Chapter Eighteen
There was no doubt in Jonathan’s mind that if he or Felicity ran, neither of them would survive.
Werewolves lived for the hunt, treated anything that fled from them as prey, and killed without remorse.
Blaze’s suit jacket was already tearing apart at the arms as silver fur sprouted beneath the fabric.
His jaw lengthened with an awful crunching sound, then he lifted his mangled face and released a howl that the other werewolves echoed.
Felicity tugged Jonathan’s arm. “We have to go.”
He could not take his gaze off the wickedly sharp fangs erupting from Blaze’s gums. The wolf shook its massive head, and the scrap of silk that had once been a cravat fluttered to the ground.
Felicity cupped her hands around his ear and shouted, “Move!”
The command sliced through his body, forcing him into action. He grabbed Felicity’s hand and pulled her past the wolves. As they skidded on the thin hall carpet, however, a sharp stab in his abdomen sent him to his knees.
Felicity shook his shoulder. “Get up!”
He struggled to his feet.
The wolves had completed their transformation and would be on them in seconds, but he was too weak to fight.
They would have to escape some other way.
He snatched the cane out of Felicity’s grasp, twisted the handle, then threw it at the creature that had once been Blaze.
It struck the behemoth on the forehead, causing him to yelp.
It would have to be enough. Jonathan hefted Felicity in his arms and sprinted toward the window at the end of the hall.
He leaped, and glass exploded around them.
As they fell, he shifted Felicity on top of him.
They hit the ground with an impact that exploded the air from his lungs.
The next thing he knew, he was lying on his side with Felicity shaking his shoulders.
High above them, the three werewolves stared out the shattered window.
He thought they’d leap out after them, but they only turned around, as if judging their problem dealt with.
“Jonathan!” Felicity rolled him onto his back.
He should have reassured her he was well, that he only needed a moment for his injuries to heal.
But they didn’t heal.
It was just like after the latest fledgling attack. He couldn’t even lift his head without feeling like he was going to cast up his accounts. Was this the end? Would he die lying in a filthy alley with a hunter screaming his name?
He certainly hoped not.
Something warm touched his lips. He flicked out his tongue and caught a drop of rich honey. When he opened his eyes, his face was pressed against a shallow wound on Felicity’s neck.
“What… are you… doing?” he managed to ask.
“Keeping you alive.” Felicity slipped the crucifix off his head. “Drink.”
The compulsion pulsed through him. His fangs extended in a flash, and he sank them deep into her flesh. Her blood burst into his mouth, as tart and sweet as juice squeezed from a freshly picked orange.
His instincts urged him to drain her, but that would make him no better than the fledglings they’d killed, and the thought of living without her made his skull ache.
So, as difficult as it was to release her when everything inside him longed for more, he forcibly retracted his fangs and licked her wound until it healed.
He wasn’t surprised when she replaced the beaded chain. What she said next, however, made ice form over his heart.
“Take me to your haven.”
No.
That was what he wanted to say, but it would have been pointless, as the command jolted his exhausted body into action.
He lifted her in his arms, took several jerky steps, then lurched into a run.
They sped through the streets until they reached the front door of the building where he spent his daylight hours.
“Go inside,” Felicity whispered.
He mentally fought against the compulsion, urging his aching legs to remain still, but it was no use.
He ascended the steps one at a time, boots stomping each tread with such force that he was surprised none of his neighbors opened their windows and shouted to keep it down.
A footman opened the door for them, but when the young man met Jonathan’s gaze, he turned as pale as the wainscoting.
Jonathan lifted a finger to his lips. He’d let Felicity make him dance like a marionette before he allowed his siblings to learn he’d brought a hunter into his haven. He couldn’t sense them nearby, but they could return at any moment.
The footman gulped, then nodded.
“Take me to your room,” Felicity said.
He did so, but the moment he crossed the threshold and she did not bark another command, his legs buckled and he collapsed. She squirmed out from beneath him and laid his head on her lap.
He groaned. “No more.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do. You were too weak to move on your own.”
She was, unfortunately, correct. The werewolves might have been content to watch them suffer in the alley, but that situation would not have lasted long. Given that she wasn’t nearly strong enough to lift him, using the crucifix had likely saved both of their lives.
He reached up and tugged a lock of her black hair. “You could have left me to die.”
She scoffed. “You aren’t getting out of our deal that easily.”
His laugh was cut off by a hacking cough. When he could breathe again without wheezing, he grabbed her arm and wiped his mouth with her sleeve.
“Excuse me!” She wrenched her arm free and inspected the stain.
He grinned. “What? It’s your blood. I thought you’d want it back.”
The outraged sound she made triggered another bout of coughing. This time, it lasted several minutes. He was glad his siblings weren’t nearby to hear. Being caught in Felicity’s arms would do little to convince the rest of his nest that there was nothing going on between him and the hunter.
