LEVIATHAN
The quarry district is exactly the kind of place I would choose if I were a gargoyle trying to make myself impossible to find. Everything is stone or covered in enough dust to pretend it is, from the retaining walls cut into the hills to the abandoned processing buildings lining the road.
Even the asphalt eventually gives up and turns into loose gravel beneath Amand’s tires, each little rock popping against the underside of the car while I lean toward the passenger window and try to follow a scent that keeps getting swallowed by the landscape.
Medusa’s magic is easier to catch than her ex’s.
Hers has that ancient sharpness I recognized at the wolf’s house, while his sits beneath it like wet stone after a storm.
The problem is that the entire fucking quarry smells like wet stone after a storm, which makes me want to climb out of the car and personally fight every rock in sight.
“Slow down,” I tell Amand as the signature strengthens near a narrow road between two abandoned buildings.
He eases off the gas while I breathe through my nose, separating magic from dust, machinery, and the faint scent of a fox shifter working somewhere nearby.
Rowan is in the back while Medusa follows in her own car, which means nobody has to spend the drive pretending a scarf makes a head full of petrifying snakes less concerning.
I’m choosing not to comment on how relieved Rowan looked when she headed for her own vehicle because the bastard will absolutely find a way to retaliate later.
“Here.” I point toward an old loading dock, catching something scorched beneath the mixed signatures.
Amand parks and I’m outside before anyone can tell me not to wander off alone, his jacket still wrapped around me from earlier because seventy degrees is apparently too much to ask of Mother Nature.
The building feels like it’s been empty for years, but someone has been using it recently.
Footprints cross the dust in several directions and fresh food containers sit beside rusted equipment, while deeper inside, the sharp smell of Medusa’s magic becomes strong enough that I stop pretending this might be another dead end.
The first thing I find is a rat.
Or half of one.
Its front legs, chest, and head have been turned to stone while the rest remains fur and flesh, the tiny body stiff beneath the remains of an old conveyor belt.
I crouch without touching it and inhale, catching Medusa’s signature tangled with the same mineral scent from this morning.
“He didn’t get the whole thing,” I say as she approaches, and her expression hardens when she recognizes her magic.
A few feet away, Rowan finds a bird with one petrified wing and half its chest hardened into gray stone. The next attempt is larger, a rabbit curled beneath a broken crate with its hindquarters petrified while the rest of it remains untouched.
None of them survived, and the progression makes my stomach tighten as I move farther into the building. He didn’t start with the wolf. He practiced until he knew exactly how much magic he needed to force through a piece of Medusa that was never supposed to answer to him.
Amand calls my name from near the back wall, the tone enough to make me move faster.
There’s a boot lying on its side beside a dark stain on the concrete, except the gray shape protruding from the top isn’t a mannequin or a chunk of stone.
It’s a leg ending several inches above the ankle, the petrification stopping unevenly where flesh should continue.
I crouch beside it and catch the faint signature of another shifter beneath the dried blood.
Whoever they were, they were alive when they left here.
The amount of blood suggests they didn’t have much time to think before deciding that losing a leg was better than waiting to see whether the stone continued spreading.
“He cut it off,” Medusa says quietly from behind us. Her snakes have gone still beneath the scarf, and for the first time since meeting her, there isn’t even a hint of amusement in her expression.
“Looks that way.” I stand and let my gaze travel over the room again, mentally arranging what we found in order.
Small animal. Larger animal. Shifter. Then the wolf this morning, completely petrified from head to toe while still conscious inside the stone.
Her ex is learning fast, and every attempt is cleaner than the one before it.
Near the back of the building, an old workbench gives us the clearest evidence yet.
There are scorched marks across the wood, several pieces of cracked stone, translucent strips of shed snakeskin, and shallow grooves carved through chunks of limestone.
Medusa picks up one of the skins carefully between two fingers and confirms it came from her severed snake, which means the bastard has been keeping it here long enough for the thing to shed while he experimented.
Amand turns over one of the damaged stones, his eyes narrowing at the scorch marks running through it. “He may have been trying to force the petrification through something else. See if he could use the snake without direct contact.”
I start chewing on my bottom lip as I rock back and forth for a second.
“That means the wolf may not have been close enough to see what hit him before his body started hardening.” I shove that thought aside and follow the strongest trail toward the back exit, with Rowan moving ahead of me and Amand close enough that his hand keeps brushing mine.
The scent carries across the loading yard before cutting off beside a limestone wall.
I stop so fast Amand nearly walks into me, his hand catching my waist while Rowan moves ahead and crouches near the gravel.
He drags his fingers through the loose stone, following the last visible tracks until they disappear.
