Page 74 of Hearts of Stone

“No, brother…” Graven’s voice was low and reassuring. “Not like this.”

“Jade, you need to get out of here,” Harry said, shooting a wary look at the gargoyles. “We can tell you—”

“No!” Wulfstan seemed to come back to himself with a blink, those dark eyes focussing on me, his eyelids creasing in concern. “I mean, yes, that’s perhaps for the best.” It was as if he donned a mask then, covering up whatever the hell was going on and providing us with an intimidating facade to look upon. “Graven can tell you… what happened here.”

“I—” the gargoyle in question went to say.

“No.” I stepped forward, daring to get closer and seeing the moment Wulfstan flinched. “You said you’d tell me. Tell me what happened…” I swallowed, realising how intrusive that command was. “I mean, tell me what you can and then I’ll go. You promised.”

A tiny little smile, barely more than an involuntary twitch of his lips that was gone before I could even properly register whatit was, seemed to herald some sort of calm in him. All I got was a small nod in acknowledgment before Daniel came up to me.

“Jaaade…” he said, in a shaky voice. “You don’t need to do this. I might have said I wanted to know what the deal was, but ghosts are usually a whole lot less corporeal and they don’t look like they could crush your head with just a forefinger and a pinky.”

“It’ll be OK.”

“Pretty sure Fay Wray said the same before King Kong…y’know…”

“It’ll be fine,” I said, not sure which of us I was trying to persuade. “I’m supposed to be some sort of witch.” As I stepped forward, the light in my palms started to glow. “So, surely I can do this.”

“Tell your story, brother.” Carrick moved in and swept me up into his arms, not moving forward until my arm went around his shoulders. “Tell our mate what she needs to know and then let us be done with this.”

“Mate…?” I looked at him, then Wulfstan. “You’re also my—?”

“Mate,” Wulfstan confirmed, with a strange kind of resignation. “I’ve waited for you for thousands of years, lass, and now here you are.” He settled down on the steps that led up to the other cells on the next level and that seemed to relax everyone. “If you’d only come before this place was built. Before...” Those dark eyes fell to the floor, boring into it now. “Before that bastard tore everyone and everything inside these walls apart.”

I already knew about some of the exploits of Luther Whiteley, because the tour guide had described some of his more… objectionable… pursuits in detail. Cruelty in the early days of the mental health field was not a new thing, but what had set Luther apart was the level he’d gone to. He’d abandoned all pretence oftherapeutic goals inside these walls, indulging instead in an orgy of pain for his own pleasure.

Using Wulfstan as his weapon of choice.

“Magic takes energy,” Wulfstan said, in a quiet voice. “Witches, warlocks, they have to get their energy from somewhere, and in the old days it was from the land. Performing rituals at the solstices and equinoxes, harvesting potent herbs and plants to produce potions.” His focus shifted up, his eyes staring into mine. “Even gathering together to create a coven, with the power of everyone involved becoming more than the sum of its parts, using the collective to raise a different kind of power. Emotions are a very real, very potent well for a witch to draw from, so they might inspire greater depths in each other. For a practitioner of white magic, that well might be filled with love, loyalty, fealty, compassion.” His eyes slid sideways towards the room with all of the terrible apparatus inside it. “For followers of the dark, any emotion is useful.”

Everyone followed the line of his gaze, all of us easily able to imagine what those pieces of equipment might’ve been used for.

“But human beings aren’t all light or all dark,” Danny said, with a frown. He looked at the room, then back at us. “There’s plenty of people that do shit with gear far worse than that.”

“And no good can come from it,” Wulfstan muttered.

“What in the puritanical fuck?” Daniel replied. “I don’t know about gargoyles, but every human being hates as well as loves, feels sadness as well as joy. You can’t separate human experience into good and bad baskets.”

“No?” We all tensed when Wulfstan leaned forward, but it was just to rest his elbows on his knees. “What if you were to dive deep into that darkness, never bothering to come up for anything good? What if you allowed others to be dragged in by that undertow, without their consent? As they screamed, ‘No!’, begging to be spared from such things. What if you gloried insuch violence and depravity, so that the act was not what helped to raise your power but the violation of it? There are some who take pleasure from pain, it is true.”

He seemed to see Daniel clearly now, his eyes narrowing.

“But people like that rarely lasted long in Luther’s world. He didn’t want willing victims, because they weren’t the most potent fuel.” His eyes flicked around the massive lobby of Z Ward. “This place was built to be hell on earth and he ensured that the people locked up in here would not be missed by those citizens on the outside. Quite the opposite. If they died, well, good riddance to bad rubbish, most would’ve said. Rapists, murderers, child killers, not one of them was without sin, but… Luther didn’t trust the Christian hell to punish these sinners. He created this place and…”

Wulfstan’s eyes searched mine and there was something fragile there. Hope, I realised. But it died quickly and I felt a pang of loss.

“…he made me its Devil. He was a cruel and unyielding god and I was his means to punish the sinners. Over and over. I…”

When his voice caught on the words, when his claws flexed, as if he would tear the words he had to say from the air, I moved forward.

“But you didn’t want to,” I said, and somehow I knew that was true. The other gargoyles muttered to themselves when I got closer, but I kept moving. “That wasn’t what you wanted to do.” I climbed the steps, even though every muscle in my body quivered as I moved, until I reached him, seeing, feeling just how massive he was.

“Jade…” Graven growled.

“Watch yourself, brother,” Carrick said and, from the sounds behind me, I could tell he was moving slowly closer. This was confirmed when Wulfstan’s eyes jerked up, his whole bodytensing. His wings partially unfurled and rather than sitting on the step, he crouched, ready to leap into action.

“Wulfstan…” I said, hands outstretched, but he wasn’t seeing me. He wasn’t even seeing the others, I didn’t think. Something else was playing out in his head as his tail flicked back and forth. “Wulfstan, everything’s OK. You’re going to tell me your story and then we’re going to leave you in peace, remember?”

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