The Beautiful and the Cursed

by Page Morgan

  Ahead, in a sphere of electric light, Luc saw a body on the floor of the tunnel.

  “Don’t stop, Luc!” came Vander’s shout from farther down the tunnel. “I see crypsis dust! It and Ingrid’s dust lead this way!”

  Axia’s pet has her. Luc ran faster and caught up to Vander and Gabby at a short set of stairs. At the top, a hatch door had been left flung open. The cold air felt good on Luc’s scales as he climbed into a grassy courtyard. It made the one at Hôtel du Maurier look like the Paris slums. This was a true lawn, a miniature Luxembourg Garden. Stately trees, their trunks gnarled and scored with age; a tiered fountain surrounded by a sunken garden; an arched footbridge spanning a small, iced-over pond. Five stories of block limestone, corner turrets, and leaded-glass windows towered over them on all sides, casting dim light over pockets of the lawn. Far beyond, an outbuilding had its lights on. A short stretch of open arcades linked this outbuilding to the main estate and appeared to be the only exit.

  In the center of the lawn was Axia’s pet crypsis, the tip of its near translucent body knotted around a hospital gurney. Ingrid lay tipped over, strapped into place with wide leather buckles. She thrashed beneath them, struggling wildly. Alive.

  Vander, still a good ten strides ahead of Luc, stopped and leveled his crossbow at the demon snake. The snake’s tail lifted the gurney from the grass and shielded itself by wagging it back and forth in front its body like a pendulum.

  “Don’t, Vander!” Gabby shouted, holding her own daggers indecisively.

  Vander cursed under his breath, lowered the crossbow, and charged the serpent instead. He tore across the grass like a madman, a battle cry rending the air. With a flick of her tail, Axia’s serpent swung the bobbing gurney, catching Vander in its path, and swept him away. He cartwheeled through the air before landing flat on his back, his weapon lost on impact. Ingrid, hanging upside down, her hair a waterfall of corn silk, screamed Vander’s name.

  The serpent’s tail swished again when its pearly diamond shaped eyes locked on Luc. It tossed the gurney aside and started to slither toward the gargoyle.

  Gabby didn’t waste a moment.

  She streaked toward the gurney, which had tumbled to a rest, again on its side, next to the fountain. Her desperation overwhelmed Luc, fermenting in the back of his throat until it was all he could sense. The snake changed its course, flicking its tapered tail toward Gabby and coiling her waist in one thick loop. Luc raced toward the serpent, driven by the immediate burn of Gabby’s panic.

  “Gabby, no!” Ingrid screamed.

  Before Luc could reach her, Gabby plunged the dagger she’d been holding through the milky scales squeezing her. The serpent hissed and spit, arching and undulating until it had uncoiled Gabby and bucked her off. Luc forced his wings to open despite the agony of it, and pushed off the grass. He’d barely caught her before his wings crinkled shut yet again, sending them both crashing to the ground.

  “Move back,” Luc ordered Gabby, who lay stunned behind him, as the serpent targeted him once more.

  He considered his pathetic wings and poisoned muscles. They had made him weak. Nearly as weak as a human. He realized then that Vander hadn’t charged the snake thinking he could best it. He’d done it because there was nothing else to do.

  Luc made his decision. He would leave this place with Ingrid, or he wouldn’t leave at all.

  Ingrid screamed as the serpent glided over the lawn toward Luc.

  As always, Luc’s wings were two sheets of night, his scaled armor reflecting facets of onyx. But there was something seriously wrong with his true form. As he rushed to meet the serpent’s attack, his right leg seemed to buckle with every stride. He should have been flying, not running.

  Luc threw his legs forward at the last moment and went into a slide, narrowly avoiding the strike of venomous fangs.

  Ingrid caught a flutter of something out of the corner of her eye and, when she looked, saw Vander coming for her. She shook her head fiercely. “No! Help Luc! Your crossbow, Vander, help him!”

  He ignored her plea and fell to his knees at her side, attacking the leather straps.

  “Forget the buckles. He’s hurt, Vander!” she cried, twisting wildly under his hands.

  “Stop moving!” he shouted right back.

  Her wrists fell forward as he loosed the straps around them; then he started on the ones binding her ankles. Luc dodged another strike, but he was limping and faltering, looking more like a fly with one wing than the massive, powerful gargoyle Ingrid knew him to be.

