by Page Morgan
Carrick gritted his teeth as he tried to straighten. “What is this, Dupuis? The girl’s angel blood. That was the deal.”
Dupuis ignored him. He didn’t even glance his way as he reached for a white coat on a wall hook. “If you would remove your dress, mademoiselle. Your undergarments will be sufficient.”
Ingrid retreated a step. “No. Not until my father and Luc are released, and I want to see them leave.”
“Not at all,” Marco argued. His voice rose to where Ingrid knew it might cross over into a shriek. “I’ve heard enough. We’re leaving, Lady Ingrid. Should anyone attempt to stop us, brace yourself for the sight of blood.”
Dupuis began to turn switches and dials on the cylindrical vat, unmoved by Marco’s threat. “You sound quite protective, gargoyle. Take a moment to search yourself. What is the tie that binds you to this young woman?”
He flipped a lever and a humming sound shook the vat. The lightbulbs brightened.
“Lady Ingrid has come to me willingly,” Dupuis added, and with a glance toward Marco arched one of his brows. “She has accepted her room here. She is on my territory. By Daicrypta edict, she is now my ward, and the human charge of my Dispossessed.”
Marco came forward, stepping in front of Ingrid and staring hard at Dupuis. But he didn’t speak. Ingrid watched as the sinuous muscles along his ribs and torso stretched. He was breathing in. Scenting her. Marco exhaled and looked over his shoulder at her. “You are no longer my human.”
The room went cold around her. His bond to her had been severed. Marco was going to leave.
“Your dress, mademoiselle,” Dupuis repeated.
Ingrid kept her eyes locked on Marco’s, while in her unfocused side vision Dupuis slipped his arms into the sleeves of his white lab coat.
She couldn’t look away. The expression on Marco’s face was new; it didn’t seem to belong to him. Sadness melted into disappointment, and then changed again, this time into something much more familiar: anger.
He moved fast and mercilessly.
Marco had half shifted before he reached Dupuis and grabbed fistfuls of his white coat. He jerked him off the floor and, with a piercing shriek, threw Dupuis as he might a sack of potatoes straight into Carrick Quinn’s hunched frame. The two men landed on the stone floor in a heap of arms and legs, taking with them one of the steel tables and the instruments upon it.
Marco turned back to Ingrid as the scream of metal and breaking glass assaulted her ears. His wolfish snout crumpled back until his face was once again human. Marco surged toward her, his great wings folding into his body as his scales softened to skin.
“Lady Ingrid, come with—”
Marco stopped—and shattered out of his skin once again, transforming so quickly that Ingrid threw her arms up before her face. She heard a shriek, then two more, and when she lowered her arms, Marco was down flat on his back, a long knife handle protruding from his abdomen.
Dimitrie entered the room through the open door. He was in human form, and he held a crossbow, fitted with a dart.
“Marco!” Ingrid yelled as she rushed toward him.
Dimitrie caught her by the arm and pulled her back before she could reach the gargoyle. Marco screeched in pain, rolling onto his side as he grasped the knife and ripped it from his armored stomach.
Dupuis had shaken himself off and stumbled to his feet. “Finish him, Dimitrie.”
“No!” Ingrid screamed, clawing at Dimitrie to let her go. Marco had only been trying to protect her, even though he wasn’t required to any longer. She had to do something to help him. “I’ll do it, I’ll give you the blood, just—just stop!”
With one easy shove, Dimitrie knocked her to her knees and sent her skidding to the far side of the room. He raised the crossbow toward Marco, who writhed on the floor, and fired again. A dart buried itself in Marco’s back, just under his right wing. His anguished shriek reverberated off the walls.
“I asked you to finish him,” Dupuis barked.
“The mercurite will hold him,” Dimitrie replied.
“Mercurite?” Ingrid pushed herself up from the cold floor, but she couldn’t reach Marco. Dimitrie stood between them.
“Our weapons are dipped in it,” Dimitrie answered. “It’s the only way humans can protect themselves against the Dispossessed.”
“But you’re one of them!” Ingrid screamed.
