The Wondrous and the Wicked
Page 14
“He’s right, Gabby, we should stay away from the Daicrypta.”
There was no arguing with Rory, either. He was as stubborn as his cousin. If Gabby told him exactly what was going through her mind—that she had found herself liking Hugh Dupuis’s company infinitely more than Benjamin’s or Nadia’s—he might have guessed that she had no intention of staying away from the Daicrypta simply because someone had told her to. If she wanted to pay another visit, then she would.
It made her wish she actually had a reason to go back.
The nets were only proven to capture full-blooded demons, though. Who knew how much demon blood Axia had developed while in the Underneath? It might not be enough for the nets to seal to her, the same way they hadn’t sealed to Ingrid or Vander.
Gabby leaned against the cushioned wall, which jostled her even more now that the carriage traveled along a road that felt like it had been pockmarked by a rain of meteorites. She wished for one useful thing to do. How had she suffered through her days before Paris? Teas and parties and dress fittings and dancing lessons and nothing but luxurious ridiculousness.
“I see I’ve got to do something drastic to keep ye from trouble, don’t I, laoch?”
The words sounded playful, but Rory gave too much worry away with his watchful eyes. To her body’s relief, the carriage stopped. The grumblings of their driver, raised voices from other nearby carriages, and a chorus of braying, agitated horses all pointed to a cluster of traffic.
“I don’t require handling,” she replied.
“I’ll take ye out again tonight. We’ll find plenty of demons to dispatch in Whitechapel—”
Gabby’s interest had just been hooked when the door to the carriage swung open and then closed again, and suddenly there was a person on the seat next to Rory. Her right hand went to her boot and the dagger she kept there, but she was slower than Rory. The tip of his blade was already pricking the stranger’s throat.
The stranger’s hands went up in a gesture of surrender, the square case he’d been holding clunking to the floor at his feet. He wore a hat with a wide, floppy front brim, pulled low to obscure his face. As soon as Gabby’s heart had slowed a notch, her eyes noticed details again—like the broad shape of the man’s shoulders and the calluses on his palms. She knew those hands.
“Nothing like a warm Alliance welcome,” he said, one hand slowly moving to push up the brim of his cap.
Nolan Quinn paid no attention to the knife falling away from his throat or to the curses Rory threw at him. He held Gabby’s shocked gaze, his lips pressed into an uncertain frown. Waiting, she thought, to see how she would react. There were too many thoughts all at once. So many that Gabby, floundering in Nolan’s blue stare, found that there was nothing at all she could say or do. So she sat back against the cushions, folded her hands in her lap, lifted her chin imperiously, and said nothing.
“Ye look like hell,” Rory said to break the tension.
He most certainly did. Nolan hadn’t shaved in days. Gabby had never seen him with so much dark stubble. His clothing wasn’t dirty but definitely looked as if it had been slept in. Well, perhaps just traveled hard in, for the shadows beneath his eyes hinted that he’d slept little.
Even with these defects, plus the scent of sweat and burnt coal that clung to him, Nolan looked so deliciously handsome that Gabby had to remind herself to breathe. And that he had spurned her.
“Listen,” Nolan said, too tense for a witty rejoinder. “I probably shouldn’t have come here, but there was nowhere else I could think to go. I had to act fast.”
Rory sheathed his knife and pulled his coat closed. “What’s happened?”
The traffic must have cleared up, for their driver slapped the reins and the carriage started rocking again.
Gabby attempted to keep her expression cool. Nolan flicked his gaze toward her a few times as he explained how the Directorate had wanted Ingrid’s leftover angel blood and the Duster files, and how his instinct had started tolling like a bell, telling him to avoid giving either to the arriving representative at all costs. When Nolan told them of tossing the files into the burning stove and then taking the blood stores, Gabby’s mask of disinterest cracked and finally fell apart.
“You took the blood?” she asked, even though the answer was quite clear. Here Nolan sat, inside her carriage in London, and at his feet was a square leather case, about the size of one of Gabby’s hatboxes.
