Charlie Fletcher [Stoneheart Ironhand (v5.0) (epub)

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.”And because the earnestness of her belief in him was so unexpected and so sharp, George immediately felt as if he wanted to escape the moment.“Come on, then.Let’s go see the Friar.”And because she felt buoyed by his confidence, and strangely comfortable that he had her back, she straightened, walked ahead of him into the dwindling rain shower, and pointed down the road.“Blackfriars is down this way.”Because she was ahead of him, she didn’t see the stone gargoyle take a headfirst leap off the gutter along the top edge of the alley, falling like the half ton of rock that it was, before its batlike wings snapped open.It swooped upward, one foot-talon neatly hitting George between his shoulder blades while the other closed around his ankle like a gin trap.And because a half ton of wet sandstone packs quite a punch, Edie didn’t hear George yell.He couldn’t yell.All the air had been knocked out of him as the gargoyle carried him, looping up and away into the darkening sky.Instead Edie turned around to see what was taking George so long, and saw nothing.No George where an instant before there had been, and no friendly face in the stream of wet pedestrians hurrying along the pavement.No one watching her back.It was as if someone had thrown a switch and George had simply been turned off.Edie was alone.CHAPTER SEVENThe IcarusThere was a pop, and unseen by anyone hurrying through the rain-spattered fastness of Old Change Court, the Walker stepped out of his portable mirror and looked around.There were only a few young office workers chattering and laughing their way to the pub near the bus stop.He slotted in behind and followed them across the square.Their talk withered as he trailed them, becoming less cheery and more gloomy—and then dying off into an uncomfortable silence.He stopped and let them carry on into the street, plans for a convivial beer before going home having become significantly less appealing, but for no reason that any of them could have put a finger on.He stopped by a pinch-waisted bronze plinth, on the top of which stood a grotesquely distorted winged figure.From the back he was naked, attached to chopped-off wings by a torturous harness that looked more like an instrument of punishment than a means of flight.His head was jammed uncomfortably backward, and his torso was bound inside an openwork breastplate device that curved around the front, hiding his face and trapping his arms within.It was a monument to agony, not flight.It whimpered as the Walker came around to the front, where the only human pieces visible were the legs, buckling under the weight of the painful apparatus.“Icarus, I thought you might like to know.Your brother is dead.”The Icarus flinched and started to twitch.After a moment, low stifled moans began to emerge from the brutal constriction of the cage hiding the face and torso.“Yes.Your brother, the Minotaur.The Minotaur that was sculpted by the same maker as yours.Your brother is dead.”The Icarus screamed, a deep man’s scream, horrifying and raw, though muffled, as though the mouth hidden inside the apparatus was sewn shut.“Yes.He died badly.I could do nothing to stop it.”The scream changed tempo and was punctuated by rhythmic panting sobs as the man, or the creature within, absorbed the news.“I thought you might like to help me find the people who did it.Two children.I have a use for them, but if you bring them to me, I will give them to you when I am done.You have my word.”The Icarus screamed more deeply, as if some of the stitches in his lips had been ripped out with the force of his previous cries.He hopped grotesquely, awkwardly, off the plinth and landed in a kind of hunched squat, his chopped-off wing tips clapping together above his head in furious eagerness.CHAPTER EIGHTAirborneEverybody wants to fly.At some stage in their lives, everyone looks up in the sky and sees the seeming effortlessness of a bird in the gulf of air overhead and thinks: I wish, just one time, that could be me.Nobody wants to fly like George was flying.He was upside down, back arched, staring at the ground below, winded by the sledgehammer blow between his shoulder blades, gagging soundlessly for a breath that just wouldn’t come.All he could do was reach a despairing hand back toward the rapidly diminishing figure of Edie as she spun the wrong way on the crowded pavement, trying to see where he’d gone.She was turning like a leaf caught in the whirlpool of a fast-moving stream, looking everywhere but the right way, which was up.And then, just as his vision started to spot and dim through lack of oxygen, he found a breath and took a deep whooping lungful of air, then another, and yelled— at the very moment the gargoyle crested a building, and Edie was lost to his sight.“Edie!”He shouted his throat raw in one ragged word that tore out of him like the death of hope, but his yell was lost in the greater noise of the city below.Above him he heard the gargoyle hiss in disapproval, and felt its grip on his leg tighten.In a couple of thunderous wing flaps, they had cleared the next block of buildings and were flying across the Thames.George looked at the water below, then he looked up just in time to see the stone creature taking a quick glance down at him.In the microsecond that they were face-to-face, he recognized the snarling cat head.He gaped in disbelief.“Spout?!”There was no doubt in his mind.This was the gargoyle he’d called Spout, the gargoyle who had tried to kill him at the Monument—the gargoyle he had seen shot to smithereens by the Gunner.The taint that was definitely dead.“But you’re dead!”The gargoyle hissed, and George turned and saw the brick face of the industrial chimney above the Tate Modern building coming closer and closer [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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