A Dark Heart (13 page)

The sudden sound of raised voices somewhere inside broke the eerie
stillness of the night, and brought him to a momentary halt. He recognized the
high, womanish tones of the Gentleman, but not the deeper, more menacing ones
that followed. But the sound of children weeping quietly underneath the arguing
voices was unmistakable … and worrying.

With a rising sense of dread, Elijah slipped inside the building, into a
darkened, dank hallway with only the light of the moon and the sound of the
voices to guide him. The building was much like his own, the narrow hallway
ending at the base of a staircase that led up into darkness. Doing his best to
avoid the creaks and groans of the rotting wood, he ascended the stairs.

He sensed warm bodies behind several of the doors he passed, belying the vacant
air of the old place, but the doors were shut tight, as if the few inhabitants
knew better than to get involved in whatever was taking place in the flat above
their heads. Their self-interest was callous, but it was the way of things,
especially in this neighborhood. And quite wise, particularly on this night,
for Elijah could all but smell the incipient violence in the air, could feel
it, like a fog closing around his body, choking him.

He stopped at the door to the attic room that the thief had entered. It
was halfway open, and he could see inside to the grimy, poorly lit flat. There
were five bodies inside, but Elijah could only scent three of them: the Gentleman
and the two children he’d heard weeping downstairs, one a young boy, the other
an older girl of indeterminate age, slight and frail-looking. They were neatly
but shabbily dressed, ginger-haired – clearly related – and a bit
battered around the edges. He could smell their blood leaking from various cuts
and scrapes from where he stood, tempting his appetite. They clung to each
other in terror while the Gentleman tried to reason with the two, hulking
leeches that loomed over them.

Damn.
It was the reason he’d not been able to scent the danger as
he’d scented the children. He had to be within striking distance before he could
smell another of his kind, particularly the fastidiously clean ones currently
filling up half of the small flat. Elijah recognized them as two of O’Connor’s
cruelest but most calculating foot soldiers. Whoever these children were, they
were obviously important, since O’Connor had sent muscle with the restraint not
to kill them on the spot.

“But I have his damned diamonds! I did everything he wanted,” the
Gentleman was saying with a thread of desperation running through his voice. He
had an accent, too, which surprised Elijah. A flat, New World accent. Visitors
from across the Atlantic were rare, considering the state of Europe since the
War.

One of the leeches shrugged. “Himself says to fetch the boy along wif ‘is
rocks.”

“That wasn’t part of our bargain!” the Gentleman cried. “O’Connor
promised he’d give her back to me if I brought in this last take.”

The other leech shrugged carelessly. “Nicky wants the lad. And we rather
fancy the lassie here for ourselves,” he said, giving the lassie in question a
good, hard squeeze on her flank. She yelped and looked desperately at the
Gentleman. “You and yer old man’s been holding out on our Nicky. ‘E ain’t too
pleased to be made to look foolish to him what’s in charge.”

 “So Nicky wants the lad here to go along wif his other prize. And
we
want the little lady as payment for our troubles. Then you’ll be even with the
boss, all clean and tidy,” the first leech said.

“Aye, he’s lettin’ you live, ungrateful git,” the other one jeered.

“I’d rather be dead,” the Gentleman cried. Elijah could not see much of
the Gentleman underneath the large-brimmed hat he wore low on his head, but he
could tell the lad’s expression was now tinged with fury. His black-gloved
hands clenched into fists at his side, and his whole body vibrated with
tension.

“That could be arranged,” said the first leech with an amused expression.
“Or you could always join your sister and give us a spot of fun on your way
out. You’re not as comely, but I won’t hold it against you.”

Elijah watched with growing incredulity as the Gentleman hurled himself
in the direction of the leech with an enraged cry, wielding a blade. It looked
lethal, but only against a human – certainly not against a vampire. The
lad was clearly seeking his own death, just as he’d threatened. Bloody fool.

