“Mercurite won’t help. He doesn’t have demon poison in him,” Ingrid said. Nolan slammed the cabinet door and spun toward her.
Gabby had once told Ingrid how much she adored Nolan’s eyes, as bright as a morning glory and as sharp as one of the Alliance’s blessed silver blades. Ingrid, however, squirmed beneath them now. He shifted his glare toward the gargoyle standing behind her.
“Marco had no choice. This man tried to kill us.”
Nolan lifted his chin and the anger drained from his face. He set down the bottle of mercurite and approached the table. Nolan inspected the wounds but didn’t attempt to staunch the bleeding. Ingrid figured he knew a dead man when he saw one.
“What is your name?” Nolan asked him. “Who sent you?”
Another Alliance member rushed into the medical room, giving Marco his desired reaction. Hans, the new faction leader in Paris, pulled up short and stumbled past the pair of half-open wings. Finally satisfied, Marco crumbled from his true form. His wings pleated and sank into his back, his barrel chest and hulking thighs slimmed, and his slate scales disappeared beneath dark olive skin.
Ingrid turned aside. It was startling how accustomed she’d become to naked men waltzing about. She’d long lost any desire to peek.
“Why does his name matter? He’ll be dead in less than a minute,” Marco said, joining the conversation now that his vocal cords allowed him to speak instead of screech. “He attempted to kill Lady Ingrid and he is Alliance. What your father told us was true, and this proves it.”
The man jerked and arched his back. He hissed a long, reedy death rattle, and then his spine hit the table.
Marco grunted. “He shouldn’t have lasted this long. It’s not good for my ego.”
Hans moved to Nolan’s side and frowned, causing two deep creases to bracket the space between his eyebrows.
“Are you certain he tried to kill you, Miss Waverly?” Hans asked.
After Carrick Quinn, Nolan’s father, had died in the jaws of a hellhound, Hans had come up from Rome and taken command of the faction. So far, he’d been quiet and unsmiling the few times he and Ingrid had met.
“Does the wound in my back look like a paper cut from when he shot an invitation to tea from his crossbow?” Marco growled.
Ingrid squeezed her eyes shut. Marco’s quick temper would not help things. A lot had changed within the last month. Nolan and the others had put up with Luc’s presence from time to time, but ever since Ingrid’s sister had accidentally killed the Dispossessed elder there had been a complete breakdown between the gargoyles and the Alliance. The tenuous accord Lennier had nurtured between the two groups for centuries had all but shattered.
“Enough,” Hans said in his soft yet authoritative voice. He had his eyes on the crimson sash. “Were there any witnesses?”
Ingrid hadn’t yet decided whether she liked Hans. She hadn’t liked Carrick, and for good reason—the man had released a mimic demon and given it orders to attach itself to her, torment her, and ultimately, kill her. He and the rest of the Directorate had agreed that the sacrifice of one human was acceptable if it meant that Axia could never reclaim her angel blood and set her Harvest in motion. They had no more of a clue about what Axia’s exact plans were than Ingrid or anyone else, but they had decided that the safest route would be to spill Ingrid’s blood and never find out.
Nolan’s father had tried to redeem himself in the end by going against Directorate orders and attempting to save Ingrid’s life. Clearly it had worked. Here she stood, still alive. However, Carrick had told her flat out not to trust anyone from the Directorate. Hans wasn’t a part of the Directorate, though he did have their ear.
“No,” Ingrid answered. She hadn’t seen anyone else on the quay, and she hoped no passersby had witnessed Marco’s transformation or the brutal killing. If they had, the poor wretches would likely have nightmares for the rest of their lives.
The door to the medical room winged open once more, and the only female Alliance hunter in Paris strode in, her cropped black hair wildly mussed and flattened on one side, presumably from a bed pillow. Chelle stood at least a head shorter than Ingrid, her petite frame drowning in a baggy shirtwaist and wide-legged canvas trousers. As if her eccentric clothing required one last detail to top it off, she was also barefoot.
Chelle approached the body without hesitation. No one needed to tell her what had happened. It was all there for her to piece together: The red sash. The deep slashes delivered by a set of talons.
“Well, has anyone looked yet?” she asked.
Ingrid frowned. “Looked for what?”