The Wondrous and the Wicked

by Page Morgan

  Ingrid staggered to the side as phantom laughter rumbled through the square. She swiveled around, her eyes catching on Axia, who was once again by the fountain.

  “I cannot be ensnared,” the fallen angel said.

  “But you just took hold of my arm. I felt you,” Ingrid said, her fingers clamped around the dagger’s handle. “You have a human body.”

  More laughter resounded, and Axia’s robes rippled in harmony. Ingrid was still watching the sway of them when something pummeled into her side and knocked her to the ground. Axia was now hovering over her instead of standing by the fountain. She’d simply appeared at Ingrid’s side, with the same fading blue mist marking where she’d been a moment ago.

  Axia started to laugh again. Ingrid found a new grip on the blade’s handle and plunged it through the bottom of her robes. The knife struck something definite—Axia’s leg. Her caterwaul stabbed at Ingrid’s eardrums, but the angel disappeared once more, the dagger no longer rooted in flesh.

  So she could be caught if taken by surprise. Ingrid got to her feet as another scream filled the abandoned square. This one came from above. Its familiarity made her lightheaded with relief. A shadow raced overhead, and as it passed, a Herculean arm took her with it. Ingrid’s feet were torn from the ground, the single gasp of air in her lungs driven out.

  She angled herself toward Marco’s body and clung to him, expecting him to soar up and over the buildings, away from the square. But his wings stopped, his body seized, and the ground rushed at them. Marco flipped midair, so that when they crashed, the prominent ridge of his spine cracked the yellow stone. He shoved her from his chest, propelling her toward the narrow steps leading down to the street that meandered around the raised square.

  Marco rolled over and crouched against the stone, his wings sinking into his back, his body reversing into his human form.

  Ingrid climbed the steps. “Marco!”

  Axia’s hooded form still presided over the square, as if she, and not the church, were its centerpiece.

  “Go,” he growled, his vocal cords not quite shifted yet.

  Ingrid had seen him like this before, when she’d used her angelic blood to control him.

  “You cannot fight me, gargoyle,” Axia said. Ingrid noticed the difference in her voice when she spoke to him. There was no humor, no honey. There was only steel.

  “And you cannot subdue me and chase my human at the same time,” Marco groaned, his face buried in the rubble of stone beneath him.

  Axia said nothing, but almost immediately, a strident cry climbed up and out of Marco’s throat. His arms shook; his fingers curled into the fragments of stone as a line opened across his broad back. An invisible scalpel drew apart his skin, flaying him from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, directly underneath three similar white lines. Axia was inflicting an angel’s burn.

  Marco grunted out a slew of curses as that burn ceased, black blood welled, and below it, another immediately began.

  “Stop!” Ingrid screamed, but Axia was no longer focused on her.

  Marco groaned and swore as the burn dragged slowly through his skin.

  Ingrid backed down the steps toward the street, not wanting to leave him, and yet knowing she could do nothing if she stayed. Marco was buying her precious time to escape. She wouldn’t let it be for nothing.

  Ingrid ran from the square, toward boulevard Saint-Michel, with the echoes of Marco’s screams knotting around her heart.

  The reports of a Paris under siege had reached Gabby on the docks for the Dover-Calais ferry. The rumor Carver had relayed to Hugh about an incident in Paris had bothered her the eighty or so miles from London to the Dover docks. When Rory had placed a hand on the small of her back to usher her forward through a bottleneck of men and women at the end of the boarding ramp, however, she knew it was more than just a rumor.

  “I don’t know what they were!” a woman had exclaimed in English while a French gentleman spouted off about enormous chiens crocs, or fanged dogs, and monstres ailés, or winged monsters. The clash of English and French had grown to a dull roar as Rory had shouldered their portmanteau, containing the finished angelic diffuser net, Ingrid’s blood stores, and a few common demon diffuser nets onto the ferry. Hugh, who had elected to bring his pet corvite in an enormous birdcage draped in black broadcloth, had led Gabby to seats far away from the excitement. The ferry had emptied as if it were going up in flames, the travelers for Paris converging around the ticketing office with demands of refunds. It had to be something else, something less absurd, people murmured as they moved away from the ferry—and yet they did not turn around and repurchase passage.

