by Page Morgan
Luc’s fingers closed around her elbow. “I think you’re right. We need to leave.”
Ingrid faced him, casting off his gentle grip. “Run? Where to this time, Luc? No. No, we must face her. We must … we must go to her. She won’t expect it.”
Luc bit back his instant retort and settled, Ingrid was sure, for something kinder. “Ingrid, none of us are strong enough to fight her. You saw what she did to Marco. The only hope we had rested with the Order.”
Ingrid recalled Axia’s laughter, the way it had ricocheted around the stone courtyard. She imagined Axia laughing now, at ease with her strength. Not nervous in the least that she might be thwarted.
The only thing Axia had appeared upset about that morning had been the question of why Ingrid had not fallen under her spell. Believing Ingrid still had angel blood in her body had whipped Axia into a bubbling rage.
Or had it been something other than anger?
Ingrid caught Luc’s arms and squeezed. “What if she was afraid?”
Ingrid left the doors and made her way to the sofa and the corvite’s birdcage. Hugh Dupuis was in conference with Rory, but his keen eyes saw Ingrid’s approach and he detached himself from the Scot.
“Miss Waverly?” Hugh greeted her with such elegance she half expected him to be holding a whiskey and a cigar.
“Mr. Dupuis,” she replied, her mind at a gallop. “I have an awful idea and I require your help.”
He slanted a brow at her as Luc caught up. “What is it?” Luc asked.
“Apparently it’s awful,” Hugh replied.
“It is,” she said. “It’s probably insane, but I think it may be our only hope.”
She was trying to keep her voice down, but curious eyes had already started to drift in their direction.
“We’re using the wrong bait,” Ingrid started to explain, her thoughts and ideas buzzing about her head like an angry swarm of bees. “Axia has no equal here. No human or gargoyle can match her. Only another angel could be a true opponent. This morning, she found me. She came looking for me, believing I still had some of her blood. Axia was convinced it was the reason I wasn’t falling under her sway. Even without intending to, I lured her out. I can do it again.”
Hugh’s expression lit with understanding.
“No, Ingrid,” Luc said.
Hugh held up his palm. “Wait. The idea has merit.”
“I said no.” Luc’s bark secured the attention of everyone else within the library.
“It isn’t your decision,” Ingrid said to him, firmly enough to forestall a third refusal. Luc clenched his jaw and speared her with a look of fury and defeat. He pivoted on his heel and put a few strides between them.
“What’s this about?” Nolan asked, approaching Ingrid and Hugh at the birdcage.
She kept her eyes on the Daicrypta doyen. “I go to her. I bring a vial of her blood and let her have it, and then tell her that there is more. That I want to strike a bargain.”
Hathaway pushed his way to Ingrid’s side. “That blood belongs to the Alliance now, Miss Waverly. Reneging on the agreement your sister and I made would not be wise.”
“Our agreement hinges upon your witnessing the net’s ability,” Gabby said. “You haven’t yet done so, and so the blood is not yet yours.”
Hathaway lost his careful composure “Do not split hairs with me, young woman. If you think you can play me for a fool, you will be sorely disappointed.”
“So many threats, Hathaway,” Nolan cut in, angling his body toward the representative with a clear threat of his own. “Is that all the Directorate is good for?”
“We’re giving her one vial,” Ingrid said. “I have no intention of handing over the rest. All I mean to do is distract her attention while drawing her out into the open long enough for Gabby’s net to capture her.”
Long enough for Axia to let her guard down a bit, and perhaps feel a bit greedy. Wasn’t that what they needed?
“And how do you plan to find her? By wandering through Paris alone?” This time it wasn’t Luc but Vander who’d chosen to argue.
Constantine raised his hand to interrupt. “Many of the Dusters I housed here before the Chimera attack this morning mentioned the Champs de Mars as a hotbed of demon activity. Perhaps Axia’s new hive here on earth.”
The exposition buildings surrounding the esplanade, and the commanding view from the tower would definitely give Axia a protected central headquarters of sorts.
