The Wondrous and the Wicked (2 page)

Marco leaned forward. “Then why, Lady Ingrid, could I taste your fear in the back of my throat?”

She clenched her teeth and beat back a wave of nausea. Marco himself didn’t make her uneasy. It was his vivid connection to
her that did. He could sense her so intimately that if he held still and drew up her scent, catalogued within his memory, he could feel the beat of her heart echoing his own. He could feel her every breath, the shift in her pulse, even her emotions. He could find her and be at her side within moments.

These things were all meant to help him keep his human charge from harm. Still, Ingrid didn’t want him to have such access. She didn’t want him to be her gargoyle.

She wanted Luc.

Ingrid turned her head toward the Seine to avoid Marco’s stare.

“I’m worried for Grayson, you know that,” she said. “I have to find him.”

“Human, your impatience is infuriating,” he growled, standing tall. “The only thing you’re going to find down there is a quick fissure straight to Axia’s hive.”

Ingrid let out a sigh and stood up. The crown of her head reached just below the starched points of his white collar. Marco wasn’t entirely wrong. She was certain there were plenty of fissures in the sewers that led to the Underneath. She was also certain that Axia, the fallen angel who had created all of the Dusters, had not forgotten about Ingrid and the angel blood still circulating through her veins. Axia wanted that blood back. It was hers, after all.

Axia had also given Ingrid and Grayson her angel blood at birth, unlike her other seedlings, thinking to safeguard it from the toxic Underneath should the Angelic Order ever banish her to that realm. After sixteen years, the angel blood had finally grown strong enough within the twins’ bodies for Axia to reclaim. With it, she could return to the human realm for something she called the Harvest. What that was, exactly, was still a mystery to Ingrid. It wouldn’t be good, that much she suspected.

Axia had already reclaimed Grayson’s angel blood. If she reclaimed Ingrid’s portion, she would be able to begin her Harvest.

“I’m not going to hide on sacred ground forever,” she said to Marco as she slipped her dagger back into her purse.

“And your brother isn’t going to come back to you until he is ready.”

Ingrid cinched her purse and curled her hands into fists at her sides. “He’s in trouble.”

Her brother’s hellhound blood had made him do horrible things. He’d killed a girl in London. Ingrid couldn’t imagine the guilt Grayson had to be suffering. What if he couldn’t live with it? What if he decided
not
to live with it?

“Think me cold and callous if you choose, but
you
are my human charge.
He
hasn’t been since he quit the rectory and started residing elsewhere,” Marco said. “I warn you: if you attempt to climb down that sewer hole again, I will strip off my clothes, coalesce, and fly you back to the abbey kicking and screaming. Trust me—you don’t want that.” His deadly serious gaze softened as he flashed his teeth. “Or perhaps you do. I am rather stunning when unclothed.”

Even poor light couldn’t hide her blush from his night vision. Marco picked up on the pinches of color and laughed.

“My mother should toss you out on your ear,” Ingrid said. “You are by far the worst butler I have ever met.”

Marco gestured toward the wide stone steps that led to the street. She groaned and reluctantly started walking toward them.

“Lady Brickton adores me,” Marco replied, following her. “And I am a marvelous butler.”

She supposed he was rather efficient. He had no excuse not to be, not with over four hundred years of various servant duties under his belt at his former territory. That didn’t mean Ingrid felt the need to praise him.

“Mama is terrified of you,” she said. Her mother knew what Marco was. She also knew that as the Dispossessed assigned to the abbey and rectory, he would not be going anywhere even should she dismiss him.

“Terrified is exactly how I prefer my humans,” he countered. “I need to work on finding a way to frighten you into obedience.”

“Threatening to remove your clothes was quite enough. I—” Ingrid’s retort fell silent on her lips as a man appeared at the top of the quay steps.

Since arriving under the bridge, she had only needed to pause for one vagrant who had shuffled by, wheeling along a wooden cart filled to the brim with his meager belongings. Ingrid had hidden in the shadows until he’d passed, the dark having been a much better veil a half an hour ago.

There was no avoiding this new stranger. The rising light cast him in shades of blues and purples, and Ingrid could tell by the cut of his trousers and heavy greatcoat that he was not some ragtag vagrant. She paused at the bottom of the steps, thinking to stand aside and allow him to descend first.
This isn’t London
, she reminded herself. This man wasn’t going to recognize her. Though she’d been in Paris for over four months, she wasn’t a true part of society here. No one but her mother would care that she was on a quay this early in the morning.

