by Page Morgan
“And the gargoyle? What was done about him?” Grayson asked.
Chelle, though diminutive in height and weight, seemed to grow larger with the return of her anger.
“Lennier assured us that he was dealt with,” she replied tartly enough to express her doubt.
This was the key, he realized. He didn’t know how old she’d been when her father had been attacked, but from that moment on it had changed her. She didn’t want to go out there now and stop the Chimeras just to protect Dusters. She was doing it because of what had happened to her father.
Grayson, still holding the rapier slack at his side, gently knocked his blade against hers. The joined silver sang out and lifted some of the weight in the air.
“You miss him.” Saying anything else, like I’m sorry, would have been too empty a response for what she’d just shared.
Her rapier caught his and shoved. The unexpected attack threw his arm up high to the side, leaving his whole front unprotected. The tip of her rapier landed on the underside of his chin, the point pressing against his skin.
“More than you miss your father, I’m sure,” she said, a victorious smile tugging at her lips.
“You’re right,” he answered, the motion of his jaw pushing the tip of her blade more firmly against his skin. He didn’t miss his father one bit.
“But, Chelle,” he started to say, unwilling to walk away from all she’d revealed just yet. “Not all gargoyles are like the one who hurt your father. Or the ones who have killed Dusters. Think about Luc. He’s trustworthy, and there have to be others like him.”
She kept her blade at his chin but eased off a bit. “Perhaps. However, the majority of them are simply criminals being punished for their sins.”
Her eyes quickly darted to view Grayson’s mouth, and in that moment her carefully composed guard faltered. She parted her lips, unable to shield her interest in the shape of his mouth.
“I’m a criminal,” Grayson said, his heart gaining speed and his body growing warm from the way Chelle was looking at him. “I took a life, just as brutally as any rogue gargoyle. Why trust me?”
She knew what he’d done in London, and yet here she stood with him in the abbey vaults, wanting him at her side. Standing so close.
Grayson acted before he could think, and before Chelle’s unusual vulnerability disappeared. He leaned forward and kissed her, fast and hard. He pulled back almost immediately, certain he would see her closed fist coming toward his nose. It wasn’t. Her lips were soft and parted in surprise, her eyes fixed on his.
So he kissed her again, more gently this time, his hand hitching up her chin so he had a better angle. Chelle tasted like tea and sugar, like the fresh snap of spearmint leaf. He wanted to kiss her forever. He couldn’t believe he’d actually found the courage to do it.
They dropped their rapiers, which fell to the floor with a clatter that echoed through the vaults. Her fingers, small but fierce, pressed against his stomach and curled into his waistcoat. She pulled her mouth away from his, but, to his continued surprise, she didn’t appear angry.
“Who says I trust you?” she asked before rising onto her toes and kissing him again.
Hôtel Bastian was nearly as tense as gargoyle common grounds had been the afternoon before. Ingrid had been summoned there with a blood-red square of thick cardstock that required no signature—it was the color of the Alliance, and the few words in black ink were in Vander’s script: Come to rue de Sèvres as soon as you can. It’s important.
Mama had been busy in the abbey, and so, before Ingrid had needed to explain another outing, Marco had whisked her away in the landau.
Alliance headquarters practically throbbed with apprehension. Whether from Axia’s impending Harvest or the anticipated arrival of the group from Rome as early as the next day, Ingrid wasn’t sure. Vander had shown her quickly to the medical room, which provided an escape from the hum of unrest throughout the town home.
“This was important?” Ingrid now asked, seated on one of the metal tables with her legs stretched out before her. The hem of her dress and petticoats were bunched up around her knee, exposing her calf. She had reluctantly rolled her silk stocking to her ankle so that Vander could inspect the fang marks that had punctured the two strawberry ovals.
“See? I told you they had healed,” she said, as Vander’s spectacled eyes ran over her calf one last time. The demon mark was still there, as plain as ever, but the wounds inflicted by Axia’s demonic fangs were gone.
Ingrid tugged up the stocking while Vander watched. Her face grew warm.