  When, after a full day and night of hard travel without a single stop to rest, their train had pulled into Gare du Nord, Gabby could feel only relief that those people had decided to stay behind. The reports had not been exaggerated in the least.

  Plumes of smoke chugged up from the city’s skyline, and the clouds above Paris were tinged a deep umber from the fires below. They’d fought through a riotous bevy of people at the station, all of them attempting to flee the city, and all of them wearing the same pale mask of panic and fear. On the curb outside the station, the price for a hack had risen to an absurd two francs per mile—if the drivers were going to die driving through a war zone, they at least wanted to die with a full purse.

  Hugh had shelled out a small fortune to a cabriolet driver to transport him, their valuable portmanteau, and his pet corvite to Clos du Vie, while Gabby and Rory had headed for Hôtel Bastian. By the time they’d hit rue de Sèvres, Gabby had shrunk back from the window and welcomed the formidable steadiness of Rory’s arm against her own. They had both drawn their silver blades and sat with them at the ready. Outside, uniformed police and French military, fully outfitted with their own, ineffective weapons, had been trolling the streets from rue La Fayette to the Sorbonne. There had been a startling lack of citizens, however, and even more eerily, a lack of noise. It was as if the smog clouding above the city had somehow muffled all sound, making the clap of hooves and the jangle of the hackney carriage’s tack louder than it should have been. It filled Gabby’s head and grated on her nerves.

  She leaped from the hack as soon as it stopped. She and Rory dashed inside, up the curving stairwell, to the third-floor door. Gabby itched to go to the rectory—she wanted to see Ingrid and Mama and make sure nothing had happened to them. But right then, there was nothing more important than finding Nolan.

  As a red-capped Roman Alliance saw them into the open loft, she thought her stomach might cast up what little food she’d consumed over the past day. What if they’d taken Nolan directly to Rome? What if he’d attempted something stupid—it was Nolan, after all—and they’d harmed him?

  Benjamin stood from the sofa and faced them, temporarily allaying her worries. The London faction leader wouldn’t still be in Paris if Nolan had escaped, would he? Nadia was there as well, though she remained on her cushion, her arms crossed and legs relaxed. Vander was seated beside her, his shirtfront torn and bloodied.

  “Gabby?” He stood up, a tender hand against his wounded side. “What are you doing here?”

  She searched the room. “Is Ingrid with you?”

  “What’s happened?” Rory asked before Vander could answer. Gabby didn’t see her sister. She did notice, however, that the dozen or more Alliance members present, both Roman and Parisian, looked ragged and drawn, and were just as blood-spattered as Vander.

  “Axia happened. Her demons. The Dusters, fallen under her spell. The damned gargoyles,” a Paris Alliance member spat out as he crossed the loft toward them. He had intense gray eyes, silver-dusted black hair, and a rugged set to his chin.

  “The Dispossessed are with us, Hans,” Vander replied, his voice hard. His flash of anger surprised Gabby.

  Hans snorted and muttered something indecipherable. Behind him, in the hallway of curtained-off rooms, stood a willowy man in a crimson cape and matching crimson beret, his hair white as powder unde
rneath. He would have resembled a Vatican cardinal had it not been for the brace of swords he wore at his hip.

  “Where is Ingrid?” she asked again. If the Dusters were under Axia’s command, what did that mean for Ingrid and Grayson? Or Vander, for that matter?

  Vander pursed his lips. “I don’t know.”

  Gabby closed her eyes and forced her breathing to steady. Her sister would be fine. She had Marco. She would have Luc, even if the gargoyle was no longer her protector. Gabby had to remain focused, just as Ingrid would do.

  “We’re here for Nolan,” she said, opening her eyes again.

  “Quinn is a traitor and will be punished accordingly,” Hans replied.

  “I wish you would stop slandering me,” came Nolan’s voice from the curtained hallway. Gabby and the others in the loft swung their heads in that direction.

