The Wondrous and the Wicked (21 page)

If he’d had his hellhound blood, he wouldn’t have needed to run to Hôtel Bastian for a blessed silver blade. Then again, if he’d had his hellhound blood, would he even be thinking for himself? Or would he be like that Duster on the quay and the bloodsucking fly feasting on the horse?

Grayson hooked around a corner, onto a street that appeared calm and demon-free. He skidded to a halt and thought of Ingrid. What had happened to his sister?

From where Grayson stood, Vander’s apartment was farther away than Hôtel Bastian. He had to get to Chelle and the others. If Ingrid had succumbed to whatever spell Axia had laid down over her seedlings, at least she would be the predator and not the prey. And what of Vander? If his mersian blood was keeping Grayson immune, would he be immune as well? There were too many questions. He’d have to find answers for them later.

Grayson began to jog down the side street. Up ahead, a
woman ran from one side of the street to the other, a child in her arms. They disappeared into a building, and the slam of a door followed. It was the only sign that the chaos had traveled this far. No street would be spared if demons and Dusters were out together.

Grayson broke into a run, his mind laying out the streets, charting a course to rue de Sèvres. At this pace, he’d be there in ten minutes.

Ahead, the road bent into the narrow warren of medieval streets that hadn’t been razed and widened, the way the boulevards Saint-Germain and Saint-Michel had been decades before. These roads had been ignored and left to accommodate local foot traffic and perhaps a horse or two astride.

Grayson rounded the corner, where a small bistro, currently empty, had set out tables and chairs. He ground to a stop so quickly his heels kept slipping forward, his body falling sideways. He caught himself on a chair, propelling himself back up and into a wolf’s direct line of sight. Not a meaty, greasy-furred hellhound, but a lean, lanky wolf. The only thing that set it apart from the wolves Grayson had seen before were its pitch-black eyes—no iris, no white, just fathomless black—and a maw filled with fangs that sawed back and forth in its bloody gums.

Grayson’s stomach churned. Rose-tinted saliva dripped from the demon’s mouth, and clumps of long, blond human hair were caught in its teeth. The demon wolf snarled, its black eyes fixed on Grayson. He gripped the lacy iron back of the bistro chair and held it before him as he might a shield. The wolf surged forward, and its teeth crushed one of the curled chair legs as if it were made of papier-mâché. The wolf jerked its head and tore the chair from Grayson’s clenched fingers.

He slammed into one of the tables and swiped up a glass ashtray to defend himself with. As if it would to do more than give the wolf something to pick its teeth with. The demon wolf lunged for Grayson—and then combusted into green sparks.

Grayson stared at two, six-pointed silver throwing stars clattering to the ground at his feet. And then Chelle was in front of him where the demon wolf had been, retrieving her
hira-shuriken
and stowing them back in her red sash.

She stared at Grayson with marked disbelief. “You are you.”

“Chelle,” he said dumbly, releasing his death grip on the ashtray and taking hold of her arms instead. They were thin and muscular beneath the billowy white sleeves of her shirt, and they also threw him off fast.

“The Dusters,” she said harshly, avoiding his eyes. “They’re attacking humans with the demons. Why haven’t you changed?”

A grating shriek thundered overhead. A jade-winged gargoyle hurtled over the rooftops and collided with another winged creature, this one a skeletal horse with a forked tail and featherless wings. Fire streamed from its snout.

“It’s difficult to explain,” Grayson said. There wasn’t time to tell her about the mersian blood or Vander’s experiments. The sight of the gargoyle’s talons punching through the wings of the demon gave him hope. Wherever she was, Ingrid had Marco to protect her.

“Come on,” Chelle said, and she started in the direction Grayson had been heading, into the labyrinth of medieval streets. He followed, his heart thrashing.

“I was in the Tuileries when I saw a hellhound leading two Dusters on a rampage,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “We’ll go to Hôtel Bastian. The Roman troops might already be—”

Chelle was cut off by a woman jumping through the smashed display window of a
boulangerie.
The woman landed on the sidewalk in front of Chelle. Grayson reached out to pull Chelle back, but again she wrested her arm free. She spared him a glance of irritation—and that was when the long, razor-edged tail protruding from underneath the woman’s dress swiped through the air and sawed into Chelle’s thigh.

