by Page Morgan
Grayson needed to get out.
His muscles shook beneath his skin, burning as if he’d just finished an hour of vigorous calisthenics. Sweat rolled from his unbuttoned collar down his chest and back. He was in his room, pacing before the window, and he felt caged. Trapped, the same way Axia had trapped him in that damned hive. Only now it was his father who’d done the trapping.
Ingrid, Gabby, and Mama had all gone out to some artist’s salon, and though Grayson and Lord Brickton had also been extended invitations, the old duffer had refused on both of their behalves. Too many bohemians, his father had mumbled, and then, with a piercing look at Grayson, he’d added, and temptations.
Grayson had considered arguing. He’d gotten dressed and nearly left with his sisters and mother. The salon would be crowded, though, and hot, and Grayson knew how easy it was for people to work themselves up over art. His mother certainly did. It made the pulse race. The blood run swift and fragrant.
Perhaps being alone in his room was for the best.
He crouched and ran his hands through his hair. It was damp from sweat. His bones. God, they hurt more than ever before.
A scattering of dirt struck his window. Grayson stood up and a second rain of dirt and snow pelted the glass. He went to it and shoved the window open.
His room overlooked the rear of the rectory, and standing directly below his window on the back lawn was Chelle. He couldn’t see her face, but the moon lit her slender figure and distinct cap.
“What the devil are you doing?” he called.
“Shhh!”
Grayson waited for her to say something more, but instead she crossed her arms and hugged herself against the cold.
“If you’ve come to serenade me, I believe your next move is to sing,” he said, knowing it would only vex her. He couldn’t help himself. He liked seeing her vexed. And talking helped him forget the state of his body.
“I am not serenading you,” Chelle hissed. She then groaned and threw up her hands. “Never mind!”
She started to stomp away.
“Wait,” Grayson called lightly. He couldn’t shout. The servants’ ell was too close, and his father’s study was only two rooms down near the corner of the rectory.
Chelle kept walking.
“Girls,” Grayson muttered, and swung his foot over the ledge of the open window. The second floor wasn’t terribly far from the ground. If he hung from the ledge and dropped, he probably wouldn’t even sprain an ankle. Besides, it wasn’t as if attractive girls threw pebbles at his window every day.
He dropped and landed with surprising agility. The action eased the ache of his muscles slightly, and the cold air in his lungs helped bring down his temperature. Chelle must have heard his feet breaking the snow. She turned back, shook her head in aggravation, and then signaled for him to follow.
It felt good to move, even if he had no clue why Chelle had come to him. It didn’t really matter, he supposed. She was here, wasn’t she?
Chelle didn’t speak until they’d left the abbey grounds. It was past ten, well after dark, and the streets were starting to empty.
“I’m patrolling the Latin Quarter tonight,” she said.
“Alone?” He searched behind them and up ahead, but he didn’t see Vander’s tall frame anywhere.
“I don’t get a partner every night, and I don’t need one, either,” she answered, prickly as a hedgehog.
“And you were wooing me at my window because … ?” he said.
“Certainly not because I felt I needed a partner!” Chelle sped up. “I thought you might be useful.”
She mumbled something in French, too fast and breathy for Grayson to understand. He got the gist of it, though: she regretted having fetched him.
“Useful how?” Other than engaging the architects and laborers who were refurbishing the abbey, Grayson hadn’t felt useful here in Paris at all.
“Your nose,” Chelle answered, and then, without a beat of hesitation, “Can you scent more than just blood?”
Grayson stopped in his tracks. So that was what she meant by useful. “You want me to sniff out demons so you can kill them.”
She faced him. Her jacket was too thin, he noted. She had to be freezing.
“Would that be a bad thing?”
“I thought I’d made it clear that I don’t want anything to do with the Alliance,” he answered.
Chelle lifted her chin and crossed her arms, trying to look down her nose at him. Their difference in height made it a challenge.
“Bonsoir, then,” she said, and left him standing there.
