A Dark Heart (14 page)

“The children…”

“Safe enough, though the Gennelman is long gone.” He paused, pressed his
hands over the wounds on Elijah’s torso. “Tell me what to do, gov,” he said
suddenly, in a horrible, desperate voice Elijah had never heard before. “You’re
dying. Shall I take you to her Ladyship?”

“Her Ladyship?” he heard Percy’s voice cry, from somewhere above him.
“Why would you take him there? What claim does
she
have on his last
moments?”

“’Cause she’s his maker, woman,” Matthews bit out.

Percy let loose a train of expletives that lasted so long Elijah must
have blacked out for half of it. When he roused himself again, Matthews and
Percy were still arguing with each other.

“I won’t take him unless he tells me he wants it,” Matthews was saying.

“Bloody, foolish man! I need him! Alive!” Percy cried. “That it was
her
all this time!”

“I’ll not do it, Percy. I’ll not go against his wishes.”

“His wish was to stay alive bloody long enough to take down O’Connor!”
Percy insisted.

He tried to gain their attention, though he didn’t know what he wanted to
say. Did he want to go to Ana? Now, faced with his last moments, did he want to
break his years of resolve to keep his distance from her and all that she
offered? To live?

Percy was right. He’d wanted O’Connor’s head before leaving this earth.

But the price for staying on this earth was just too high. Wasn’t it?

He didn’t know anymore. All he seemed to be able to see in his mind’s eye
as he drifted into darkness were Ana’s gentle green eyes staring down at him.
And he wished with all of his heart to see them, just once more, before he was
gone for good.

“WELL, that
was … interesting,” Christiana said, for lack of a more enthusiastic word,
tugging off her long white silk gloves and eyeing her companions tentatively
from her seat on the divan in the Romanovs’ drawing room. Aline and Sasha had
insisted on taking her to the opera for an evening out. She’d roused herself
from her funk just enough to don her new green gown, but only just. In spite of
recent events, she remained determined to go through with her plan to scandalize
London society and begin the new chapter in her life – the chapter that
did
not
include Rowan or Elijah. But of course, by the time they’d
arrived at the opera house, her resolve had faltered and her desolation had
returned.

Aline’s mood hadn’t helped matters, either. The evening had turned into a
disaster for all of them, not just Christiana, the moment Aline had discovered
her husband’s ex-mistress on stage, singing the lead. Apparently, the soprano
who’d originally been slated to sing had been replaced at the last minute. As
Luciana Luclair was perhaps the most celebrated soprano in the world, no one in
the audience had minded … except for Aline.

Christiana’s friend threw herself down onto the settee, her arms crossed
and her mouth set in a pout.

Sasha had the good grace to look a bit sheepish as he hovered in the
doorway, as if afraid to enter the room and face his wife.

“Yes, what an
interesting
evening. Simply
lovely
.
Aida
is officially ruined for me forever,” Aline ground out. “My favorite opera,
mind you,
ruined
!” she reiterated, sending her husband a death-glare.

Romanov found the courage to arch an eyebrow. “Perhaps we should have
left at intermission, as I suggested.”

Aline’s eyes narrowed. “And miss The Luclair’s personal visit to our box?
Her hand on your … your…”

“Posterior,” Christiana supplied with a sigh.

“Posterior,” Aline repeated. “See? Christiana saw it too. The whole of
London probably saw it. And it happened
after
you told her we were
married. Jade!”

Sasha crossed his arms, matching Aline’s posture. “Are you referring to
me or Luciana?” he asked archly.

“Both! And how dare you use her first name. As if … as if…” Aline broke
off, too mad to continue.

Sasha strolled to his wife’s side. “As if what,
milaya
?” he asked
softly. “You know I have need of only one woman in my life. The soprano is in my
past.”

Aline sniffed and refused to meet her husband’s eyes. “The image of her
hand on your posterior is seared into my eyeballs forever. I doubt I’ll ever
recover,” she said with a huff.

“That you are jealous of my
posterior
makes my heart warm,” Sasha
said, his lips twitching at the edges. “I shall guard its virtue more
assiduously in the future.”

Aline just huffed again, though Christiana could see that her friend’s
temper was slowly cooling by the way her shoulders had relaxed. “See that you
do.”

Romanov was not through, however. He leaned over the back of the settee
and whispered something in Aline’s ear. Whatever he said sent a scarlet blush
over Aline’s cheeks.

Christiana rolled her eyes. She was thankful the whisper had been in
Russian. She had little interest in learning what scandalous words could make
her friend turn that bright of a color.

“
Aida
is still ruined,” Aline insisted, without heat.

“I’ll make it all better for you tonight,” Sasha said, kissing her crimson
cheek. “I’ll make sure you forget it entirely.”

