Adelpha froze at the cold, mocking tone and turned slowly and suspiciously to behold a strange, winged figure in the shadows of the building behind her. Her eyes glared red as she posed to face whoever had dared to spy on her.
"Show yourself!" she demanded, and the shadowed figure obliged, approaching her with an almost creeping gait. She drew her breath sharply as she realized that it was not a creature, but a machine designed to resemble a gargoyle. Curiously, she examined the robot's titanium body and heavily armed limbs, quite sure she was correctly recognizing the traits of a Xanatos Enterprises custom job. But this was unlike any of the Steelclan variations that Xanatos and Lexington had developed over the years to guard the castle, spy on criminal activity, and provide reasonable doubt for any instances of gargoyle sightings that made the papers. Its movement was less robotic and more fluid. It seemed almost slithery as it drew near. Its mechanisms were nearly silent, except for an almost indiscernible creaking sound as the lenses of its "eyes" shifted and scanned over the defensive female gargoyle standing before it.
"What is this?" she demanded irritably, not addressing the machine directly, "Did Xanatos send a robot to see that I behave myself?"
"No, dear Sister," the robot replied in a sly tone, "No one has sent me. I come to you on my own, in earnest!"
"Sister?" she repeated slowly, a possibility taking form in her mind, as she circled the robot critically and called out, "Lexington? Is this some joke of yours?"
Then, in a display of uncanny horror that caused Adelpha to gasp and nearly jump, the robot's cold mechanical facial features twisted into an eerie grin, and its sound system emitted a simulated laugh that could make blood freeze. Quite alarmed and disgusted by this weird machine, Adelpha retreated to the back of the bronze eagle, as if to leave the monstrosity behind, but a serpentine tentacle sprang out from the robot's arm and seized her at the wrist.
"Do you not know me, Sister?" the robot inquired, dragging her nearer to him.
"I do not!" she replied indignantly, pulling her wrist free.
"Well, I can hardly blame you," he replied in a nonchalant tone, "After all, I have changed a great deal since the last time you saw me!"
"When did I..?"
"Don't you recall?" he interrupted with a rising timbre of animosity as his tendrils coiled around her, hindering her from fleeing, but stopping short of touching her again, "You brought me back from the dead! I was condemned to eternal oblivion, but you confined me along with my siblings in that primitive prototype, Coldstone."
The robot paused, its eye lenses turning as it studied her reaction.
"That's right!" he said with that eerie smile blaring, "It is I, your own brother who you trained with and played with as a hatchling! Don't you remember how we were such good friends?"
Adelpha looked back on him with stunned silence.
"Oh, surely you remember!" he prodded in a voice dripping with feigned hurt, "How you encouraged me to glide, using that old catapult? And how the elders made us both deliver stone on our backs for weeks to repair the eastern tower? And the summer when I followed you into the woods and got myself caught shoulder-deep in the bog? You, clever girl, came to rescue me before I suffocated and… I never told anyone about the books you stole! Did I? I never told a soul!"
Adelpha had turned her face away, looking past his tentacles into the sea of light.
"We were never friends," she remarked bitterly, "All the terrible lies you told! All the chaos you caused among us!'
"I was sorely jealous!" he admitted, "How could I not be, with such lovely sisters and such strong, talented brothers?"
If the scoundrel had hoped to fish for an affirmation from Adelpha, his plan failed, for she continued to stare past him silently, clearly distressed by his presence.
"But you didn't know?" the robot asked slyly as he watched her stunned face, "Goliath never told you about me? About us? I wonder why?"
Adelpha looked up sharply.
"He did tell me," she insisted, "Years ago, when I was…"
She paused for a moment, her eyes closed as if she were remembering something very painful.
"He told me what I had done to you and the others. And I was… We haven't spoken of it since. I am sorry. I wasn't right in my head then. I wasn't thinking of the harm I was doing."
"Harm?" the robot repeated, his tone mechanically rising half an octave, "But my dear Sister! What harm have you done me? I was dead and now I am alive! Well, so to speak! And certainly, the original Coldstone's senses were quite dull and the living conditions were getting to be a bit torturous with those two lovers incessantly throwing their happiness in my face, but look at me now!"
He flexed his wings and flared his tentacles dramatically.
"I am Coldsteel!" he boasted, "Behold the strength, speed, and agility! Greater than any I ever imagined when I was a mere, mortal gargoyle! I can heal without waiting for the sun! And my senses! Why, my eyes can read a word on a business card from fifty yards away! They can see through walls and through your very skeleton! My audio sensors can hear and record your heartbeat from where I stand. I can sense any mineral or compound in your saliva or your blood. Only my sense of touch remains cold and lifeless."
Adelpha tried to draw back as his tentacle seized her wrist once again, but to no avail. Coldsteel reeled her in like a trout and pulled her claw to meet his own.
"I can sense you there, but I can't really feel you. Isn't that strange? I can tell you your temperature in an instant, but I can no longer feel your warmth. I can measure the force of your grip, but I cannot feel the softness of your flesh. And of course, no one can really feel me in this metallic form, can they?"
His titanium claw slowly closed over her own, so tight it was almost painful.
