Luc darted higher into the sky in an attempt to get the demon stink out of his nose. They were everywhere, out in full view of humans, laying down a path of destruction and blood. Luc had spent the last hour on the roof of his territory watching and listening with rising dread as the city erupted into turmoil street by street. He’d stayed in human form, even though no fewer than twenty Dispossessed had soared over common grounds in broad daylight.
Their passing shrieks had conveyed the news that fissures had turned into geysers spewing Underneath demons. When more than one gargoyle had screeched down at Luc, reporting that Duster abominations were banding with the demons, Luc had risen to his feet. The worn clay tiles had shifted under his weight as he’d undressed.
Their world, their boundaries, their time living in the dark, had reached an end. Luc had shed his clothes and then his skin while humans on the street below watched and screamed. He’d launched himself from the roof, leaving his territory, thankfully vacant of any humans taking refuge from the waking nightmare unfolding in the streets. He had to find Ingrid. If she’d somehow turned into Axia’s pawn and joined the demons roaming Paris … Luc didn’t know what he would find, but whatever it was, Ingrid would need him.
When he’d reached the abbey and rectory, it had been completely quiet. The chime at the base of Luc’s skull had not come. If Marco wasn’t there, neither was Ingrid. Lady Brickton, if home, would at least be safe from demons, Luc thought as he’d wheeled in the air and headed for the only other place he knew Ingrid might flee: Hôtel Bastian.
He flew through a cloud of black smoke, a fire having engulfed a row of homes along rue Saint-Sulpice. He felt the heat of the flames and flew faster, clearing the smoke cloud and angling toward the ground. Though rank, the air there would be easier to breathe.
The streets had started to empty. He figured the panicked humans were seeking shelter indoors, and as he flew at rooftop level, he saw that most windows and balcony doors had been closed and shuttered. If only those shutters had been made of blessed silver.
He skewed left and turned onto rue de Sèvres. Except for a handful of people a quarter mile down, the wide boulevard had been abandoned. Four uniformed gendarmes were skirmishing with an appendius demon, and closer, a lone man was brandishing his sword at a hellhound, its fangs painted crimson. Luc could only see the man’s back, but he knew who it was. He never forgot a human charge.
Grayson Waverly swung the sword at the hellhound’s front paw as it swiped at his head. The blade bit into the hound, the wound spitting green sparks. It was a novice stroke of a blade that was clearly not his own—Grayson would have been better off hurling books at the beast.
Luc darted lower, tucking in his wings to gain speed, and rushed over Grayson’s head. The talons of his feet punctured the fibrous skin and dense muscle of the hound’s neck. He then grabbed hold of the two protruding slanted fangs and broke them off at the base. It was the first thing to do when fighting a hellhound; the wicked points were the hound’s most dangerous weapon. Luc kept the fangs in his hands and, with a shriek, plunged them into the hellhound’s fire-lit eyes.
He landed deftly on the pavement as the demon’s death sparks fizzled, then turned to face Ingrid’s brother, who still held the sword aloft. Luc released the trigger inside him and let his true form go. Within seconds, he stood on the cold pavement in human form.
“Where is Ingrid?” he immediately asked.
Grayson let the sword down. He kept his eyes level with Luc’s. “I don’t know. I was coming to find you.”
“Why haven’t you become a hellhound?” Luc asked. “The Dusters—”
“I know, they’ve joined the Underneath demons. I can’t explain it all right now. Luc, I need your help.”
If Grayson hadn’t become one of the crazed Dusters, perhaps Ingrid hadn’t, either. Luc realized Grayson was still talking to him.
“I brought her to Hôtel Bastian. She’s burning up and needs gargoyle blood. I didn’t know who else to ask.”
Luc stared at him. “Who?”
“Chelle,” Grayson answered. “Mercurite is useless against Duster poison.”
Luc glanced behind them, toward Paris Alliance faction headquarters. He could see the building from where they stood.
“Ingrid isn’t there?”
“Damn it, Luc, no! I told you, I don’t know where she is. But Chelle needs your help!” Grayson took a steadying breath. “Please, Luc. I can’t let her die.”
