Free The Wondrous and the Wicked by Page Morgan

causing the man behind her to stumble to the side in order to avoid colliding with her. She ignored his mumbled curse and stared across rue Amélie.
That voice.
    “Ingrid, over here. Quick,” it came again, and this time shesaw a shadow dipping into the slim break between two buildings across the street.
    Grayson?
    She crossed the street, jumping over the thin stream of wastewater and sludge running down the center gulch in the road.
    She’d known her brother would be with Léon! But, oh … what had happened? Had he been meeting the rest of the Dusters here? She entered the gap between the two buildings, and it immediately forced her to take a diagonal route to the right.
    “Grayson?” she called, one of her gloves running along the limestone of the building she followed.
    Ahead, the alley cut to the left. Just before Ingrid turned the corner, she pulled to a stop. She closed her eyes and cursed herself.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
It wasn’t Grayson. He wouldn’t be running from her, leading her away from the safety of the street.
    It was a delusion demon, just like the one that had once used Grayson’s voice to attempt to lure her into the catacombs beneath the abbey.
    Ingrid took a step back, but as she did, something hooked her ankle and tugged hard. She yelped as her foot flew forward, out from underneath her. She hit the ground on her side, her elbow jamming into the packed dirt. The thing that had wrapped around her ankle pulled again, hauling her around the corner and ruching up her skirt as she slid along the wet ground.
    She dug her gloved fingers into the dirt for purchase, and kicked and thrashed her leg, but she wouldn’t come free. Lifting her head, she saw a pale brown tentacle curled around her ankle. The tentacle was attached to a gelatinous glob the same dirty-dishwater color. It moved with an undulating ripple, pulling itself along by more writhing tentacles.
    Ingrid ripped off her gloves but then remembered Vander and how he’d absorbed so much of her dust during their stroll. She released what she had, aiming for the delusion demon, and the lines of electricity that spit out of her fingertips were enoughto stun it. She wrested her ankle free and scrabbled to get up. She spun around, lunged forward—and came face to face with the red lantern eyes of a hellhound.
    The beast was as tall as Ingrid, its giant maw open to showcase the wicked curve of its protruding fangs. The stench of its breath and its black, greasy fur hit her and she stumbled back, her foot treading upon one of the delusion demon’s squishy tentacles.
    The hellhound raked its head to the side, and one of its bottom fangs opened her shoulder. Ingrid screamed and clutched at the wound, demon poison already burning its insatiable path through her neck and chest. It fired down into her arm, consuming the pathetic reserves of electricity.
    The hellhound took hold of the fabric of her skirts and petticoats in its mouth, and then once again, Ingrid was jerked off her feet and dragged down the alley. A fissure. The beast was taking her to a fissure and all she could do was rasp a scream of pain. The rough alley ground suddenly gave way, as if the beast had dragged her off the edge of a cliff. And then she was falling, weightless, the demon poison coursing through her, filling her completely. Allowing her entrance into the Underneath. Straight into Axia’s waiting arms.

CHAPTER SIX
    A ll this time, Luc had believed that the stone statues that topped the abbey’s twin bell towers and lined its pitched roofs were dog-headed gargoyles. He knew each one of them by heart. Every snarling mouth and extended tongue, every pair of wings, tucked, outstretched, cracked, or not present at all. There were missing talons and ears here and there. One gargoyle, jutting out above the courtyard’s transept door as if it were bursting through the stone façade, had lost its head altogether.
    Perhaps that had been the wolf-headed gargoyle, Luc considered