She screamed and her knees buckled. Grayson dove forward,
catching her before she could hit the sidewalk. He moved quickly, pulling a
hira-shuriken
from her red sash. He sliced his palm before whirling the star toward the female Duster. The star missed, and the Duster sprinted away.

Chelle clawed at her thigh and gasped for air, her face contorted in agony.

“Let me see it.” Grayson peeled her hand back, but the wound wasn’t gushing blood. It wasn’t even that deep. Nothing someone as fierce as Chelle would lose every last ounce of coloring over.

Her lips pressed together and her eyes fluttered shut. “P-poison.”

Grayson swore. That thing had been a Duster, not a demon, and yet it had still injected poison?

“Tell me what to do.” He took her head in his hands to keep her from rolling it side to side, and made her look into his eyes. “Chelle, what do I do?”

Her hand clutched at her trouser pocket and Grayson rifled through it, his fingers closing around a glass vial the size of his pinky finger. Mercurite. He uncorked the vial with his teeth and spat it out. The viscous silver liquid ran like honey over Chelle’s blood-smeared wound. It beaded into wide globules and seeped into the torn flesh. Chelle grunted and tensed, her back arching off Grayson’s thighs. But a few moments later she was still squirming and panting in agony.

“Not … working,” she gasped.

He chucked the vial, shattering the glass on the ground. The few drops of remaining mercurite balled together on the pavement, creating a miniature silver dome. Mercurite was supposed to destroy all demon poison.

But a demon hadn’t attacked Chelle.

“It’s Duster poison,” Grayson said, staring at her wound. “We have poison, too.”

Why hadn’t he thought of that before? They were half demon—why
wouldn’t
they have poison?

Chelle began to seize. Grayson stood up, cradling her against his chest and pinning her arms and shoulders. The only other thing that cured demon poison was gargoyle blood. He had no idea if it would prove as useless as the mercurite had, but there was nothing else he could think of. The only gargoyle he could approach—the only gargoyle he trusted—was Luc.

“You’re going to be fine,” he whispered as he started to run, Chelle’s body shivering and twitching.

Her voice came through as a whine. “Common … grounds.”

Good. Even locked in anguish, Chelle was present enough to know his plan. For once, Grayson didn’t feel inadequate. He’d take care of her. He’d make her safe. And then he’d let himself think about Ingrid.

She smelled the acrid bite of smoke. Heard the muffled blare of screams. Ingrid woke with her face cheek-down on something soft.
Grass. The Champs de Mars.
The two thoughts were so clear that when Ingrid opened her eyes she expected to see the exhibition buildings surrounding her. Instead, she saw the curved brass legs of an upholstered theater seat. She wasn’t lying on grass, either, but on a floor of red velvet carpet.

She tried to push herself up, collapsing twice before succeeding. Her arms were stiff, and her hands stung with the fiercest case of pins and needles she’d ever had. As she struggled to sit back upon her knees, her head spinning like a dervish, Ingrid saw she was most definitely not on the Champs de Mars. Why had she thought such a thing? She wasn’t in Vander’s room, either. She had found consciousness on the carpeted floor of a theater balcony box. How on earth had she gotten
here
?

She wobbled to her feet, clutching the edge of one burgundy upholstered seat with her numb hand, and looked out over the theater in horror. It wasn’t just any theater, but l’Opéra Garnier, and below, flames had consumed the stage.

An echoing crack ripped through the theater, and Ingrid shrieked as the stage collapsed in a ball of fire. More screams sounded from the other side of the balcony box door, and suddenly Ingrid was back in her friend Anna Bettinger’s ballroom, the curtains going up in flames, guests tripping over one another to flee the fire that Ingrid had accidentally set.

She held up her numbed hands before her. Her gloves. They were gone.

Had she done this?

She coughed as the box filled with smoke. She staggered toward the door and pushed it open, only to be met with another gray wall of smoke. Ingrid fell to her hands and knees. The air was easier to breathe near the floor, though barely. She coughed and choked and crawled, not knowing where she was going.

She remembered being in Vander’s flat, and the darkness that had overcome her. The voice tunneling into her head:
Come, my seedlings.
It had been Axia.

She had come for the Dusters. She was here. This was
her
bedlam.