Marco stepped close behind Ingrid, his brawny chest brushing against her shoulders. Though he said nothing, she felt him rigid with menace as the stranger took the first few steps down.

“Relax,” she whispered, but at the tail end of her plea came a familiar sharp
twang.

She knew the sound: the spring release of a crossbow.

Marco caged Ingrid with his arms and with unnatural speed pivoted her away from the stone steps. He moved with such swiftness that he drove the breath from her lungs and her vision blurred. Marco stumbled as something hit him, and with a grunt and a growl, he shoved Ingrid.

“Run,” he rasped. “Go!”

His thrust propelled Ingrid forward, but she stumbled to a halt, disobeying her gargoyle yet again. Had that man actually
shot
at them? She turned back toward the steps in time to see
Marco’s human body erupt into true form. His butler’s uniform ripped apart at the seams as his spine cracked and lengthened, his legs grew and bulked with muscle, and a pair of massive wings unfurled out of his back. He flexed those wings, raising them into great sails, and shredded the last clinging remnants of his jacket. Ingrid stared at the dart embedded in Marco’s ribs.

Marco’s battle screech echoed off the quay wall as the stranger tossed his spent crossbow aside, drew a sword, and slashed it toward Marco’s enormous form. With one swipe of his talons, Marco sent the sword clattering to the ground. He raked his claws toward the man again with unrelenting ferocity. Ingrid swiveled around and squeezed her eyes shut, but she still heard it: the rip of flesh, a short squeal of agony. And then silence. An awful silence, slowly being pushed back by the pounding of her pulse and the burble of the swollen Seine.

Ingrid turned toward the quay steps, certain of what she would see. Marco’s wings drooped slightly as he twisted at the waist and wrenched out the embedded dart. The stranger lay on his side next to Marco’s long, spiked tail.

“Is he … is he dead?” Ingrid whispered. Marco couldn’t answer her while in gargoyle form, and he wouldn’t be shifting back into human form here, not with his clothes in tatters.

Instead, he threw the bloody dart and the man’s discarded sword and crossbow into the river. The current swallowed them. Marco scooped up the limp body with one arm. He then stalked toward Ingrid, fury powering every step. She pulled in a breath and held it as the eight-foot gargoyle, his wolfish face crumpled into a scowl, surged toward her. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her, but she’d never been more terrified of him.

Marco broke into a run. His wings snapped open and caught a gust of wind a mere second before he hooked her around the waist with his free arm. Ingrid slammed against his chest, and she clung to him as he lifted off the quay and into the low blue light of dawn.

T
he man wasn’t dead.

He’d groaned during the flight to Hôtel Bastian, the rising sun nipping at Marco’s tail the whole way to rue de Sèvres. Marco had landed on the roof of the town house with such force that the Alliance member standing sentry had actually cried out. He’d recovered quickly and run inside to alert the others, leaving the door open, the invitation explicit: gargoyles were not often permitted inside Hôtel Bastian, but this was obviously an exception.

The injured man hacked a wet cough as Marco shrugged him off his plated and scaled shoulder, dropping him carelessly on a steel table inside Hôtel Bastian’s medical room. More blood leaked through his teeth and over his lips.

The gashes across his chest were fatal; of that Ingrid was certain. Marco’s talons had ripped a path from the man’s right collarbone to his left ribs, and with every heartbeat, blood rushed from the carved trenches, drenching his overcoat and shirt and—

Ingrid
stared at the sash, wide as a cummerbund, wound around the man’s torso. Even soaked nearly black with blood, she could see what color it had originally been: bright crimson. The color of the Alliance.

Marco had brought them here, to Paris Alliance faction headquarters, for a reason.

Ingrid heard the thud of feet approaching the room and expected Marco to shift back to his human form. But he remained true and turned to face the door. The first person to rush in would meet with the sight of a gargoyle’s intimidating height, brawn, and fury.

This wasn’t the first time the Alliance had tried to kill her.

Nolan Quinn charged through the door of the medical room. He was occupied with tucking in the rumpled tails of his linen shirt and strode right by Marco without more than a swift glance of acknowledgment. The gargoyle emitted a snort of disappointment through his long, wolfish snout.

