In The End: Gargoyle Saga

Chapter 9: A Vessel For Evil

'Hey!'

'No, I'm sorry, but it's true.' She turned to Tyr. 'They need to know that there is something behind all this, and for the life of me, I cannot figure it out.'

'What?' Dean and I said together.

Hadriana took a deep breath and explained, 'There is someone who is planning all of this, getting the demons to possess the Watchers. Demons possess humans, but they are going beyond this and are attacking the Watchers. Demons are stupid.' Justin hissed at her, but she ignored him. 'It takes someone who has a great deal of power to do something like this. The fact that they have Loki on their side and have somehow got hold of an Arthurian legend by the balls to keep the Watchers' bodies there...' she shuddered. 'Someone is the puppet master.'

'But how do you know the Watcher's bodies are there in Avalon?' I pressed. To me, it didn't make sense. It's true. I knew nothing about Avalon. There was some small text I read about during a lesson with Master Skye, but it just said that it was a place of magic and had a powerful source of magic that keeps everything at bay, but I was unsure what it meant.

Hadriana smiled, 'Avalon was created to keep heroes alive. Watchers are heroes as they protect the innocent. Plus, Dinglewood told me when the Watchers appeared, he really can't keep his mouth closed,' she shrugged.

Tyr groaned. 'And here I thought you were this smart person when really a silly little hobgoblin with a big mouth ran and told you.'

The immortal stood up and clapped her hands. 'Right, Tyr, go back to Tara and tell her what's going on, and while you are up there, send a message to Dagen and tell him to meet us at the foot of the Tor. We need to get those Watchers out.'

'I'm going to check on Rowan,' I muttered and headed out of the room. Feeling awkward, I turned to see Justin staring at his hands. A wave of sadness and guilt washed over me and I couldn't help but be plunged into these feelings. 

'Say hi to him for me,' Alina smiled.

Nodding, I had almost physically push these depressing feelings away and left Justin sitting quietly beside Alina.

Offo backed away when I went into Rowan's or my old room. Rowan looked like crap. Appearing very pale and a thin film of sweat coated his face, he was still unconscious and was groaning with each breath. He had a fever, that was for sure.

I went to sit beside him and a frown appeared on his forehead. 'What's wrong with him? I thought that we had made him better.'

'I'm sorry, Miss Verity, you had brought him back to life, but I believe that something was brought back with him.'

A bolt of cold horrifying shock went straight through me and it was then, that I knew. I had felt a dark presence in the castle, but I thought it was me. Now that I was practically sitting beside Rowan, did I feel an evilness around him... or more pointedly, in him.

'What do I do?' I took hold of Rowan's cold, clammy hand.

Offo sighed and, fetching a flannel, placed it against Rowan's forehead. 'It needs to be expelled from him. Rowan is fighting it; it hasn't controlled his body completely.'

'It? You mean it's a demon?'

'No,' he shook his head, dismissing my notion. 'It is evil. An essence of evil. It clearly escaped from the Norse hell and melded into an open wound.'

'But I... I didn't see anything come out.'

He gave me a sympathetic look, 'You can't see evil you can only see the actions of evil. Rowan is a gargoyle, a vessel of good. In order to get the evil out of a gargoyle you need a pure vessel. One that hasn't already been tainted with evil.' He glanced at me and already I knew what he was going to say.