Ingrid crawled toward the sounds of screaming, the blare of whistles and bells. The smoke seemed to lift a little, and she saw that she’d crawled into an enormous room. Light streamed through the billows of smoke. There were windows ahead. A whole wall of them. Her eyes stung and her vision blurred, but she still spotted a door on the far right-hand side of the ballroom. Hope that it might lead to a terrace drove her to her feet. She hurried to the door and clutched the handle but had to sink back down to the floor to drag in a breath.

Ingrid fumbled with the handle, pushing and pulling and then falling out onto the terrace when the door at last gave way. She collapsed, gasping fresh air, hearing the wails of sirens and bells, and panicked shouting from the street below.

A pair of talons landed on the terrace beside her. Marco sank into a crouch by her side, his cinnamon-red scales and amber
wings fiery in the afternoon sunlight. He’d flown in daylight? Exposed his gargoyle form to humans all over Paris?

Things were bad. Cataclysmically bad.

His arm, bricked with muscle, scooped Ingrid up off the cold stone.

“It’s Axia,” Ingrid croaked as Marco tucked her close to the plates of his chest. Her throat and eyes burned from all the smoke. “She’s here.”

He lunged off the edge of the terrace and Ingrid caught an unsteady, tear-hazed sight of the street below. Rue de l’Opéra in flames; fire leaping from windows and punching through roofs; carriages overturned in the middle of the street, their hitched horses bucking as hellhounds feasted on their flesh. A gunshot cracked through the pandemonium and Marco rose higher into the air, his wings beating through the black curls of smoke, taking them away from the maelstrom below. But there was no escaping it, she knew. No safe place. Axia’s Harvest had begun.

L
uc darted higher into the sky in an attempt to get the demon stink out of his nose. They were everywhere, out in full view of humans, laying down a path of destruction and blood. Luc had spent the last hour on the roof of his territory watching and listening with rising dread as the city erupted into turmoil street by street. He’d stayed in human form, even though no fewer than twenty Dispossessed had soared over common grounds in broad daylight.

Their passing shrieks had conveyed the news that fissures had turned into geysers spewing Underneath demons. When more than one gargoyle had screeched down at Luc, reporting that Duster abominations were banding with the demons, Luc had risen to his feet. The worn clay tiles had shifted under his weight as he’d undressed.

Their world, their boundaries, their time living in the dark, had reached an end. Luc had shed his clothes and then his skin while humans on the street below watched and screamed. He’d
launched himself from the roof, leaving his territory, thankfully vacant of any humans taking refuge from the waking nightmare unfolding in the streets. He had to find Ingrid. If she’d somehow turned into Axia’s pawn and joined the demons roaming Paris … Luc didn’t know what he would find, but whatever it was, Ingrid would need him.

When he’d reached the abbey and rectory, it had been completely quiet. The chime at the base of Luc’s skull had not come. If Marco wasn’t there, neither was Ingrid. Lady Brickton, if home, would at least be safe from demons, Luc thought as he’d wheeled in the air and headed for the only other place he knew Ingrid might flee: Hôtel Bastian.

He flew through a cloud of black smoke, a fire having engulfed a row of homes along rue Saint-Sulpice. He felt the heat of the flames and flew faster, clearing the smoke cloud and angling toward the ground. Though rank, the air there would be easier to breathe.

The streets had started to empty. He figured the panicked humans were seeking shelter indoors, and as he flew at rooftop level, he saw that most windows and balcony doors had been closed and shuttered. If only those shutters had been made of blessed silver.

He skewed left and turned onto rue de Sèvres. Except for a handful of people a quarter mile down, the wide boulevard had been abandoned. Four uniformed
gendarmes
were skirmishing with an appendius demon, and closer, a lone man was brandishing his sword at a hellhound, its fangs painted crimson. Luc could only see the man’s back, but he knew who it was. He never forgot a human charge.

Grayson Waverly swung the sword at the hellhound’s front paw as it swiped at his head. The blade bit into the hound, the wound spitting green sparks. It was a novice stroke of a blade that was clearly not his own—Grayson would have been better off hurling books at the beast.

Luc darted lower, tucking in his wings to gain speed, and rushed over Grayson’s head. The talons of his feet punctured the fibrous skin and dense muscle of the hound’s neck. He then grabbed hold of the two protruding slanted fangs and broke them off at the base. It was the first thing to do when fighting a hellhound; the wicked points were the hound’s most dangerous weapon. Luc kept the fangs in his hands and, with a shriek, plunged them into the hellhound’s fire-lit eyes.