The Wondrous and the Wicked

by Page Morgan

  Ingrid fumbled with the handle, pushing and pulling and then falling out onto the terrace when the door at last gave way. She collapsed, gasping fresh air, hearing the wails of sirens and bells, and panicked shouting from the street below.

  A pair of talons landed on the terrace beside her. Marco sank into a crouch by her side, his cinnamon-red scales and amber wings fiery in the afternoon sunlight. He’d flown in daylight? Exposed his gargoyle form to humans all over Paris?

  Things were bad. Cataclysmically bad.

  His arm, bricked with muscle, scooped Ingrid up off the cold stone.

  “It’s Axia,” Ingrid croaked as Marco tucked her close to the plates of his chest. Her throat and eyes burned from all the smoke. “She’s here.”

  He lunged off the edge of the terrace and Ingrid caught an unsteady, tear-hazed sight of the street below. Rue de l’Opéra in flames; fire leaping from windows and punching through roofs; carriages overturned in the middle of the street, their hitched horses bucking as hellhounds feasted on their flesh. A gunshot cracked through the pandemonium and Marco rose higher into the air, his wings beating through the black curls of smoke, taking them away from the maelstrom below. But there was no escaping it, she knew. No safe place. Axia’s Harvest had begun.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Luc darted higher into the sky in an attempt to get the demon stink out of his nose. They were everywhere, out in full view of humans, laying down a path of destruction and blood. Luc had spent the last hour on the roof of his territory watching and listening with rising dread as the city erupted into turmoil street by street. He’d stayed in human form, even though no fewer than twenty Dispossessed had soared over common grounds in broad daylight.

  Their passing shrieks had conveyed the news that fissures had turned into geysers spewing Underneath demons. When more than one gargoyle had screeched down at Luc, reporting that Duster abominations were banding with the demons, Luc had risen to his feet. The worn clay tiles had shifted under his weight as he’d undressed.

  Their world, their boundaries, their time living in the dark, had reached an end. Luc had shed his clothes and then his skin while humans on the street below watched and screamed. He’d launched himself from the roof, leaving his territory, thankfully vacant of any humans taking refuge from the waking nightmare unfolding in the streets. He had to find Ingrid. If she’d somehow turned into Axia’s pawn and joined the demons roaming Paris … Luc didn’t know what he would find, but whatever it was, Ingrid would need him.

  When he’d reached the abbey and rectory, it had been completely quiet. The chime at the base of Luc’s skull had not come. If Marco wasn’t there, neither was Ingrid. Lady Brickton, if home, would at least be safe from demons, Luc thought as he’d wheeled in the air and headed for the only other place he knew Ingrid might flee: Hôtel Bastian.

  He flew through a cloud of black smoke, a fire having engulfed a row of homes along rue Saint-Sulpice. He felt the heat of the flames and flew faster, clearing the smoke cloud and angling toward the ground. Though rank, the air there would be easier to breathe.

  The streets had started to empty. He figured the panicked humans were seeking shelter indoors, and as he flew at rooftop level, he saw that most windows and balcony doors had been closed and shuttered. If only those shutters had been made of blessed silver.

  He skewed left and turned onto rue de Sèvres. Except for a handful of people a quarter mile down, the wide boulevard had been abandoned. Four uniformed gendarmes were skirmishing with an appendius demon, and closer, a lone man was brandishing his sword at a hellhound, its fangs painted crimson. Luc could only see the man’s back, but he knew who it was. He never forgot a human charge.

  Grayson Waverly swung the sword at the hellhound’s front paw as it swiped at his head. The blade bit into the hound, the wound spitting green sparks. It was a novice stroke of a blade that was clearly not his own—Grayson would have been better off hurling books at the beast.

  Luc darted lower, tucking in his wings to gain speed, and rushed over Grayson’s head. The talons of his feet punctured the fibrous skin and dense muscle of the hound’s neck. He then grabbed hold of the two protruding slanted fangs and broke them off at the base. It was the first thing to do when fighting a hellhound; the wicked points were the hound’s most dangerous weapon. Luc kept the fangs in his hands and, with a shriek, plunged them into the hellhound’s fire-lit eyes.