“Jesus, Cousin,” Rory breathed. “Ye defied Directorate orders. Have ye gone mad?”
Nolan ripped off his hat and his black hair fell around his forehead. He raked it back.
“It was instinct, Rory,” he said. “I had to follow it. We’re hunters. We survive on instinct. Mine screamed at me to take that blood and run, and so I did. I’ll worry about the consequences later, all right?”
At that word—consequences—Gabby’s stomach slipped into a knot. What would they do to Nolan when they found him?
“You think the Directorate means to harm the Dusters,” she said, the vision of Nolan tossing file after file into the stove at Hôtel Bastian playing through her mind.
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “They’re Axia’s pawns. Who knows what she’s going to use them for, but it won’t be good.” He opened his eyes and fixed them on hers. “Yes. I think they plan to harm the Dusters. If only to cut Axia’s plans off at the knees.”
Gabby sprang forward, sliding to the edge of her seat. “What about my sister? And Grayson? Why didn’t you bring them with you?”
“Your sister has the best protection the universe has to offer, lass. And do you really believe your brother would have gone sneaking off with me anywhere?”
No. Not after their last encounter, when Nolan had threatened Grayson’s life for leading a hellhound into the Daicrypta courtyard.
“Ye could have burned the blood with the files,” Rory said, all calmness and logic, whereas Gabby’s head swam with the confusing muddle of deceit and politics.
“No,” Nolan replied. He tapped the case with the side of his foot. “Just as instinct told me to keep it out of the Directorate’s hands, it also told me to keep it safe. I don’t know why or how, but …” He sighed, sounding exhausted. “It’s got to help us.”
Gabby peered down at the locked case, and this time, comprehension struck. Angel blood. Nolan had brought them angel blood.
“Hugh,” she whispered, suddenly so restless she wanted to get up and pace. “Hugh!”
Nolan peered at her from the sleepy position into which he’d begun to slouch.
“Hugh who?” he asked, frowning.
Rory groaned. “Daicrypta.”
That got Nolan out of his slouch. He sat forward and opened his mouth, but Gabby waved her hands to hush him.
“He needs angel blood to test something.” She couldn’t stop her gloved hands from clapping. “Oh, this is perfect!”
Nolan’s confusion turned into a solid glower. “You want to hand angel blood over to a disciple named Hugh?”
“He’s a doyen, actually,” she corrected him, and Nolan’s mouth went wider with disbelief, his throat making little hoarse clicking noises when words failed.
“It’s all right, cousin,” Rory soothed with an elbow to Nolan’s shoulder. “He seems moderately trustworthy.”
Nolan’s stare of disbelief shifted toward Rory. “I honestly have no idea what’s happening right now.”
Why would he? He’d been absent for weeks, and in more ways than one. He’d hurt Gabby with his silence, of course. She’d been reminded of that every night when she’d lain down to sleep, only to be haunted by questions like Why? and Am I that easy to fall out of love with? But until that moment, she hadn’t known how angry his silence had made her. The knowledge surged inside her so quickly that she was certain the temperature in the carriage had jumped.
Well, good. Let Nolan be in the dark. Let him try to find a footing here, the same way she’d had to. And let him do it without her.
Grayson paced in front of the locked vendors’ stalls along a corner of the Quai d’Orsay and a bridge spanning the Seine. Only a few of Paris’s many bridges were protected by the Dispossessed. This was one of them. Grayson stopped and stared through the darkness. There were precious few lamps along this pedestrian bridge, and the weak light made it difficult for him to see Chelle from where he stood. Others would have a difficult time as well. That was a good thing, considering Chelle had just climbed onto the bridge’s thick stone parapet and was gazing down into the black water of the Seine.
Chelle didn’t want any passing humans to help her. That wasn’t the plan. The plan, Grayson had started to realize with that cold, greasy feeling that came with knowing he’d made a horrible decision, was wrong. Wrong and dangerous, and he couldn’t just stand there waiting for his moment to leap in, the way Chelle had instructed. He had to move. Now.
