Chapter 3
Three
“Be brave, Will,” Blade called. “Ain’t naught to it. Just a little prick, much like your own. You don’t ’ear the lasses down on Petticoat Lane complainin’, do you?”
Will swore at him and stared ferociously at the wall as Honoria slid the needle in.
The silver began burning immediately. Cold iron healed in seconds, but silver kept the wound open long enough for her to take her sample.
Sweat dripped into his eyes, and a chill ran down his face. Bile churned in his stomach.
“There we go. Nearly done,” Honoria crooned, patting his shoulder. “It’s a nice red sample, Will. I’d grown used to Blade’s blue blood.”
The sound of light footsteps in the hall caught his ear.
His head swam as he turned his face that way, cold spiraling through him.
A warm, floral scent curled through his nose.
Honeysuckle. Oh no. Not her. Not now… Somewhere in the distance he thought he heard Blade asking if he was all right.
As the room buzzed, he glanced toward the needle and the vial thick with his blood.
A mistake.
The next thing he knew, he was lying flat on his back on the floor and shoving at the vile smelling salts someone waved under his nose. His fingers grazed a lady’s breast, and his eyes shot open as Lena tumbled backward, the smelling salts spilling everywhere.
Months since he’d seen her. Months where the image of her had faded until the memory was almost a blur.
Now here she was, as vibrant and beautiful as ever, her dashing red skirts spilled across the floor like a pool of blood.
The hunger in him, the raging warmth, bubbled up, flooding through his vision until he knew his eyes were wolf-gold.
Vision sharpened, picking out every single strand of hair that tumbled over her shoulders, the dew on her lips, the light reflecting off the bleached tips of her lashes.
Mine, something inside him snarled. For a moment the world blurred and when he wrenched back his control, his hand was half lifted toward her.
“What the hell are you doin’ here?” he snapped, still disorientated. Cold sweat ringed his neckline.
Blade caught his hand. “Easy there.” The words were light, but Will knew them for the warning they were.
Control it. Rein it in.
The effort left him breathless. As his vision faded back to normal, he realized they were all staring at him in various states of wariness.
“I’m fine,” he muttered.
Blade knelt back on his heels. “Good. Don’t think I could take you on just yet.”
Lena sat up, her face pale. The coffee-dark color of her hair was the same precise shade of her sister’s, but her brown eyes were warmer, more almond shaped. Smiling eyes, meant to tempt and tease.
They weren’t smiling now.
Lena’s lips curved, but it didn’t light up her face the way it could. “Goodness,” she said in a falsely bright tone. “How much blood did you take, Honor?”
“I had no idea you had a fear of needles,” Honoria said, glancing at the tiny vial.
“Thought I could handle it.” It had been a long time since he’d fainted.
“The exhibition?” Blade asked.
Where he’d found Will as a boy. Chained up on stage in London’s East End and forced to exhibit his monstrous strength and healing capabilities to the gasping crowd.
The showman, Tom Sturrett, cut him with iron blades.
Despite the presence of the loupe virus, the poor conditions and lack of food meant he didn’t always heal as quickly as they wanted.
Then Mrs. Sturrett would stitch him up with her coarse needle.
It wasn’t long before just the sight of it was enough to make the blood rush out of his head.
Lena clasped her gloved hands in her lap, tendrils of soft brown hair escaping from her chignon. She must have been in a rush, for her hat was still cocked jauntily across her brow, a scarlet feather trailing over one cheek. His gaze lingered on the feather.
“The exhibition? What exhibition?” she asked.
Blade met his gaze. “When—”
“Nothin’,” he snapped.
They all looked at him again and Will cursed his bluntness. Nothing would fire Lena’s imagination more than a brusque denial. He could already see the curiosity forming in her eyes. She’d be after his secrets now like a ferret.
Maybe it was best to give them the condensed version.
“Used to be displayed in the penny gaff shops as a curio. Or up on stage in Covent Garden.” Pitching his voice louder, he mimicked Sturrett’s showman cry.
“Come and see the ferocious Beast! Witness London’s last remaining verwulfen in chains!
” He could almost smell the cheap shag tobacco the audience smoked and the reek of stale, unwashed bodies.
“After the singin’ and flash dancin’ I were the main event.
They’d drag me out in a cage and the audience’d throw rotten food at me.
