Gabby doubted her plan the moment the demon emerged. It slipped from under the stone bench, looking, at first, like a shorter version of the bench it had been hiding beneath, one of many benches within the closed and gated park along rue de Babylone.
The demon had four stumpy legs and a long, flat back. It remained in its benchlike form for another moment. Plenty of time for Gabby to consider whether she should have stayed at the rectory instead of sneaking out, fully armed with two blessed daggers and the short sword Nolan had given her. She gripped the handle of the sword, her leather gloves sticking to the cold silver.
Damn that Carrick Quinn! He’d made her so furious, wounded her so deeply, that all she’d been able to do the last two days was formulate her revenge plan. If the Alliance wasn’t going to take on any regular first-generation members, then she’d be something spectacular. She’d prove that she could fight. She’d hunt demons on her own until Carrick Quinn got wind of it and finally accepted that he’d been wrong.
The benchlike demon started to change. The flat seat grew longer as new vertebrae appeared like leaves being inserted into a grand dining room table. Two more sets of stumpy legs fell down from where they’d been tucked up beneath the seat, and those, too, began to lengthen.
Gabby skittered back as one end of the bench curled up, peeling back like a banana skin. One set of stumpy legs, another pair, and then a third, drew off the ground, until only a single pair of legs supported the thin, flat demon. The rest of it stood erect, and to Gabby’s utter horror, it also had a head. Like the two hidden pairs of legs, the demon’s head had been tucked in. It unfolded now, the higher end of the bench becoming a neck.
It probably had eyes and a nose, but really, all Gabby saw was its mouth: a round hole with two sets of spiked teeth rotating and gnashing together like cogs. Upon seeing its dangly legs—no, arms, she now saw, each tipped by a thick, tusklike horn—Gabby realized what this demon was: an appendius.
For the first time, she felt her resolve slip. Like before, on the abandoned bridge, she unintentionally gave in to fear. But unlike before, she failed to push it back out. She knew what the appendius could do. Tomas, the traitorous Alliance member, had been attacked by one. The appendius’s horns had left gruesome scars on his face and neck—worse than Gabby’s by far. The appendius would have skinned me alive. It would have devoured me piece by piece, taking time to digest between meals. The memory of what Tomas had told her about the appendius sent her skittering back another few steps. Her pulse hammered in her throat.
Then the demon took its first swing.
The horned tip of one arm slashed toward her. Gabby barely leaped out of its reach, ducking behind a tall, deep green cast-iron Wallace fountain. The appendius slammed its horned tip into one of the four sculpted caryatids, their raised arms holding up the fountain’s domed top. Gabby scrambled farther back, behind a box hedge, her fear completely unleashed. Luc would already be in his scales and on his way, she was certain.
The ground shook beneath her feet as the appendius plodded along, following her as she weaved deeper into the park. Fool! What did she know about fighting demons? A few lessons from Chelle and one from Tomas, and that was it.
She threw herself behind a massive tree trunk and gasped for air, forcing herself to breathe evenly. Tomas had taught her that the appendius’s weak spots were in the center of each arm, where there was nothing but soft cartilage.
With both hands gripping her sword’s handle, she jumped out from behind the tree and took an upward swipe at the appendius’s oncoming arm. The blade cut through with barely any resistance. Her victory was short-lived, however—the other arm pierced her shoulder with its tip. She went down on the packed dirt and rolled against the knotty base of the tree. Her ears started to ring with panic.
But she still heard the wings.
A shriek rent the air, and clutching at her wounded shoulder, Gabby watched as a pair of sapphire wings unfurled in front of her, shielding the appendius from view. The blue-tinted scales of the strange gargoyle glimmered in the moonlight. What gargoyle was this? She’d chosen this spot purposefully. It wasn’t marked. There couldn’t be a Dispossessed guarding it.
The gargoyle, though smaller than Luc, brutally sheared off the rest of the demon’s arms with two powerful strokes of its talons. The appendius reeled back, no longer balanced, and fell. Instead of destroying it, the gargoyle turned to Gabby, plucked her from the ground, and spiraled into the air.