She looked like a petulant child storming off in a fit of temper. A child with blessed silver hidden in the folds of her clothing and a highly skilled and lethal aim. He didn’t have to worry about her. Chelle would be fine on her own.
Still, he found himself catching up and swinging in front of her, blocking her way. “That doesn’t mean I want you roaming the streets at night alone.”
Chelle stared hard at him before doing the oddest thing: she laughed.
“You are a gentleman, aren’t you?” she said, as if it were the silliest thing he could possibly be.
It almost made him relieved to deny it. “Trust me—I am no gentleman.”
Gentlemen didn’t turn into monsters and kill prostitutes in back alleys like demonic versions of Jack the Ripper. Again he regretted having told Ingrid what he’d done. She only knew half of his evil deed, but that was enough to have built an awkward wall between them the past few days.
He wouldn’t make that same mistake with Chelle. Or anyone else.
Chelle walked beside him, her pace slowed. They’d passed rue Lagrange and had come to the wide boulevard Saint-Germain. For one of the main thoroughfares in Paris, the traffic was slim. A buggy puttered by, along with a horse or two, and a covered carriage coming from the other direction.
“What exactly do you do on patrol?” Grayson asked to fill the silence. It wasn’t an awkward silence, but he certainly didn’t want Chelle to grow bored with his presence.
“We look for demons,” she said.
“I’m not that slow,” Grayson replied. “What I mean is, if demons come in every shape, even in human form, how do you know what’s a demon and what isn’t?”
She kept her hand at the red sash tied around her slim waist, where she hid her throwing stars. Her hira-shuriken, he corrected himself.
“Every demon has a trademark,” Chelle explained, her eyes never straying from the street or sidewalk. “Some are more intelligent than others, and are better able to acclimate to the human realm. But most demons are base creatures, unable to think beyond want and attain. They don’t work hard enough to cover up the trademarks that Alliance are trained to spot.”
Chelle crossed in front of him and hitched her foot on the bottom rail of a length of iron fence. She pulled herself up to peer over the spikes, into a private garden.
“Appendius demons can shorten or lengthen their bodies and legs, allowing them to crawl low to the ground, through grass and beneath shrubbery, until they rear up and attack unsuspecting humans.”
Chelle let go of the fence and landed beside Grayson.
“But their horns leave specific impressions on the ground, making it easy for Alliance to track them.”
Grayson listened intently. Chelle had an alluring voice. It was steady and confident, and completely devoid of the acerbic sweetness that plagued so many debutantes back in London.
“Corvites are like demon messenger birds. They carry information to and from the Underneath. They look like ravens or crows, but their calls set them apart. A corvite’s call breaks off in a growl.”
They turned onto a winding side street off Saint-Germain. The lack of streetlamps and the resulting shadows slowed him, but Chelle kept her confident pace. She must have come this way alone plenty of times before. Grayson didn’t like that thought at all.
“Demons with enough power to glamour themselves into human form are working so hard
to maintain that glamour that they usually fail to mask their behavior. They froth at the mouth or hobble around . … I can’t explain it. They just look uncomfortable in their skin,” she said, and then shrugged. “We know what to look for, and when we see it, we close in.”
“And have you ever made a mistake?” he asked. “Have you ever attacked what you thought was a demon but was really just a hobbling, frothing-at-the-mouth human?”
“There is no room for mistakes. If any Alliance harmed an innocent human, we would turn ourselves over to the Directorate for punishment.”
The noble thing to do, Grayson thought. Unlike him, who’d ripped apart a girl, apparently with his teeth, and had been running ever since. He hadn’t even known her name. If Chelle knew what he’d done … He let out a joyless laugh.
“What is so funny?” Chelle asked.
Grayson’s next step faltered. His hands, tucked deep into his trouser pockets, balled into fists as an odor wafted under his nose. It was smoky and sweet, and he shivered uncontrollably.
“Grayson?” Chelle stopped. “What is it?”
Walking had relieved the soreness of his muscles and bones, but now they seized again, the pain immediate and fierce. The scent grew stronger, and with an awareness rushing up his spine, Grayson understood what it was.