Luc turned back to Grayson. He understood Grayson’s desperation; he himself felt the same intense need to find Ingrid and protect her.
He nodded, realizing that Grayson must be in love with this Alliance girl. “Fast. I have to find your sister.”
Grayson narrowed his eyes at Luc but said nothing. He kept the blessed blade out and began to jog back toward Hôtel Bastian. Luc followed, thinking that a naked man walking down rue de Sèvres was but a slight disturbance compared to the bloodbath up ahead, where the appendius had mopped the ground with the bodies of the four police officers who had been attempting to kill it.
If Ingrid was out there, letting her electricity flow freely, possessed by whatever spell Axia had cast over the Dusters, she was in danger. Not just from uninformed humans, who would see her as a monster, but from other gargoyles. Without Marco to protect her, she would be at their mercy. And if she woke from this spell—if she woke from it at all—and saw what she’d done … if she’d hurt people … it would devastate her.
Itching to leave, Luc stormed up the flights of stairs to the third floor, where the normally closed and bolted door to faction headquarters had been left wide open. Grayson entered, and Luc hesitantly followed.
Grayson noticed his uncertainty. “The Roman troops aren’t here yet. They were due this morning and could be out there right now with the rest of the demon hunters. The place is deserted. Come on.”
Luc passed through the open loft, following Grayson to the row of curtained makeshift rooms. Grayson shoved one curtain back on the rods and revealed the Alliance girl lain out on a cot, and Vander Burke crouched beside her.
“Vander?” Grayson said, entering the room. “Where is Ingrid?”
The Seer stood up, his eyes landing on Luc, then looking away. “I don’t know. We got separated after she electrocuted me.”
He took off his glasses. “I don’t know if it’s my mersian blood, but I don’t seem to be affected by Axia. Neither do you,” he said to Grayson. He turned back to the cot. “But what happened to Chelle?”
The right leg on her trousers had been torn up and bloodied; her face was covered with a sheen of sweat. She rolled her head side to side, murmuring nonsense. Grayson knelt by her side, grasping her hand and lifting it to his lips.
“Duster poison,” he answered. “And mercurite is useless on it.”
He looked back at Luc expectantly.
“Hold out your sword,” Luc ordered, and Grayson did so. Luc clasped the tip and pulled hard, slicing open his palm. He let the blood well up before reaching inside the ragged rip in the girl’s trousers and pressing his hand against her wound.
“You’re going to be all right,” Grayson whispered into her ear, bending his head against hers.
Luc felt a pang of sympathy for him. The girl—Chelle—looked mostly dead already. Her lips were dry and the color of bleached bone. Her eyes were screwed up tight in agony. The skin beneath Luc’s hand was searing hot, and the wound … he still felt the gash in her leg. It wasn’t healing.
“Grayson.” There was no easy way to tell him, so he just came out with it. “It’s not working.”
Grayson kept his head against Chelle’s. “No. It has to work. Try again, goddamn it!”
Luc removed his hand from Chelle’s leg. He stayed crouched by the cot.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. He really was.
Grayson said nothing. He only squeezed Chelle’s hand, his cheeks wet against her temple. Vander stood silently behind them.
Luc turned to him. “Where did you last see her?”
Vander put his spectacles back on. Luc noticed that his clothing was torn and blackened in spots. Probably from where Ingrid had electrocuted him.
“My room on rue de Berri,” he answered.
Luc grew cold, then scorching hot with the urge to destroy something. He swallowed the question of what Ingrid had been doing there.
“And Marco?” Luc asked.
The Seer glared at Luc. “He wasn’t with us,” he said slowly, each word stretched tight by frustration.
Voices entered the open loft outside the room. The telling chime pounded at the base of Luc’s skull.
“Hello? Is anyone here?”
Luc closed his eyes and exhaled at the sound of Ingrid’s voice.
“You might want to put something on,” Vander muttered before shouldering past Luc into the loft.
