Luc wasn’t in the mood for visitors. He never had been, not when he’d resided at l’Abbaye Saint-Dismas, and definitely not now. Visitors were forced upon him anyway, a constant stream of them coming and going at all hours of the day and night, sauntering through the arcaded entrance off the Luxembourg Gardens and dropping down from the sky into the courtyard.
How had Lennier withstood it?
After the elder’s death, Hôtel du Maurier had been in urgent need of a guardian. And in the eyes of the Order, Luc had been in urgent need of reassignment. Still, when Irindi, the angel of heavenly law, had directed him here, to this ramshackle residence that had been abandoned by its human owners decades ago, Luc had laughed. The Order couldn’t be serious. They wanted him to take over gargoyle common grounds?
It had been a month now, and Luc still hoped Irindi would appear and send him to his true reassigned territory. This just had to be an extra dose of punishment for breaking all the rules the Dispossessed were supposed to live by.
Luc stood at a window inside Lennier’s second-floor apartments and braced his arms against the cold glass. There were at least fifteen men in the small, enclosed courtyard below. Had it been night and not afternoon, they would have been in their gargoyle forms, crowded wing to wing around the cracked and dry Hydra monstress fountain.
Their eyes were all turned toward Luc, watching and waiting for their leader, Vincent, Luc’s current and most unwelcome visitor. He turned and faced the Notre Dame gargoyle that had intruded on him a half an hour before.
“You’re wasting your time,” Luc said. “I’ve been given Lennier’s territory, not his role as elder.”
Across the room, Vincent sat on a sofa in front of the marble fireplace. He kept his eyes on the cold ashes in the hearth.
“That is obvious. At least, to me it is,” he replied. “The new elder must earn the title. The Order cannot hand it out like a prize.”
It was a title Vincent had been coveting. When word had traveled through the Dispossessed that Luc had been given guardianship of Hôtel du Maurier, the rumor that he was also to be the new elder had somehow been fanned into existence. Gargoyles and their damned gossip.
Once ignited, the rumor had spread like wildfire. It had all seemed to happen around Luc rather than to him. The first few weeks in his new territory had passed as if he were being held underwater. He’d seen the gargoyles swarming the grounds of Hôtel du Maurier at night. He’d known they’d come to see him, the gargoyle that had taken Lennier’s place. He just hadn’t cared enough to speak to them or tell them that they were wrong.
“Irindi didn’t say anything about being elder. She gave me a territory, nothing more.”
They were the same words he’d finally been able to grind out two weeks after being removed from the abbey. He’d said them again and again since then, to anyone who would listen. Had he been more coherent in the days after leaving the abbey, perhaps he would have been able to stamp out the whispered assumptions. Instead, he’d sat brooding in silence at the head of the dining room table Lennier had never used, ignoring the visitors flooding into the front sitting room.
The only one he’d spoken to had been Marco. Luc had asked if Ingrid was safe. And then he’d told Marco to keep her away.
“Nevertheless,” Vincent said, pushing his tall, reedy human form up from the sofa. “The Dogs and Snakes, along with some of the other lowly castes that have organized their little crusade to see you into the role, need to know where you stand. They need to be shown. Definitively.”
Whenever Vincent spoke like this, enunciating each word as if Luc were an imbecile, his lower lip drew down and exposed his small, yellowed bottom teeth. Right now, Luc resisted the urge to put his fist through them.
Vincent came to common grounds every few days. His tireless quest to convince Luc to openly announce his support for him as elder had long since rubbed Luc’s patience to shreds. The Dogs and Snakes and some other lower castes had thrown their weight behind Luc for reasons he couldn’t understand. Gaston, the representative for the Dogs, had tried to explain that they believed Luc could forge a stronger bridge between the Dispossessed and the Alliance. Stronger than even Lennier had been able to manage. The Alliance here in Paris liked Luc. They trusted him. The same couldn’t be said for Vincent.
“They do know where I stand,” Luc replied. “It isn’t behind you.”
Vincent’s thin nostrils flared, the way they did every time Luc refused him.
“The Chimeras and the Wolves are with me, Luc, and you know their numbers are stronger than all of yours combined.”
Luc strode past Vincent, toward the door to the dim corridor. Outside of these apartments, the grand town house was in near ruins. The handful of rooms Luc used was well kept, though lacking in modern touches like electricity and plumbing. Gargoyles required neither of those things, and anyhow, Luc had existed in far worse conditions.
“Marco is not with you,” Luc said. The Wolf was by no means Luc’s friend, but Ingrid was a Duster, and it was obvious to all the Dispossessed—and many of the Alliance—that Vincent had begun picking off Dusters one by one.
Vincent formed a smug grin. Luc wouldn’t have minded smashing his fist into that, either.
“Marco is no longer the voice of the Wolves. He’s become too obsessed with his new human toy, that Duster abomination, to maintain his standing within his own caste.” Vincent stepped away from the hearth. Luc had already opened the door for him, though he would much rather have tossed him through one of the windows.
“Tell me, Luc,” Vincent said as he approached. “Do you think he has touched her yet?”
Luc gripped the doorknob hard enough to fissure the sculpted glass, his body shivering with the desire to erupt into true form.
“I have eyes on them,” Vincent went on, no doubt enjoying Luc’s fury. “Just as I had eyes on you.”
“Get out.”
Vincent’s lips hardened back into a thin line. “Pledge your support to me.”
“Go to hell. You’re killing Dusters, and I won’t support that,” Luc answered.
Vincent swept up to the door, his long black cape reminding Luc of a pair of wings. “You took a human consort, and I don’t support that.”
