Page 118 of Hearts of Stone

“What happened?” Jade’s voice was like a breath in my ear. “Is he…?”

As if in answer to her trembling question, a great roar heralded a shower of bricks, out of which emerged a battered and bleeding Wulf, an even more destroyed Luther in his arms. He pushed his hands high, holding Luther’s still writhing form up to the moon’s light, and that’s when they came.

A tour operator had approached Master Ashley some years ago about doing ghost tours of Z Ward. The man had been frank about it all being a hoax which had affronted the master. But while the financial incentive was not attractive to him, memorialising the story of Z Ward and all its horrors was. He saw it as a way of giving those restless spirits peace.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Because it appeared that the wards had done more than contain Wulf. They’d also containedthem. Thin, black shapes streaked past the now defunct wards, their screams and cries all too familiar. Everyone who’d ever been torn apart within those walls now rose from the wreckage. Jade gasped when she saw each black shape arrow in on Wulf, but I squeezed her tight in reassurance.

“Watch,” I prompted.

Because it wasn’t Wulf that was their prey; it was Luther.

He’d taken away their liberty, their humanity and, finally, their lives. But they’d waited for a hundred years to get their revenge and now they had it. Luther’s body jerked as each spirit slammed into him, squeezing small cries of pain out of him, to be choked off then repeated as another, then another swooped in. They massed like a school of feeding sharks, tearing off parts of him like those predators of the sea might do to the corpse of a dead whale, until his whole body shivered and then…

“Now I understand…”

Madeline stepped forward, over the wreckage of Z Ward and towards Wulf, whose strength was failing him. His arms shook, his knees gave out and he came crashing down onto the ground. But the spirits would not be denied.

“Take me down,” Jade said, patting at my arm as we watched Wulf fall. “Carrick—”

“You want to be with him in his final moments.” I nodded sharply and then flew us back down.

Her feet stumbled on the broken bricks and we all rushed to prevent her from falling. She gripped my arm tight as we moved closer. A golden light bathed Wulf’s form, even as Luther’s was being swallowed by a swarming mass of black spirits. But that light was pitiless, illuminating all of Wulf’s twitches and jerks as his own life force left him. His chest laboured as he fought to take each breath, but his eyelids flickered then opened when Jade dropped down beside him.

“Wulf…”

He tried to smile, but his lips could only twitch then form a grimace of pain.

“It was worth it, lass,” he told her. “To be free… And you gave me that.” His eyes rolled upwards. “To see the stars in the open sky again. To know that I could reach up and touch them.” His hand rose, claws extending, and then fell limply, before he turned his gaze back to Jade. “I just wanted that and… you.”

She dived forward, wrapping her arms around his neck. As she clung to him, I knew what she was doing. It was as if by holding onto his corporeal body, she could keep him with her, with us.

But that could not be: that was Luther’s final act of abuse.

He could not go to the circle of hell with his name on it without Wulf going there with him. And so my brother nestled incloser to Jade, taking that small moment of comfort before it too was snatched from him.

“No. I won’t let you,” she ground out, lifting her head, then her hands, and I saw the white glow between her palms.

“No, Jade…” I started forward and so did the others, right as Madeline stepped closer.

“Into the light,” Madeline said, holding out her hands, and, as we watched, an act of true magic took place. The black spirits that were devouring Luther seemed to still at the sound of her voice. “Let go of the pain, of everything, and move on to the next world. Move into the light and everything you seek will be found.”

The spirits paled slightly, seeming to stare at her like lions disturbed while eating their prey. She persisted, staring up at the moon, all of its cool glow focussed on her. The light in Jade’s palms seemed to brighten as well, the two women’s powers joining together.

“Into the light,” Jade said, much more sadly, stroking Wulf’s face, tracing its shape, even as his eyes failed him. They became more grey, stony, unseeing by the second, as a familiar grey scale mottled his flesh. When a gargoyle dies, he goes to stone one last time, leaving behind him a body, but not a soul to animate it. He let out one long shuddering breath, then another and then his breath stopped.

All of the fires that Luther had lit had been extinguished, as his strength had faded. But a new light flared to life now. Those former dark shades became motes of light, like fireflies, spiralling upwards. Madeline smiled, then laughed, the beautiful girl who had danced through Master Kenneth’s ballroom right back here on the grounds. The little points of light seemed to mass in her hands, right before she threw them into the air to go flying upwards. To where? I wouldn’t know, not until I took mylast breath, but when finally the last bright mote floated away, Madeline turned to us.

“I’ve fulfilled my promise to you,” she said. “You have found your fated mate, and so will gargoyles everywhere.” We followed her gaze to where Caraxes and Axton’s stone forms stood amongst the rubble. “You will be freed from the loopholes in the curse of the Fall that bound you to warlocks, not witches and—”

“What about Wulf?”

Jade’s voice was so distorted by a potent mix of tears and anger I didn’t recognise it immediately, but when she pulled away from the now stone form of my fallen brother, I saw it. The deadly kind of determination which the Whiteleys were known for, but in quite a different form. Hers made her glow from within, with the light in her palms growing brighter.

“You promised that all of the gargoyles of the house would find their fated mates,” Jade insisted. “Not that one would find her and then…” Her voice broke as she looked down at Wulf, her fingers flexing. “And then die. That wasn’t part of the promise.”

“Jade—” Graven started to say.

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