The Wondrous and the Wicked (24 page)

“I won’t hide behind a gargoyle.”

“Then I’m coming with you,” she said, even though she knew it might return them to their earlier argument about Paris and vengeful gargoyles.

It didn’t, however. Nolan only nuzzled her closer, dipping his mouth close to her ear and whispering so low that no one else would be able to make out his words.

“The net is more important, Gabby. Have Rory bring it to Paris as soon as it’s finished.” He pressed his lips to the skin just south of her earlobe and gripped her arms. “Stay with Hugh and Carver. I don’t want you in Paris. Do you hear me, lass?”

He pulled back until his morning-glory eyes found hers. He was waiting for a nod. She gave him one because she had heard him. She just didn’t plan to obey.

Nolan tugged her forward, kissing her forehead the same way he had the night in the rectory kitchen before she’d left for London. Only this wasn’t a cold, angry, or obligatory kiss. His hands came up to cup her cheeks, and as he let her go, he looked pained. Perhaps a little scared. He shook off the hand of one of the Alliance men and fell into step behind Benjamin and beside Nadia.

Nolan didn’t look back.

O
utside, the city had gone quiet. Too quiet, Ingrid thought as she pulled the heavy velvet drape in the medical room aside and peered down rue de Sèvres. There was no traffic, foot or wheeled. No activity at all. The only signs of life along the horizon of rooftops were the plumes of smoke from scattered fires. The smoke blocked out the light of the setting sun and washed a burnt-orange haze over the city.

Chelle was still alive but unconscious, and Grayson had carried her to the medical room so Vander could stitch up the gash on her thigh. Demon poison, left untreated, would have killed her by now. Apparently, Duster poison was an entirely different beast. That didn’t make it any less frightening or confusing. Chelle was giving off dust, and if Vander had the color right—pale amethyst—it was rattilus dust.

“The Duster had a long, scorpion tail, spiked with teeth like a saw,” Grayson said, hovering over Chelle’s unmoving form on one of the examination tables. He hadn’t let go of her
hand or stopped smoothing her short black hair away from her face.

“A rattilus,” Luc confirmed from where he stood sentry at the door. He’d borrowed some of Nolan’s clothes and a pair of boots.

Marco had left a little while before, but only when Ingrid’s mother’s tension had not abated. He’d growled in frustration, unable to trace any of the servants, even Margaret, Mama’s lady’s maid. They hadn’t been harmed. They had simply disappeared from his senses, suggesting they had quit the rectory, leaving Mama alone. Ingrid wouldn’t have believed Margaret could be so cowardly. She supposed desperate times showed a person’s true mettle. Marco had left, saying he would be back after he relieved Lady Brickton’s worry.

Demons couldn’t set foot on hallowed ground, Ingrid knew, and felt better about her mother’s being holed up in the rectory. It was the Dusters that worried her. However, if she had been released from the spell, the others had to have been as well. She hoped.

“So a rattilus Duster cut into Chelle, injected its poison, and, what … 
created
another Duster?” Grayson asked.

No one needed to answer. Chelle wasn’t awake yet, but she was alive. And she was a new Duster.

“Axia is creating more Dusters,” Ingrid said, letting the drape swing back into place. If there were demons out there, she didn’t want them to see the lights and get curious. “She’s building an army, and she’s using Dusters to do it.”

Ingrid didn’t want to contemplate how many humans had been injected with Duster poison during the single hour Axia had compelled her seedlings to ravage Paris. Her throat was still raw from the smoke she’d breathed in at the opera house. Her fingers and hands had regained feeling, but they still tingled. She didn’t remember anything, but she knew she’d thrown a lot of lightning. One of her targets had been Vander. He’d told her not to worry, that he had recovered just fine, but she’d still cried. Still felt like a monster.

“Only certain Dusters would have the capacity to inject poison,” Vander said, his eyes landing briefly on Grayson. “There are others who don’t. Like you, Ingrid.”

She flexed her fingers, trying to dispel the last of the tingling. Demon poison was used to debilitate prey. Lectrux demons used electricity to do that, not poison. She kept quiet but inside shuddered with relief.

“And you,” she said to Vander, who had turned toward one of the long counters. He was busying himself with a microscope and a sample of Chelle’s blood. “Mersians aren’t dangerous to humans. You didn’t even fall under Axia’s spell.”

