Druthers had heard the Blackheart of Ben More was at his door, and brought the most lethal of his men out to brawl. The kind of brawl that someone wouldn’t be walking away from.
Four someones, to be precise.
If anyone carried a pistol, it would be Druthers, but if he was expecting a shipment of goods, the last thing he’d want to do was fire it and alert the night patrol.
Dorian may just have to stake his life on that. “Gentlemen,” he greeted them ironically.
“What you sniffing around my cut of snatch for, Blackwell?” Druthers barked, his accent clearly marking his peasant Yorkshire ancestry. He motioned to Gemma and Farah through the slats in the crates. “Don’t you got enough of your own?”
“What I have is a business proposition for you.” Dorian attempted to communicate in a language the bastard would understand.
Druthers motioned to Bones and the African to step ahead of him, which they did. “What makes you think I’d discuss business with a cornered pretender and a few whores? If I took down the king of the London underworld, I’d never have to buy me own drink again, not to mention the rest of the London docks would be up for grabs.”
A shadow shifted in the alley, and Dorian stepped back a few paces, drawing the criminals closer. “Think about your next move carefully, Druthers,” he warned with the arctic calm that had sent many a would-be attacker scrambling away. “I see this ending with your death.”
Bones and his compatriot passed the alley and reached the pile of crates, though they threw each other covert looks of uneasiness.
“You don’t see nothing out of those eerie eyes, Blackwell.” Druthers addressed him but sneered at the women who remained wisely silent behind the crates. He wedged himself behind his advancing men, the bear with the kukri remaining at his side like a giant scarred sentinel. “What I see is a few cunts needing to be taught a lesson.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Dorian replied, tucking his hands behind his jacket to offer his chest as a target.
“My whore’s too ugly for the four of us.” Druthers wet his cracked and peeling lips with a swipe of the tongue, his eyes snagged on what he could see of Farah. “But as soon as I’ve rid the world of Dorian Blackwell, your pretty, tight slut will be looking for a new man to ride.”
Some men felt fire lick through them when they were about to kill. It turned their skin red, made them sweat, filled their muscles with strength and heat and burned away all sense of logic and control.
With Dorian, it was ice.
It hardened his muscles and crackled through his veins, freezing everything that made him alive. Human. It expanded to fill the empty spaces and reinforced any brittle parts. It dulled pain until people could chip away at him again and again, only to be bit by shards. The cold kept him sharp. Alert. Fierce.
And didn’t slow him down one bit.
With this many opponents, the fight would need to go quickly. Once a body hit the ground, another would replace it, and he couldn’t take the chance that someone might stand up and come at him again. No time to waste with punishing or wounding.
Lethal blows. Open veins. No survivors.
As Bones’s knife arced at his throat, Dorian crouched and wrenched the two long knives from their scabbards hidden against his back beneath his coat. He spun them so his thumb capped the pummel, and the blades rested along his forearms. On his way back up, he sliced through the meat beneath the pit of his attacker’s arm.
The man dropped his knife immediately as he severed the muscle and rendered his opponent’s knife arm permanently ineffectual. The piercing scream was cut short by Dorian’s second knife embedding deep into his throat.
Dorian was too focused on the next threat, the cudgel held in the coffee-skinned man’s leathery hand, to feel the warm arterial spray as he wrenched the blade out of Bones’s neck. The bleeding man made a terrible gurgling sound as his momentum carried him forward, and the body landed somewhere out of view.
Dorian almost missed the flash of auburn hair as Christopher Argent materialized from the alley and struck like a viper. One moment, the bear, George Perth, was just behind Druthers readying his kukri to strike, and the next, his limp feet were disappearing into the black alley.
Another unsuspecting victim of Argent’s famous garrote.
Dorian rushed the dark assailant, giving him a chance to raise his right arm for a blow that would have all the force of a speeding steam engine. That was, if Dorian had allowed it to land. Throwing his left knee into the unguarded torso, he heard the satisfying sound of the man’s breath leaving his body as he collapsed at the waist over his knee. One strong thrust of the knife to the back of the neck was enough to sever the man’s spinal cord.
He looked up from discarding the body, and found Druthers had pulled his pistol. “Not another move,” the brigand warned, his eyes peeled wide with fear. “I don’t want to shoot you, it’ll bring the coppers.”
“Then what do you propose?” Doran queried, fighting the need to look back and check on Farah. She’d never seen him kill before. What did she think of him now?
“Hand me the whore, she’s mine, and I’ll be on my way.”
“It’s too late for that, I’m afraid.” Dorian shook his head, slinging drops of blood from his blade with a flick of his wrist. “A man like me can’t leave an attack like this unanswered and hope to retain his place at the top.”
“I still have George,” Druthers threatened. “He’s the deadliest man in Wapping. You can’t kill us both before eating a bullet.”