Excerpt: Trapped in Stone

Adrien heard the footsteps as they passed over the cemetery grass. Then a voice shot through the quiet.

“This is the time for mourning the loss of those beloved to us. This is the time for crying, and the time for sobbing. The time to sake our fists up to the sky and demand justice, yes, justice!”

Adrien had begun shaking at the sound of that voice, but it was not grief. A searing, boiling anger had risen up in him like a lightning strike, or perhaps like a volcanic eruption. His eyes were clearing, but he did not need them to know who spoke. He could recognize that sneer hidden in the modesty.

“Be quiet, Guardian! This is my daughters’ passing,” Granna barked savagely, and a murmur of astonishment rippled through the crowd. “There will be time enough for justice.”

“Just as our hearts mourn the death of Tara’s Guardian,” Goddrick went on as if he had not heard the old woman speak. Adrien though he would lounge towards him and in some single motion destroy the man where he stood. He thought he would go insane, lose control, implode, all at once. The bastard has forgotten my mother! My mother!

But Goddrick continued regardless, the solemn look on his face wearing thin as he approached the message he wanted to deliver to this crowd, to Tara. “We must also remember the death of a young man mercilessly murdered through the use of dark, wretched magic.”

“Shut up!” His voice had roared up from his belly with such ferocity that Leah had sprung back from him. Her face had changed from rising incredulity, into one of fear.

“We must remember Charles Thompson,” Goddrick finished, ignoring Adrien completely.

To his complete alarm, he heard consent rippling back through the crowd behind him. Adrien would have turned, done something, if Granna had not gripped his hand in a vice-like grip.

“And we must remember who murdered this innocent,” Goddrick finished. “For he stands here among us today, deceiving us with a mask of grief. Do not be deceived!”

Out of the corner of his eyes, Adrien saw a blond head cut through the crowd and stand before Goddrick. The likeness was visible, but they were not one and the same. Michael’s face was now plaintive whereas his father’s had begun to take on the shine of righteousness.

“Father, stop! For the gods’ sake, stop this!” He heard Michael plead. The crowd murmured again.

The cold eyes Goddrick turned upon his son revealed disgust seated deep inside of them. It revealed every dissatisfaction the man had felt about his son not just from the moment Adrien had stepped into their lives, but even before then. Perhaps all the way to the boy’s birth. It was merciless, and Michael shrank away from it, a horrified expression eating away at the small act he had tried to do on his behalf.

The crowd stood still. The pole bearers held up the coffins, unsure of whether or not they should take them away from the sunlight with such discord in the air. Everyone waited for what would happen next.

Adrien stepped forward, his eyes fixed on Goddrick with a murderous intensity he could not quell. He might have been aware of the look on his face did not serve to champion his cause, but he felt entitled to such rage.

“You lie, Guardian. You have invaded our homes pretending to seek justice, you lie!” Astounded silence rung through the cemetery. “You accuse me of a tragedy I did not cause, as if that would excuse your occupation of this land!”

Goddrick’s mouth turned up into a cruel sneer. “The guilty always fabricate diversions to escape guilt.”

“I am not guilty of anything! You are! You killed my mother, you killed the Guardian! You killed them all!”

He had not waited to stop shouting to move. The minute Adrien had flung his first accusation at the Guardian, he had ran at him, preparing his strength and his power to meet him head on. He had felt his bones sing with the very strength of the Earth, and he knew he would crush Goddrick with the first hand he laid on him. Crush every bone in his body with such a force that he would crumple on to the ground in a lifeless heap.

Yes, his mind screamed inside his head, Yes, kill him! Destroy him! It dissolved into senseless noise, a towering rage that possessed every fiber of his being.
The bastard jumped back from his reach before Adrien had a chance to lay a hand on him, and with the same movement two of the guards stepped in front as if they were marionettes responding to an invisible command. The guards reached out, their eyes empty and their movements stiff, and each clasped his hands.

The power went into them like the clap of thunder. A hallow, sickening crunch was heard as their faces flared with incredible pain—a brief but horrible outburst of consciousness—and then their bodies crumpled into nothingness. A mass of boneless flesh, blood seeping out of every orifice, flopped down towards the floor with the flaccidity of rubber.

Screams broke out from the funeral crowd, the other guards jumped and stepped back from Adrien, Granna and Michael both raced up towards him but stopped short. They were afraid—out of their minds with fear. He could hear it in the voices of those who screamed, and continued screaming in horror. He could see it in the faces of the guards, pulled back without the pretense to defend themselves, but paralyzed.

He knew he had lost and Goddrick knew this as well. The bastard grinned at him from where he stood at the entrance to the mausoleum. The pole bearers had scattered and dropped the coffins, now laying askance on the ground, the wreaths disturbed but still, mercifully, closed.

Adrien raised his hands and looked at them as if they were alien limbs attached to his body, possessed by a will that was not his own. He stumbled back, maintaining his balance only just slightly, almost crashing into Michael who fled away from him.

“I killed them,” he breathed out in shock and desperation. Goddrick heard him, Goddrick sneered at him with so much contempt and malice that fear shot through Adrien’s body like a bolt of electricity.

“You killed them,” the Guardian agreed, now marching towards him. “And you will pay for it, Adrien Dounay. For their deaths and many more.”

Goddrick was still approaching him, a hand out before him like a menacing claw. Adrien could feel the tendrils of the Guardian’s power wrapping around him, immobilizing him slowly like a predator’s toxin, or a net winding tightly around him.