Damn it, weren’t Isaac and the others supposed to be drawing the gargoyles away?
Bethany struggled to get free, but the gargoyle was too heavy. She tried to reach into her vest for a charm, but her arms were pinned the wrong way for that. Perched on her back, the gargoyle drew back one claw, preparing to strike.
“Get off of her!” Thornton yelled. He ran at it, brandishing the broken half of the Anubis Hand. He swung it before the gargoyle could react. The mummified fist connected with the gargoyle’s snout. There was a much smaller flash this time, and no web of fire, but the gargoyle still tumbled off of Bethany, stunned. Thornton helped her up, and together they started running. The gargoyle stumbled side to side on its feet for a moment, its wings twitching, then shook its head clear. It saw Thornton taking its prey away and released an angry shriek.
“Thornton, the staff!” I shouted. He tossed it to me. I caught it and ran at the gargoyle, noticing for the first time that it wasn’t Yellow Eye. Strange, Yellow Eye hadn’t come back after mysteriously retreating into the alleyway. I swung the staff, and the Anubis Hand connected with the gargoyle’s jaw. There was a much brighter flash now. The gargoyle was knocked backward, burning as it rolled across the street, giving off sparks and embers until it finally exploded in a burst of blackened ash. I turned back to the others. “Now
Bethany was pale and out of breath. Her spill on the sidewalk had opened the cut in her knee again, and she was leaning against Thornton for support. “Save the gloating,” she said. “We have to get to the safe house before more of them come. It isn’t far now.”
“Can you walk?” I asked.
Instead of answering, she let go of Thornton, turned around, and started limping quickly up the block toward Ninth Avenue.
“Okay then,” I said, and followed.
We turned downtown on Ninth, moving as quickly as we could. I kept a tight grip on the Anubis Hand, just in case. A nearby shriek, like the hunting call of a bird of prey, froze us in our tracks. A dark, man-sized shape moved across the night sky. It was little more than a shadow against the darkness, but the silhouette of its wings was unmistakable.
“Your boss isn’t doing his job,” I said.
“You’re wrong about that,” Bethany replied. “If he wasn’t, we’d already be dead.”
We turned west onto Forty-Third Street, a quiet, sleepy block. A gargoyle landed on top of one of the buildings along the street. It crouched on its haunches and folded its wings onto its back until it looked every bit the twin of its architectural namesake. From its high perch, it scanned the street below.
Bethany grabbed Thornton and me, and pushed us into a dark doorway across the street. She put her hand on my chest, pushing me as far back against the door as she could. I felt the heat of her skin through my shirt.
“Don’t move,” she whispered. “Stay quiet. Don’t even breathe.”
“Not a problem,” Thornton whispered back.
The gargoyle’s head whipped in our direction, as if it had heard us. I felt its icy gaze narrowing in on us like a rifle sight. It launched itself into the air toward us.
“Run!” Bethany said.
We took off down the street. The gargoyle came after us, chittering and shrieking. I took a swipe at it with the Anubis Hand, but the staff was half the length it used to be. The gargoyle easily maneuvered away from it. Without a weapon, the only thing to do was run, so we ran like mad.
Up ahead, in the middle of the block, a figure stepped out into the street. She was an older, slender woman in her late sixties or early seventies, wearing a billowy red blouse and black cotton pants. Strands of long gray hair blew back from her face in the breeze. She saw us, there was no way she couldn’t have, but she didn’t move, she just stood there in the middle of the street like a lunatic.
“Get away!” I shouted, waving. “Get inside!”
She stood her ground. I looked back, saw the gargoyle was gaining on us, then looked at the woman again. She didn’t look remotely frightened.
She extended her left arm. Her hand and forearm were sheathed in a long white glove, the kind someone might wear to a fancy ball, except she was only wearing one of them. Her right hand was bare. Something sparked in the palm of her glove, and then a column of fire exploded out of it. It arced through the air toward the gargoyle. As the flames passed over my head, I dropped to the pavement and looked up in time to see them envelop the gargoyle. The creature fell out of the sky like a burning comet. By the time it hit the street, there was nothing left but a few smoldering bones that looked like blackened twigs.
The woman lowered her arm. A thin wisp of smoke wafted from her glove.
My eyes were so wide I thought they might pop out. “That was amazing,” I said.
The woman nodded. “It was, wasn’t it?”
Before I could ask her who she was, a dozen big black crows swooped down from the night sky behind her. A moment later, they came together to form the Black Knight astride his armored horse.
Bethany shouted, “Behind you!”
The woman spun around. The jet-black horse snorted and hoofed the pavement.
“You,” she said. There was so much anger dripping from that one word it was immediately clear to me these two had met before. The woman raised her white-gloved hand again. Fire spat from her palm to wash over the Black Knight. But when the flames dissipated, he was unharmed.
The Black Knight reached for his sword. I pushed myself off the sidewalk and onto my feet. As soon as the Black Knight saw me, he froze, his sword halfway out of its scabbard. Then he pulled it the rest of the way out, leveled it in my direction, and urged his steed forward, the woman now all but forgotten. He wanted a rematch.
The Black Knight galloped toward me. I threw myself aside a second before his blade would have run me through, hitting the concrete with my shoulder. I rolled to a stop at the edge of the street, wincing with pain, and saw the Black Knight and his horse break apart. A dozen crows flapped their way into the night sky and didn’t come back. I stood up, rubbing my sore shoulder.
“That’s strange. I’ve never seen the Black Knight retreat like that,” the woman said. She studied our faces, then smiled. Deep dimples appeared in the shallow wrinkles of her cheeks. Her brown eyes twinkled as she smoothed down the sides of her blouse. “You must be Isaac’s friends.”
“Are you Ingrid Bannion?” Bethany asked.
“I am.” She looked up at the sky. “Maybe we should take this inside, where it’s safer.” She started walking toward an abandoned lot between two town houses in the middle of the block. A chain-link fence separated us from the patch of overgrown grass beyond it, but for some reason I had trouble focusing on it. It was like the empty lot didn’t want me to look too closely. I blinked and squinted, but the strange feeling didn’t pass. I wondered if I’d hit my head on the pavement without realizing it.
“Is the safe house close by?” I asked.
“Oh yes, it’s quite close,” Ingrid replied. She stepped up onto the sidewalk in front of the empty lot—and then kept stepping up right into the air. White-painted cement stairs appeared beneath her feet with each step she took, until finally she stood on the landing at the top of what appeared to be a freestanding stoop.
There was a house there, I realized, but somehow I couldn’t see it. The moment the thought struck me, the empty lot wavered like a mirage and a white, stucco-walled town house appeared in its place. It stood three stories tall and twice as wide as the town houses that flanked it, as if someone had bought two neighboring buildings and fused them together seamlessly. At the top of the steps, Ingrid stood before double doors that were crowned with a peaked, stone cornice. Both doors were decorated with holly wreaths sporting red plastic berries, though Christmas was still three months away. Lights glowed warmly through the thin white curtains in the windows. A collection of small Hummel figurines had been arranged on the inside of the windowsill next to the doors, all of them dressed like little ceramic shepherds with various musical instruments in their hands or pressed to their cherubic lips.
Ingrid opened the front door and motioned for us to follow her inside. I climbed up the stoop behind Bethany and Thornton, hesitant to put my full weight on steps that had appeared out of nowhere. But when I put my foot
