He’s screaming now, begging, and I want to believe him. I do. But if I’m wrong— “No!” I scream as the beast turns toward Macy with a roar.
I shoot straight up in the air, race to get to her before he reaches her, but even as I fly faster than I ever have in my life, I know I’m not going to be fast enough. I know I’m going to be too late.
Xavier gets there a split second before I do. He throws himself in front of Macy, sends her careening to the ground behind him and takes the blow meant for her.
I can hear the bones shatter from where I am, can feel his skull crack and cave in even before he flies straight into the wall. He hits the ground with a sickening thud, but the beast doesn’t care. He reaches for Xavier’s leg, starts to pick him up, but it’s my turn to throw myself in front of Xavier.
I land between them, and I do what Hudson’s been begging me to do. I throw my arms up in the universal gesture for stop and scream, “No!” from the very depths of my soul.
102
We Are the Monsters
The Unkillable Beast rears back like I’ve struck him, so hard that he ends up stumbling and falling to the ground with a loud bellow that shakes every bone in my body. Shakes the very walls of the cavern.
But even as he screams, there’s that voice inside me again, telling me, No hurt, no hurt, and I realize Hudson is right. That voice I’ve been hearing since I got to Katmere, that voice that warned me every time trouble was coming, that voice that I was certain was my gargoyle, was actually the Unkillable Beast all along.
I have no idea how. I have no idea why. But right now, all I care about is saving my friends.
I rub a hand over my eyes to wipe the tears away and then look at it, really look at this stone giant, for the first time since I got here.
I look at the craggy, broken rocks of his exterior.
At the stone rubbed smooth beneath the iron shackles.
At the top of his head and the one broken remnant of a horn that rests there, and I realize what I should have known all along.
The reason Macy’s magic didn’t work on him.
The reason Jaxon’s telekinesis didn’t, either.
The reason Eden’s lightning and Flint’s ice didn’t so much as faze him isn’t because he’s all-powerful. It’s because, like me, he’s totally immune to magic.
Because he’s a gargoyle.
Not unkillable at all. Just a gargoyle—the last in existence besides me—chained up for a thousand years, if the lore is to be believed.
As I stare at him, this poor gargoyle, this poor, giant monster of a man—I put a hand to my own head, to the horns that have grown larger every time I’ve gained power, and look at him with new eyes. How many battles must he have survived, how many opponents must he have defeated to have grown as large as he is now?
The answer is unfathomable.
And we’ve only added to his agony.
Oh my God. What have we done?
What have we done?
I’m sorry, I say. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
I don’t know if I’m saying it to him or to Xavier or to Hudson or to all three. I just know that it’s my own hardheadedness that has brought us here, my flat-out refusal to listen to Hudson even when he begged me to, that led us to this exact moment in time. My inability to see anything in terms beyond black or white, good or bad. Savior or monster.
And now a moment I can’t change or take back, no matter how much I wish I could, stretches before me.
Behind me, Macy screams in agony, and I know what I’m going to find even before I look. Still, I turn around—keeping one arm extended to the beast to show that I mean him no more harm—just as she sinks to her knees, sobbing, beside Xavier.
I watch as she gathers him up in her arms and rocks him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
“No!” Flint yells as he tries to limp over to where we are. “No! No, don’t tell me that, please don’t tell me that. No!”
Eden’s back in human form, tears streaming down her face and Jaxon…Jaxon looks broken in a way I’ve never seen before.
Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry, the voice inside me says. Wolves are bad. I must protect her. I must save her.
I don’t know who he’s referring to and right now, I don’t think it matters. All that matters is that Xavier is dead. He’s dead and this poor, broken soul killed him, not because he wanted to but because I wouldn’t listen. Because I refused to see.
The horror and the grief turn my knees to nothing—just like the rest of me—and my legs go out from under me.