“Hellhound,” he rasped. His muscles had coiled so tightly he could barely breathe.
Chelle’s hand flew to her sash. She pulled out a throwing star and crouched into a defensive position. Her nose wrinkled as if she’d just smelled the inside of a latrine.
A shadow moved up ahead. Two red eyes flickered and flared, as if someone had just run a lit match over wicks. The hellhound slinked toward them, its greasy, shaggy fur taking shape out of the darkness.
“Stay back,” Chelle said. Grayson didn’t know if the order was for him or the hellhound. He couldn’t have moved even if he’d wanted to. Every bone in his body, from his tibias to his skull, stretched and pulled until he was certain they would all splinter into dust, leaving him a writhing mass of burning skin and muscle. He doubled over and ground his teeth.
“Grayson!” Chelle’s cry of alarm brought his head up.
The hellhound was in front of him. Their eyes did more than just meet. The circles of fire latched on to Grayson’s eyes and dug in; they made him focus. They seemed to pull everything that was inside of him forward, away from his quivering body.
For a moment the pain was gone. And with one shattering quake, Grayson was gone, too.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ingrid sipped her punch in the corner of an apartment on rue Bonaparte. The place was stifling. At least two dozen people milled about in shuffling half steps throughout a scant three-room apartment. The walls were covered from ceiling to baseboard with oil paintings, some canvases still fresh. It was all enough to make Ingrid’s temples throb. She lifted her cup to her lips again and accidentally elbowed an older gentleman who had sidled up beside her. He grinned forgivingly before saying, “It speaks of my youth.” He nodded toward the canvas that hung in front of them both.
Ingrid hadn’t yet looked up at the oil painting, and when she did, she wished she hadn’t. It showed a woman at the beach. She was taking tentative steps into frothy seawater. And she was nude. How on earth could this remind him of his youth? Ingrid smiled dumbly and fluttered her lashes. Appearing dimwitted was but a small sacrifice to avoid the man’s attempt to discuss the artist’s oeuvre, which seemed to focus on the nude female body.
Ingrid knew it was art. She knew better than to blush and appear scandalized. But if she had to look at one more dimpled buttock or fleshy thigh, she thought she might chuck her punch at the nearest canvas.
The man moved away a moment later, and Gabby slid into his place.
“Dreadful,” she whispered.
“How many interpretations of a woman’s rump must we be subjected to?” Ingrid whispered back.
Meeting artists had to be one of the most tedious elements of preparing for her mother’s gallery debut. This was the third such salon this month, and while Gabby and Mama seemed to enjoy them, Ingrid wished to be anywhere else. None of it felt real anymore. Whenever she was out, she couldn’t stop herself from glancing around and noting that, most likely, no one else present had demon blood in them. They didn’t know about Luc’s kind or the Alliance or the Angelic Order. She held these secrets with a kind of reverence, and the weight of them felt more real and significant than any salon or social gathering could possibly be.
“We certainly have an endless bounty of bare rumps here to admire,” Gabby murmured into her punch before taking a sip. Her thick, dark plum veil hung diagonally across her face, as did the veils on all of her hats, exposing just one of her smoky quartz eyes, fringed by dark lashes.
Ingrid had heard all about what happened during the visit to the surgeon, including Gabby’s foray into the morgue, Nolan’s drawing the blood of a dead Duster, and Gabby’s successful slaying of a corpse demon. Gabby had only wanted to discuss those things; Ingrid’s mind, however, had stuck to how thoughtless their father had been.
Gabby’s scars weren’t small, but they weren’t grotesque, either. The hellhound’s claws had carved three deep curving lines into her cheek, but Benoit’s stitches had been neat.
Gabby had feigned indifference about the visit to the surgeon, but Ingrid had seen her sister hurt and humiliated before. She always blinked rapidly and shrugged too much. And that was when Ingrid had noticed something was wrong with Gabby’s shoulder.
“Is your wound better?” Ingrid asked.