“Good,” Vander replied. “I was hoping you were well enough, because I need you to leave Paris. Tonight, if possible.”
Her hand stalled out and she stared at him. “Vander, what is it?”
He stood in front of her, his arms crossed over the brass buttons of his waistcoat. He looked a little green around the gills.
“The Directorate wants every dossier Nolan and I have on the Dusters here in Paris. The files we’ve been gathering on every demon-marked human, every stranger I’ve spotted with dust.”
She finished quickly with her stocking and slid to the edge of the table. “How many files do you have?”
“Nearly fifty,” he answered. “Nolan keeps them in his room here. Some have just addresses and physical descriptions; others have names. Many are Constantine’s students, but there are many more who aren’t. We’ve been keeping an eye on them when we can.”
The old Ingrid would have accepted her first, optimistic theory right away: that the Directorate must plan to protect these Dusters somehow, either from Axia or from the gargoyles’ picking them off one by one. Her time with the Alliance and the Dispossessed had made her skeptical, however, and a second, far less optimistic theory chilled her.
“They’re afraid of the Dusters,” she said. The Directorate had wanted Ingrid dead so that Axia couldn’t reclaim her blood and come here, to Earth. Now that she’d succeeded, the only way to cut off Axia’s power was to take away her army.
“I think the Directorate’s idea of securing Paris is to get rid of the Dusters, yes. And I think the troops arriving tomorrow have orders to do just that.” Vander uncrossed his arms and braced himself against the table. His arms bracketed Ingrid’s body.
“I don’t trust them, not after what Carrick confessed, and especially not after that assassin.”
“But they wouldn’t kill us,” Ingrid said, then immediately felt naïve. “I mean, they tried to kill me, but they wouldn’t kill all of us. Would they?”
Vander hung his head. His back and ribs expanded with a deep breath.
“When we take our Alliance oaths, we vow to protect the human race against the Underneath despite personal risk, and to accept the necessity for small sacrifices in favor of the greater good.” Vander lifted his head, looking as if he wanted to say something more. Give her some further explanation. Ingrid didn’t require it.
“Sacrificing Axia’s seedlings would protect humankind,” she said. Like thinning out a garden row of vegetable sprouts. Leave all the seedlings in and the row will grow wild and unmanageable, the plants stunted. Pull out half of the seedlings and the other half will have room to thrive.
Vander pushed off the table and stood straight, tall enough for Ingrid to have to crane her neck to watch his reaction. She wanted him to deny her theory, but he didn’t.
He cupped her cheek, his fingers pressing against her skin with urgent determination. “They already know where to find you, so you can’t be at the rectory when they arrive in Paris.”
Ingrid tried to shake her head, but he took hold of her other cheek and stilled her.
“I could send you to my uncle’s home in Vichy, or you could join Gabby in London—”
“I won’t leave. I can’t. What about Grayson?”
“I’ll find him tonight and let him know what’s happening.”
And what about Luc? Ingrid closed her eyes. She didn’t want to leave Paris, not even to save
her own skin. She felt as tied to the city as Luc was. If he couldn’t leave, neither should she.
“I know you only want to protect me,” she said, looking up at Vander again. “But I won’t run.”
He didn’t appear surprised by her defiance, only thoroughly vexed.
Just then the door to the medical room swung in on its hinges and Hans, the new Paris faction leader, rushed in. He took in the sight of Vander, whose hands were belatedly coming away from Ingrid’s face, with only mild interest. He shifted his intense, searching glare behind them, toward the corner of the room.
“Where is it?” Hans barked, and started toward the back corner.
Ingrid hoisted herself from the table and turned to follow Hans’s rigid figure.
“Where is what?” Vander asked.
“Enough, Burke. I want the blood.”
Hans stopped at the squat refrigerated cabinet set in the corner. Ingrid stared at the padlocked zinc doors. She’d completely forgotten about the blood samples that Vander and Nolan had been storing.
“I’m handing it over to the Directorate representative tomorrow,” Vander replied, plainly discontented to be doing so.
