by Reine, SM
“Come back before they see you,” Stark said.
Deirdre’s eyes tracked up the wall to the gargoyles, the steep roof, the bell tower and its open window.
It felt like an invitation.
She was fast and agile. She was willing to bet that it wouldn’t take longer than two minutes to reach the roof, tops.
Deirdre could get inside to search for the Infernal Blade immediately.
If she got her hands on it first, then it didn’t matter what kind of scary, prehistoric animal that Everton Stark could shapeshift into. He wouldn’t be a match for her. All it would take was a single scratch.
She imagined Stark frozen into stone, crumbling like Gage’s tooth.
“Now, Tombs,” he said.
She returned to the cliff and began to climb.
After Deirdre returned to Stark’s camp, they formulated a simple plan: At nightfall, Deirdre would climb into the cathedral’s bell tower, open the doors from the inside, and let everyone else in. Then they would neutralize the monks and steal the sword.
It wasn’t much of a plan at all. But they wouldn’t know what the inside of the building looked like until they got there, so they couldn’t do better. The opaque stained glass made further intel impossible.
They were going to have to trust that a handful of shifters armed to the teeth would be able to stop anything a handful of human monks could throw at them.
“This is a terrible idea,” Bowen said, lounging against the roots of a tree. Vidya sat stiffly a few feet away. She didn’t look at him when he spoke. “We might as well plan to just walk in and ask them to give us the sword nicely.”
“I’m game to hear better ideas,” Deirdre said. “Gimme whatever you got. Please.”
“How’s this? We blow the place up.” Bowen made an explosion noise, wiggling his fingers in what Deirdre assumed was meant to be a bomb gesture. “I’ve got some charges back at the van. I’ll grab them, stick them around the walls, and flatten the place.”
“Did you look at the cathedral? It’s made of stones bigger than your head.”
“Just means we need more bombs,” he said.
Colette returned to the camp. “Someone else can take a turn patrolling,” she said, flopping beside Vidya. “I’m bored.”
“Where’s Niamh?” Bowen asked. “Isn’t she taking a turn on guard?”
Colette shrugged. “Haven’t seen her. I think she said that she was going to go down to the lagoon, though. So she’s probably not guarding anything.”
Deirdre glanced at Stark. He was lying on his belly at the edge of the ridge, watching the cathedral through the binoculars. He hadn’t moved for well over an hour.
Bowen and Vidya didn’t look like they were moving, either.
Deirdre heaved a sigh. “I’ll keep watch for a shift.” She stuffed her Ruger into her underarm holster and got up. Walking circles through the forest would be fractionally less boring than sitting in the forest.
She headed out into the trees.
They were far from the popular trails and any hint of civilization, so Deirdre was alone in the forest. It might have been relaxing if she hadn’t been waiting to go looking for the Infernal Blade. A legend. A myth.
What if it was real?
And what if Deirdre managed to grab it before Stark?
The rustling of leaves under her feet almost concealed the sound of slopping water. Deirdre thought it was just waves in the lagoon at first.
But when she stopped walking, she realized that the water was moving too arrhythmically to be natural.
Someone was splashing in the water.
Deirdre drew her Ruger, keeping it aimed at the ground and her finger off the trigger as she slipped through the underbrush.
She was almost as good at moving quietly through the forest as she was at navigating urban environments. She walked along fallen logs like balance beams, easily stepping over twigs that might break under her weight. She was hyper-aware of her body, the way she moved through the forest, the places that her body touched the surrounding foliage. Deirdre didn’t make a sound.
The trail sloped down to the water’s edge. Deirdre hooked her arm around the trunk of a tree, half-hiding in its shadow, and leaned over to look at the tepid lagoon.
Niamh sat at the water’s edge. She was naked, bare back gleaming sinuous lines, legs curled underneath her. All of those red curls tumbled over one shoulder.
She twirled a white feather between her forefinger and thumb. Niamh had plucked it out of her own scalp.
There was motion on the opposite side of the lagoon, where tree branches tickled the surface and created ripples that spread all the way toward Niamh.
Two large white birds drifted together, floating on the waves, riding the water up and down as the wind stirred their feathers. The graceful arcs of their necks reminded Deirdre of Niamh’s back.
Swans.
Her friend’s shoulders were shaking in the slightest tremor. Crystalline tears flowed down her cheeks.
But it wasn’t sadness in Niamh’s eyes. It was hate. Hate for the swans, hate for what she would never become again, hate for whoever had broken her.
She had never told Deirdre what happened to her swan skin. She’d made jokes about it, sure. She’d talked about how she’d been dying to join the Island of Misfit Toys and burned her skin on purpose. She also once said that she’d accidentally thrown it away.
Now Deirdre saw the raw, painful truth of what Niamh had lost.
Deirdre had never been able to shapeshift. It made her an outsider, someone who never quite fit in anywhere. But it was hard to mourn something she’d never had. Being an Omega was simply her identity.
In contrast, Niamh knew what it was to have wings. She had once floated on lakes in a silent, graceful ballet wearing nothing but feathers and moonlight.
She had lost that.
