He hadn't anticipated how hard it would be to move without dislodging her. There was no saddle and nothing for her to hang on to. Elina clung to his stone mane.
She seemed to be smart and brave, so Gio hoped she was able to hold on. Trying not to move too abruptly, he trotted out the hole he had smashed in the wall.
He was now standing on the stone balcony. Gio wondered about Javic's suggestion that it might be possible to stonewalkout, even if they couldn't stonewalk in.
He began to sink into the stone even as he thought it. Hastily he wrenched himself out. It felt like dragging himself out of quicksand. Elina yelped from his back and clung tighter.
Okay, so itwaspossible to leave that way. He was briefly torn. Taking Elina somewhere and coming back for Max would make things easier and less risky, but he couldn't bear to leave Max behind. There was too much risk that he would collapse as he had earlier and leave her stranded. He refused to take the chance.
Where is Max?
It wasn't meant to be a question, but he felt a tug inside him, if his lion knew where she was.
He quickly realized, as he started trotting down the mountainside in the direction of the valley, that finding Max wasn't all that hard anyway. He just had to follow the sound of gunfire and explosions.
As he got used to the feeling of moving with a passenger, he was able to lengthen his stride. He charged toward the fray.
"There he is!" someone yelled.
Gio roared, unable to express his feelings any other way. His feelings were mostly wanting to yell at Javic to portal her out, damn it!
I have your sister, so if you take Max, we can all get out of here.
Which, being a lion, he couldn't outright say.
He saw Javic, who was easy to locate by a flash of flames. There was a yell from Max. And then Gio realized that he had misjudged the situation; Javic wasn't helping, he was attacking. Max was backed up against a cliff. Some of Javic's fiery wires were wrapped around her wrists and ankles.
Gio came charging into the middle of it. He smacked down the magic ropes with his paws and then tried to bite through them.
He couldn't tell Max to get on, but she took in the situation with a quick glance. Seeing Elina on his back, Max scrambled up behind her.
Gio tried to ask what was going on, and once again ran into the problem where all he could do was growl, a sound like rocks grinding together.
"My brother!" Elina gasped. "Is that my brother?"
"They've taken him over somehow!" Max snapped. "As soon as we confronted them—well, I'll tell you later. Get us out of here!"
Gio could have stonewalked now, but with attackers closing in, he couldn't risk taking the time; the passengers on his back were too vulnerable. He lunged to escape, bringing him very close to Javic. The young man's eyes were wide open, blank, and glowing. Behind him, a black-robed cultist was waving some sort of short, jeweled scepter. Gio didn't know what that was, but he could guess that it was somehow related to Javic's condition.
Javic gestured, and a wall of fire erupted in front of them, blocking their path. Gio veered wildly to the side to avoid it. He felt the unnerving sensation of his passengers starting to slide off his back and tried to modulate his speed.
"Javic!" Elina cried. She tried to twist around. "We can't just leave him!"
"We'll come back for him," Max promised, holding the girl with one arm and bending over Gio's mane. "There's nothing we can do if we get caught too—Gio, look out!"
A dart lanced past his nose. Gio recognized those darts; they were designed to work on gargoyles. In a past that hardly seemed real to him now, when he was still human, he had been hit with one of those: tranquilizing to gargoyles and lethal to humans. It was his friends' attempt to save his life that had led to his present condition, first of all trapped in a stone lion statue and then bonded to it as closely as to his own heart.
He sprang forward, trusting in Max to keep herself and Elina on his back. Somehow she did, bending low over the girl and clinging to his mane. They lost the blanket; it went sailing behind and tangled up with their pursuers.
A rifle cracked, and Max flattened low on his back. Gio felt a chip taken out of his hindquarters. It didn't exactly hurt, but it felt strange. He had to get them out of here. A little higher, and that should would have hit Max in the back.
He could also feel the trembling in his limbs that meant he was draining his energy dangerously low.
The pursuit took them into a dead-end canyon. Gio skidded to a halt. There was nowhere to go from here, but for this brief moment, boulders blocked their pursuers from the sight of them. He concentrated on stonewalking. Dimly he heard Max telling Elina to take a deep breath and hold on.
It was only as the rock closed around them, sealing them into a timeless nothingness, that he realized he had once again stonewalked with no destination in mind.
Panic nearly consumed him, but then Gio had the strange, completely novel feeling that his lion was frantically communing with Max's animal. He hadn't even realized that was possible, and in his present dazed state, he couldn't tell what they were saying to each other. But somehow, in some way, information passed between them, and suddenly he knew exactly where he was going. He could see it, smell it, and taste it—a wild place, high in the mountains, with fresh clean air. His lion liked it already.