They wanted the Duster files and the leftover angel blood?
“Show it to me,” Hans demanded, still strung tight as an acrobat’s wire. “I want to see it.”
Vander took slow steps toward the cabinet, which only seemed to grate on Hans’s nerves. Ingrid followed him, just as curious.
“What’s going on, Hans?” he asked, even more slowly reaching into his waistcoat pocket for the key Ingrid knew he kept there.
Hans didn’t reply. He stood aside and waited while Vander crouched to unlock the zinc doors, which opened to a plume of cold white vapor.
The blood stores, the three frosted glass containers, were gone.
Vander leaped up and stepped back, nearly treading on Ingrid’s toes. He caught her arm and kept a firm grasp, as if preparing for Hans to draw a weapon. But the faction leader only read her and Vander’s shocked expressions.
“I’ve already been through the file cabinets in Nolan’s room,” Hans said. “The Duster dossiers were missing. But we found them.”
Hans glanced toward the door, and Ingrid saw that two more Alliance members had joined them.
“They’re a pile of scraps and ash in the kitchen stove,” Hans finished.
Vander’s grip on Ingrid’s arm went slack.
“When did you last see Nolan Quinn?” Hans asked.
Nolan. He’d had a key to the cabinet as well. Ingrid had seen him lock and unlock it time and again.
“Yesterday,” Vander said, muttering a curse under his breath. “Yesterday morning. After the Directorate’s telegram arrived.”
Nolan had taken the blood? He’d destroyed the Duster dossiers? He’d defied direct orders from the Directorate and what … gone into hiding?
“The blood was still there, at least until noon,” Vander added.
“So he’s had over twenty-four hours on the run,” Hans said, kicking back into action and heading toward the door.
Vander’s voice bellowed after Hans, stopping the faction leader in his tracks. “Whatever Nolan is doing, it’s for the Alliance.”
Hans swiveled back around. “Nolan Quinn is a traitor, and he’ll be dealt with. We have our orders. The Directorate expects those orders to be obeyed. Follow them, Burke, and you, even with your demon blood, might find yourself on the right side of things when all is said and done. But they want the rest of the Dusters.” His steely gaze landed on Ingrid, then shifted back to Vander. “And we will deliver.”
Hans left the room, the other two Alliance members following in his wake. Ingrid stepped forward and touched Vander’s wrist, his hand propped on his hip. He looked down at her fingers and stared at them as if they might offer answers.
“Nolan’s protecting us,” she whispered. “He burned the files and took the blood because he knew something was wrong. But, Vander, what will they do to him?”
He’ll be dealt with, Hans had said. The Alliance had thrown Tomas, a traitorous member, into prison for the rest of his life. Nolan’s freedom could be on the line.
Vander covered Ingrid’s hand. “I don’t know. But I do know that I won’t give them a single Duster.”
And then he’d likely wind up charged with treason as well. It made her grip his wrist tighter. How had the Alliance gone from something good to something so corrupt and wrong?
Or perhaps, Ingrid reasoned, it had never been completely good in the first place.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The London Daicrypta headquarters had been two or three steps down in grandeur compared to its Parisian counterpart, but the London Alliance headquarters, compared to Hôtel Bastian, was more like what awaited at the bottom of a refuse-laden gutter pipe.
The faction had set up shop in a century-old brick mill near Fleet Ditch, with a working front for the public as a storage facility for mechanical wares. They had even filled the first floor with all sorts of gears and engines, cogs and wheels, and other contraptions that were surely, Gabby thought, the iron and steel innards of some machinery, in order to make the building appear legitimate.
However, the next two floors of the building, which covered nearly an entire block, was the residence of some thirty Alliance members. It was, Gabby had noted in the few times she and Rory had visited, a much more organized and well-outfitted Alliance faction than what she’d witnessed in Paris. She had been welcomed earlier that month by their leader, Benjamin, a lean yet muscular man in his midforties who looked like he could still move and fight with the strength and agility of a fighter half his age. He’d assured her that the incident with Lennier would not be held against her here in London, and that she would be considered a friend of the Alliance. He’d stirred her hope that perhaps, with the right training, she could be more than a friend.
