The Wondrous and the Wicked

Book 3: The Dispossessed

by Page Morgan

Genres: YA Action & Adventure; YA Paranormal

Synopsis

For fans of Lauren Kate's Fallen series comes the exciting conclusion to the trilogy that includes The Beautiful and the Cursed and The Lovely and the Lost. The Waverly sisters must save themselves before all is lost.

Since the Waverlys arrived in Paris, the streets have grown more fearsome by the day. As Ingrid learns to master her lectrux gift, she must watch Axia's power grow strong enough to extend beyond her Underneath hive. By all indications, the fallen angel's Harvest is near--and the timing couldn't be worse.

Targeted by vengeful gargoyles, Gabby has been exiled to London for her own protection. Meanwhile, the gargoyle castes are in disarray, divided between those who want Luc to lead them and those who resent him and his fondness for humans. The Alliance is crumbling from the inside as well, its members turning against one another, and possibly against the Waverlys, too.

Axia has promisted that the world will burn. An now, unable to trust the Alliance, separated from Luc, Gabby, and her twin, Grayson, Ingrid is left to face the demon uprising alone.

Release date: April 14, 2015

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Print pages: 352

Sample

Chapter One
Paris
Late March 1900
Ingrid should have brought a sword.
She crouched in a most unladylike manner on the narrow quay beneath the Pont de l’Alma, considering ways to pry a manhole cover free. The tarnished brass disk had to weigh at least five stone. She needed to lever the blasted thing up if she wished to descend into the sewers before daylight broke over the city.
Entering miles of dank, serpentine sewage tunnels alone was a risk at any time of the day, but Ingrid needed to slink her way in, and she preferred to do so without being seen. She had to find her brother. Grayson had been gone for nearly a month, and she’d started to have that old bubbling awareness again. The caged restlessness that always beset her when she simply knew her twin was in trouble.
The sewers were as good a hiding place as any, and Grayson had most definitely been hiding. For a month he’d been on his own in Paris, avoiding Ingrid and their mother. Had Gabby still been in the city, instead of in London, Ingrid was certain he would have steered clear of their younger sister as well. Anything to avoid facing the reality of their grim situation: that he and Ingrid were Dusters--humans who had been given demon blood at birth. A rogue guardian angel had gifted them this blood, and with it, inhuman abilities. Ingrid could create electricity at her fingertips. As for Grayson . . . his ability was a bit more complicated, and much more dangerous.
Well, she was finished waiting for him to come home. She needed her brother--even if he was a hellhound some of the time. Ingrid would find him and drag him back to the abbey by the ear if she had to.
She untied the silk drawstring pouch cinched around her wrist and withdrew the petite hand dagger she kept for emergency use. When Vander Burke had given her the four-inch blade of blessed silver with its polished ebony handle a few weeks prior, he’d intended for her to use the weapon to fend off hungry Underneath demons trespassing in the human realm. Ingrid, however, was perfectly content using it to try to lift this sewer manhole cover.
She scraped the point of the blade along the rim of the cover, searching for a gap. It was nearly impossible to see in the predawn darkness. The point slipped into a crevice and Ingrid pushed against the weight of the brass disk with all her strength.
“You are not going down there.”
She paused at the low, surly voice. She’d wondered if Marco might follow her. Butlers didn’t usually keep such close tabs on the members of the family they worked for, but Marco was more than just the butler at l’Abbaye Saint-Dismas. And Ingrid was more to him than just his employer’s daughter.
The dagger had barely raised the cover an inch, but she continued to hold it propped open.
“Not by myself,” she replied, glancing quickly over her shoulder to where he stood. “My gargoyle wouldn’t be so negligent as to allow that.”
Marco came around to stand before her. The dark gray merino of his butler’s livery was a few shades darker than anything else around them. Sunrise was closer than she had thought.
“If you’d help me with this, please?” she asked, pushing on the handle again. With his strength, Marco could easily rip the cover up and toss it aside.
Instead, he set his foot on the cover, forcing it to slam shut and her dagger tip to pop free.
“And as your gargoyle, I am forced, once again, to keep you from getting yourself killed.” He crouched down until his eyes met hers.
Marco’s dark features were even darker than usual in the coming blue of dawn. Ingrid had once feared the scowling face before her. Even more, she’d feared him when he would take on his true form--a thick, cinnamon-red jacket of reptilian scales, featherless sienna wings, and long, wickedly sharp talons. At one point, not very long ago, Marco had considered killing her. That was before he’d been assigned to the abbey and become her gargoyle protector. Before everything that he was forbade him to harm her.
“I’m not afraid of what I might find in the sewers,” Ingrid said, though the tunnels were rife with demons. Her last visit beneath the city had been with two demon hunters, Vander Burke and Nolan Quinn, and she hadn’t known the first thing about protecting herself.
Things were different now. Ingrid knew how to use her demon half, powered by the blood of a lectrux demon. She knew how to summon electricity and store it in her fingertips, and more importantly, how to release a current of lightning without completely draining her reserves. If she came across a demon threat in the sewers, she was certain she could subdue it.
Marco leaned forward. “Then why, Lady Ingrid, could I taste your fear in the back of my throat?”
She clenched her teeth and beat back a wave of nausea. Marco himself didn’t make her uneasy. It was his vivid connection to her that did. He could sense her so intimately that if he held still and drew up her scent, catalogued within his memory, he could feel the beat of her heart echoing his own. He could feel her every breath, the shift in her pulse, even her emotions. He could find her and be at her side within moments.
These things were all meant to help him keep his human charge from harm. Still, Ingrid didn’t want him to have such access. She didn’t want him to be her gargoyle.