“While that sounds like a truly delightful place to visit,” Marco began, having returned to the library, “someone else will have to take the blood and lure her out. You, Lady Ingrid, will be staying here.”
Ingrid tightened her hands into fists. “Axia would sic her demons on anyone else. I’m the only person she will stop to listen to, especially if she still believes I have some of her blood in my veins.”
Mama pushed forward to the edge of the sofa cushion. “And what is to stop this Axia woman from harming you straight out?”
Her smoky quartz eyes watched Ingrid with uncut doubt and fear. That she’d referred to Axia as a woman only underscored how little she understood about the situation. However, she was far from fainting dead away at the idea of evil angels and bloodthirsty demons. Ingrid was surprised at how similar her mother’s fortitude was to Gabby’s. Perhaps even to her own.
“She wasn’t going to kill me this morning,” Ingrid answered, feeling more and more confident. “She was only going to draw out the angel blood she believed I had.”
Luc had been brooding behind Nolan and Gabby until then. “If the net fails or if it misses its mark, we can’t protect you. We can’t fight an angel.”
Vander took a sidelong glance at Luc. “It won’t miss its mark,” he said. “Not if I’m shooting it.”
Knowing Vander would be aiming the crossbow reassured Ingrid like nothing else could have.
Rory, who had remained silent and watchful, finally spoke. “Ye can’t approach her alone. She’d be suspicious of that.”
“I will not assign any of my men to guide you into this suicide mission,” Hans said to her. “Entering a boxed-in space such as the Champs de Mars with those buildings built up around it now would be like walking into a gladiators’ arena.”
Benjamin and Nadia ignored Hans’s declaration and made one of their own.
“We can stay out of sight but within earshot,” Nadia said, with Benjamin adding, “Should you require it.”
Ingrid nodded her gratitude while trying not to look at Luc and the muscles clenching along his jaw. His disapproval burned.
“I do not want you to do this, Ingrid,” Mama said. Soft lines fanned her eyes and lips as she frowned. “However, I trust your instinct. If you think this will work …”
Ingrid wished she could say something different to reassure her, but she didn’t like to lie. “I don’t know if it will.”
Mama absently patted her skirts and found Marco with her steady gaze. “You will keep her safe.”
Marco looked at Ingrid’s mother as if he’d never seen her before. Two vertical lines creased the skin between his brows as he frowned. “I will,” he said, and with a glance at the gargoyle at his side, added, “As will Luc.”
Mama pursed her lips, her hands stilling over her dark plum lace overlay. “Mr. Rousseau is not my daughter’s gargoyle.”
Ingrid crossed a look with Luc. His grimace was enough to pierce her. She was certain that her mother’s disdain hurt him as much as it did her.
“Let’s just say he’s self-appointed,” Marco replied.
Hathaway rested his hands on the handles of his swords, sheathed at his hips. “One vial, Miss Waverly. Hans will accompany your outing to the Champs de Mars and bear witness to the diffuser net display.”
Hans, utterly galled, speared the Directorate leader with a mutinous glare as Hathaway went on. “I don’t wish failure upon this harebrained scheme of yours. I just think it very unlikely to succeed.”
What to say to that? Hath
away was a cold man, but he was probably correct.
Hugh coughed to break the clouding tension and extended his hand to Ingrid. “Then it’s settled. Come, Miss Waverly. I believe you have some blood to collect.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The blue-white-and-red-uniformed French Imperial Guard officers surrounded the Champs de Mars. As Grayson and the other Dusters approached the main exhibition halls from avenue de la Bourdonnais, the police did not open fire or attempt in any fashion to stop their small group from passing through the arched entryways that led to the enclosed esplanade. They simply backed up, staring at them while clutching their issued rifles and sabers. Grayson figured the enormous hellhounds flanking them were the primary reason for that.
The police had most likely already discovered that their bullets did not stop the beasts. If only they had known about blessed silver, Grayson thought as they traversed the long entryway. The seams the Alliance had sewn so tightly around their secret world had finally split. The mess wasn’t something Grayson could wrap his mind around just then. The only thing he could allow himself to think about was Axia and his plan to bring her to her knees.