Marco growled on the floor. His body rippled out of true form until he lay naked, facedown. His wings folded and nearly disappeared into clean gashes just beneath his shoulder blades. The one closest to the mercurite dart remained half formed.
“No he isn’t. He’s a Shadow bastard and a traitor,” he spit, his grating voice tremulous.
Dimitrie didn’t deny it. He only grimaced. “Be thankful I didn’t aim for your heart, Wolf.”
Dupuis brushed off his coat and walked away from Marco’s prostrate form. The blood-draining machine droned on. “Get her ready, Dimitrie.”
Luc crawled out of the basement storeroom, his human body still a grotesque fusion of flesh and stone. He couldn’t scent Ingrid. She had been there one second and gone the next, and no matter how hard he tried, her rich, earthy essence wouldn’t come.
He dug his fingers into the rotting wooden doorframe and hauled himself up. It had been half an hour since Dimitrie had left with the promise of Ingrid’s death on his lips. Luc threw his head back and cracked it against the soft wood. If her scent was gone, that meant she was either in the Underneath with Axia and no longer his human charge, or she was dead.
If Axia had somehow snatched Ingrid back to the Underneath, Luc would simply go after her again. Surely he could find demon poison somewhere in this Daicrypta prison. He would ingest it and cross into the Underneath, and like last time, once he and Ingrid shared the same realm again, he would be able to scent and trace her.
But if she was dead … if Dimitrie had taken her from him … The boy had been right. Luc wasn’t going to let him rot here for eternity.
He felt the telling chime at the base of his skull. Dimitrie wasn’t far.
Luc forced himself to move forward. The darted tips of his leathery wings dragged along the floor. He was half naked and half scaled, and he could barely move. Where the mercurite had touched him, his jet scales had been frozen in place, calcified to flinty stone. In the last half hour they had softened to something more like wet cement. Still. How was he supposed to destroy Dimitrie like this? And if Ingrid wasn’t dead, if he had to go into the Underneath … how could he rescue her?
The single electric bulb lighting the dug-out corridor hummed and brightened before a wire inside snapped. The light fizzled, dropping the corridor into a tunnel of mixed grays.
He heard a voice.
“Is someone there?”
Brickton. His oiled-leather scent traveled fast up Luc’s nose. He was hard-pressed not to gag on it.
“Hello?” Ingrid’s father called again. There was a closed door to Luc’s right, with a chain draped through the handle and affixed to an iron ring driven into the stone. Luc stared at it a moment, considering. The man wasn’t in any danger. Luc sensed fear, but that was only because Ingrid’s father was a fool, and ignorant to everything going on around him.
Perhaps it was time to enlighten him.
Luc closed his hand around the chain and swore. Mercurite. Cursing again, he grabbed the iron ring staked into the stone and tore that out instead, then threw the door open. Brickton sat tied to a chair in the center of a small storeroom much like the one Luc had been kept in.
“Tell me who you are,” Brickton pleaded. His eyes darted around, blind in the dark. “Dimitrie?”
Luc tested his footing, shuffling forward awkwardly.
“I’m the one who can save you,” Luc whispered.
Brickton gasped. “Then by God, man, untie me. Get me out of here!”
He struggled with the ropes that bound his wrists. Blackness seeped down the tops of his hands, Luc saw. Blood. He’d chafed his s
kin raw trying to escape.
“I can’t say I’m inclined to do that yet.” Luc tested the slender bones framing his wings. They twitched as they straightened, making a popping sound. Lord Brickton stopped fidgeting.
“What do you want, then?” he asked.
Luc lifted the bridge of one wing and touched Brickton’s flaccid cheek with the arrowed tip.
“I want you to leave Paris,” Luc answered.
He flexed his long, rigid talons, wet cement turning to tidal clay.
“I will, I will,” Brickton said, voice reedy with desperation. “I promise, I’ll take my family and—”
“Your family stays,” Luc said. “You leave. Forever.”
Brickton gargled an objection. “They will come with me. I cannot possibly leave them—”
“They stay in Paris, or you stay right here.”
This time Ingrid’s father swallowed his argument. He closed his eyes and nodded.
Luc sheared through the ropes that bound Brickton’s wrists and ankles.
