5. Geo
The trip to the library was short, aided by two cars borrowed from the hospital’s parking garage. Getting them started was Bianca’s job, something she did with practiced ease. Cress and her coven packed themselves into the small vehicles, while the larger ones and especially the trucks went to the guardians and Crystal fae for the task of gathering supplies and people.
If I wasn’t escorting the two cars making the brief trip to the Cerris City Library, I would’ve flown right past it. It was a building made of chrome and glass, modernized with a flat roof and sharp angles. I’d gotten my hopes up for nothing. There were no gargoyles here, waiting in stasis for when they would be needed most. I was the only stone protector this library had.
It seemed the building was made very recently, without the spacious eaves where a gargoyle could perch. I flew overtop it, frowning to myself and recognizing why modernization had moved away from my kind.
The creation of gargoyles was outlawed some time ago due to a moral argument. Something I had experienced personally: ritually placing a witch’s soul inside of a stone heart to animate a gargoyle made the resulting construct a new person with its own life to live, if they came to realize it.
Once most of us took our human forms of flesh and blood, we were loath to return, inevitably abandoning the duty we’d been created to perform. It was unfortunate that I was seeing the downsides of this, with a lack of protectors to call upon when this library needed it most.
What a hypocrite my disappointment made me. I felt muffled and numb in my stone form now. I’d been out of it long enough that it felt like I was suffocating the complexity of my emotions. If I stayed this way too long, it would all fade until only cold reasoning was left, and what a shame that would be.
I was no longer comforted by unfeeling duty. My heart belonged to the purple-haired witch exiting one of the cars two stories below where I flew. When I’d awoken from self-imposed stasis, my duty had simply been her.
Her wants, needs, goals, dreams. My stone heart resonated for Cress, and she was mine. My purpose, my future.The reason I craved the warmth and illogicality of emotion within me once more.
I completed one last, wider pass overhead to check for threats before coming in for a landing on the sidewalk nearby. At the last second, I checked my momentum to set down my obsidian body without cratering the cement underfoot. I only remained a gargoyle for the authority it gave me…if the librarians within this space would give me jurisdiction as its new protector.
“Door’s open,” Roe said, holding back what looked to be a solid pane of glass for everyone else to pass through.
“The defenses here are insufficient,” I ground out. “How are we to hold control of a house of glass?”
Cress was the one who answered. “Easy. Everything of value is down below.”
“I don’t like the idea of enemies three layers above our heads,” I replied.
She went ahead of me into the library’s inside foyer, head bent over her handbook. It replied in a squeaky, “You got it, toots! Look for hostiles quietly!”
“Quietly,” she hissed back.
“Yup!” It flapped off to fly around the first floor. I stood next to Cress and watched it go with a low, rumbling chuckle.
In my stone form, I towered over her, taller in stature than any human man and much broader even with my wings folded as tight as they would go to my back. I carried a new addition, too, a shield made of tempered crystal. It was a gift from Prince Orthus and was as large as my torso. It’d already come in handy for our last fight, and Cress liked it, finding it delightful with how it rang from the touch of sunlight and glittered like an opal. If I appreciated its function and she enjoyed its form, then it was perfect in my eyes.
I likened it to myself, as I had been sculpted and given new life for her. She enjoyed my form and functions quite a bit in private. My longing was a meager ember compared to normal, yet I yearned to touch her, to take her hand. I flexed my digits as much as they would bend, frustrated with how it felt I was working with an oven mitt rather than graceful fingers to twine with hers.
Later, I thought. In my own head, I was as taciturn as ever.
Would I have Cress to myself soon? Yes.
Would Ben join us? Probably yes.
Did I care? Hmm.
No. He could assist in clearing away her troubles for an evening. And if the dimensional returned… When he returned, Phaeron could join us. His absence was grinding through her thoughts, creating the shadows that danced in her eyes. If he was that important to her, then it was time for my pride to take a step back so I could fulfill my duty as her man.
“…Geo? Are you even listening?” Cress’s voice cut through my thoughts. I refocused my quartz-formed eyes, realizing I’d stalled in place, gazing down at her absentmindedly. And apparently, she’d been trying to talk to me all the while, as her lip was quirked with annoyance and she crossed her arms.
