The Wondrous and the Wicked (39 page)

“I am faster than lightning,” Axia trilled before severing herself yet again. She reappeared directly beside Ingrid, who unleashed another coil of lightning.

The Dispossessed surged up and crashed down yet again as the lightning burned through Axia’s fade.

“Faster than your brother’s fall,” Axia whispered in Ingrid’s ear.

Ingrid whipped around. The mention of her brother eviscerated her frustration and replenished her fury. Briars of electricity sizzled from her fingers, toward Axia, who predictably, cast a fade and vanished.

Ingrid was about to turn and search for her yet again when the fade did something different. It didn’t evaporate like mist. It became
solid again. It wasn’t a fade. It was still Axia. Her smile wilted. Axia tried to sever herself once more, started to disappear—Ingrid saw the blurred lines of her form stretching out into another direction. But her body snapped right back, slamming into her fade, like an elastic band snapping back to its starting point.

Ingrid held Axia’s confounded stare. Her demon power wouldn’t work.
The mersian blood.
Grayson
hadn’t
failed. He’d done it!

“Vander—now!”

She heard Nolan’s shout and saw Luc and Marco pitch forward, released from Axia’s hold, just as a howling wind whipped through the esplanade. It thrashed the branches of the trees and sprayed the fountain water in angled sheets, the icy mist flecking Ingrid’s face.

No longer laughing, Axia threw down the full force of her angelic power, buckling Luc and Marco at the knees. Ingrid expected to feel the ground quaking, to see blackness seeping into the corners of her eyes as Axia dragged her under the Dusters’ spell. But Ingrid could still see, still stand. And then she remembered what Axia had said:
I will weed you out.

A hellhound, a Drainer, and a rattilus bore down on Ingrid, their orders to hold back terminated. She could attempt to stun them all, the way she’d done to that first hellhound. But they would just keep coming, one demon after another, while Axia held the gargoyles in submission. Ingrid knew she could not electrocute every last demon here.

They had come here for Axia.
Grayson
had come here for Axia.

Time in the Champs de Mars slowed, and though the demons were nearing, Ingrid didn’t see them. She saw Grayson, the two of them as children. They were sitting in the grass, comparing their birthmarks; together in Hyde Park, Grayson playfully nudging her closer to the Serpentine River; in their father’s library, building a domino line out of books; at Victoria Station before he left for Paris last fall, twirling her in a circle, trying to
make her dizzy so she wouldn’t see his anxiety; Grayson, in the Underneath, bite marks riddling his skin.

Grayson. Dead.

And there it was again. The sob that poured through her chest and into her throat, eddied through her head, going everywhere but out of her mouth. She dragged in air, gulping it, trying to release the scream. To release the pain.

The demons bearing down on her were obliterated by blessed silver before they could touch her, but there were more on their way. Ingrid paid them no attention. What she saw were the bulbs along the Eiffel Tower, brightening, straining, and then bursting. The lights within the exhibition halls flickered and went out. Behind her, the screeching wheels of the generators revved to a deafening whine before clanking and crashing to a halt.

Ingrid raised her arms and finally,
finally
screamed as fire raced over her palms. An orb of lightning slammed into Axia, throwing her back. Her body seized in the air, the ropes of electricity wrapping her, holding her in place while Ingrid continued to scream, continued to drain the current from every last corner of her body.

Released from the fallen angel’s hold, Luc and Marco rose and collided with the hellhound and appendius that were seconds away from tearing into Ingrid. She watched everything unfolding as if she were merely an observer, untouchable. Lightning shivered from Axia to the iron tower and then back to the angel, who hurtled toward the ground as a net twined around her convulsing body. The spikes along the rim of the angelic diffuser net shot into the grass. The mesh netting sealed to Axia, who was still shivering in blue and white spits of electricity. Vander had hit his target. They’d captured her.

Ingrid’s arms went limp, her ears rang, and a dark tunnel closed around her vision. She didn’t feel anything as she hit the ground. The last thing she saw was the top of the tower, a gargoyle perched on its spire.

P
aris was supposed to be beautiful in April. The city’s greening had started to paint over the destruction left behind by Axia’s Harvest. It had been one week. One week since the world had exploded with news of the madness in Paris, a near-apocalyptic event. The citizens who had fled had since returned, and tourists for the exposition had come early and in droves. Surviving an invasion of bloodthirsty demons had seemed to inspire a need to celebrate, and everyone wanted to join in, hear stories, relive the horror.