Ugh.
That
was most definitely her cue to retire for the night. Now
that they’d settled into parenthood, the couple’s rather indiscreet demonstrations
of affection seemed to be on the rise. It had not been
this
bad in
Paris. And she had even less of a desire to bear witness to such displays than
she had then.

She rose from her seat. “I’m for bed,” she said.

“Oh, already?” Aline said rather distractedly as Romanov continued to
nuzzle her cheek.

“It’s after midnight,” she said, pretending to stifle a yawn, though she
wasn’t tired in the least. Another night spent tossing and turning loomed ahead
of her.

“Is it? Well, we shall see if your plan to cause a stir in that gown
succeeded in tomorrow’s gossip columns,” Aline said, “though judging from the
opera glasses turned towards our box this evening, you indeed accomplished your
goal.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Aline. They might have just been focused on Sasha’s
posterior,” she couldn’t help but retort.

For a moment, both Aline and Romanov gaped at her with astonishment, and
Christiana was afraid that she’d gone too far.

But at least they’d stopped fondling each other.

Then the front doorbell sounded, breaking the sudden silence. As if the
sound snapped them out of their momentary stupor, Aline and Romanov both began
to laugh.

Christiana sighed with relief. She’d spoken out of irritation, which
she’d immediately regretted, but at least the words seemed to have amused
rather than offended her hosts.

“Who the devil could be calling at such an hour?” Sasha asked when he’d
stopped laughing.

Aline continued to snicker. “I don’t know, but whoever it is, I am not at
home. I need to go check on Fyodor and the twins…”

The drawing room door burst open, and Madame Kristeva flew inside, her
face ashen, her hands fluttering restlessly at her heaving breast. Christiana
had never seen the portly older woman move so fast or look so disturbed.

“What is it?” Aline asked, flying to her feet.

Madame Kristeva practically shrieked her response, but it was in Russian,
so Christiana couldn’t understand a word of it. But she understood the look
Madame Kristeva cast in her direction well enough that the hackles on her neck
rose. This late night visit had to do with her, and it wasn’t going to be
pleasant.

“Damn it,” Sasha breathed at whatever Madame Kristeva said, tracing towards
the door in the blink of an eye. The rare profanity, coupled with Sasha’s
inhuman haste in front of the housekeeper, unsettled Christiana even more.

She turned to Aline, whose blush had completely drained away at the news.
She looked as pale and shaken as Madame Kristeva, who continued to chatter away
in panicked Russian.

“What is she saying?” Christiana demanded. “What is happening?”

Aline hurried to her side and grabbed her by the hand, pulling her in the
direction of the door. “It’s the Inspector,” Aline explained in a voice that
wavered. “He’s injured.”

Christiana shook off Aline and quickened her steps towards the front of
the townhouse, her heart beating so fast and hard her ears were deafened by the
sound of her rushing blood. Time had ceased to make sense the moment Aline had
spoken Elijah’s name, so it seemed to take hours to reach the foyer, though it
couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.

The chaos she found when she arrived befuddled what remained of her
senses. Some part of her took in the three strangers who stood on the fringes
of the foyer. A fragile girl and boy were huddled together in the shadows, both
with ginger hair, threadbare clothes, and terrified expressions. Behind them
loomed a tow-headed young man dressed in the first stare of fashion, a fierce
scowl distorting angelic features, and a pair of broken spectacles perched on
the end of his nose. It took a moment for Christiana to realize that the dark
crimson covering his white shirtfront and hands was blood, and another moment
to realize the glint of metal in those bloody hands was a nasty-looking dagger.

But she quickly dismissed the strangers from her mind when she saw the
burden draped over Constable Matthews’ automaton arms.

Elijah.

His unconscious body had gone boneless, one arm dangling limply from his
side, his head flopping backwards at a precarious angle. His face was colorless
and marred with deep, bloody gashes in his forehead and cheek – and they
weren’t healing.

As she stumbled to Matthews’ side, she could see dark stains saturating
the torso of Elijah’s shirt, could smell the sharp ferric tang of his blood in
the air. It was as if she were reliving that night all over again, when she’d
found him gutted and bleeding to death from the Ripper’s attack in that dirty
alley. Except then there hadn’t been so much blood – so much blood that
it dripped on the marble flagstones at Matthews’ feet.

Dead. He had to be dead. Even his vampiric resilience seemed to have
deserted him this time.

She heard someone scream, and it took a moment for her to recognize the
sound of her own voice. She clutched Elijah’s lifeless body, uncaring of the
cold, sticky blood that coated her bare skin and silk dress, searching for some
sign that he wasn’t completely gone. She passed a hand over his bloodied cheek
and leaned close to his blue-tinged lips, and didn’t draw another breath for
herself until she felt a small, shallow billow of air against her own skin.

