Chapter 20 – Cody
CODY
Istare into the flames as Jordon and Damon pretend to sleep. All of us have been upset since the shade left. They both want to pretend they don’t know why, but I can’t pretend.
My mother is one of the few female gargoyles in the sanctuary. From the time I was a boy growing up, my mother stressed how precious and important women and girls were. She said it was my responsibility to protect them. To protect anyone weaker than I was.
Not that she thought women were weak. No, she’d remind me of that in the same breath. She just said that women deserved to be treated like queens. Like women with their own minds and own strengths, but nearly worshipped by the men around them.
But is the shade a woman or a monster?
The gargoyle within me rages at the thought of a woman putting herself in a dangerous position to help me. Not just a dangerous situation, but one in which a man might touch her, when she doesn’t want him to. That feels wrong on every level.
But is it just because of my inexperience with monsters?
I rise from the fire and shift into my gargoyle form. Damon rolls my way, a question on his lips, but I flap my wings and shoot into the sky, away from the castle.
My mind is twisting and turning. If the shade is a monster, our job is to kill her.
To take one life to preserve hundreds of thousands.
The last monster we killed was a cyclops.
He had been gifted with the ability to shift his form.
And so, he would shift into that of a handsome man, meet women at bars, and drive them to his remote cabin.
There, he would shift back into a towering cyclops, a creature with one eye and a giant’s form.
He would tear their heads from their bodies and feast on their blood and bones.
We’d cornered him. We’d fought him, and we’d killed him.
But when Elliot shifted into his human form and went to the woman who was in danger, she’d dug a blade into his leg, shifting as she did so, so that she’d nearly torn his leg from his body.
It turned out we weren’t facing one cyclops, but two. Someone had warned them that we’d be coming, and they’d sprung a trap for us. We managed to kill the second cyclops, but it’d nearly cost Elliot his life.
Monsters were dangerous. They were tricksters. They could take on other forms and behave accordingly. Was that what this shade was doing?
Or was she as innocent as she seemed?
My stomach turns.
I rotate in the sky, knowing I shouldn’t get too far from the others. Not when we’re so close to the enemy. In the distance I see a shape, and realize that it’s Damon, coming after me.
Sighing, I realize that this has to happen. That he and I need to talk. That no matter what happens next, he can’t keep going on the way he has been, nor can I allow my inexperience to affect our Brotherhood.
I hear the smallest sound before the metal net closes around me.
Struggling against it, I’m disoriented. I can’t untangle my wings. I can’t reach my blade. But I have the horrifying sense of plummeting to the earth at a dangerously rapid speed.
And then I hit the ground. Hard.
Earth and leaves rise up in a dusty storm around me. I’ve left a crater in the earth, and my entire body rings like a gong that’s been struck over and over again. It makes my vision blurry and my body feel numb.
Suddenly, I see a dozen leering faces above me, with eyes glowing red and fangs bright under the moonlight.
Something attaches to my net, and then I’m being dragged at a rapid pace through the woods.
“Hurry!” someone shouts. “He must cross the barrier before the other gargoyles can save him.”
Trees whip around me, and I struggle to gain my freedom, sweat rolling down my back. If they get me near the castle, I’m doomed.
And my Brotherhood needs me.
Suddenly, my flesh shifts into my human form, and no matter how much I reach for my gargoyle form, it isn’t there. We slow and I see the lights of a hundred torches at the top of the castle walls.
Oh hell, it’s too late. I’ve been caught.
I’m such a fool.