by Page Morgan
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.
Luc pulled the trigger in his core and unloosed his true form. He shed his clothing in practiced harmony with the pull and coil of new muscle and lengthened bone, of sliding tendons and ridging vertebrae. His jet scales shimmered from crown to ankle like a form-fitting cloak, and then, with his clothing bundled under one arm, he was racing after Marco’s tail as it whipped through the open loft door and up into the sun-streaked clouds. The two of them were dark shadows racing through the sky, so fast, Luc knew, that in a blink of a human’s eye they would be there, then gone.
But they would still be seen. Too large and fast to be birds. Too real to be figments of the imagination.
Luc focused on Marco a short distance ahead. They were over Saint-Germain and closing in on the crowded, narrow streets just past the Esplanade des Invalides. Marco had to be berating himself for letting his guard down. For thinking, after a thwarted attack that morning, that the odds of a second were slim.
Marco lost altitude and folded in his wings as he careened through a narrow gap between two buildings. Luc pulled in his wings, and a moment later his talons touched down in the dim, dank alley. He and Marco weren’t alone.
Luc shed his scales in a matter of seconds and faced Vander Burke, whose blessed sword hung in his hand. “Where is she, Seer?”
Vander turned in a circle, his eyes everywhere but on Luc. He didn’t answer. Luc forced his way into Vander’s line of sight.
“Where is she?” Luc repeated.
Vander finally met his glare. “I don’t know. We found Dusters, dead in the apartment building across the street, and dust. Gargoyle dust.” He glanced over Luc’s shoulder, where Marco was still standing in his scales.
“I went after it and sent Ingrid to catch a hansom back to Hôtel Bastian.”
“Alone,” Luc inserted, his fury on a fast boil.
Vander ignored him. “Her dust trail led here. And it’s not the only dust I see.”
Dust lingered. Vander could see traces of the colorful particles hours after a demon or Duster had left a certain spot.
“Another gargoyle?” Luc asked, but Vander was already shaking his head and swallowing hard.
Marco’s human voice entered the conversation, his body having shifted. “She’s gone.”
The break in his voice, the sound of utter defeat, left Luc cold. Vander sank into a crouch, propping himself up with his sword. He pressed his head against the handle. “Her dust trail ends here.”
A fissure.
Luc went utterly still. He wanted to kick the blade out from under Vander’s balancing weight and plunge it through his neck. He wanted to scream and rage and destroy. But right then, he couldn’t even breathe.
“I can’t scent her,” Marco said.
“Don’t,” Luc said. If either of them spoke another word, he might actually attack them both: the useless, pathetic excuse for a demon hunter and the neglectful gargoyle who’d gotten cocky and careless.
“Stand up,” Luc growled. Vander pulled his forehead back and raised his eyes to Luc’s. Slowly, rising inch by inch, he stood, locked in Luc’s fiery stare.
“Axia needs her seedlings. I don’t think she’ll kill Ingrid.” Luc hated that the Seer hadn’t said this with begging desperation. Vander remained calm, his tone placating. “She’ll reclaim her angel blood and then most likely return her. As soon as she’s back, Marco will scent her and find her.”
“Not before I suffer an angel’s burn,” Marco grunted.
“Forget your burn!” Luc shouted, releasing the bundle of clothing still tucked under his arm. Unlike Marco, he didn’t enjoy walking around in his birthday suit and had long since learned to carry his discarded clothes whenever he went in true form. He tugged on his trousers. “And forget your excuses, Seer. I know you keep demon poison at Hôtel Bastian. Bring it to me.”
He would ingest it just as he had the last time Ingrid had been taken into the Underneath. With the poison in his system he would go to the familiar Métro stop, now nearly constructed, find the fissure that he knew to be closest to Axia’s hive, and descend into it.
Marco’s heavy hand moored Luc’s shoulder. “Take that poison to go after her and every gargoyle in Paris will know that what Vincent says is true.”
Luc shrugged off his hand. Desecrating his body with demon poison the first time had been acceptable, but only because Ingrid had been his human charge. Now he had no excuse. No excuse that wouldn’t get him mauled to death by gargoyles.
“Know what is true?” Vander asked, rounding on Luc this time.
“You’re not really so thick, are you, good reverend?” Marco replied.
Vander stepped back and sheathed his sword. “Those Dusters back there,” he began. “They were murdered by a gargoyle.”
“And you think this concerns me when my human is most likely being drained by an evil angel hag?” Marco returned.
The peal of bells and police whistles drowned out Vander’s argument. The predictable roar of shouts and screams signaled that the bodies had been discovered.
