The Wondrous and the Wicked
Page 4
She wouldn’t bother trying to explain to this gargoyle that killing Lennier had been an accident. Her worst mistake ever. Lennier had helped her find Ingrid. He’d saved her from getting mangled in a carriage wreck, too. Lennier hadn’t deserved a dagger to the heart, and Gabby still felt sick with guilt every time she remembered the way he’d crashed like a stone to the earth, shedding his albino scales to adopt the flaccid and pale skin of an old man.
But what did this gargoyle care? He’d come to deliver a message. If he was anything like so many more of the Dispossessed, he’d rather wash his hands clean of humans entirely.
The gargoyle came around another beam, to the edge of the slipway. He pressed his light ginger brows together and looked down at her. “The blessed silver blade in your hand says differently. You hold that, and in our eyes, you’re Alliance.”
Rory finally lowered his swords. Gabby trusted his senses. If he believed this gargoyle wasn’t going to attack, then she would believe it as well.
“Is there word of a new elder?” Rory asked.
The gargoyle cut his eyes away from Gabby and spared the demon hunter an indifferent look. “Marco says two Dispossessed are vying for elder, and one of them would gladly use a vengeance kill to claim the role. That’s why you should, in his words, ‘stay the hell out of Paris.’ ”
Finished with his message, the gargoyle started back for the slipway opening. Only one of the two contenders would kill her? Gabby moved past Rory, jumped over a few stacked boards, and followed the gargoyle.
“Why would the other gargoyle not kill me?” she asked, hope blooming and leaving her a little light-headed. If he didn’t wish for her death and he became the new elder, perhaps he would allow her to return and live in Paris safely.
“Because you were his human once,” the gargoyle replied.
Startled into distraction, Gabby tripped over a bowed floorboard and narrowly missed plunging her foot through a rotted section of the floor along the slipway, the spooling waters of the Thames showing below.
“Marco is vying for elder?” she asked.
“No,” the gargoyle answered, stopping at the entrance to glance back at her. “The Dog called Luc.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Luc wasn’t in the mood for visitors. He never had been, not when he’d resided at l’Abbaye Saint-Dismas, and definitely not now. Visitors were forced upon him anyway, a constant stream of them coming and going at all hours of the day and night, sauntering through the arcaded entrance off the Luxembourg Gardens and dropping down from the sky into the courtyard.
How had Lennier withstood it?
After the elder’s death, Hôtel du Maurier had been in urgent need of a guardian. And in the eyes of the Order, Luc had been in urgent need of reassignment. Still, when Irindi, the angel of heavenly law, had directed him here, to this ramshackle residence that had been abandoned by its human owners decades ago, Luc had laughed. The Order couldn’t be serious. They wanted him to take over gargoyle common grounds?
It had been a month now, and Luc still hoped Irindi would appear and send him to his true reassigned territory. This just had to be an extra dose of punishment for breaking all the rules the Dispossessed were supposed to live by.
Luc stood at a window inside Lennier’s second-floor apartments and braced his arms against the cold glass. There were at least fifteen men in the small, enclosed courtyard below. Had it been night and not afternoon, they would have been in their gargoyle forms, crowded wing to wing around the cracked and dry Hydra monstress fountain.
Their eyes were all turned toward Luc, watching and waiting for their leader, Vincent, Luc’s current and most unwelcome visitor. He turned and faced the Notre Dame gargoyle that had intruded on him a half an hour before.
“You’re wasting your time,” Luc said. “I’ve been given Lennier’s territory, not his role as elder.”
Across the room, Vincent sat on a sofa in front of the marble fireplace. He kept his eyes on the cold ashes in the hearth.
“That is obvious. At least, to me it is,” he replied. “The new elder must earn the title. The Order cannot hand it out like a prize.”
It was a title Vincent had been coveting. When word had traveled through the Dispossessed that Luc had been given guardianship of Hôtel du Maurier, the rumor that he was also to be the new elder had somehow been fanned into existence. Gargoyles and their damned gossip.
