She knew the sound: the spring release of a crossbow.
Marco caged Ingrid with his arms and with unnatural speed pivoted her away from the stone steps. He moved with such swiftness that he drove the breath from her lungs and her vision blurred. Marco stumbled as something hit him, and with a grunt and a growl, he shoved Ingrid.
“Run,” he rasped. “Go!”
His thrust propelled Ingrid forward, but she stumbled to a halt, disobeying her gargoyle yet again. Had that man actually shot at them? She turned back toward the steps in time to see Marco’s human body erupt into true form. His butler’s uniform ripped apart at the seams as his spine cracked and lengthened, his legs grew and bulked with muscle, and a pair of massive wings unfurled out of his back. He flexed those wings, raising them into great sails, and shredded the last clinging remnants of his jacket. Ingrid stared at the dart embedded in Marco’s ribs.
Marco’s battle screech echoed off the quay wall as the stranger tossed his spent crossbow aside, drew a sword, and slashed it toward Marco’s enormous form. With one swipe of his talons, Marco sent the sword clattering to the ground. He raked his claws toward the man again with unrelenting ferocity. Ingrid swiveled around and squeezed her eyes shut, but she still heard it: the rip of flesh, a short squeal of agony. And then silence. An awful silence, slowly being pushed back by the pounding of her pulse and the burble of the swollen Seine.
Ingrid turned toward the quay steps, certain of what she would see. Marco’s wings drooped slightly as he twisted at the waist and wrenched out the embedded dart. The stranger lay on his side next to Marco’s long, spiked tail.
“Is he … is he dead?” Ingrid whispered. Marco couldn’t answer her while in gargoyle form, and he wouldn’t be shifting back into human form here, not with his clothes in tatters.
Instead, he threw the bloody dart and the man’s discarded sword and crossbow into the river. The current swallowed them. Marco scooped up the limp body with one arm. He then stalked toward Ingrid, fury powering every step. She pulled in a breath and held it as the eight-foot gargoyle, his wolfish face crumpled into a scowl, surged toward her. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her, but she’d never been more terrified of him.
Marco broke into a run. His wings snapped open and caught a gust of wind a mere second before he hooked her around the waist with his free arm. Ingrid slammed against his chest, and she clung to him as he lifted off the quay and into the low blue light of dawn.
CHAPTER TWO
The man wasn’t dead.
He’d groaned during the flight to H?tel Bastian, the rising sun nipping at Marco’s tail the whole way to rue de Sèvres. Marco had landed on the roof of the town house with such force that the Alliance member standing sentry had actually cried out. He’d recovered quickly and run inside to alert the others, leaving the door open, the invitation explicit: gargoyles were not often permitted inside H?tel Bastian, but this was obviously an exception.
The injured man hacked a wet cough as Marco shrugged him off his plated and scaled shoulder, dropping him carelessly on a steel table inside H?tel Bastian’s medical room. More blood leaked through his teeth and over his lips.
The gashes across his chest were fatal; of that Ingrid was certain. Marco’s talons had ripped a path from the man’s right collarbone to his left ribs, and with every heartbeat, blood rushed from the carved trenches, drenching his overcoat and shirt and—
Ingrid stared at the sash, wide as a cummerbund, wound around the man’s torso. Even soaked nearly black with blood, she could see what color it had originally been: bright crimson. The color of the Alliance.
Marco had brought them here, to Paris Alliance faction headquarters, for a reason.
Ingrid heard the thud of feet approaching the room and expected Marco to shift back to his human form. But he remained true and turned to face the door. The first person to rush in would meet with the sight of a gargoyle’s intimidating height, brawn, and fury.
This wasn’t the first time the Alliance had tried to kill her.
Nolan Quinn charged through the door of the medical room. He was occupied with tucking in the rumpled tails of his linen shirt and strode right by Marco without more than a swift glance of acknowledgment. The gargoyle emitted a snort of disappointment through his long, wolfish snout.
The man on the table gurgled on more blood, and Nolan swore under his breath. “What happened?”
“We were on the quay beneath the Pont de l’Alma—” Ingrid began.
“What demon did this?” Nolan barked as he threw open a cabinet door and pulled down a familiar black glass bottle.