“Luc! Lower!” she cried out, but again, ate her own words as wind filled her throat. She tucked her head to keep the icy mist from pelting her eyes.
The same fast, debilitating dizzy spell had come over her in the profane cemetery lot. The mimic demon had been latching on to her. Burrowing through her memories.
The mimic?
Luc’s arms went slack.
Ingrid gargled a scream as her whole body swung down, perpendicular to the ground, far, far below. Her fingers dug for purchase on the shalelike scales. The mist had made them slick, though, and he slipped out from under her hands.
It isn’t Luc was the absurd thought floundering through her mind as she fell. It was the mimic. It had finished playing with her. Now it was time for her to die.
Weightlessness felt strange. As if the sky were both pushing her down and sucking her back up at the same time. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t even scream. The wind blew the pins and combs from her hair as fingers of wind rotated her body in the sky. Her cloak flapped like useless wings at her sides.
She wouldn’t see Luc again. She’d be dead and he would still be a gargoyle and how could this be happening? Ingrid rushed to grab hold of his image—she only had a few seconds left to think of it. It wasn’t his human form that slid into her mind, though. Not the raven hair and soft warm skin, but his tempered-steel scales, the brawn of his chest, the magnificent spread of jet wings. That was the Luc she wanted to cling to.
The front of Ingrid’s body slammed hard against an unforgiving surface, driving the air straight out of her lungs. The strike hadn’t hurt half as much as she thought it would, and her body undulated as it might upon a wave. She dragged in a rough gasp and—she was still breathing.
Opening her eyes, she saw the Paris skyline scrolling by underneath her and the scaled body of the gargoyle she’d crashed into. Marco! She lay prostrate along the knuckled ridge of his back, his russet wings stroking the air at her sides. They enclosed her in a safe embrace on each upward stroke. She wound her arms around his neck and straddled him, digging in with her knees until her muscles shook. Ingrid buried her face in his coarse scales.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she sobbed, and was answered with a shriek that vibrated through his back.
Ingrid had only just evened out her breathing when Marco dove into a sharp slant. The peaked roof of a palatial old mansion rushed at them, along with a brightly lit circular drive. Marco shifted his weight, throwing down his legs and landing on the drive with startling finesse.
Ingrid fell off his back without an ounce of grace. She landed on her rump and stayed there. The stillness of solid ground was glorious.
“Lady Ingrid.”
Nolan’s father ended her reprieve. He stood within the open front door of a medieval-looking estate. Ingrid remained where she was, her legs too rubbery to attempt standing. He came into the courtyard, his eyes fixed on her. “I feared you would not come,” he said, and for a moment he did look afraid. Afraid and relieved at once.
“You,” Ingrid said. A spark of electric static fired through her shoulders. Her arms and legs—her whole body—were so wet and cold that the burn of the sudden flare hurt. Just as it had hurt that time on Constantine’s grounds when she’d been sprawled in the snow, and again, in the sewers. Ingrid gasped as more sparks lit and fired underneath her skin.
“Where is my father?” she asked, wobbling to her feet.
Carrick raised his palms to her in a gesture of peace. “He is uninjured. The severed finger came from a test corpse. The intended effect seems to have been achieved, however, for here you are.”
Ingrid stepped in front of Marco. He blew a shot of steam from his wolfish nose and stayed close behind her.
“You’re a traitor to the Alliance,” she said.
Carrick blinked twice at the accusation.
“I cannot argue. I went against my vows. Everything I hold sacred.” Carrick Quinn, though taller and rounder than Nolan, still had his son’s easy swagger. He came toward Ingrid. The gas jets hinged to the fa?ade of the mansion threw half his face into shadows. “And you should be grateful that I have, Lady Ingrid, because the Alliance very much wants you dead.”
It was inevitable. Grayson had known it that morning when he’d been standing on the roof of H?tel Bastian, listening to Ingrid insist she sacrifice herself for their bastard of a father. Grayson’s temperature had catapulted, his pulse had gone full tilt, and even though he’d fought it off all day, a part of him had known he wouldn’t win.
He was going to shift.
Standing along rue de Clichy, in the slim alley between two apartment buildings, waiting for Constantine’s brougham to clatter by, Grayson knew his time had run out.