by Page Morgan
“Chelle?”
The Alliance member dropped the tray. “What is it?”
A second fighter came down the first few steps and repeated the question.
“I don’t know,” Grayson answered, grasping Chelle’s shoulders. “Chelle? What’s wrong?”
She was facedown on the floor, and he was about to turn her up when he heard a rasping sound coming from behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a pair of bright green eyes cutting through the dark.
Grayson got to his feet and stumbled backward as a Duster emerged from the shadows and into the spill of light. His chin had lengthened to a sharp point, the skin along his neck had blown out like a frilled lizard, and his forehead and hairless scalp shimmered with pearly scales. A long, forked tongue darted through his lips, then retracted.
The Duster lunged at Grayson, fangs first. A broadsword cut through the air between them, the long, sharpened edge burying into the Duster’s stomach.
“No!” Grayson shouted as a dark stain seeped into the fibers of the Duster’s shirt. “He’s human!”
“He is a monster!” the Alliance fighter returned, pulling the blade back with a wet squelching sound.
The other fighter now vacillated on the last step and shouted for his comrade to hurry.
The serpent Duster fell to his knees. And then Chelle’s prostrate form began to move. The fighter’s sword swung toward her. Grayson grabbed his arm and twisted him away, pushing him from Chelle’s side, toward the stairs.
“Do not. Touch. Her.”
The man shoved Grayson off, propelling him into the chest of the other Alliance member. The second man flung Grayson to the dirt floor.
“She is not human any—” The first man’s mouth stretched wide, his eyes bugging out. His next words dissolved into a hoarse scream. He collapsed to his knees. Chelle stood behind him, and with a twist of her torso, she yanked the long, curled tail that had punched through the seat of her trousers out of the fighter’s back.
The second Alliance fighter staggered, tripping over the tray of food, but Chelle snapped her tail like a whip. The quill-like spikes running the length of it rippled and clicked together in the second before they guillotined him.
The second fighter’s head and body parted and dropped limply to the floor. Grayson stared, revolted and on the verge of being ill.
Chelle’s eyes snapped to him, showing the same ferocity her tail had shown these fighters.
“It’s me,” he said, but her eyes were empty of any recognition. He hoisted himself upright using the bottom of the stairwell’s railing, his eyes still locked with Chelle’s. There were more noises coming from within the basement as well.
Grayson took the stairs three at a time, bounding toward the door, hoping he was out of her tail’s reach. The steps shook behind him, and he could feel Chelle closing in.
He barreled through and slammed the door, throwing his shoulder against it and jamming the heavy deadbolt into place. Through the thick slab of wood Grayson heard Chelle roar with anger. The door shuddered, and long ruby-colored spikes stabbed through the wood, less than an inch from his shoulder.
Grayson leaped back, staring at the quills. Chelle drew them out, leaving behind a dozen holes. Grayson backed down the short hall, toward a side-entrance servants’ door.
“I’m sorry, Chelle.” She could neither hear nor understand him, but he had to say it. He’d promised he wouldn’t leave her, but if he stayed he’d wind up as dead as those two Alliance fighters.
“I’ll be back for you,” he said, knowing what he had to do. None of this would end until Axia had been destroyed. She was here, controlling her seedlings and the newly created Dusters, and she would be in a mortal form. Grayson was sure of it. She had to be here. She had to be fallible. Grayson couldn’t allow himself to imagine what would happen if she wasn’t.
He opened the ground-level door that emptied into the narrow lane between buildings, elated to be free from the cellar but feeling guilty as well. There was a waxing roar outside: screams and raised voices, sirens and bells and whistles and breaking glass. It was starting again. Grayson stepped out, shut the door behind him, and walked toward the noise.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ingrid could tell that Luc hadn’t wanted to leave. His expression had remained cool and unconcerned when he’d explained to her about Gaston’s visit and how something important regarding Vincent and the Chimeras was under way. It had to be now, he’d said, and would she please stay here, in front of the fire with the curtains drawn, until he returned?
“I’m not invited,” she’d stated.
