“You need to leave. All of you. Now.”
Ingrid joined Vander at the window. She peered out just as stealthily, feeling Luc press up behind her for a glance as well. Four stories below, three conveyances had pulled to a stop directly in front of H?tel Bastian’s entrance. The carriages were surrounded by Alliance members, all of them armed. She spotted Hans among them. They were guarding the carriages, it seemed, and the dozen or more men climbing out of them and onto the curb.
“The Roman troops?” she guessed. A man wearing a bright red cape and hat appeared among those below.
“And the Directorate representative,” Vander said. He stepped away from the window and, crouching, pulled up the hem of his right trouser leg. He gripped the hilt of a knife strapped inside his boot and held it out to Ingrid. “You’re not safe here.”
Ingrid didn’t take the proffered blade. She’d had one in her reticule, but she’d lost the purse, along with one pair of her custom-made gloves and Luc’s stone talisman, when the hellhound had dragged her to the Underneath.
“All we have to do is tell them about your demon blood being able to subdue ours,” she said.
Vander stood up. “And if they don’t care? If they don’t listen or understand? They’re hunters, Ingrid, and they’ve got their orders. You need to go.”
“He’s right. Take the knife,” Luc told her, still at her back.
She didn’t want the knife! “Where are we supposed to go? We can’t keep running. There has to be something we can do.”
“We find Axia,” Grayson said. He’d gone back to Chelle’s side.
A low rumbling of feet and voices drifted from a few stories below.
“If she’s started her Harvest, that means she’s here. In human form. That’s why she consumed the blood of those girls back in December, right? To give herself a corporeal form,” Grayson explained as the bottom floors of H?tel Bastian came to life.
“One that can be harmed,” Ingrid said. Or better still, killed.
Vander’s patience snapped. He grasped her hand and forced the handle of the knife into her palm. He closed her fingers around it.
“Go. Go with Luc and Grayson and stay away from any Alliance, understand? There’s more mersian blood in my room on rue de Berri. Get to it in at least another day or so.”
She frowned at him. “You can’t stay here. You’re a Duster!”
“I’m Alliance,” Vander replied, then nodded toward the table where Chelle was lain out. “Besides, I can’t leave her.”
“Neither will I,” Grayson said. Ingrid spun toward him to protest, but he already had his poker face on and his hands up. “I’m not leaving her, Ingrid.”
She pursed her lips. Ingrid knew her brother, and she knew when he’d made up his mind to see something through. Besides, she had a strong feeling that her brother had fallen in love.
More voices, the scraping of furniture, the slam of a door.
“What will they do to you?” she asked Vander.
“Get her out of here, Luc,” he said, ignoring her question. “Avoid the roof. There will already be a few fighters stationed there. Go down the hall, to the last room on the right. There’s a balcony.”
Luc took her elbow and dragged her from the room, Ingrid craning her neck to see her brother and Vander before the door shut. They ran down the hall to the room with the balcony, just as Vander had instructed. Luc threw open the doors and tugged Ingrid against his chest. He swung one leg over the wrought-iron rail.
She froze, staring down at the four-story drop. “Wait—aren’t you going to shift?”
He lifted her to sit on the rail, her legs dangling over the edge. He held her steady, and she didn’t even consider being afraid.
“I’m not planning on flying anywhere,” he said as he hooked her legs with his arm and cradled her against his chest. He brought his anchoring leg over and then they were falling. The wind rushed up her nostrils and through her hair; a scream lodged like a stone in her throat. Luc hit the pavement below. His legs, like oiled springs, sank into a smooth, graceful crouch before bounding back up again. Ingrid’s stomach swam somewhere around her ankles.
“We’ll be less visible on foot,” Luc said, inclining his head toward hers. “Are you able to walk?”
She licked her lips and nodded. He let her down, but she continued to gaze up at him.
“How did you do that?”
His lopsided smile made her forget the ground beneath her feet. “Not human, remember?”
He kept her hand in his as they ran along the alleyway, away from the main road. They reached the next block and Luc turned right. Ingrid looked left, toward the abbey and rectory.
“We’re not going home?” she asked, forgetting for the moment that he no longer called it that.
“It will be the first place the Roman troops go,” he answered.
She thought of Marco and what he would do to any Alliance fighters who showed up searching for her.