Elijah had known it would come to a fight, from the moment he’d learned
O’Connor’s plans for the boy and young woman. The sickening memories of his own
treatment at O’Connor’s hands had flooded up inside of him with relentless
intensity, causing his stomach to churn, paralyzing him as he’d watched the
scene unfold before him. It was that night all over again, when he’d saved
Percy. All he could clearly think was that he’d not let these children suffer
the things he’d suffered – he’d die before he let that happen, all of his
plans for vengeance be-damned.

 If he could just save them, it would be enough.

But he couldn’t afford to delay a second more if he meant to do any good,
for the second leech, fangs descended and eyes aglow, had raised one of its
hands, preparing to crack open the Gentleman’s head as soon as he was in range.
One swipe was all it would take.

He’d thought he was beyond the glut of emotions that suddenly overtook
him as he charged into the room. He’d thought he’d moved past compassion for
lost children like these, past raw fury for the soulless devils who preyed upon
them. But his humanity had just been lying dormant after all, underneath all of
the morphine and self despair.

He knew he had barely a sliver of hope of surviving, of saving the
children at all. He was half-dead already, no match for two full-blooded,
healthy leeches. But he had surprise on his side, and a few tricks – or
at least a pair of them – left. He hoped they would be enough.

And somehow, miraculously, he reached the leech fast enough to deflect
the deathblow to the little thief. The leech’s claws dug into one of his
shoulders instead, ripping his flesh down to the bone.

He wanted to howl in agony, but he pushed the pain away and stepped
between the leeches and their victims, clutching his ruined shoulder. He
recovered enough to pull his walking cane free of the strap on his back, though
it tore at the wound to do so, sending a fresh wave of white-hot agony through
his shoulder. With trembling hands, he unsheathed the narrow blade hidden
within the cane and turned briefly to address the children.

They were staring at him with slack-jawed terror, as afraid of him as they
were of the other leeches. Even the Gentleman was frozen where he stood,
gripping his useless knife in front of him, gaping beneath his wide-brimmed cap.

“Run, you fools,” he gritted out, before turning back to the leeches to
press his last advantage. With his free hand, he withdrew the old Earl’s
antique pistol he’d hastily shoved into his waistcoat earlier, cocked it, and
fired it right between the eyes of his nearest opponent. He blew the back of
the leech’s head off, and sent him tumbling to the floor in a pool of his own
gore. But Elijah knew from personal experience the wound would merely
incapacitate the leech for a minute at most before his unnatural body would
regenerate enough to come at him again, so he leapt over the fallen leech to
finish the job with his sword.

Another scream came from behind him just as he’d raised his blade. He spun
around and found the other leech reaching for the young boy as the children
attempted to leave the room.

“Go,” said a familiar voice beside him, and he nearly jumped out of his
skin. He turned to see Percy at his side, a long, vicious blade in her hands.
“Help them,” she said, kneeling down over the fallen leech, raising her blade.
“I’ll finish this one for you.”

He’d not noticed Percy’s arrival in all of the chaos, but he wasn’t about
to question it. He traced as quickly as he could to overtake the other leech in
time. The leech quickly turned from the boy to intercept him, hissing and
swatting Elijah’s blade to the side, unconcerned over the cuts he received to
his palms in the process. They just healed over in seconds anyway.

“This doesn’t concern you, Inspector,” the leech said.

“Oh, but it does. O’Connor knows this is my neighborhood,” he retorted.
“You should know better than to conduct your business here.”

The leech just sneered at that. “Look at you. You’re on your way out,
Inspector. Everyone knows it.”

“I just took out your friend there. I’m not dead yet.”

The leech looked unimpressed. “But you will be. Very soon, I expect.” He
glanced at the gun leveled at his head. “And you might as well throw aside that
old relic. Unless you think you can reload it before I rip out your throat.”

Elijah tossed the gun aside with a growl.

The leech smirked and cracked his knuckles in anticipation “Well, then, that’s
better. Now let’s have some sport,” he said, and launched himself at Elijah.

Elijah sidestepped the leech and brought his blade across the man’s back,
cutting through the coarse wool and linen and into the flesh beneath. It barely
slowed the leech, who swung around and came at Elijah again, swiping a dagger
back and forth across Elijah’s torso, fast and deep on each pass. Elijah felt
his skin slitting open, and hot, sticky blood pouring from his guts and over his
legs. He staggered back, raising his sword in front of him, not daring to look
down, for he knew it was bad. His vision blurred, and his head began to spin,
and somewhere far in the distance, he heard someone screaming his name.

