The Wondrous and the Wicked (8 page)

“Dust,” Vander rasped. “Not theirs.”

“A demon?” she asked.

Vander shook his head once before reaching into his coat. He removed his sword, a thin rapier, and ascended the steps slowly, purposefully. He hadn’t instructed Ingrid to stay put, so she climbed after him. Vander reached the landing, whirled past the open door at his right, and pressed his back against the wall. He then peered around the doorframe.

His clenched jaw loosened and horror brightened his eyes. She scooted past the open door the same way he had, planning to place herself right behind him. The blood stopped her. It colored the inside of the apartment, splattered over a threadbare carpet and the plaster-and-beam walls. She clapped her hand over her mouth when she saw the bodies on the floor. All four of them. They lay prostrate, their limbs tangled as if they’d all fallen together in a heap. Their clothes were soaked with blood, a glistening crimson pool forming around them.

“Van—” Ingrid’s voice broke off when she saw another body across the small room. He was seated on the floor, his back to the wall and slumped to the side. The gore from his torn-apart stomach and chest had splashed his face, but Ingrid still recognized him.

“Oh my God,” she whimpered.

It was Léon.

A thump from up the next set of steps drew Vander’s attention. The steps led to a door half the size of a normal apartment door.

“He’s on the roof,” Vander whispered.

Ingrid averted her eyes from the bloodbath. “Who is?”

“The gargoyle that did this,” he answered.

Ingrid finally understood. He’d seen
gargoyle
dust.

“Go,” he said, already taking the steps up to the roof door. “Hail a hansom and get back to Hôtel Bastian. Tell Nolan what’s happened.”

“Vander, stop! You can’t—”

“Go!” he shouted again, and then was gone, through the door and onto the roof in pursuit of the gargoyle.

Ingrid wavered on the landing. She couldn’t help Vander with this. He was the hunter, not her. He was right. She had to go, had to alert the others. Taking one last glance around the shabby apartment from the open doorway, making sure there was no other body she had overlooked—one with blond hair and a face she knew better than her own—she ran back down the curving stairwell.

A door opened as she passed by the last landing, but she didn’t stop. She barreled down the final flight of steps and straight out onto the sidewalk beside the
fromagerie
, her chest heaving, her legs weak. She had thrown herself into the path of two older women, who peered at her wild display with narrowed, disapproving gazes.

“Pardon,”
Ingrid said, barely above a whisper. She pushed back the blond tresses that had fallen out from under her pinned hat and searched for a cab. She saw wheeled carts and rickshaws and a private carriage, but nothing she could flag down.

Ingrid peered up at the apartment building. The alley between this building and the next was so slim Vander could have easily jumped from roof to roof. She needed to move. Needed to find a cab. She hurried toward the cross street up ahead.

“Ingrid!”

She reeled to a stop, causing the man behind her to stumble to the side in order to avoid colliding with her. She ignored his mumbled curse and stared across rue Amélie.
That voice.

“Ingrid, over here. Quick,” it came again, and this time she
saw a shadow dipping into the slim break between two buildings across the street.

Grayson?

She crossed the street, jumping over the thin stream of wastewater and sludge running down the center gulch in the road.

She’d known her brother would be with Léon! But, oh … what had happened? Had he been meeting the rest of the Dusters here? She entered the gap between the two buildings, and it immediately forced her to take a diagonal route to the right.

“Grayson?” she called, one of her gloves running along the limestone of the building she followed.

Ahead, the alley cut to the left. Just before Ingrid turned the corner, she pulled to a stop. She closed her eyes and cursed herself.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
It wasn’t Grayson. He wouldn’t be running from her, leading her away from the safety of the street.

It was a delusion demon, just like the one that had once used Grayson’s voice to attempt to lure her into the catacombs beneath the abbey.

Ingrid took a step back, but as she did, something hooked her ankle and tugged hard. She yelped as her foot flew forward, out from underneath her. She hit the ground on her side, her elbow jamming into the packed dirt. The thing that had wrapped around her ankle pulled again, hauling her around the corner and ruching up her skirt as she slid along the wet ground.