  He landed deftly on the pavement as the demon’s death sparks fizzled, then turned to face Ingrid’s brother, who still held the sword aloft. Luc released the trigger inside him and let his true form go. Within seconds, he stood on the cold pavement in human form.

  “Where is Ingrid?” he immediately asked.

  Grayson let the sword down. He kept his eyes level with Luc’s. “I don’t know. I was coming to find you.”

  “Why haven’t you become a hellhound?” Luc asked. “The Dusters—”

  “I know, they’ve joined the Underneath demons. I can’t explain it all right now. Luc, I need your help.”

  If Grayson hadn’t become one of the crazed Dusters, perhaps Ingrid hadn’t, either. Luc realized Grayson was still talking to him.

  “I brought her to Hôtel Bastian. She’s burning up and needs gargoyle blood. I didn’t know who else to ask.”

  Luc stared at him. “Who?”

  “Chelle,” Grayson answered. “Mercurite is useless against Duster poison.”

  Luc glanced behind them, toward Paris Alliance faction headquarters. He could see the building from where they stood.

  “Ingrid isn’t there?”

  “Damn it, Luc, no! I told you, I don’t know where she is. But Chelle needs your help!” Grayson took a steadying breath. “Please, Luc. I can’t let her die.”

  Luc turned back to Grayson. He understood Grayson’s desperation; he himself felt the same intense need to find Ingrid and protect her.

  He nodded, realizing that Grayson must be in love with this Alliance girl. “Fast. I have to find your sister.”

  Grayson narrowed his eyes at Luc but said nothing. He kept the blessed blade out and began to jog back toward Hôtel Bastian. Luc followed, thinking that a naked man walking down rue de Sèvres was but a slight disturbance compared to the bloodbath up ahead, where the appendius had mopped the ground with the bodies of the four police officers who had been attempting to kill it.

  If Ingrid was out there, letting her electricity flow freely, possessed by whatever spell Axia had cast over the Dusters, she was in danger. Not just from uninformed humans, who would see her as a monster, but from other gargoyles. Without Marco to protect her, she would be at their mercy. And if she woke from this spell—if she woke from it at all—and saw what she’d done … if she’d hurt people … it would devastate her.

  Itching to leave, Luc stormed up the flights of stairs to the third floor, where the normally closed and bolted door to faction headquarters had been left wide open. Grayson entered, and Luc hesitantly followed.

  Grayson noticed his uncertainty. “The Roman troops aren’t here yet. They were due this morning and could be out there right now with the rest of the demon hunters. The place is deserted. Come on.”

  Luc passed through the open loft, following Grayson to the row of curtained makeshift rooms. Grayson shoved one curtain back on the rods and revealed the Alliance girl lain out on a cot, and Vander Burke crouched beside her.

  “Vander?” Grayson said, entering the room. “Where is Ingrid?”

  The Seer stood up, his eyes landing on Luc, then looking away. “I don’t know. We got separated after she electrocuted me.”

  He took off his glasses. “I don’t know if it’s my mersian blood, but I don’t seem to be affected by Axia. Neither do you,” he said to Grayson. He turned back to the cot. “But what happened to Chelle?”

  The right leg on her trousers had been torn up and bloodied; her face was covered with a sheen of sweat. She rolled her head side to side, murmuring nonsense. Grayson knelt by her side,
grasping her hand and lifting it to his lips.

  “Duster poison,” he answered. “And mercurite is useless on it.”

  He looked back at Luc expectantly.

  “Hold out your sword,” Luc ordered, and Grayson did so. Luc clasped the tip and pulled hard, slicing open his palm. He let the blood well up before reaching inside the ragged rip in the girl’s trousers and pressing his hand against her wound.

  “You’re going to be all right,” Grayson whispered into her ear, bending his head against hers.

  Luc felt a pang of sympathy for him. The girl—Chelle—looked mostly dead already. Her lips were dry and the color of bleached bone. Her eyes were screwed up tight in agony. The skin beneath Luc’s hand was searing hot, and the wound … he still felt the gash in her leg. It wasn’t healing.