“My apologies,” I said. I was merely daydreaming of you.
“I was saying we should head down a level and see if there are any librarian witches still at work here.”
“A sound plan,” I answered. The library’s inside was familiar, though the stacks were sparser than I was used to.
“Wait,” whispered áine. She’d declared herself the eighth member of the coven and tagged along with us, along with Jordan Evenstar, as Ben had not been able to dissuade her. A good thing, too, with their abilities.
áine pointed to the left, where the handbook had stopped and bobbed in place ten feet above the ground. It was analyzing something.
A vine as thick as one of my stone fingers sprang from áine’s wrist, unspooling at her will as curls of green mist rose from her palms. Someone yelped behind one of the stacks when áine made a circular motion with her hand and tugged backward. The plant returned to her, towing along a young teen by a loop of vine curled around his ankle. He clawed at the ground in futility. When I checked his aura, sure enough, he bore a weak but fluid halo of shifter magic.
He also hissed when áine released him from the vine. “You are not a librarian,” I stated.
“Obviously,” the kid muttered, standing and dusting himself off. His gaze flickered between us and he ran a hand through unruly russet-brown hair a shade darker than his skin. “If you guys are looking for a place to stay, keep going. The library’s closed.”
“We are looking for the librarian witches,” I stated.
He shrugged sharply. “And they don’t want to see anybody.”
“We’re here to help,” Cress put in hastily. She patted the sword fastened to her hip. “I’m a librarian too.”
“That might be different. Wait here,” he said. Without waiting for a reply, he moved behind the nearest stack and shifted. His clothes hit the ground with a rustle before he dashed away on the four padded feet of a brown tabby cat.
Cress watched him go, smiling broadly. “Aww, look how cute he is.”She stooped to pick up one of her familiars, Bella, who purred in her hold. The other two had listened to her instruct her handbook and disappeared into the first floor to search for dangers.
“Not that I know many shifters, babe,” said Ben. “But I think they’d object to being called cute.”
Her expression barely dimmed. “I thought shifters were only able to turn into bigger animals?” she asked.
Roe was the one to pitch in while everyone else waited in various states of nervous idleness. “There are shifters of pretty much every animal you can imagine. They just keep to their own clans for the most part.”
There was a loud snap. Several of us glanced over at Wren, who was chewing gum with a few aggressive pops in her mouth. “Two bucks says the kid ditched us,” she said.
“Let’s give him a little benefit of the doubt. The librarians will trust him more than us,” Cress said.
Wren released a little “hmph.”
A few minutes later, the cat shifter returned, leading a woman toward us who didn’t look much older than Cress and her friends. “Oh, wow. A real gargoyle,” she said, stopping short when she spotted me. “No wonder Steven was in such a fuss!”
The cat’s ears pinned back, and he growled before going back around the stack to shift back. I heard the rustling of clothes before he emerged wearing what he’d shifted out of. “There’s a gargoyle and a librarian, and they wanted to talk to you,” he said.
“Hi, I’m Aurora,” she said, waving to me shyly.
“Greetings. I am Geo.”
“Nice to meet you, Geo. Is that short for anything?”
“No.”
Ben muffled a snicker behind his hand. The librarian shifted on her feet, still looking uncertain as she took in our group. “Well, okay then. If you’re trying to find shelter, I’m afraid we’ve closed the library. There are dangerous, unstable creatures down below that are trying to escape their containment rooms. It’s not safe.”
“We are here to offer assistance and partnership,” I said.
“And Ashbough Protective Services is only a couple miles away to shelter and protect any civilians you might have,” Roe added, gesturing toward the shifter boy.
She glanced at him. “Oh, Steven? He’s practically our mascot. We, err…” She leaned in, lowering her voice. “Most of the staff abandoned Cerris City right before the lockdown. If you’re really here to help, jump in and do it. Those of us who stayed can barely keep up with what’s going on down below.”
“We definitely want to help,” Cress said.
“We’ll do so as a group, though. As a fair warning, you should know that many of us are new to our magic,” Roe added.
The other librarian nodded, waving the concern away hastily. “Let’s be on our way. The powercore is going to need contact with you first”—she nodded to Cress—“and then it will communicate where you’re most needed.”
Cress nodded, determination creasing her face. “Let’s go.”