The Wondrous and the Wicked (6 page)

“You’ve been absorbing my hellhound dust for the last few weeks and making my life less of a living hell. Yes, I do have to thank you,” Grayson replied.

Every time Vander absorbed hellhound dust, he would take on some hellhound symptoms of his own. He’d been stoic about it at first but had eventually admitted to being able to smell the unmistakable tang of blood. And to feeling a thirst, too, Vander had said. Or perhaps it was hunger. He hadn’t been able to decide which. Grayson didn’t wish his symptoms on anyone, but he hadn’t been able to refuse Vander’s generosity.

He’d been sitting on the steps of rue Foyatier in Montmartre when Vander had found him. A bracing February wind had been rushing up the stone steps, cooling Grayson’s temper after his first visit to Monsieur Constantine’s chateau. Léon, another Duster, had convinced him to try at least one session. It hadn’t been so awful, Grayson admitted, until Constantine had started asking for details about what had happened the month before, in that Daicrypta courtyard in Montmartre. Why in the world had Grayson imagined he could command two hellhounds? The hounds had wound up killing Nolan Quinn’s father, and Grayson was to blame.

Rather than answer Constantine, he’d left Clos du Vie, and in the dark, Grayson had shifted into hellhound form. He’d run
along the perimeter of Paris before sneaking down into the eighteenth arrondissement. Vander tracked Grayson’s dust from the Cimetière de Montmartre, where he had been dispatching a possessed cadaver. After promising not to tell Ingrid that he’d found him, Vander had offered to take some of Grayson’s dust. After one full day of smelling only air and not blood, of not feeling the slightest urge to change into his demon form, Grayson had gone to the rue Foyatier steps again. He’d hoped Vander would come. He had.

Vander buttoned his cuffs now and glanced up at him. “I wish you’d let me tell her.”

Grayson stood by the closed door. He slid his arms into his jacket even though he was still sweltering. A ten-degree hike in body temperature was considered normal when one was half hellhound.

“I’m not ready,” he said, his voice soft. “Not yet.”

“She misses you.”

“And I miss her.” The muscles along his shoulders tensed. He didn’t care for this part of his meetings with Vander. Today, the guilt cut more sharply than usual.

“She was under that bridge this morning looking for you,” Vander said, standing up. He’d told Grayson about the attack while he’d been absorbing his hellhound dust. “She was going to go into the sewers. You know what could have happened to her in there.”

Grayson rubbed his palm over his cheek and tamped down the urge to give in—to go back home to Ingrid and Mama at the rectory. He didn’t
want
to stay away. He was doing it to keep them safe. For the past few weeks, Vander had been taking the edge off Grayson’s urges, but the effects were temporary. They always came back. Sometimes it happened slowly, over the course of one or two days. Other times they rushed back like an ocean tide after less than twelve hours. He was a mess of sporadic hunger and guilt, of hope and injured pride. He couldn’t control his
demon half without Vander’s help, and in all honesty, Grayson didn’t trust himself yet.

“Are you sure she wasn’t hurt?” Grayson asked.

“I haven’t seen her yet, but Nolan said there’s not a scratch on her.” Vander had been acting cool toward him today, and this was the reason. He didn’t know where Grayson and Léon had been living, but he wanted permission to at least tell Ingrid that her twin was safe. Grayson knew his sister, though. She’d push for more information. He also knew Vander was too far gone in love with Ingrid to put up a decent fight—he’d give in and tell her everything.

When Grayson remained quiet, Vander let out an irritated breath and took his coat from one of the wall pegs.

“I’m meeting Ingrid in twenty minutes,” he said, shrugging into his long, faded winter coat. Even if Vander had money, Grayson didn’t think he’d spend it on a new coat or suit. For a brief moment, he thought of his father, Lord Brickton, and what the stuffy old goat’s expression would be if he learned his daughter was planning to marry a poor reverend.

Not that Vander had proposed yet.

“I’ll understand if you don’t want to meet anymore,” Grayson said as Vander crouched to slide a long, narrow trunk out from under his bed. “I know it isn’t easy for you to keep secrets from Ingrid or to feel what I normally feel because of this damn blood.”

Vander twirled the small dial of a lock set into the trunk. Left, right, then left again. The hinges sighed their release.