  Her ankles dropped to the grass just as the tip of the serpent’s tail swept Luc’s feet out from under him. The snake rolled and undulated, its regal head and tapered fangs stabbing toward Luc.

  “No!” Ingrid screamed.

  A piercing shriek and a blast of air fanned down over their heads. Marco’s russet wings cut toward the serpent with hummingbird speed. He sank his talons into the demon and swiped it off the ground. The snake wriggled and bucked, but Marco held it skillfully as Yann dove toward the serpent. The edge of one feathered eagle wing sheared through scale and flesh, and Marco let the serpent fall in a hailstorm of green sparks. Final sparks.

  Vander released the chest buckle and caught Ingrid as she fell. She’d done far too much falling lately. She eased back so she wasn’t sprawled in Vander’s lap and pushed her hair out of her eyes.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked, and immediately found the fang bites on her arm. The searing burn was still there, but the pain had leveled off. Her angel blood would destroy the poison soon enough and she’d be fine, but Luc … There was something wrong with him.

  She stood, her legs feeling quivery and her head cotton-stuffed.

  “Ingrid!” Gabby bypassed Luc and threw her arms around her sister as if they had been parted for months instead of a single evening.

  Ingrid watched Luc with her face half buried in Gabby’s hair. His wings dragged like wrinkled elephant ears. The sight of his struggling, wounded body lanced through her. He stopped a good yard away.

  He wasn’t her gargoyle, not officially. Yet once again he’d come for her. Gabby must have sensed Ingrid’s distraction because she let go, stepped aside, and followed Ingrid’s gaze.

  Ingrid staggered forward. Luc opened his arms to her and she fell into them. His scaled obsidian plates were hot and unforgiving, and it felt like embracing a sun-warmed boulder, but she didn’t care. Luc was alive.

  “I want to be yours again.” She whispered the wish into his chest.

  Luc loosened his arms and Ingrid wondered if she’d been wrong to wish it aloud. She peered up at him. Felt the prickling of Gabby’s eyes on her back. Vander’s glare. Luc stared down the short slope of his doggish nose. It was a barely pronounced muzzle that left his face more human than monster. He was still hideous, though. Ingrid was too honest to say he wasn’t.

  Luc ran his rough-knuckled hand down the curve of her cheek, his deadly talons tucked safely into his palm.

  “Ingrid,” Vander barked. “You and Gabby have to leave. Go through the arcades.”

  Luc withdrew his hand and everything around her slid back into focus. “But Papa,” she said, turning to Vander. “He’s still inside.”

  Luc shot a curl of steam from his nostrils and made a gravelly noise in the bottom of his throat. His form began to degenerate then, much more slowly than usual. His wings crackled and snapped as they pleated into his back.

  Gabby whirled away from Luc and Ingrid did the same, though she pinked in the cheeks thinking about his last shift. How she’d watched without shame.

  “Nolan is inside, too. We can’t leave him,” Gabby said.

  Vander picked up his crossbow. “I’m not leaving him.”

  “Your father isn’t in the building,” Luc rasped from where he stood, behind Ingrid. Pain laced each word. “He and Grayson are close, but … I don’t know. Something is wrong. Ingrid, the Seer is right. You and Gabby have to go.”

  Luc was staying, though she didn’t unde
rstand why. Gabby took Ingrid’s arm and led her toward the arcades. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Luc, returned to true form, and Vander. They were waiting, watching. They wouldn’t move until she and Gabby had successfully gone.

  Ingrid’s feet slipped over the grass, slick with icy night dew, as they approached the stone arches and the thick columns that ran the length of the arcades.

  A shadow peeled off from one wide column. Ingrid dragged Gabby to a halt.

  “Dimitrie?” Ingrid whispered. Her breath hung as a cloud before her.

  The gangly boy came toward them. Gabby jerked her hand from Ingrid’s grasp and withdrew a dagger from her cape, but Ingrid held up her arm.

  “Stop. He won’t hurt us. He can’t. He’s—” Ingrid paused, knowing the words would be bitter. “He’s my gargoyle.”

  “He isn’t mine,” Gabby retorted, dagger still poised. “Back off.”