Luc had given her a relaxed smile. “You’re safer here.”
When he’d taken her into his arms, however, she’d felt tension turning his muscles into steel rods. He’d kissed her forehead, breathing a long, warm sigh against her skin. Then he had pulled away and left in a rush, shutting her inside the second-floor sitting room.
He’d stacked wooden cabinet doors on the fire before leaving, so at least she’d have light and heat. No food, however, and Ingrid’s stomach complained. She paced before the fire and, after a quarter hour or so had passed, grew bored. There was nothing for her to do except worry and wonder. What was happening out there? What exactly did Luc and Gaston mean to do about Vincent and the Chimeras? Where were Grayson and Vander? Was Marco going to be with Luc and Gaston? If so, then her mother would be left unprotected at the rectory. The thoughts and doubts spiraled on and on as she paced, the first blue hints of dawn seeping through the gaps in the curtains.
She felt trapped and restless, and not having even a lick of a spark in her arms or hands for the last day and a half was not as welcome as Ingrid had imagined it would be. Not that she wanted to black out again and wake up in some strange place consumed by flames, but it would have been nice to know that she could protect herself.
She spent the next half hour trying to conjure up a current, the same way she had during lessons at Constantine’s home before she’d figured out her electricity could be fueled by other electric pulses. Fast-flowing water had electricity, as did dark, brooding thunderheads in the sky. Fire, too. Ingrid was staring into the flames eating away at the charred cupboard doors when she heard noises coming from outside. After the uneasy silence of the day before, when Paris itself had seemed to curl into a protective ball, the racket outside seemed unnaturally shrill.
She moved away from the fire and toward the windows overlooking the street. She widened the gap between two curtains. Dawn was much closer than she’d realized. The building across the street, with its terraces and tin smokestacks unevenly placed along the roof, was visible. The silhouettes of at least a dozen corvites lined the roof, a few more scattered along the balcony railings.
Something black, fast, and huge raced by the window. Ingrid jerked back and swallowed a scream. It hadn’t been one winged creature, but many. A whole flock of corvites, growling through the air, black and thick as a cloud of midnight. Ingrid went back to the window and looked out again, this time down toward the street. There were people out. More people than she and Luc had seen the afternoon before, when they’d last peered outside. One courageous shopkeeper had even opened his awning and set out a few baskets of bread. The shopkeeper and the people who had ventured from their homes had likely grown restless hiding away from something they most certainly could not understand. And if they didn’t understand it, they could not properly fear it.
A few mounted police officers trotted by, but the horses they were riding were shifting and snuffling loudly. Ingrid was just about to step away from the window when a carriage, pulled by two horses, clattered past, the horses whinnying and jumping, their bodies smacking into one another in panic. There was no driver at the reins, just a pale, nearly translucent crypsis serpent coiled on the roof of the carriage. Half of its body hung over the roof’s canvas edge and inside the window. The driverless carriage cut from one side of the road to the other in a deranged zigzag.
Ingr
id tugged the curtains together and closed her eyes. The demons hadn’t left, and now people were chancing going out among them. It would be another bloodbath.
A tinkle of breaking glass sounded from above. Ingrid looked up at the ceiling, the white plaster moldings of vines and fruits cast in orange by the firelight. A second crash from upstairs had her backing toward the door. Someone—or something—was in the house with her. She couldn’t stay. Yes, if she left she would be in danger, but she couldn’t just sit and wait for whatever it was—demon or human or gargoyle—to sniff her out.
Ingrid left the sitting room and stumbled through the inky-blue corridor. She didn’t have Luc’s hand to hold this time, but a set of stairs appeared on her left and she flew down them, the clumsy thudding of her boot heels padded by carpet. She heard the sound of cracking wood upstairs as she came into the foyer instead of the kitchens. Ingrid unlocked the bolt on the front door and raced into the cold dawn. She stopped on the sidewalk and craned her neck to see the windows of the town house. Sure enough, there were two on the third floor that had been smashed.
