“I’m sorry,” she said, stepping away. “Are you injured?”
Marco frowned and smoothed the merino where she’d clutched it. “A sniffling human does little more than fray my nerves.”
“I meant did Axia hurt you very much?” Ingrid said, listening to the landing above for Vander’s approach. How was she going to face him?
“She’s caused a bit of a problem for me,” Marco conceded as they stepped into the foyer.
Ingrid allowed Marco to drape her cloak over her shoulders. “For all of us. Are you coming to Clos du Vie?” she asked.
“Do I have a choice?” he retorted.
He didn’t. None of them did. Axia held sway over them all, or so it seemed. Ingrid could only hope that Nolan had been right: that they had a way to stop her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Getting to Vander’s flat on rue de Berri hadn’t been easy. Grayson had gone on foot, preferring to have the freedom of ducking into a building or the mouth of an alleyway whenever he might require it. The only demons he’d crossed paths with had been corvites. There had been one on every street he’d traversed so far, and he had started to wonder if it was in fact only one bird, following him, landing atop a fence or hitching post or standing in the center of the street. Its red-rimmed pupils would watch him intently as he moved past, toward his next turn.
He hoped this was the case. They were Axia’s messengers, and he wanted a specific message delivered. Grayson had forced himself to maintain eye contact with the demon bird, even though the corvite’s stare left an oily feeling in his stomach.
Demons weren’t the only danger on the streets, either. Grayson had encountered three different gangs of looters, smashing storefront windows, swinging off lampposts, climbing to upper-story balconies to wrench shutters open and kick in doors. For the last year or so he’d been hearing nervous chatter about some priest’s prophecy that the new century would bring on a doomsday event. The end of the world, an apocalypse. Religious fanatics everywhere had latched on to the idea. Perhaps the prediction had been on the mark after all, Grayson had considered as he’d jogged up the Champs élysées, the wide boulevard eerily empty and quiet. Perhaps people had the right to go a little mad now that hellish demons had started feeding on humans in plain sight.
Grayson had found the vials of mersian blood, labeled in Vander’s precise, slanted script, and the injection kit in his room. He’d filled the glass barrel with a dose of blood and emptied it into his own vein. He couldn’t risk Axia’s next beckoning. She’d sent out two waves of attacks thus far, each one lasting just about an hour. Axia had told him that her hellhounds couldn’t remain on the Earth’s surface for long stretches of time—Earth being as toxic to them as demon poison was to a human. Perhaps that was the reason behind the short bursts of attacks. The actual duration didn’t matter; the hounds had still had enough time to cause damage and instill fear.
Grayson had filled the barrel again and then pocketed the needle and syringe and five eight-milliliter vials of blood. If only Chelle’s blood had been compatible with Vander’s. It would have been nice to have her here, at his side. If it was weak of him to admit that Chelle’s skill set gave him a certain peace of mind, well then, so be it. But he would have to do this on his own, and another part of him was glad she was locked in a cellar on rue de Sèvres.
He left Vander’s apartment building, his mind focused on the contents of his pockets: the blood and one of Vander’s blessed silver daggers. His entire weapons cache to take down the most powerful being on the planet fit in his two trouser pockets. Grayson laughed. This plan of his was crazy and desperate and far too malleable. He needed to find Axia, and yet if he succeeded, he would place himself within her reach. It could work. Or he could wind up dead.
Another gang of looters caught his attention across rue de Berri. They were looking directly at him. Grayson held up his hands as he walked, as if to say Go on about your business. They followed him, though, and their quiet procession sent the hairs along the back of his neck prickling. A glance over his shoulder showed that there weren’t just men. Two girls, oddly enough in fashionable tea gowns, were part of the group as well. They were all young, no older than twenty, and they looked terrified.
Grayson stopped walking, one foot off the curb and in the street. He kept his hands in the deep coves of his pockets, his fingers rubbing the smooth curves of the needle’s plunger and the handle of the dagger. The others stopped walking as well. He knew what they were.
“You’re Dusters,” he said.