Chapter 1 #2
Will staggered, throwing aside the crushed pieces. His ears were still ringing, but at least he could think. Breathe. Move.
The scent of hot, coppery blood washed over him.
“Blade,” he growled, leaping over the gasping man on the roof and sliding to his knees beside his master.
Blade lifted his head, then collapsed back down. “Bloody… Get it out…’s silver.” He lifted his fingers and flinched as they brushed against the knife hilt.
“Hold still,” Will snapped. A cold ring of sweat beaded on his forehead. The knife was buried to the hilt. He had no idea of the damage it had done, or what would happen if he removed it.
Behind him, the two men helped each other to their feet. Will spared them a glance, but they were trying to get away, now that the advantage had shifted once more to him and Blade.
“Gutted by a human.” Blade laughed incredulously. “Always thought…it’d be one of the Echelon. In the end.”
“Stop your whinin’.” Will wrenched his shirt off, a frisson of icy cold trailing down his spine.
Blue bloods were notoriously difficult to kill.
That was one reason the French revolution had guillotined their aristocrats.
The only other way to stop them was to cut out their heart or cause severe damage to it.
He swallowed hard and shoved his shirt around the wound to stop the bleeding.
“Nothin’ more’n a scratch. We’ll have you hale in no time. ”
Blade met his gaze. His fingers were surprisingly strong when they closed around Will’s. “Swear you’ll look after ’er,” he snarled. “If…if I don’t…”
Will dropped his gaze. “Aye. You know I’ll do it.” He owed Blade his life, no matter what he personally thought of Honoria. “Hold still. You need blood.”
Darkness slithered through Blade’s pale eyes. His head rolled to the side. “Feels…numb…” he murmured.
Panic speared through Will’s gut. “Don’t you dare!” Ripping at the heavy hunting knife he carried, he cradled his friend’s head in his hands. “Here. Have me blood. It’ll help.”
It was short work to slash the vein in his wrist open. He cupped the back of his head and held Blade’s mouth to his wrist.
A moment of hesitation that never used to be there. He knew what Blade was thinking. He’d stopped taking directly from any of his thrall’s veins when Honoria came into his life. Now he drank his blood either from her or cold, out of the icebox.
“Don’t be a fool. She won’t mind,” Will snarled.
That hint of darkness swept through Blade’s irises again. Will’s chest caught. Not in fear. Gods, not that. Anticipation swept through his veins, lighting them on fire. It’d been a long time since he’d been one of Blade’s thralls. He’d not realized how much he missed it.
As Blade’s mouth closed over his wrist, his tongue sliding over the ragged wound, Will collapsed forward onto his hands.
A gasp tore from his lips. Feeling flooded through him that he hadn’t felt in years.
It had confused him when Blade first took him as a thrall, but it was nothing more than his body’s reaction to the chemicals in his master’s saliva.
But the moment of closeness…
This was all he’d ever have of that.
He ground his teeth and tried to deny the pull. Twice as harsh after three years of abstinence. And just as confusing.
He didn’t feel this way with females.
Or he never had. Until Lena walked into his life.
And I’m not thinkin’ of her. Will bit his lip, trying to ignore the flush of pleasure that thought brought. Dark hair, dark eyes, that flirtatious little smile that drove him insane… His groin tightened and he growled, head bowed as the sensation against his wrist increased.
It was over all too quickly. Will collapsed onto his backside, clutching his wrist against his chest. The skin throbbed, still feeling the imprint of Blade’s mouth.
Heat flushed through the ragged edges of the knife cut—his loupe virus, rapidly healing the wound.
It would be gone by the end of the hour, barely a pink pucker against his swarthy skin.
Blade gasped, drawing his feet up. His eyes blazed with black fire, and he grabbed the handle of the hilt and ground his teeth together. Crying out, he drew it out of his chest and collapsed back on the roof, panting for breath.
The wound was still bleeding, but sluggishly now. With his blood flushing through Blade’s system, there was a strong chance he’d pull through. Verwulfen blood was thrice as potent as a human’s.
“Honoria’ll…kill me…” Blade gasped.
That’s if he survived. Will took one look at the ashen color of his face and looked away swiftly. Damage to the heart was always dangerous. He had to get him back to the warren, where Honoria, with her medical background, might be able to help.