Digging into her skirt pocket, her fingers found Vander’s dagger. The tip grazed her palm before her fumbling hand got a grip on the handle. She started for rue de Vaugirard. As a main road it promised more people; perhaps there would be strength in numbers. Besides, it would be a more direct route toward boulevard Saint-Michel and eventually the abbey and rectory. The Alliance members searching for her would have already gone there and left, she hoped, and she had to let Mama know that she was well. Besides, when Luc returned to Marco’s old territory and realized she was gone, the first place he’d look for her would be the rectory.
Ingrid kept her pace at a fast clip; she didn’t want to run and draw attention to herself, from people or demons. There were few others about. A kitchen maid quickly filling a basket of bakery goods at another open shop; two old men in some sort of military costumes standing on a corner, each of them wearing a brace of highly polished pistols; a fast-moving hackney, this one with a driver, coming down rue de Vaugirard.
She’d never felt more exposed. The hackney was bearing down on her, the horses’ heavy breaths panting out steamy clouds. She had a little money and considered hailing the hack. The crypsis rooting around through the window of that other carriage gave her pause, but it was a long walk to the rectory from here. Ingrid put up her arm and waved to the driver. He clattered by without sparing her more than a glance. Ingrid cursed beneath her breath and walked on, allowing her pace to advance to a half jog. Wherever he was, Marco was likely pitching a fit right then. She was attempting to keep her fear under control, but she knew he would be able to sense something amiss. She kept glancing up, expecting to see his winged form at any moment.
Two streets ahead, an enormous black beetle scuttled into the road, its body easily the size and girth of an Irish wolfhound. Ingrid stopped moving and stared at the beetle’s antennae. Two black rods as thick as her arms passed a blue electric current from one tip to the other. The tips sparked and spit, and barbs of electricity shivered down each long feeler, encasing them in spirals of blue.
A lectrux demon, it had to be. The demon she shared blood with. Ingrid felt a fast, and odd, sense of understanding and, even more fleetingly, kinship as the lectrux paused in the middle of the road. It lowered its feelers to the pavement and swept them side to side. Her arms were her antennae, she realized. They projected the current the same way the lectrux’s feelers projected it. The demon perked up and its giant beetle body shifted in Ingrid’s direction.
The connection she’d felt severed instantly. Ingrid took the immediate right up ahead. Without her own electric pulses at her command, she would be nothing more than prey. Ingrid threw caution to the wind and ran, her lungs tight and her legs burning with exertion. The street meandered to the left, cutting around a raised square set in front of a church. Narrow stone steps, crafted of pale yellow marble to match the façade of the church, led to the square. There were no trees or gardens, just a matching yellow marble fountain and scattered benches. The square was empty, so Ingrid took the steps, keeping her pace just as quick.
Her boots scraped to a stop as someone stepped out from behind the fountain and into her path. The cloaked and hooded figure remained still. There was nothing more than a dark, cavernous hole where the face should have been. Ingrid stared, unable to breathe.
Axia’s robes undulated. “I have been searching for you, Ingrid Waverly.”
The orangery glowed with electric light, casting a flood over the snow-crusted shrubs that trimmed the glass-and-iron walls. Luc stood among the trellised rows of Clos du Vie’s vineyard with Gaston and Marco and the rest of the Dogs, Wolves, and Snakes, watching the chateau from afar. They were all in true form, and quieted by somber determination. Luc had not cobbled this plan together with any sense of levity, and he did not stand here now, waiting for the Chimeras to arrive, with a featherlight conscience. None of them did. The decision to attack fellow Dispossessed was not an easy one to make. It had to be done, though. Vincent could not keep killing humans, and the sooner he was stopped, the sooner the rest of the Chimeras would see they had been led astray.
Luc hoped for this result, at least.
Constantine had unwittingly helped their plans. Gaston’s human had taken in at least a dozen dazed and frightened Dusters under his roof at Clos du Vie. Without a doubt the Chimeras knew about this as well. So many Dusters in one place made for an irresistible target, Gaston had reckoned. Luc had agreed and called all of the gargoyles standing with him to surround the chateau. He’d also ordered the others to leave Vincent to him.
