“Looks like they’re chasing them straight into town,” Luke said grimly, climbing up beside her. Through the rain and the sea spray, it was hard to tell exactly what was happening, but it looked like the lifeboat was almost to the docks. “Does Westerly Cove have any kind of police force?”
“Not at all. If we need something like that, we have to call the Mounties. But we almost never do.”
“Yeah, because the town’s protected.” It came out too tired to be sarcastic.
Inga looked up, and Luke did too, as the helicopter beat its way through the storm toward them. She felt Luke’s shoulder press against hers, and his hand brushed her hip. Inga reached down and took it. She found herself wondering where Rogue was and if they would ever see him again.
They were probably about to be shot. She wondered if diving into the water would save them. Maybe if they went down as deep as they could ... Polar bears were great divers, and she vaguely remembered from some movie she’d watched a long time ago that bullets rapidly lost their velocity in water.
But they would have to come up for air eventually. They might be able to escape a boat that way, if they were very lucky. But not a helicopter, which could canvass the surface of the water until it found them.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” Luke said.
“I made my own choices,” Inga retorted. She squeezed his hand.
The sound of the helicopter was incredibly loud. Inga could see that the side door was open, and she glimpsed someone in that gap leaning out with a rifle.
“Inga,” Luke said in a very different tone. “What on Earth is that? One of the griffins?”
He took his hand off the rocks for a moment to point.
Inga looked up. There was something—no, several somethings swooping out of the rain and mist swirling around the helicopter. She couldn’t see them clearly through the storm. They had wings, and they were huge.
“They’re too big,” she shouted above the noise. “I don’t know what they are.”
But she did, actually. She had looked at them every day of her life. She’d just never seen them from this angle before.
Let alone moving, flying,alive.
The helicopter was under attack by gargoyles. There were at least a half dozen of them, with more arriving by the moment, swooping out of the clouds. Inga stared, open-mouthed. At first the pilot didn’t seem to be aware of them, but that changed in an instant when they got close enough to grab hold. Two of them started trying to climb in through the open cargo door. Another seized hold of the helicopter’s landing skid, dragging it down on that side.
The helicopter swayed and dipped dangerously. Bursts of gunfire came from the open door. Inga and Luke could only stare as the huge machine wobbled above them. Inga was aware that they were still in danger, now from having the helicopter crash on them, but she wasn’t sure if the water would be any safer.
There was a sudden scream and someone plummeted from the open doorway. He fell like a stone and crashed into the water, and didn’t come up.
The helicopter started rising, going up, trying to escape its attackers. As it flew erratically out to sea, into the full force of the storm, the noise abated and Inga became aware of more gunfire and screaming coming from closer to the town.
“There are more of them,” Luke exclaimed.
The men in the powerboat were also under siege. Several gargoyles had swooped down on them and were now yanking them out of the boat and flinging them into the water. The great creatures appeared to be impervious to gunfire. Made of rock, Inga thought; of course they were. Was that a colorful lei around the neck of one of them? She gave a half-hysterical laugh, and realized that she and Luke were dangerously close to hypothermia.
But she couldn’t stop watching. She turned to find out what had happened to the helicopter, just in time to see it tilt on its side and completely lose its grip on the air. It was almostmajestic as it fell with seeming slowness and hit the waves in a great explosion of spray. It vanished beneath the water. The gargoyles continued to circle above the site of the wreck, like huge gray carrion birds.
Inga tugged on Luke’s hand to get his attention. Her hands were so numb by now that she couldn’t feel his fingers wrapped around hers.
“We need to get ashore,” she told him through chattering teeth.
Together, they slipped into the water. Inga shifted and almost gasped in relief as the freezing water became nearly warm. Luke shifted with almost as much ease. Still, they were both cold and exhausted, and it was a slow slog of a swim until they reached a part of the bay where the beach was shallow and accessible enough that they could climb ashore. By that time, the powerboat had disappeared as well, although Inga was too busy swimming to notice if it had fled back to the ship or simply went down with all hands under the gargoyle onslaught. At the moment, she was too tired and cold to care.
She and Luke struggled out of the waves and collapsed on the pebble beach. Rain continued to drive down on them, but their heavy fur protected them. Inga rolled so she was pressed against Luke. She knew she was going to have to shift in a moment; they didn’t want to be discovered here as bears by townspeople who didn’t know their secret. But for the moment, she was too tired to move.
She didn’t hear the telltale ripping sound, but Rogue abruptly came splashing out of the water. He flopped down next to them, soaked and panting. Inga raised her head enough to nose at the dog, but she didn’t smell blood on him. Rogue licked her nose.
With her head up, she could hear a babble of distant voices. She and Luke were more-or-less hidden behind some of thelarger boats, but when she pushed herself up on shaky front legs, she saw that the lifeboat was pulled up to one of the docks, and there was a small crowd of people out on the dock, surrounding the rescued researchers.
She saw no sign of any gargoyles. The ones circling the helicopter wreck had disappeared at some point while she and Luke were swimming for shore.
It’s over,she thought.It’s finally over.