“Go,” he snarled. Brickton didn’t waste a moment. He sprang from the chair and stumbled forward, arms outstretched to guide him through the darkness.
A muffled crash from somewhere else on the basement level drew Luc’s attention from his human’s staggered escape. He didn’t know how far the man would get, but that wasn’t his concern just then. Dimitrie was. Again Luc called up Ingrid’s scent. Reflex. Habit. Again, he was left hollow.
A scream followed the crash, and he lurched toward the door, the chime at the base of his skull driving him into motion. Luc pulled at the trigger in his core to coalesce, but he stayed disfigured, half gargoyle, half human, as he trudged through the corridor toward the pandemonium.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Chelle stood just outside the Daicrypta gates. The mansion was barely visible behind the immense brick wall enclosing the grounds, which ran the full length of the block. Scores of trees grew in a straight row behind the wall, acting as a second barrier to curious eyes. Grayson watched her pace the sidewalk for close to a minute. She’d bounce up onto the balls of her feet, turn, walk, bounce up restlessly, then turn and do it all over again.
Grayson hadn’t meant to take so long, but he’d been stuck in that side alley for longer than he’d expected. Letting his human form go and changing into his hellhound one had been easy. Natural, even. It was changing back that had proven difficult, especially with two hellhounds at his side. It seemed that his body wanted to stay in harmony with theirs.
Grayson had managed, though, and he’d kept it that way as he’d walked up the hills of Montmartre, the hellhounds following him through a circuitous route of alleys, roofs, and park squares. He held himself in, keeping his muscles tight, imagining his bones as immovable iron. Staying human had taken so much of the last hour’s focus that when he crossed the dark street toward Chelle, he still hadn’t quite worked out how the two hellhounds concealed in the shadows behind him were going to be useful.
“Where’ve ye been?”
Rory appeared at Grayson’s side with phantom grace.
“I’ll tell you if you promise to keep your hands off that silver,” Grayson answered.
Chelle hurried toward him. “I started to think something had happened.”
She looked and sounded furious, and when she came to a stop just beneath his chin, he knew better than to try to touch her.
“Where are Lennier and Yann?” Grayson asked, searching the sky and the roofs of nearby homes.
“Gone. Why?” Chelle stared up at him, her nose crinkling. “What happened? You smell like …”
Like a hellhound. She could smell it on him.
“I’ve brought two hellhounds with me,” Grayson said. “They’re under my command.”
Chelle pulled back and the hira-shuriken came out, two flashes of silver in her skilled hands.
“What have you done?” she whispered.
“Trust me, Chelle. They aren’t going to attack,” he answered, and letting out all his breath, summoned the hounds forward with a single thought: Come.
He didn’t need to look to know they were there. Chelle’s squint softened and her eyes grew round and alert. Rory came flush against her side, a knife in each hand. At least the gargoyles weren’t there. Grayson wouldn’t have been able to convince them not to attack.
“We can use them,” he said, though it was difficult to speak and hold himself together at the same time.
“Call them off,” Rory ordered, his vigilant eyes never wavering from the hellhounds slinking up behind Grayson.
Stay, he thought, and in the next second Rory’s brows slanted down in surprise. The hounds had lowered themselves to the paving stones.
“They won’t hurt you,” Grayson said, hoping he was right. He’d led these beasts here. To Chelle. If anything happened to her … if he failed …
“How are you doing this?” she asked, eyes flicking from Grayson’s face to the hounds behind him.
“I don’t know, really, and I don’t know how long it will last, but I’m going in.”
Chelle shook her head. “Nolan and Vander have already gone after Ingrid, along with your stubborn little sister. Stay here with us—and send them away,” she said with a glance at the hellhounds.
“I can’t,” Grayson said. “If my sisters are in there, I’m going in, too.”
Chelle gritted her teeth and let out a frustrated grunt. “Do you think I wish to stand out here twiddling my thumbs on the sidewalk, Grayson Waverly? Don’t you think I would rather be inside with Vander and Nolan doing something useful?”
A clamor rose suddenly from within the walled estate and the three of them shot to the gates and peered around the ivy-wrapped wall. The front doors to the mansion had been thrown wide, and three men scrambled into the circular drive.
