The Wondrous and the Wicked (35 page)

The police had most likely already discovered that their bullets did not stop the beasts. If only they had known about blessed silver, Grayson thought as they traversed the long entryway. The seams the Alliance had sewn so tightly around their secret world had finally split. The mess wasn’t something Grayson could wrap his mind around just then. The only thing he could allow himself to think about was Axia and his plan to bring her to her knees.

He’d wanted this confrontation, he reminded himself upon
entering the esplanade. He had cleared the line of trees, their limbs barely budding, and could now view the entire length of the Champs de Mars. To the left were the ornate fountains of the Château d’Eau and the glass ceilings of the Palace of Electricity, visible just behind the chateau. To the right, farther down the esplanade, stood the Eiffel Tower. Everywhere in between, along the wide gravel walk and the thin strips of snow-dusted grass, were swarms of demons and Dusters. The Dusters stood in tight clusters, the demons circling them. And not just hellhounds. Close to him, a thick, squat black beetle the size of a miniature pony scuttled back and forth in front of a group of six or so Dusters. The beetle’s long antennae crackled with blue spits of electricity. Bands of it reached from one antenna to the other, licking back and forth in constant bursts of light. It was a lectrux, he assumed, and the Dusters it was fencing in were a mixture of boys and girls. They were filthy and haggard, and their fear was so real Grayson could practically taste it.

The boy with the mop of red hair who had approached Grayson with the others on rue de Berri nudged him.

“Mistress is there,” he whispered, his chin jerking in the direction of the Eiffel Tower.

It was time. Grayson’s pulse throbbed in his ears as he started along the gravel esplanade toward the tower. When he had entered, there had been a low, breathy roar within the exhibition space—Axia’s nest. There had to be at least a hundred or more Dusters here, and just as many creatures scraped up from the Underneath, to guard them. Crowds like that made noise. Yet as Grayson took measured steps toward the iron behemoth, a silence settled in. He kept his chin lifted and his sights on the tower. Of all the demons present—from rattilus demons and crypsis serpents to corvites and the flylike beings Luc had once called Drainers—hellhounds were the most prominent. They stopped pacing as Grayson walked past. Their ember-red eyes watched him intently.

He still had his hands in his pockets, his right hand closed
around the warm glass barrel of the syringe. The glass was slippery; his palms were damp. Suddenly every last nerve in his body jumped to attention.

“You have come to me at last.”

The Dusters and demons in Grayson’s side vision pressed themselves toward the ground. He saw her then, emerging from behind two of her hounds. Her hooded figure was the only one that did not stoop. Axia glided toward him. A black corvite swooped overhead, its growling call echoing off the façades of the surrounding buildings.

For a moment, he forgot that he had been the one to design this meeting, and felt trapped again, a prisoner inside her Underneath hive. His skin itched along his arms and legs with the memory of the fanged man—one of these beastly hounds, he realized—and how he’d punctured Grayson’s skin again and again, injecting him with black demon poison.

Axia lifted her arm, the sleeve of her robe long enough to cover her fingers, and pushed back the cavernous hood. He tensed, remembering how in the Underneath she’d been bald, her skin stretched tight over the sharp bones of her face, emphasizing her unnaturally round black eyes and her lipless mouth. He prepared himself to be struck by her hideous visage again.

But when her hood fell around her shoulders, that wasn’t what Grayson saw at all. She wasn’t the decrepit creature she’d been in the Underneath. She had lips, full and pink. She had dark brown eyes instead of all-black, fathomless pupils. And her hair cascaded around her shoulders in wild golden ringlets. It wasn’t just her hair that was golden
—she
was. Axia had a luminescent glow that seemed to leak out of her very skin.

“Do you bring a weapon into my nest, Grayson Waverly?” she asked.

He froze under a sweep of panic.

“Lay it down,” Axia commanded after his beat of guilty silence.

He cautiously removed both hands from his pockets, though only one extracted a weapon. He let the dagger drop to the ground, where it thudded dully. Grayson damn well hoped she didn’t have him turn out his other pocket. Thankfully, she seemed appeased.

“I wish you had come of your own accord.” She spoke in the same honey-sweet voice he remembered from before. It chimed through his ears, leaving behind something like the faint peal of bells.

