Nolan’s scream drowned out Gabby’s. She watched his broadsword cleaving the air as he chased after the demon and his father. There was nothing to be done for him. Gabby knew it, and if she did, so did Nolan.
Pangs of shock and sadness drummed her in the stomach. She would have gone after Nolan had it not been for her brother, covered in swaths of greasy yellow fur and crouched on all fours in front of Ingrid.
“Stay away from her!” Lord Brickton screamed, jabbing Gabby’s sword toward Grayson. Her brother yelped and growled as he avoided the point of the blade. Why didn’t he shift back?
“Papa, stop!” Ingrid and Gabby shouted together, each of them pulling at their father’s sleeves.
More screeching came from above, the shadow of wings and long, whiplike tails swerving through the air. Lennier and Yann had returned, and with Marco, Chelle, and Rory, they were driving the disciples back inside the mansion. Vander, however, was still stuck beneath one of their bizarre nets. Luc had freed Ingrid, but the silver must have been laced with mercurite—he could only crawl toward Grayson, who was still at the end of Lord Brickton’s sword.
“You’re a monster,” Brickton moaned, the sword trembling in his grasp. “A murdering monster. This is how you killed her, then, you wicked beast. This is what you are.”
Gabby stared, not understanding. Grayson hadn’t killed anyone. He couldn’t have.
Her father raised the sword. He was going to do it. He was going to kill his own son. Grayson hunched down and roared—and Gabby knew that her brother would not be the one to die.
Luc must have known it as well. He stopped crawling, and from where he lay, battered and broken, he lashed out his long, darted tail and clipped Brickton’s ankles. Marco compounded the strike, slamming into her father’s chest with the force of a bull. Her father went down and Gabby’s sword pinwheeled through the air, landing yards away.
“Grayson, shift! Change back!” Gabby cried.
Lennier and Yann circled above like vultures. Grayson wasn’t human to them just then. He was a demon. A threat.
Yann dove first.
Gabby heard the spring on Vander’s crossbow release. A dart shot through the gaps in the netting and pierced one of Yann’s razored wings. He spun wildly off course—and Lennier immediately plunged down, his great white wings tucked back, talons extended.
“Grayson!” Gabby screamed.
Her brother bounded away, but he still didn’t shift. Maybe he couldn’t, Gabby thought. She reached into her cloak and gripped the handle of a dagger. If she could pierce Lennier’s wing, just wound him, as Vander had done to Yann, it would buy Grayson time to shift. Or escape. Gabby didn’t care which, so long as her brother was still breathing.
She hurled the dagger as Lennier swooped low. The blade was in midflight when Léon’s silken ropes lassoed Lennier’s leg and pulled him back. The dagger sailed past Lennier, who took one swipe at the arachnae silk and sheared himself free.
A second dagger was in Gabby’s hand and then whirling toward Lennier before she could take another breath. He unfurled his wings, exposing the steel cage of his chest, and the dagger plunged through the albino scales. Lennier dropped, heavy as a stone. His body plowed a deep rut into the earth, and then he lay still. Utterly still.
“Gabby—” Ingrid’s hand landed on her shoulder and jerked her back. “What did you do?”
Gabby stopped breathing.
She reached inside her cloak and touched the one remaining dagger. The familiarity of it made her stomach clench. It was one of her own. She’d thrown two daggers. One blessed silver and one—
Oh God.
The mercurite-dipped blade. The one she’d pocketed, intending to use it on Dimitrie.
Yann touched down beside Lennier and crouched over the elder gargoyle’s body. His lion’s tail slashed back and forth, his white and gray speckled wings flat planes at his sides.
His tail stilled, and Gabby knew for certain which dagger had speared Lennier’s chest.
Almost instantly Yann took flight in a reverse flip and came for her.
Rory slid underneath Yann, his daggers weaving through the air. His aim was true, and Yann veered off course long enough for Marco to leave Brickton and hook Gabby around the waist. He rocketed into the air, and as they spiraled up, Gabby craned her neck to look down. Lennier was no longer a gargoyle but a flaccid old man, his long white hair splayed on the ground—and her dagger was embedded in his heart.
Chelle approached Grayson, her arms open and hands facing out.
“It’s me,” she said, as if he couldn’t already recognize her. Couldn’t already smell her blood sluicing through her veins.
“Change back, Grayson.” Her voice was muffled but firm. Calm. She wasn’t afraid.
