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Brother Marshall’s eyes skimmed the canyon, fist wrapped tightly around the staff, as though prepared to swing.

Could he see her?

Deirdre slipped back an inch, cloaking herself in the darkness of the bushes. She tensed, hand on her gun, ready to draw.

But Brother Marshall looked right past her without pausing.

There was a slight bulge under the arms of his robes. Deirdre thought he was wearing an underarm holster like hers.
Some monk
.

His gaze lifted to the roof of the cathedral. He was looking at the gargoyles mounted on the tiles. The gray stone monsters were frozen with their claws uplifted, teeth bared, and fury etched into their ugly faces. Deirdre imagined they must have represented demons from his religion’s mythos. They probably did a good job as scarecrows. They were uglier than sin.

People walked past the doorway behind Brother Marshall—other monks in robes. Deirdre counted them.

Four.

If those were mundane humans, then Deirdre would have a laughably easy fight against the monks of Holy Nights Cathedral. If they were witches… Well, Deirdre and Stark would have an interesting night.

After a long moment, Brother Marshall went back inside. The doors swung shut behind him.

Each of the doors had half of a massive, elaborate pentagram etched into it. With the doors closed, the pentagram was complete. It shimmered in the gloom of the canyon.

More magic.

“Five people,” Deirdre whispered into the Walkie Talkie. “There are five monks in the cathedral. That Brother Marshall guy and four others wearing the robes. I don’t think there’s any more than that. There aren’t any cars. No easy way to get in and get out of the canyon. I’m going to say five.”

“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.”

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.