Chapter 9 - Curious
My eyes nearly popped out at her noise. The vividness of her moan sent a bolt of desire straight through my core. To be fair, it was a decent mimicry of one of my most recent companions. Incensed, I grabbed her shoulder in alert and rolled her back flat against the wall once more. “Are you actually trying to get us caught?”
The Dodo and his men were walking down the hall, coming closer and closer to our darkened nook. Clever blocking was not going to disguise the fact of who I was. Much worse, if the animals caught wind of anything at all suspicious about Allie’s nature, I could risk losing the coeur.
Dammit.
I racked my brain to think.
Across the corridor, I spotted a cleaner carrying a mop exiting a cabin he must have just finished cleaning. Eyes lighting up, I grabbed Allie’s arm and pulled her across and into the door before it locked shut behind him.
Or at least I’d thought it was a door to a cabin.
“Ow!” Allie hissed as she slammed against a supply shelf.
I almost stumbled in the pitch dark. Ammonia and salts bathed the air around us in the cramped space—of the cleaning closet.
“Well, this is much better,” Allie drawled. Feeling around for a light switch, she tugged on a little string and the dimmest bulb ever lit up the dank closet. Not exactly helpful.
I leveled a dark gaze at her. “Stop talking. And definitely stop moaning like that,” I snapped. “Don’t you know it’s rude to eavesdrop on other people’s intimate acts?”
She scoffed. “How could I not eavesdrop when all those women were so loud? To tell the truth, I’m a bit glad they haven’t been coming around lately. I’m finally managing to get a decent night’s sleep. I mean seriously, you guys would go at it for hours and hours and hours—”
I gritted my teeth. As proud as I was of my libido, hearing Allie refer to my sexual conquests with a certain banality was grating on my nerves.
“God only knows what the hell you were doing to those women all night long, makes it sound like they’re being murdered—then again, you are an assassin, and a rabbit,” she rambled on.
She was driving me crazy.
Without warning, I pushed her back against the closed door, grasping the nape of her neck, and leaned down.
“What the hell are you doing?” she gasped, pawing my face away. Those ridiculous glasses fell in the darkness.
My eyes flashed as I pressed my body against hers. I just wanted to shut her up. “I thought perhaps you wanted a proper demonstration.” My gaze dropped to that annoying mouth. “The other day you asked me to kiss you.”
She tilted her head back as far away from me as she could. “Right, perhaps if my life depended on it. Plus if you recall, I was seriously high the other day.” Her eyes glittered in the dark. “Besides, I already told you I’m not seducible.”
“That’s what all those women said,” I relayed confidently, stroking the side of her face with my thumb. “Before they fell under my spell and I carved their hearts out.”
I had intended for my statement to be disarming, intimidating, but I was distracted by how smooth her cheek was. That flowery scent was close by again. I bent my head lower, closer, in an attempt to seek it out.
The sudden lack of protest from Allie made me stop short. She didn’t try to push away either. Perhaps my declaration was a little more than disarming. When I looked into her face, her gaze was distracted off to one side in deep thought.
A shadow crossed her face. It was the vivid memory of the devastating slaughter back at Veridia. The heart in my chest gave a dull thump in the tense silence.
Allie swallowed hard. “Rabb…why do you do this for the Queen?”
I stopped short at her question. Her mouth was still a mere breath away from mine. “I have to. I’m bespelled to follow her commands.”
“That’s all?”
I pulled back an inch. “The Queen saved my life.”
“Saved your life? How?” Curiosity filled her eyes, but there was also a certain measure of…pity.
I dropped my hands from her and straightened up. “I was cursed. My soul trapped in the form of a rabbit. I was about to die and the Queen saved me. We made a deal. She would restore my life, my human form, and in exchange, I would dedicate my immortal existence to serving her.”
“By seducing women? By luring them to follow you and then stealing their hearts?”
“Yes. I lure them from their lives and they return…a little less.”
“You said she extracts magic from them, the hearts. I bet if she stole your heart, she must have gotten so much power from it.”
“I told you I no longer remember ever having had a heart. Even if I did, an immortal heart would be useless,” I explained. “What makes Heartfire embers so magical is their limitations. It’s the brief spark of power such that mortality can give, knowing that life is fleeting, that no matter how much you have, no matter how well you live, eventually you will lose everyone you love.”
Her eyes seemed pinned to my mouth as I spoke. “But doesn’t love last forever?”
This encounter seemed different from when I cornered her at my clock tower. This time, her aura seemed…curious, instead of laced with fear.
“Perhaps that’s the trick.” I shrugged. “How love can be fleeting and yet eternal.” I cleared my throat after a moment. “But as I’ve mentioned, since I have neither a heart nor a plethora of loved ones, my Heartfire ember would have been useless.”
Allie’s gaze averted to one side again, as if to absorb my words to understand their full meaning.
I studied those hazel eyes in the dim light. It was beginning to fascinate me how well Allie kept her wits about her, managing to ask me thoughtful probing questions, all despite my close proximity. Such behavior was certainly unheard of.
Moving to one side, Allie pressed her ear to the door. “I think they might be gone.” She turned the knob and cracked the door open to peek outside and see if the coast was clear before swinging it open more fully. But as soon as I stepped out behind her, there was a yell.
“Oi, you there!”
Halting, Allie cringed.
I stopped in mid-stride before turning to see two of The Dodo’s men rounding the corner toward us.
The first mousy gentleman with a whiskery mustache stuck his little nose up in the air. “Were you just in that there closet eavesdropping on our private conversation?”