Or sometimes they’d dress me in wolf furs and have some of the actors play at blue bloods.
It’d usually end when they attacked me with swords. ”
Lena’s eyes went round. “They didn’t really stab you?”
“With iron.” His voice was hard. “Heals right quick. Unless it’s silver-alloy.”
“A similarity you share with Blade,” Honoria mused.
“Honestly, Honoria. How can you think about the disease after hearing something so dreadful!” Lena snapped at her sister. Then looked back at him. “I thought you were fifteen when Blade brought you home?”
“I were. Or nearabouts. Didn’t keep much track o’ time, in the cage.”
Lena’s eyes softened with distress.
Will hadn’t expected her to defend him or sympathize.
Most of the crowd had been costermongers and the like, but sometimes one of the Echelon paid Sturrett to display him in their grand homes in Mayfair.
The ladies wore fine silks and toyed with the extravagant diamonds and pearls around their necks—fancy women dressed like Lena—but at least they didn’t throw nothing at him.
Instead they’d eye him with their hot little eyes, whispering and smirking behind their fans.
The gentlemen hadn’t liked that at all. Will hadn’t the heart to tell them he shared their sentiments.
It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Nobody listened to him when he was in the cage.
He’d become little more than an animal to them.
In the end, he’d stopped speaking, growling and snapping at them when they came near him.
That was the worst of the degradation. If Blade hadn’t been in the audience one night and forced Sturrett to free him, he shuddered to think what he might have ended up like.
“Both diseases dislike the presence of silver,” Honoria mused. “Which suggests a common…ancestor, so to speak? The more we know, the more likely I could find a cure. I’ll examine the sample under the microscope and begin tests. Perhaps it were best if you weren’t here, Will?”
It wasn’t the sight of blood as did him in, so much as the needles. But he had to get out of here. His skin was itching.
“Aye. I’ll be off.”
“Not home,” Honoria said. “You’re not fit to leave just yet. I want to check on you before you go. Lena?”
Lena’s head lifted like a startled doe. “Yes?” she asked warily.
Honoria took a shallow breath, as though considering her words. “Can you see Will to the kitchen and sit with him awhile? Make sure he gets something into his stomach. You know how he gets after some excitement.”
“That ain’t necessary,” he said.
Lena exchanged glances with him. “I was hoping to speak to you, Honoria.”
Even Blade stared at her, a silent question in his gaze. Honoria’s eyes met his and somehow the question was answered. Blade growled under his breath and nodded. “Best to get somethin’ into you, Will. We’ll be down shortly.”
No help for it. He was stuck with her and the room was suddenly far too small. Will opened the door and stalked through. Lena hurried behind him in a swish of skirts with a muttered curse about gentlemen allowing ladies to go first.
“I ain’t no gentleman.”
“Well, everyone knows that,” she murmured. “They don’t call you the Beast for nothing.”
The words shouldn’t have stung. He’d been called worse for years. Indeed, he’d taken the name on, molding himself into it. Using it to keep curious humans at bay and predators on their toes.
But for some reason, hearing it from her lips felt like a knife to the chest.
Following his nose to the kitchen, he found it empty. Lady Luck wasn’t with him today. Though a bubbling pot of soup on the stove bore evidence of Blade’s housekeeper, Esme, there was no sign of the actual woman.
A light touch fumbled at his wrist. The smooth silk of her elbow-length gloves. “Here,” Lena said, tugging his hand toward one of the low stools by the hearth. “Sit. I’ll fetch you some soup.”
She let him go, but the feel of her touch remained, like phantom fingerprints. Will sank slowly onto the stool, watching as she bustled about the kitchen.
Lena looked out of place. The hearth dominated the room and emitted a constant blanket of heat.
Soot stained the ceiling, and the workbenches were heavy and scarred from frequent use.
Strings of onions and herbs dangled over the main bench, along with a row of copper pots strung from metal hooks.
It was homey and inviting. Precisely everything that Lena was not.
Her red velvet skirts were hooked up just enough to reveal a flirtatious froth of underskirt, and her corset narrowed an already slender waist to a size he could span with his hands.
Black bands of lace decorated her bodice and the panels of her skirts.
As she reached up to try and fetch a bowl, the creamy mounds of her breasts threatened to tumble from her bodice.
A hint of black lace edged against her creamy skin.
Will’s fingers itched.