“There is no room for mistakes. If any Alliance harmed an innocent human, we would turn ourselves over to the Directorate for punishment.”
The noble thing to do, Grayson thought. Unlike him, who’d ripped apart a girl, apparently with his teeth, and had been running ever since. He hadn’t even known her name. If Chelle knew what he’d done … He let out a joyless laugh.
“What is so funny?” Chelle asked.
Grayson’s next step faltered. His hands, tucked deep into his trouser pockets, balled into fists as an odor wafted under his nose. It was smoky and sweet, and he shivered uncontrollably.
“Grayson?” Chelle stopped. “What is it?”
Walking had relieved the soreness of his muscles and bones, but now they seized again, the pain immediate and fierce. The scent grew stronger, and with an awareness rushing up his spine, Grayson understood what it was.
“Hellhound,” he rasped. His muscles had coiled so tightly he could barely breathe.
Chelle’s hand flew to her sash. She pulled out a throwing star and crouched into a defensive position. Her nose wrinkled as if she’d just smelled the inside of a latrine.
A shadow moved up ahead. Two red eyes flickered and flared, as if someone had just run a lit match over wicks. The hellhound slinked toward them, its greasy, shaggy fur taking shape out of the darkness.
“Stay back,” Chelle said. Grayson didn’t know if the order was for him or the hellhound. He couldn’t have moved even if he’d wanted to. Every bone in his body, from his tibias to his skull, stretched and pulled until he was certain they would all splinter into dust, leaving him a writhing mass of burning skin and muscle. He doubled over and ground his teeth.
“Grayson!” Chelle’s cry of alarm brought his head up.
The hellhound was in front of him. Their eyes did more than just meet. The circles of fire latched on to Grayson’s eyes and dug in; they made him focus. They seemed to pull everything that was inside of him forward, away from his quivering body.
For a moment the pain was gone. And with one shattering quake, Grayson was gone, too.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ingrid sipped her punch in the corner of an apartment on rue Bonaparte. The place was stifling. At least two dozen people milled about in shuffling half steps throughout a scant three-room apartment. The walls were covered from ceiling to baseboard with oil paintings, some canvases still fresh. It was all enough to make Ingrid’s temples throb. She lifted her cup to her lips again and accidentally elbowed an older gentleman who had sidled up beside her. He grinned forgivingly before saying, “It speaks of my youth.” He nodded toward the canvas that hung in front of them both.
Ingrid hadn’t yet looked up at the oil painting, and when she did, she wished she hadn’t. It showed a woman at the beach. She was taking tentative steps into frothy seawater. And she was nude. How on earth could this remind him of his youth? Ingrid smiled dumbly and fluttered her lashes. Appearing dimwitted was but a small sacrifice to avoid the man’s attempt to discuss the artist’s oeuvre, which seemed to focus on the nude female body.
Ingrid knew it was art. She knew better than to blush and appear scandalized. But if she had to look at one more dimpled buttock or fleshy thigh, she thought she might chuck her punch at the nearest canvas.
The man moved away a moment later, and Gabby slid into his place.
“Dreadful,” she whispered.
“How many interpretations of a woman’s rump must we be subjected to?” Ingrid whispered back.
Meeting artists had to be one of the most tedious elements of preparing for her mother’s gallery debut. This was the third such salon this month, and while Gabby and Mama seemed to enjoy them, Ingrid wished to be anywhere else. None of it felt real anymore. Whenever she was out, she couldn’t stop herself from glancing around and noting that, most likely, no one else present had demon blood in them. They didn’t know about Luc’s kind or the Alliance or the Angelic Order. She held these secrets with a kind of reverence, and the weight of them felt more real and significant than any salon or social gathering could possibly be.
“We certainly have an endless bounty of bare rumps here to admire,” Gabby murmured into her punch before taking a sip. Her thick, dark plum veil hung diagonally across her face, as did the veils on all of her hats, exposing just one of her smoky quartz eyes, fringed by dark lashes.
Ingrid had heard all about what happened during the visit to the surgeon, including Gabby’s foray into the morgue, Nolan’s drawing the blood of a dead Duster, and Gabby’s successful slaying of a corpse demon. Gabby had only wanted to discuss those things; Ingrid’s mind, however, had stuck to how thoughtless their father had been.