  “Grayson.” There was no easy way to tell him, so he just came out with it. “It’s not working.”

  Grayson kept his head against Chelle’s. “No. It has to work. Try again, goddamn it!”

  Luc removed his hand from Chelle’s leg. He stayed crouched by the cot.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. He really was.

  Grayson said nothing. He only squeezed Chelle’s hand, his cheeks wet against her temple. Vander stood silently behind them.

  Luc turned to him. “Where did you last see her?”

  Vander put his spectacles back on. Luc noticed that his clothing was torn and blackened in spots. Probably from where Ingrid had electrocuted him.

  “My room on rue de Berri,” he answered.

  Luc grew cold, then scorching hot with the urge to destroy something. He swallowed the question of what Ingrid had been doing there.

  “And Marco?” Luc asked.

  The Seer glared at Luc. “He wasn’t with us,” he said slowly, each word stretched tight by frustration.

  Voices entered the open loft outside the room. The telling chime pounded at the base of Luc’s skull.

  “Hello? Is anyone here?”

  Luc closed his eyes and exhaled at the sound of Ingrid’s voice.

  “You might want to put something on,” Vander muttered before shouldering past Luc into the loft.

  He dressed himself in jet scales before exiting through the curtains, his wings catching on the fabric as he entered the hallway. Seeing Ingrid in the Seer’s arms wasn’t ideal, but at least she was here and alive, and flanked by another massive gargoyle. Marco had kept his true form as well. He saw Luc and nodded his wolfish snout in greeting.

  Then Ingrid, her cheek pressed against Vander’s shoulder, saw Luc. Her eyes went wide. Soot had streaked her cheeks and darkened her thick tumble of blond locks. Her mint-green dress had been dirtied to a deep myrtle, torn at one shoulder, and frayed at the hem. She had never looked more beautiful.

  Ingrid pushed herself out of the Seer’s arms and ran down the short hallway toward Luc. Her face crumpled with a sob in the instant before she threw herself against the plated muscles of his chest. He caught her with his corded arms, trying to soften the collision before she bruised herself. She clung to him, her arms so slight he hardly felt them around his waist. Luc tensed his wings to bring them forward, and then he crossed them, folding Ingrid into a double embrace.

  “I think I’ve hurt people,” she said, her voice small and muffled by the cage of his wings. “I don’t remember anything. There was a fire, and I think … I think it was me who set it.”

  He wanted to grip her tighter, but he didn’t trust his talons. He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t her fault. That it didn’t matter. That she was safe now and that he’d keep her that way. She wouldn’t have understood any of it, though. He could hold her, but the wall between them was still there. It would always be there.

  He let his wings down, revealing their embrace. Vander skewered Luc with a glare as he came back toward them and turned into the room where Chelle lay. Marco grunted and spoke, his screech making perfect sense, if only to Luc: You’re making things worse for yourself, brother. And for her.

  His reply startled Ingrid, who flinched when his answering shrieks rumbled in his chest: Come what may, I’ve made my choice and she’s made hers.

  He loosened his wings and arms, and Ingrid stepped back. She held Luc’s eyes. It was the only way to communicate right then.

  “My God.” Vander’s voice drew her attention away. She pulled away from Luc and entered the curtained room, rushing to her brother’s side. He was still kneeling by the cot and had turned to Vander, who was staring at Chelle. She lay immobile, no longer thrashing and moaning. If not for the slight rise of her chest every few moments, Luc would have assumed she was dead.

  “What is it?” Grayson asked.

  Vander continued to stare at her. He reached out over Grayson’s head and combed his hand through the air above Chelle. “It’s dust. She’s started to give off dust.”

  Gabby hadn’t returned to Waverly House after bringing Hugh Dupuis the case of angel blood. She, Nolan, and Rory had arrived on the Daicrypta’s Belgravia doorstep that morning and had made themselves comfortable in Hugh’s study. He had offered them refreshments while he and his assistants—he’d scoffed at calling them disciples the way his father had, as if they were simply followers of a godlike doyen—had accepted one pint of Ingrid’s blood and disappeared into his laboratory to commence work separating the blood and then testing it against the lodestone mixture used in his diffuser nets.