However, as Gabby sat with Benjamin and a few other upper-rank fighters in the second floor of the warehouse, discussing the demon trapping diffuser nets, she wondered if she was a fit for the Alliance at all.
“You don’t seem to understand what these nets can do,” she said, pushing herself up from the uncomfortable sofa Benjamin kept in the convening room, a glassed-in office that had perhaps once been used by a foreman. The office sat up a short flight of steps that looked over the open second-floor loft.
“They stop a demon in its tracks and diffuse its power, rendering it completely defenseless,” Gabby explained for what felt like the tenth time. She and Rory had been summoned to the Fleet Ditch warehouse to explain their visit to Hugh Dupuis’s home. Gabby wasn’t certain how Benjamin had learned of it, but she figured Hugh and his corvites weren’t the only ones keeping their eyes on her.
“Dupuis told you all this?” Benjamin asked, leaning against the wavy glass, his back to the activity below.
Portions of the loft had been sectioned off as meeting spaces, open training areas, even a kitchen and dining hall, and there were probably a dozen or more people milling about. Each one had glanced up toward the glass-faced office every now and then during the past fifteen minutes.
“Yes, but Rory and I saw it on our own as well,” she answered. They’d already explained how they’d met Hugh Dupuis on the London docks. “Mr. Dupuis simply explained the nets in more detail to me yesterday during my visit.”
Nadia, a middle-aged woman with close-cropped, mostly gray hair, lifted her booted foot onto the seat of a low stool and leaned forward. “And you thought nothing of going inside a Daicrypta doyen’s home alone?”
She, like Chelle, dressed as a man, in trousers and a jacket, but unlike Chelle, Nadia truly had no feminine features and, Gabby had learned, went by the name of Ned outside these warehouse walls.
“I was never in any danger,” Gabby said with a sigh. “I truly don’t believe Hugh Dupuis is a threat.”
“He’s Daicrypta,” Nadia threw back, as if the single word were enough of an argument. To the Alliance
, perhaps it was.
“Yes, but he goes about things much differently than his father did.”
Nadia put her foot back down and mumbled “Or so he says” under her breath. Gabby ignored it. There was no way to convince Nadia or Benjamin or the handful of others in the room of what Gabby had felt while in Hugh’s presence: that he wanted to help.
“I think he would share these nets with the Alliance if you expressed an interest,” Gabby said. “They could be useful in demon hunting.”
Benjamin stood free of the window and paced the creaky cork floor. “We don’t have a use for nets,” he said. “We hunt and destroy demons. We don’t trap them or experiment on them.”
She looked at Rory, who stood beside the door, working the tip of one of his daggers underneath his nails and doing a smashing job of ignoring the conversation.
“But you do hold demons for experimentation,” she argued. “There’s a whole room in Paris at Hôtel Bastian dedicated to it!”
“Well, there isn’t one here,” Benjamin said, flashing her the universal expression for don’t argue with me.
He was the leader in London, but perhaps he was still in the dark about the Directorate’s dealings with the Daicrypta. Or perhaps he did know about them but wasn’t authorized to say so. Really, the Alliance was starting to give Gabby a headache.
“I expect you both to show consideration for the way we do things here. Neither of you is part of my faction, but you’re still Alliance.” Benjamin tilted his head toward Gabby. “Almost, as far as you’re concerned. And we do not work in tandem with the Daicrypta. Especially a Daicrypta with the name Dupuis.”
Gabby wasn’t sure whom she was more frustrated with: Benjamin, for his unwavering shortsightedness, or Rory, for keeping his mouth shut and his head down for the entire meeting. She told Rory as much as soon as they’d been escorted out through the side door.
“There’s no arguin’ wi’ the leader of another faction,” Rory explained as he helped her into the enclosed carriage that had been waiting for them outside the warehouse. They settled in, and the driver didn’t waste a moment directing the horses onward, out of this part of the city.