Vander had given Ingrid an injection of his blood immediately after he’d sutured Chelle’s wound. They hoped it would work the way it had for Grayson.

“I don’t know why she would have given me the blood of a mersian if it meant she wasn’t going to be able to command me. If she even knew,” Vander said, peering through the microscope. He swore and slammed his hand onto the table. “It’s clotting. Chelle’s blood and mine.”

Grayson dug his palms into his temples and raked his fingers roughly through his hair.

Out in the street, a rise of noise broke the unnatural silence. Vander crossed the room to the window and lifted the drape just enough to peek out.

“You need to leave. All of you. Now.”

Ingrid joined Vander at the window. She peered out just as stealthily, feeling Luc press up behind her for a glance as well. Four stories below, three conveyances had pulled to a stop directly in front of Hôtel Bastian’s entrance. The carriages were surrounded by Alliance members, all of them armed. She spotted Hans among them. They were guarding the carriages, it seemed, and the dozen or more men climbing out of them and onto the curb.

“The Roman troops?” she guessed. A man wearing a bright red cape and hat appeared among those below.

“And the Directorate representative,” Vander said. He stepped away from the window and, crouching, pulled up the hem of his right trouser leg. He gripped the hilt of a knife strapped inside his boot and held it out to Ingrid. “You’re not safe here.”

Ingrid didn’t take the proffered blade. She’d had one in her reticule, but she’d lost the purse, along with one pair of her custom-made gloves and Luc’s stone talisman, when the hellhound had dragged her to the Underneath.

“All we have to do is tell them about your demon blood being able to subdue ours,” she said.

Vander stood up. “And if they don’t care? If they don’t listen or understand? They’re hunters, Ingrid, and they’ve got their orders. You need to go.”

“He’s right. Take the knife,” Luc told her, still at her back.

She didn’t want the knife! “Where are we supposed to go? We can’t keep running. There has to be something we can do.”

“We find Axia,” Grayson said. He’d gone back to Chelle’s side.

A low rumbling of feet and voices drifted from a few stories below.

“If she’s started her Harvest, that means she’s here. In human form. That’s why she consumed the blood of those girls back in December, right? To give herself a corporeal form,” Grayson explained as the bottom floors of Hôtel Bastian came to life.

“One that can be harmed,” Ingrid said. Or better still, killed.

Vander’s patience snapped. He grasped her hand and forced the handle of the knife into her palm. He closed her fingers around it.

“Go. Go with Luc and Grayson and stay away from any Alliance, understand? There’s more mersian blood in my room on rue de Berri. Get to it in at least another day or so.”

She frowned at him. “You can’t stay here. You’re a Duster!”

“I’m Alliance,” Vander replied, then nodded toward the table where Chelle was lain out. “Besides, I can’t leave her.”

“Neither will I,” Grayson said. Ingrid spun toward him to protest, but he already had his poker face on and his hands up. “I’m not leaving her, Ingrid.”

She pursed her lips. Ingrid knew her brother, and she knew when he’d made up his mind to see something through. Besides, she had a strong feeling that her brother had fallen in love.

More voices, the scraping of furniture, the slam of a door.

“What will they do to you?” she asked Vander.

“Get her out of here, Luc,” he said, ignoring her question. “Avoid the roof. There will already be a few fighters stationed there. Go down the hall, to the last room on the right. There’s a balcony.”

Luc took her elbow and dragged her from the room, Ingrid craning her neck to see her brother and Vander before the door shut. They ran down the hall to the room with the balcony, just as Vander had instructed. Luc threw open the doors and tugged Ingrid against his chest. He swung one leg over the wrought-iron rail.

She froze, staring down at the four-story drop. “Wait—aren’t you going to shift?”

He lifted her to sit on the rail, her legs dangling over the edge. He held her steady, and she didn’t even consider being afraid.

“I’m not planning on flying anywhere,” he said as he hooked her legs with his arm and cradled her against his chest. He brought his anchoring leg over and then they were falling. The wind rushed up her nostrils and through her hair; a scream lodged like a stone in her throat. Luc hit the pavement below. His legs, like oiled springs, sank into a smooth, graceful crouch before bounding back up again. Ingrid’s stomach swam somewhere around her ankles.

