whistling around them and playing her nerves like violin strings was ruffling his hair, and Gretchen could guess a little at the tangled emotions he was feeling.
He was as free right now as anyone could possibly be—he was out in the great wide open wilderness, with the proof of his innocence right at his feet and nothing but safe blue sky all around him. But two of the people who’d hurt him were seconds away from confronting him, and as dangerous as it might be to come face to face with Roger and Monroe, maybe Cooper needed that. Some part of him clearly wanted to face down the last of his demons.
She was ready to let them stay, then. He’d been through so much, and there was no way she could begrudge him whatever satisfaction and sense of closure he would get from getting to trade a few choice words with the men who had almost ruined his life.
But Cooper finally tore his gaze away from his past and looked straight at her, with all his attention and all his love shining brightly in his eyes. It was enough to take Gretchen’s breath away.
He’s giving all that up for me, she realized. He wants the chance to face them, he wants to make sure they don’t get away—but he’ll give that up to make sure I’m safe.
No, it was even more than that. He would give that up just to choose his future over his past. He could walk away from everything he’d been through if it meant that he was walking towards her.
She was going to take him up on it, for his sake. She had a bad feeling about whatever Phil had been talking about, and the sooner they had him safely and officially in Martin’s custody, the better.
Cooper said, “Yeah. Let’s get out of here.” He felt along his back, wincing as he brushed against his wounds, but he clenched his jaw into place. “I think I’m strong enough to fly again. I can carry him.”
He transformed into his sleek, glorious griffin, and took a struggling Phil up in his talons, holding him more securely and gently than Gretchen thought Phil probably deserved.
Gretchen had just started melting into her own griffin—already it felt comfortable and natural, like stepping into a pair of old shoes that had been perfectly broken in—when another one of Phil’s contemptuous laughs rang out, echoing around them so she had to hear it another dozen times.
She could see why he was laughing. This time, she couldn’t really blame him: the joke was definitely on them.
The advancing car had come to a standstill.
And what had burst out of it was a monster like nothing Gretchen had seen before.
Even in a nightmare.
20
Fuck.
It was the only word Cooper could think of.
There was a monstrosity stalking towards him, something so grotesque and unnatural that his griffin shied away from it. It was repulsed in an instinctive, animal way that was even more powerful than Cooper’s own revulsion. The thing in front of them wasn’t right, and his griffin knew it even better than he did.
Gretchen, human again, reached over and clutched at him, her hand digging into the scruff at his shoulders where the feathers stopped and the fur started. He could feel cold sweat on her palm.
This was as scared as he had ever seen her, and considering everything they’d faced together—that meant she was having the exact same response he was.
Even Phil’s laughter had taken on a vaguely nauseated sound. He didn’t want to be around this thing, either, and he knew it was on his side.
“Maybe it’s Monroe again,” Gretchen whispered. Her lips were barely moving, and her face had gone as pale as it had been when she’d been half-frozen. “Maybe it’s not real. He’s just making us see things.”
For a second, that gave him a fantastic hope. But then he knew better.
Monroe’s visions had been disorienting, like some kind of low-grade acid trip. The constantly shifting colors of the car his creepy powers had painted had been dizzying. Monroe could mess with them, but he couldn’t make them miss that they were being messed with.
He could still leave them confused and half-blinded, but he couldn’t fully trick them, not when they were prepared for him. The only reason he’d gotten away with confusing them before was because they hadn’t known what they were dealing with—since it seemed so wrong to doubt the evidence of their senses, they’d doubted themselves instead. Now they