Chapter 47 Leo
The pipe never landed.
I felt the weight of it overhead. The air had shifted, metal poised, cold and final. There was a pause in the room that wasn’t silence so much as held breath, like the world itself flinched.
Then came the groan.
Low and slow, like wood splitting beneath ice.
My eyes snapped open. Not fully. My left one was swollen shut. Blood soaked my temple, hot and thick. The taste of copper filled my mouth. But I was still here. Still breathing.
And the thing above me… it wasn’t moving.
The gargoyle hung midair like a marionette with cut strings. Limbs rigid. Muscles locked. Jaw cracked wide in a frozen snarl.
His eyes were wrong. Not just wide. Terrified.
He wasn’t looking at me.
He was looking past me.
I turned my head slowly, dizzy, until I saw her.
Kristen.
She was standing.
The ropes that had pinned her to the chair lay in a torn heap at her feet. Her arms were outstretched, fingers curled like talons. Her feet hovered half an inch off the ground. Her hair floated around her head like it was underwater.
And her eyes…
Crimson. Burning. No pupils. No white. Just two perfect orbs of blood-red light, staring through the world like she wasn’t part of it anymore.
Her face didn’t move. No rage. No fear. She looked like a statue. Like a god.
The gargoyle twitched.
Not a struggle. More like a seizure. His limbs shuddered, bones pressing against skin, like something inside him wanted out. He made a choking sound and clawed at the empty air.
“Help me!” he shrieked.
His voice was no longer calm or human. It cracked at the edges, warped like static through a broken speaker. “I can’t. I can’t shift. I can’t move. I CAN’T—”
Then it started.
His wings jerked backward, spread wide like he was trying to fly, and stopped.
Veins bulged across his throat. He screamed again, but this time it was wet, gargled. The skin at the base of his wings turned black, then tore.
Bone cracked like snapped branches.
His wings ripped free from his back.
There was no clean sever. No magic disintegration.
They tore loose in bloody chunks, shredded sinew dangling like ropes as they fell to the floor with a noise I’ll never forget.
Thud. Slap.
The next scream didn’t come from him.
It came from me.
His arms twisted at the shoulders, elbows bending the wrong way, claws flailing in circles until something inside gave. A sound like tearing leather, and then each arm jerked backward in a sharp, violent motion and tore clean from the socket.
Blood sprayed in twin arcs across the wall. Across me.
Warm and stinking.
He didn’t fall.
His torso still hung there, quivering, suspended by a force I couldn’t see, like some horrible puppet strung on invisible wire.
His legs curled in, then snapped straight. Both knees broke inward. The bones crunched. The thighs twisted unnaturally, and then detached. One. Two.
His body dropped two feet lower, just a limbless torso now, howling like a wounded animal.
There was nothing human left in that voice.
The air around Kristen shimmered. Her arms never moved. Her face didn’t change. She wasn’t here. She wasn’t seeing this.
She was something else.
The blood rolled off her in waves, never touching her skin. It curved away from her like she radiated pressure. The lights above flickered and burst.
He made one last sound. A kind of hissed gasp.
Then the torso folded in on itself. Crushed.
Ribs cracked inward, like an invisible hand was squeezing him shut. His spine splintered. And just like that, he imploded in midair, collapsed like a rotted fruit, spraying the room in viscera.
A single clawed hand fell to the floor, twitching.
Then nothing.
Kristen stood in the center of it all, her arms still raised, glowing like molten metal.
I couldn’t move at first.
Not because of the pain. Not because of the blood.
Because it was her.
And she wasn’t done.
The walls pulsed with the same red light that bled from her eyes. The chair she’d been tied to creaked, levitating an inch off the ground, then two. Nails squealed from wood as it began to twist and buckle.
I could feel it building.
More power. More violence.
There wouldn’t be a room left.
“Kristen.”
No reaction.
She didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe.
“Kristen, look at me.”
Her fingertips began to spark, veins glowing beneath the skin. Cracks formed in the concrete beneath her feet.
“KRISTEN, STOP.”
For a moment, I thought I was too late.
Then her head jerked.
Just slightly.
Like she heard something.
The light in her eyes dimmed, flickered. Her arms dropped an inch.
“Hey,” I whispered. “Come back. Please.”
Her arms fell limp.
The chair hit the ground with a bang.
The last scraps of the gargoyle’s body dropped like meat.
And she collapsed.
I caught her before her head hit the ground.
My arms were shaking. Everything hurt.
But I had her.
She was warm.
Still glowing slightly, like embers under skin, but fading. Fast.
Her eyelids fluttered. Her lips parted like she was going to speak, but no words came out.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “I’ve got you.”
She didn’t respond.
She was out cold.
I pulled her into my chest and forced myself to stand. My legs screamed. My ribs felt cracked. One of my eyes was still half-blind from blood.
But I moved.
I stumbled through the room, over shattered chairs, torn limbs, puddles of gore. I kicked the door open and fled into the night.
The cold air hit like a slap.
I ran across the lot, down the hill, to the tree line where my bike was hidden beneath a tarp. Threw it off. Mounted.
I loaded her onto the back, one arm around her waist, one hand on the throttle.
Then I drove.
Like hell.
The house was nearly dark when I got there.
The music was gone. The lights were low. The party had died while the nightmare lived elsewhere.
Only Anna stood in the doorway, arms crossed, phone in hand. She spotted me coming up the walk, engine still humming low beneath me.
Then she saw Kristen.
Then she saw the blood.
“Oh my god,” she said, running to meet me. “What the hell—what happened to her?”
“She’s fine,” I said. My voice was hoarse. Flat. “She’s okay now.”
“What happened to you?”
I glanced down.
Blood.
Not mine.
Some of it, maybe.
Most of it wasn’t.
“It’s a long story.”
Anna moved to help, eyes wide. “Is she—? Is she breathing?”
“Yes.”
“She looks…”
“I know.”
I lifted Kristen again. My arms were raw, muscles numb, but I carried her anyway.
Anna hovered at the door.
“Patricia’s still not back.”
I stopped.
Looked up at the sky.
Black. Empty.
No stars.
I looked down at Kristen in my arms.
Still unconscious. Still bleeding heat.
I looked at the door.
Then I looked at Anna.
And then I whispered, more to myself than to anyone else—
“What the fuck just happened?”