A Dark Heart (28 page)

Finally, as if sensing his distress, she found him with her eyes, and a
thousand emotions, from love, to relief, to fear, flashed over her face as she
hurried in his direction. Rowan shouted something at her and followed in her
wake, but about halfway there the two guards who had been guarding their cage
waylaid him, forcing him to a halt. Elijah wasn’t worried about Rowan. The man
would have no trouble dispatching the pair of leeches, but the interruption
left Ana to continue alone in her foolhardy journey. As she passed the device,
she staggered as the power of the light attempted to suck her in, tugging at
the long swathes of her skirt, ripping her hair from its pins. She quickly
righted herself and continued on, as if nothing could deter her in her purpose.

He was so petrified with fear for her that he couldn’t even force out the
scream that sat lodged in his throat.

If she made it to his side alive, he was going to kill her.

And then she was there, throwing herself against the bars in an effort to
reach as much of him as she could, raining kisses over every inch of his face,
running her hands over his shoulders and back as if to assure herself he was
alive. He tried to match her ardor, but he was too weak to do much more than
stand there, torn between the joy of being in her arms once more and the anger
he felt over the danger she’d put herself in to get there.

“You bloody idiot,” he choked out between her feverish kisses. “What are
you doing here?”

“Rescuing you. Loving you. God, Elijah, what have they done to you?” she
breathed, holding his face between her hands and smoothing his hair back,
studying him with dismay.

“They shot him full of opium and Elder blood, my lady,” Percy said flatly
next to him. “Could you save your happy reunion until
after
you’ve
actually rescued us?”

Ana gave Percy a scowl without any real heat behind it and held up her
wrist. “Drink,” she said.

With a final glance beyond them at the chaos unfolding, Elijah threw off
any lingering urge to balk at her command and sank his fangs deep. As soon as
her blood hit his veins, the sizzling hot pain began to dissipate, replaced
with a warm, healing surge of energy. A few draughts later, he tore his fangs
from her wrist and gasped as her blood electrified him from tip to toe, casting
off the last of the poison’s debilitating effects.

Ana smiled at him and stepped away. “That’s better.” She tested the lock
on their cage. “Now if I can find a key…”

She broke off midsentence when Elijah took the two steel bars in front of
him and bent them away from each other. He squeezed himself through the opening
he’d created and quirked a brow. “Or I can just do that.”

Ana swallowed, wide-eyed. “Or you can just do that,” she agreed.

He took her by the hand and tugged her close. “I am furious at you right
now.”

“I’m the one that’s furious. All that talk about staying out of danger,
and look at you!” she retorted, nuzzling his cheek as if she couldn’t get close
enough.

“Well, I certainly didn’t want to be here,” he muttered. He glared across
the room where Ehrengard still wrestled to regain control of the device. Then
his eyes tracked O’Connor. The coward was attempting to hide from Sasha and
Rowan, who were making short work of the gangster’s men. Elijah couldn’t work
up much of an appetite to join in the fight, though, not with Ana in his arms.
All he could think about was getting her to safety before Brightlingsea’s
damned machine blew them all to high heaven. “We need to get out of here, Ana.”

“What about Ehrengard? What about O’Connor?” Percy cried, grabbing at his
arm.

He shook her away. “They can go hang,” he said. And he meant it. From the
look of things, O’Connor was going to get his comeuppance anyway. He had no
desire to stay and see it through to the end. He had too much to lose.

Percy glowered at him with betrayal and what looked very much like hatred
blazing in her eyes and took off straight in Ehrengard’s direction before he
could think to stop her.

“Percy, wait!” he called, torn between following her and spiriting Ana
away from the chaos as quickly as possible. By the time he took a half-hearted
step in Percy’s direction on Ana’s urging, it was too late. He didn’t know what
Percy hoped to accomplish by rushing Ehrengard straight on, considering what the
man was, but he had a feeling Percy was beyond rational thought at the moment.

She did manage to take Ehrengard completely off guard, however. The
damned fool knocked straight into Ehrengard’s back as the man worked at the
black box and sank her blade deep into the side of his neck, nicking the
jugular. Acidic amber blood spurted everywhere, and Ehrengard howled in rage,
grabbing Percy off his back with an effortless swipe of his hand and flinging
her across the chamber as if she were weightless. She hit a tiled wall hard and
sank to the ground in a boneless heap, knocked unconscious.