Some enterprising artist had started hawking papier-mâché hellhounds and gargoyles near the Champs de Mars, churches hadn’t seen higher attendances in years, and there were even guided tours cropping up, highlighting the places where the most savage deaths had taken place. People weren’t repulsed by the demon invasion at all. They were absolutely giddy.

It made Gabby ill. She’d purchased a hellhound from one such street vendor, dropped it on the pavement, and crushed it
under her boot heel. She’d gotten stares and a cry of disappointment from the vendor, but she had kicked the paper hellhound into the gutter and stormed off.

The Harvest was over, but it had taken everything.

And no, as it turned out, Paris wasn’t beautiful in April. The ground was just thawed enough for them to bury Grayson, however, and that was what they were doing that morning.

Clouds, platinum-lined with the hint of another spring rain, hung low above the rectory cemetery. Gabby stood on the soft grass, still damp from the rains that were melting the snow and exposing new, pale green grasses underneath. She and Ingrid had wound their arms together and laced their fingers tightly. A bracing wind buffeted their black silk mourning dresses and black velvet capes. Before coming out to the graveside burial, Gabby had put on one of her hats with a slanted veil. She’d tugged out the pins and chucked the thing across her bedroom before breaking down into gasping sobs.

Her brother wasn’t supposed to be dead. He wasn’t supposed to have left them, not now, not yet. Not like this.

Mama stood to Gabby’s right, with Papa there to shore up Mama’s other side. He’d arrived two nights after the Harvest ended, and though his eyes had been red-rimmed, Gabby hadn’t yet seen him cry. She’d only heard him. That first night, and every night since, whenever Gabby passed the study door, she heard soft, muffled sobs. She pictured her stoic father, the man who had disowned Grayson, slouching in his chair, bawling into his monogrammed handkerchief. That was all any of them had been doing.

Ingrid had spent the week in her room. Mama and Papa had turned their heads when Luc arrived each morning and slipped up to Ingrid’s bedroom to hold her the day through. Gabby had stayed with Mama during the day and Ingrid at night, when Luc left. As she listened to Vander, who was standing at the head of
the dug grave, reading from the book of Psalms, she felt exhaustion weighting her.

Theirs was a small crowd of Alliance, Dispossessed, and those who knew their secrets standing around the casket, which had already been lowered into the freshly dug ground. Nolan stood behind her, his hand lifting every now and then to the small of her back. Rory was with him, his dagger vest replaced by a more respectful black waistcoat, jacket, and tie. Hugh Dupuis had delayed his departure for London until after the burial, and he kept beside Rory—a place in which Gabby, and a few others, had noticed he could usually be found.

And then there was Chelle. She stood between Rory and Nolan, trembling like a reed in a rushing stream. Nolan and Vander had broken her out of the basement at Hôtel Bastian, and when they’d told her about Grayson, she had done something neither of them had ever seen: she had collapsed. She’d cried in great, heaving sobs, and Nolan had later told Gabby that he’d needed to carry Chelle out of the basement. That she’d been inconsolable since.

So Grayson had gone and fallen in love. And yet he’d only known that first taste of it. Gabby had tried putting herself in Chelle’s place, imagined Nolan being taken from her now, before they could even really begin. It had made Gabby cling to him when he’d next visited the rectory.

Finishing with the Psalms, Vander closed the Bible he’d been reading and adjusted his wire spectacles. He was a reverend now, though he wasn’t wearing anything that would mark him as such. Just his usual threadbare tweed.

“I would like to say something more before we commit Grayson’s body to the earth. Something not found in here,” he said, lifting the Bible in explanation.

Ingrid’s arm kept shaking, and Gabby wished Luc could be standing on her sister’s other side. He, Marco, and Gaston,
accompanied by Monsieur Constantine, stood across the open grave. Luc’s eyes were fastened on Ingrid, watching her, ready. But the intimacy of standing so close would not have been borne here, in public view.

“I met Grayson when he first came to Paris. He was here alone, trying to prepare this old rectory for when his sisters and mother would arrive. He admitted to me that he was nervous, that perhaps he’d made a mistake listening to Constantine and purchasing the abbey.” Vander paused and sent Constantine an apologetic glance. “Grayson told me about Waverly House, and the conditions his sisters and mother, whom I hadn’t yet met, were used to. This place would be a change. A drastic change, and he worried it wouldn’t be good enough.”

