The Wondrous and the Wicked (30 page)

“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.”

L
uc 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.”

His eyes were closed, but he wasn’t dead. His ribs still expanded with shallow breaths every few seconds.

Luc shook Marco’s shoulder, not caring if it inflicted pain. “Goddamn it, Marco, wake up! Where is Ingrid?”

The Wolf’s eyes opened to slits. “Ouch.”

“Where is she?” Luc asked again.

Marco pushed himself to his hands and knees, and a rasp of pain whistled out of his throat. Luc had endured only one angel’s burn at a time. To receive dozens … he wasn’t surprised Marco had lost consciousness. Irindi wouldn’t have done this.

“You’re elder,” Marco groaned, and before Luc could ask how he knew this, he continued, “I feel it. Every gargoyle will feel it. Congratulations, brother.”

“I don’t want congratulations. I want to know where Ingrid is.”

“The rectory,” Marco answered. “In her room.”

Luc stood up, his eyes going to Marco’s back once again. “It was Axia, wasn’t it?”

The Wolf held out his hand for assistance. “And we thought Irindi was a bitch.”

Luc gripped his hand and pulled him to his feet. A shot rang out and a chunk of stone from the nearby fountain exploded in a rain of dust. Luc dropped into a crouch. He scanned the square until his eyes came to rest on one of the
gendarmes
who had retreated earlier. He was behind one of the church’s arcade columns now, his rifle aimed at them.

“No one likes it when you’re naked, Marco,” Luc said, positioning himself behind the shelter of the fountain. Marco remained upright, his hands on his hips.

“Everyone likes it when I’m naked,” he replied as another shot cracked off and hit the smooth yellow marble less than a yard from his bare feet. “I imagine he objects to the color of my blood. Let’s fly.”

Luc swore under his breath. “I can’t.”

Marco stared at him.

“Vincent,” Luc said, hoping it was enough of an explanation for now.

“I’ve helped you fly before,” Marco said. He rolled his head and shoulders and then, wincing from the pain of the angel’s
burns, shuddered into his cinnamon scales. The policeman opened up a volley of shots, and a second rifle joined in from another corner of the square. Luc didn’t have time to undress. His true form burst through the borrowed livery, though with only half of its usual grandeur. Marco surged into the air, the talons of one foot clamped tight around the bony stump of Luc’s lost wing. He beat the air with his one wing, his speed slower than Marco’s, making their rhythm choppy, but at least Luc didn’t spin into a dive.

The reports of the rifles faded as the two gargoyles glided into the thick orange smog. To be elder, Luc thought, and yet be dragged through the air like this, like some useless, decrepit invalid, was pathetic. By the time the abbey’s bell towers came into sight, Luc was certain he’d never been more humiliated. Marco released the remains of Luc’s wing as they crossed over the flat hedgerow top; then he veered toward the carriage house loft, presumably to search for clothes. Scores of weeping black ridges ribbed his back between his wings, mirroring his flayed human skin.

Luc coasted toward Ingrid’s bedroom window, where the gauzy white curtains had been tied back. He’d just started to dip into a slanted fall when his talons caught the wooden ledge. He lost his balance, overcorrected, and splintered off a piece of pulpy wood. The casement windows flew inward, revealing Ingrid, her mouth open in alarm. Luc fell inside, his humiliation complete.

“Luc!”

Her hands wrapped around his arm and tugged in a fruitless attempt to lift his bulky form from the floor.

“Oh, Luc, what happ—”

She let out a shriek and he guessed she had noticed his destroyed wing.

Luc pushed himself to his feet and angled his back away from her. He didn’t want her to see him struggle, or to stare at the pitiful stump. She’d covered her mouth with her hands, and her eyes
burned with unshed tears. He shook his head, trying to tell her not to cry. She took her hands from her mouth and laid them flat against the plates of his chest.

“Will you be all right?” She fanned her hands over his chest, down the hard swells of muscle over his abdomen, and then dragged them to his arms. She touched him as though inspecting him for damage, her fingers light as a breeze against the thickness of his scales.

Luc nodded. He had to shift back—he had to tell her about the battle, about becoming elder. He wanted to know what had happened to her out there with Axia as well. The painful memory of his torn wing sinking back into his body on a reverse shift was still fresh enough to make him hesitate.

Ingrid’s fingertips came to Luc’s mouth. Her thumb brushed across the leather of his bottom lip, and then her satiny palms cupped the lines of his jaw. She was so soft. So fragile, and yet here she stood making contact with a beast.

Ingrid had touched his mouth before—in the underground shopping arcade after the mimic demon attack. Luc had jerked away, ashamed of how ugly he was. But he knew now that she wasn’t touching him to explore something grotesque. She loved him. She loved all of him, every scale, every monstrous detail, right down to his hard leather lips. Still, he wasn’t prepared for her to stand on the tips of her toes and press her mouth to them.