Rigging up a makeshift bandage, he held his coat in place to suppress the bleeding and then tied the ends of his shirt off. “There. That’ll hold until we get you home.” Sliding his arm under Blade’s shoulder, he helped him to sit.
Blade gasped, clutching at his chest. The sight tore another shaft of ice through Will’s gut.
Followed by a hot stab of anger. Three years ago Blade would’ve laughed this off.
He was no longer standing on the edge of the Fade—when the craving virus finally overtook a blue blood and he turned into something else, something worse—but for a moment, Will didn’t know if that was any better.
“Can you stand?”
Blade struggled to his feet, his eyes glassy with pain.
“You have to hold on,” Will warned, bending and easing the other man over his shoulder. “I’m goin’ to get you home. To Honoria. She’ll know what to do. Just you hold on.”
***
Honoria eased the blankets higher and then turned the knob on the gas lamp lower. Light muted, casting a variety of shadows across the room as Blade slept. Will paced in front of the fire, his wrist tingling as the skin healed.
Honoria washed her hands, moving away from the bed.
Her face was composed, but deep shadows lingered in the hollows beneath her reddened eyes.
As she turned, the light caught her profile and for a moment Will stopped breathing, seeing another’s face in the shadows.
Then she looked up, arching a brow at him and the image was gone.
She shared the same dark eyes and rich mahogany hair as her sister, but Lena’s face was prettier and she was a good inch or two shorter than Honoria.
Just the ghost of her image lingered, haunting him.
A quick jerk of the head meant Honoria wanted to talk to him. Outside.
Shooting Blade one last look, he strode to the door.
An old shirt of Blade’s hung loosely over his chest. He couldn’t quite button it, and the sleeves stretched taut over his arms. Foolishness.
But he wasn’t knocking on Rip’s door—Blade’s other lieutenant—and asking for a shirt that might have a better chance at fitting him.
Honoria eased the door closed. “I think he’ll be fine. The bleeding’s stopped and I’ll get some more blood into him. Thank you for bringing him home to me.”
Will nodded. He never had much to say to her. They’d tried, after she first married Blade, to find some common ground between them. But he knew what she thought of him—had overheard it in quite explicit detail the night before he moved out of the warren.
Dangerous.
Unpredictable.
A threat to her sister.
Sometimes he wasn’t sure if she hadn’t been half right.
Her gaze dropped to his wrist. “Do you need tending—?”
“It’ll heal.”
“Something to eat then? There’s stew…in the kitchen. I’ll just—”
“Ain’t hungry.” He nodded his leave of her, then turned on his heel. The back of his neck was itching.
“Will. Please.”
He stopped moving and glanced back over his shoulder.
“You know you can come home now. It breaks his heart that you’re living on your own. And you know…she’s not here anymore either.”
Honoria would never understand. He shook his head. “She weren’t the reason I left,” he growled. Not the only one anyway.
Then he turned and stalked out into the darkness, feeling her eyes on his back the entire way.
***
No point going home.
Will stared at the fire in the distance, still raging out of control. Something bothered him about the attack. The mysterious device. The flamethrower. The silver knife. Those men had been prepared to face a blue blood and incapacitate them.
He breathed deeply through his nose. It was hard to pick up a scent trail with the overwhelming cling of ash in the air but not impossible. Moving east, he loped across the rooftops, his unease growing as the men circled back toward the north. Toward Whitechapel.
Just before the wall that circled the rookery, they dropped off the rooftops and disappeared into an alley. Will knew the area well. It was a dead end.
He followed them in and stared at the brick wall at the back of it.
The ripe scents of the rookery spilled over into the surrounding streets.
He wrinkled up his nose and looked around.
There was a grate in the cobbles, but surely they wouldn’t have gone down.
That led to the sewers and from there into the notorious sprawl of Undertown.
Weren’t nothing living there now, only ghosts and whispers.
People had tried to move back in once the vampire that had slaughtered its residents was killed, but something drove them back out.
If they came back at all.
All that space, the caverns and homes carved into the old underground tunnel scheme. Empty. Or was it?
Will hauled the grate out of the cobbles and dropped down into the dark, landing lightly on the pads of his feet. His nose told him there was nothing there. Nothing but refuse and the odd rat skittering away.