Chapter 106

Aldara stumbled but righted herself and kept moving, ever mindful of the gun in Yves's hand. "In one of my trunks," she told him. "There's a secret compartment. How did you find me?" In movies, it always helped to keep the villain talking, right?
"All I had to do was hack the cruise line. They turned up the address you were using, along with the delivery instructions for your luggage. Then all I had to do was fly up here last night. The island was easy to hide on and when I saw the plane land, I stowed away in the restroom. Simple as could be." He pushed her through the galley.
"Which trunk?"
"The green one," she answered without thinking then cursed herself. Yves chuckled and nodded toward the cargo compartment.
"Good. Now open it up."
The first thing she saw was a pool of blood on the floor of the hold with Marc's inert stone body lying beside it.
"How did you get on the ship?" She fought back tears as she stepped carefully around Marc's body and knelt beside the trunk, her heart breaking.
"Flew onboard at night. Wasn't difficult. Wish I'd known harpies can't die by drowning."
Aldara slid her hand into her purse.
"What are you doing?" Yves barked, raising his pistol.
"The keys are in my purse," she told him. But her hand closed around the stock of the handgun instead. She didn't even pull it out of her bag, just raised it and pulled the trigger, shooting him right through the damaged leather.
"Bitch!" Hit in the shoulder, Yves squeezed off a shot before he dropped his pistol but it went wild, slamming into a storage bin. "Why the hell didn't you die the first time I killed you?"
"Because I made a promise to your father," she retorted. She darted away from him as he lunged toward her. "One I intend to keep."
"Fine, bitch. Now the gargoyles die." He leapt aside to unlock the cargo hatch. His one arm hung mostly useless but there was still a hell of a lot of power in the other.
"No!" Aldara trained her gun on him for another shot, only to have him swipe out at her with his one good arm and knock the weapon out of her hand. Then he backhanded her into the bulkhead before turning back to wrench open the door.
Her arm felt as if it had been ripped out of its socket and her ears were ringing from the force of her skull connecting to the steel bulkhead wall. But she couldn't stop now, couldn't let Marc's stone form be flung from the plane. She looked around for a weapon then picked up a fire extinguisher and flung it at Yves, throwing him off balance right in front of the open hatchway.
One more thing to throw might push him out, but Yves could fly, so that wouldn't help. He righted himself and advanced on Aldara, his enormous fist drawn back and menace gleaming in his black eyes. The punch might not kill her but she couldn't fly if she was unconscious and the fall just might. She readied herself to duck when she heard a roar then suddenly there was another loud shot. Yves' eyes widened just as a red circle blossomed on his forehead.
"Aldara," she heard Marc gasp. "You...okay?"
Yves crumpled and hardened simultaneously or nearly so. By the time she'd inhaled her next breath, he was a kneeling statue, an expression of outrage frozen on his jet-black stone face, the angry hole still seeping blood from between his eyes. The force of the bullet had thrown him back into the open doorway. As he solidified, he teetered then slowly toppled out the hatch.
"Marc?" Aldara shifted her gaze from the empty doorway to her lover who still lay on the floor, chest heaving. He'd moved, though, and her gun - well, his father's - was clutched in his golden-brown hand. "You're alive?"
"I might not be as big or strong as Beau or Marc but I've always been faster," he joked. His breathing was ragged but as he sat up, she could see the hole in his chest had already closed, identifiable only by the torn and bloody gap in the shirt around it. "The others?"
"All shot," she said.
"Stone or flesh?" She ran over to help him as he struggled to stand.
"Stone, all of them," she assured him, which didn't mean much, she realized, thinking of Yves. There shouldn't be any way he'd have recovered from a bullet right between the eyes.
"Then there's hope." Marc leaned against the bulkhead, wrapped both arms around Aldara and crushed her to his chest. Burying his face in her hair, he murmured brokenly. "Thank God you're okay."
He tipped up her head and his lips ravaged hers for a kiss that was as possessive as it was brief. His body still trembled and his breathing was still ragged but then so was hers. "Who's flying the plane?"
"Nobody. I think your father put it on autopilot before he was shot."
"Okay. We can check on them and then I can fly this puppy home."
"You know how to fly a plane?" She lifted one hand to wipe her tangled hair out of her face and felt the stickiness of blood where she'd been slammed against the wall.
"My dad gave me lessons."
"What do we do about...?" She pointed to the open hatch.
"He won't have survived the fall, not in his stone shape," Marc said. "And I can't say I give a shit. He tried to kill most of the people I care about in this world. Gargoyle justice tends to be pretty brutal since we can't exactly turn one another over to the human authorities."
"I've got no problem with that at all." She didn't think she'd have ever felt safe again with Yves running around free.
"We'll write up an aviation report saying a hatch malfunctioned and a slate statue fell out of the plane to explain when people find the rubble," he added. "Right now I want to go check on my father and my friends." He cautiously stepped over and closed the cargo hatch then drew in a deep, ragged breath, took her hand and went back into the passenger part of the plane.