Once ignited, the rumor had spread like wildfire. It had all seemed to happen around Luc rather than to him. The first few weeks in his new territory had passed as if he were being held underwater. He’d seen the gargoyles swarming the grounds of Hôtel du Maurier at night. He’d known they’d come to see him, the gargoyle that had taken Lennier’s place. He just hadn’t cared enough to speak to them or tell them that they were wrong.
“Irindi didn’t say anything about being elder. She gave me a territory, nothing more.”
They were the same words he’d finally been able to grind out two weeks after being removed from the abbey. He’d said them again and again since then, to anyone who would listen. Had he been more coherent in the days after leaving the abbey, perhaps he would have been able to stamp out the whispered assumptions. Instead, he’d sat brooding in silence at the head of the dining room table Lennier had never used, ignoring the visitors flooding into the front sitting room.
The only one he’d spoken to had been Marco. Luc had asked if Ingrid was safe. And then he’d told Marco to keep her away.
“Nevertheless,” Vincent said, pushing his tall, reedy human form up from the sofa. “The Dogs and Snakes, along with some of the other lowly castes that have organized their little crusade to see you into the role, need to know where you stand. They need to be shown. Definitively.”
Whenever Vincent spoke like this, enunciating each word as if Luc were an imbecile, his lower lip drew down and exposed his small, yellowed bottom teeth. Right now, Luc resisted the urge to put his fist through them.
Vincent came to common grounds every few days. His tireless quest to convince Luc to openly announce his support for him as elder had long since rubbed Luc’s patience to shreds. The Dogs and Snakes and some other lower castes had thrown their weight behind Luc for reasons he couldn’t understand. Gaston, the representative for the Dogs, had tried to explain that they believed Luc could forge a stronger bridge between the Dispossessed and the Alliance. Stronger than even Lennier had been able to manage. The Alliance here in Paris liked Luc. They trusted him. The same couldn’t be said for Vincent.
“They do know where I stand,” Luc replied. “It isn’t behind you.”
Vincent’s thin nostrils flared, the way they did every time Luc refused him.
“The Chimeras and the Wolves are with me, Luc, and you know their numbers are stronger than all of yours combined.”
Luc strode past Vincent, toward the door to the dim corridor. Outside of these apartments, the grand town house was in near ruins. The handful of rooms Luc used was well kept, though lacking in modern touches like electricity and plumbing. Gargoyles required neither of those things, and anyhow, Luc had existed in far worse conditions.
“Marco is not with you,” Luc said. The Wolf was by no means Luc’s friend, but Ingrid was a Duster, and it was obvious to all the Dispossessed—and many of the Alliance—that Vincent had begun picking off Dusters one by one.
Vincent formed a smug grin. Luc wouldn’t have minded smashing his fist into that, either.
“Marco is no longer the voice of the Wolves. He’s become too obsessed with his new human toy, that Duster abomination, to maintain his standing within his own caste.” Vincent stepped away from the hearth. Luc had already opened the door for him, though he would much rather have tossed him through one of the windows.
“Tell me, Luc,” Vincent said as he approached. “Do you think he has touched her yet?”
Luc gripped the doorknob hard enough to fissure the sculpted glass, his body shivering with the desire to erupt into true form.
“Get out.”
Vincent’s lips hardened back into a thin line. “Pledge your support to me.”
“Go to hell. You’re killing Dusters, and I won’t support that,” Luc answered.
Vincent swept up to the door, his long black cape reminding Luc of a pair of wings. “You took a human consort, and I don’t support that.”
Luc released the fractured glass knob, aching with the urge to coalesce. He imagined sinking his talons into Vincent’s throat. Silencing him forever.
“Do you think any of the others will side with you once they know the real reason you were removed from the abbey?” Vincent asked. “Even your own Dogs will turn against you.”
Marco had fed the Dispossessed a convincing story: that with only three humans remaining on abbey grounds, Irindi had decided the territory required just one protector, and since Marco had so recently been reassigned, she’d chosen to send Luc elsewhere. The lie had rolled out of Marco without hesitation, though Luc knew it hadn’t been meant to protect him. If caught in an illicit relationship with a human, a gargoyle would meet his final death. The human would not be forgotten, either. Luc had seen human consorts torn to ribbons in the past. It had been long ago, during darker times, but neither he nor Marco had wanted to take the chance that sentiments had not evolved.