Luc released the fractured glass knob, aching with the urge to coalesce. He imagined sinking his talons into Vincent’s throat. Silencing him forever.
“Do you think any of the others will side with you once they know the real reason you were removed from the abbey?” Vincent asked. “Even your own Dogs will turn against you.”
Marco had fed the Dispossessed a convincing story: that with only three humans remaining on abbey grounds, Irindi had decided the territory required just one protector, and since Marco had so recently been reassigned, she’d chosen to send Luc elsewhere. The lie had rolled out of Marco without hesitation, though Luc knew it hadn’t been meant to protect him. If caught in an illicit relationship with a human, a gargoyle would meet his final death. The human would not be forgotten, either. Luc had seen human consorts torn to ribbons in the past. It had been long ago, during darker times, but neither he nor Marco had wanted to take the chance that sentiments had not evolved.
Marco’s explanation had been widely accepted, but clearly not by everyone.
Luc was certain he’d been careful with Ingrid. A gargoyle could feel another gargoyle’s presence by the pounding chime at the base of his skull. Whenever Luc had touched Ingrid, or kissed her … when he’d told her he loved her … they had always been alone.
“You know nothing,” Luc said.
“I am offering you your life. Refuse me again and the truth will be made known. Do you honestly want to test Marco’s ability to protect his human against a horde of gargoyles?”
His human. The words gouged Luc more deeply than Vincent’s hollow threat. The abbey and rectory had been Luc’s territory for more than three hundred years. His human charges had come and gone, flowing in and out, and he’d had stretches of hibernation in between. No human had ever awakened Luc the way Ingrid had. Not just from a stony sleep, but from a monotonous existence. She’d given him a purpose. Ingrid was his, not Marco’s.
“Bring me your proof,” Luc said to Vincent.
“Perhaps I’ll bring the girl herself,” he returned.
Luc bristled and surged up against Vincent’s chest. He had never felt so murderous. “Touch her and I will rip out your heart.”
Vincent laughed as he stepped into the hallway. “Ripping out hearts seems to be Marco’s job, not yours.” Seeing the confusion on Luc’s face, Vincent chuckled again. “Or haven’t you heard? Your lovely demon-blooded human was set upon by an Alliance assassin this morning. Oh, but you can’t feel her anymore, can you?”
Luc slammed the door in Vincent’s face.
The moment he’d been severed from Ingrid, Luc lost the ability to surface her soft scent of sweet spring grass and earthy black soil. The absence of it had torn a gaping hole in his gut. Not being able to protect her, to even be near her, kept that hole yawning wider and wider with every passing day.
At least Ingrid was safe. No thanks to him, but he supposed it shouldn’t matter. If the Alliance still had their crosshairs on Ingrid, she needed Marco.
Luc couldn’t protect her any longer, but perhaps there was a way he could stop gargoyles like Vincent. But to actually become elder? To attempt to take Lennier’s place and command the respect and loyalty of hundreds of Dispossessed?
Luc turned to face the cold hearth. He wanted his abbey back. He wanted Ingrid back.
Not this.
The demon hunter walked a tight circle around Grayson Waverly, so close that Grayson felt the hunter’s shirtsleeve graze his own. Grayson stood completely still with his hands at his sides. He raised his eyes toward the ceiling.
“This will never not be awkward,” he muttered. “Will it?”
Vander Burke made another slow rotation, his attention fastened on something Grayson couldn’t see: demon dust. According to Vander, the dust hovered in the air around Grayson’s body at all times. It curled behind him when he walked, leaving a glittering trail in his wake. Like that of all other hellhound Dusters, Grayson’s dust was deep scarlet. The color of a hellhound’s eyes. The color of the thing Grayson most desired.
“I suspect I come out of these meetings slightly more uncomfortable than you,” Vander said as he moved past Grayson’s shoulder and out of sight.
Grayson closed his eyes and cursed himself. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Thank you, Vander.”
The demon hunter said nothing as he came back around into Grayson’s line of vision, then stepped away.
“There.” Vander held out his arms. “That should take care of you for a day or so.”
Grayson ran his hands down the front of his shirt. Already he was breathing easier. He had arrived in Vander’s small room on rue de Berri, adjacent to the American Church’s sanctuary, where Vander had been studying a quarter of an hour before. Grayson’s muscles had been aching, his skin itching, and the scent of Vander’s blood had made his throat hot with hunger. He’d barely been able to stifle the urge to shift.
Vander had taken one look at him and, without a word, gotten to work. It wasn’t difficult. All Vander had to do was walk through Grayson’s dust field. If he stood close enough, for long enough, his own demon dust absorbed Grayson’s. That was what mersian demons did, after all. They consumed the dust of other demons, and with it, their abilities.
“Like I said before,” Grayson said, picking up his jacket from where he’d slung it over the back of a caned chair. “Thank you.”
Vander sat on the edge of his narrow bed. The room was cramped, every available corner stuffed with things he’d brought with him from his flat above the old bookshop: stacks of books, boxes, and a long table crammed with a microscope and test tubes. Grayson eyed the clothing that hung on wall pegs and the sweaty glass terrariums atop the bow-front dresser, the drawers so overflowing with books and newspapers they couldn’t shut all the way. Books in dresser drawers and clothing hanging haphazardly on the walls. Grayson shook his head and grinned. Yes. This was a room he could understand.
“You don’t have to thank me,” Vander said as he rolled down his sleeves. He’d been hunched over the microscope, changing a glass slide, when Grayson had arrived.
“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.