Nikolai looked up at the airship and signaled to Adrik, leaning over the bay doors. “Let’s go.”
Kaz hit the controls and the metal shell slowly began to close. They leapt onto what would be the final pallet of titanium and the crew of the airship drew them up.
Less than one hundred feet from the bay doors of the airship, Nikolai realized something was wrong.
He peered down at the cable still hooked to the beam below. “The anchor line isn’t releasing.” Nikolai gestured up at Adrik to try the release again, but the mechanism was stuck. The anchor didn’t budge. “I have to go back down. I’ll disengage it manually.”
“There isn’t time,” said Kaz. “Those hull doors are going to close first. They can eject the cable when we get to the top.”
“No good.” If they simply released the cable, the anchor would be trapped inside the yard, evidence that someone had been where they shouldn’t be. An investigation could lead back to Ravka.
Nikolai saw lights moving along the western side of the building. The guards were coming.
“How long do I have?”
“Two minutes. Maybe three. Take your medicine, Sturmhond. They won’t be able to prove the cable is Ravkan. Not right away.”
“I can’t let that happen.” Nikolai glanced up at the airship, at the faces of the soldiers and Grisha looking down. He wished he could order them to avert their eyes. There was no way to disguise what he was about to do. “Tell me, Brekker, do you believe in monsters?”
“Of all kinds.”
“Prepare to meet another.”
He closed his eyes and let the demon uncoil. It wasn’t hard. The monster was always waiting for its chance.
Kaz raised his cane as the shadow emerged, taking shape in the air before them. “All the Saints and their ugly mothers.”
The demon spread its black wings and hurtled toward the opening in the hull doors. Nikolai’s hands still clung to the cable, but he couldn’t do much more than that. He was seeing through the demon’s eyes. He felt its arms—his arms—extend, muscles flexing, claws reaching. A moment later the monster wrenched the anchor free. The cable recoiled with sudden force and slammed against one of the carefully stacked pallets of aluminum with a reverberating clang, sending bars of metal sliding.
“So much for leaving no trace,” said Kaz, though his eyes were big as moons as he watched the demon soar upward back to them.
“They might not notice,” Nikolai said hopefully.
The anchor cleared the crack in the hull a bare breath before the shell clamped shut. But the demon was trapped inside.
“Now what?” said Kaz.
Nikolai could feel the demon speeding toward the shell. No. He tried to command it, slow its progress, force it back into shadow, but it was too wild with its own freedom. It slammed through the metal shell, leaving a gaping hole in its wake.
“Think they won’t notice that?” Kaz asked.
Nikolai glanced up and saw Zoya bring her hand down in a swift arc. “Hold tight!”
A bolt of lightning sizzled through the air beside them, its heat searing the sky.
It struck the shell at the edge of the hole the demon had made, scorching the metal, making it look as if the storm had savaged the metal rooftop.
Rain spattered Nikolai and Kaz in a gust as Zoya let it pour through to the yard below. Adrik swathed the airship in clouds to hide the sight of it from any guards peering up through the damaged shell.
Moments later, they were inside the airship bay, soaked to the bone.
For a moment the demon hung on the wind, feeling the swell of the storm, fearless in the lush black night and still hungry for blood and damage. Nikolai didn’t want to draw it back—and not because he dreaded its presence inside him. Some part of him hated to cage it once more.
But the demon didn’t fight. Maybe the divisions between them were eroding. And maybe that was a problem. He couldn’t deny the remorse he felt as he tugged the darkness back.
You’ll fly again, he promised.
The airship doors banged shut. The crew stared at him. Nikolai had known what unleashing the monster’s power meant, what he was revealing. But for a moment he’d lost himself in the demon’s exultation. Zoya was shaking her head, though Kaz seemed only intrigued now that his initial fear had passed.
What happens now? he wondered, as these Ravkan soldiers faced him. He could see the terror in their faces, their bewilderment. Adrik stood several steps back, arm raised as if ready to summon a storm to fight with. For once he looked shocked instead of morose.