I have
, he thought, but instead replied, “I won’t be your slave.”

Axia’s laugh tinkled through the air, wrongly bright within the solemn, fear-filled Champs de Mars. “You refer to the mersian blood cure. I admit my decision to bestow such a gift on Evander Burke was erroneous. Mersians are unto themselves in the Underneath, as I learned during my imprisonment there, and are indifferent to my influence. However, he is but one seedling. It seems Evander Burke will have to be weeded out.”

So that was why Vander—or Evander, or whatever his full name was—had not fallen under Axia’s spell. That only presented yet another pressing reason Grayson knew he must succeed: to protect Vander—and the mersian blood. He settled his hands back inside his trouser pockets, hoping the action appeared casual.

Axia’s golden brows slanted and her lips puckered into a moue. “Do not worry so, Grayson Waverly. The mersian blood within you will soon fade, and you will give yourself over to me. You will become what you have always been meant to be.”

He and Ingrid had never been the sort to speak without first weighing their choice of words. Gabby would have begun arguing with Axia immediately, and a part of Grayson longed to do the same. To assert that he would never give himself over to her, no matter how easy it would be. He’d felt the draw before, the overwhelming urge to shift and settle into the form that, if he allowed himself to admit it, felt more comfortable than the one he currently held.

He couldn’t argue with Axia. It did seem, in many ways, that he was meant to be a hellhound, or at least part hound. But he also knew he would never allow himself to be owned.

“I’d rather die than become one of your pets.” As soon as he’d spoken the words, he felt as though a door had slammed behind him. He’d crossed over some threshold. Some understanding within himself. There would be no turning back.

The black wings of another corvite circled over Axia’s head, and then the demon bird’s claws settled on the soft mound of golden curls draped over her shoulders. The bird growled. Axia canted her head just enough to hint that whatever the demon had said had been significant.

She twitched her shoulder and the corvite flew off.

“Grayson Waverly, while I am as dissatisfied with you as I am with my mersian seedling, I see no reason to weed you out yet.”

She took a few steps to the left and angled herself toward him, as if to impart some confidence. “I can remove your demon blood just as easily as I bequeathed it.”

Grayson stilled. The pure hatred he’d felt for Axia slipped. He felt something he hadn’t since she’d taken him to her hive before: reliance. A knowledge that he was a prisoner, had always been a prisoner, and that she had always been the gatekeeper. She was telling him this for a reason. To Grayson, it sounded curiously like the beginning of a bargain.

“Why would you do that?” he asked. “Don’t you need your seedlings for this war of yours?”

Her radiant skin was difficult to look at. It produced the same abrasive glare the surface of a pond did at sunset.

“I require obedient seedlings,” she answered, and continued with a loose sweep of her hand. “As you can see, I have many here. Many more will come. You say you would rather die than become my pet?”

Axia tacked to the right and stepped directly in front of Grayson. He cradled the barrel of the needle in his pocket and
slipped his fingers into the twin holes of the plunger. She was close. But close enough? He eyed the hellhounds on either side of her, knowing if he made his move now, the hounds would rip into him. The tremor of his wrist did nothing to inspire courage. He
would
rather die than become her pet, but that didn’t exactly mean he wanted to die.

He stayed quiet, hoping she would continue without his answer. She did.

“Tell me, Grayson Waverly.” Axia said. “Who else would you so willingly sacrifice?”

Gabby ran her hand down the velvety blaze of one of Constantine’s bay mares. The stables were quiet and warm, drenched in late-afternoon sunlight. She hadn’t been able to take pacing the library, or any other room in the chateau. Ingrid and the others had left for the Champs de Mars a half an hour before, and only Gabby, Constantine, Hathaway, and Lady Brickton remained at Clos du Vie. Mama had even formally accepted Clos du Vie as her home, absolving Marco from any need to leave Ingrid’s side.

Nolan had pulled Gabby aside while the others had been loading into the carriages and Luc and Marco had been preparing behind one of the conveyances to coalesce into true form. He hadn’t pleaded with her to stay at Constantine’s. He hadn’t reminded her how dangerous walking into Axia’s new hive was going to be. Gabby had seen his request in his eyes, had felt it in the glide of his fingers along her scarred cheek. He’d kissed her in front of everyone—even Mama—before jumping into the driver’s box of Vander’s wagonette.