He dressed himself in jet scales before exiting through the curtains, his wings catching on the fabric as he entered the hallway. Seeing Ingrid in the Seer’s arms wasn’t ideal, but at least she was here and alive, and flanked by another massive gargoyle. Marco had kept his true form as well. He saw Luc and nodded his wolfish snout in greeting.
Then Ingrid, her cheek pressed against Vander’s shoulder, saw Luc. Her eyes went wide. Soot had streaked her cheeks and darkened her thick tumble of blond locks. Her mint-green dress had been dirtied to a deep myrtle, torn at one shoulder, and frayed at the hem. She had never looked more beautiful.
Ingrid pushed herself out of the Seer’s arms and ran down the short hallway toward Luc. Her face crumpled with a sob in the instant before she threw herself against the plated muscles of his chest. He caught her with his corded arms, trying to soften the collision before she bruised herself. She clung to him, her arms so slight he hardly felt them around his waist. Luc tensed his wings to bring them forward, and then he crossed them, folding Ingrid into a double embrace.
“I think I’ve hurt people,” she said, her voice small and muffled by the cage of his wings. “I don’t remember anything. There was a fire, and I think … I think it was me who set it.”
He wanted to grip her tighter, but he didn’t trust his talons. He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t her fault. That it didn’t matter. That she was safe now and that he’d keep her that way. She wouldn’t have understood any of it, though. He could hold her, but the wall between them was still there. It would always be there.
He let his wings down, revealing their embrace. Vander skewered Luc with a glare as he came back toward them and turned into the room where Chelle lay. Marco grunted and spoke, his screech making perfect sense, if only to Luc: You’re making things worse for yourself, brother. And for her.
His reply startled Ingrid, who flinched when his answering shrieks rumbled in his chest: Come what may, I’ve made my choice and she’s made hers.
He loosened his wings and arms, and Ingrid stepped back. She held Luc’s eyes. It was the only way to communicate right then.
“My God.” Vander’s voice drew her attention away. She pulled away from Luc and entered the curtained room, rushing to her brother’s side. He was still kneeling by the cot and had turned to Vander, who was staring at Chelle. She lay immobile, no longer thrashing and moaning. If not for the slight rise of her chest every few moments, Luc would have assumed she was dead.
“What is it?” Grayson asked.
Vander continued to stare at her. He reached out over Grayson’s head and combed his hand through the air above Chelle. “It’s dust. She’s started to give off dust.”
Gabby hadn’t returned to Waverly House after bringing Hugh Dupuis the case of angel blood. She, Nolan, and Rory had arrived on the Daicrypta’s Belgravia doorstep that morning and had made themselves comfortable in Hugh’s study. He had offered them refreshments while he and his assistants—he’d scoffed at calling them disciples the way his father had, as if they were simply followers of a godlike doyen—had accepted one pint of Ingrid’s blood and disappeared into his laboratory to commence work separating the blood and then testing it against the lodestone mixture used in his diffuser nets.
Gabby had paced endless circuits around the study, had sipped tea and nibbled on biscuits and cold sandwiches, and had even taken to inspecting Hugh’s bookshelves—a true testament to how deliriously bored she was. Rory and Nolan had spent the passing hours happily reclined in club chairs before the fire, or actually reading books, when Gabby had only enough interest to look at the cover and title page. Neither of them seemed at all anxious or pressed for time. She supposed they knew to reserve their energy for when it would truly be needed.
The noon hour waxed and waned, and later, when Gabby’s feet and back finally ached enough from pacing the room all day, she collapsed onto the sofa. The leather was fire-warmed and plush, and with the first golden-rum rays of sunset bleeding through the windows, she’d felt her eyes growing heavy. Nolan left his chair to ease himself down beside her. He’d spread a velvety blanket over her lap and Gabby had ignored propriety and relaxed against his side. She must have drifted off, for when she opened her eyes again, it was to darkness. The fire was the only light in the room, and Gabby was snuggling a pillow instead of Nolan.
Disorientated, she sat up and glanced about the study. The hidden door to the laboratory was cracked open, as was the door to the corridor. She was alone, and though a little bit of light spilled from the laboratory, it was quiet enough for the sparks and crackles from the logs in the hearth to sound like pistol shots. As Gabby swung her legs to the floor, she fought the puerile anger that something important had happened and no one had woken her.