Each swanmay was born with a single skin. Once it was gone, it was gone. It wouldn’t regenerate. Niamh would never be able to become her animal again, whole and complete, both human and swan.
With anger that profound, was it any surprise that she’d joined Stark?
And could Deirdre blame her for wanting to obey Stark’s every command, even if it meant a brutal fistfight with her best friend?
Deirdre had been cruel to her friend, and now she felt shame so powerful that it weakened her knees. She owed Niamh an apology.
There would be time for that later—Deirdre couldn’t intrude on Niamh’s time beside the lagoon. Her pain was too intense. If she’d wanted Deirdre’s company, she would have asked for it.
Deirdre slid away through the night, holstering her gun.
Colette and Bowen were asleep on each other again, catching some rest before the cathedral attack. Vidya had repositioned herself to the far side of the tree, awake and staring into the darkness. She couldn’t have slept in the last twenty-four hours at all.
As far as Deirdre could tell, Stark hadn’t moved since she’d left the camp. He was still positioned at the edge of the cliff, watching the cathedral through his binoculars.
Deirdre hunkered down next to his bulk.
“Niamh’s not coming with us to Holy Nights Cathedral, is she?” Deirdre asked in a whisper.
Stark’s finger rolled along the top of the binoculars, adjusting the focus. “That’s not why I brought her, no.”
“You’re sick,” she said. He lifted his gaze to look at her, expression flat, waiting for Deirdre to elaborate. “You brought her so that she’d go to that lagoon. You knew how she’d react, didn’t you? You’re trying to remind her why she works for you. That’s beyond sick.”
“She asked to come,” Stark said.
“What?”
He returned his attention to the binoculars. “She asked to come with us so she could go to the lagoon. I hadn’t planned on letting her come. She asked and I relented.”
Deirdre’s jaw dropped. It almost sounded like Stark was doing a kindness for Niamh when he put it that way
.
She glanced back at the others to see if they’d heard. They were still asleep, or not paying attention.
“I haven’t seen any sign of the monks for an hour. I think they’re asleep now.” Stark set the binoculars down and delivered a swift kick to Bowen’s side. The shifter’s jerk of surprise woke up Colette, too. “On your feet. It’s time to move.”
—XIII—
As Deirdre had suspected, the cathedral presented far from a difficult climb. The gray bricks gave her a lot to grab on to. The wind was slow that night, making her ponytail sway behind her as she made her way to the roof.
Touching so many runes on her way up the wall made her nervous. There was no way to avoid them.
Deirdre had seen witches throw fire, melt furniture, turn shifters to dust. And that was spontaneous magic. Whatever they could do with runes built into the foundations of a cathedral would surely be a thousand times wickeder.
But she reached the shingled roof without being incinerated.
She swayed on the edge for a moment, hands outstretched, looking at her fingers. She expected magic to melt her flesh away.
Nothing happened.
“Easy,” Deirdre whispered into the wind.
She wasn’t alone on the roof of the cathedral. The gargoyles were hulking silhouettes in the night, poised as though about to reach out to snatch birds from the sky and stuff them in their mouths. The craftsmanship on them was impressive up close. They were so detailed they could have been alive.
Deirdre peered over the shoulder of one gargoyle, looking past his clawed fingers to the lawn far below.
It was a long way down to the ground. Stark and his team were down there somewhere, waiting for her to open the doors.
She had the strange urge to spread her arms and jump off the cathedral.
Instead, Deirdre clambered up the roof to reach the bell tower. It was only another twenty feet up. Deirdre climbed up onto the edge of the windowsill and swung her legs inside.
There was nobody in the bell tower to try to shoot her, like Bowen had said. It was just an empty room without so much as a single bell.
Iron bars ringed the room, sort of like in a ballet studio. Deirdre ran her fingers along the nearest of them. The bars had been deeply scored with parallel scratches that reminded her of werewolf claw marks.
“Huh,” Deirdre said.
What had Brother Marshall been keeping in his bell tower?
Whatever had happened at Holy Nights Cathedral in the past, it was currently empty and silent.
She pressed the button on her Walkie Talkie. “I’m in,” Deirdre said.
“Is it safe to follow?” Stark asked.
She stuck the Walkie Talkie back into her pocket without replying, hoping to delay him. She didn’t want anyone following her yet. She needed as much of a head start as possible.
After all, she was going to get the Infernal Blade first.
No pressure.
The stairs leading down into the choir loft creaked under her feet as she descended. Deirdre shifted her weight to the edges, trying to reduce the amount of noise she made as she spiraled down the staircase.
“Tombs, is it safe to follow?” Stark repeated, voice muffled by the cloth of her pocket.
“Shove it up your nose,” Deirdre muttered.
The choir loft was empty. She passed the stands and looked over the side at the cathedral below.
The moonlight seemed amplified by the stained-glass windows, splashing the images of the trees and apples across the floor, making the whole room glow. The altar at the front of the room was covered in half-melted candles, which dripped in waxen stalactites toward the floor.
And the mural—that mural.
It filled the entire rear wall of the cathedral, painted with the same degree of loving detail as the gargoyles. Its textures were so meticulous that it could have been a window into another world.