Grayson clenched his hands into fists and stepped onto the bridge, walking fast. Chelle braced her weight confidently against the stone griffin. They hadn’t talked about her father after their kiss in the abbey vaults earlier that afternoon. When Chelle had finally pulled away from him, a gorgeous pink blush on her cheeks, Grayson hadn’t been able to think about anything besides her mouth and when he would be able to kiss her again. If she’d let him. She’d left the abbey with a promise to pick him up at ten o’clock.
He’d thought that he could do it. He’d listed off all the reasons why he should do it. Yann had tried to kill Grayson before; he was a Chimera, and next to Vincent, he was the most influential of his caste; he was likely the one killing Dusters, too. But he was still a man. A gargoyle, but also a man, and that was what stuck in Grayson’s throat like a wad of dry crackers. Chelle wanted to kill a man, not just a gargoyle, and she wanted Grayson’s help.
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t kill again, not even someone who deserved it.
Grayson had just parted his mouth to call her name when another person came through the vaporous shadows, toward Chelle’s perched figure.
Too late.
Grayson reached for the hilt of his sword, hidden at his waist under his long frock coat.
“I would ask you to step down to safety, boy,” Yann entreated in French, his tone bored rather than concerned.
Chelle stood still and unresponsive. Yann took a step closer to the bridge.
“I will remove you if need be,” he said, switching to English and probably growing irritated at the threat of an angel’s burn.
Grayson knew Chelle’s next move, and he dreaded it. She spun around and sank into a crouch, taking Yann by surprise when she aimed a primed crossbow at his chest. But Chelle had allowed him to get too close, and he’d moved quickly. He grabbed her ankle and swiped her off her feet. She landed hard on her side, momentum rolling her backward, toward the drop-off into the river below.
“No!” Grayson shouted, distracting Yann long enough for Chelle to regain the advantage.
She fired the crossbow from her downed position, her body still teetering. The mercurite-dipped bolt ripped into Yann’s shoulder. He roared in pain, staggering back as Grayson ran forward. He stopped breathing as Chelle’s body disappeared over the edge of the bridge—then began again when he saw her fingers digging into the stone edge.
Grayson grabbed her slim wrists, which shook with effort.
“Now, Grayson!” Chelle screamed. “I can pull myself up, but you have to do it now!”
Grayson let go of her wrists and spun around, his hand going to his sword; he expected Yann to be behind him, talons slashing. The Chimera was a few paces away, down on one knee. His hand hovered around the mercurite bolt, unable to touch it in order to remove it from his flesh.
He stared up at Grayson, a smirk lifting the corner of his lips. Yann’s long black hair, streaked with silver, had fallen forward, half covering his amused grin.
“Yes, do it now, Duster.” He echoed Chelle’s order and then broke off into a dry, mocking laugh. “I’d like to see you try.”
Grayson hadn’t drawn his sword. His hand still rested on the hilt, his palm sweating, arms frozen. He wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t. His mind tumbled backward, toward the memories of the girl in London and the blood on his teeth.
“Grayson! Now!” Chelle’s voice no longer came from below the bridge. She’d hauled herself up, elbows on the parapet.
Yann laughed one more time, and then, before Chelle could climb over completely and unleash her hira-shuriken, burst out of his clothing and his human form. He took flight, his great, razor-feathered wings unaffected by the mercurite bolt in his shoulder. He hurtled out of view and range before Chelle’s feet hit the bridge.
“He was injured! You had the advantage!” she raged.
“No, Chelle,” he said, his own voice strangely calm. “There is no advantage in murder. And that’s what it would have been.”
“What do you mean?” She stepped away from him. “We agreed it had to be done. They’re animals, Grayson. They killed Léon. They’ll kill you!”
“This wasn’t about me.” He followed Chelle as she took a few more steps away from him. “It was never about me or the Dusters. I’m not a complete idiot. What happened to your father was awful. It was wrong and sadistic and I don’t blame you for hating the gargoyle that destroyed him. But killing Yann or any of the other Chimeras out there isn’t going to make it right.”