She got up and had taken a step toward the laboratory door when a cold gust of wind blew against her ankles. She stopped. It had blown in from the corridor. She changed direction and went to the study door, where the chill increased. Wind licked at her shoulders and the crown of her head as she stepped into the corridor. Craning her neck, she saw that the skylight shaft, which cut through all three stories of Hugh’s home, had been levered open to a smoggy night sky. Air barreled down the shaft and snapped at Gabby’s cheeks and nose. The moonlight was just barely starting to cut through the brume when a pair of wings eclipsed the rectangular opening. Gabby leaped backward as a gargoyle shot down the wide shaft. She deserted her space on the checkered marble floor a heartbeat before a gargoyle like none she’d seen before landed in a crouch in front of her.
A mantle of amber fur covered its wings and body, though the coat wasn’t like anything she’d wish to pet. While Luc’s scales were flat against his body, this gargoyle’s fur stood up and out as spikes. Its arms, legs, and chest were brawny and intimidating, it talons long and hooked, just as any other gargoyle’s would be. Its face was what frightened her. This was no clownish chimpanzee face. This was the face of a vicious, angry ape: round, flaring nostrils; a dark, pronounced brow; and a grimace that exposed a mouthful of broad teeth and canines. This was Carver.
“I’m sorry I laughed at you earlier,” Gabby whispered to the enormous gargoyle, who was still staring down at her. “You’re not a monkey at all, are you?”
She expected him to reverse his shift right there in the corridor—Luc or Marco would have held no reservations about such a bodily display. However, Carver blew air out of his crumpled nostrils and stalked farther down the corridor in his true form, disappearing around a bend in the hallway.
Gabby let out her breath and decided against searching the rest of the dark house for Nolan or Rory. She returned to the study and headed for the papered-over door to the laboratory. She nudged the open door wider and slipped inside.
The room was brightly lit from the many bulbs dangling from the ceiling. Hugh Dupuis and Rory were speaking in hushed tones at the long center table. Neither of them had noticed her quiet entrance. They were occupied with a microscope and were sharing the eyepiece. The position had their ears brushing up against one another. While Rory needed to lean down to peer through the microscope, Hugh needed to use a stepstool.
Gabby parted her mouth to announce herself but stopped when Hugh shifted his head slightly, just enough for him to look sideways at Rory. The demon hunter’s shoulders stiffened, though he didn’t step away from the lens. He didn’t bark at Hugh for holding himself too close. Gabby’s head was still muddled from her nap, from finding herself alone, and then from the sight of Carver’s gargoyle form. This quiet scene with Rory and Hugh was also peculiar. It ended as quickly as a dream upon waking.
Rory noticed Gabby standing behind them and straightened his back. He moved away from the microscope.
“Feeling refreshed, Miss Waverly?” Hugh asked easily.
“Not exactly,” she said, unable to ignore the way Rory was looking over her head instead of at her.
“Well, you’ve joined us just in time,” Hugh replied.
“You’ve finished?” she asked. Hugh gestured for her to step forward and look through the eyepiece.
She approached the microscope. The knobs and dials were far too complex for her to instinctively know how to use them.
“Not quite. However, we have successfully magnetized any atypical blood cells from the sample,” Hugh said, guiding Gabby’s fingers to a knob. “Adjust the focus for your eyesight. There. Now, we studied the atypical cells and determined that they vary in structure and size. Using a lodestone composite, we were then able to divide the cells a second time. The demon cells attached themselves to the lodestone composite, while the other cells remained immobile.”
Gabby straightened her back and faced Hugh. “Other cells? You mean the angel blood? It didn’t work? Lodestone doesn’t magnetize it?”
Hugh cocked his head and again gestured for her to look through the microscope. Gabby did, but her stomach was already sinking, her hope growing cold. The focus came clear.
The magnification rendered the drop of blood in a Petri dish into hundreds of red, round pillows, all of which had a single indentation in the center. They bounced off one another, moving and shifting like they’d been caught in a current of water.