Marco’s explanation had been widely accepted, but clearly not by everyone.
Luc was certain he’d been careful with Ingrid. A gargoyle could feel another gargoyle’s presence by the pounding chime at the base of his skull. Whenever Luc had touched Ingrid, or kissed her … when he’d told her he loved her … they had always been alone.
“You know nothing,” Luc said.
“I am offering you your life. Refuse me again and the truth will be made known. Do you honestly want to test Marco’s ability to protect his human against a horde of gargoyles?”
His human. The words gouged Luc more deeply than Vincent’s hollow threat. The abbey and rectory had been Luc’s territory for more than three hundred years. His human charges had come and gone, flowing in and out, and he’d had stretches of hibernation in between. No human had ever awakened Luc the way Ingrid had. Not just from a stony sleep, but from a monotonous existence. She’d given him a purpose. Ingrid was his, not Marco’s.
“Bring me your proof,” Luc said to Vincent.
“Perhaps I’ll bring the girl herself,” he returned.
Luc bristled and surged up against Vincent’s chest. He had never felt so murderous. “Touch her and I will rip out your heart.”
Vincent laughed as he stepped into the hallway. “Ripping out hearts seems to be Marco’s job, not yours.” Seeing the confusion on Luc’s face, Vincent chuckled again. “Or haven’t you heard? Your lovely demon-blooded human was set upon by an Alliance assassin this morning. Oh, but you can’t feel her anymore, can you?”
Luc slammed the door in Vincent’s face.
The moment he’d been severed from Ingrid, Luc lost the ability to surface her soft scent of sweet spring grass and earthy black soil. The absence of it had torn a gaping hole in his gut. Not being able to protect her, to even be near her, kept that hole yawning wider and wider with every passing day.
At least Ingrid was safe. No thanks to him, but he supposed it shouldn’t matter. If the Alliance still had their crosshairs on Ingrid, she needed Marco.
Luc couldn’t protect her any longer, but perhaps there was a way he could stop gargoyles like Vincent. But to actually become elder? To attempt to take Lennier’s place and command the respect and loyalty of hundreds of Dispossessed?
Luc turned to face the cold hearth. He wanted his abbey back. He wanted Ingrid back.
Not this.
The demon hunter walked a tight circle around Grayson Waverly, so close that Grayson felt the hunter’s shirtsleeve graze his own. Grayson stood completely still with his hands at his sides. He raised his eyes toward the ceiling.
“This will never not be awkward,” he muttered. “Will it?”
Vander Burke made another slow rotation, his attention fastened on something Grayson couldn’t see: demon dust. According to Vander, the dust hovered in the air around Grayson’s body at all times. It curled behind him when he walked, leaving a glittering trail in his wake. Like that of all other hellhound Dusters, Grayson’s dust was deep scarlet. The color of a hellhound’s eyes. The color of the thing Grayson most desired.
“I suspect I come out of these meetings slightly more uncomfortable than you,” Vander said as he moved past Grayson’s shoulder and out of sight.
Grayson closed his eyes and cursed himself. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Thank you, Vander.”
The demon hunter said nothing as he came back around into Grayson’s line of vision, then stepped away.
“There.” Vander held out his arms. “That should take care of you for a day or so.”
Grayson ran his hands down the front of his shirt. Already he was breathing easier. He had arrived in Vander’s small room on rue de Berri, adjacent to the American Church’s sanctuary, where Vander had been studying a quarter of an hour before. Grayson’s muscles had been aching, his skin itching, and the scent of Vander’s blood had made his throat hot with hunger. He’d barely been able to stifle the urge to shift.
Vander had taken one look at him and, without a word, gotten to work. It wasn’t difficult. All Vander had to do was walk through Grayson’s dust field. If he stood close enough, for long enough, his own demon dust absorbed Grayson’s. That was what mersian demons did, after all. They consumed the dust of other demons, and with it, their abilities.
“Like I said before,” Grayson said, picking up his jacket from where he’d slung it over the back of a caned chair. “Thank you.”