He’d wanted this confrontation, he reminded himself upon entering the esplanade. He had cleared the line of trees, their limbs barely budding, and could now view the entire length of the Champs de Mars. To the left were the ornate fountains of the Château d’Eau and the glass ceilings of the Palace of Electricity, visible just behind the chateau. To the right, farther down the esplanade, stood the Eiffel Tower. Everywhere in between, along the wide gravel walk and the thin strips of snow-dusted grass, were swarms of demons and Dusters. The Dusters stood in tight clusters, the demons circling them. And not just hellhounds. Close to him, a thick, squat black beetle the size of a miniature pony scuttled back and forth in front of a group of six or so Dusters. The beetle’s long antennae crackled with blue spits of electricity. Bands of it reached from one antenna to the other, licking back and forth in constant bursts of light. It was a lectrux, he assumed, and the Dusters it was fencing in were a mixture of boys and girls. They were filthy and haggard, and their fear was so real Grayson could practically taste it.
The boy with the mop of red hair who had approached Grayson with the others on rue de Berri nudged him.
“Mistress is there,” he whispered, his chin jerking in the direction of the Eiffel Tower.
It was time. Grayson’s pulse throbbed in his ears as he started along the gravel esplanade toward the tower. When he had entered, there had been a low, breathy roar within the exhibition space—Axia’s nest. There had to be at least a hundred or more Dusters here, and just as many creatures scraped up from the Underneath, to guard them. Crowds like that made noise. Yet as Grayson took measured steps toward the iron behemoth, a silence settled in. He kept his chin lifted and his sights on the tower. Of all the demons present—from rattilus demons and crypsis serpents to corvites and the flylike beings Luc had once called Drainers—hellhounds were the most prominent. They stopped pacing as Grayson walked past. Their ember-red eyes watched him intently.
He still had his hands in his pockets, his right hand closed around the warm glass barrel of the syringe. The glass was slippery; his palms were damp. Suddenly every last nerve in his body jumped to attention.
“You have come to me at last.”
The Dusters and demons in Grayson’s side vision pressed themselves toward the ground. He saw her then, emerging from behind two of her hounds. Her hooded figure was the only one that did not stoop. Axia glided toward him. A black corvite swooped overhead, its growling call echoing off the façades of the surrounding buildings.
For a moment, he forgot that he had been the one to design this meeting, and felt trapped again, a prisoner inside her Underneath hive. His skin itched along his arms and legs with the memory of the fanged man—one of these beastly hounds, he realized—and how he’d punctured Grayson’s skin again and again, injecting him with black demon poison.
Axia lifted her arm, the sleeve of her robe long enough to cover her fingers, and pushed back the cavernous hood. He tensed, remembering how in the Underneath she’d been bald, her skin stretched tight over the sharp bones of her face, emphasizing her unnaturally round black eyes and her lipless mouth. He prepared himself to be struck by her hideous visage again.
But when her hood fell around her shoulders, that wasn’t what Grayson saw at all. She wasn’t the decrepit creature she’d been in the Underneath. She had lips, full and pink. She had dark brown eyes instead of all-black, fathomless pupils. And her hair cascaded around her shoulders in wild golden ringlets. It wasn’t just her hair that was golden—she was. Axia had a luminescent glow that seemed to leak out of her very skin.
“Do you bring a weapon into my nest, Grayson Waverly?” she asked.
He froze under a sweep of panic.
“Lay it down,” Axia commanded after his beat of guilty silence.
He cautiously removed both hands from his pockets, though only one extracted a weapon. He let the dagger drop to the ground, where it thudded dully. Grayson damn well hoped she didn’t have him turn out his other pocket. Thankfully, she seemed appeased.
“I wish you had come of your own accord.” She spoke in the same honey-sweet voice he remembered from before. It chimed through his ears, leaving behind something like the faint peal of bells.
I have, he thought, but instead replied, “I won’t be your slave.”