Gabby listened, rapt. This was Grayson before the Underneath. Grayson before she’d known he’d changed. Nolan slid his hand against her back, a sturdy reminder that he was there.

“I asked him, half joking, if his sisters were really that spoiled.” This time Vander sent Gabby and Ingrid the apologetic glances. “He looked at me, and more serious than I’d yet seen him to be, he said his sisters deserved to be happy here. He said he’d tear down this place and put up a new Waverly House if that was what it took.”

Ingrid’s fingers tightened around Gabby’s. She knew Ingrid’s chin was quivering just as violently as her own, the tears coursing freely down her cheeks.

“I knew right then,” Vander continued, “that Grayson was the kind of man who would do whatever it took to take care of the people he loved. He walked into Axia’s nest knowing he probably wouldn’t leave it alive.” Vander crouched before the grave, his toes crumbling a bit of dirt. The clumps landed on the varnished tiger-oak casket. “He went anyway. He went for all of us.”

Gabby released Ingrid’s hand as Luc threw caution aside and broke from his indomitable hold across the grave. He walked around Vander, to Ingrid, and brought her against his chest.
He began to lead Ingrid away, her broken sobs knifing through Gabby.

Nolan touched her shoulders and brought her closer to him. If Ingrid could seek solace in the arms of a gargoyle, then she could very well do the same with a demon hunter. She still snuck a glance up at her father as she allowed Nolan to guide her away from Grayson’s grave.

Lord Brickton stared at his son’s casket, his wife shuddering in his arms. The insignificance of everything else hit Gabby, and she sank into Nolan’s warm side.

“Cousin,” Rory whispered, tagging Nolan’s elbow. He glanced toward Chelle, who had seated herself on the flat top of an old gravestone. Her shoulders and back heaved and shook. “Ye know yer the only one who can calm her.”

Nolan took a deep breath, his arm taut around Gabby. “Rory … stay with Chelle for just a little while and I’ll be there when—”

Gabby pressed her palm flat against Nolan’s chest. “Go. It’s all right.”

Nolan would return to her side in a few minutes. Grayson would never return to Chelle’s.

He kissed her forehead and ceded Gabby’s arm to Rory. “Don’t get into trouble.”

He walked across the grass, between the scattered gravestones, toward Chelle. Gabby was grateful for Rory’s muscular arm. There weren’t many people here to say their goodbyes to Grayson, but those who were had proven their loyalty to one another.

“Are you going back to London?” Gabby asked, keeping her voice low.

Rory’s bicep flexed underneath his black suit jacket. “Aye,
laoch
.”

“I’m sure Carver will be thrilled to see you again,” she said, remembering Hugh’s gargoyle.

Rory smiled, confirming Gabby’s speculation with his usual poise.

“Hugh’ll have a time of it tryin’ to keep Hathaway and the rest of the Directorate off his scent,” Rory added, switching tracks.

In the craze and chaos following the battle in the Champs de Mars, the Daicrypta doyen, with Rory’s help and a few gargoyles as well, had transported Axia’s netted and incapacitated body to the abandoned Montmartre mansion owned by his father. He’d hooked Axia up to the ancient draining machinery housed in the little outbuilding behind the courtyard and drained every last drop of her blood. Had they allowed the Alliance to drag her body away, Hathaway would have had the same thing done, most likely on the machine Nolan and Vander had been building at Hôtel Bastian. Gabby didn’t know what Hugh had done with the blood, but she trusted him. Whatever his plans, he had no designs against the Dispossessed, as Hathaway did.

According to Rory, Hugh had given Axia’s desiccated remains to the horde of gargoyles waiting in the Daicrypta courtyard. The gargoyles had disposed of her, and with relish.

Hans and Hathaway had suspected Rory’s deceit, but with no evidence, what could they do? They certainly couldn’t charge him with treason, the way they’d threatened Nolan. Of course, the angelic net
had
worked, and there was no doubt that Nolan’s actions had only helped bring Axia and her Harvest to an end. There would be no trial against him in Rome. When he’d told Gabby the news, she’d dissolved into new tears. Better tears. And they had felt good.