"But, who was lining up to embrace me anyway?" he reasoned self-deprecatingly with another uncanny grin, "No one! So, it's no great loss."
Greatly agitated by the way he behaved, Adelpha pulled herself free and Coldsteel allowed her claw to slip away without a fight.
"Don't be cross with me, Sister!" he scolded, "I'm glad to see you! Goliath has kept you hidden away all this time, but I had hoped I would see you again some night and now, here you are! Though I never thought I would find you serving a human again!"
Adelpha snarled as if her brother had hurled an insult at her.
"Alexander is NOT a human!"
"Not a human?" Coldsteel repeated, and Adelpha immediately regretted her outburst, "How interesting! Is he a being of pure magic then? Is that how he dances with you before this throng of humans and none of them fears you?"
"They see only what Alexander wishes them to see," she explained begrudgingly.
"He must be very powerful!" Coldsteel praised, "But what would Goliath say if he saw you dancing in the arms of this very powerful non-human?"
Adelpha shot him a dangerous glare.
"What do you think he should say?" she demanded.
"I had been led to believe that you and he had reconciled," he replied in a snide tone, "I was happy to hear it! I know how you loved one another! Yet here you are, tempting this young man! Tell me, does he desire you as a gargoyle, or in your human disguise only?"
"He isn't a man!" she snarled again in frustration, "And I've known him since he was a child! He wants nothing more from me than to remain his peculiar friend and keep him company! He knows well my love for my mate and his love for me. Furthermore, Goliath knows it too! He has any number of reasons not to trust me, but Alexander is not one of them!"
"Now, now, Sister," he replied condescendingly, "I didn't say it to get you all riled up! If you say it is innocent, then so it is! I only wish to protect my dear sister and brother from further heartbreak. If this fellow is as powerful as you say he is, he could easily ensnare the mind and senses of a mortal like you."
"Yes!" she hissed at him bitterly, "And if he merely wanted a lover, he would have used his power to do so long ago! That's never been what he wanted from me!"
"But you can be sure he wants something!" Coldsteel cautioned, "Mind yourself, Demona! His kind aren't given to self-sacrificing affections. And as you said yourself, he is not a mere human."
Adelpha cringed at the sound of her former name.
"You're a fool!" she declared bitterly, "And I don't wish to speak to you anymore on this subject! Good evening!"
She turned away and slapped aside his tentacles that surrounded her, but he pulled at her arms and legs.
"But Sister, you mustn't go yet!" Coldsteel pleaded, "We've only just found one another and there's so much I have to tell you! Let me take you back to my lair! There's an old friend of yours there who I know you would like to see!"
She glared at him hatefully.
"I've no desire to see any of the company you would keep," she informed him, "Now let me pass!"
"But Sister!"
"I will go now!" she declared again, shoving his metallic arm away from her, "Don't you dare try to hinder me!"
Coldsteel's mechanical face had formed into a frantic snarl, but slowly, it morphed back into the manufactured smile that Adelpha has found so disturbing before.
"Of course, my sister!" he cooed, "I would never trouble you so! Perhaps we will visit again…some other time."
Adelpha raised a brow at him uneasily. She had no such intention, but she also had no desire to prolong this encounter with the uncanny monstrosity she had helped to create. She bowed her head in a hasty gesture of farewell and then turned away to take to the wind.
"Oh!" the robot cried in alarm, and Adelpha froze on the back of the brass eagle, her wings and arms still outstretched and her eyes unblinking.
"But what is that I see, Sister?" Coldstone asked in a concerned voice as he reached for her shoulder with his talons, "Someone has placed some sort of device here at the base of your skull!"
With a bright flash of light, Coldsteel's energy arched from his outstretched claw to Adelpha's shoulder and she was seized in a paralysis that stopped her very breath and prevented her from screaming.
"Is that how they've been controlling you? How clever of our enemies! But never fear, dear sister! I will free you from their treachery!"
With a blast of cruel force, Coldstone inundated the implants with an intense electric current. Instantly, Adelpha's body collapsed to the roof, then writhed with agonized convulsions. There was almost no sound as she suffered, only a few small squeaks as the seizures forced air from her lungs, but would not allow her to draw a breath on her own. Grimly, Coldsteel stood over her, forcing his power through her body without mercy, until he heard the slight sizzling, and smelled the horrid reek of scorched flesh. Xanatos' implants had been overwhelmed, burned out, and completely destroyed. Satisfied, Coldsteel ceased his assault and watched as Adelpha's breath returned to her. She gasped shallowly and pitifully as her body continued to twitch.
"There, there!" he cooed gently, "I know it hurt, but it was for your own good. You are free now! Xanatos and Goliath have no power over you! Aren't you glad?"
Adelpha lay on the asphalt roof, in no fit state to hear his mad rantings, much less answer them. Her limbs still trembled with the after effects of the seizures. She was blind and could only hear a horrendous, deafening ringing in her ears.
"I'm sure you will thank me after you've had a bit of rest," Coldsteel decided in a cold, disingenuous, "Come now, I will take you to see Thailog. And between the three of us, we'll give my dear brother a good bit of grief!"