Argent dove for Dashforth’s office as the handle rattled, and he barely made it behind the wall in time for the door to open. He used the astonished exclamations and calls for the police and doctor to cover the noise of the window latch as he stepped out onto the ledge and pressed the window closed.
Damn. The streets were full of people. The bobbies were being sent for, and if he didn’t work fast, the ruckus would draw attention to the building and he’d be spotted for certain.
The building next to Dashforth’s offices, a red-brick mercantile of haberdashery supplies, was only separated from this structure by perhaps the width of a coffin. Excellent. Balancing with his back to the wall, he inched along a ledge that barely deserved the name until he came to the tight alley. The trouble with buildings in this up-and-coming part of town was a preponderance of embellishments, such as ledges, for example, that only adorned the front of the building facing the street. The alley, barely half again the width of his shoulders, was hardly more than a glorified gutter and, apparently, a place to store rubbish.
Argent glanced out to the street. For a late-winter day, the sky was surprisingly clear. The chill kept people bundled, their necks bunched down into their scarves and cloaks, scurrying on their way, hoping to find a warm hearth at their destination. No one seemed to be looking up.
Three tall stories separated him from the ground. From freedom. His only option was to use an ability that he’d acquired by climbing the flat stone walls of Newgate, and perfected during bloody ambushes in the Underworld War.
He’d have to act quickly.
His legs were long enough to bridge the gap. Keeping one foot firmly on the ledge, he kicked his other leg and arm out to catch his weight on the adjacent building. Once secure, he pulled his foot off the ledge and caught his downward trajectory with one hand and one foot braced against each wall. He ignored the sharp brick that abraded his palms as he spider-crawled down the building sides, allowing his legs to slide, and then his arms in succession, until he could safely drop to the cobblestones below.
He caught his fall with a crouch, and only one bundled-up woman passerby started at his landing. A true city dweller, she decided it was safer not to question odd happenings, nor tarry in their wake, and she sank deeper into the hood of her cloak, quickening her steps along the way.
Straightening, Argent curled his throbbing palms into fists, knowing the pain would subside the colder he let himself get.
Though how the cold could penetrate the flood of molten heat still pouring through him would confound even the most scientific minds.
What the devil had just happened up there? What he’d meant to be a patient and informative interrogation had quickly become an unmitigated disaster. And here he stood, in the shadow of an alley, blood throbbing, hands smarting, and none the wiser.
His sound of frustration echoed off the stones before his fist collided with them. Though his knuckles didn’t splinter, the skin broke and bled. He needed the pain. Pain always grounded him. Focused him. Sharpened his edge to lethal.
This time, it was little help.
He hurried away from Dashforth’s office until he found another dark, narrow alley, where the windowless stone walls could see nothing, and therefore tell nothing. To mitigate the feverish throbbing, he turned and pressed his head to the cold, cold stone, trying to absorb some of it back into his soul.
The alley became his purgatory, a place to endure, to reflect. Alone in the center of a city nearly as heartless as he’d always been.
If you don’t kiss me, I’ll die.
The chill in the wind became a memory of Millie’s warm breath against his mouth. If he hadn’t kissed her that night, she would have died—by his own hands. He wondered if she knew that now. Now that she knew who he was. What he was.
There, even in the darkness of the stairwell where he’d first kissed her, her features had glowed with a light he’d never seen before. He’d been about to do it. About to snap the pretty bones in her neck, and break the spell she’d cast upon him while dancing. It would have been so easy to extinguish the light glowing from beneath her golden skin, from inside those obsidian eyes, on the night they’d shone the brightest for all of London.
If you don’t kiss me, I’ll die.
She’d said it as though she’d known her life was in his hands, and with a kiss, he could save her.
He’d never saved anyone before. Never given in to impassioned pleas for a victim’s life. He showed no mercy, gave no quarter, and hadn’t even been aware that he was capable of hesitation. The ghosts of his sins didn’t haunt his dreams. For he never had any. Easier not to dream than to rip oneself from nightmares that never seemed to end. Fear had been equally as absent from his life as regret. What had he left to fear? Whatever nightmares the future held were dreams compared to what lay buried in his past.
But in that moment, standing with their bodies pressed together, everything had changed. She’d not been afraid of him, nor had she been aware that she’d begged death, himself, to kiss her. She’d been nothing more than a woman stripped of artifice and pretense, a woman trusting the touch of a man, letting instinct and sensation suffuse that vibrant light inside of her until Argent had been certain with every fiber of his black soul that if he didn’t kiss her she would, indeed, have died.
And … He’d desired her to live. So he could have her. So she would be his.
For a man like him, desire was dangerous. To want something, to have something, gave him something to lose. Something for his enemies to use against him.