That
had been pathetically quick work on the leech’s part.

He cut his blade in the direction of the leech’s neck, but he was moving
so slowly that the leech easily stopped the sword in its path, jerking it from
Elijah’s hand and tossing it over his shoulder with a laugh.

“You’re weak as a human,” the leech said, tsking with mock disappointment.
“No sport at all,” He stepped up to Elijah, and stuck his bloodstained dagger
in Elijah’s chest down to the hilt, right through the heart, then twisted it,
as casually as he pleased. He licked a bit of blood from his fingers afterwards
and grimaced. “You taste bloody awful, mate. What is that? Heroin?”

“Morphine,” Elijah answered. Though he didn’t know why he suddenly
decided to have a conversation with the man. He stared down at the dagger
sticking out of his chest, and the dark blood running out of his body, down
over his boots, onto the dusty wood floor. He couldn’t even feel it anymore.
His body felt numb all over, and it wasn’t even trying to regenerate.

Suddenly, he found himself on his knees, gazing beyond the leech at the
devastated expression on Percy’s face. She seemed frozen in place, just staring
at him with big, luminous gray eyes. His eyes skirted to the left and focused
for a moment on the young boy with the shock of dark red hair, who was watching
him with a disturbing intensity from the shelter of his sister’s arms. He
wondered briefly why the children were still there. He’d told them ages ago to
run. What was stopping them?

Matthews. Matthews stood in the doorway. Elijah wanted to ask Matthews
what the hell he thought he was about, blocking the children’s exit. And why he
was crying.

“It’s a shame. I was thirsty,” the leech continued their strange
conversation. “I shall have to settle for the little lady, I suppose.”

Elijah turned his attention back the leech, his vision darkening at the
edges. It was growing more and more difficult to hold his head up. “That
pistol,” he said, his voice coming from a great distance to his ears. “It’s a
dueling pistol. From 1809. The old Earl of Llewellyn gave it to me. Pulled me
out of the gutter, he did. Found me a family. Sent me to school. Gave me a
bloody gift every Christmas like I was his own son. Never understood it,” he
said.

The leech looked momentarily puzzled. He retrieved Elijah’s sword from the
floor and tested its weight. He raised it in the direction of Elijah’s neck and
paused, as if considering the best angle to take off his head. “What the hell
are you talking about?”

“My dueling pistol,” Elijah continued, his vision now almost completely
gone. He was dying. He could feel the life eking out of him. He wouldn’t even
need the sword to finish him off. “Did you know all dueling pistols come in
pairs? A matched set. Nobs used to blow each others’ heads off all the time
with them.”

The leech shook his head in disgust. “Is this how you want to go out?
Nattering on about nobs and dueling pistols?”

“Not particularly,” Elijah managed to answer. “Which is why I brought a
matched set tonight,” he said, pulling out the other pistol from his boot with
the last of his strength, aiming it at the leech’s forehead, and pulling the
trigger.

The recoil knocked him on his back.

“Bloody, bloody hell!” Percy screeched as she was splattered with the
leech’s brains all the way on the other side of the room.

Elijah rolled to one side and tried to pick up his fallen sword to cut
off what remained of the leech’s head, but he couldn’t seem to make his legs
work. He floundered around in his own blood, clutching his stomach and chest,
breathing heavily, unable to focus his vision any longer. He was sure his
insides were falling out of him.

Then hands were on him, pushing him down, and he suddenly found himself
lying on his back again, staring up into the face of Matthews.

“How did … you get here?” he whispered.

Matthews shook his head and clasped his good shoulder, looking beyond
speech as tears rolled down his cheeks.

“I have to … finish … the leech…” Elijah breathed, trying to sit up.

Matthews pushed him back down and just kept patting his shoulder, over
and over again. “Already done, gov. Percy cleaved the blighter’s head straight
off.”