  Ingrid turned around. Luc and Vander had already started toward them, Vander with his crossbow raised and Luc stretching his wings as far as they could go. From this distance, Ingrid noticed a hole in each wing. Her stomach rolled—and then her pulse fluttered. Because coming up behind Luc and Vander was another Dimitrie.

  Just as Ingrid saw it, Luc froze. He turned and saw the other Dimitrie in his human form.

  One of them was the mimic.

  The Dimitrie closer to Ingrid lunged for her. Gabby planted her foot in Ingrid’s side and shoved her down, slicing at Dimitrie’s reaching arm with her dagger. He vanished, and Gabby stumbled through the space where he had just been standing.

  “It’s the mimic, Gabby!” Ingrid shouted as it reappeared a few feet away.

  Gabby swiftly sheathed the dagger and withdrew her sword. She swung, but the mimic ducked out of the blade’s path, laughing. Playing.

  Ingrid got to her feet and saw Vander running toward them—and Luc half running, half flying away. He skimmed over the lawn, his wings a swell of ink, toward the real Dimitrie. The smaller gargoyle simply waited, his twiggy arms lifted at his sides, palms turned out in a gesture of supplication. He looked so young, like a boy lifting his face to a summer rain.

  Luc smashed into him. His wings blocked out everything but their legs as they plowed into the ground.

  “Luc, now!” Vander screamed.

  And then Ingrid knew. She knew what Luc was going to do.

  A shriek rent the air. The ground shook and Ingrid dropped to her knees, Gabby falling with her as the shriek died away to a pitched whine. It had come from the mimic. Ingrid and Gabby stared at the demon as it lit in a flurry of color. It was no longer Dimitrie, but a jet-scaled Luc, then a near-translucent serpent, then a man again: Jonathan. The mimic faded into Anna’s image before becoming someone Ingrid had never seen before. It continued to change, shuffling through image after image—all the disguises it had worn—until the very shape of the mimic began to dissolve. Like a sugar cube in tea, it disappeared a little more with every transformation.

  It gave one final flicker, and was gone.

  Vander helped Ingrid up, then Gabby. Slowly, all three of them turned. Ingrid knew what Luc had done, but she wasn’t prepared to see it.

  He had his back to them, his wings once again listless. He stood over Dimitrie’s still body, prostrate on the grass. Luc held something in his talons. Something round and strange, and Ingrid squinted to see what it was.

  She bit back a scream.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Dimitrie’s head.

  Luc held Dimitrie’s head, his talons curled into the boy’s mop of blond hair. Gabby lowered her sword. She wanted to vomit. The night couldn’t possibly get any worse.

  It did, however, and promptly.

  Gabby heard panting behind her. She held her sword aloft as another figure rushed down the length of the arcades, the slap of feet on the paving stones reverberating off the vaulted ceilings. She nearly dropped her weapon when her father stumbled past a column and slipped on the frosted grass.

  “Papa!” Gabby and Ingrid exclaimed.

  He looked at them with confusion before waving his hands wildly. “Go! Go! Run!”

  Something must have been chasing him.

  Gabby and Vander raised their weapons once again. Lord Brickton’s eyes landed on her sword.

  “Gabriella, what are you—?” He didn’t finish his question but tore the handle of her sword out of her palm.

  “Papa—give me that!”

  Lord Brickton wheeled toward the arcades just as a hellhound streaked through and onto the lawn. Vander fired his crossbow a second too late; the dart missed and the hellhound ripped across the grass, toward Gabby, Ingrid, and their father, who chopped clumsily at the air with the sword.

  Ingrid, however, threw her arms forward, palms flat, fingers splayed. Veins of lightning crackled through the air and hit the oncoming demon. The hellhound reared up onto its hind legs, then crashed backward as briars of electrostatic energy shivered over its fur.

  The hound wasn’t down one second before a second dart from Vander’s crossbow speared its chest. Gabby’s father cried out as the beast burst into a green cloud and vanished. He staggered back when Ingrid turned to face him.

  “What did you just do?” he said, his voice spiraling to a frantic pitch.