“We need to leave,” Vander said. Luc was more than ready. He couldn’t stand to look at the Seer another second. With his shirt and boots back on, Luc turned toward the alley entrance. It wasn’t visible, the zigzagging line of the alleyway making this place a perfect doorway to the Underneath. He’d walk back to the abbey and wait. Marco, his clothing still a pil
e on the floor of the carriage house loft, would have to fly. Luc would go nowhere until Ingrid’s scent surfaced in Marco’s nose, signaling her return—and he didn’t care what the other Dispossessed thought.
Blue light flickered behind Ingrid’s closed lids. There was no place left for the demon poison to fill, no corner inside her spared. The pain had plowed so deep it had struck bone.
The flickering blue wasn’t cold like a winter tide or a shaded forest brook. It was hot and dry, and when Ingrid tried to move, she let out a moan. Lord, everything hurt.
She parted her lashes and the blue light grew brighter. She knew where she was. She had been here before, on this same hard-packed dirt floor. The small, cavelike room inside Axia’s hive hadn’t changed.
Ingrid should have been in a panic. Her pulse should have been hammering and her body sweating, and her mind should have been racing to assess the possibilities for escape. Instead, she lay on her side, her cheek against the floor, dirt caking her parched lips. All she felt was the crushing weight of failure. Axia had managed to trick her back into the Underneath after all. Hopelessness cramped around her chest and squeezed her stomach until she felt ill, on top of feeling defeated and incapacitated by pain.
Ingrid’s leg ached the most. As the fog of the demon poison began to clear, she recalled that the hellhound had raked its fang across her shoulder, not her leg. Another sharp twinge of pain assaulted her as she strained to lift her head. She peered down the length of her body and saw a dark mass huddled by her legs. Robes. They shuddered and writhed.
Ingrid’s stockings had been torn away and her skirts and petticoats bunched up to expose her pale knee. The agony of her calf seared brighter, the anguish radiating from one spot: her demon mark.
The robe’s wide hood obscured Axia’s face, but Ingrid could feel the fallen angel’s fangs lodged deep in the flesh of her calf. Pulling. Suckling. Reclaiming.
A swell of nausea and exhaustion, chased by more pain, brought Ingrid’s head back to the dirt floor. She couldn’t move. And if she couldn’t move, she certainly couldn’t fight. It was too late anyway. It was over. Axia had won.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Gabby sat at her writing desk with a candle in one hand and a stick of red sealing wax in the other. The candle’s flame turned the hard, squared-off tip of wax into a thick rain. It dripped onto the creamy linen envelope below. She let another few drops pool up before pressing the heavy pewter W monogram stamp into the quickly cooling wax. It was the second letter she’d written to Ingrid in as many days.
Gabby had returned from the Battersea dry dock the afternoon before in a tear to get up to her room and shout at her sister through the muted confines of a letter. Had Ingrid known that Luc was vying for the position of elder? If so, why had she not mentioned it? Gabby couldn’t imagine that her sister would overlook all the possibilities. If he was named elder, Luc could command the gargoyles in Paris to cease thinking about revenge for Lennier’s death. He could devise a way to bring Gabby back to Paris and keep her safe.
It was only after Gabby had sealed and addressed the letter and sent it off to the post that she realized she hadn’t written a proper greeting or inquired after Mama or Grayson. She hadn’t even asked if Ingrid was well after her run-in with the Alliance assassin.
As she addressed this second letter, the paper heavy with apologies, Gabby thought again about Luc as elder. The notion was difficult to imagine. Luc just seemed so … solitary. Quiet. Not like a leader at all.
There was a movement at Gabby’s bedroom window. She slapped her pen against the desk when she saw the bird perched on her windowsill. If the window hadn’t been closed to the drizzly snow, Gabby would have reached for the dagger sheathed under her skirts at her calf and hurled it at the bird’s oil-slick breast.
It wasn’t a raven, as it pretended to be, but a corvite. A demon messenger bird. And it had been spying on her for the last week.
“What do you want?” she asked it.
The corvite’s head turned toward the sound of her voice. Its long, hooked beak smacked into the glass. Anyone who stared into a corvite’s eyes would notice the blood-red ring around each black pupil. But really, who stared at birds all day? Gabby certainly hadn’t. Not until she’d known that not all birds were of this world.
Why was Axia sending her little messengers here? Gabby pushed back her chair and stood.
“Get out of here!” She waved her arms. “I’m not a Duster, and I don’t have angel blood, so leave me alone!” She rushed at the window and threw up the sash.
The demon bird squawked and beat its wings at her before leaping from the sill. It swooped toward the back lawns, its throaty caw trailing off into a low growl. A draft of wet wind raised the hairs along Gabby’s arms as the corvite’s wings flapped deeper into the night. It would be back eventually. Gabby left the window open. She’d be ready for it.