“I want to help you, Grayson.” The trunk opened to reveal an impressive collection of blessed silver weaponry nestled in form-fitting velvet cushions of midnight blue. Vander removed the hand crossbow he usually wore underneath his coat, two silver darts, and a light rapier.

“Besides, I don’t exactly mind recovering from our meetings,” he added with a wry grin.

His “recovery” involved seeing Ingrid and entering into her dust field just enough to drown out the hellhound symptoms. Lectrux abilities were apparently much easier to live with.

“Where are you meeting?” Grayson asked.

Vander sheathed the blessed weapons and held up his hands, palms out. “Don’t worry, big brother. We’ll be in full public view. I won’t be able to do more than hold her hand.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Probably.”

Grayson feigned a scowl but quickly let it dissolve. He liked Vander Burke. He was going to be a bloody
reverend.
What older brother—even one who was only six minutes older—wouldn’t want his sister to fall in love with a reverend?

“Before you leave,” Vander said, adjusting his spectacles, “I have some potentially good news.”

He nodded toward the table at the foot of the bed, and the needle and syringe kit Grayson had become acquainted with during his last de-dusting. Vander had been wondering, even before hunting Grayson down in Montmartre: If his dust could absorb another person’s dust, what then could his blood do? Could it absorb the potency of a Duster’s blood? At their last meeting, he had tied a rubber tourniquet around Grayson’s bicep, and, using the needle and syringe from his kit, drawn a vial of his blood. He’d planned to draw a vial of his own blood, mix the two samples, and then watch and wait.

“You warned me not to expect much,” Grayson said, though he’d let his hope run wild anyway.

Vander hunched over the microscope and used the thick steel knobs to focus the lens. “My warning still applies. However”—he stepped aside and gestured for Grayson to have a look through the eyepiece—“the samples aren’t clotting.”

Grayson held his breath. That was promising, at least. Vander had explained how blood from one person did not always mix well with blood from another. Transfusions were risky, according
to the phlebotomy text he had been reading, because there was a high likelihood that the joining bloods might clot, spread through the recipient’s body, and stop the heart altogether.

“We’re a match,” Grayson said, bending over the microscope and adjusting the focus until the multiplication lenses showed the blood cells pressed between each slide. They were perfect little pillowy cells.

“We can try a small injection.” Vander failed to mask the thrill his new experiment gave him. “Come to Hôtel Bastian tonight, after most of the patrols have gone out.”

Grayson clapped Vander on the shoulder and refrained from thanking him yet again. The demon hunter raised his finger.

“But like I said—”

“Don’t get my hopes up,” Grayson finished for him. He grabbed his hat from the cane-back chair and tipped it toward Vander before slipping into the corridor.

The smell of musty carpet and rotting wooden crossbeams set in the plaster walls didn’t bother him as much on the way out as they had on the way in. His dust had been reduced, and for the time being, he felt comfortably distant from his curse.

The stairwell took him to the street-side door and deposited him on the sidewalk.

“Better?”

His friend Léon leaned against the limestone exterior, ankles and arms crossed. Léon had walked with him to rue de Berri but, as usual, declined to go up to Vander’s room. He wanted nothing to do with dust reduction. Not too long ago, Léon had nearly allowed the Daicrypta to drain his blood in order to be rid of it. Like Grayson, Léon had lost control of his demon half once. Grayson had taken the life a prostitute in London, and Léon had killed his own parents and younger brother.

But now, after having spent more time with Constantine and a handful of other Dusters, Léon felt at ease with his demon side.
His arachnae blood gave him fangs, deadly venom, and the surprisingly useful ability to create silken web at his fingertips. All controllable, apparently.

“I can’t smell your blood,” Grayson answered. “And considering your blood smells like a pair of dirty socks, yes—much better.” He ducked as Léon made a swipe for his hat.

“I do not understand,” Léon said, his French accent heavy. They spoke to one another in English mostly, since Grayson’s French wasn’t much better than Ingrid’s. “Without your dust, how are you to protect yourself?”

They started toward the wide boulevard of the Champs-Élysées. Grayson knew Dusters had been going missing the last week or two. He’d eventually gone back to Clos du Vie for another lesson with Constantine, and it had gone more smoothly than the first. Grayson had returned many times now, and at his last session, the old man had warned him to be vigilant.

