“It looks that way, but any number of them could be Otherworlders. Unless they make a move there’s no telling.” He took a blade from somewhere in his coat, inspected its edge in the light of the porch lamp, and put it away again. “Oh, and your man is approaching from the south. He’s eighty paces away.”
“What?” hissed Ilsa. She craned around the wall as her taller companions peered over and squinted down the street.
Sure enough, a male figure was approaching St Genevieve’s. His soaking hair could be any colour, but he had the build of the man Ferrien had impersonated, and as he came into the light of the lamp in front of the orphanage, Ilsa’s breath caught.
Gedeon. He was so close.
He stopped with a hand on the gate, his attention snagging on something in Ilsa’s direction. Four hooded men were coming the other way, and as they passed their hiding spot, the lamplight flashed across the shape of a revolver.
Eliot spotted it too. “This one’s armed. Whisperer. They must be Fortunatae.”
Was Alitz one of them? Was Pyval? Ilsa made to step around the wall, but Fowler’s hand closed around her arm and tugged her back. She was about to throw her best punch at him when Cassia gasped and pointed down the road.
Prowling silently behind the Fortunatae were four huge wolves. They were gaining with every step, but they weren’t fast enough. As soon as the hooded men were in range of Gedeon, the leader raised his gun. Gedeon froze in place. It was too late to run.
The wolves pounced. The gun fired. Ilsa’s scream was muffled by the shot. Gedeon fell to his knees and collapsed face first into the street.
36
They burst from the garden into the road, but it was all over. The Fortunatae men were dead, the wolves were Camden militia again and Gedeon was…
Was no longer Gedeon.
Cassia reached him first and hauled him onto his back. “Oh stars. Scotty!” she cried.
He was another soldier, and he was breathing. “Cassia?” he gasped, gripping at his bleeding chest. “What are you—”
An enormous crash sounded from somewhere in the orphanage. “That’s the second decoy,” said another wolf. “Desmond, with me.”
Two of them disappeared through the gates and the door beyond, while the other two hauled Scotty to his feet.
“With all due respect, sirs, Miss Sims, help or get out of the way,” said a long-haired wolf. He shot a mistrusting glance at Fowler, then looked Ilsa up and down. “Who are you?”
“I’m—”
“Get down!”
Ilsa’s face smacked the cobblestones as Eliot threw himself on top of her. A flash of light filled her vision, the stone wall of the orphanage cracked with a sound like thunder, and then she was being hauled to her feet again.
In those few seconds, everything had descended into chaos. The flash had been a spell, the first of a flurry now raining down on them from a boarded-up house across the street. Cassia had generated a protective shield, but more Sorcerers were advancing from behind. Fowler was a blur, slowing just long enough to cut each rebel down, then disappearing again. A bird of indeterminate species swooped down onto a rooftop, thrashed like it was having a seizure, landed haphazardly on gangly human limbs, and took cover as he tossed a projectile into the fray. It was as safe a spot as any for Fyfe to defend himself from.
Oren was nowhere to be seen.
“Come on!” yelled Eliot, and they ran for the house. “Be careful when you shift. Keep an eye out for Whisperers.”
If there had been time to think, Ilsa would have talked herself out of it. The square, grey-stone structure of the orphanage seemed to reach for her as she drew nearer; the doorframe seemed to narrow even as they passed through.
Inside was a different kind of chaos. Children were pouring from their rooms and running, screaming, down the corridors. Desmond and the other man were trying, and failing, to herd them to safety.
Ilsa and Eliot followed the sounds of fighting to the kitchen at the back of the house. The loud crash, it turned out, had been someone tearing a hole in the high wall that surrounded the courtyard out back. Rebels and more hooded men and women – the Fortunatae – had engaged with the second decoy and were overpowering them. One was Psi, and was using the rubble of the wall as missiles. She could probably take down the whole building if she chose. Another, Ilsa saw with a jolt of terror, was a Wraith. As she watched, he emerged through what was left of the wall behind a cornered wolf, and cleanly snapped his neck.
But several were Whisperers, and Gedeon’s wolves were at a disadvantage. The Changelings were less skilled with real weapons, and some were struggling to stay in control of their minds. They became beasts in flashes, lashed out and changed again, but the damage wasn’t great enough.
“Bloody hell,” breathed Eliot. “This is a shambles.”
He drew his own gun and aimed it through the open kitchen door, but missed.
“When your aim is bad,” said Ilsa, carefully slipping the knife she had holstered at her waist up her sleeve, where she preferred her tools. A blade is only as good as its backup. “You just got to close the distance.”
“Ilsa, wait!”
But she had already become a sparrow, and in the chaos, she slipped unnoticed through the Fortunatae’s front line. As a bird, it was easy to think about the present moment – and not the things she’d seen Wraiths do, or whether she might lose her knife, or cut her own wrist by mistake – so she concentrated on it as she shifted and landed lightly on the wall behind him. He heard her, of course, but Ilsa had expected that. She had already let the blade slip into her hand; she had already raised it; she was already falling on top
