“Only the ashes of the amsirah who once resided there and their empty homes.I’m assuming they were amsirah because of the lightning rods on the homes, but I could be mistaken.”
“Only ashes, you say?”the third asked.
The amusement in its voice was unmistakable.I exchanged an uneasy look with Scarlet.
“Yes.There are thousands of piles of ash and clothing throughout the town,” Tucker said.
“They were amsirah,” the third confirmed.
If it could smile, I was certain it would be beaming ear to ear.
“What happened to them?”I asked and was happy when my voice didn’t tremble.
“They killed themselves.”
And now we were back to this, except there wasnowayall those amsirah turned themselves into piles of ash.Something else happened to them, and I was certain the gargoyles knew what it was.
“How?”Tucker asked again.
“They paid the price for stealing the Heart of Stone.”
CHAPTERSIXTY-THREE
Ellery
“The gem,”I whispered.“Where did they steal it from?”
“Fromusssss.”
The hissed word “us”was full of malevolence.While they couldn’t all speak to us, I felt it emanating from all the statues.
“That pulsating stone in the town belongs to you?”Tucker asked.
“It’s not pulsating; it’s beating,” the third answered.
“For us,” the fourth added.
“And the stone destroyed those amsirah?”Tucker asked.
“Without us, its power grows until it becomes too much to contain.When that happens, the energy it releases becomes destructive,” the third said.
“The magnetic storms,” Scarlet whispered.
“We don’t know what those are.”
The fact the third one had said,wedon’t know what those are, instead ofI, really made the telecommunication possibility more real.Are they plottingagainstus?
“The stone isours,” the third continued.“Their greed made them steal it from us, but it isours.”
“Why would they want it?”I asked.“It doesn’t do anything.”
“It is a great source of power.”
“And whether they could harvest that power for themselves or not, they still wanted to control it,” Ryker said.
“Yesssss.”
“Sounds like our ancestors were as greedy and incompetent as our current leaders,” Ianto said.