Axia’s laugh tinkled through the air, wrongly bright within the solemn, fear-filled Champs de Mars. “You refer to the mersian blood cure. I admit my decision to bestow such a gift on Evander Burke was erroneous. Mersians are unto themselves in the Underneath, as I learned during my imprisonment there, and are indifferent to my influence. However, he is but one seedling. It seems Evander Burke will have to be weeded out.”
So that was why Vander—or Evander, or whatever his full name was—had not fallen under Axia’s spell. That only presented yet another pressing reason Grayson knew he must succeed: to protect Vander—and the mersian blood. He settled his hands back inside his trouser pockets, hoping the action appeared casual.
Axia’s golden brows slanted and her lips puckered into a moue. “Do not worry so, Grayson Waverly. The mersian blood within you will soon fade, and you will give yourself over to me. You will become what you have always been meant to be.”
He and Ingrid had never been the sort to speak without first weighing their choice of words. Gabby would have begun arguing with Axia immediately, and a part of Grayson longed to do the same. To assert that he would never give himself over to her, no matter how easy it would be. He’d felt the draw before, the overwhelming urge to shift and settle into the form that, if he allowed himself to admit it, felt more comfortable than the one he currently held.
He couldn’t argue with Axia. It did seem, in many ways, that he was meant to be a hellhound, or at least part hound. But he also knew he would never allow himself to be owned.
“I’d rather die than become one of your pets.” As soon as he’d spoken the words, he felt as though a door had slammed behind him. He’d crossed over some threshold. Some understanding within himself. There would be no turning back.
The black wings of another corvite circled over Axia’s head, and then the demon bird’s claws settled on the soft mound of golden curls draped over her shoulders. The bird growled. Axia canted her head just enough to hint that whatever the demon had said had been significant.
She twitched her shoulder and the corvite flew off.
“Grayson Waverly, while I am as dissatisfied with you as I am with my mersian seedling, I see no reason to weed you out yet.”
She took a few steps to the left and angled herself toward him, as if to impart some confidence. “I can remove your demon blood just as easily as I bequeathed it.”
Grayson stilled. The pure hatred he’d felt for Axia slipped. He felt something he hadn’t since she’d taken him to her hive before: reliance. A knowledge that he w
as a prisoner, had always been a prisoner, and that she had always been the gatekeeper. She was telling him this for a reason. To Grayson, it sounded curiously like the beginning of a bargain.
“Why would you do that?” he asked. “Don’t you need your seedlings for this war of yours?”
Her radiant skin was difficult to look at. It produced the same abrasive glare the surface of a pond did at sunset.
“I require obedient seedlings,” she answered, and continued with a loose sweep of her hand. “As you can see, I have many here. Many more will come. You say you would rather die than become my pet?”
Axia tacked to the right and stepped directly in front of Grayson. He cradled the barrel of the needle in his pocket and slipped his fingers into the twin holes of the plunger. She was close. But close enough? He eyed the hellhounds on either side of her, knowing if he made his move now, the hounds would rip into him. The tremor of his wrist did nothing to inspire courage. He would rather die than become her pet, but that didn’t exactly mean he wanted to die.
He stayed quiet, hoping she would continue without his answer. She did.
“Tell me, Grayson Waverly.” Axia said. “Who else would you so willingly sacrifice?”
Gabby ran her hand down the velvety blaze of one of Constantine’s bay mares. The stables were quiet and warm, drenched in late-afternoon sunlight. She hadn’t been able to take pacing the library, or any other room in the chateau. Ingrid and the others had left for the Champs de Mars a half an hour before, and only Gabby, Constantine, Hathaway, and Lady Brickton remained at Clos du Vie. Mama had even formally accepted Clos du Vie as her home, absolving Marco from any need to leave Ingrid’s side.
Nolan had pulled Gabby aside while the others had been loading into the carriages and Luc and Marco had been preparing behind one of the conveyances to coalesce into true form. He hadn’t pleaded with her to stay at Constantine’s. He hadn’t reminded her how dangerous walking into Axia’s new hive was going to be. Gabby had seen his request in his eyes, had felt it in the glide of his fingers along her scarred cheek. He’d kissed her in front of everyone—even Mama—before jumping into the driver’s box of Vander’s wagonette.
