need for autonomy, shall we? I do so love it when you put up a fight. It makes your eventual surrender so much sweeter.”

“Surrender to the likes of you?” I snarled. “Never.”

Chapter 63

Seneca

At the sound of Jade’s scream, I threw myself off the roof of The Eyrie, and wing-tip to wing-tip with the others of my flock, we flew blindly towards her. But I realised that we didn’t need to follow any sound or scent to find where she was, for some hitherto hidden instinct was yanking us forward. Then I saw the lazy spirals of smoke rising from the building and my heart felt like it was gripped in a massive fist. That fist clenched harder as I saw him.

Luther.

The disguise had been effective. We’d had no idea that the madness of our former master lay beneath a face that was an echo of Wulf’s. We hadn’t wanted to see it. We’d thought we’d escaped him and that he lay with the worms, like all of the masters before him. Instead, he was here, creating chaos and pain. I knew that it had been his fiery fingers that had set the grass alight; knew that Jade was still in there and I let out a roar of denial.

“Wulf! Brother!” Graven shouted. “Let us in! We have to get Jade out or she’ll die.”

Reasoning with a half-mad gargoyle? That was no fit solution. But almost immediately, Jade came stumbling out. Carrick and I both swept down at the same vicious angle, stooping like an eagle might to catch his prey, and then I swept her up into my arms. I heard her gasping for breath, smelled her scent, now like burnt jasmine, rather than the night-blooming kind, but had never felt something so welcome.

“Jade…”

My voice broke, too full of emotion, of everything I wanted to say. But the screams and cries and warnings I’d hopelessly been unable to shout from the house roof were silenced the moment I held her. I cradled her close, my wings working to take us higher and higher, away from that damnable place. And then I heard her voice, still raspy from the smoke.

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