  “Nolan!” she called, starting toward the hallway. Hans held up his hand and two red-capped Romans slid into her path.

  “I’m all right, lass. They’ve just got me tied up in my room,” he answered, his voice bouncing off the beamed ceiling. “You told me you’d stay in London.”

  Gabby pitched her voice to meet his. “I said no such words. Besides, we’ve finished the net!”

  “What net?” Hans asked.

  Benjamin stepped forward, his blocky shoulders widening as his eyes narrowed on her. “Does this have to do with the Daicrypta diffuser net you came to us about?”

  “Yes,” she answered, but then pulled back. “And, well … no.”

  Rory pushed his way in front of Gabby and bore down on the two red-capped Alliance. “My cousin isnae a traitor. He took the angel blood, but wi’ it, we made a net that can stop Axia.”

  Hans snorted on a laugh. “A net to stop an angel? Spare us, Quinn. You’ll be going to Rome with your cousin for your part in this.” Hans made a rolling gesture with his hand and the two Roman Alliance advanced on Rory.

  Gabby could have sworn that his hands had been empty a moment before, but silver now glinted in Rory’s closed fists. “Keep yer distance or lose important appendages.”

  The two Alliance stopped, though they didn’t retreat.

  “But what he says is true,” Gabby said. “The net is hollow tubing filled with angel blood, and angel blood bonds to itself like two magnets.” It was a poor rendition of the calm and convincing explanation Hugh had supplied her. “If the net comes into contact with Axia, it will seal to her and trap her, and for heaven’s sake, look out the window! She’s here, and you need this net. It can stop her!”

  Even as the words left her mouth, Gabby heard them for what they were: desperate and fantastic. She didn’t blame Hans for scoffing, or the other Alliance members for slanting their brows. None of them looked in any way impressed by what she’d said. In the curtained hallway, the red-caped man continued to stare evenly at her, his hands resting on the handles of his swords at each hip.

  “Did you exhaust all of the angelic blood on this … net of yours?” the man asked. His rich baritone carried well.

  “All of it? No,” she answered. “But that’s not the point—”

  “Where are the reserves?” he interjected.

  “She isn’t going to tell you, Hathaway!” Nolan shouted from his room.

  Was this the Directorate representative? One of the men who had declared her sister’s life inconsequential? If so, then no, she wouldn’t tell him—not unless it could buy her something in return.

  “Wait,” she said.

  “Gabby …” Nolan drew out the last syllable of her name as if in warning.

  She disregarded him. “I’ll tell you.”

  Rory looked sharply at her. She kept her gaze on Hathaway.

  “No, you won’t,” Nolan called.

  “I’ll take you to the angel blood myself,” she went on.

  “No. You. Won’t.”

  Gabby ignored him. “I’ll take you to the blood after I take you to the net and you see it for yourself.”

  “Burke, do something useful and gag her,” Nolan commanded. His disembodied voice earned a bored sigh from Vander, who was checking the bandage underneath his shredded shirt.

  “Sorry. One claw wound per day is my limit,” Vander replied, wincing.

  “Very well,” Hathaway said to her. “Take us.”

  He stepped forward. Gabby crossed her arms. “Release Nolan first.”

  “Yes,” Nolan called. “Release Nolan. His hands were bound too tightly and he can no longer feel them.”

  Hathaway stopped, his expression unreadable. “Simply seeing the net will not prove its worth.”

  Gabby snatched at the opening. “Then help us find Axia so we can prove that it works.”

  “And then the angel blood?” Hathaway prompted.

  Gabby thought of the two pints of her sister’s blood left over from the making of the net. She wished there had been time for Hugh and his assistants to create more angelic diffuser nets. She trusted him with the remainder of the blood, though. Hugh hadn’t had the covetous gleam in his eyes this Directorate representative had. She didn’t know what the highest-ranking officials within the Alliance wanted the blood for—to control the Dispossessed, the way Vander and Nolan had theorized? She couldn’t see that far into the future. She could only see that it was her sole leverage.

  “Is yours,” she answered Hathaway.

  “Betray me, Miss Waverly, and the fact that you are not Alliance won’t impede me from tossing you into our reformatory.”