Ehrengard pulled the knife out of his neck and tossed it aside before
stalking in Percy’s direction to finish her off. He looked like an enraged
bull.

“God, Elijah, do something!” Ana cried next to him.

But before Elijah could trace to Percy’s side to intercede, another low
sonic boom sounded, followed by that blinding pulse of light that seemed to
erase the world around them for a fraction of a second. When the world
rematerialized out of the white void, sound and colors rushing back into his
consciousness, he watched with growing incredulity as another pulsing, churning
ball of white light appeared. It filled the space between Ehrengard and Percy,
who stirred and raised a hand to her brow to squint into the light. But this
ball of light was different than the other. It hovered before them, disembodied
from any machinery, and instead of creating a vacuum, this one generated a
fierce gale, forcing even Ehrengard to brace against it.

Just when Elijah didn’t think things could possibly get any more bizarre,
they suddenly did as the black silhouette of what appeared to be a man began to
emerge from the light.

“What the bloody hell!” Ana breathed next to him, her shock clearly
overcoming her manners.

What the bloody hell indeed
, he thought to himself, as he watched
the Duke of Brightlingsea step out of that ball of light and into the chamber.
The man looked like an absolute Bedlamite too, wearing nothing but a pair of
ragged trousers that looked slightly singed around the edges, his damned feudal
broadsword clutched in his right hand. He placed two bare feet onto the floor
of the chamber and rolled his massive shoulders, an elaborate, completely
unexpected tattoo of what appeared to be a dragon rippling as he did so. The
beast rose up from his back in vibrant reds and golds and wrapped around his
shoulder and halfway down his chest. It looked as ferociously ill-tempered as the
man himself, who glanced around the chamber with a scowl before settling all of
his grim attention on Ehrengard.

Brightlingsea took a few steps towards his opponent, and the ball of
light behind him suddenly disappeared, as if it never was. He raised his sword
and charged full tilt in Ehrengard’s direction, a maniacal gleam in his amber
eyes.

Ehrengard recovered quickly from the shock of Brightlingsea’s unorthodox
entrance and pulled his own weapon – another thick, ancient looking sword
– from the folds of the cloak that he wore. The two men crashed together,
their swords clanging so loudly the whole chamber echoed with it over the din
of the black box.

Their fight escalated quickly, Ehrengard shoving the Duke so hard the man
crashed through the wall inches from where Percy lay, stunned and helpless.
Tiles and brick exploded in all directions from the impact, and Elijah rushed
to cover Percy’s body with his own. She might have had inexplicable healing
powers, but he didn’t think Percy could survive the onslaught of rubble that began
to rain down over her head.

When the dust had settled, both he and Percy watched as the Duke shot
forward out of the wreckage with a roar, bare feet and all, entirely unaffected
by his rough landing.

“Who the …
what
the bloody hell is that?” Percy choked out, eyes
wide.

“
That
is Brightlingsea,” Elijah muttered, rising to his feet and
pulling Percy up with him. She winced at the movement. “And you are lucky to be
alive. What were you thinking?” he hissed, wrapping an arm under her shoulders
and practically carrying her back towards Ana.

“I was thinking I wanted the bastard dead,” she said, her eyes following
the violent fight avidly as she limped alongside of him. “And that might
actually happen. My god, he’s magnificent!” she breathed as the Duke swung his
sword in an impossibly fast arc and cleaved straight through Ehrengard’s
shoulder. Ehrengard bellowed with pain but dropped his sword, clutching at the
massive wound. Brightlingsea advanced on the man and raised his sword to finish
him off, a look of deadly intent on his face.

By God, Brightlingsea might just kill the man.

But Ehrengard had other plans. He traced quickly away from Brightlingsea
to the black box and seized the white-haired man, pulling him tight against his
body. The white-haired man struggled, but was clearly no match for Ehrengard’s
greater strength.

When Brightlingsea saw the hostage, his expression turned horrified, and
all the ruddy color from the battle drained from his face. He lowered his sword
as if he didn’t know what to do.