“These are human erythrocytes. Red blood cells,” Hugh explained before sliding out the Petri dish and replacing it with another. She tapped the focusing knob once more, and another sample of round red pillows came into focus. These did not have the indented centers; they had a silver dot in the center, like a pearl in the mouth of an oyster.
“And these?” she asked.
“That angels have cell structure amazes me,” Hugh said in answer. “That angels have the capacity to bleed amazes me further.”
So this was what angel blood looked like. They didn’t move about as the human cells had. The cells clung together in a single glob. Gabby wished to reach in and poke at the pillows of cells.
Something did enter the magnification field just then: Hugh inserted a long, thin needle, driving apart the glob of cells.
“Watch,” he instructed, then removed the needle. The cells that had been driven apart slapped back together instantly.
He forced the cells apart again with the thin needle, and then pulled the needle back once more. The cells rushed back into the glob, crashing into one another and staying put, as though they were huddling together against yet another invasion of the needle.
“Lodestone doesn’t attract angel cells,” Hugh said. “However …”
Gabby’s hand fell from the focus knob. “Angel cells attract to other angel cells.”
“Like draws to like,” Hugh said with a nod.
Gabby had nearly forgotten Rory’s presence behind them until he spoke. “Can ye make a net filled wi’ angel blood, then?”
“My assistants are already at the task,” Hugh answered.
It had worked. It had actually worked! They would have a weapon against Axia. They would have a way to stop her.
Gabby hopped in excitement, throwing her arms around Rory’s neck. He caught her and returned the embrace, her feet dangling in the air as he kicked up his feet and turned in a jig, swinging Gabby as she laughed.
“I go out for a walk, leaving the pair of you snoring, and I come back to revelry.”
Nolan stood in the doorway to the laboratory, his frock coat unbuttoned, his bowler hat in his hand.
Rory ceased his jig immediately and set Gabby back down.
“What have I missed?” Nolan asked.
“Only that Miss Waverly’s idea for a new diffuser net will be a reality within, oh”—Hugh took out his pocket watch—“twelve hours or so.”
Nolan shrugged out of his coat. “That’s a relief. I’m glad I won’t spend the rest of my life in an Alliance prison for nothing.”
The reminder of Nolan’s actions and the gravity of what his punishment for defying Directorate orders might be removed the smile from Gabby’s lips.
“Once the Directorate sees what this net can do, they’ll forgive you,” she said.
A wistful grin touched the corner of Nolan’s lips. He said nothing, though she could tell he thought her statement naïve.
“You heard Hugh,” she said. “It will be finished in twelve hours. We can return to Paris with it—”
“You are not going to Paris,” Nolan said, a finger pointed in her direction.
As if being interrupted weren’t enough to send a jolt of irritation through Gabby, Nolan had told her what to do. Her pulse jumped with a hot surge of defiance.
“I will do as I please, Nolan Quinn.”
He squared his shoulders and placed his hands on his hips, battle ready.
“A month’s time is about as significant as an hour for the Dispossessed. Do you really think they’ll have moved on from what you did to Lennier?”
Gabby clenched her fists, remembering her first encounter with this arrogant Scot. The way he’d challenged her had driven her mad. Despite the fact that she’d fallen in love with him, it seemed little else had changed.
“The gargoyles must know Axia’s return is imminent. Given the choice between two targets, I’m quite certain the gargoyles would focus on her and not me,” she said.
“You’re underestimating their world and their rules, Gabby. If you’re going to be Alliance, you have to start thinking like a hunter and not like prey.”
“I am thinking like a hunter, and my prey is Axia. You want me to be afraid. Tell me something—are good Alliance hunters afraid?”
“There’s a difference between bravery and stupidity.”
Gabby widened her eyes at the slap of insult just as Carver, in his human form, entered the laboratory. He looked pointedly at Hugh.
“I need to speak to you,” Carver said. The doyen made a short bow and followed his gargoyle into the study without question.
“Gabby’s got a point,” Rory said, continuing the argument once Carver and Hugh had exited the room. “And she isnae as defenseless as ye might think. She’s got decent skill wi’ a sword.”