She wanted Luc.
Ingrid turned her head toward the Seine to avoid Marco’s stare.
“I’m worried for Grayson, you know that,” she said. “I have to find him.”
“Human, your impatience is infuriating,” he growled, standing tall. “The only thing you’re going to find down there is a quick fissure straight to Axia’s hive.”
Ingrid let out a sigh and stood up. The crown of her head reached just below the starched points of his white collar. Marco wasn’t entirely wrong. She was certain there were plenty of fissures in the sewers that led to the Underneath. She was also certain that Axia, the fallen angel who had created all of the Dusters, had not forgotten about Ingrid and the angel blood still circulating through her veins. Axia wanted that blood back. It was hers, after all.
Axia had also given Ingrid and Grayson her angel blood at birth, unlike her other seedlings, thinking to safeguard it from the toxic Underneath should the Angelic Order ever banish her to that realm. After sixteen years, the angel blood had finally grown strong enough within the twins’ bodies for Axia to reclaim. With it, she could return to the human realm for something she called the Harvest. What that was, exactly, was still a mystery to Ingrid. It wouldn’t be good, that much she suspected.
Axia had already reclaimed Grayson’s angel blood. If she reclaimed Ingrid’s portion, she would be able to begin her Harvest.
“I’m not going to hide on sacred ground forever,” she said to Marco as she slipped her dagger back into her purse.
“And your brother isn’t going to come back to you until he is ready.”
Ingrid cinched her purse and curled her hands into fists at her sides. “He’s in trouble.”
Her brother’s hellhound blood had made him do horrible things. He’d killed a girl in London. Ingrid couldn’t imagine the guilt Grayson had to be suffering. What if he couldn’t live with it? What if he decided not to live with it?
“Think me cold and callous if you choose, but you are my human charge. He hasn’t been since he quit the rectory and started residing elsewhere,” Marco said. “I warn you: if you attempt to climb down that sewer hole again, I will strip off my clothes, coalesce, and fly you back to the abbey kicking and screaming. Trust me--you don’t want that.” His deadly serious gaze softened as he flashed his teeth. “Or perhaps you do. I am rather stunning when unclothed.”
Even poor light couldn’t hide her blush from his night vision. Marco picked up on the pinches of color and laughed.
“My mother should toss you out on your ear,” Ingrid said. “You are by far the worst butler I have ever met.”
Marco gestured toward the wide stone steps that led to the street. She groaned and reluctantly started walking toward them.
“Lady Brickton adores me,” Marco replied, following her. “And I am a marvelous butler.”
She supposed he was rather efficient. He had no excuse not to be, not with over four hundred years of various servant duties under his belt at his former territory. That didn’t mean Ingrid felt the need to praise him.
“Mama is terrified of you,” she said. Her mother knew what Marco was. She also knew that as the Dispossessed assigned to the abbey and rectory, he would not be going anywhere even should she dismiss him.
“Terrified is exactly how I prefer my humans,” he countered. “I need to work on finding a way to frighten you into obedience.”
“Threatening to remove your clothes was quite enough. I--” Ingrid’s retort fell silent on her lips as a man appeared at the top of the quay steps.
Since arriving under the bridge, she had only needed to pause for one vagrant who had shuffled by, wheeling along a wooden cart filled to the brim with his meager belongings. Ingrid had hidden in the shadows until he’d passed, the dark having been a much better veil a half an hour ago.
There was no avoiding this new stranger. The rising light cast him in shades of blues and purples, and Ingrid could tell by the cut of his trousers and heavy greatcoat that he was not some ragtag vagrant. She paused at the bottom of the steps, thinking to stand aside and allow him to descend first. This isn’t London, she reminded herself. This man wasn’t going to recognize her. Though she’d been in Paris for over four months, she wasn’t a true part of society here. No one but her mother would care that she was on a quay this early in the morning.
Marco stepped close behind Ingrid, his brawny chest brushing against her shoulders. Though he said nothing, she felt him rigid with menace as the stranger took the first few steps down.
“Relax,” she whispered, but at the tail end of her plea came a familiar sharp twang.
She knew the sound: the spring release of a crossbow.
Marco caged Ingrid with his arms and with unnatural speed pivoted her away from the stone steps. He moved with such swiftness that he drove the breath from her lungs and her vision blurred. Marco stumbled as something hit him, and with a grunt and a growl, he shoved Ingrid.
“Run,” he rasped. “Go!”
His thrust propelled Ingrid forward, but she stumbled to a halt, disobeying her gargoyle yet again. Had that man actually shot at them? She turned back toward the steps in time to see Marco’s human body erupt into true form. His butler’s uniform ripped apart at the seams as his spine cracked and lengthened, his legs grew and bulked with muscle, and a pair of massive wings unfurled out of his back. He flexed those wings, raising them into great sails, and shredded the last clinging remnants of his jacket. Ingrid stared at the dart embedded in Marco’s ribs.
Marco’s battle screech echoed off the quay wall as the stranger tossed his spent crossbow aside, drew a sword, and slashed it toward Marco’s enormous form. With one swipe of his talons, Marco sent the sword clattering to the ground. He raked his claws toward the man again with unrelenting ferocity. Ingrid swiveled around and squeezed her eyes shut, but she still heard it: the rip of flesh, a short squeal of agony. And then silence. An awful silence, slowly being pushed back by the pounding of her pulse and the burble of the swollen Seine.
Ingrid turned toward the quay steps, certain of what she would see. Marco’s wings drooped 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
The man wasn’t dead.
He’d groaned during the flight to Hotel Bastian, the rising sun nipping at Marco’s tail the whole way to rue de Sevres. 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 Hotel 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 Hotel 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--
Ingrid stared 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.