Luc bristled and surged up against Vincent’s chest. He had never felt so murderous. “Touch her and I will rip out your heart.”
Vincent laughed as he stepped into the hallway. “Ripping out hearts seems to be Marco’s job, not yours.” Seeing the confusion on Luc’s face, Vincent chuckled again. “Or haven’t you heard? Your lovely demon-blooded human was set upon by an Alliance assassin this morning. Oh, but you can’t feel her anymore, can you?”
Luc slammed the door in Vincent’s face.
The moment he’d been severed from Ingrid, Luc lost the ability to surface her soft scent of sweet spring grass and earthy black soil. The absence of it had torn a gaping hole in his gut. Not being able to protect her, to even be near her, kept that hole yawning wider and wider with every passing day.
At least Ingrid was safe. No thanks to him, but he supposed it shouldn’t matter. If the Alliance still had their crosshairs on Ingrid, she needed Marco.
Luc couldn’t protect her any longer, but perhaps there was a way he could stop gargoyles like Vincent. But to actually become elder? To attempt to take Lennier’s place and command the respect and loyalty of hundreds of Dispossessed?
Luc turned to face the cold hearth. He wanted his abbey back. He wanted Ingrid back.
Not this.
The demon hunter walked a tight circle around Grayson Waverly, so close that Grayson felt the hunter’s shirtsleeve graze his own. Grayson stood completely still with his hands at his sides. He raised his eyes toward the ceiling.
“This will never not be awkward,” he muttered. “Will it?”
Vander Burke made another slow rotation, his attention fastened on something Grayson couldn’t see: demon dust. According to Vander, the dust hovered in the air around Grayson’s body at all times. It curled behind him when he walked, leaving a glittering trail in his wake. Like that of all other hellhound Dusters, Grayson’s dust was deep scarlet. The color of a hellhound’s eyes. The color of the thing Grayson most desired.
“I suspect I come out of these meetings slightly more uncomfortable than you,” Vander said as he moved past Grayson’s shoulder and out of sight.
Grayson closed his eyes and cursed himself. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Thank you, Vander.”
The demon hunter said nothing as he came back around into Grayson’s line of vision, then stepped away.
“There.” Vander held out his arms. “That should take care of you for a day or so.”
Grayson ran his hands down the front of his shirt. Already he was breathing easier. He had arrived in Vander’s small room on rue de Berri, adjacent to the American Church’s sanctuary, where Vander had been studying a quarter of an hour before. Grayson’s muscles had been aching, his skin itching, and the scent of Vander’s blood had made his throat hot with hunger. He’d barely been able to stifle the urge to shift.
Vander had taken one look at him and, without a word, gotten to work. It wasn’t difficult. All Vander had to do was walk through Grayson’s dust field. If he stood close enough, for long enough, his own demon dust absorbed Grayson’s. That was what mersian demons did, after all. They consumed the dust of other demons, and with it, their abilities.
“Like I said before,” Grayson said, picking up his jacket from where he’d slung it over the back of a caned chair. “Thank you.”
Vander sat on the edge of his narrow bed. The room was cramped, every available corner stuffed with things he’d brought with him from his flat above the old bookshop: stacks of books, boxes, and a long table crammed with a microscope and test tubes. Grayson eyed the clothing that hung on wall pegs and the sweaty glass terrariums atop the bow-front dresser, the drawers so overflowing with books and newspapers they couldn’t shut all the way. Books in dresser drawers and clothing hanging haphazardly on the walls. Grayson shook his head and grinned. Yes. This was a room he could understand.
“You don’t have to thank me,” Vander said as he rolled down his sleeves. He’d been hunched over the microscope, changing a glass slide, when Grayson had arrived.
“You’ve been absorbing my hellhound dust for the last few weeks and making my life less of a living hell. Yes, I do have to thank you,” Grayson replied.