Two solid knocks landed on her bedroom door. Gabby glanced at the mantel clock, the hands lit by the fire in the grate. What did Rory want at half past ten? She moved across the white-carpeted room, knowing her new lady’s maid, Kendall, had a gentler touch on the wood, and had already taken her leave for the night besides. Her father, whenever he was home, never sought her out at all.
Her guess had been correct. Rory stood on the other side of the threshold, dressed in a dark charcoal hunting kit: checked trousers and a four-button jacket, a lighter gray linen shirt, and a gray bowler. He’d even exchanged his usual tan vest for one of black leather.
“Where are you going?” she asked, her brow rising at the bulging canvas bag in his hand.
He’d been taking her in as well: she wore an emerald silk wrap cinched tight over a matching nightdress, with little white slippers poking out underneath the hem. In any other London residence, a young man simply could not knock on a lady’s bedroom door at this hour of the night and then proceed to stare so openly at her lack of proper clothing. But all the usual rules didn’t apply between Gabby and Rory. When he looked at her there were no flickers of admiration or desire. No curiosity. He had no intentions beyond protecting her, and for that reason she felt as comfortable with him as she did with Grayson.
Rory shook his head.
“Ye canna hunt wearin’ that.” He stepped into her room without an invitation.
Gabby closed the door. “Hunt?”
She followed Rory to her bed, where he promptly upended the canvas bag. The contents slid out and landed in a clinking heap on her pillowy duvet. Gabby gawked, instantly recognizing the strange-looking crossbow and a silver mesh net.
“Where did you get those?”
The last time she’d seen a net and crossbow like that, she’d been in the expansive courtyard within the Daicrypta mansion in Paris, surrounded by disciples who wanted to drain Ingrid’s blood. They had all been armed with this same weapon. Gabby remembered how the nets had sailed out of the crossbows, unfolding as they spun toward their targets.
“Chelle managed to nab it from the Daicrypta courtyard,” Rory answered. He lifted the crossbow and ran his hand down the stock’s straight silver plane. “The Alliance in Paris’ve been tryin’ to figure what it’s made of.”
Gabby approached her bed and noticed that the net had four long, slim metal bars in its center, like the ribs of an umbrella. One of those bars had been made slightly longer than the other three. The mesh between the bars was a simply done crosshatch, woven to leave rather large gaps, wide enough to put one’s hand through. The net wasn’t made of metal wire but of a strange, thin tubular material. And trimming the net was yet another tube, this one wider. She saw recurring slits along that tube and remembered how Ingrid and Vander had been sealed to the earth when they’d been captured beneath the nets. Gabby figured the tube had spikes hidden inside that came out to plunge into the ground.
She lifted a portion of the crosshatched net, expecting it to be heavy, but the material didn’t weigh more than one of her bed’s bolster pillows.
“Does the
net gather up somehow? Before it’s shot out of the crossbow?” she asked.
Looking rather smug, Rory took the cumbersome netting from her by gripping the bottom of the longest metal bar. He pressed a steel-capped button located where all the bars joined in the center. Rory’s long bar stayed immobile, but whatever mechanism he’d engaged sent the other three bars swiveling around it, like ribbons on a Maypole. They wound tightly around the stationary bar, twisting and expertly tucking the mesh net as they closed. When it had all finished, Rory held what looked like an exceptionally long, thick crossbow bolt. Again, similar to a bound umbrella.
“Why did Chelle send it to you?” Gabby asked.
“She knows I like new toys,” Rory answered with a lopsided grin. He shrugged. “Suppose she thought we might have fun wi’ it, too.”
She looked again at his dark gray hunting attire. “What, tonight? Rory, I’m not certain I’m ready.”
Practice sparring at the dry dock during daylight hours was one thing. Demon hunting at night was something altogether different. She’d gone out on her own in Paris one evening in February, wanting to prove to Carrick Quinn that she could hunt and be useful to the Alliance. Instead, she’d clashed with an appendius demon and gotten herself stuck with the poisonous horned tip of its arm. Nolan had needed to use mercurite to destroy the poison before it burned through her body and killed her. Gabby still wasn’t sure what had caused her the most anguish: the poison, the cure, or the humiliation of failure.
Rory packed the Daicrypta crossbow and bound net into his canvas bag.
“ ’Tis time to go out, Gabby.”
With startling finesse, Rory ripped a dagger from his vest. He pivoted on one heel while sinking into a crouch and chucked the dagger across the room, toward the open window. Gabby heard the short, surprised shriek of a corvite but didn’t see the demon bird itself before it exploded into a cloud of emerald death sparks. Rory straightened his legs and strode to the window.
“That thing was beginnin’ to annoy me,” he said, retrieving the dagger that had clattered onto the brick window ledge when the demon had vanished.
