The Wondrous and the Wicked Read Free

slightly as he twisted at the waist and wrenched out the embedded dart. The stranger lay on his side next to Marco’s long, spiked tail.
    “Is he … is he dead?” Ingrid whispered. Marco couldn’t answer her while in gargoyle form, and he wouldn’t be shifting back into human form here, not with his clothes in tatters.
    Instead, he threw the bloody dart and the man’s discarded sword and crossbow into the river. The current swallowed them. Marco scooped up the limp body with one arm. He then stalked toward Ingrid, fury powering every step. She pulled in a breath and held it as the eight-foot gargoyle, his wolfish face crumpled into a scowl, surged toward her. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her, but she’d never been more terrified of him.
    Marco broke into a run. His wings snapped open and caught a gust of wind a mere second before he hooked her around the waist with his free arm. Ingrid slammed against his chest, and she clung to him as he lifted off the quay and into the low blue light of dawn.

CHAPTER TWO
    T he man wasn’t dead.
    He’d groaned during the flight to Hôtel Bastian, the rising sun nipping at Marco’s tail the whole way to rue de Sèvres. Marco had landed on the roof of the town house with such force that the Alliance member standing sentry had actually cried out. He’d recovered quickly and run inside to alert the others, leaving the door open, the invitation explicit: gargoyles were not often permitted inside Hôtel Bastian, but this was obviously an exception.
    The injured man hacked a wet cough as Marco shrugged him off his plated and scaled shoulder, dropping him carelessly on a steel table inside Hôtel Bastian’s medical room. More blood leaked through his teeth and over his lips.
    The gashes across his chest were fatal; of that Ingrid was certain. Marco’s talons had ripped a path from the man’s right collarbone to his left ribs, and with every heartbeat, blood rushed from the carved trenches, drenching his overcoat and shirt and—
    Ingridstared at the sash, wide as a cummerbund, wound around the man’s torso. Even soaked nearly black with blood, she could see what color it had originally been: bright crimson. The color of the Alliance.
    Marco had brought them here, to Paris Alliance faction headquarters, for a reason.
    Ingrid heard the thud of feet approaching the room and expected Marco to shift back to his human form. But he remained true and turned to face the door. The first person to rush in would meet with the sight of a gargoyle’s intimidating height, brawn, and fury.
    This wasn’t the first time the Alliance had tried to kill her.
    Nolan Quinn charged through the door of the medical room. He was occupied with tucking in the rumpled tails of his linen shirt and strode right by Marco without more than a swift glance of acknowledgment. The gargoyle emitted a snort of disappointment through his long, wolfish snout.
    The man on the table gurgled on more blood, and Nolan swore under his breath. “What happened?”
    “We were on the quay beneath the Pont de l’Alma—” Ingrid began.
    “What demon did this?” Nolan barked as he threw open a cabinet door and pulled down a familiar black glass bottle.
    “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