“Still no word from Marianne?” Grayson asked to avoid Léon’s question. The girl had hellhound blood, like Grayson, though she hadn’t fully shifted yet.

Constantine had started combining his students into small groups, allowing them to form acquaintances. The old man had thought the approach might be better than having his students learn how to control their base instincts and desires individually, feeling isolated and freakish.

Léon shook his head. That made four Dusters in just the past week.

“The rumor is that gargoyles are doing this,” Léon said as they came upon the busy Champs-Élysées.

Grayson hadn’t met many gargoyles, but he couldn’t imagine Luc would have anything to do with killing Dusters. If Marco had not become bound to Ingrid, the Wolf might have developed an appetite for Duster blood. Not now, though. Yann, a griffin chimera that had attempted to kill Grayson once, couldn’t be
trusted. He’d been Lennier’s comrade and likely still craved retaliation against Gabby.

“If that’s the case, we’re bird bait,” Grayson muttered. Léon huffed a laugh.

“But if you had your dust like you
should …
,” he said, not needing to finish his thought.

Grayson stuck his hands in his pockets and stepped around an ankle-deep puddle of slushy gutter water.

“I want to be human, Léon.”

Léon was the only one who knew about Grayson’s meetings with Vander. The other Dusters he’d gotten to know through Constantine’s lessons were like Léon—practically proud of their demon dust. They acted as if they felt special instead of just strange. They didn’t understand how the blood ate away at Grayson.

“You cannot be,
mon ami
,” Léon replied softly.

Grayson hadn’t told his friend about Vander’s latest theory or the blood test. If it worked … if Vander’s blood could cancel out Grayson’s demon blood, even if for a little while … it could be the answer to everything.

They crossed the boulevard and Grayson turned left, heading toward Place de la Concorde. Léon drew to a stop.

“Are you not coming back to the room?” he asked. “Pierce and the others are meeting us there soon.”

He and Léon had moved into a crummy little place on the left bank a few blocks away from the Eiffel Tower and the mass of exposition buildings erected around the Champs de Mars. It was one room, with no running water and a single brazier for heat, but without funds, it was the best the two of them were able to afford. Their Duster friends preferred the place to their own homes, considering most of them still lived with their families.

“In a while,” Grayson answered. A ball of nervous energy tightened in his stomach. “I need to try to find someone.”

He felt slightly guilty that it wasn’t Ingrid. However, Vander was about to meet with her anyway. Fresh out of dust, Grayson didn’t want to waste any time. Ingrid and Mama had not been the only people he’d been avoiding. Or missing.

“The Alliance girl,” Léon guessed.

Grayson’s smile came involuntarily. “Her name is Chelle.”

Léon rolled his eyes. “I know her name, you fool. You talk about her even when you sleep.”

“I do not,” Grayson said, but Léon was too busy laughing.

“You are like one of Shakespeare’s plays. All tragic and star-crossed and depressing. She does not even like you,
mon ami
.”

Léon was right about that. Chelle didn’t like him. There had been one moment, though, when she’d seemed as if she might be softening toward him. A moment when, if Grayson had possessed the nerve, he might have kissed her. But that was before he’d confessed to ripping out a girl’s throat back in London.

Chelle was going to skewer him. He still had to see her, though: her clenched jaw and dark, flashing eyes. He yearned to hear her impertinent voice commanding him to go away.

“You are going to humiliate yourself,” Léon said.

Grayson shoved him hard enough to send him into one of the icy gutter pools. Léon swore in French, still laughing.

“I know I am, but I’m tired of looking at your sorry face all the time,” he called, racing away before Léon could counterattack.

Léon waved in surrender, kicking his legs and shaking out his soaked trousers and shoes. As they parted ways, Grayson swallowed the urge to turn around and walk back to the shabby room with his friend. It would be easier than seeing Chelle. But if he could control himself this time with Chelle, perhaps he’d try stopping by the rectory soon.

Ingrid didn’t need him. She was safe with Marco and Vander. But
he
needed
her.
And he needed to prove that he could be the Grayson she remembered and trusted.