The bay mare in the warm stables snuffled and stomped one of its hind legs. Gabby nearly laughed. She felt like making the same complaint.

“It’s not fun being left behind, is it?” she asked, rubbing the mare’s snout once more before leaving her be.

Gabby had worn her cloak but had removed it, her Prussian blue day dress warm enough for the gathered heat in the stables. Her cloak hung on a peg driven into a beam near the doors, and as she ambled along the weathered floorboards, hands clasped behind her back, she saw a glint of silver from within the folds of the cloak. She always kept the pommel of the sword Nolan had given her at a high polish, though it had been some time since she and Rory had last sparred.

Gabby crossed to the cloak, withdrew the sword, and as usual, admired the craftsmanship. Nolan would not have given it to her had he not believed that she would one day wield it well. Perhaps he was too protective, too coddling, but she also knew he was right. When she and Rory had come across the mollug demon on the London docks and Rory had simply handed her the diffuser net, expecting her to figure it out on her own, she’d been furious. And scared. She wasn’t ready yet. But she would be someday.

Gabby cut the sword through the air and sank into a defensive crouch. Rotating on one heel, she spun and slashed the blade in a clean stroke, then, taking hold of the handle with both hands, practiced one of the offensive moves Rory had shown her. The sword was the perfect size and weight for her, showing yet again just how well Nolan knew her. Gabby imagined him with her, circling her as she thrust and cut, calling out instructions or correcting a blunder, his eyes sharp and his lips turned up in a mischievous smirk. He would be thinking about kissing her, no doubt. And she would chastise him for distracting her.

Gabby heard a soft thump as she punctured the air in front of her with the tip of the sword. She held still, her heart beating fast and making her breathing loud. The noise had sounded as if it came from overhead. She stood tall, her sword falling until the tip brushed along the hay-strewn floor.

Another thump came, this one louder than before. Something had landed on the roof. Gabby’s eyes drifted up. She stared
at the beamed ceiling and the curved rafters and for a fleeting moment convinced herself it had only been a pair of birds.

Her throat felt unnaturally dry as she regripped the handle of her sword and eyed the doors. She’d shut them behind her to keep out the cold, but she hadn’t thrown the heavy wooden bolt into place. Instinct, base and immediate, urged her to hide. To duck into one of the empty stalls or climb into the hayloft. She imagined Nolan issuing another piece of advice:
Trust your instinct, lass.

Gabby swung herself into the nearest stall just seconds before the stable doors crashed inward. They sounded as if they’d been blown open by a black-powder explosion. The stall belonged to the chestnut she’d been petting. Gabby retreated to a rear corner of the stall, the mare whinnying and stomping.

“I know you’re in here.”

Gabby’s stomach bottomed out at the sound of the canyon-deep voice that filled the stables.

“Did you believe I would forget?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and exhaled a tremulous breath. The total silence allowed her to hear the soft rush of a gargoyle coalescing.

Yann had come for her.

T
he Champs de Mars had been totally surrounded by armed citizens and the French Imperial Guard by the time Ingrid, Hugh, Nolan, and Rory had approached the exterior of the exhibition buildings. They’d come on foot, Luc having stopped the landau two blocks distant in an attempt to go unnoticed by Axia and her demons. He had argued, once again, against Ingrid’s leaving his side. And Ingrid had been reluctant to, as well. She couldn’t show her unease, however, considering the whole plan had been her idea.

Eventually, Luc and Marco had assented that they could not be part of Ingrid’s small party when she entered the Champs de Mars. The demons there would only trigger their impulse to coalesce and to shield Ingrid from danger, when danger was exactly what Ingrid needed to find. She needed to get close to Axia and distract her long enough for Vander to sight a clear shot from where he would be hiding with an unenthusiastic Hans.

A trio of uniformed military policemen stepped into their path, just in front of an arched entrance to the Champs de Mars.

“Vous n’avez pas permission d’entrer,”
one of the policemen said, his eyes alighting on the vest of blades worn by Rory, who had left his coat purposely unbuttoned.