“I wonder what Great-Uncle Ezra would say if he saw me now,” she said. “Likely expel me from the base. He’s so set on me not…”
She trailed off, but he understood. Mr. Sorrow’s disapproval had been evident when Jonathan had met him at the museum. “That grizzled, old man doesn’t want his lovely young grandniece to join the murderous family business? I cannot fathom why.”
She rapped his forehead with her knuckles.
“That’s not the reason. Or at least not the only reason.
I think… I think it’s because of my parents.
Before they died, Great-Uncle Ezra had supported their decision to have me join the ranks of the hunters.
I saw the letter he wrote to my mother. She received it the day I was branded.
” She peeled back the sleeve of her dress to reveal a section of raised skin on her inner arm near her elbow in the shape of a stylized sun.
He ran his fingers over the initiation mark. He’d seen them before, on the bodies of the hunters he’d killed. It was a barbaric ritual her kind performed before they began training. “But if they went this far, then why weren’t you trained?”
“I was, starting that day until—” Her voice cracked.
She cleared her throat. “My uncle educated me in the hunter arts until my parents were murdered. Then Uncle Ethan died and when Great-Uncle Ezra arrived, the first thing he did was forbid me from patrolling. He… He told me it’s what my parents would have wanted.
” She sniffed. “What they wanted was for me to be a hunter. Not a pathetic scribe.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, and her lap was rather comfortable, so he waited.
After a few minutes, she began speaking again, in a voice so soft, he almost didn’t hear.
“Sometimes I wonder if I’d been sleeping, if I hadn’t been there when that woman had burst through the window, maybe Great-Uncle Ezra wouldn’t treat me the way he does. ”
Realization settled over him like a blanket tossed over his legs. “You think he holds you responsible for their deaths?”
Another sniff. “Yes.”
Her story was uncomfortably familiar. His siblings had adapted to Marguerite’s absence quickly, but it hadn’t been as easy for him.
The weeks and months after she’d left had carved a chasm in his heart that had remained stubbornly empty, no matter how he’d tried to fill it with sex or alcohol.
Even restoring vampiric artifacts to their rightful owners hadn’t worked.
He’d become the brother his siblings had watched carefully, as if prepared for him to vanish at any moment.
Not that it had mattered, as every time Jonathan had escaped, Marcus had sent Cordon or Helena to drag him back.
At first, Jonathan had assumed Marcus had been torturing him because his brother had blamed him for Marguerite’s decision.
After all, Jonathan had been the most vocal in his opposition to her tales of mate atrophy.
It had taken years before Jonathan had realized Marcus had isolated him not out of anger, but fear that Jonathan would embrace death rather than live without their maker.
Mr. Sorrow likely had no idea how badly his actions had backfired. Instead of pushing Felicity away from the danger of his family’s occupation, he’d drawn her so deeply into hunting that Jonathan was surprised she hadn’t yet been killed during one of her foolish patrols.
But just as his grief had prevented him from understanding Marcus’s decisions after Marguerite’s abandonment, Felicity was too set on revenge to believe him if he told her she saw malice where there was likely only concern.
She rubbed her eyes with her fists. “I wish they would stop treating me like I’d fall apart with the slightest touch.”
Her words resonated so strongly with him that he wrapped his arms around her shoulders. He couldn’t do anything to ease the ache in his own heart, but perhaps he could bring her solace.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
He pressed his lips to her hair. “Comforting you. Do you have a problem with that?”
“I suppose not.”
As her ragged breathing eased, her honey-sweet scent wreathed around him and made his fangs throb, although he wasn’t sure if it was her blood, her companionship, or her body he craved. Perhaps all three.
If only she weren’t a hunter.
A hunter who had tried to kill Marcus, had shoved Winifred out a window, and had bound Jonathan into servitude.
He had to get her out of his haven before his siblings discovered what he’d done.
He stood and walked to the window. “It will be dawn soon. We can resume our search tomorrow night.”
She scooted upright and wrapped her arms around her legs. “Why bother? We don’t have the cane, and we barely got out of the brothel alive. If we go back for it, they’ll kill us before we get through the door.”
“You’re going to give up that quickly?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the dagger, having separated it from the cane before he’d thrown it at the werewolves.
She looked up, and when she spotted it, her eyes widened. “You have it.”
He tossed it to her.
She held the weapon as if it were a priceless artifact. “Look at this.” She ran her thumb along the hilt. When she lifted it, the pad was stained black. “What is that?”
He walked closer and sniffed her finger. “Tar.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Opium.”
“Correct.” A very particular kind of opium. He recognized it from the days when he had been so lost to despair that he had become an addict. Clear, as the drug was called, was significantly more potent than the human equivalent yet elicited little more than a mild euphoric rush in most vampires.
And there was only one place in the city that served it.