The man on the table gurgled on more blood, and Nolan swore under his breath. “What happened?”

“We were on the quay beneath the Pont de l’Alma—” Ingrid began.

“What demon did this?” Nolan barked as he threw open a cabinet door and pulled down a familiar black glass bottle.

“Mercurite won’t help. He doesn’t have demon poison in him,” Ingrid said. Nolan slammed the cabinet door and spun toward her.

Gabby had once told Ingrid how much she adored Nolan’s eyes, as bright as a morning glory and as sharp as one of the Alliance’s blessed silver blades. Ingrid, however, squirmed beneath them now. He shifted his glare toward the gargoyle standing behind her.

“Marco had no choice. This man tried to kill us.”

Nolan lifted his chin and the anger drained from his face. He set down the bottle of mercurite and approached the table.
Nolan inspected the wounds but didn’t attempt to staunch the bleeding. Ingrid figured he knew a dead man when he saw one.

“What is your name?” Nolan asked him. “Who sent you?”

Another Alliance member rushed into the medical room, giving Marco his desired reaction. Hans, the new faction leader in Paris, pulled up short and stumbled past the pair of half-open wings. Finally satisfied, Marco crumbled from his true form. His wings pleated and sank into his back, his barrel chest and hulking thighs slimmed, and his slate scales disappeared beneath dark olive skin.

Ingrid turned aside. It was startling how accustomed she’d become to naked men waltzing about. She’d long lost any desire to peek.

“Why does his name matter? He’ll be dead in less than a minute,” Marco said, joining the conversation now that his vocal cords allowed him to speak instead of screech. “He attempted to kill Lady Ingrid and he is Alliance. What your father told us was true, and this proves it.”

The man jerked and arched his back. He hissed a long, reedy death rattle, and then his spine hit the table.

Marco grunted. “He shouldn’t have lasted this long. It’s not good for my ego.”

Hans moved to Nolan’s side and frowned, causing two deep creases to bracket the space between his eyebrows.

“Are you certain he tried to kill you, Miss Waverly?” Hans asked.

After Carrick Quinn, Nolan’s father, had died in the jaws of a hellhound, Hans had come up from Rome and taken command of the faction. So far, he’d been quiet and unsmiling the few times he and Ingrid had met.

“Does the wound in my back look like a paper cut from when he shot an invitation to tea from his crossbow?” Marco growled.

Ingrid squeezed her eyes shut. Marco’s quick temper would not help things. A lot had changed within the last month. Nolan
and the others had put up with Luc’s presence from time to time, but ever since Ingrid’s sister had accidentally killed the Dispossessed elder there had been a complete breakdown between the gargoyles and the Alliance. The tenuous accord Lennier had nurtured between the two groups for centuries had all but shattered.

“Enough,” Hans said in his soft yet authoritative voice. He had his eyes on the crimson sash. “Were there any witnesses?”

Ingrid hadn’t yet decided whether she liked Hans. She hadn’t liked Carrick, and for good reason—the man had released a mimic demon and given it orders to attach itself to her, torment her, and ultimately, kill her. He and the rest of the Directorate had agreed that the sacrifice of one human was acceptable if it meant that Axia could never reclaim her angel blood and set her Harvest in motion. They had no more of a clue about what Axia’s exact plans were than Ingrid or anyone else, but they had decided that the safest route would be to spill Ingrid’s blood and never find out.

Nolan’s father had tried to redeem himself in the end by going against Directorate orders and attempting to save Ingrid’s life. Clearly it had worked. Here she stood, still alive. However, Carrick had told her flat out not to trust anyone from the Directorate. Hans wasn’t a part of the Directorate, though he did have their ear.

“No,” Ingrid answered. She hadn’t seen anyone else on the quay, and she hoped no passersby had witnessed Marco’s transformation or the brutal killing. If they had, the poor wretches would likely have nightmares for the rest of their lives.

The door to the medical room winged open once more, and the only female Alliance hunter in Paris strode in, her cropped black hair wildly mussed and flattened on one side, presumably from a bed pillow. Chelle stood at least a head shorter than Ingrid, her petite frame drowning in a baggy shirtwaist and wide-legged canvas trousers. As if her eccentric clothing required one last detail to top it off, she was also barefoot.