She had come for the Dusters. She was here. This was her bedlam.
Ingrid crawled toward the sounds of screaming, the blare of whistles and bells. The smoke seemed to lift a little, and she saw that she’d crawled into an enormous room. Light streamed through the billows of smoke. There were windows ahead. A whole wall of them. Her eyes stung and her vision blurred, but she still spotted a door on the far right-hand side of the ballroom. Hope that it might lead to a terrace drove her to her feet. She hurried to the door and clutched the handle but had to sink back down to the floor to drag in a breath.
Ingrid fumbled with the handle, pushing and pulling and then falling out onto the terrace when the door at last gave way. She collapsed, gasping fresh air, hearing the wails of sirens and bells, and panicked shouting from the street below.
A pair of talons landed on the terrace beside her. Marco sank into a crouch by her side, his cinnamon-red scales and amber wings fiery in the afternoon sunlight. He’d flown in daylight? Exposed his gargoyle form to humans all over Paris?
Things were bad. Cataclysmically bad.
His arm, bricked with muscle, scooped Ingrid up off the cold stone.
“It’s Axia,” Ingrid croaked as Marco tucked her close to the plates of his chest. Her throat and eyes burned from all the smoke. “She’s here.”
He lunged off the edge of the terrace and Ingrid caught an unsteady, tear-hazed sight of the street below. Rue de l’Opéra in flames; fire leaping from windows and punching through roofs; carriages overturned in the middle of the street, their hitched horses bucking as hellhounds feasted on their flesh. A gunshot cracked through the pandemonium and Marco rose higher into the air, his wings beating through the black curls of smoke, taking them away from the maelstrom below. But there was no escaping it, she knew. No safe place. Axia’s Harvest had begun.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Luc darted higher into the sky in an attempt to get the demon stink out of his nose. They were everywhere, out in full view of humans, laying down a path of destruction and blood. Luc had spent the last hour on the roof of his territory watching and listening with rising dread as the city erupted into turmoil street by street. He’d stayed in human form, even though no fewer than twenty Dispossessed had soared over common grounds in broad daylight.
Their passing shrieks had conveyed the news that fissures had turned into geysers spewing Underneath demons. When more than one gargoyle had screeched down at Luc, reporting that Duster abominations were banding with the demons, Luc had risen to his feet. The worn clay tiles had shifted under his weight as he’d undressed.
Their world, their boundaries, their time living in the dark, had reached an end. Luc had shed his clothes and then his skin while humans on the street below watched and screamed. He’d launched himself from the roof, leaving his territory, thankfully vacant of any humans taking refuge from the waking nightmare unfolding in the streets. He had to find Ingrid. If she’d somehow turned into Axia’s pawn and joined the demons roaming Paris … Luc didn’t know what he would find, but whatever it was, Ingrid would need him.
When he’d reached the abbey and rectory, it had been completely quiet. The chime at the base of Luc’s skull had not come. If Marco wasn’t there, neither was Ingrid. Lady Brickton, if home, would at least be safe from demons, Luc thought as he’d wheeled in the air and headed for the only other place he knew Ingrid might flee: H?tel Bastian.
He flew through a cloud of black smoke, a fire having engulfed a row of homes along rue Saint-Sulpice. He felt the heat of the flames and flew faster, clearing the smoke cloud and angling toward the ground. Though rank, the air there would be easier to breathe.
The streets had started to empty. He figured the panicked humans were seeking shelter indoors, and as he flew at rooftop level, he saw that most windows and balcony doors had been closed and shuttered. If only those shutters had been made of blessed silver.
He skewed left and turned onto rue de Sèvres. Except for a handful of people a quarter mile down, the wide boulevard had been abandoned. Four uniformed gendarmes were skirmishing with an appendius demon, and closer, a lone man was brandishing his sword at a hellhound, its fangs painted crimson. Luc could only see the man’s back, but he knew who it was. He never forgot a human charge.