Vander sat on the edge of his narrow bed. The room was cramped, every available corner stuffed with things he’d brought with him from his flat above the old bookshop: stacks of books, boxes, and a long table crammed with a microscope and test tubes. Grayson eyed the clothing that hung on wall pegs and the sweaty glass terrariums atop the bow-front dresser, the drawers so overflowing with books and newspapers they couldn’t shut all the way. Books in dresser drawers and clothing hanging haphazardly on the walls. Grayson shook his head and grinned. Yes. This was a room he could understand.
“You don’t have to thank me,” Vander said as he rolled down his sleeves. He’d been hunched over the microscope, changing a glass slide, when Grayson had arrived.
“You’ve been absorbing my hellhound dust for the last few weeks and making my life less of a living hell. Yes, I do have to thank you,” Grayson replied.
Every time Vander absorbed hellhound dust, he would take on some hellhound symptoms of his own. He’d been stoic about it at first but had eventually admitted to being able to smell the unmistakable tang of blood. And to feeling a thirst, too, Vander had said. Or perhaps it was hunger. He hadn’t been able to decide which. Grayson didn’t wish his symptoms on anyone, but he hadn’t been able to refuse Vander’s generosity.
He’d been sitting on the steps of rue Foyatier in Montmartre when Vander had found him. A bracing February wind had been rushing up the stone steps, cooling Grayson’s temper after his first visit to Monsieur Constantine’s chateau. Léon, another Duster, had convinced him to try at least one session. It hadn’t been so awful, Grayson admitted, until Constantine had started asking for details about what had happened the month before, in that Daicrypta courtyard in Montmartre. Why in the world had Grayson imagined he could command two hellhounds? The hounds had wound up killing Nolan Quinn’s father, and Grayson was to blame.
Rather than answer Constantine, he’d left Clos du Vie, and in the dark, Grayson had shifted into hellhound form. He’d run along the perimeter of Paris before sneaking down into the eighteenth arrondissement. Vander tracked Grayson’s dust from the Cimetière de Montmartre, where he had been dispatching a p
ossessed cadaver. After promising not to tell Ingrid that he’d found him, Vander had offered to take some of Grayson’s dust. After one full day of smelling only air and not blood, of not feeling the slightest urge to change into his demon form, Grayson had gone to the rue Foyatier steps again. He’d hoped Vander would come. He had.
Vander buttoned his cuffs now and glanced up at him. “I wish you’d let me tell her.”
Grayson stood by the closed door. He slid his arms into his jacket even though he was still sweltering. A ten-degree hike in body temperature was considered normal when one was half hellhound.
“I’m not ready,” he said, his voice soft. “Not yet.”
“She misses you.”
“And I miss her.” The muscles along his shoulders tensed. He didn’t care for this part of his meetings with Vander. Today, the guilt cut more sharply than usual.
“She was under that bridge this morning looking for you,” Vander said, standing up. He’d told Grayson about the attack while he’d been absorbing his hellhound dust. “She was going to go into the sewers. You know what could have happened to her in there.”
Grayson rubbed his palm over his cheek and tamped down the urge to give in—to go back home to Ingrid and Mama at the rectory. He didn’t want to stay away. He was doing it to keep them safe. For the past few weeks, Vander had been taking the edge off Grayson’s urges, but the effects were temporary. They always came back. Sometimes it happened slowly, over the course of one or two days. Other times they rushed back like an ocean tide after less than twelve hours. He was a mess of sporadic hunger and guilt, of hope and injured pride. He couldn’t control his demon half without Vander’s help, and in all honesty, Grayson didn’t trust himself yet.
“Are you sure she wasn’t hurt?” Grayson asked.
“I haven’t seen her yet, but Nolan said there’s not a scratch on her.” Vander had been acting cool toward him today, and this was the reason. He didn’t know where Grayson and Léon had been living, but he wanted permission to at least tell Ingrid that her twin was safe. Grayson knew his sister, though. She’d push for more information. He also knew Vander was too far gone in love with Ingrid to put up a decent fight—he’d give in and tell her everything.