Gabby lowered her glass. “Practically healed. I know the Alliance looks down on it, but Luc’s blood works miracles.” She eyed Ingrid cautiously. “Speaking of Alliance … have you heard anything more about Vander’s leaky fingers?”
Ingrid still couldn’t shake off the feeling of the viscous webbing: the itchy, sticky pull of the silk as it clung to her skin. Or how it had looked streaming from Vander’s fingertips. Constantine had demanded that Vander come to Clos du Vie for Ingrid’s next lesson. He required time to scour his books for a reason why Vander would have taken on Léon’s arachnae ability, if only to a minimal degree.
“I’ll see him tomorrow,” Ingrid answered. “Let’s get some air.”
She pulled her sister toward a pair of open doors that led to a narrow terrace. There was barely enough room for the two of them to stand side by side, but they could at least revel in the cold night air. Unfortunately, they couldn’t quite escape the crowd.
A man approached their balcony hideaway. He was middle-aged, with faint lines branching out around his eyes when he smiled at them. And he apparently knew they weren’t French.
“Good evening,” he said with a small bow.
“And to you,” Ingrid returned politely. He wore a crisp black suit with delicate stripes of gray.
“Are you an admirer of the artist?” Gabby asked with false enthusiasm.
“I am not.” He fastened his attention on Ingrid, his eyes so intense they practically shoved her. “You are Lady Ingrid Waverly of l’Abbaye Saint-Dismas.”
Ingrid blinked. She fought the urge to back up a step—not that she could go very far. “And you are?”
The man dipped into a bow so deep his forehead nearly reached his kneecaps.
“I am Robert Dupuis, Daicrypta doyen and primary research facilitator.”
This time Ingrid did step back. She dragged Gabby by the elbow, too, until they were fully outdoors on the two-foot-wide terrace. Dupuis laughed.
“I see André has told you about me, mademoiselle.”
“André?” Ingrid repeated.
“Monsieur Constantine,” Dupuis answered with a second roll of laughter. “Of course he would not have shared his given name with you. Far too informal for him, I suppose.”
Gabby’s eyes narrowed to wrathful slits. “You’re the one who wants to drain my sister’s blood?”
“Not all of it, my dear,” he said, keeping his p
revious humor.
“You aren’t getting one drop!” Gabby shouted.
Ingrid clamped her fingers around Gabby’s arm. Now was not the time for her fire. If Luc felt her swirling temper and Ingrid’s alarm, he’d abandon the carriage and horses below and be on the terrace railing within seconds.
“Monsieur Dupuis, why have you followed me here?” This was no chance meeting.
“I do not come on an errand of malice,” he answered. “I am concerned for your safety and for the safety of those you hold dear. I trust you have heard of the two families murdered this week?”
“I know they were killed by Dusters, yes,” Ingrid said. Her initial alarm was quickly dissolving. This man couldn’t harm her, and not just because Luc was so close. Dupuis couldn’t touch her unless Constantine handed her over or she gave herself to the Daicrypta.
“Those who are infected with demon blood are at great risk,” he said.
“As are those put under your knife,” she returned.
The humor left his expression. “André Constantine has been gone from the Daicrypta many years, Lady Ingrid. Our research has vastly improved, as have our technologies. You need not fear me.”
She didn’t fear him. Their being alone on the terrace without the shadow of Luc’s wings was proof of it.
“The doyens and disciples of the Daicrypta know of the fallen angel, Axia, and her desires for your blood. Her blood, I might say,” he said. “If you allow it, I can remove that temptation for her.”
“By taking my blood,” Ingrid clarified. She felt Gabby tense at her side.
Dupuis shook his head. “By cleansing it.”
This gave Ingrid pause. He sounded so sure of himself and this procedure of his. What if he was right? It wasn’t as if the angel blood were doing anything inside her anyway. It kept her unusually healthy, yes, and she had been able to command a handful of Dispossessed, including Luc, a couple of times. But she didn’t need Axia’s blood.