The compliment buoyed Gabby, if only for a moment. Nolan turned toward his cousin and crossed his arms over his chest. He took his time assessing Rory. He lifted his chin and tipped his head just so.
“You’ve been training her.”
“Aye,” Rory answered, that one syllable drenched with challenge.
Nolan took a step forward. “Without my consent.”
I wanted to be the one to train you. Gabby recalled what Nolan had said to her after he’d figured out that Chelle had also given her a few lessons in demon hunting. He hadn’t been upset with Chelle, but right now he looked ready to draw the sword resting in his waist scabbard.
“She can fight,” Rory said, glossing over Nolan’s last statement. No, he hadn’t asked for his consent. That word refueled Gabby’s ire, and fast.
“And now, after a month of unauthorized training and her so-called decent skill, you’re all for tossing her to the gargoyles. What entertainment. We’ll just go along and see how well she does. I’ll pack the picnic,” Nolan bit off.
He’d closed in on Rory and now stood so close he had to look up in order to meet his cousin’s stony glare.
“Are you quite finished insulting me?” Gabby asked. “I don’t need your consent to train, Nolan, and while I’m certainly not under any illusion that I’m skilled enough to fight a gargoyle, I’d appreciate a little more faith.”
Nolan looked over his shoulder, then lowered his eyes to the floor. “I’m not trying to insult you. I’m trying to keep you safe.”
Safe as a porcelain bowl wrapped in cotton linen and boxed up. It would be a lie to say she didn’t want to feel safe, or that Nolan’s worry didn’t leave her feeling warm and even a bit precious. But it also left her feeling trapped, like an ornamental bird kept in a cage, its wings clipped.
“I can’t stay in London,” she said. “I should be in Paris. I should be with Ingrid and Grayson and Mama, and—” She stopped short of saying and you. Hugh and Carver had reentered the laboratory, and besides, Nolan was making her so furious she couldn’t bring herself to pay him a compliment.
Nolan ran a hand through his hair, scrubbing at his scalp. “I’m leaving.”
Hugh held up his hand. “If I might take a moment to—”
Nolan brushed past him, through the laboratory door and out of sight.
Hugh cleared his throat before turning toward Gabby and Rory instead. “Carver’s been out this evening. He brings a rumor that something is happening in Paris.”
Gabby tried to listen to Hugh, but her ears kept hold of the sound of Nolan’s steps fading through the study.
“In Paris?” she repeated, distracted by Nolan’s retreat into the hallway.
“What is it?” Rory asked.
“One of the Dispossessed here received a telegram,” Hugh began to explain, but Gabby got too bungled up in the comedic image of a gargoyle tapping at a telegraph with its talons and then the sound of the front door slamming to hear what Hugh said next.
He’ll come back, she told herself. He was just going out for another walk.
It was only then that she realized he might not come back. Was he leaving Hugh’s home—or leaving London altogether?
Without a word, Gabby started for the laboratory door. She’d been walking at first, but in the study she picked up her pace, driven by the sharp fear of losing Nolan again. Perhaps for good. He couldn’t go back to Paris. He was on the run from the Alliance. He could so easily slip away and stay away, and that thought had Gabby all-out running down the corridor toward the foyer. She couldn’t let him go. Gabby reached for the front door, her breath stuck in her lungs, and flung it wide with every intention of shouting Nolan’s name from the front steps for all of Belgrave Square to hear, if necessary.
It wasn’t.
Nolan hadn’t gone farther than the bottom step. By the steaming light of a gas lamppost, Gabby saw two burly men flanking Nolan with menacing closeness. Benjamin and Nadia, of the London Alliance, stood on the sidewalk in front of the steps.
“Miss Waverly,” Benjamin said, his greeting accompanied by an arched brow. It somehow managed to chastise her.
“What is going on?” she asked. Nolan turned and started to climb the few steps toward her. One of the burly men restrained him. Nolan glanced down at the sausage-link fingers clamped around his forearm.
“Release my arm immediately or you’ll be nursing five bloody stumps,” Nolan said, his voice soft yet murderous.