“N-No sir.” Allie shook her head instantly. “We were just…”
I finished her sentence with a clear, authoritative tone, “—trying to sneak in a moment of pleasure. We couldn’t be bothered to find our cabin.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Allie suck in her cheeks at my outrageous claim but she didn’t say anything to the contrary.
“Maybe we ought to report you to The Dodo, hey Bill?” Mr. Mouse elbowed his colleague, the other one with an elongated lizard-like mouth.
Bill looked from Allie to me in turn, his eyes narrowed. “They are acting mighty suspicious.”
I didn’t want to waste any more time with these duds. I hooked my arm around Allie’s neck to drag her away and she yelped out. “Hey—” I paused to think quickly. “Mary Ann, I think we’d better leave these gentlemen to their business and head to our cabin to continue our affairs.”
Allie shot me a sideways glare. I was probably choking her. But her expression shifted into a sickeningly sweet smile as she gave me a playful shove away. “Oh, of course. I would be only so happy to. Come on, Steven.”
I winced.
Steven?
Bill was craning his neck to peer at my face. “You know what, you look kind of familiar. Have we met before?”
Allie waved his claim away. “Oh, I’m sure a fine gentleman such as yourself has never met us lowly folk.”
Turning his attention to her, Bill leered before reaching for her arm. “Is that one of them birds from upstairs? I haven’t sampled this one yet. Let me see your pretty face, Miss—”
There was a sudden sting of displeasure in my chest. Eyebrows snapping together, I caught his hand to twist his arm behind him and slammed him face-first against the wall. My warning was a low growl in my throat, “Touch her and die.”
“H-Hey, what are you doing?” His nasty colleague backed up in wide-eyed dread. “I-I’m gonna call the boss!” he yelled out as he scrambled away before his friend could even yelp.
It seemed The Dodo’s dogs were all bark and no teeth.
“Let me go, you bastard.” Bill struggled against my grasp. “I’ll make sure you pay for this. You and your little girlfriend too.”
Allie heaved an exasperated sigh. “Jeez, let him go.”
I rolled my eyes in resignation, but the moment I loosened my hold on Bill, he spun around, rearing back his arm to punch me in the face.
“You loathsome f—!”
It didn’t take much to weave away to avoid his laughable aim. But before I knew what was happening, Allie moved in to deliver a swift knee between Bill’s legs and he collapsed with a howl.
“Let’s go,” Allie urged, whirling around to run away.
I glanced at Bill, a crying heap on the floor as he clutched at his groin, and shrugged before following suit behind Allie as we ran up the stairs.
I couldn’t help my remark. “Steven is a terrible name.”
Somehow that made Allie laugh. “And Mary Ann is what? Your most favorite name in the whole entire world?” Her gaze sliding over my shoulder, her smile faded. “Oh, crapshoot.”
The saloon behind us was quickly filling with an angry mob of more ruffians, headed directly for the stairwell.
For us.
Annoyed, I clicked my tongue. I could possibly fight them all. I glanced over at Allie, her eyes wide with overwhelm. There was no guarantee that I could protect her at the same time. Without my magic, it would be too risky.
I backed up. “Go, out the side door,” I told her and followed suit as we ran down the narrow passageway along the side railing to head to the rear in an attempt to delay the inevitable fight.
When we reached the stern where the big paddle wheel furiously churned white water, I whirled back around.
Dead end.
Bracing my hands on the railing, I stopped to glance up the river. “We need to get off this boat now.”
Allie checked up the way. “Are we close enough to the other side?”
“Please tell me you can swim,” I prompted.
“I’m not the best but I can float.”
“Good enough.” I moved to help her up the side of the railing but she grabbed my arm.
“Wait.” Her gaze was on the floor, her eyes narrowed as if ascertaining something. “The boat is moving too fast. It’s not safe.”
I glanced past her shoulder at the rushing mob of bloodthirsty thugs. “Well, it won’t be safe on here for too long either.”
Allie’s gaze flicked out to the water and her eyes lit up. “I have an idea.” She pointed across the water to a buoy marker. “There’s a slight bend over there where the boat is likely to slow down. We just need to time it properly and then jump off the boat.”
Reading her firm tone, I grumbled inwardly, but I knew there wasn’t much choice.
“How much time until we reach the buoy?” I wanted to know.
Allie bit her lip. Her eyes darted around as she was seemingly trying to figure out something in her head and mumbling incoherently.
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you trying to calculate the velocity of the steam boat against the drag of the river current based on our distance to the buoy?”
She gave me a look of ridicule. “No, that’s crazy. I’m listening for the slowing down of the steam engine.”
But the noise of the mob was getting louder too, footsteps clattering on the wooden deck, on the metal stairs, and even beneath us. They were going to surround us soon.
“Allie!” I prompted in urgency.
She waved me away with a screech, “Shush!”
The fastest pair of the thugs was about to come upon us. I groaned in exasperation as I surged forward to take them on. I blocked an onslaught of punches before whirling around to deliver each thug swift kicks in the face. But as they fell at my feet with a clatter, two more sets of thugs jumped down from the top level of the boat, landing right in front of me.
I clenched my teeth to shoot Allie another look. “Allie!”
Allie kept blinking then she flinched in a startle upon satisfaction of her assessment. She met my gaze. “NOW!”
Hurrying back, I hoisted Allie up the side of the railing so she could jump off.
Her gaze widened, spotting something over my shoulder. She tried to warn me, “Rabb!” but she had already fallen back into the water.
A sharp pain gouged deep in my shoulder. Yelling out a groan, I lurched over, easily tipping over the railing.
The roar of the mob turned faint as I dove headlong into the rushing cold water.