  He snapped his fingers and a Roman Alliance member disappeared inside Nolan’s curtained room. Neither Rory nor Vander showed or said what they thought of her bargain. However, when Nolan stepped through the curtains and stalked down the hallway, nudging past Hathaway with an intentional shove into his shoulder, she saw his thoughts clearly.

  If a glare could have strangled someone, his would have wrapped around Gabby’s throat and squeezed. He rubbed his wrists where the binding rope had left red lines. He came to a stop directly in front of her.

  “We’ll discuss your bargaining skills later,” he muttered.

  “I just had you freed, Nolan Quinn. You could at least thank me.”

  His mouth twisted with what was no doubt a suppressed sarcastic retort. Nolan stepped closer, the tips of his boots coming toe to toe with hers. He inclined his head and lowered his voice.

  “Some things should be done in private,” he said, allowing a moment for Gabby’s cheeks to heat before dashing her with a bucket of cold water. “Murder, for example.”

  Gabby narrowed her eyes on him as Nadia rose from her relaxed position on the sofa.

  “How do we get Axia to show herself to us?”

  “We’re hunters,” Vander answered before a moment’s deliberation had passed. “We use bait.”

  It was purely logical, which made Gabby think of her sister again. She had to get to the rectory and find Mama and Ingrid, and hopefully Grayson.

  “How, exactly, do we bait an angel?” Rory asked, keeping his threatening glare fixed on the two Roman Alliance boys as he sheathed his daggers.

  Nolan drew alongside Gabby, and though he didn’t reach for her hand or grip her arm, the closeness of his body gave her an inexplicable sense of accomplishment. Let him be cross. She had freed him, poor bargaining skills or no.

  “We bait her with her mistake,” Vander answered, reaching for his threadbare tweed overcoat on the arm of the sofa. “Me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Luc hadn’t expected Ingrid to still be at Hôtel Dugray. It was the last place he’d seen her, however, and considering rue de Vaugirard was closer to Constantine’s end of the Bois du Boulogne than St. Germain-des-Prés, he’d gone to Marco’s former territory first.

  The front door to Marco’s old territory had been left open, a couple of windows along the third floor shattered. Luc felt no presence of another Dispossessed and quickly led Constantine’s horse northeast, toward the Luxembourg Gardens. The borrowed black gelding complained
and shivered beneath Luc’s legs. Animals didn’t like him, and it had been a long time since he’d sat upon the back of a horse. Flying was faster and more efficient, and honestly, it smelled better. A deep, throbbing ache pulsed under his left shoulder blade, subduing his urge to shift and fly. His wing would regenerate. It had to regenerate. But thoughts of his wing would have to wait.

  A hard push through the fifteenth and sixteenth arrondissements had lathered the horse’s flanks in sweat, and now its nostrils flared and snorted with exertion. As Luc approached an intersecting street, he caught a thready chime at the base of his skull. He followed its lead, turning up a narrow side street. The chime grew stronger as he neared the raised square in front of a yellow marble church. Luc drew the reins back and brought the horse to a stop when he saw two uniformed gendarmes and five citizens standing in a circle around an unclothed body.

  “No,” Luc breathed, jumping from the saddle.

  He tore his way through the small crowd, heaving one of the military policemen aside when the man tried to block Luc. The others had enough sense of self-preservation to step back a few paces.

  “Marco.” Luc crouched beside the Wolf’s naked human form, which was facedown on the stone square. He fought back a swell of bile as he took in the state of Marco’s back.

  From the nape of his neck to the base of his tailbone, angel’s burns had carved into his skin. There wasn’t a strip of spared flesh. It was just a canvas of raw meat, with ribbons of white sinew, pink muscle, and red flesh. Oily black blood trickled to the cracked stone underneath, pooling in viscous puddles.

  “Do you know this man?” one of the gendarmes demanded.

  “I know that you want to be gone when he wakes up,” Luc answered.

  The two policemen were the first to back away. The citizens quickly followed, deserting the square with whispers about the black blood.

  Luc touched Marco’s shoulder. “Marco.”