Chelle kept her body turned away from him.
“You’re not a murderer,” he said, remembering the softness of her lips, her small hands tentatively exploring the breadth of his chest. “Trust me, you don’t want to be one.”
He reached for her shoulder, but Chelle sensed his intent and darted to the side. She whipped around to spear him with an expression of pure disgust.
“You should have never agreed to this if you didn’t have the stomach for it,” she said, and Grayson knew she was right. He should have stopped her before it had gotten this far. He had no excuse.
Chelle pointed wildly up into the starless night sky. “Yann’s gone to warn the others, and by dawn every last gargoyle in Paris will know that I tried to kill him.”
She shoved Grayson hard in the chest and then stormed past him, toward the Left Bank, shouting over her shoulder, “Congratulations, Grayson Waverly. You’ve just signed my death warrant.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lord Brickton quit Waverly House with less than a few hours’ notice. Gabby and Rory had returned from Fleet Street, Nolan having jumped from the carriage before it turned into Grosvenor Square, to find her father’s trunk being loaded into the family’s second carriage, the one they reserved for trips to their country estate.
“Mitchard is expecting me,” her father had said, referring to his land steward. Apparently he was off to Fairfax Downs, their estate in Cumberland, to make the annual tour of his lands. Papa had donned his greatcoat and taken up his walking stick in the entrance foyer, completely ignoring Rory and stopping only to peck Gabby on the cheek—her unblemished side.
She’d hated the feeling of relief when Reeves had closed the door behind him. Her father had left her to her own devices all month, tiptoeing around her and Rory, finding a reason to leave a room if she entered, eating in his study instead of at the dinner table. Gabby should have missed him more. Before, when she and Mama and Ingrid and Grayson were all living in London together with him, she would have. Before, she would have begged him to take her with him to Fairfax Downs. It bothered her how drastically things had changed.
That evening, she and Rory sat at the long dinner table, their cutlery scraping at their plates and their eyes drifting to the wall of windows that overlooked the lawns. Perched on the ledge of the window closest to Gabby was a raven-winged corvite. It stared into the dining room,
its red-ringed pupils darting between Rory and Gabby. She wondered why Hugh would send another demon bird to sit outside her windows. Was it there to spy yet again? Or had it been sent as a pictorial invitation for her to return to Belgrave Square? She hoped for the latter.
“What will happen to Nolan?” she whispered.
“I wouldna worry.” Rory speared his Cornish hen with his fork and carved it using one of his own blades instead of the one laid on the table before him. “He’s a fox when he needs to be.”
Nolan was a fox, sly and cunning and quick. But he’d still appeared shaken that afternoon in the carriage. Not being able to trust the Alliance must have felt like the earth giving way underneath his feet.
“You don’t trust Hugh Dupuis,” she said, thinking of the angel blood and her plan to take it to him. Nolan had left the carriage with the blood, saying he’d see her soon; she hoped it would be by tomorrow. There was simply no time to waste.
“I don’t trust any man till he’s saved my skin at least once,” Rory replied, laying down his fork without finishing his hen. She hadn’t touched anything since the soup course. Cook Edna would be vexed.
Rory wiped the blade of his dagger with one of the dinner napkins. “I don’t trust Hugh Dupuis, but I do trust ye, laoch.” He pushed back his chair and stood. “If ye trust him enough to bring him angel blood, I won’t stop ye.”
Rory bid her a good night and left the dining room. Gabby sat back in her chair, her eyes drifting toward the corvite demon at the window. She didn’t know if she trusted Hugh, but she did know that there was only one way to find out.
Gabby stuck her tongue out at the corvite and made her way up to her room. She passed a number of guest chambers and was equal parts glad and frustrated that Nolan wasn’t able to occupy one of them. She was proud of how she’d acted in the carriage earlier, refusing to melt into a puddle at his feet. She wasn’t so pigheaded as to deny that she’d missed him, or that she had wanted to crawl into his lap and kiss him until they were both gasping for air. But Gabby’s pride had been akin to iron, easily crushing the urges.