  Ingrid looked to Gabby, her wide blue eyes pleading for help. How could they explain any of this to him? But just then the doors to each wing of the mansion swung open, and the Daicrypta disciples braved entering the courtyard. They flooded out, surrounding their quarry within moments. Gabby did a harried count and found a neat dozen. They each held odd-looking, crossbow-like contraptions. She didn’t know what they were but thought it wise to consider them deadly.

  “Papa, give me my sword,” Gabby said through clenched teeth.

  “Don’t be absurd,” her father countered. “Where did you get this to begin with?”

  Yet another thing she couldn’t explain easily. The disciples advanced slowly. Dupuis was dead, but they clearly still wanted Ingrid’s blood.

  “Vander?” Gabby called. “Please tell me you have a plan.”

  “I was hoping we could make that a group effort,” he replied.

  Gabby focused on the approaching disciples closest to her. Even if she had been holding her sword, there was absolutely no way she could take them on all at once. The closest one called out in French, ordering them to lay down their weapons. He had barely finished speaking when a tangle of white silken rope looped around his chest and arms and snapped him off his feet. The other two disciples went down next, each of them wreathed in thick silk.

  Léon! The Duster was climbing out of the basement-level hatch with Nolan just behind him, and Carrick leaning heavily on his son’s shoulder. Léon cocooned yet another disciple, but not before the strange crossbow contraption went off. It fired not bullets or darts but a glittering, tightly woven net. Léon’s silken webbing snarled the net midair before it could come down on top of him, and he slung it aside.

  “Behind you, Gabby!” Nolan shouted. She turned to see a second hellhound leap from the arcade roof, land atop a disciple, and with one massive paw, crush his head into the ground.

  Luc let out a shriek and surged forward, even though his wings barely lifted him from the ground. He collided with the hellhound and scrabbled with it for a few paltry moments before the beast raked a claw through one of Luc’s already damaged wings. He went down, and the hellhound lunged toward Ingrid yet again. A glimmering net reached Ingrid first, clobbering her to the ground. Small spikes along the border of the net pierced the earth and held her flat to the grass.

  The hellhound roared to a stop and, with an angry yowl, darted in another direction.

  A second net caught Vander in the side and took him down as well. Gabby heard a shrill ping as spikes shot out of the net’s border ring and bolted into the earth. She crouched, trying to pry up the spikes.

  “Gabby!” Vander rolled beneath the strange net and aimed the silver bow straight at her. She screamed
and ducked and a dart whirred past her. It struck an oncoming disciple in the shoulder.

  As the disciple fell, Gabby saw Marco’s wings above the courtyard. His bestial talons snatched a disciple by the collar of his monkish smock. Marco spun him through the air and sent him crashing through one of the latticed windows.

  Gabby’s father pulled her to her feet and started to drag her to Ingrid’s netted figure. Luc had struggled over to her and was prying up one side of the silver net while roaring in pain. Whatever the net was made of, it wasn’t gargoyle friendly. Ingrid crawled free and Luc collapsed. Brickton abruptly dug his heel in the ground and came to a halt, Gabby treading on his ankles.

  Two red lantern eyes peered out from the dark of the arcades. Another hellhound.

  This one hung back, however, watching the chaos unfurl in the courtyard.

  “Stay away.” Her father’s order trembled on his lips.

  The hellhound emerged slowly. Hesitantly. Not at all like the others.

  “Lord Brickton, lower your sword,” Vander commanded.

  “I will not!” he shouted.

  “Papa, stop!” Ingrid cried. “It’s not a hellhound!”

  It wasn’t. Even Gabby could see that. This one was smaller than the others. It was furred, but it wasn’t the same. It was wearing clothes.

  “What in God’s name is it, then?” their father spluttered, the point of the sword still aligned with the beast.

  Gabby slapped his wrist and yanked the sword down hard. “It’s your son. It’s Grayson.”

  Grayson knew he should shift. His father stared at him, pure revulsion brimming in his eyes. This was his son. A monster. An aberration, and he most certainly wanted to kill it.

  Grayson couldn’t shift, though, not with the remaining hellhound on a tear around the courtyard. He couldn’t understand. He’d had the hounds under his sway. He’d brought them to heel. What had happened?

  We serve Mistress first.

  The answer trickled into his mind with crystalline lucidity compared to the muffled, underwater voices of his sisters and father. Their arguing burbled around him while the hound’s thoughts continued clearly.