“Nothing leaves from here,” he says, looking up at the wall before tipping his head toward the sky.
“No drag marks. No sign he pushed off hard enough to fly.”
I scent above us anyway, leaning back slightly when Amand’s palm stays firm against my stomach to keep me from wandering directly into the rock.
“Nothing up there either. Flying wouldn’t erase his magic, and neither would shifting.
” I chew on the inside of my cheek while staring at the place where the signature simply stops.
“He walked right up to this wall and then somehow decided the normal rules of magic no longer applied to him.”
“Could turning to stone change what you’re smelling?” Amand asks. His thumb moves absently against my side while he studies the limestone, and I settle against him for half a second before remembering I’m supposed to be annoyed rather than enjoying myself.
“I don’t know.” Gray creeps over the backs of my hands before I notice my Chameleon magic reacting to the wall.
I flex my fingers until my skin comes back, and Amand catches one hand before I can shove it into my pocket.
“Mine doesn’t vanish when I blend. Gerald can still track me if he knows what he’s looking for, so unless gargoyle magic works completely differently, there should be something. ”
Amand rubs his thumb over my knuckles, watching the last patch of gray disappear. “You’re doing that more.”
“I’m also being irritated more. There may be a connection.” I keep hold of his hand while Medusa approaches, the scarf over her snakes shifting every few seconds. “Please tell me somebody saw your asshole of an ex before he developed the ability to walk through solid rock.”
“His mate didn’t see him.” Medusa stops beside Rowan and looks toward the wall. “He heard scraping outside shortly before the wolf came downstairs, but he never saw who made it. He doesn’t recognize my ex and says they’ve never met.”
I rock back on my heels, still holding Amand’s hand while Rowan rises. “So we have scraping, his scent leading straight here, and absolutely nothing after it.” My empty coffee cup is still sitting in the car, which suddenly feels like a personal betrayal. “How well does he know this place?”
“Better than you’re going to like.” Medusa folds her arms beneath her chest. “He worked in the quarry district for years. Restoration, structural repair, old stonework. If someone wanted a gargoyle who understood what a building was doing before it collapsed on them, they called him.”
Rowan looks past her toward the rows of abandoned buildings and exposed quarry walls. “Then we’re searching his territory.”
“Which sounds much more depressing when you say it like that.” I finally let go of Amand’s hand and rub both palms over my face. “I need coffee before we keep doing this. Preferably somewhere your ex didn’t also secretly own.”
Medusa’s mouth twitches for the first time since we arrived. “There’s a place ten minutes away. He used to take me there, but I’m fairly certain he never bought it.”
The coffee shop is small enough that the four of us barely fit around one table.
Rowan sits close enough that his thigh stays pressed against mine while Amand takes the other side, his arm stretched behind my chair and his fingers occasionally brushing the back of my neck.
Medusa sits across from us with her snakes uncovered, three of them immediately becoming obsessed with the pastry beside her tea.
I wrap both hands around my coffee and sink a little deeper between my mates. “Six years, right? That’s how long you were with him?”
“Almost.” Medusa tears off a piece of pastry and has to pull it away when one of the snakes lunges for it.
“Long enough that I stopped paying attention to most of the gargoyle things he did. He stoned when he slept deeply, when he needed to heal, sometimes when he wanted to be left alone. It wasn’t unusual. ”
Amand’s fingers slide beneath my curls, and I tip my head toward the touch before asking, “What did he look like when he did it?”
“Usually like himself carved out of gray stone. Nothing dramatic.” Medusa pauses, her eyes narrowing slightly as she thinks. “There were times I couldn’t find him right away, though. Mostly outside. Once or twice at hotels, and a few times around here.”
I stop leaning into Amand’s hand. “Wait. You knew he’d turned to stone, but you still couldn’t find him?”
“I knew he was nearby.” She pushes another snake away from her plate and takes a sip of tea. “I assumed he was hiding behind something because he thought it was funny to make me look for him. Eventually he’d move or change back, and I never cared enough to ask where he’d been sitting.”
Rowan’s hand settles on my thigh beneath the table, his thumb pressing once against the inside of my leg while he looks at Medusa. “Did you ever notice anything strange about the stone itself?”
“No.” She shakes her head slowly. “But I also wasn’t looking for anything strange. He was my boyfriend, not a case.”
I stare into my coffee for a second, then glance toward the quarry through the window.
“The trail at the wolf’s house ended against stone.
This one ended against stone too, and now you’re telling me there were times he could stone himself somewhere nearby and you couldn’t immediately find him.
” Rowan’s fingers tighten slightly on my thigh as I look back at Medusa.
“I don’t know what that means yet, but I’m done assuming the trail disappears because he leaves. ”