She dug her gloved fingers into the dirt for purchase, and kicked and thrashed her leg, but she wouldn’t come free. Lifting her head, she saw a pale brown tentacle curled around her ankle. The tentacle was attached to a gelatinous glob the same dirty-dishwater color. It moved with an undulating ripple, pulling itself along by more writhing tentacles.

Ingrid ripped off her gloves but then remembered Vander and how he’d absorbed so much of her dust during their stroll. She released what she had, aiming for the delusion demon, and the lines of electricity that spit out of her fingertips were enough
to stun it. She wrested her ankle free and scrabbled to get up. She spun around, lunged forward—and came face to face with the red lantern eyes of a hellhound.

The beast was as tall as Ingrid, its giant maw open to showcase the wicked curve of its protruding fangs. The stench of its breath and its black, greasy fur hit her and she stumbled back, her foot treading upon one of the delusion demon’s squishy tentacles.

The hellhound raked its head to the side, and one of its bottom fangs opened her shoulder. Ingrid screamed and clutched at the wound, demon poison already burning its insatiable path through her neck and chest. It fired down into her arm, consuming the pathetic reserves of electricity.

The hellhound took hold of the fabric of her skirts and petticoats in its mouth, and then once again, Ingrid was jerked off her feet and dragged down the alley. A fissure. The beast was taking her to a fissure and all she could do was rasp a scream of pain. The rough alley ground suddenly gave way, as if the beast had dragged her off the edge of a cliff. And then she was falling, weightless, the demon poison coursing through her, filling her completely. Allowing her entrance into the Underneath. Straight into Axia’s waiting arms.

A
ll this time, Luc had believed that the stone statues that topped the abbey’s twin bell towers and lined its pitched roofs were dog-headed gargoyles. He knew each one of them by heart. Every snarling mouth and extended tongue, every pair of wings, tucked, outstretched, cracked, or not present at all. There were missing talons and ears here and there. One gargoyle, jutting out above the courtyard’s transept door as if it were bursting through the stone façade, had lost its head altogether.

Perhaps that had been the wolf-headed gargoyle, Luc considered as he approached the abbey and rectory. For Marco, a member of the Wolf caste, to have been assigned to this territory, there had to be a wolf-headed statue somewhere on the grounds. Every Dispossessed transformed into a certain caste of gargoyle, and every gargoyle’s territory had to have at least one matching granite statue.

The angels, all-knowing as they were, determined which gargoyle caste each newly damned soul would belong to. In their first
lives, Wolves, like Marco, were the fiercest and most persuasive; Dogs, like Luc and Gaston, loyal and dauntless; Snakes, cunning and flexible. The lesser castes, such as Monkeys and Goats, were of not much significance in their first
or
second lives.

It was the Chimeras, the anomalous blend of two animals, that Luc was thinking about as he approached the tall iron gates surrounding the abbey. Vincent’s caste concerned him. Their numbers were equal to the Wolves, and among the Dispossessed, large numbers meant more power. If the Wolves and Chimeras had truly joined forces, Vincent should have already been elder. The fact that he’d again come begging for Luc’s support that morning made little sense. Luc needed to ask Marco for the truth.

Luc peered through the bars of the iron gates. The abbey hadn’t looked so fine or sturdy for at least a century. The stained-glass windows gleamed, and the arched front doors were new and painted glossy red. Even the gargoyle statues appeared to have been dusted and cleaned for Lady Brickton’s new gallery.

He walked on, to where the iron fence ended and a row of tall hedges began. The hedges enclosed the courtyard, rectory, and carriage house, protecting them from street view, but there was a gap in the hedges for the Waverlys’ landau. Luc walked through, officially entering another gargoyle’s territory.

Marco was here. Luc felt his presence, just as Marco was feeling his. Luc took a deep breath. Ingrid’s sweet grass and dark earth, and even that biting tang of demon dust, remained nothing more than a memory. If she was here, so be it. Luc knew he couldn’t hide from her forever. He’d thought time away would lessen the ache, but it had only served to sharpen it.

Luc stepped lively, eyes cast down, forcing himself not to think of her. Which only made him think of her more. He stormed into the carriage house and slammed the door behind him.

“Take out your aggression elsewhere, brother,” came Marco’s unruffled tenor from the loft above.

