Page 135 of The Stone Initiation
Basques mouth turned down. “Yes. If he is alive then that is exactly what they’re doing, and if Romi breaks… If they take down his shields, then—”
“Your precious information will be in their hands.” I gave a bitter laugh. “Your son is in danger and that’s all you can think about?”
“No, Cameron. I couldn’t care less about the information. My concern is for my son’s soul and what it would mean for him to lose it.”
“Lionel?” Mistress Carter looked up at him, shocked.
“It’s all right Regina. She needs to know the truth if she’s going to succeed in the task we have for her.”
My pulse throbbed hard in my throat. “Tell me.”
“If the Graynites succeed in breaking through Romi’s shield, they will strip him of his soul.” He pressed his lips together. “And a gargoyle without a soul is a Graynite.”
* * *
His words tooka moment to sink in and even then, my brain refused to accept what they meant. He watched me in silence as I processed this information.
I needed to know if I’d understood him correctly. “Are you telling me that a Graynite is simply a gargoyle without a soul?”
“It’s a little more complicated that,” Basque said tightly. “But that’s all you need to know for now.”
But I wasn’t done yet. “Were all Graynites once gargoyles?”
His jaw ticked. “Yes.”
I sat back in my seat. “Fuck. And no one knows? The cadets? The initiates? The elites?”
“The elites are aware of the fact.”
“But how? How did this happen? History and—”
“You’re told what you need to know in order to do your jobs.”
“Wow. Hold onto the information and control the masses. Nice. I mean that’s never backfired before, has it?”
“Do you think telling the guardians that we expect them to kill creatures that were once just like them is going to help them be effective protectors to the human race? Do you think allowing them to feel empathy toward these creatures will be beneficial? One moment of hesitation is all that it takes for them to bring you down. They feed off souls, Cameron. Human, supernatural or Gargoyle, it matters not to them. They’re a threat, and they have my son.”
“How did the Graynites come to be? How did it start? I need to understand what I’m dealing with here?”
“It began with a curse,” Mistress Carter said, gaze flicking to Basque to check if it was okay to continue. He nodded. “We were dying. Losing against the gray and so the gargoyles made a deal with a powerful force.”
“What force?”
She shook her head. “That information is classified. I…Wedon’t know. All we know is that they were given the power to fight the gray, but the cost was their souls. A whole army lost their souls. The gray was defeated and the graynites were born.”
The graynites that they said came out of the gray just as it was pushed back through the rift. Not monsters, but heroesturnedinto monsters by a curse. “How can you live like this? Knowing only half the truth?”
“Because the truth of the past won’t change the present,” Basque said. “When the Graynites took Romi, it was no fluke. They took what they believed to be the only adult Basque in existence. They hoped to put us at a disadvantage against the alpha, which means that the alpha planned to surface.”
“But then they found out about me somehow…”
“Yes. Basques have never been very fertile. Our bloodline is dying out, so when you were born, I knew your life would be at risk from the graynites if they found out about you, and so I sent you away with your mother and hid you best I could.”
Which was why my mother had never registered me. “But then I surfaced and registered, and my blood went into the system.”
“Yes. Basic tests are done at the intake center, but the samples get sent to a lab where they’re tested further. We believe there may be a mole in our midst. If they get their hands on you then we’ll be left without any way to kill their alpha.”
“So what? You want me to hide out here and cower? They have my brother.”
