Gabby heard Carrick laboring for breath and felt a pang of worry. Her father. She had to find him, too, but Ingrid needed her more. In another few seconds she, Marco, and Vander would be able to squeeze through the gap and go after her. Traitor or not, she knew Nolan wouldn’t leave his father’s side.
“I can’t locate your sister,” Marco said, the muscles in his upper body cording as he heaved aside the slab door. “She accepted a room here and is Dimitrie’s human now.”
Vander slid in front of Gabby and helped push the slab with both hands, though Gabby was certain Marco didn’t require the added strength.
“We’ll find her,” he said, and finally, the gap was wide enough for them to go through.
“Nolan?” Léon called, his voice distracting Gabby before she could step inside the tunnel. There was a muffled silence out in the corridor. “There is something coming.”
Ingrid’s head jerked to the side. The fast creaking of wheels and the rocking motion of her body nearly lulled her back into the swirly black fog. Until she remembered.
Dupuis.
Ingrid wrenched herself to consciousness. She was on her back, moving through the dark. She turned her face away as a glaring lightbulb flashed overhead. She tried to sit up and realized in a sudden panic that she couldn’t. Dupuis had her restrained on a gurney. Leather straps buckled each wrist, thigh, and ankle, as well as the width of her chest. Cinched tight, her legs had gone numb. Her wrists ached.
But it was still there. The barest electrical current swarmed at the tip of each finger.
“I do wish you had not chosen to be so defiant.”
Dupuis’s voice came from near the crown of her head. He was behind her, pushing the gurney, and he sounded a touch breathless.
“Did you plan to have those silly Alliance friends of yours rush in at the last minute to rescue you?” Dupuis chuckled.
His breath wafted over her face. Paired with the musty, water-on-rock odor of the corridor they were winding through, it made Ingrid fight back a gag.
“Where are you taking me?” She wriggled her fingers. It wasn’t enough of an electric current. This was a languid Thames, whereas she needed Victoria Falls.
“Did you know, my lady, that we have spent decades draining the blood of demons? The discovery of demon-blooded humans such as yourself prompted us to develop mechanisms that would make the process far less lethal.” Dupuis took the gurney around a sharp bend. The metal frame scraped the wall.
“It is unfortunate that we have now been driven from those mechanisms. They might have spared your life. We do, however, maintain our original machinery.”
He was still going to drain her blood.
“Now I will have to take it all and separate it later,” he explained with the same sort of sigh a maid might give upon finding a just-cleaned floor dirty again.
“You were never going to destroy it,” she said, her voice shaking as the wheels traveled over uneven floor.
They were underneath the estate, in some twisting tunnel. Wherever they were going, Ingrid dreaded their arrival.
“Destroy it? No,” he said, amused. “It will be the Daicrypta’s most valuable leverage.”
They passed underneath another glaring bulb. Ingrid winced and felt the pressure in her hands build.
“Your blood can do the one thing the Alliance wishes it could do,” Dupuis went on. “They have their mercurite weapons and their dreams of regulations, but you saw your gargoyle back there—the threat of mercurite did not stop him from trying to help you. Gargoyles will never adhere to Alliance regulations unless they are forced to.”
Ingrid wriggled her fingers, remembering the courtyard at H?tel du Maurier and the way she’d forced Vincent to submit. With her blood, the Alliance could control the Dispossessed?
“We have the technology to proliferate blood samples in the laboratory, you see,” Dupuis went on excitedly. “One or two liters of blood can become hundreds of liters, possibly thousands. Enough for every Alliance fighter. Can you not imagine what the Directorate would be willing to give for such power?”
Perhaps the Directorate would want it, though Ingrid couldn’t imagine those she knew, like Vander, Nolan, or Chelle, giving themselves angelic powers.
Dupuis rolled the gurney under another humming bulb, and Ingrid, instead of wincing, purposefully stared into the white glass as it rushed overhead. New static swelled within her arms.
“But these are details you need not worry yourself over,” Dupuis said dismissively.
Because she was going to die. There was no one coming for her now.
Dimitrie was her gargoyle, but he wasn’t going to help her. Marco had a mercurite dart in his spine, and if Luc was being held in mercurite as well …
The only person who could save her was her.
Another bend in the corridor and the metal rim of the gurney nicked the wall again. The friction threw off a spark. They passed another lightbulb and the slender bones in each of her fingers ached with another gradient of pressure.
Electricity begets electricity, Constantine had once said. She could absorb an electric current and let it fuel her own.