Luc climbed the bare board steps and found Marco reclining on the cot that had once been his. He held a book over his face, his nose stuck within the pages.

“Are you the voice of the Wolves or aren’t you?” Luc asked. He didn’t have the patience for preamble today.

Marco licked his index finger and flipped to the next page in his book. “Do you like what I’ve done with the place? I thought it needed a Wolf’s touch.”

Luc let out his breath and took a quick look around. Nothing had been rearranged. The loft was exactly how he’d left it.

“Answer me. Do the Wolves stand with Vincent or not?”

Marco clapped the book shut and sprang up from the cot in one fluid bound. “The Wolves do as I tell them. Our alliance with the Chimeras ended the moment Yann attempted to kill Lady Gabriella. We do not stand with Vincent now.”

Marco, dressed in the black merino trousers and white linen shirt of a butler’s livery, tossed the book to the floor. With a lift of his brow, he added, “We don’t necessarily stand with you, either.”

Good
, Luc thought. At least someone was being reasonable.

Marco strode to the loft door and rolled it open. It was late afternoon, and the sun looked like liquid fire slipping through the naked tree branches.

“Vincent has made threats,” Luc began. He didn’t know how to proceed. Marco might have known the truth about Luc and Ingrid, but that didn’t mean he liked or accepted it.

Marco stared out over the rectory, his back to Luc. “Of what sort?”

“Ingrid.”

Marco turned his head, the muscle in his jaw jumping. “Threats against her?”

There was a reason Marco led the Wolves. He was the strongest, fiercest, and fastest gargoyle Luc had ever met. Vincent should have been begging
him
for his favor instead of Luc.

“If a certain rumor he decides to spread takes hold, I’ll be destroyed,” Luc said. “I need to know you’ll get her out of Paris.”

Marco turned fully from the loft door now. “What does he know?”

“He suspects,” Luc replied. The fewer words exchanged, the better.

Loving a human was a shameful thing. It was one of the first rules Luc had learned after emerging from death into this new existence. As elder, Lennier had welcomed Luc with a short list of hard-and-fast rules. “You protect. You don’t have to like it, but you have to do it,” he had said, his long white hair flowing like twin silvery rivers over his shoulders. “You are no longer human like they are,” he had gone on. “You are of a higher order now, and attachments will not be tolerated.”

Lennier had been ancient even then, and he had witnessed firsthand what resulted from such attachments. They weakened the gargoyle until he trusted his human enough to share his secret, in turn jeopardizing the rest of the Dispossessed.

“We will act swiftly and without mercy, against both the gargoyle and his human,” Lennier had explained. All to stop the knowledge of their existence from spreading.

At least, that had been the official reason spoken from the lips of authority. As the years, then decades, and finally centuries passed, that official reason had been practically buried beneath the brutal truth: there were many gargoyles who clung to excuses to satiate their base mob mentality. Luc had never participated in these mobs, and they had been happening less often as time wore on. However, Luc knew the Wolf’s talons were not so clean.

“I will take her as far as my chains allow,” Marco said after a moment of silent deliberation. He then quirked his lips. “But don’t let that worry you, brother. I’m sure the Seer would be overjoyed to take her the rest of the way. He’s with her right now, as a matter of fact.”

The thought of Vander Burke whisking Ingrid away to some
safe haven stabbed shards of glass into Luc’s chest. He must have been scowling, because Marco’s goading smirk fell off.

“This is your own doing. You have my silence and my vow to keep Lady Ingrid safe. And that means safely away from
you
,” Marco said, good humor gone. “But if you continue to—”

It took a second for Luc, his eyes fastened as they were on the rafters while Marco ranted, to realize something was wrong. That Marco wasn’t just searching for his next words. By the time Luc dragged his gaze down from the ceiling, Marco’s eyes had gone a deep umber, and his pupils had slimmed to vertical slits. He stared into a dark corner of the loft, and Luc knew he wasn’t seeing anything. He was
scenting
something.

“Lady—” Marco’s human words cracked off into a grating shriek.

Ingrid.

Marco peeled off his clothing, too slow to save his trousers from ripping apart at the seams. Luc didn’t need Ingrid’s scent surging through him to know exactly what was happening. Daylight be damned.