Their monotonous wait came to an unexpected end as a clamor resounded from the chateau. It pierced the stillness of the morning, and to Luc’s right, Gaston’s wings sprang open. A second later the gargoyle shuttled into the air. He raced low to the ground toward the glass orangery while Luc held his arm aloft—a signal for everyone else to stay where they were. There must have been trouble within the chateau. Something having to do with Gaston’s humans.
Over the next minute or two, the clamor grew to a discordant mélange of screams, clipped shouts, and breaking glass. It wasn’t until Marco sank into a crouch, grunting as though he’d been punched in the abdomen, that Luc began to suspect the problem stretched beyond the walls of Constantine’s chateau.
“What is it?” Luc asked, his high-pitched shriek shattering over the quiet slopes of the vineyard.
Marco stayed in his crouch, but his scaled wings cracked open.
“You are needed here, brother,” Marco gargled low in his throat. He rocketed into the sky, and his wings melted into the coming dawn.
Ingrid. Something was happening to her, and like before, when Axia had succeeded in dragging her into the Underneath, Luc was completely blind as to what. He had followed Marco that time, but he couldn’t now. He was leading this attack. If he were to go after Marco, he would forfeit his bid for elder. A bid he hadn’t made for himself, and yet it was his all the same.
Finally, after not wanting it for so long, a position of such power made sense. No one will challenge you, Gaston had said. And if Vincent were to claim the position, no one would challenge him, either. He’d plunge the Dispossessed and all of Paris into days darker than the ones Lennier had lifted them out of centuries ago.
No. Luc had to stay here, and he had to trust in Marco. He filled his lungs, his plated chest expanding, and realized that putting his faith in the Wolf was easier than he’d expected.
The racket at the chateau had died down, but there was still something off. In the distance, the blare of whistles and the tolling of church bells were waking the city. There was something else, too. It appeared to be a dense black cloud racing toward the chateau from the direction of the city. The cloud split, created gaps, and then merged again. It swayed through the sky, and when it reached the space above the front lawns of Clos du Vie, Luc saw that the cloud was as wide as the chateau itself.
Luc ha
dn’t expected this many Chimeras. They circled the roof, a tornado of wings and tails, paws and talons, fur and scales. Luc searched the rotating horde of gargoyles for Vincent’s long, pointed pelican’s beak, while the gargoyles beside and behind him shook their wings with nervous anticipation. He understood his brothers’ sense of urgency but wanted to sight Vincent before moving them up and out of the vineyards. The Chimeras were swarming and spinning too quickly for that, though. The frenzy of wings spun toward the orangery, and a Chimera bashed through the slanted glass roof.
Luc was the first one into the air and fleeting across the lawns. Chimera after Chimera smashed through glass panels and poured into the orangery. Luc plunged after them, nicking his wings on the jagged entrance. He dropped through a green bower of moss and his talons cracked the terra-cotta tiles below. The electric lights in the orangery, still shining, exposed a swarm of Chimeras overhead, circling two Dusters like vultures. One of the Dusters still looked human, though his teeth had lengthened into fangs and no longer fit within the confines of his mouth. Strings of saliva dripped past the boy’s jaw. The other Duster had shifted into a ginger-furred hellhound, its clothing in tatters around its shoulders and waist.
They hissed and spat at the circling Chimeras—Vincent not among them. A snake-headed goat, its scales bright green, made the first dive. Its tail swiped the fanged Duster off of his feet.
“Stop!” Luc’s shriek blared through the orangery. It distracted the snake Chimera long enough for Luc to swoop low and wrap his talons around the tapered, fur-tipped end of its tail. He pivoted fast, slinging the Chimera into a stand of bamboo.
Above him, an eagle-winged, double-headed antelope with curled horns made a dive. A Dog gargoyle slammed into it, driving the Chimera off course and straight into a glass garden table and set of wicker chairs. Dogs, Wolves, and Snakes clashed overhead with the Chimeras, and the orangery throbbed with high-pitched caterwauls.