“We’ll be less visible on foot,” Luc said, inclining his head toward hers. “Are you able to walk?”

She licked her lips and nodded. He let her down, but she continued to gaze up at him.

“How did you do that?”

His lopsided smile made her forget the ground beneath her feet. “Not human, remember?”

He kept her hand in his as they ran along the alleyway, away from the main road. They reached the next block and Luc turned right. Ingrid looked left, toward the abbey and rectory.

“We’re not going home?” she asked, forgetting for the moment that he no longer called it that.

“It will be the first place the Roman troops go,” he answered.

She thought of Marco and what he would do to any Alliance fighters who showed up searching for her.

“Don’t worry about Marco. He’ll know where we are,” Luc said, his read on her unsettlingly accurate.

“To your territory, then?” she asked as Luc slowed their pace to a jog.

“Not with Vincent and the others likely massing there right now to discuss the demon invasion,” he answered quickly.

She yanked her hand from his and came to a stop. This side street was as deserted as rue de Sèvres had been, but she still kept her voice low.

“Why did we even bother leaving if we had nowhere to go? Why am I running from the Roman troops if Vander and Grayson aren’t?”

Luc expelled a long breath. His hands were on his hips, his alert gaze coasting along the empty road for a moment before settling on her.

“Because the first Alliance fool to touch you would have died.” Luc took the three steps back to her side. “I would have killed him, and then maybe a few more, but eventually they would have overtaken me. I’d be dead—for good, this time—and the Alliance and Dispossessed would be at war.”

A gust of wind barreling down the street caught the last traces of her anger and stole them away. She hadn’t thought that far ahead. She closed her eyes, knowing she had to start or they weren’t going to make it through the night.

“Marco’s old territory,” she said, opening her eyes. “He said it was deserted.”

Luc held out his hand. She slipped her fingers through his.

“I know where it is,” he said.

The stately town home covered nearly half a block of a street directly off rue de Vaugirard. The windows were dark when Luc and Ingrid approached, as were most of the windows surrounding Marco’s old territory. Shutters drawn, drapes thrown closed, awnings over storefronts secured. There were few people milling about as the last rays of sun streaked through the dust and smoke drifting through Montparnasse. A group of young men, loud and cocky, were making a racket farther down Vaugirard; two policemen on horses trotted toward them; a brave girl in one of the buildings had her window open, her elbows propped on the sill, her eyes pinned on Luc and Ingrid.

Luc led Ingrid toward the back door of the town home, where deliveries and servants had come and gone. His hand loosened around hers.

“No gargoyles, at least,” he whispered, reaching for the knob. He twisted it, breaking the lock and reminding Ingrid once again that even his human form couldn’t mask what he truly was.

The glass-paned door glided inward and Luc and Ingrid stepped inside a dark, cold room. Ingrid couldn’t see anything beyond black shapes, a glint of copper or glass, and the hulking shadow of a stove. Luc, however, had reclaimed her hand and easily guided her through the dark. The last vestiges of dried herbs and vinegar, of burned coal and wood, hinted that this was the kitchen.

She stayed behind Luc, her hand closed in his. He led her deeper into the pockets of darkness, treading up stairs to the second floor. With every step she felt as if they were ascending farther and farther from the mad world outside, into a safe haven of their very own.

He brought her into a room and closed the door behind them before leading her across the bare floor. Her skirts brushed along a piece of furniture, and Luc guided her to sit upon a sofa. The cushion was soft with use, and Ingrid sank down into it.

“There’s a fireplace,” Luc announced before releasing her hand.

Ingrid was still shaking, but she didn’t think it was from the cold, musty air of the closed-up town home. She couldn’t stop wondering what had happened when the Roman troops had walked into the medical room. How had they treated Grayson? And what if Vander refused to point out other Dusters? Ingrid buried her face in her hands. It was a nightmare. Not just Axia and the hellish realm she’d unleashed, but the Alliance and how they’d undergone a sea change.

A small flame ignited in the hearth. It revealed the black outline of Luc’s crouched figure. He wasn’t as broad or as tall as Marco, but he was powerfully built. Nolan’s borrowed clothes fit snugly, defining the able muscles of Luc’s arms, shoulders, and back. He blew into the flames and added a few small pieces of firewood.