“Close your eyes,” she suggested. His heart rampaged hard in his barrel of a chest. He had to calm down.
He closed his eyes to the sight of Rory prying the steel-like net off Vander; to Ingrid helping Luc to his feet, their gargoyle protector looking half dead; to the gargoyle lying motionless on the ground, now a mound of white hair and pale crepe-paper flesh. Gabby had only been trying to protect him. She never would have killed that gargoyle on purpose.
He had to change back. He had to explain.
His femurs cracked as they shrank. The hulking muscles along his neck and back compressed and his cartilage reshaped. The wicked February-night wind licked his human skin next.
When he opened his eyes, on all fours, the frosted grass dampening his trousers, Grayson felt another pair of eyes boring into the crown of his head.
Grayson got to his feet. A pair of hands shoved him hard in the chest and propelled him back to the ground.
“We trusted ye!” Rory towered over him. “Ye said the hellhounds were under yer command.”
“They were.” Grayson rebounded to his feet. “At least, I thought they were.”
“You led them here?”
Nolan crossed through the dark arcades, the tip of his broadsword slicing into the earth as he dragged it.
Grayson didn’t know how to explain what had happened. “I’m sorry—”
“No, you’re not. Not yet.” Nolan flipped up his sword and drove it toward Grayson. Vander slammed his crossbow into Nolan’s silver blade and brought it down.
“Not now,” he said, raising his eyes to the Daicrypta windows. “We need to leave. Before they have another fit of bravery.”
The skin under Nolan’s eyes looked bruised as he stepped back and saw Lennier’s lifeless body for the first time. He stilled. “What dagger is that?”
Rory bent to extract it, the blood black on the blade. “Mercurite.”
Nolan forgot his fury with Grayson and turned it on Rory. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Rory calmly sheathed the bloodied dagger. “I know what I’ve done tonight, cousin, but I dinna think Gabby does. ’Twas her deed, no’ mine.”
The last ounce of Nolan’s color drained. He took a panicked look around the courtyard and, when he didn’t see Gabby anywhere, ran for the arcades once more. He passed Luc and Ingrid, who were already limping in retreat. Vander hurried to shore up Luc’s other side.
Grayson felt someone approach from behind. He knew who it was. He’d always been able to feel his father’s disappointed glare before meeting it head-on.
“What are you?” his father asked.
Grayson sucked in a breath and saw Ingrid stop up ahead, her eyes bouncing between him and their father. She’d begged to know what happened that night in London. Well, Grayson was done hiding.
“I’m exactly what you thought I was.” He turned toward his father. Brickton appeared unusually old and haggard. Undone. “Did you never wonder how I ripped out her throat?”
Beside him, Chelle let out a gasp. Good, he thought. Let her hear it, too. He’d been fooling himself, thinking he could hide from what he truly was. Best to tell them all and get it over and done with.
“I did,” Grayson went on. “I wondered. I tried to imagine how human teeth could manage such carnage. Obviously, human teeth didn’t.”
He wanted to see shock spread across his father’s face, but Brickton didn’t acquiesce. Ever unflappable and hard, he only flared his nostrils.
“You are no longer my son.”
A bitter laugh crawled up Grayson’s throat and he bowed low. “With pleasure, my lord.”
Grayson had spent his life feeling tethered to the man standing just feet away. As the invisible threads finally released him, the gulf of freedom was as invigorating as it was terrifying. It spread out before Grayson, open and empty and full of promise. Bad or good, Grayson didn’t know, but it was promise just the same. He wasn’t afraid to drift out into that open gulf. He backed toward the arcades.
“Grayson, stop. He doesn’t mean it. He can’t mean it.”
Ingrid’s voice was so small and uncertain. Grayson knew she didn’t believe a word she was saying. He’d once known everything his twin felt. Everything she thought. She had been inside him, a second person. Lately, though, he’d lost her. As he walked away from her now, ignoring her pleas for him to stop, to come back, he realized it was better this way. Not for him, but for her. For them all. She didn’t want him to be a monster, but he was. Chelle wanted to believe that he was more human than demon, but he wasn’t. The sooner they realized these things, the sooner they could get on with their lives.
A hand rested gently on his shoulder. It was Léon, his expression drawn. Another murderer. The only person Grayson pitied more than he did himself.
“Come” was all Léon said.
And Grayson went.