She climbed onto a half-tumbled stack of hay and threw herself, belly first, onto the mare’s back. She kept low, swinging her left leg forward to straddle the mare, despite the scandalous rise of her watered silk dress. Who the devil cared if her knickers showed? Gripping the horse round its thick neck, she dug her heels in and the chestnut took off, skittering out of the stall and into the open stables.
The hopes that perhaps Yann had left or that the horse would provide adequate protection proved false. Gabby had nearly made it to the stable doors when a long, whiplike tail pounded into her right side, lifting her clean off the horse’s back. The bay mare was gone before Gabby hit the floor. She lunged to her feet, weaving slightly, her sword out before her. Yann’s lion-and-eagle amalgamation appeared in front of her. The long silver hair covering the lower, lion half of his Chimera form glistened like stardust. His black eagle eyes were cold and alert, his yellow beak hooked into a sharp tip.
His tail lashed out at Gabby and bit into her sword arm. She screamed and the sword clattered to her feet. She reached for a dagger sheathed inside her cape, but her hand only combed the air. Blast! Her cape still hung on a peg behind Yann. She had only one dagger left—the blade at her heel. Yann’s wings snapped open, his starry-night feathers singing a metallic song as they bristled. Gabby had seen his feathers shear through a crypsis demon, the edge of each one as keen as any blessed silver blade.
The Chimera’s tail lashed out at her again, aiming for her shins. Gabby jumped as it cut underneath her heavy skirts. She landed, bent into a crouch, and extracted the blade at her heel. It left her palm, her aim hasty but precise. The dagger drove into the lion’s meaty breast, though nowhere near its heart. Yann shrieked and lurched as his wings collapsed.
Gabby scooped up her dropped sword and bolted through the open stable doors, into the dusky blue sunset light. Her knees nearly gave out when she saw Gaston, still in human form, rushing across the gravel drive, toward the stables.
But then he stopped, his eyes on the space above her head, and in the next second, Gaston shattered out of his clothes and skin. His black leather wings, stretched tight over slender bones, unfolded and he launched himself into the air. Gabby swiveled around to follow his course, losing her balance as she did. She stumbled, her feet and ankles crossing over one another as if she were a baby giraffe taking its first steps.
Gabby’s hip slammed into the gravel drive, but she was still looking up, so she could see a half-feline, half-stag Chimera with feathered wings swooping toward her. Gaston had already collided with a second Chimera, so this one was all hers. Gabby rolled to the left in the last second before the Chimera’s calico legs, tipped with bulbous paws and wicked nails, could land and crush her skull. Still holding her sword, Gabby sliced the blade a few inches above the gravel and hacked into its front legs. Her blade stuck there; the blessed silver was crafted to melt through the flesh of a demon, not a gargoyle. She needed a mercurite-dipped weapon.
The Chimera thrashed and recoiled, and the handle of Gabby’s light sword was ripped from her palm. The silver blade was still embedded in the creature’s legs, but she wasn’t about to try to get it back.
Gabby dug her hands into the cold gravel, heaved herself up, and stumbled toward the chateau. The doors to the library were open, and Constantine filled the entrance.
“Go! Inside!” she screamed, though she knew a gargoyle could easily crash through the glass door or windows of the library.
Constantine, however, didn’t retreat into the relative safety of his library. He twisted the globe topper of his walking stick and withdrew a long, thin rapier. Gabby’s pace faltered a moment as the older gentleman rushed from the doorway, looking for all the world like a soldier entering the fray of battle.
The telltale shriek of a Chimera closing in from behind made Gabby’s legs pump harder.
“Inside! On the table!” Constantine shouted as their shoulders brushed past one another. Before Gabby could ask what on earth he’d meant, his coarse battle cry rent the air. Gabby kept running, her ears filled with the deafening crash of her own pulse and ragged gasping. She didn’t stop as she came to the doors, or even when Constantine’s war cry abruptly cut off.
She plowed into the library, the soles of her boots slipping along the polished parquet floors as she threw out her arms to slow her momentum. A pair of hands clamped around her arms and Gabby screamed before seeing the red-caped Directorate representative, Hathaway, at her side.
“What in Hades is happening?” he bellowed as Gabby tried to wrench her arm from his grip. The table. Constantine had said something about it being on a table.