  Gabby had paced endless circuits around the study, had sipped tea and nibbled on biscuits and cold sandwiches, and had even taken to inspecting Hugh’s bookshelves—a true testament to how deliriously bored she was. Rory and Nolan had spent the passing hours happily reclined in club chairs before the fire, or actually reading books, when Gabby had only enough interest to look at the cover and title page. Neither of them seemed at all anxious or pressed for time. She supposed they knew to reserve their energy for when it would truly be needed.

  The noon hour waxed and waned, and later, when Gabby’s feet and back finally ached enough from pacing the room all day, she collapsed onto the sofa. The leather was fire-warmed and plush, and with the first golden-rum rays of sunset bleeding through the windows, she’d felt her eyes growing heavy. Nolan left his chair to ease himself down beside her. He’d spread a velvety blanket over her lap and Gabby had ignored propriety and relaxed against his side. She must have drifted off, for when she opened her eyes again, it was to darkness. The fire was the only light in the room, and Gabby was snuggling a pillow instead of Nolan.

  Disorientated, she sat up and glanced about the study. The hidden door to the laboratory was cracked open, as was the door to the corridor. She was alone, and though a little bit of light spilled from the laboratory, it was quiet enough for the sparks and crackles from the logs in the hearth to sound like pistol shots. As Gabby swung her legs to the floor, she fought the puerile anger that something important had happened and no one had woken her.

  She got up and had taken a step toward the laboratory door when a cold gust of wind blew against her ankles. She stopped. It had blown in from the corridor. She changed direction and went to the study door, where the chill increased. Wind licked at her shoulders and the crown of her head as she stepped into the corridor. Craning her neck, she saw that the skylight shaft, which cut through all three stories of Hugh’s home, had been levered open to a smoggy night sky. Air barreled down the shaft and snapped at Gabby’s cheeks and nose. The moonlight was just barely starting to cut through the brume when a pair of wings eclipsed the rectangular opening. Gabby leaped backward as a gargoyle shot down the wide shaft. She deserted her space on the checkered marble floor a heartbeat before a gargoyle like none she’d seen before landed in a crouch in front of her.

  A mantle of amber fur covered its wings and body, though the coat wasn’t like anything she’d wish to pet. While Luc’s scales were flat against his body, this gargoyle’s fur stood up and out as spikes. Its arms, legs, and chest were brawny and intimidating, it talons long and hooked, just as an
y other gargoyle’s would be. Its face was what frightened her. This was no clownish chimpanzee face. This was the face of a vicious, angry ape: round, flaring nostrils; a dark, pronounced brow; and a grimace that exposed a mouthful of broad teeth and canines. This was Carver.

  “I’m sorry I laughed at you earlier,” Gabby whispered to the enormous gargoyle, who was still staring down at her. “You’re not a monkey at all, are you?”

  She expected him to reverse his shift right there in the corridor—Luc or Marco would have held no reservations about such a bodily display. However, Carver blew air out of his crumpled nostrils and stalked farther down the corridor in his true form, disappearing around a bend in the hallway.

  Gabby let out her breath and decided against searching the rest of the dark house for Nolan or Rory. She returned to the study and headed for the papered-over door to the laboratory. She nudged the open door wider and slipped inside.

  The room was brightly lit from the many bulbs dangling from the ceiling. Hugh Dupuis and Rory were speaking in hushed tones at the long center table. Neither of them had noticed her quiet entrance. They were occupied with a microscope and were sharing the eyepiece. The position had their ears brushing up against one another. While Rory needed to lean down to peer through the microscope, Hugh needed to use a stepstool.

  Gabby parted her mouth to announce herself but stopped when Hugh shifted his head slightly, just enough for him to look sideways at Rory. The demon hunter’s shoulders stiffened, though he didn’t step away from the lens. He didn’t bark at Hugh for holding himself too close. Gabby’s head was still muddled from her nap, from finding herself alone, and then from the sight of Carver’s gargoyle form. This quiet scene with Rory and Hugh was also peculiar. It ended as quickly as a dream upon waking.