He was alive. Barely.

“My God,” she managed to choke out, but that was all she could manage.
She was moving beyond words, tears already choking her, and she cursed her
weakness, her growing sense of helplessness.

“What happened?” Sasha demanded, taking charge.

Matthews’ bulldog countenance looked as helpless as Christiana felt, and
a tear trickled down one scarred cheek. Christiana’s dread deepened even more.
If Matthews – former prizefighting brawler from the East End – was
crying
,
then things had to be hopeless indeed.

“A pair of leeches were after those two,” Matthews answered grimly,
nodding at the ginger-haired pair behind him. “Gov here took ‘em both out, but
not before one of the blighters stuck him up but good. ‘E’s done for.”

“Don’t talk like that, you fool,” the bloodied, tow-headed man growled,
stepping out of the shadows, brandishing his knife. “He’s not dead yet, and
we’ve got
her
.” He turned a pair of cold, ruthless silver gray eyes in
Christiana’s direction, his expression hardening even further. “Heal him,” he
demanded.

Christiana stiffened at the demand, and the looming threat of the
stranger’s knife.

“Now wait a bloody minute,” Aline said, stepping between Christiana and
the stranger, hands on her hips, all five feet of her. “Who the hell do you
think you are, and what the hell do you think you’re doing with that knife?”

Sasha was by his wife’s side in a fraction of a second, shielding her
from the stranger’s threat. Just as quickly, he lashed out and knocked the
blade from the man’s hand with a snarl.

At that super-human display of speed, the red-haired children gasped and
backed further into the shadows of the room, and the young man’s complexion
went ghostly white. He faltered back a step, clearly shaken, but quickly
produced another knife from his bloodstained waistcoat.

“What the hell are you?” the man breathed. “You’re no leech.”

Sasha bared his teeth in the parody of a smile. “You’ll find out exactly
what
I am if you don’t put that blade away. And trust me, you don’t want to know.”

The stranger bared his teeth back in a display of courage that was as
brazen as it was foolhardy, keeping his blade drawn, though his hand shook.
“Oh, I don’t think so, mate. I’ve learned the hard way not to surrender. I’ll
keep my blade handy, thank you very much. Something tells me I might need it
again tonight.”

“Fuck off, Percy,” Matthews said in exasperation. “That there is
Professor Romanov, and you’d do well not to threaten his wife if you want to
see the dawn.”

“I’m not threatening his
wife
,” the man drawled. “I’m threatening
the lady next to her,” he said, pointing his knife back in Christiana’s
direction. “The bitch who turned Elijah and left him to rot.”

Christiana went cold at the accusation. Who
was
this man? Who was
he to say such things?

“This ain’t Covent Garden, Percy,” Matthews continued with an eye roll.
“Stop yer damned dramatics.”

“How can I when he’s dying! He’s dying, Lady Christiana, can you not see?”
the man raged.

Christiana saw all too well. She also knew that she could not do to
Elijah what she’d done nine years ago. Heart pounding, she ran her fingers
through Elijah’s lank, sweat-and-blood-soaked hair, squeezing her eyes shut.
She needed time to think, time she didn’t have.

Sasha saw Christiana’s struggle and gently nudged her aside to inspect Elijah’s
injuries.

“What are you doing? You’re wasting time. Give him your blood, for God’s
sake!” Percy insisted in a voice that cracked with emotion.

Sasha ignored Percy as he felt Elijah’s pulse and examined the wounds
underneath his tattered shirt. Sasha had trained as a medical doctor before his
present incarnation as a psychiatrist, and had spent the entirety of the
Crimean War as a field surgeon, so he was no stranger to traumatic wounds. But
he sighed a curse under his breath and shook his head at whatever it was he
found beneath the shirt.

“First let’s get him upstairs, and we can decide what to do,” he said,
gesturing Matthews towards the grand staircase. His expression softened when he
glanced her way. “Come, my Lady. He is in a bad way, but there is yet hope.”

Aline put her arm around Christiana’s waist, and they fell into step
behind them. Christiana was glad for the support her friend offered, for her
legs felt like they’d turned to custard.

“What he
needs
is the bitch’s blood,” Percy muttered behind them.

Christiana followed in Matthews’ wake up the stairs to an empty
guestroom, ignoring the awful poisoned-tongued peacock behind her as best as
she could. By the time she reached the bedroom, Elijah was stripped to the
waist and laid out across a white sheet, his wounds, both new and old, exposed.
It was worse than she could have ever imagined. Most of the flesh across his
torso was shredded to pieces, as if a feral animal had sunk its claws deep and
ripped him open, and a wound over his heart welled with blood.