Luc lifted the bridge of one wing and touched Brickton’s flaccid cheek with the arrowed tip.
“I want you to leave Paris,” Luc answered.
He flexed his long, rigid talons, wet cement turning to tidal clay.
“I will, I will,” Brickton said, voice reedy with desperation. “I promise, I’ll take my family and—”
“Your family stays,” Luc said. “You leave. Forever.”
Brickton gargled an objection. “They will come with me. I cannot possibly leave them—”
“They stay in Paris, or you stay right here.”
This time Ingrid’s father swallowed his argument. He closed his eyes and nodded.
Luc sheared through the ropes that bound Brickton’s wrists and ankles.
“Go,” he snarled. Brickton didn’t waste a moment. He sprang from the chair and stumbled forward, arms outstretched to guide him through the darkness.
A muffled crash from somewhere else on the basement level drew Luc’s attention from his human’s staggered escape. He didn’t know how far the man would get, but that wasn’t his concern just then. Dimitrie was. Again Luc called up Ingrid’s scent. Reflex. Habit. Again, he was left hollow.
A scream followed the crash, and he lurched toward the door, the chime at the base of his skull driving him into motion. Luc pulled at the trigger in his core to coalesce, but he stayed disfigured, half gargoyle, half human, as he trudged through the corridor toward the pandemonium.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Chelle stood just outside the Daicrypta gates. The mansion was barely visible behind the immense brick wall enclosing the grounds, which ran the full length of the block. Scores of trees grew in a straight row behind the wall, acting as a second barrier to curious eyes. Grayson watched her pace the sidewalk for close to a minute. She’d bounce up onto the balls of her feet, turn, walk, bounce up restlessly, then turn and do it all over again.
Grayson hadn’t meant to take so long, but he’d been stuck in that side alley for longer than he’d expected. Letting his human form go and changing into his hellhound one had been easy. Natural, even. It was changing back that had proven difficult, especially with two hellhounds at his side. It seemed that his body wanted to stay in harmony with theirs.
Grayson had managed, though, and he’d kept it that way as he’d walked up the hills of Montmartre, the hellhounds following him through a circuitous route of alleys, roofs, and park squares. He held himself in, keeping his muscles tight, imagining his bones as immovable iron. Staying human had taken so much of the last hour’s focus that when he crossed the dark street toward Chelle, he still hadn’t quite worked out how the two hellhounds concealed in the shadows behind him were going to be useful.
“Where’ve ye been?”
Rory appeared at Grayson’s side with phantom grace.
“I’ll tell you if you promise to keep your hands off that silver,” Grayson answered.
Chelle hurried toward him. “I started to think something had happened.”
She looked and sounded furious, and when she came to a stop just beneath his chin, he knew better than to try to touch her.
“Where are Lennier and Yann?” Grayson asked, searching the sky and the roofs of nearby homes.
“Gone. Why?” Chelle stared up at him, her nose crinkling. “What happened? You smell like …”
Like a hellhound. She could smell it on him.
“I’ve brought two hellhounds with me,” Grayson said. “They’re under my command.”
Chelle pulled back and the hira-shuriken came out, two flashes of silver in her skilled hands.
“What have you done?” she whispered.
“Trust me, Chelle. They aren’t going to attack,” he answered, and letting out all his breath, summoned the hounds forward with a single thought: Come.
He didn’t need to look to know they were there. Chelle’s squint softened and her eyes grew round and alert. Rory came flush against her side, a knife in each hand. At least the gargoyles weren’t there. Grayson wouldn’t have been able to convince them not to attack.
“We can use them,” he said, though it was difficult to speak and hold himself together at the same time.
“Call them off,” Rory ordered, his vigilant eyes never wavering from the hellhounds slinking up behind Grayson.
Stay, he thought, and in the next second Rory’s brows slanted down in surprise. The hounds had lowered themselves to the paving stones.
“They won’t hurt you,” Grayson said, hoping he was right. He’d led these beasts here. To Chelle. If anything happened to her … if he failed …
“How are you doing this?” she asked, eyes flicking from Grayson’s face to the hounds behind him.
“I don’t know, really, and I don’t know how long it will last, but I’m going in.”
Chelle shook her head. “Nolan and Vander have already gone after Ingrid, along with your stubborn little sister. Stay here with us—and send them away,” she said with a glance at the hellhounds.