The man let him go and Nolan continued up the steps to Gabby’s side.
“We had a communication from the Paris faction yesterday,” Benjamin said. “Hans suspected Mr. Quinn might have fled to our city with something that doesn’t belong to him. Said if he did come here, he’d start by looking for you, Miss Waverly.”
Her breath came back to her, but only in little gasps. She stayed quiet, uncertain about what she should and should not say. Nolan was in trouble here. Real trouble. However, flicking her eyes up to see his face, she wouldn’t have known it. He wore his arrogant smirk as comfortably as he might an old hat.
“Where is the blood?” Nadia asked, her voice gruff. It went well with the men’s clothing she wore.
“What blood?” Nolan returned. He startled Gabby by taking her hand and threading his fingers through hers. “I’ve only come to London to make amends with my lady love.” He raised Gabby’s hand to his lips. She wasn’t wearing gloves, or one of her veiled hats, allowing Benjamin and Nadia and their two muscled goons to look fully upon her scars. Right then, for the first time, she realized she didn’t care. The scars were insignificant compared to what was at stake. Nolan had risked everything to come here: his name, his safety, his future. He’d followed his instinct and it had led him true. As he lowered her hand from his mouth, she had never admired him more.
“You choose to kiss and make up at the Daicrypta?” Nadia asked. “How romantic.”
“It’s private, at least. And protected,” Nolan replied, his fingers still twined with Gabby’s. He flashed one of his easy, charming smiles. “Just try to get inside. I don’t think you’ll have much success.”
Gabby had left the front door open, but looking back now, she saw Rory and Carver blocking the entrance.
“I’ll ask you one last time for the blood,” Benjamin said.
“And I’ll tell you one last time that I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Hugh appeared in the doorway, between Carver and Rory, and to Gabby’s surprise, his diminutive stature didn’t make him any less intimidating. Even his false smile appeared ominous.
“So many Alliance on my doorstep.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Why, this is even more enjoyable than carolers at Christmastime.” Hugh pouted. “However, I’m afraid I cannot extend you an invitation inside at the moment.”
Benjamin and Nadia’s men both started up the steps. Nolan released Gabby’s hand and took a step down.
“I doubt you came here solely for this blood you keep insisting I have.” Nolan held up a hand and extended it behind him, motioning for Carver and Rory to halt. They had come forward, ready to meet the two bruisers.
Benjamin shifted his weight, as if bored rather than irritated. “You’re coming with us, Mr. Quinn. Hans wants you back in Paris. Draw your weapon and I assure you, I’ll bypass Paris and take you straight to Rome instead.”
“No,” Gabby said. It slipped out like a plea. She descended to the same step as Nolan and took his arm. “Come back inside. Carver won’t let them in.”
She hadn’t wanted him to leave, and she certainly didn’t want him leaving like this. Not when she knew there was a very real chance—more real than even before—that she wouldn’t see him again.
Nolan pulled her into an embrace. He wrapped his arms around her waist, his mouth buried in her hair. She felt his breath warm her scalp when he spoke.
“I won’t hide behind a gargoyle.”
“Then I’m coming with you,” she said, even though she knew it might return them to their earlier argument about Paris and vengeful gargoyles.
It didn’t, however. Nolan only nuzzled her closer, dipping his mouth close to her ear and whispering so low that no one else would be able to make out his words.
“The net is more important, Gabby. Have Rory bring it to Paris as soon as it’s finished.” He pressed his lips to the skin just south of her earlobe and gripped her arms. “Stay with Hugh and Carver. I don’t want you in Paris. Do you hear me, lass?”
He pulled back until his morning-glory eyes found hers. He was waiting for a nod. She gave him one because she had heard him. She just didn’t plan to obey.
Nolan tugged her forward, kissing her forehead the same way he had the night in the rectory kitchen before she’d left for London. Only this wasn’t a cold, angry, or obligatory kiss. His hands came up to cup her cheeks, and as he let her go, he looked pained. Perhaps a little scared. He shook off the hand of one of the Alliance men and fell into step behind Benjamin and beside Nadia.
Nolan didn’t look back.