Well, Elijah most certainly did. The old man worked for Ehrengard, had
built that bloody doomsday machine that still seemed determined to devour the
whole chamber. What was Brightlingsea waiting for?

Brightlingsea addressed the old man in that strange foreign tongue, and
the man frowned and turned his head from the Duke, surrendering to Ehrengard’s
hold. He answered the Duke with a barrage of angry words, never once meeting
his eyes. Elijah wasn’t sure why the old man had to be angry Brightlingsea,
since it was Ehrengard who seemed intent on using him as a human shield. But
Brightlingsea looked overcome with shock and despair at whatever it was the man
told him.

It was a hell of a time for the Duke to start developing feelings.

“What are they talking about?” he asked Percy as they reached Ana’s side.

She shook her head. “They’re too far away, I can’t make it out,” she
rasped out. “But what is the Duke doing? Why doesn’t he just kill them both?
Who is that man?”

“I think I know,” Ana said grimly. “I think that’s Da Vinci.”

“What?” they both answered her, incredulous.

She gave them a wry look. “Did you think he wouldn’t want a Da Vinci
heart for himself? I don’t know what he’s doing here with Ehrengard. But Da
Vinci is the one person in the world Brightlingsea would die to protect, and
Ehrengard knows it.”

“Oh, for the love of God!” Elijah muttered, as Brightlingsea proved Ana’s
words all too true. The Duke started to follow as Ehrengard backed through the melée
and out of the chamber with his hostage. But then he glanced back at the device
and stopped abruptly. He lowered his sword, looking lost for a moment, then seemed
to pull himself together with painstaking effort. With grim resolve in every
line of his powerful body, he stalked over to the black box and studied the
dials. His furrowed brow and blank stare did nothing to calm Elijah’s rising
sense of dread. If the Duke of Brightlingsea himself couldn’t stop the device,
then they were all doomed.

“We’ve really got to get out of here,” he muttered.

For once Percy didn’t argue with him, and they started across the chamber
towards Rowan, Sasha, and Hex Bartholomew, who’d never made it very far past
the entrance. The pair of immortals were still busy cutting through the last of
O’Connor’s army, while Hex waited in the rear to finish off the fallen leeches
with a wicked looking dagger across their necks. The woman seemed entirely
unaffected by the carnage around her and the gruesome task she’d been assigned.
She paused briefly after slicing through a leech’s neck to throw a relieved
glance in their direction, but something behind them seemed to distract her,
and her relief turned into panic.

Elijah turned to see what had caught her eye. His heart sank at the sight
of Hector tucked into a corner of the chamber, with O’Connor advancing
menacingly in his direction. For the first time, the boy actually seemed
cognizant of the danger he was in, for a terrified expression distorted his
angelic face.

He cursed and traced in Hector’s direction, but before he could reach
him, O’Connor made a grab for the boy. Hector cried out and struggled, but
O’Connor tightened his brutal grip with one arm and raised a blade to Hector’s
tender neck with the other. Someone shouted out in horror, and Elijah realized
it was Hex Bartholomew. She skidded to a halt a few feet from where O’Connor
held Hector hostage, pleading with him to let the boy go.

O’Connor was having none of it, his eyes locked with Elijah’s. The man
was scared and desperate and all too willing to use that knife on Hector, of
that Elijah had no doubt. He slowed his approach and held out his hands,
fighting back the sudden surge of rage and pain he always felt when confronting
the man.

“Stay back, or I’ll cut the boy’s throat,” O’Connor sneered. “I want out
of here alive, Laddie. And you’re going to help me.”

All of his soul balked at the old nickname, but he forced himself to nod.
“Just don’t hurt the boy.”

“I won’t … not yet anyway.” O’Connor backed out of the corner towards the
entrance, carefully keeping his distance from the device and Elijah. “Fine
company you keep these days, Laddie. And a fine
Lady
for a maker,” he
said, sending a mocking glance Ana’s way. “I wonder if she knows what you are.
What I made you.”

Elijah shuddered inwardly at O’Connor’s words, could feel his bloodlust
rising, his vision growing even brighter and his fangs throbbing from the
desire to tear the man apart.