Deirdre’s skin crawled as she studied the man and woman in the mural.
They were looking at her.
The Walkie Talkie in her pocket exploded with noise.
“They’re moving!”
“It was a trap, get out, get out—”
“—the hells are those?”
Deirdre twisted the volume knob to quiet it. “What are you guys talking about? What’s moving?” She waited for a response, but everyone had gone silent. She pressed the button again. “What’s going on out there?”
Quiet.
Something heavy thudded into the roof above her.
She wasn’t alone anymore.
Deirdre froze, ears perked as she listened to the movement. The thudding continued rhythmically. It sounded like a heartbeat.
Or footsteps.
The Walkie Talkie shook as she lifted it to her mouth again. “Is that you, Stark? Vidya? Bowen?”
No response.
Something else slammed into the roof, just as resonant as the first. A third thump followed.
Three bodies clunked toward the bell tower.
Now the stairs were creaking. The first of the newcomers was inside the cathedral.
Deirdre hurried into the hallway behind the choir loft and took the narrow steps down to the first floor. She didn’t bother trying to be quiet. The thumping and scraping of large bodies moving above her were more than loud enough to mask the sounds of her movements.
She hit the first floor and searched for somewhere to hide. The doors behind the pews probably led to the monks’ apartments—not somewhere she wanted to go. There was also a confessional against the wall. It was the only secluded area she could see, which made it the first place they’d look for her. But it wasn’t like she had a lot of options.
And judging by the sounds of movement, she was out of time.
Deirdre climbed into the confessional. She left the door open a crack and pressed her eye to it, watching the cathedral on the other side.
Something was moving in the choir loft. The light from the stained-glass windows didn’t reach all the way up there, so she couldn’t see who or what they were, but Deirdre could see that they were big.
They weren’t the human monks who lived at Holy Nights Cathedral.
Shapeshifters?
One of them climbed onto the railing and jumped off.
It landed in the middle of the pews with a crash of stone meeting stone.
Deirdre jerked the door shut, adrenaline flooding her system. She’d only glimpsed the creature, but a glimpse was all she needed. It was as big as a werewolf and made of the same gray stone material as the walls of the church. Its flesh—if it could be called flesh—was covered in magical runes.
One of the gargoyles from the roof had come to life.
And it was looking for her.
That window in the bell tower must have been left open to give the gargoyles passage in and out of the cathedral. Deirdre had tripped some kind of alarm by getting in.
Damn Bowen for being right.
Footsteps rang out through the cathedral. Each one sounded like a mallet striking an anvil—or giant stone feet slamming into the ground.
Heavy breathing whuffed not far away.
The gargoyle was searching for her.
Deirdre cracked open the door and peered through again. Two of the gargoyles were prowling through the pews. They may have been stone, but they looked convincingly alive. Their muscles rippled as they walked.
Their backs were to the confessional.
Now or never.
Deirdre drew her Ruger, pushed the door open silently, and jogged for the door leading to the monks’ apartments.
Her feet didn’t make a sound against the floor. Her clothes barely even rustled with her movements.
But she heard a growl behind her.
The gargoyles had seen her.
Deirdre gave up all attempts at being quiet and bolted.
She reached the door to the apartments. It was locked. As she struggled to twist the knob, she threw a look over her shoulder and saw both gar
goyles unfurling massive gray wings tipped with metal hooks.
“Screw it,” Deirdre said.
She fired her Ruger at the lock.
The metal broke. Deirdre pushed the door open and leaped inside, shutting it behind her.
Statues flanked either side of the doors. They were faceless human figures, tall and heavy, made of the same thing as the gargoyles. Hopefully they wouldn’t also come alive to fight her.
She shoved one over. It crashed to the ground and blocked the door.
“What are you doing here?”
Deirdre whirled, aiming her gun at the source of the voice.
It was Brother Marshall.
He stood a hundred feet down the candlelit hallway, draped in those voluminous black robes that could have hidden anything. There was no sign of the staff. But there was no sign of his hands, either, so Deirdre suspected that he was armed.
“Get on the ground and put your hands behind your head,” she said.
He didn’t move.
“What do you want?” Brother Marshall asked.
Deirdre licked her lips. Her gun wavered. “I need the—uh, I need you to give me the Infernal Blade.”
Surprise flitted over his face.
“The what?”
Something slammed into the door behind Deirdre. She drew the Sig in her other hand, aiming it behind her, and keeping the Ruger on Brother Marshall.
“The Infernal Blade,” Deirdre snapped. “The cursed sword. I know it’s here.”
He surveyed her with narrowed eyes. “You didn’t come here to rob us.”
“Actually, that’s exactly why I came here.”
“There’s something else that’s drawn you to our hallowed halls tonight. The gods have a plan for all of us,” Marshall said. “I know this for a fact.”
“Do you, now?” Deirdre asked.
He shrugged, unworried to be at the point of her gun. “You wouldn’t have been able to find us if you weren’t meant to be here.”
The guy was crazy at worst and mildly delusional at best. Of course, if Deirdre had committed her life to being a monk at some remote cathedral, then she would probably want to convince herself that the sacrifice was worthwhile, too.