“Father,” Grayson murmured, watching as the Earl of Brickton, stripped down to his trousers, waistcoat, and shirtsleeves, swung a Grecian vase wildly at one of the two men chasing him. The vase hit the man’s temple and he staggered, clutching his head.
Grayson’s father saw the closed front gates and doubled back, bolting away from the circular drive and out of sight.
“Damn.” Grayson leaned against the wall. He hadn’t forgotten about his father, but he hadn’t really cared, either. Hadn’t worried about him the way he was worrying about Ingrid.
He turned back to Chelle and Rory and stopped. The hellhounds were gone.
A yelp, then a low growl sounded from behind the wall.
“They jumped it,” Rory said, glaring at Grayson. “Was that yer command?”
No. Grayson grasped the sides of his head, his insides turning to fire as the urge to shift consumed him. He had to stop them. They were under his command.
“I thought—” he started to say, barely able to breathe.
He heard his father scream and his muscles and bones twisted and popped. He threw back his head and a growl ripped from his throat. Before he’d even finished shifting, Grayson had sprung into the air and over the Daicrypta wall.
Ingrid watched with dread as Dimitrie closed the door and threw a heavy bolt into place. He set his crossbow on one of the steel tables, and with carefully controlled motion, turned to her. “My human told you to undress.”
She backed away.
“Touch her and I’ll slice off your fingers and feed them to you,” Marco grumbled, still immobile on the floor.
Dimitrie laughed at the improbable threat as a hand wrapped around Ingrid’s ankle. She shrieked and kicked her leg, but Carrick Quinn’s fingers clung like briar thorns. He was still on the floor, his face a mask of agony.
“Forgive me for … what I’ve done.” He gasped before letting her go. She spun away, and Dimitrie caught her in his gangly arms.
Carrick fought to rise to his knees. A cough ripped from his throat. Blood flew from his mouth and splattered onto the floor.
Ingrid stopped struggling.
“He needs help!” she crie
d to Dupuis. The Daicrypta doyen was still fiddling with the machinery.
Carrick was a traitor, yes, but he was also Nolan’s father.
“The mercurite poisoning is incurable, I am afraid,” Dupuis answered, uninterested. “If he is lucky, the internal bleeding will finish him off within the hour. Dimitrie?”
Dimitrie grabbed the collar of Ingrid’s blouse and wrenched the fabric apart. A handful of abalone buttons scattered, leaving bare skin and the lace top of her camisole exposed.
While Marco roared another vow to tear off more of Dimitrie’s appendages, Ingrid sank her teeth into the gargoyle’s forearm. It took Dimitrie by surprise, though she doubted it hurt. He only pushed her away and swore.
“Forget the clothes!” Dupuis snapped his fingers. “Get her on the gurney.”
The bulbs overhead brightened again, their shrill hum rising to a scream. Ingrid squinted up at the glowing orbs of shuddering white light. She needed her electricity. Needed it now. She stared at the hot white glass and the wires inside strained to brighten. Ingrid gasped as dual currents clawed down her arms and prickled at her fingertips.
“Stop her,” Dupuis ordered. The lightbulbs had drawn his attention. They hummed louder, grew brighter. Dupuis’s look of alarm told Ingrid exactly what he didn’t want her to realize: the power-draining machines weren’t pushing the bulbs to their limits. She was.
“Dimitrie, now!” Dupuis shouted.
The gargoyle leaped forward and clamped his hands around her shoulders. She seized his arms in return, and where her fingers dug in, flickering braids of electricity tasseled out. She saw them quiver over his shirt; felt them tunnel through his flesh, into his nerve endings. The straining lightbulb above them popped and went black. Dimitrie shook, sick gurgling noises low in his throat. Ingrid screamed when he shot back, out of her grasp, as if blown by a heavy gale. He landed hard on the floor and didn’t move.
Ingrid’s knees buckled. She landed on one, her hands flat against the floor. Her palms stung, the muscles in her arms trembled, and yet this time, something was different.
She still felt it. A tickle just beneath her skin. It wasn’t much. But it was there.